“Look,” she said, waving vaguely towards Katie’s side of the large double room, “I’m not going to tell anyone about you two, if that’s why you’re here. It’s none of my business. It’s nobody’s business.”
I gaped at her. “You—you knew?”
“Oh, Max, of course I knew. It was so totally obvious—I realized what was going on like six weeks ago.”
“But—but I—”
“The way you looked at her? I might be a freshman, but I’m not stupid.”
I swallowed hard. “Dee, you can’t—”
“I’m not going to bust you, Max. I haven’t said a word about it to anyone, and I’m not going to tell anyone now.”
I pressed my lips tightly together and inhaled through my nose, processing this new information. “But she’s dead,” I said at last. “What if I’m the one who—?”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “She broke your heart, so you killed her? I don’t think so. And I want to know who did it as much as you do. They have to find out before—well, before he does it again.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. Somewhere out there was a killer, and whoever it was who’d killed Katie could just as easily kill again.
I pressed the heels of my hands to my temples, trying to think.
“Katie’s parents,” I finally said. “Do you know if—when they’re coming up? To get her things?” I sat on Katie’s bed, softly stroking Bennington, the stuffed bear she’d had since she was a kid.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “I talked to her dad about an hour ago. They couldn’t get a flight, so they’re driving. They’ll be here in the morning.” She sighed and sat on her own bed. “Look, Max, you know Katie and I weren’t the best of friends, but I want to help. What can I do?”
I looked at her. “I want to ask you some questions, I guess. Is that okay?”
She nodded, and I saw that there was moisture in the corners of her eyes.
I took another deep breath and gathered my thoughts. Maybe the best way to begin would be to follow Branigan’s lead. “For starters, where were you last night?”
“I was at Professor Farmer’s picnic until about 11,” she said. “Brandon gave me and Gavin a ride back here, and I sat up studying for my calc exam until like 12:30. Then I went to bed.”
“Did anyone see you, once you got back to campus?”
“Not after Brandon dropped us off. I went down to the bathroom just before bed to brush my teeth, but there was nobody there or in the halls.”
“Tell me about the picnic,” I said.
She looked out the window for a minute before responding. “Well, you know about the fight beforehand. I never touched her freaking iPod—I have my own freaking iPod, everybody here has a freaking iPod!—but Katie just made up her mind I’d swiped it and practically chewed my head off. After you got her calmed down, though, she came back to the room and flopped down on her bed and picked up Bennington and hugged him—and her iPod was under the stupid bear, right where she’d left it. She apologized, but I think maybe she thought I really had taken it, but then I changed my mind when she was down in your room and put it back. Anyway, we didn’t hang out at the picnic—she was talking to Brandon, and I was with Blair and Ethan on the other side of the living room. Professor Farmer gave us our papers back around 10:15 or so, and what I remember is that Katie left soon after that. She was upset about her grade, I think. That was the last time I saw her.”
I got up from Katie’s bed and looked at her desk. Her laptop was there, open and on, but there was no term paper in sight. In the second drawer, I found her “Gender” notebook—but the paper wasn’t there, either.
“You didn’t see her here at the dorm?” I was still poking around, trying to find the paper or some other sign that she’d been back to her room after the picnic.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t. And I didn’t see her paper, either, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
I sighed. “Okay, Dee. Thanks. I—I’m going to take her bear with me for tonight, okay? I’ll bring it back in the morning, if her parents want it.”
“Okay,” she said, walking me to the door. I was halfway back to my room before I heard her say my name. I turned around.
“I really am sorry, Max,” she said.
* * * *
After talking to Dee, I really just needed to lie down and gather my thoughts, and that’s what I was doing when someone knocked on my door. I rose unsteadily and opened up to find a distraught Gavin inches from my face. Gavin was the preppiest person on the hall, male or female, and owned enough Polo shirts to make Ralph Lauren jealous. Today he was wearing a black Polo over khakis. Mourning attire.
“Can I come in?” he said. “I need to talk to someone—you knew Katie best and I—well, you know—I just need to talk.”
I nodded and let him into my room. He sat in the beanbag chair across from my bed and tried not to cry.
I handed him a tissue and sat on the edge of my bed, uncomfortable with his emotion but knowing I needed to talk to him, too.
“Remember,” he said at last, “what I told you, you know, about what happened yesterday afternoon?”
I frowned. The last thing I wanted to think about was that he had asked Katie out.
“No, listen,” he continued, “what if it’s my fault that she—well, that she—died?”
I leaned forward. “Gavin,” I said, “it’s not your fault unless you killed her. Did you kill her?”
“No!” He looked startled. “It’s just that—what if she was upset that I asked her out, and she did something stupid because of it? That would make it my fault! I mean, she went to that party at Ross, last night, and you know how she gets when she drinks.…”
“It wasn’t your fault, I promise you. When did Katie go to Ross, though? I thought she was at Professor Farmer’s picnic?”
“She was. Dee and I caught a ride out there with Brandon—he said Katie could ride with us, too, but she took her bike and got there about 10 minutes after we did. She mainly talked to Brandon until dinner, but I was close enough to hear some of their conversation and she seemed, you know, perfectly normal. When Farmer handed back our papers, though, sometime after ten, she got really upset. Soon after that, she took off—all there was to drink at the picnic was soda and cider, and she told me she wanted a ‘real’ drink, so she was heading over to Ross. She asked me if I wanted to go with her, but I was having a good time at the picnic and decided not to. Dee and I came back to campus with Brandon about 11. He dropped us off, and I just went to bed. I was still kind of freaked about—well, what happened. Are you sure she didn’t—you know—do it herself?”
“She didn’t kill herself, Gavin. The policeman said she was probably murdered.”
He shuddered, then got up from the chair and threw his tissue at my wastebasket. “This is so horrible, I know, but—in a way, I’m sort of relieved.” Suddenly realizing how that had sounded, he added in a rush, “Not that she’s dead, obviously. But, you know, if somebody else killed her, then I guess it really wasn’t my fault, after all. But, Max, why would anyone kill Katie? I mean, you know, why?”
“I don’t know. That’s kind of the million-dollar question right now, I guess.”
Shaking his head in bewilderment, he left my room.
* * * *
Why had Katie been killed? If I knew that, I thought, the answer might help me figure out who had killed her.
The Ross Townhouses seemed to be the last place she’d been seen alive, so I decided to head over there and nose around. It had already turned bitterly cold in Vermont, so I shrugged into my North Face fleece, threw on a wool ski cap, grabbed my backpack, and headed out.
It was only a five-minute walk from Stew to Ross, but I was thoroughly chilled by the time I touched my access card to the pad and
pushed through the door. My hard-partying friend Charlie was sprawled out on one of the shabby sofas in the downstairs lounge, surrounded by pillows, with a dog-eared paperback in his hands. I’m not sure if he was actually reading it, but he was holding it—and it was by Kierkegaard. Charlie grew up in a Chicago suburb, a real straight-arrow all the way through high school. His first weekend at Midd, though, he’d found himself at a party at one of the social houses, and I don’t think he’s been sober for 15 minutes at a stretch ever since. I have no idea how he keeps his GPA up—but underneath his shaggy blond hair is a brain that somehow seems to be successfully fueled by alcohol.
“Hey, Charlie,” I greeted him, and slapped the hand he held aloft. “You were at the party last night, right?”
“Absolutely, babe, of course I was!” The words were slurred, and, although I couldn’t see it, I knew he must have a bottle somewhere in the immediate vicinity. “It was the party of the semester! I looked for you. Where were you?”
“Studying,” I confessed. “It’s a rough job, but somebody’s gotta do it—and I knew you’d be drinking for the both of us. Listen, Charlie, I can see you’re busy, but can you help me with something for a minute? Do you remember my friend Katie?”
He frowned, concentrating. “That’s that freshman you’re really tight with?”
I hesitated at his use of the present tense, but decided it’d be just too complicated to explain. “Yeah,” I said. “Her.”
“Sure. She was here last night, I asked her where you were. She just glared at me and walked away.” His voice dropped to a whisper, and he waggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx in those goofy old comedies my dad likes to watch. “I think she was in a hormonally induced bad mood, if you know what I mean.”
“Do you remember who she was talking to, what she was wearing, anything?”
He laughed. “What are you, a detective?”
“No, Charlie, I’m not a detective,” I said patiently—thinking, I just play one on TV. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened to my friend.”
He dug beneath his pillows, found a blue Nalgene water bottle, and took a swig of whatever was in it. “That’s deep,” he said. “Hey, wait a second … she was wearing a red Hingham Hockey sweatshirt! That’s why I asked her if you were with her, ’cause I figured it had to be yours, nobody else I know went to Hingham. She pretty much ignored me, though. She wasn’t talking to anyone, I don’t think. She seemed really angry and just sort of sat in a corner by herself, pounding beers. While I was manning the keg, she got at least three or four of ’em from me, and she never said a word, not even thanks.”
“Do you know what time she left?”
He considered the question, then shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea, sweetheart. I was so shwasted, I wasn’t paying any attention to the time.”
I figured that was about all I’d be able to learn from Charlie, so I thanked him, told him to get some sleep, and turned to go.
“Hey, Max!” he called after me. He pulled several folded sheets of typing paper from between the pages of his book and held them out to me. “She left this behind, I found it lying on the floor when I was cleaning up this morning and saw her name on it. Can you give it back to her?”
I took the thin sheaf of paper from him and unfolded it. Across the top of the first page was the heading “Gender is as Gender Does,” and underneath it “by Katie Parker.” Scrawled across the bottom of the page in red ink was a big circled B+ and a handwritten message: “This is promising, Katie, as far as it goes. Problem is, it doesn’t go far enough. I expected a more fully developed job from you!”
Katie’s paper. She was a straight A student, so I could imagine the B+ flipping her out. Professor Farmer was a notoriously tough grader, though. I’d only gotten a B- from him on my final paper, two years earlier, and I’d been relieved to wind up above C level.
“Thanks, Charlie,” I said dully. “I—I’ll take care of it.”
I headed out into the frosty December air. Now what?
The last anyone had seen of Katie had been at Prof Farmer’s picnic. I was not one of the professor’s fans—actually, I’d always found him sort of skeevy, and I really didn’t relish the idea of seeing him when I didn’t have to—but it seemed clear he must’ve been one of the last people to see her alive, and that meant I probably had to go talk with him. I had no idea where the expression “bearding the lion in its den” came from, but I knew what it meant—and I knew I was going to have to do it.
* * * *
By the time I got into my rusted old Volvo and headed north, it was after 10. I slipped a mix CD Katie had made for my birthday into the player and jumped forward to track 9—Ani’s “Freakshow” seemed a fitting soundtrack to the day’s events.
Several minutes north of campus, I pulled into a long driveway and wound my way through the bare woods that surrounded the house. I parked next to his truck and noticed that the living room lights were still on. Good. Despite the cold, a window was open, and I could hear soft jazz wafting towards me. I don’t know jazz, but whatever it was was mellow and warm with saxophones.
I rang the doorbell, but there was no response from within the house. I rang again. On the third ring, the music stopped, and, as I was about to press the buzzer a fourth time, the door finally opened.
Professor Farmer hadn’t changed much since I had seen him last—in December of my freshman year. His hair was a little thinner than I remembered, his beard a little grayer, but the way he slowly looked me up and down before speaking creeped me out just as much as ever.
He was holding a half-full bottle of #9, a Burlington brew, in his right hand, and he raised it to eye level and tipped it towards me in a sardonic salute.
“Maxine Callahan, as I live and breathe,” he said. “It’s been quite a while, Max. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“You heard about Katie?”
His smile disappeared. “Yes, it was on the news. Such a tragedy. She was a sweet girl, a fine student.”
“She was at the picnic last night, wasn’t she?”
He nodded.
“Can I come in and ask you about it?”
He seemed nonplussed by the question, but then he nodded sadly and said, “Yes—yes, of course.”
He stepped aside to let me pass, but not quite far enough. As I came into the house, I had to brush against him. The momentary touch of his skin against mine made me shiver.
His house hadn’t changed much, either. He followed me into the living room and sat down on the couch. I moved to the armchair across the low coffee table from him. There was a throw rug I wasn’t sure I remembered next to the table, but otherwise the room seemed the same.
“Can I get you one?” he said, raising his bottle again.
“No,” I said quickly, adding a thank-you almost as an afterthought.
He took a drink. “This is rather awkward,” he said.
“About Katie, Professor? What time did she leave here?”
He paused a moment before replying. “She took off earlier than the others, I remember. Around 10:30, I think. Perhaps a bit before that.”
“Alone?”
“I think so, yes. Yes, I’m almost certain.”
“Did anything out of the ordinary happen? I know Katie and Dee argued before they left the dorm. Did they fight again at the picnic?”
“Not that I noticed,” he answered. “She seemed quiet last night, quieter than usual. She only talked to Brandon, as far as I can recall. I handed back the final papers at, oh, quarter past ten or so, and she left not long after that.”
“Do you remember what she was wearing?”
He looked into his beer, as if to find the answer there. “A shirt? A sweater, maybe? Jeans, I think. I didn’t notice, to be honest.” He drained his bottle and got up. “You sure you
don’t want one?”
“No, thanks,” I said. On the drive out, I’d rehearsed a series of questions in my mind, but none of them seemed especially important any more, and being there was making me less comfortable by the minute. “Can I just use your restroom, and then I’ll be on my way?”
He looked at me, his face emotionless. “Sure, Max, you know where it is.”
I nodded. When I reached the little room at the end of the hall, I swung the door shut behind me and leaned heavily on the sink, my pale face gazing back at me from the medicine cabinet’s mirror. I was running out of options. Professor Farmer had been no help, and I was clueless where to go next. If Detective Branigan didn’t know about Katie and me yet, well, he’d know soon, and my ability to find out what had really happened would be severely limited—limited to the inside of a jail cell, probably.
I sat down on the crocheted toilet cover—where had that monstrosity come from?—and buried my face in my hands. I had no idea what to do.
When I looked up again, I found myself staring blankly at the professor’s white wicker laundry hamper, 18 inches in front of me. In the narrow gaps between the wicker slats, I caught glimpses of the blue of a pair of jeans, the white of a T-shirt, the red of—
The red of—
As if in a trance, I lifted the hamper lid and looked inside. Dirty shirts, underwear, jeans. The hint of red, barely visible through the slats, was completely invisible from above. Wincing at the smell of somebody else’s dirty laundry, I held my breath and dug a hand deep into the pile, burrowed down past the denim and cotton and linen and pulled free—a red sweatshirt.
On the front were the words “Property of Hingham Hockey.” Inside was a label with my name on it.
The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK ™: 20 Modern and Classic Tales of Female Detectives Page 55