I thought back to the crime Abby had mentioned on the phone when we first connected. It made sense either Coach Oliver was the culprit, or he knew who might be. I couldn't figure out why Abby wrote in her journal her feelings had changed for him, but now that I had confirmation he was W. A., I could ask Coach Oliver myself why he lied to me about his relationship with Abby. What a man is willing to tell his girlfriend versus what he tells another guy were often two very different things. If I had any hope of getting Coach Oliver to spill the truth, I'd need to make it sound like I was on his side.
While I was waiting, my father returned my call. “It went smoothly for most of the day, Dad. I like the students, and Myriam was helpful. She's got a venomous tongue, but if you ignore that part of her, she's somewhat tolerable.” I checked my watch and noticed Lorraine would be arriving any minute.
“Myriam is keen to share her opinion. I enjoy our discourse most of the time, but on occasion, she cuts a bit deep with her words,” my father replied. For a brief, fleeting moment, an unnatural thought that we were having a normal conversation settled inside me.
“She's annoyed at how you brought me on board to Braxton even though I…”
“Let it go. Just don't annoy her, and you'll succeed in this trial period,” he replied.
Trial period? What was he talking about? “Um, you should be worried about her annoying me and posting those blogs about you. She quoted another line today about weak men as I was leaving.”
“Let's continue this discussion when you get home tonight, Kellan. I believe your mother is anxious to hear for herself how the day went.” After he disconnected the call, I groaned and repeated to myself out loud several times… I am not a child living at home with my parents again.
The colorful sun finished setting which made me realize how late it had gotten. My phone said a quarter after six, yet Lorraine was still a no-show. I called and texted, but nothing came back during the next few minutes. I began to worry and rang Connor.
“Did the logs I sent confirm what Dr. Castle told you earlier?” he said answering the phone.
“Yes, they did. I appreciate it, but that's not why I'm calling.”
“What's up? You sound anxious.”
I told Connor everything that'd happened. He instructed me to take the cable car back to North Campus to meet him at Grey Sports Complex. He thought I might run into her on the path if I wasn't driving. When I reached North Campus at a quarter to seven, several students were lined up to board the cable car. Carla huddled closely with Jordan at the end of the queue. I would've interrupted them, but I needed to get to Grey Sports Complex. While jogging over, I recalled this was the second time I'd seen them together without Striker. Jordan had mentioned they were all friends, but it seemed like those two spent more time together than I'd be comfortable with if she was my girlfriend. Maybe that's part of what Nana D meant when she'd told me Striker was having girl troubles.
When I arrived at Grey Sports Complex, Connor wasn't standing anywhere out front. I entered reception and checked the digital monitors on the walls opposite me. The third-floor fitness center was packed with a large group of students working out. I tried to locate Lorraine among the crowd, but the only person I recognized was Striker doing intense pull-ups.
After showing my face to the camera, I entered through the middle door in search of Coach Oliver's office on the third floor. When I arrived at his office, the door was open, and the lights were on, but no one was inside. As I turned to walk down the hallway toward the fitness center, Connor called to me.
“Kellan, I can't seem to find her anywhere. I checked the entire first floor. Could she be stuck in transit?” Connor's expression worried me. “Unless you seriously believe something happened to her.”
Lorraine wasn't the type to exaggerate or make someone wait. If she had something important to tell me, she'd have made it to The Big Beanery on time, answered my call, or reached out to explain why she was delayed. “Something's definitely wrong. Let's check the rest of the building, and if we can't find her, then we need to locate Coach Oliver. Lorraine was with him before she called me.”
Connor went downstairs to check the second floor in case Lorraine was hiding out in one of the empty rooms. I stayed on the third floor but went to the other hallway to check if she was actually in the fitness center perhaps hidden from the camera's view. When I arrived, I poked my head inside, but like I'd seen on the camera, she wasn't around. Striker waved to me while preparing for his next set of exercises. Either I was sweating from running around, or the building's heat was on way too high.
I left the fitness center and crossed back over to the other hall where Coach Oliver's office and the conference room were. I doubted Lorraine was sitting in there, but there was a window in the conference room overlooking the front of the building. It would provide a clear view of the cable car station. Maybe Lorraine was waiting for the next trip to South Campus. It was now seven o'clock.
I opened the door and stepped into the small conference room only to instantly feel a cold breeze blowing in my direction. Someone had either left the window open or the heat had stopped functioning in that room. I felt along the wall for the light switch but couldn't find it. Remembering Coach Oliver had said they were installing a new voice-activated system, I wondered whether it would work if I said lights on. Two seconds later, the glow from three recessed bulbs flooded the room.
I immediately noticed two shutters blowing against the exterior wall near a large open window. When Connor entered the room behind me, I jumped two feet in the air. He said, “I didn't find Lorraine downstairs. How about you?”
I turned around breathing deeply to regain my wits. “Not yet, but look at all these overturned chairs.” I walked to the window noticing it had been pushed all the way to the top of the ceiling. The open space was about four feet wide by six feet tall. When I stuck my head outside, it looked over the enclosed front courtyard.
“Anything?” Connor said as he approached my right side. His cologne was overpowering.
Several students crossed a few dozen feet in front of the building, but not Lorraine. It was hard to tell in the darkness, then I noticed something odd at the base of the statue in the courtyard. “Do you have a flashlight?” When he nodded, I showed him where to shine the beam.
A few seconds later, he confirmed my suspicions using a cold, matter-of-fact tone they'd probably taught him in the police academy. “That's a body on the ground near the statue, isn't it?”
Chapter 17
I gulped and closed my eyes wishing I hadn't seen who I thought I'd seen. We ran from the conference room to find the nearest exit. I could hear Connor calling Sheriff Montague as he raced behind me. We exited to the second floor toward the courtyard entrance.
Connor shouted to wait for him while holding me at bay. After I followed his request, he walked near the statue. I watched him kneel to check Lorraine's pulse. When he turned back toward me, I could tell it wasn't good news by the morose expression on his face.
“She's dead?” I said feeling the weight of my entire body sinking quickly.
“Yes, her neck broke when she hit the statue after the fall from the window,” Connor replied.
“It's gotta be Coach Oliver. Lorraine told me on the phone he was up to something illegal.” I felt my blood begin to boil as I rushed toward the statue. How could this happen?
“Did she actually use those words? I'm not saying it doesn't look suspicious, but we have to be crystal clear on the facts.”
“Not exactly,” I replied trying to calm myself down. “When I asked her what she thought was going on, she definitely said it had something to do with Coach Oliver and Striker's grades.”
After the sheriff arrived, Connor gave her a quick recap on what I'd already told him about my call with Lorraine. I waited for them to finish discussing the situation. Paramedics arrived and verified there was nothing they could do to help. Sheriff Montague directed her team to get the coroner onsite whi
le Connor called my father to inform him what had happened. I wasn't ready to deliver the news, and the sheriff wanted to hear directly from me what Lorraine had told me.
“Did she sound like she might harm herself?” asked Sheriff Montague.
“What? No, that's crazy! She was frightened and wanted to meet me at The Big Beanery. There's no way she decided to jump from the window. Lorraine wouldn't do that!” I was irate over the way the sheriff had suggested Lorraine might have lost the will to live. “Plus, she saw someone there who she didn't expect to be there. Someone's killed her just like they killed Abby.”
“Calm down. I'm trying to ascertain the facts. This will be a lot easier if you trust me,” she said taking a seat next to me on the bench. “There's a note.”
Easier said than done. Sheriff Montague hadn't given me any reason to assume she was on my side in the past. “What did the note say?”
“I can't get to it without moving her arm. I want the team to finish their initial analysis before we touch the body,” noted Sheriff Montague. “We'll find out what happened, I promise. Is there anyone you can think of both she and Abby fought with recently?”
I considered everyone I'd encountered at Diamond Hall and shared the names with the sheriff. It was a short list, but there also could have been several people before I returned home to Braxton whom I wouldn't know about. I finished relaying my final account of the whole afternoon when Connor let us know he'd gotten ahold of my father. “President Ayrwick is on his way, sheriff.”
I knew how much my father relied on Lorraine, and as standoffish as he could be, her death would devastate him. It had devastated me. Connor and the sheriff stepped away to discuss something. As much as I wanted to pin the crimes on Coach Oliver, it didn't make complete sense why he'd kill both the women he was apparently dating. Dean Terry's behavior had been puzzling me. Jordan and Carla's presence together on the cable car queue was suspicious, but any guilt I recognized on their faces might have been the result of someone catching them in a close embrace. Did they have alibis for the night of Abby's murder? Another clue to follow up on.
I knew my mind was in overdrive when I began wondering if Connor could be responsible. Although I'd found Lorraine's body, the whole setup might have been part of his grand plan to cover up what he'd done. I shook the troubling thoughts from my head knowing my former best friend was not a double killer. I needed to drive home to get sleep and deal with the latest loss.
Sheriff Montague returned to the bench I'd been using as my place to recover from the shock of seeing a friend lying dead on the ground. “Holding up okay? I can't imagine finding two bodies within such a short period is a normal thing for you.”
“No, it's not,” I replied keeping my gaze on the pavement. “I'd like to get out of here.”
“You are free to go, but you've figured out the drill by now.” Sheriff Montague suggested a time to meet the following day to review a written statement. As I stepped away, she called out my name. “I can't tell you what the note said, but it wasn't a suicide message. I can't make heads or tails of it right now. We can discuss it tomorrow.”
“You mentioned earlier there were fibers under Abby's fingernails. Can you share anything?” I asked.
“No DNA. It looks like the fibers match the baseball team's newest jackets. But we haven't finished running all the tests, so please keep this to yourself for now.”
I nodded and headed toward the cable car to get to South Campus, find my Jeep, and drive home. I should have stayed to check on my father, but I needed to be alone for a little while. Lorraine had confronted Coach Oliver because I asked her about the W. A. in Abby's journal. Had I somehow sent Lorraine to her death?
* * *
I must have crashed when I got home because I barely remember climbing into bed. I tossed and turned most of the night while mourning the loss of Lorraine, but when I woke up on Tuesday, the desire to punish the killer was at the center of my thoughts. I went for a run, then caught up with my mother who was heading to Braxton at the same time. My father had left much earlier to talk with the Board of Trustees about last night's incident, so she shared a ride with me to the campus. Sometimes you need your mother to make things a little better.
“Kellan, we'll all miss her very much,” she said as I pulled out of the driveway. “I can't understand why she would jump to her own death from Grey Sports Complex, but if she was in that much pain, I only hope she's in a better place now. Do you think she killed Abby?”
My mother didn't know anything about Lorraine's relationship with Coach Oliver. While I was certain Lorraine hadn't committed suicide, my mother felt otherwise probably based on whatever my father had said the previous night. “I think someone pushed her, Mom. Maybe because of something she knew about Abby's death. They must be connected.”
“We've never had murders at Braxton before. Between those two awful events and this maniacal blogger, your poor father's retirement is causing him so much stress.” My mother gripped the small handle on the roof of the Jeep when I took the curve near the river too quickly.
“Has he said anything recently about the blogs? I suspect Myriam,” I replied.
“He knows who's behind them. He can't tell me, but we talked about it yesterday. I'm certain Connor is on top of it. There haven't been any posts since the one after the party.”
I dropped off my mom at the admissions building on North Campus, then drove to South Campus to start my day. When I entered Diamond Hall, Lorraine's boxes in the first-floor hallway encouraged the pain to flood my body all over again. She'd have been moving back to the newly renovated executive offices the upcoming weekend. I went to the second floor to steal a few minutes of solitude and map out a plan of attack for the day. Instead, I found a woman with bright red hair dressed in jeans and an oversized Braxton Bears baseball sweatshirt sitting at Lorraine's nearly empty desk.
“Can I ask what you're doing in here?” I inquired. Given the two murders, I needed to talk to Connor about how well security operated on campus if random people could wander into the building and rifle through someone's desk.
When she lifted her head, the startled expression and the amount of makeup she had painted on her face made her look like a clown. “I could ask you the same question. Who are you?” she said.
I wasn't accustomed to being questioned in such a manner when I knew I was clearly in the right. “I'm Kellan Ayrwick. I work here, and this desk belongs to someone else. How about you?”
The woman stepped away from the desk and smiled. “Oh, it's nice to meet you. I'm sorry I was a little rude. I didn't expect anyone to come in while I got things ready for the department. I'm Siobhan.”
I knew the name, but I couldn't place it at the moment. “Are you a temp?”
“No, I've been out on maternity leave for the last two months. The chief of staff called me last night and asked if I could stop in today to help with a few things. Apparently, there was an accident, and Lorraine Candito won't be in the rest of the week.” Her Irish accent was quite thick.
That's right! Siobhan was the office manager whose responsibilities Lorraine had been covering. “I believe congratulations are in order,” I responded. “Boy or girl?”
“One of each, twins,” she replied pulling out her phone to show tons of pictures of the twins dressed in green outfits. Siobhan and I chatted for several minutes during which I learned she'd been at the college for five years and had moved to Braxton after visiting a friend who'd attended a semester abroad at a college in Dublin, Siobhan's hometown. She'd decided the year before to have in vitro fertilization never expecting two eggs to be fertilized at the same time. Being a single mom to twins wasn't as easy as she thought.
I explained my temporary role teaching Abby's classes. Siobhan didn't have much to say about the late professor indicating she preferred not to speak ill of the dead. “Siobhan, I was wondering if you knew much about who had access to the student systems. I got a brief overview from Myriam, but I wanted to be s
ure I could get the grades entered for an upcoming paper my students will turn in next week.”
“Professors only have access to their own courses. They can't see anything about their students other than contact information, and we keep that at a bare minimum. I have advanced privileges, but I can only enter and update grades for classes if the professor has given me access to do so.”
I thanked Siobhan for her help and walked toward my office. She followed asking if I needed anything, but I didn't have a chance to respond. We found Myriam coming out of her office. “Siobhan, I see you've met Mr. Ayrwick, resident troublemaker.”
Me? What had I done? “Good morning, Myriam. Have I done something to offend you?” I asked with as much of a smile as I could muster stepping into her office. Siobhan retreated into the main area on the floor to her desk. Either she'd experienced one of Myriam's tongue lashings before, or she didn't want to embarrass me while I received one of my own.
“You mean other than telling Sheriff Montague I'd fought with both Monroe and Lorraine to try to make me look guilty of something? Honestly, the nerve of you spreading gossip after only working here for one day,” shouted Myriam as she dropped her bags to the ground. “One's doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”
Not another weird quote. “The sheriff asked me if there were any people on campus both Abby and Lorraine had spent time with. I mentioned your name, but I didn't accuse you of anything,” I replied feeling disdain for the woman growing inside me. “Unless you count being the author of that nasty blog against my father.” I didn't mean to say the indictment out loud. I definitely suspected her, and the woman's constant Shakespeare references were getting on my nerves.
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