Not only did Morganstern agree to meet, she suggested they go for coffee away from the station. Sarah clicked off and stared at her phone. She’d sure never gotten this kind of access to a homicide detective when she was working on a story. Morganstern must be fishing too. Her unlikely suggestion was a new French patisserie on the south edge of St. Louis, almost an hour’s drive from Aberdeen.
The pastry was consolation. Balancing a tall glass mug of café au lait and a croissant oozing dark chocolate and raspberry jam, Sarah snagged a corner table. Chouquette looked like Marie Antoinette’s country hideout, full of whitewashed wood, pale blue linen and old silver teapots. A little girly for a chat about murder, but Sarah loved the ambience.
Until Morganstern joined her.
“You wrote the book about Sean Aldington,” the detective remarked as she plunked down her bag and keys.
“I did.” Sarah set her cup down with a clutch of dread. She knew what the St. Louis County prosecutor thought of Sean, and no doubt the police agreed.
“I liked it. You were thorough.”
Sarah’s stomach unknotted. “Glad you thought so. I’m surprised you even read it.”
“Start to finish. That case bothered me.”
“Me, too.” Here was her opening − she might as well jump. “This one bothers me too. Steven said Philip had a voice-activated recorder, which means you must have the murder recorded, right? Surely you found the machine?”
“In a ceramic kitty planter. With a near-dead battery.”
“So you heard at least something?”
Morganstern smiled. “At least something.”
“Did you tell Northrup Grant what you heard?” Sarah tried. “Is that what got him so riled? He called and screamed at Colin.”
“I didn’t tell Mr. Grant anything. I asked him questions. I’m afraid he drew his own conclusions, which could well be unfounded.”
Time to switch tack. “The crucifixion posture bothers me, too. At first I was wondering if it was Philip’s dramatic sacrificial gesture − one blood, one body.” Sarah stopped short, realising they hadn’t told Morganstern about the flashblood ritual.
The detective just looked puzzled. “The Catholic thing,” Sarah said with a vague wave of her hand. “Point is, the position of his body suggests his death was some kind of redemptive sacrifice. A parallel to Jesus dying for people’s sins. Although that suggests it’s somebody truly fanatic . . .”
“I’m not necessarily buying the ritual murder thing,” Morganstern cut in. “I just don’t think that’s what we’re after.”
Sarah stalled, biting into a gush of raspberry and dabbing at what landed on her chin. Should she tell Morganstern about flashblood? Without any real evidence it would sound as lurid as a late-night horror show. Better wait until they knew more. “I know Roman Catholicism can seem esoteric. But . . .”
“I do understand the concept of redemptive sacrifice. I just feel like there’s something a little more desperate at work here.”
The word stopped Sarah. She hadn’t thought of this act as desperate. It felt too choreographed, too charged with significance. But the minute Morganstern spoke, Sarah knew she was right. Whatever meaning someone had wanted to attach to the act after the fact, something frantic had driven it.
*
By the time Sarah got back to Matteo, she was hungry again. Nervous hungry. She went over to the dining hall to scavenge and found Max stacking clean plates. “Any junk food in this place?” she asked, stepping behind a long serving counter empty of everything but the next morning’s miniature cereal boxes.
“Father Cadigan keeps a couple bags of jalapeno Doritos stashed for emergencies.” Max reached under the counter, pulled out a bag and tossed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said fervently. “Grease and spice calm me.”
“Wish they calmed me.”
There was a note of real upset in his voice, and she stopped rooting inside the bag because the crackling was so loud. “Is all this getting to you?”
He carried a tower of plates to the warming table. “You know how you’ve been asking about Graham? I keep thinking.” He came back, picked up another stack of plates and just stood there, holding them. When Sarah was about to coax him he blurted, “Graham and Philip fought.”
Once that was out his face relaxed, and he set the plates on the table and returned to the counter. “He said something about how Philip thought he was the king of the school, and Philip said that was better than being a sociopath. Then Graham went . . .” Max slammed his right palm down on his left arm, right above the elbow, and raised the forearm with a single jerk.
“Got it. Then what?”
“Then he left. It wasn’t any big deal, they didn’t punch each other or anything. But now . . .”
“Now, everything matters,” she agreed. Max didn’t look finished, though. “Is there anything else?” She kept her voice casual. “What are the other boys saying?”
He shrugged. “Graham thinks Steven did it. Steven’s clueless and keeps hanging out with Graham anyway. Ben doesn’t even want to think about what happened. He keeps obsessing about how Father Cadigan was in Philip’s room a long time, late at night.” Max’s cheeks reddened.
“When was that?”
“Not the night that − you know. A couple nights earlier.”
“I’m sure he had a good reason,” Sarah said slowly. But she didn’t feel sure at all.
*
She decided to skip dinner and work a little, try to convey the mad scramble to find a ventilator for a newborn who couldn’t breathe. The Haitian nurses had just stood around the mother, shaking their heads, soothing her. The volunteers had run to get the hospital’s only ventilator cart and wheeled it up to the second floor, careening around corners – but, by the time they crashed through the doors of the labour and delivery room, the baby was dead.
Feeling their frustration again, the words came, and she reached for her laptop.
The lock was busted.
Her fingers rested a second on the edge, then pried up the lid, gently lifted the screen to its full ergonomic height and pressed, tentatively, the power button. The screen stayed black. She pressed power again, harder. Drew furious squiqqles on the trackpad. Plugged in the charging cord.
Nothing.
She closed the laptop and carried it over to the dorm, her throat tight. “Steven!” she called outside his door. “Can you help me?”
No answer. Then it dawned on her: What if he was the one who’d sabotaged it? Steven knew more about computers than anyone else there. Queasy with panic, she spun on her heel. She’d take the laptop to a big-box computer store. They wouldn’t know what to do with a Swiss laptop, but they could at least . . .
His door opened. “Sarah?”
Deep breath. Tough it out. If he’d sabotaged her laptop, he could damn well fix it. She thrust the case at him. “It’s dead. What could have happened?”
With the nimble confidence that only objects produced in him, he took the charging cord from her other hand and plugged the laptop into his outlet, pressing keys. “Your operating system’s gone. Somebody must have wiped it. This wouldn’t just happen.”
She bit back profanity. “So is the laptop itself okay?”
“It could be, if you reloaded it.”
“And everything I had on it is lost?”
“Depends. Did you work on the hard drive?”
“Only for really personal stuff. Otherwise I use Dropbox.” A sunburst breaking through dark clouds. “God, I’m an idiot. Of course. So I’m fine. It’s just the files from the hard drive that are gone.”
Her list of passwords. Somebody could wipe out her bank account. She marched over to Colin’s office and banged the laptop down on top of the file he was reading.
He blinked, staring down at the glossy white rectangle then up at Sarah, red cheeked and breathing hard. “What?”
“Somebody’s purged eve
rything on my laptop.”
“Shit.” A pause to think it through. “Haiti?”
Let him sweat. “Everything.”
“Sweet Jesus. Who would do that?” He answered himself, “Philip’s killer, trying to scare you.”
“That’s a little melodramatic, but I will say, between this and the doll . . .”
“What doll?”
“Somebody put a Haitian vodou doll in my bed a few days ago. I just assumed it was a prank.”
“That’s not a prank, it’s a warning,” he said, voice sharp with worry. “And it had to come from someone with easy access.”
“Who wouldn’t have easy access?” she fired back. “You don’t have any locks on the doors!”
He looked sick. “Do you at least have your notes? A printout or something? Connie could type it up for you.”
Sarah relented. “I didn’t lose Haiti. It’s on the cloud.” Seeing his furrowed brow, she grinned. “The data’s stored remotely. I’m fine − it’s just a hassle. And I did lose some personal stuff. Like all my security passwords, including the one that guards my measly life savings.”
“If it’s any comfort, I don’t think this was about theft.”
They looked at each other.
“Actually, that’s no comfort at all.”
Her hands were folded on top of the laptop, and Colin reached over and covered them with his. “I’m putting a lock on your door.”
“That would be dandy.” She punched up the volume so he wouldn’t hear the shake in her voice. “New subject. Philip and Graham had a fight, not long before Philip’s death. He called Graham a sociopath.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Philip didn’t like Graham one bit. But how he knew to say ‘sociopath’ I’m not sure. I’m starting to wonder if he got into Connie’s office and read people’s files.”
What else was in those files? Anything somebody would kill to keep secret? No, that was absurd. They were just school files, and Colin and Connie both saw them all the time.
“Philip seemed so laid back,” she said. “Why would he take such a dislike to Graham − just over that incident with Steven?”
“It started well before that. Philip was used to being the outrageous one − maybe he just didn’t want to share the attention.” Colin pulled out his phone and started scrolling through emails, a habit Sarah would have sworn he’d never succumb to. He was feeling overwhelmed.
For once, she didn’t care.
“What if Steven’s wrong about the map?” she asked, jolting his attention back. “What if it really is genuine?”
“From what I’ve heard, he doesn’t make mistakes.”
“Maybe he lied. Maybe it’s a double bluff, and he stole the map for himself.”
“What got you started down this convoluted path?” Colin slid his phone back into his pocket, looking annoyed.
“Jasmin said it’s impossible to discern, with the naked eye, whether an old document is pith or xuan.”
“That may be, but Steven’s naked eye is a different proposition altogether. He paid his mother’s mortgage for a year by recognising a rare diamond in a junk shop’s pile of costume jewellery.”
“I just keep thinking . . . He gave himself the perfect cover.”
“To steal the map, perhaps. That doesn’t mean he’d kill for it.”
“There’s more,” she warned. Saying it felt gossipy and mean spirited, and she had to remind herself she was only telling the truth. “Ben said he saw Jimmy go to Philip’s room. Late at night. Not Friday, a few nights earlier. And Jimmy didn’t come out again for a long time.
“My guess is he was bringing Philip the map, and they got to talking,” she added quickly. “But you can imagine what’s in the boys’ heads. Maybe a rumour got started, and Morganstern got wind of it and said something to Northrup Grant.”
“Maybe Northrup Grant is trying to cover his own tracks,” Colin retorted. “Luke told me he saw Grant leaving the dorm this morning. He already had Philip’s stuff. What was he doing here?”
Good question. But Sarah found Jimmy’s late-night visit far more interesting. Colin would take Jimmy’s part automatically; that fierce Scots loyalty was the glue that held his life together. Incapable of imagining Jimmy doing something that wrong, he’d blame her for blowing it out of proportion because she’d always been jealous of their friendship.
Whoa. Where had that come from? Was she jealous of their friendship? Colin and Jimmy had always shared so much − the seminary, the tight-knit Jesuit community, and now the school. She’d always been the odd one out, never quite belonging.
Suddenly she wanted to drop the subject, apologise for even bringing up something so ridiculous. She forced herself to keep going: “What about the reverse? Could Philip have tried to seduce Jimmy just for the rush of it?”
“Jimmy wouldn’t let it get that far.” Colin went to the window and stood looking out, his back to her. “Philip would have, though. He even flirted with me a couple times, kept dropping hints I refused to acknowledge.”
“He’d dare that with the head of school?”
Colin shrugged. “He liked risky experiments. And he probably figured it was a sure way to make me his ally. These days the consensus is that nobody straight and sane would choose celibacy.”
She’d wondered herself. Not about Colin’s sexuality − she was sure of that. But why he’d given up so much.
“Maybe Philip played games like that with some other grown up, and they took revenge,” she suggested. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
He looked away. “It’s not exactly the kind of thing you want to tell people. I wouldn’t want anybody to draw the wrong . . .”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she interrupted. “You’re not needy enough to be a paedophile. And if it’s the label you’re worried about, why would it even matter?”
He looked stricken. “Because I’m not gay, and I’m not a eunuch. Celibacy doesn’t erase me altogether you know.”
Her cheeks flushed so hot they felt sunburned. She reached for a diversion. “Jimmy is gay, though, isn’t he? I always assumed . . .”
“Every once in a while he drops something about a girl he dated in high school; but, yeah, I’m sure he is. This may be hard to believe, but we’ve never actually talked about it. In seminary, we all avoided the subject. Those were the years of the purges, when rumours would fly for a few months and then they’d kick out half a dozen guys without even warning them. Later, with all the scandals, nobody said a word about sex. It was like joking with a baggage handler after 9/11.”
After he’d paced for a bit, she reached back and grabbed his arm as he passed. “Hey. I wasn’t suggesting anything you know. Jimmy’s always looked up to you, but it’s pure hero worship. His big brothers probably ignored him.”
Colin sat down again. “He’s been a huge help with the school you know. He’s changed since we first met him. He spent two years in Kenya, working with the Jesuit mission there. When he came back I could sense the difference. He’d stopped being scared of sadness. I don’t mean he was shallow before, but . . .”
“I know what you mean. He grew up a bit.”
Colin grinned. “Just a bit, though. He’s great with the kids because he’s as into music and pop culture as they are. He’s a good spiritual director for them. And he’s a good friend.”
“So are you.” She walked around the desk and dropped a kiss on the top of his head, feeling the warmth of his scalp beneath the fine, straight brown hair.
He twisted to look up at her. “I don’t want you sleeping alone tonight.”
“Is that an invitation?” she drawled.
His turn to flush. “Then I really would lose the school. Can’t you go spend the night with Adriana or something?”
“Colin, I’ll be fine. I’ll shove a chair against the door.”
*
After Sarah left, he paced. Who could he get to spend the night on the sof
a in the milkhouse? Not one of the boys. And Adriana wouldn’t be much help if somebody did come back. Besides, Sarah was too stubborn to allow it.
He smiled. Even in her standard jeans, white shirt and boots, she reminded him of a Jane Austen heroine, feisty in a nineteenth-century way. Summer’s freckles looked like mischief on her fair skin. Her face had a forthright plainness, her hips a fullness he found reassuring. He . . .
He walked over to the milkhouse. “Just making sure,” he called, and pushed on the door as hard as he could. Good. She must have dragged the couch over; the door didn’t budge. He went back to his room and reread Philip’s file, then Graham’s, looking for some toehold of a theory. Nerves buzzing like an exposed circuit board, he closed the files and dug out the bottle of Xanax he’d kept from his mother’s satchel of meds, spilling one into his palm. Three paragraphs into an education commission report, his mind glided away unmoored, drifting into the middle of a dark, choppy lake . . .
He jerked awake when his study door opened.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jimmy walked into Colin’s room without a word.
“What’s wrong?” Colin asked, trying to hide his panic. At some level, he realised, he was waiting for the next death. “Where’ve you been so late?”
“The dorm.” Jimmy sank into Colin’s plaid chair. “The boys called me. Graham was plastered.”
“And they told you? They do hate him.”
“They didn’t have much choice. He was getting pretty loud. I’m surprised Sarah didn’t hear him through the walls. Or maybe she did. She’s so besotted with him, she might not have told us.” Jimmy hunched forward, elbows on his knees, and looked up, his expression more sombre than Colin had ever seen him. “He’s an angry drunk, FYI. And psycho − the boys said he kept raving about blood dripping and faces splitting in two. By the time I got there and settled him down, he was turning maudlin. I sat with him for a while, and he started rambling about making a confession, asking what would happen to him. I assured him I was bound by the sacrament not to reveal anything he confessed.” Jimmy gave Colin a long look. “Tomorrow you should talk to him. Outside the seal of the confessional.”
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