Frenzy

by V. J. Chambers

  I sat back in my chair. “I need to know what happened to Cori. Something about her is so intriguing. I want to know who she was. I want to do what I can for her. I want to find out who hurt her.”

  “What about the money?”

  “I thought you said you could handle that. Wasn’t that your plan from before?”

  “Well, that was before you kept dragging me to plays and shit. You’re seriously cutting into the time I have to do business.”

  “Oh.” I chewed on my lip.

  He sighed. “Okay, okay, don’t worry about it. I can get that money if we need it, all right? As long as you can get me to Professor X, it’s a deal.”

  “I will,” I said. “I promise. And if you don’t want to interview people with me, you don’t have to.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I can do it alone.”

  “Who are you talking to today?”

  “Cori’s creative writing professor. Adam Townsend. Rumor is that she sold him drugs.”

  “A creepy old dude? Okay, I’m coming with you.”

  “He’s not that old.”

  “Definitely coming with you. What if that guy really did kill Cori? What if you start accusing him, and he hits you over the head?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “No way. I’m coming along.”

  I smiled. “Well, thank you, Levi.”

  He ate some eggs. “Man, these really don’t taste like eggs.”

  “Seems to me they probably only taste like ketchup.”

  He threw down his fork in disgust.

  * * *

  “…please call me back, okay? I don’t know why you’re avoiding me. I love you, baby.”

  I closed the door the dorm room just in time to see Jill hanging up her phone. “Everything okay?”

  She sighed. “Not really.”

  I was just popping in to drop off some textbooks. Levi and I were meeting at Wallis Hall to go find Townsend during his office hours. But I had a few minutes. I could talk to Jill if she needed it. I set down my backpack and went over to her. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, it’s Parker,” she said. “Ever since he found out about Cori, he’s been distant. But since the weekend, he won’t return my calls. He won’t talk to me at all. I tried to get his R.A. to let me into his wing so I could go to his room, but he wouldn’t let me.”

  At Keene, there were pretty strict rules about where you could and couldn’t go. Girls couldn’t go down a boys’ wing without an escort, for instance. And you couldn’t get into a dorm that you didn’t live in without keycard access. Our cards were only programmed to let us into our own building, not into Parker’s.

  “Well, that sucks,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know he’s upset,” she said. “But we should be working through this together. I could help him. I could support him or something. I can’t do anything if he won’t talk to me.”

  “Is it about Cori?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it something you did?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “If it is, he’s not telling me.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. “You want a hug?”

  She nodded.

  I enfolded her in my arms.

  “Mostly, I’m worried about him, you know,” she said into my t-shirt.

  “I know,” I said. “He’ll come around. He has to. He knows how much you care about him.”

  She pulled back. She was crying.

  “Hey, it’s okay.”

  She went over to her bed and sat down. “It’s not okay.” She wrapped her arms around her knees.

  “Is there anything I could do? Maybe I could talk to Parker?”

  “You could try.” She wasn’t looking at me.

  “I will try,” I said.

  “It won’t make any difference.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  She wiped her eyes. “Let’s drop it. We can talk about something else.”

  “We can talk for a few minutes anyway. I have to run.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Maybe we can do something together tonight if you want.”

  “I have to work tonight.”

  “At the art building?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, maybe I’ll stop by.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Maybe I want to.”

  She gave me a tremulous smile. “You’re a really good friend, Molly.”

  I smiled back. “I try.” Truth was, I was kind of a crappy friend. At least, that’s what Heidi would think.

  “So, um, what’s going on with you and Levi? I hear you guys have been hanging out a lot.”

  “Levi? Oh, we’re just doing stuff together. It’s not anything like what you’re thinking.” I could explain the whole thing to her, but I’d have to start back at the beginning with the money, and I didn’t want to tell her about that. Plus, I doubted she wanted to hear about it right now.

  “He’s pretty cute.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It’s not? He brought you home from the party this weekend. I purposefully stayed away from the dorm for a few hours in case… you know.” She winked at me.

  I laughed. “Seriously. There’s nothing going on. He only brought me home because I was tweaking out on that pill. It was really speedy. He gave me a tranquilizer. I fell asleep. The end.”

  “Aww, it was like he rescued you.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I think he likes you.”

  “No.” I made a face. “I don’t think he does.” Of course, he did seem concerned about my wellbeing when I confronted Adam Townsend, the creative writing professor. And he was really cute. And I’d discovered there were layers to him. He wasn’t an idiot stoner. He had priorities and things.

  “He’s not as stupid as he looks, is he?”

  “No,” I said. “He’s not.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Hi there,” said Adam Townsend, standing up from behind his desk. “I don’t think I have you in class.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t.”

  “Or you,” said Townsend, eyeing Levi.

  Levi shook his head. He was standing behind me with his arms crossed over his chest, doing his best to look intimidating.

  “Well, then, is there something I can do for you? I’m afraid the creative writing class is jam-packed full. I really can’t fit anyone else in there.”

  “It’s not about class,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you about Cori Donovan.”

  He looked down at his keyboard. “Cori. That’s such a tragedy.”

  I sized him up. Levi was here to protect me. I decided to just go for it. “We understand that you bought drugs from Cori.”

  Townsend’s face snapped up. “You what?”

  “She was your dealer,” said Levi.

  Townsend looked at him. “You. That’s why you look familiar. You were with her that time in November.”

  I turned to Levi. He was?

  Levi raised his eyebrows. “At the hotel?”

  Townsend sucked in a noisy breath. “All right, look, I can’t talk about this here. Meet me later. After my office hours. Whatever you want, we’ll talk about it there.”

  * * *

  The coffee shop was dimly lit. Something acoustic and mournful was being piped over the sound system. Adam Townsend was sitting in an overstuffed leather couch at the back of the shop. He was sipping on a mug of coffee, but his hands were shaking.

  Levi and I sat opposite him.

  “What do you want?” he said. “You want me fired? You want to blackmail me? Trust me, I don’t have a lot of money.”

  “We only want to ask you some questions,” I said. Townsend seemed shifty to me. He acted guilty. That didn’t prove anything, but it was definitely suspicious.

  “Questions?” he said.

  “About Cori,” I said.

  “Well, y
ou already know that I bought drugs from her,” he said. “What else is there to know?”

  “That was the extent of your relationship with her?” I asked.

  He set down his coffee cup. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Just asking.”

  “I’m a married man.” He held up his hand and pointed out his ring. “Happily married. I would never, ever get involved in that way with a student.”

  Interesting. He was very defensive, wasn’t he? “I didn’t say you would. You’re the one who brought that up.”

  “Oh, please, you were clearly implying I had an affair with her.”

  I shrugged.

  He took a drink of his coffee. “I suppose next you’re going to accuse me of killing her.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  His face turned white. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Molly,” I said. “I’m curious about Cori.”

  He massaged the bridge of his nose. “Listen, there’s nothing to know about Cori. She was one of my students. She was very imaginative but also very sad and angry. She wrote very disturbing fiction. It was absorbing and interesting. I liked it. I thought she was talented. I spoke to her about one of the stories, and she said that it was based on her own life. I joked that she wasn’t saying that she was actually selling ecstasy, and she said that she was. A week or so later, my wife and I were going out, and I asked her if she’d sell me something. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

  “You only bought drugs from her once?” I asked.

  He sank back into the couch. “Well… no. Not just once. The product that she had was very pure. It was really good. I bought it from her somewhat often. Maybe five times. I don’t know. Cori thought the whole thing was hilarious. She thought everything was hilarious.”

  “So, you interacted with her numerous times outside of class.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Kind of. It was only to buy the E. That’s all. She used to always bring it in different little containers, to mask what it was. She’d give me a box of candies, but the pills would be inside, wrapped up. Or she’d disguise it in a fancy cigarette case. Once she gave me dried flowers that had been framed. When I took off the back of the frame, the pills were in there. She was very inventive. I thought she was an extremely interesting young person, but I wasn’t involved with her.”

  Was he denying this too much? “You keep saying there was nothing between Cori and yourself. But I haven’t once accused you of that.”

  He sat up straight, clearly frustrated. “It’s only that it’s cliche, isn’t it? It’s like something out of Twin Peaks or something. Good girl washes up on shore, and then everyone finds out she wasn’t such a good girl after all, that she was sleeping with half of the people in town. Who was Laura Palmer having an affair with? Her psychologist, right?”

  I wrinkled up my nose. “What’s Twin Peaks?”

  He sighed. “Sometimes I forget just how young you all are.” He picked up his mug, but he didn’t take a drink. “I think she would have been with me if I wanted it. Cori, that is. I think if I’d pursued anything with her, she might have been up for it. She seemed so… brash and unafraid. It was as if she wanted to attack life. As if she needed to have every possible experience that she could manage. In class once, she said that authors needed to experience everything, because how else could they write about it if they hadn’t lived through it? So, I think I could have had an affair with her. But I didn’t.”

  Levi cleared his throat.

  Townsend and I looked at him.

  “She wasn’t a good girl,” said Levi.

  “What?” said Townsend.

  “You said that a good girl washes up on the shore, and everyone finds out she wasn’t so good,” said Levi. “But Cori wasn’t a good girl. Everyone knew she was promiscuous before she died.”

  Townsend looked nonplussed. “You were sleeping with her, were you?”

  Levi shook his head. “No. Cori and I worked together. That’s it.”

  “Right,” said Townsend. “Because you were with her at the hotel. When she brought me those pills in the candy box.”

  Levi glowered at him. “And she was in that room with you for a while.”

  “She stayed for a drink,” said Townsend.

  Levi and Townsend glared at each other. The longer they looked at each other, the more tense everything seemed to get.

  Finally, Townsend looked away. “I didn’t have an affair with Cori.”

  “Did you kill her?” I said.

  He laughed. “No.”

  “Where were you at the beginning of break?”

  “I didn’t even see her over break. I tried to call her around New Year’s. I wanted to try to get some pills. But her phone went directly to voicemail.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I can even show you the call.” He scrolled through his phone and showed it to me.

  I looked at the screen. “Candy striper?”

  Townsend pulled the phone back. “That was what I called her in my phone. I didn’t want to have her real name in there.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “You two obviously aren’t the police,” said Townsend. “If you aren’t going to threaten me with something, I don’t think I’m going to hang around and listen to this anymore.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have killed Cori?”

  Townsend stood up. “Well, she was a drug dealer. From what I understand, she probably kept pretty dangerous company.”

  “Does your wife know who you bought your E from?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Townsend. “In fact, that night at the hotel, she and Cori met.” He reached down to pick up his coffee mug. “You know, Cori had a black eye once. Sometime in October, I think. Looked pretty bad. Wouldn’t talk about how it happened. Maybe she had an abusive boyfriend. Maybe you should bother him.”

  A black eye? What?

  * * *

  Levi handed me my drink. “Here you go. Soy latte with whipped cream. Which kind of defeats the purpose of soy, don’t you think?”

  I snatched it from him. “I like whipped cream, but I don’t like the heaviness of lots of cow milk.”

  He sat down next to me. He had an Americano. We were still sitting on the couch, but Townsend was gone.

  “Do you believe him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Guy’s a little weird, don’t you think?”

  “A lot weird,” I said. “He kind of gives me the creeps.”

  Levi sipped at his coffee. “Yeah. He could have done it. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “How do we find out?”

  He set down his drink. “I don’t know. But, Molly, what happens if we do? What will you do then?”

  “Then we’ll tell people what we know.”

  “Like the police?”

  I grimaced.

  “Come on, if we find a murderer, you telling me you don’t want the police to deal with it?”

  I really hadn’t thought this far into the future. I’d been fueled by my interest in Cori Donovan and by my desire to make up for the mistakes I’d made. I wasn’t really clear on my plan of action. “I guess we would go to the police.”

  “Well, what if we screw everything up by asking all these questions?” he said. “What if, for example, Townsend really did it? What if there’s evidence that could lead to his arrest? What if he gets panicked because we’re onto him, and then he destroys it? What if the police can’t touch him then?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that.

  “What you’re doing here is dangerous,” he said. “You could get hurt. Maybe you should drop it.”

  I peered down at my latte. The whipped cream was melting in the coffee. “I can’t drop it.”

  “Of course you can. All you have to do is go back to your dorm and focus on your homework instead of Cori Donovan.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not?”

  I didn’t answer. I used
the stirrer in my latte to pick up a big dollop of whipped cream. I ate it. Then I felt guilty, because I was enjoying whipped cream, and neither Cori nor Heidi was able to do that anymore. “I told you before, it’s like penance.”

  “Yeah, I don’t get that. You’re a college freshman. You haven’t even had time to do something that requires penance.”

  I lifted my chin. “Cori was my age. She did all kinds of crazy things.”

  “Yeah, but she didn’t think she needed to do penance.”

  “Maybe she did. You should read her plays.”

  “What’s this bad thing you think you did? Did you cheat on your boyfriend or something?”

  “No,” I said. “It was bad, Levi. It was really bad. I should have gotten in trouble for it, but my dad…” I stopped myself. I was saying too much. I couldn’t tell Levi about this. I couldn’t tell anyone about it.

  “Hey.” He put a hand on my knee.

  I looked up at him.

  His eyes were concerned. “I don’t know you real well, Molly, but I can tell you’re not a bad person. I can’t believe you did anything that bad.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean to do it,” I said. “But that doesn’t make any difference, you know? It’s still done. And I feel like I have to do something to make things right.”

  “How does finding Cori’s murderer do that?”

  “It doesn’t.” I ate more whipped cream. “Not really. But I can’t do anything to fix what I did or make it better. That’s all finished. This isn’t the same thing, but it feels like…” I set down my coffee. “Do you believe in destiny?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I moved into her room,” I said. “I know all the people she knew. I feel like I’m meant to try to help. I know I can’t bring her back to life or anything, but I feel like if I could get justice for her, that would mean something.”

  He took a deep breath, fishing his drink up off the table. “Yeah, maybe I understand that.”

  “You do?”

  He turned to me. “I admire you a little bit, Molly. You’re so young, but you’ve got all these… layers.”

  That was weird. I’d been thinking earlier that he had layers. “I’m not that young. How old are you, anyway?”

  He grinned. “I’m ancient.”