Near Miss

Chapter Sixteen: Threads

Sylvie had spent the last fifteen minutes trying to answer a very simple question: how could she talk to Liney Wu?

She'd tried at least three different avenues of attack. No one seemed to have Liney Wu's phone number. She hadn't been able to get ahold of the elementary school registry, and she wasn't willing to call the school to find it. Then, blessedly, she'd happened upon Rhea Wu under the teachers' registry. By chance, a phone number was listed.

Rhea Wu answered on the third ring. "Hello? Who is this?"

"Hey, I'm from the newspaper," Sylvie said flatly. "I'm just trying to do some preliminary research for an article that will be out tomorrow morning. Do you happen to know whether Melanie Hawk was at Liney's birthday party earlier this week?"

"Melanie Hawk?" Rhea hesitated. "I'm sorry... I'm not sure I know who you're talking about."

"She's Oscar Hawk's mother," Sylvie explained. "Do you know her?"

"Oscar? Oh, yeah, that's the sulky boy with the hurt hand. She wouldn't stop talking about it."

"So she was there," Sylvie confirmed.

"Oh, yeah, the whole time. I think she was one of the last to leave."

"Was Oscar there too, then?" Sylvie ventured.

"I mean, I assume so. Since she was there the whole time, he couldn't have left, could he?"

Could he have left? To Sylvie that was not just a rhetorical question- it was right at the heart of all her suspicions. Oscar had been acting extremely strange. But, at roughly nine years old, did he have the nerve to try to murder his aunt? Did he have the daring to sneak away from a birthday party and throw a knife into Magdalen's yard? It was a difficult question to answer; on the one hand, common sense dictated that this was entirely impossible, but Sylvie had never been one to underestimate children.

Speaking of... "Can I talk to Liney?" Sylvie asked.

"Oh." Rhea sounded oddly disappointed. "Okay."

"You know I can't record anything without your permission." Sylvie's tone was reassuring. "I'm just trying to find out where they were at that time. Making sure they were where they said they were."

"Okay," Rhea repeated. "All right. Let me fetch her."

Get her, Rhea had said. It was an odd choice of words for such an innocent action. Why exactly did Rhea need to "fetch" her daughter when she could simply "get" her? Before Sylvie could deduce any possible reason for this, Liney was on the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hey, I'm from the newspaper," Sylvie greeted. "I just wanted to ask something about your party the other day."

"My party's going to be in the newspaper?" Liney sounded appropriately incredulous.

Sylvie didn't bother with pleasantries. "No," she said simply. "It's not going to be in the paper. I just want to ask about someone in particular."

"You want to make sure they were there, or something?"

"Exactly." Sylvie smiled. "So, do you remember whether Oscar Hawk was there?"

"Oscar? He was upset the entire time. He just stood in a corner and sulked."

"And you're sure he was there the whole time?"

"Oh, yeah. Some of my friends kept wanting to pull a prank, but they never did. They were planning it all the time."

"Okay, thank you." Without closing the conversation, Sylvie hung up. One more person interviewed, one more alibi confirmed, one more case destroyed. How could anyone have tried to hurt Magdalen, if none of the key players had the opportunity?