The Twisted Thread by Charlotte Bacon Page A

at least the closest he had come to marriage.
    Matt looked at Vernon and said, “How long have you known? It wasn’t Fuller.”
    Vernon rubbed the back of his neck and held the door to Nicholson open for Matt. “Okay, but he also cornered me. He and that uptight Latin teacher both saw fit to inform me you had . . . what did she call it? ‘A blot on your copybook.’ ” Vernon sighed. “But you’re right. I did my own research on you when Angell said he was going to put us together. The last bozo I got hooked up to had this Internet porn problem. I just wanted to know who I was dealing with. And so, yes, I did a check. Do one on me. You’ll feel better. I’m a lot grubbier.”
    Matt supposed it was fair, and it was certainly Vernon’s nature. He even discovered he wasn’t particularly surprised. “By the way,” Vernon continued, “your credit’s better than mine. Anyhow, it came up from a classmate. I talked to a kid you knew. Andrew Morgan.”
    Andrew Morgan had been in Matt’s math class, year after year, and had always been a gossip. “How’d you get him to talk?” They walked up a set of marble stairs with dips worn in their centers from 130 years of feet walking up them on their way to see the head. “On second thought,” Matt added, “I don’t want to know.”
    â€œPretended I was from the alumni office, trying to get a reunion together. Did he know what had happened to you since high school,” Vernon admitted glumly. “I know. It’s not legal.” He scratched his chin. “Does Angell know?”
    â€œProbably. I tried to tell him when I first got hired. Seemed only fair. But he wasn’t interested. Didn’t want to hear or, more likely, already had.”
    They were outside Porter McLellan’s office and could see the assistant tapping with sharp-nailed efficiency at her keyboard. It was just seven, but she looked as if she’d been hard at work for hours already.
    Vernon thought for a moment, then said, “Less said now the better. It might actually work in our favor. They’ll think less of you and let something slip.” Matt felt a surge of appreciation for Vernon and his practical ways. “Time for the Grand Poohbah?” he said and tilted his head toward Porter’s office. Matt was going to handle Porter and try to see the girls who claimed to have helped Claire. Vernon was off to talk to the security people again and get an update on the search for the baby. Later that morning, they would share the faculty. So far, they’d barely mentioned the child; it seemed clear another body would soon be found, and there were parts of their job that were too dispiriting to dwell on.
    In the waiting area, Tamsin told Matt to have a seat and that Mr. McLellan would be with him shortly. He was grateful for the pause. It was unsettling to be back in this room in such different circumstances. The rugs had been changed, the furniture, too, but the overall similarity was notable, and it brought with it an ugly stew of memories. Charlie’s histrionics, his own stalking back to the dorm to throw his belongings in a few bags, the teachers who would not meet his eyes when he passed them on the Quad. He breathed deeply and leaned forward to page through a brochure for Armitage. Printed on the heaviest stock, with a glossy blue cover embossed with the school shield, the pamphlet gave off an impression of polished gravity. Inside, he read that classes contained no more than twelve students at a time and were often smaller, especially for mathematics and languages. Paul Revere, Greenville’s high school, housed fifteen hundred students and offered instruction in seventeen different languages. But that number was linked not to a desire to “create global citizens,” as Armitage claimed in its mission statement, but to the fact that the school had so many kids in