by Diane Hoh
Ivy and Suze would sympathize. Even if they had been against Quinn being “involved” with him, they liked Simon. And while she was up there, she’d ask Suze why she lied that day.
Quinn left Tobie a note, telling her where she was going.
Ivy had just washed her hair and was in the bathroom, wrestling with pink foam rollers when she yelled at Quinn to “Enter!” Suze hadn’t come home yet.
Ivy sagged against the bathroom door, her face chalky white, when Quinn told her about Simon. “There goes our theory about some maniac who hates all loving couples,” she said. “Simon might be perfectly loving,” sending Quinn a sympathetic gaze, “but he certainly wasn’t a ‘couple’ in that elevator.”
Quinn collapsed into the chair beside Suze’s bed. “The doctor says he’s going to be okay. Have you seen Tobie?”
Ivy shook her head. “Probably out with Danny.” She retreated into the bathroom, leaving the door open so they could talk while she finished her hair.
“Ivy,” Quinn said, “I’m getting a little desperate here. Especially after what happened to Simon. Do you have any new theories? I still wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with what happened to Tobie and Peter Gallagher.”
Ivy’s pink-dotted scalp peered around the corner of the bathroom doorway. “I don’t see how. Simon didn’t have any connection with that business.”
Quinn frowned. “I know. I can’t make the connection, either. I talked to one of the policeman over at the infirmary. He’s checking on some names for me. They think there were other people with the guy who robbed Tobie’s boyfriend. The policeman said that Tobie got death threats before she testified against the guy, so someone must have been really angry with her. Maybe they followed her here, to get even.”
“But why would they go after Simon?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.” There was a small gold ring lying beside a delicate gold chain on Suze’s bedside table. Quinn absentmindedly picked it up and began rolling it around in her fingers as she talked. “If Gunther’s girlfriend or his pals followed Tobie here to pay her back for sending him to prison, why is Tobie still okay and every couple on this campus is afraid to go out at night? Maybe I’m reaching, making a connection where there isn’t any.”
“You’re right,” Ivy called from the bathroom. “You are reaching. Mixing apples and oranges, if you ask me. I don’t think one thing has anything to do with the other. We already decided it was someone who hates romance, who can’t stand seeing people in love. Maybe Simon wasn’t part of a couple when he was conked on the head, but he is in love. That’s enough explanation for me.”
Quinn slid the small gold ring onto her pinkie finger and began nervously tapping out a rhythm on the wooden table. She didn’t know how to broach the subject of Tobie. Ivy might be horrified that she would even suspect her. She decided to go about it indirectly. “I keep thinking how angry you’d be if you saw your boyfriend killed right in front of your eyes.”
Ivy stuck her pinked head out again. “Well, you won’t like this, Quinn, but I personally think your roomie could use a little heavy-duty psychiatric help. I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, but that girl is really moody. It’s not healthy.”
Well, at least Ivy wasn’t shocked and horrified. It was out in the open now, her fear about Tobie. But she still didn’t know what to do with it. “I can’t believe Tobie would hurt anyone.” She should tell Ivy about Tobie’s stay in the hospital. That was important, wasn’t it? But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. It didn’t seem right, to share that information with someone.
“She wouldn’t hurt anyone in a normal frame of mind,” Ivy said. “But it seems to me that Tobie hasn’t been in a normal state of mind for a while now. Who could blame her? I’d feel the same way in her shoes. But how well do we really know her, Quinn?”
Good question. Quinn was about to return the pretty gold ring to Suze’s end table when she noticed engraving inside. Curious, she held the small circle closer to the table lamp, and peered at the writing. The cursive letters were tiny, and hard to read.
Quinn squinted, trying to make out what it said.
Love Gunther, forever.
Quinn bolted upright in her chair, the ring still in her hand. Gunther? How many Gunthers could there be?
The ring was in Suze’s room, on Suze’s table. Suze was blonde, and although she wasn’t heavy now, she could easily have lost weight since the trial. Watching someone you love being convicted and sent to prison would probably take the pounds off. Suze wasn’t quite as cynical about romance as Tobie and Ivy, but she never dated any guy more than once or twice.
Because … because her heart belonged to Gunther Brach? Forever, like it said on the ring? After all, she’d kept the ring, hadn’t she? She hadn’t tossed it away and planned to make a new start when the prison doors closed behind Gunther. She must have been wearing the ring all this time on the chain lying on the table, under her clothes where no one could see it.
Suze …
Impossible. Or was it?
Quinn’s mind was rushing along like the river behind Butler Hall. Suze could easily have put those things in her room. But it couldn’t be Quinn she was trying to frame. It had to be Tobie. It was Tobie she was angry with, not Quinn.
And Tobie was such an easy target for framing. Tobie was unstable. She’d been ill, in a hospital, shattered by Peter Gallagher’s death. No one who knew that, including the police, would have any trouble believing that Tobie couldn’t stand seeing other couples in love and happy.
Quinn remembered then, that Suze had been the one to approach her at registration. She’d been cheerful and friendly. Quinn had liked her right away. Now, she wondered if Suze had made friends with her only to get closer to Tobie.
Had Suze thought the yellow raincoat and the skirt and blouse and sneakers were Tobie’s? Quinn was taller than Tobie, but they sometimes wore each other’s sweaters and blouses and skirts short enough not to hang to Tobie’s ankles.
Suze was a chem major. She would know all about sulfuric acid, wouldn’t she? The stink bomb had had a timing device on it, so Suze could have been out there on the dance floor, merrily dancing away with Leon when the foul thing went off.
How she must have laughed when everyone panicked!
Quinn rolled the ring around in the palm of her hand, staring down at it.
Love Gunther, forever.
I’m so self-centered, Quinn thought with disgust. I was so sure someone, maybe even Tobie, was trying to make me think I’d done those terrible things while I was sleepwalking. I completely ignored the fact that there are two of us living in that room.
It wasn’t me someone was trying to frame. It was never me. It was Tobie.
Gunther’s girlfriend had found the perfect way to get even with Tobie Thomason for sending Gunther away for a very long time. She was going to send Tobie away, too.
She was going to send Tobie to prison.
Chapter 20
“IT’S NOT TOBIE,” QUINN said, her voice low and dull. “It’s Suze.”
Ivy stuck her head out of the bathroom again. “What are you mumbling about?”
“I said, it isn’t Tobie. It’s Suze. But she’s been trying to make it look like Tobie’s guilty. And she’s done a good job.”
“Suze?” Ivy’s eyes widened. “My roommate?”
Quinn was about to explain when the door opened.
Quinn looked up.
Suze stood in the doorway.
“What about your roommate?” she said to Ivy as she advanced into the room to stand beside Quinn. “Quinn, I heard about Simon. I’m really sorry.”
Oh, I’m sure, Quinn thought angrily.
“Is he going to be okay?” Suze asked with concern.
Hypocrite! Quinn shrugged. “I guess so,” she said coolly.
Then confusion set in. What should she do? She couldn’t stay here in this room, with the person who had bashed in Simon’s skull. She had
to do something … .
“Looks like we were wrong about someone targeting couples only,” Suze said, sitting down on the bed opposite Quinn. “It’s pretty scary, isn’t it?”
Quinn didn’t answer her. What could she say to someone who had done what Suze had done? How innocent she looked, with that golden hair and those big blue eyes. But those big blue eyes had glared with hatred at Tobie while she was testifying.
No wonder Suze flirted incessantly with every boy on campus. She had no intention of getting involved with anyone because she was still in love with Gunther. Or she wouldn’t have kept the ring.
Ivy had retreated from the bathroom doorway. She was standing at the sink, looking as uncertain as Quinn felt. It seemed odd to see Ivy looking unsure.
There was only one thing to do. The ring had to be taken to the police. If it didn’t prove anything else, at least it proved that Gunther Brach’s girlfriend, who had sworn vengeance against a Salem student, was actually on campus. The police would have to figure out what to do about that chilling piece of news.
Quinn had so many questions whizzing around in her brain. She wanted to scream each and every one of them at Suze. But she didn’t dare. She’d be leaving Suze and Ivy together, and it was crucial that Suze not suspect they’d found the ring. That could be dangerous for Ivy.
Swallowing her anxiety, she forced herself to remain seated and talk with Suze about Simon while Ivy worked quietly in the bathroom, glancing out every now and again at Quinn and lifting her eyebrows inquisitively, as if to say, “Well, what are you going to do?”
Finally, Quinn couldn’t stand it another minute. Sitting there, talking with Suze as if absolutely nothing had changed, listening to her phony concern about Simon, was making her sick. She was about to stand up, make an excuse, and leave, when Suze leaned forward on the bed and whispered something to her.
Quinn didn’t catch the words. “What?” she asked, standing up.
Suze stood up, too. She moved closer to Quinn. “I said,” she whispered, “what are you doing with Ivy’s ring?”
Chapter 21
QUINN STARED DOWN AT the ring in her hand.
“If Ivy catches you with that,” Suze said, still whispering, “she’ll have your head. I picked it up once when she was in the shower, and when she saw me with it, she screamed bloody murder. You’d better put it down, fast!”
The ring was Ivy’s? Not Suze’s? It belonged to Ivy?
How could Ivy be Gunther’s girlfriend?
Quinn’s eyes went from the ring in her hand to the bathroom. Ivy was at the sink, her back to them, hastily removing the pink foam rollers from her hair.
Moving quickly, fingers flying, as if she were in a hurry.
She had just finished setting her hair. It couldn’t be curled already. Why was she taking the rollers out now?
She was moving as if she had something she simply had to do, right away.
Had she seen the ring in Quinn’s hand?
Then, as Ivy freed her hair clump by clump, Quinn could see by the light over the bathroom mirror that the roots, which Ivy would hide when she brushed her hair flat, were not as dark as the rest of her hair. In fact, they weren’t dark at all. They were blonde.
Gunther Brach’s girlfriend had been a blonde. And Ivy’s dye job clearly needed a touch-up. Was that what she’d been about to do when Quinn arrived? And then had quickly pretended she was only setting it?
She never curls her hair, Quinn reminded herself. She wears it sleek and smooth. It always reminded me of a seal’s coat.
Quinn felt dizzy. Her brain was spinning. It wasn’t Suze? Ivy, not Suze? She felt completely disoriented, as if she’d suddenly found herself stepping out of a spacecraft onto an entirely different planet.
Ivy.
Quinn’s brain ordered, You have to do something and you have to do it now.
She knew her brain was right.
The ring still in her hand, she stepped into the bathroom and whispered to Ivy, “Don’t let Suze know we suspect her. Could be dangerous. Tell her you have to monitor the halls or something, but don’t stay here alone with her, okay?” And then added in a normal voice, “Your hair’s going to look great. See you.”
Then she left the bathroom and walked to the door, signaling to Suze to follow along. At the door, out of Ivy’s line of vision, Quinn whispered, “Don’t tell her I have the ring, and don’t stay here with her! Go find Leon, or maybe Tobie’s home by now, but don’t stay here. Promise me.”
Thoroughly bewildered, Suze nodded.
Aloud, Quinn said, “See you guys later, okay? I want to call the infirmary and find out how Simon is. Then I have some heavy-duty sleeping to do. What a day! ’Bye!”
The ring still clutched in her hand, Quinn hurried from the room.
She took the elevator to save time, shuddering as she stepped into the place where only a short time earlier, she had found Simon lying in his own blood, unconscious.
But she breathed a sigh of satisfaction as, just before the elevator closed, she saw Suze leaving the room and entering their RA’s room. She’d be safe with Meg.
When Quinn reached the lobby, she ran to the pay telephone and called the police station, asking for the officer she’d talked to earlier.
“I need to know that girl’s name,” she insisted, wasting no time. “Gunther Brach’s girlfriend. We talked about her at the infirmary, remember? Did you find out what her name is?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said casually. “It’s here someplace. Hold on a sec.”
Hurry, hurry, Quinn telegraphed, hurry! Why had Ivy been taking the rollers out of her hair so quickly? Had she overheard them whispering? Any second now, she’d discover that the ring was missing.
“Here it is,” the officer’s voice said. “I told you it was a weird name. And it does start with an S, just like I said.”
Scarcely breathing, Quinn said, “What is it?”
“Salina. Salina Grun. German name, I’d say, just like her boyfriend’s. Salina Ivy Grun.”
Grun. Green. Salina Ivy Green.
Thrusting the ring into her jeans pocket, Quinn said, “Don’t go away. I’ll be right there. I have something to show you.” She hung up.
Then she ran from the building and jumped into her car.
Chapter 22
QUINN’S HANDS WERE TREMBLING as she thrust the key into the ignition. In her haste, she tromped down too hard on the accelerator and the engine roared angrily.
Calm down, calm down, she warned, taking her foot off the pedal. Ivy doesn’t know you know. Maybe she won’t even notice the ring is missing. Relax, relax, don’t panic!
Her mind raced as she pulled out of the parking lot and drove off campus, turning the car toward town.
Ivy … Ivy was Salina Grun! Gunther Brach’s girlfriend. The girl who, according to the police and Tobie, had probably been with him when he killed Peter Gallagher. The girl who had sat in the courtroom every day, watching as Tobie testified against Gunther. The girl who had threatened Tobie with death if she testified. And Tobie had testified.
Quinn forced herself to stick to the speed limit. The highway to town was uncrowded this late at night. No moon. She was driving through a black velvet painting broken only by her headlights.
She could feel the ring in her jeans pocket. Love, Gunther, forever.
It was so hard to believe that Ivy Green … Grun… Salina Grun… had been in love with a criminal. With someone who would do what Gunther had done. Smart, funny Ivy, who, like Suze, wasn’t about to get involved romantically with anyone. Because she already was involved. Unfortunately, the object of Ivy Green’s affections was in prison.
And that had made Ivy very, very angry.
She had attacked those couples. And then she had tried to frame Tobie for it. That was why she’d come to. Salem in the first place. To get even with Tobie for sending Gunther to prison. By sending Tobie to prison. Ivy’s idea of justice.
She had dyed her hair, lost weight, and was
probably wearing contact lenses. And she had arrived on Salem’s campus with a plan.
Such a clever plan. I thought it was Suze, Quinn chastised herself. But it wasn’t. Same plan, different planner. And Ivy made no mistake when she picked out my clothes to use as planted evidence. She did it on purpose. To make it look like Tobie was trying to frame me. Clever. Very clever.
But it hadn’t worked.
Why not?
And then Quinn got it. She got it as surely as if Ivy had been sitting beside her, telling her the whole plan, detail by detail. And as frightened as she was, as loudly as her heart was pounding in her chest as she drove through the night, she threw back her head and laughed. She couldn’t help it. If you looked at it in a certain way, it was really very funny.
Here Ivy had come to Salem with this wonderful, perfect plan, and it had all been screwed up by a …
sleepwalker!
If I hadn’t had those episodes, she thought, I would have taken all of those things I found in my room to the police right away. A guilty person wouldn’t have taken the evidence to the police. So the police would have thought I was innocent. And the police know Tobie’s history. They know about her stay in the hospital. They know that she has good reason to be unhappy when she sees other couples in love. So it would have looked exactly the way Ivy wanted it to look … as if Tobie were trying to frame me. The police would have suspected Tobie right away.
That all by itself probably would have been Tobie’s undoing. Driven her over the edge. She was precariously close to it already. Even if she hadn’t gone to prison, she would probably have ended up in a psych ward somewhere, just from thinking about the horrible possibility of having to be in a courtroom again, this time as the defendant.
What a great plan!
And I ruined the whole thing, Quinn thought, still grinning. Ivy didn’t know about the sleepwalking. If she had, she might have guessed that I’d probably think I really was the guilty party and that would have ruined everything. Actually… it did ruin everything.
Thank God no one had ever told Ivy that Tobie’s roommate had a sleeping disorder.