Darker Than Any Shadow - By Tina Whittle Page 0,100
pushed myself to standing, still wobbly, but determined now. Rico jumped up as I hopped toward Trey’s work station, Trey following at my heels.
I steadied myself against the file cabinet. “Where?”
Trey pulled open the top drawer and ran his fingers along the indexes. It took him two seconds to find a folder labeled Lex Anderson/ Box Contents/ Miscellaneous Writings/ Duplicates.
He handed it to me. “Here.”
I plopped myself on the floor and pulled out the photocopies, sorted chronologically. I ran my finger along the handwritten lines. “I thought these were keepsakes, but they’re not. They’re evidence.”
Rico looked confused. “Of what? My apartment is filled with poem-covered trash too.”
“I know! That’s why I didn’t get it at first. I thought it was about the words—and it is—but not only the words.” I waved frantically at the bedroom. “Go play the DVD, the team retrospective.”
“The one Padre brought?”
“Yes, yes, that one! Fast forward to Frankie’s part.”
Rico did as I asked. I gave one paper to Trey. “Read this one, the one written on the takeout menu. And listen.”
He did. Frankie’s rich alto washed into the living room, a little halting, a little unsure. Trey read. Suddenly his eyes flashed my way.
“It’s the same poem.”
I smacked the floor. “Now look at the date on it.”
“Over a year ago.”
Rico came out of the bedroom and stood in the doorway. “That’s the threat he made up against Frankie, that she stole his poems?”
I shook my head. “This wasn’t like all his other threats—those were manufactured. This one was real. And it would have destroyed her reputation as a poet, probably gotten her kicked off the circuit forever.”
“Yes, it would have.” Rico didn’t seem convinced. “But Frankie wasn’t stupid enough to steal from a teammate. He was bound to notice.”
“She didn’t steal from Lex. She stole from Kyle.” I waved the papers. “Amber told me all about it in the hospital. Kyle made the rounds during the auditions—Jacksonville, Miami, Savannah…and Atlanta. Frankie was on the team then. She judged the auditions.”
Trey still looked puzzled. “But she had her own poems. And they were successful ones.”
“Not poems like these. Padre said she sucked at the sweet emotional stuff, but you’ve gotta have that in your repertoire if you want to compete, you told me so yourself. So imagine, one day Frankie’s judging this out-of-town newbie…”
I paused to let this scenario sink in. Kyle—hopeful, inexpert, a nobody—with his collection of sad sweet poems. Frankie—mercenary, blocked, opportunistic—with the poems she needed right in front of her, ripe for the taking.
“All she had to do was write them down and send Kyle packing. Which she did. I’m sure she never expected him to turn up again. And Kyle didn’t. But Lex did.” I looked at Rico. “You know as well as I do that this kind of plagiarism is the devil to prove. But Kyle had these scraps, dated scraps. So when he found out—”
“But how did he find out?”
“Amber said he studied poets obsessively, like you do. He must have seen one of her videos and recognized his words coming out of her mouth.”
“But what’s Debbie got to do with it?”
“Nothing! She stumbled into the argument, that’s all.”
“So why didn’t Frankie kill her on the spot?”
“Because Debbie made the perfect scapegoat. She herself was convinced she’d killed Lex. It wasn’t until she decided to throw the blame back on Frankie that she became dangerous. Until then, she’d been desperate to avoid the cops, with good reason, and Frankie could use that.”
We all went quiet. The puzzle pieces maneuvered themselves into place, the truth becoming clear. I spread the poems on the floor, a carpet of verse, a blackmailer’s tool, a poet’s secret history.
I shook my head. “One thing I don’t get—why didn’t Kyle turn Frankie in to the PPI committee the second he found out? Why create Lex?”
Rico came and stood beside me, his eyes on Lex’s words. “Because he was desperate to show her that he was the better poet, on stage, where it counted. But Frankie was gonna yank him from the team. These poems were Lex’s big gun. He pulled it.”
I sat there silently, surrounded by Lex’s words. In the end it hadn’t been vengeance that fueled him. Once he’d tasted the spotlight, Lex had been so desperate to stay on the team that he’d betrayed his teammates one by one. All for three minutes and nineteen seconds behind the mike.