The Outfit Clash: I'm Told to Strip novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Twice Renovated

Maddie read the notice three times.

Then she put the phone down and went across the hall and came back with her sewing kit.

"What are you doing?" Will said.

"Fixing your shirt. You buttoned it wrong this morning, and you've been walking around like that all day."

He looked down.

"Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Georgia knew," Maddie said. "Georgia let you."

He looked at me.

I shrugged. "It was a good day."

Maddie rebuttoned him with grim little tugs.

"Monday," she said. "In front of the board. She wants me expelled while they watch, so they'll think your star witness is a thief."

"Then we give them something bigger to look at," Will said.

He didn't sleep that night.

The forensic accountant had sent me the frozen vendor files on Tuesday. Four boxes of paper.

Will took them back to his apartment over the laundromat and spread them across the floor.

At six in the morning he called me.

"Georgia. What year is your radiator?"

"What?"

"Look at it. There's a stamp. Cast into the iron."

I got out of bed and crouched by the radiator with my phone flashlight.

Under thirty coats of beige paint, in raised letters on the end fin, it said 1958.

"Nineteen fifty-eight," I said.

He was quiet for a second.

"Two years ago, a builder owned by Patrice's cousin billed this university one million four hundred thousand dollars to renovate north-quad," he said. "New radiators in all ninety-six rooms. New windows. New plumbing."

"Last summer, the same builder billed one million seven hundred thousand to renovate it again. New radiators in all ninety-six rooms. New windows. New plumbing."

"Both invoices are signed as complete by the vice president for campus operations."

I looked at my window.

It had been painted shut so many times it didn't open at all.

I looked at the water stain on my ceiling, shaped like Ohio.

"Three point one million," I said.

"For a radiator from nineteen fifty-eight that clanks in B flat."

"Will. You're a genius."

"I'm a guy who read four boxes on a laundromat floor. Can I come over? I need coffee and I need to see your radiator."

"You saw my radiator two nights ago."

"I wasn't looking at the radiator," he said.

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