“Syracuse. I figured, what with Professor Blackmore getting arrested and everything, that class was toast, and I only had one other class, so I decided to blow it off and come back last night.”
“Why come back now? It’s a long weekend. Why not come back Monday night?”
“Two days is all I want to spend with my mom and dad.” She did something funny with her mouth. “Mostly I went home to see if they’d give me some money. They gave me five hundred, so then I came back.”
That was believable. I could remember Trevor’s time in school. His most brilliantly argued pieces of writing were not his essays, but pleas to Maureen and me for more funds.
I was almost finished with the sandwich. I’d been glancing at the two donuts, the sense of anticipation building.
“Do you know Lorraine well?”
“Is she in some kind of trouble?”
“I just wondered how well you know her.”
“Not that well, like I said. I’m not going to say anything else until you tell me what’s going on with her. Like, she’s totally not the kind of person to do drugs or anything like that, so if that’s what you think, you’re totally wrong.”
I could not bring myself to eat a donut while telling Cleo a friend of hers-even one who was not that close-was dead. I pushed the tray off to one side.
“A couple of nights ago, shortly after you finished texting with Lorraine,” I said, “someone came to her room.”
“I know. She said she had to go.”
I nodded. “That’s right. Do you have any idea who it was?”
“No. Not a clue. What happened? Did something happen?”
“Yes. Cleo, someone killed Lorraine Plummer. I think whoever did it was the person who interrupted her chat with you.”
She set down her juice. “That’ s-no, that’s crazy.” Her eyes started to well with tears. “How do you know this? You’re wrong.”
I shook my head slowly. “I wish I were.”
“How? Who?”
“That’s why I’m here talking to you. To find out who.”
“Oh God,” she said, putting a hand over her mouth and looking out into the parking lot. “Thackeray is so totally fucked.”
I leaned in slightly. “What?”
“I mean, come on. They had this perv attacking girls, and he gets shot, and then the security boss or whatever he was is run over by my fucking professor? What the hell’s wrong with that place?” She shook her head forcefully. “I’m done. I am never setting foot on that campus again. The place is totally nuts. This whole fucking town is nuts. Did you hear about what happened at the drive-in?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And then today you can’t even drink the water without dropping dead. I mean, what the hell is going on?”
“You’re right,” I said, keeping my voice low and calm. “You’re absolutely right. There’s been a lot of strange stuff going on these past few weeks.” And she didn’t even know about the squirrels, or the mannequins on the Ferris wheel, or that goddamn bus.
Or that anonymous phone call I’d had the other day from someone congratulating me on putting things together.
“And now, there’s this, with Lorraine,” I said, hesitating, not wanting to share more than I should, or overspeculate. But I said, “Maybe, in some way, it’s tied in to some of the other things that have been going on.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. It’s just kind of a feeling I have. But right now, this second, I want you to concentrate on Lorraine. Did she have a boyfriend?”
Cleo tried to focus. “Um, uh, not that I know of. She might have, but I don’t know.”
“Can you think of anyone she might have been seeing, if not recently, then going back a ways?”
“I can’t, I just-”
She stopped suddenly, as though she’d just remembered something.
“What?” I asked.
“The other day when I saw her, she did say something weird.”
“What did she say?”
“Just-she said she met this guy who was really cute, but he was off-limits.”
“Did she say who he was?”
“No.”
“A student at Thackeray?”
“She didn’t say that, either.”
“What did she mean by this guy being off-limits?” I asked.
“He was married,” Cleo said. “The guy was married. It was sort of like a crush.”
“When did she tell you this?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. In the last few days?”
“What day?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea. It was just something she said recently.”
Suddenly, she gathered up her purse, stood, and said, “I’m outta here. I’m quitting this school, and getting out of this town. Fuck it, I’m done.”
“I just had a couple more questions about-”
“No, I mean it. I’m done. I’m going back to Syracuse, even if it means living with my nutso parents.”
With that, she walked briskly out of the Dunkin’s.
I put in a call to Joyce Pilgrim.
“Still no coroner or anyone else here,” she said without even saying hello.
“Lorraine was interested in a married man,” I said.
“She was having an affair?”
“Not sure about that. She was interested in him, but felt he was off-limits. I don’t know if she had something going with him or not.”
“Professors aren’t supposed to have relationships with their students,” Joyce said.
I thought, Yeah, and they’re not supposed to give them roofies and include them unwittingly in their lifestyle sex parties, either.But I already knew that had happened. And, according to further interviews I’d had with Professor Peter Blackmore, they’d happened with Lorraine Plummer, although not recently.
Could Lorraine have been referring to Clive Duncomb or Blackmore? Or even the writer, Adam Chalmers? All three were married, and at the time of her death Lorraine was unaware-I had not yet interviewed her about this, and had still been sorting out how to tell her she was a sexual assault victim-just how despicable those three men were. It was possible she’d made her comment to her friend Cleo about being interested in a married man before the deaths of Chalmers and Duncomb, and the arrest of Blackmore.
So it could have been one of them she was referring to.
But it couldn’t have been any of them who killed her. Only Blackmore was alive the night of her murder, and he was in custody.
Which would mean that her comment about having a crush on a married man was a lead that was going to go nowhere.
Still.
“You there?” Joyce asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “When you’re talking to people about Lorraine, ask them about who she might have been seeing. Married, unmarried, student, professor. Whatever.”
“What am I now?” Joyce Pilgrim asked. “A detective?”
“Just ask, okay?”
“You want me to be a coroner, too? ’Cause there’s still been no one here to look at the body. I’m waiting out front of the building for someone to show up. I can’t exactly check that security video while I’m killing time here.”
“I’ll make another call,” I said, thanked her, and put the phone down on the plastic tray, next to the two donuts.
I hadn’t taken a bite out of either of them yet. They seemed to be taunting me, daring me to eat them.
To show I was weak.
My phone, which had been out of my hand for only about thirty seconds, started to ring.
It was Garvey Ottman, at the water treatment plant.
“Hello?” I said.
“Duckworth?”
“Yeah.”
“We found Tate.”
TWENTY
RANDALL Finley was talking all the way back to the water plant about what David should do next, but the former reporter was not listening.
He was thinking about Samantha Worthington.
He really hadn’t stopped thinking about Sam since he’d broken into her house and found out that she had left. Where had she gone? Why had she packed up and taken off? Why hadn’t she called to let him know what she was doing?