Page 31 of Old Money
I stop just short of saying my name. I sputter for a moment, then try again.
“Alex, hi. I’m a fellow graduate of the Wheaton School, reaching out to congratulate you, and the whole class of ’99, on the twenty-year anniversary of your graduation. We’d love to hear what you’ve been up to since then, and discuss your recollections from your time at Wheaton. And, in particular, the friendships you made there.”
I feel my lips begin to twitch and quickly hang up, slapping a hand to my mouth, giggling and giddy with adrenaline.
“Oh my God,” I laugh into my hand. “Oh my God, oh my God, what is wrong with me?”
I collapse back on the bed, looking at the number on my outgoing calls and bursting into laughter again. I feel utterly ridiculous. But I’m not scared—I’m not even worried. Odds are, Alex will simply delete the message at the first mention of Wheaton, assuming I’m one of those chipper alums who call for a hand-out ten times a year—albeit a little more awkward than most. And on the off chance he does call me back? Well, mission accomplished.
I think about Jeremy’s warning:Let this sleeping dog lie. Looks like a biter. He’s probably right. There is no reason to believe Alex Chapman will talk to me—no reason to believe he won’t threaten me himself. But I just don’t think he will. I have the oddest feeling that, if I ask just the right questions at just the right moment, Alex will answer. I don’t know what makes me think so—or, I do, but it’s also ridiculous. It’s Alex’s face in the photo. I pull the article up on my phone, zooming in to look at it again. It’s small and slightly blurry in the dim light, only partially visible behind Patrick’s shoulder. Alex isn’t smiling.
Chapter Fourteen
July Fourth, 1999
Caitlin vanished for the first time during cocktail hour. All the teenagers did.
Every party began in the yellow ballroom, kitted out with bar stands and a shrimp-cocktail spread that no one ever touched. Families would sit together at dinner, but here, everyone split off into their demographics. Kids my age hung around in corners, sometimes playing UNO or passing around a Game Boy until Mr. Brody confiscated it. The adults shuttled between conversations, the volume rising slightly with each round of drinks. With their parents pleasantly sloshed, the older kids would start to dip out, meeting up for their own private gatherings on the back steps or the tennis courts.
Sometimes I’d see them from the terrace—a cluster of them smoking at the bottom of the hill, or a couple making out in the trees beside the pool. But it wasn’t much fun, spying on my own.
Susannah never came to parties—no staff kids did, unless they’d snagged some little one-off job like Jamie had, filling in at coat-check for twenty dollars and unlimited sodas. I knew most of the kids playing games in the corners—I was friendly with some of them at school. But they had their own social circles at the club, and I knew without asking that they were closed to me. So that night, like most nights, I spent cocktail hour leaning against one of the open French doors, drinking Shirley Templesand half watching the room like a dull TV rerun I’d seen a dozen times. I wish, just that once, I’d paid closer attention.
I do know from various news reports that Caitlin was with Patrick for at least part of that hour. They were seen on multiple occasions by multiple guests, though no one recalled specifics—they were just darting around the clubhouse together, like the rest of the teenagers. Nobody noticed the looks on their faces, their tones of voice or whether they were holding hands or not.
I’m guessing they still were at that point—though perhaps not in front of people. Whatever conflict arose, I don’t think it had even begun yet. The one thing I do recall from that point in the evening is the moment they both returned. It was just before dinner, and she appeared first, slipping in through the doorway and weaving through the crowd to join her dad, chatting with a group at the far end of the ballroom. She looped her arm through Uncle Greg’s, laughing at something he said. Her cheeks were flushed with a candy-apple shine.
Patrick came in just a minute later. A ripple of quiet went through the crowd, and all conversations paused, just for a breath, as he walked through the door—his own face glowing too. Everyone was talking again, pretending not to look at him, but stepping out of his way. The party seemed to move around him as he ambled across the room—hands in his pockets, chin high and head cocked, the right side of his mouth turned up, as always, in that delicate smirk. It looked both obnoxious and utterly dashing. I’d never thought of a boy as sexy, but I knew Patrick was something other than cute or handsome, and that it made me feel pleasantly ill. I could see, objectively, that his suit was too big and his shaggy hair was dirty. But Patrick had a preternatural confidence—the same kind Caitlin had—that made everything he did or said or wore seem exactly right. Even that fussy little four-in-hand knot.
He stopped beside his mother at the French doors, barely thirty feet away from me. Liv Yates was locked in conversationwith an older woman, a martini held casually at her side. Patrick lifted it from her hand—gently, but with no attempt to hide it—and turned to take a sip.
Just as the glass touched his lips, he noticed me staring. His eyes locked on mine and he froze, as if I were a ghost.
Two heartbeats and it passed. The fear dissolved, his face relaxing back into its easy grin. I watched him tip his head back, draining the martini glass, Caitlin’s words echoing in my head:They scare easy.
Chapter Fifteen
Two weeks later, on a Friday morning, I drive to Alex Chapman’s house. I head out early, the morning blissfully cool after a long night of rain. By the time I reach Bramble Bush Road, where Alex lives, the sun is blazing and the air is as thick as a wet wool blanket.
Alex never returned my voicemail—my little impromptu alumni-relations message. I’d woken up the next morning seized with anxious regret, feeling like a fool for the impulsive call—and even more foolish for thinking Alex might be receptive to me. I hadn’t even blocked my number. What if he did listen to my whole, awkward message, with the cryptic allusion to recollections from ’99, and in particular, his friends? What if he told Patrick?Wouldn’the tell Patrick? And wouldn’t he put an end to all this somehow?
But two weeks later, nothing. I was still punching in at work (with an honest-to-God time card). My call hadn’t caused even a minor stir—nothingI’d done so far had. They hadn’t even placed the notice in the paper about my FOIL request. I’d checked theHV Journalevery day before work, but the only items in the public-notice section were road-work announcements and summer library sales. All that fretting I’d done, imagining my very presence would make waves. It hadn’t made a ripple in the village—let alone Italy.
TheDaily Mailran two more little items about the Italian getaway, though in terms of photos, they stuck to the famous friends—all of whom I stalked on social media obsessively, searching every selfie and champagne-toast shot for evidence of something amiss. It never appeared. Neither did Alex.
I’d gotten that funny feeling again, and emailed Jeremy, who confirmed it. The rest of the group was still cruising around Italy, but Alex flew home ten days ago, alone.Last-minute booking. Rome to JFK, and first class too, Jeremy wrote.That’s a $5k fare. Old money or not, I call that a red flag.I think so too, but there’s only one way to find out.
I turn onto a sun-dappled stretch of road, slowing to a crawl and scanning for Alex’s gate: 84 Bramble Bush Road is one of only a dozen homes up here, on the crest of the hill. It has nearly as grand a view as the club—which sits, conveniently, just on the other side of the woods, connected by a narrow footpath. Members sometimes use it for riding, and every year, without fail, some member kid takes a golf cart up there and winds up getting stuck on a tree root. Bramble Bush isn’t technically club property, but they treat it as such since nearly all the residents are members.
Alex, however, is not. I checked the member rolls myself (one perk of working in Brody’s office). His parents still are, but Alex never joined. It might mean nothing. I have to remember that. On balance, all these tiny details thatfeeloff are nothing compared to the facts I know.
Alex was a classic Wheaton kid—a lacrosse-playing type whom everyone called “Chap” or “Chappy.” Patrick’s inner circle was larger than most, but Alex was near the center of it, and often a party to his misdeeds. He was in the passenger seat when Patrick got his DUI on Martha’s Vineyard. He was nearly arrested himself when he and Patrick were busted on the Hudson, playing a game of speedboat chicken that ended with a sloppy crash and a shattered knee for Alex. And those two incidents were just their greatest hits.
The night of the murder, Alex told the cops that he and Patrick had been in the men’s locker room doing coke—something they were rumored to do a lot of together. I would’ve believed the story myself, had I not seen what I saw. Alex was unable to produce the coke in question, and therefore was neither arrested nor charged. He was, however, admitted off the waitlist at Princeton two months later—where Patrick himself was going to college. Where Patrick’s father had gone too.
I pause beside a moss green fence, checking the map on my phone. This is it all right, and as I inch forward toward the gate, I see a car in the driveway. My heart leaps and I pull over, rolling down the windows and idling a few feet away. The house is a charmingly weathered colonial, on a rambling stretch of land. I sit for a moment, looking at it and breathing. I need to be calm when I knock on his door.
I see white shutters. I hear early-morning birds chirping. I—
