Part 37 (1/2)

”I understand. That's why it's imperative that Duncan Pharmaceuticals be ruled out as the source of the substance we're investigating.” Selena lowered her voice. ”Look, Dr. Quince, I don't think you guys are responsible. But you find something like this in the halls of Salem Falls High ... in the same town where there's a pharmaceutical company ... well, to cover all of our own a.s.ses, if you'll excuse my language, we have to just make sure we're not talking about the same stuff.” She turned her attention to the screen again. ”How come that one has a star next to it?”

Arthur looked where she was pointing. ”Duncan Pharmaceuticals is introducing a new homeopathic line-prescription drugs derived from all-natural sources instead of chemical ones. The atropine was one of the drugs in that focus group.”

Selena hiked herself up on a stool beside him. ”Natural sources? Where does it come from?”

”The belladonna plant.”

”Belladonna?”

”That's right. You've probably heard of it. It's extremely poisonous.”

”Can you overdose on it?”

Immediately, Arthur bristled. ”Almost any drug on the market has adverse effects, Ms. Damascus.”

”What would some of these adverse effects be?”

”Confusion. Agitation.” Arthur sighed. ”Delirium.”

”Delirium? So it is is a hallucinogen.” a hallucinogen.”

At that moment, Amos Duncan entered the lab. Noticing Selena, he did a double take. He'd seen her around town, certainly, but because Selena had known better than to try to talk to Amos directly, there was no way he'd know she was there on Jordan's behalf. ”Arthur,” he boomed, walking toward them. ”I need to speak to you.”

”Ms. Damascus was just leaving,” Arthur hurried to explain. ”She's here gathering information for a drug case.”

In spite of what Arthur had thought, this information didn't make Amos the least bit nervous, as if he knew how tight a s.h.i.+p he ran. ”You work for Charlie Saxton? You've got my sympathy!” Amos said, but he was grinning. Selena grinned right back. If he wanted to mistakenly believe she was a local cop, she wasn't going to be the one to correct him.

No, he'd figure it out for himself when he saw her in the courtroom.

They wandered through the aisles of the music store, clicking their fingernails on CDs arranged neatly as teeth. Without any conscious effort, other eyes gravitated toward these girls, light to a black hole. And how couldn't you look? Such ripe beauty, bursting at the seams; such confidence, left behind them as sure as footprints.

Chelsea, Meg, and Whitney were oblivious to the power of their attraction. They shopped aimlessly, each of them as aware of their missing mate as a soldier with pain in a phantom limb.

Meg tripped and knocked over an entire display of CDs. ”Oh, gosh. Let me help,” she said in apology to the pimpled employee who came to clean up.

”f.u.c.king cow,” he muttered.

Whitney turned, hands on her hips. ”What did you say?”

Reddening, the boy didn't look up.

”Listen here, you little toad,” Whitney whispered fiercely. ”With a snap of my fingers, I could make your d.i.c.k curl up and rot.”

The kid snorted. ”Yeah, right.”

”Maybe I'm bluffing. And then again, maybe I'm a witch.” Whitney smiled sweetly. ”You wanna stick around and take that chance?”

The employee scurried into the back room. ”Whit,” Meg chided. ”I don't think you should have done that.”

”Why not?” She shrugged. ”He was p.i.s.sing me off. And besides, I could could do it, too, if I wanted.” do it, too, if I wanted.”

”You don't know that,” Chelsea said. ”And even if you could, you're not supposed to. Magick isn't about getting rid of everything blocking your path.”

”Says who? Healing's boring. So is all that c.r.a.p about moon cycles. Now that we've figured out spells, we're supposed to just keep them all inside us?”

”It's safer that way.” Chelsea shrugged. ”Fewer people get hurt.”

Whitney laughed. ”That little a.s.shole made fun of Meg. Just like Hailey McCourt.”

”She's better now,” Meg pointed out. ”And nicer.”

”She learned a lesson, thanks to us.” Whit stared in the direction the boy had fled. ”The little weasel deserves to be humiliated.”

”And what about Jack St. Bride?”

The question, which fell from Chelsea's mouth like a burning match, devoured the air between them. ”Jesus,” Whitney managed finally. ”I don't think this is a public conversation, Chels.”

But now that it had burst from her, Chelsea couldn't stop. She held her hand up over her mouth, and still the words bled through. ”Don't you wonder, Whit? Don't you think about it all the time?”

”I do,” Meg murmured. ”I can't get it off my mind.”

Chelsea stared at Whitney. ”Gillian's not here now,” she said. ”She's never going to know what we talk about. And even if you won't admit it, Whit, you know that we shouldn't have-”

”-been discussing this,” Whitney said firmly. She surrept.i.tiously slid a CD into her macrame purse and made her way out of the store, fully expecting her friends to follow her lead.

Charlie knew better. As a detective, the rules of evidence ... and the methods of their collection ... had been drilled into him for years. There had been recent cases where evidence was ruled inadmissible when taken without a teenager's consent from a room within his parents' house. Drug evidence.

”What are you doing?”

His wife's voice startled him out of his reverie, and he nearly stumbled out of Meg's closet. ”Just looking,” Charlie managed.

Barbara didn't bat an eyelash. ”For a corduroy skirt?”

He looked at the hanger clutched in his hands. ”For a s.h.i.+rt. One Meg borrowed.”

”Oh,” Barbara said. ”Try the dresser. Third drawer down.”

She left, and Charlie rested his head against the closet door. He didn't want Barbara to know what he was searching for. Didn't want to admit he was doubting his daughter.

He fingered a worn friends.h.i.+p bracelet tied around the k.n.o.b of the door-striped red and blue and green, it was one Meg had made her first summer at sleep-away camp. She'd called home crying every hour of the first two days, insisting that keeping her there was a form of child abuse. But by the time Charlie and Barbara had driven up to Maine to get her, Meggie had settled in, and she sheepishly told them to go on home.

Kneeling, Charlie rummaged through nearly untouched sports paraphernalia-it'd taken him nearly a decade to learn that his little girl was never going to be a willing athlete-and shoes several sizes too small. There was a teddy bear with an eye missing and a poster Meg had made for a school project about the New Hamps.h.i.+re state bird, the purple finch. There was an old pink ballet bag and an a.s.sortment of dolls she had outgrown but couldn't bear to give away. Charlie smiled and reached for one, a naked baby with yellow hair and one stuck gla.s.s eye. A girl who sentimentally saved things like this wouldn't hide drugs from her father, would she?

He had seen enough teen drug cases in Salem Falls to know they followed a pattern: Either the child and the parents had a complete lack of communication between them or the child was resentful of the parents or the parents were too self-absorbed to really see what their child had turned into. None of that fit the bill for himself and Meg-they'd always been closer than most parents and kids. This was something McAfee had misunderstood. Maybe his kid had heard wrong. Maybe Chelsea, for whatever reason, had been lying.

Satisfied, Charlie went to stuff Meg's mess back into the closet in as disorganized a fas.h.i.+on as possible, lest she realize someone had been snooping through her things. In went the teddy bear, the hockey stick, the Rollerblades. He lifted the ballet bag and felt his hand close around something cylindrical and firm.

Ballet clothes, ballet shoes, ballet tights-everything in that bag ought to be soft.