Graduating (Covenant College Book 5) (19 page)

“I can’t believe we’re breaking into her room,” Tally said, her eyes sparkling. “This would make a great movie. We could be cat burglars.”

I rolled my eyes. We were standing outside of Heather’s room – a room no one had entered (as far as we could tell) in months – and I was on my knees trying to pick the lock.

“Where did you learn to do this again?” Paris asked.

“I told you, Will’s brother taught me.”

Aric made a growl in the back of his throat.

“Oh, grow up,” Kelsey said. “Will was before you. The only overlapping was done on your part.”

Aric growled again.

“I don’t know if we should be doing this,” Kate said, wringing her hands. “We’re invading her privacy.”

“Is this even still her room?” I asked, making a face when I heard the mechanisms in the lock click into place. I pushed the door open triumphantly, and then immediately deflated. All of Heather’s stuff was still there. “Crap.”

Kate pushed inside, glancing around. “Well, where is she if all her stuff is still here? How can she have moved out if she didn’t move anything?”

I walked over to the desk in the corner, sifting through the papers and books. “Anyone know when she was taking psychology?”

“Last semester,” Kate said. “She hated it.”

“I don’t think she’s been here,” Paris said.

“Maybe she abandoned all her stuff?” I suggested hopefully.

“I can see leaving the garbage, but would you leave all of your clothes and shoes behind?” Kelsey asked, looking through the closet. “Although, with her taste, I might consider it.” Kelsey held up a shirt with a teddy bear across the chest and stuck out her tongue.

I made a face. It was hideous. “I’m not going to lie. This isn’t good.”

“Oh, I see why you’re taking journalism classes,” Paris teased. “You’re on top of your game when it comes to obvious breaking news.”

“This is beyond bad,” I said, ignoring Paris’ sarcasm. “I was already in a really crappy position. Now things are … horrid.”

“What do you mean?” Tally asked.

“I’m already the suspect in a mass murder,” I said. “Now my roommate goes missing? It’s March. If we report her missing now, it’s going to look really suspect.”

“It would have looked just as bad in January,” Aric said.

“We don’t know she’s missing,” Kate said. “She’s probably still pissed. Maybe she just dropped out.”

“I don’t suppose you know her home phone number?”

Kate shrugged. “I might. Let me check my phone. It’s downstairs.” Kate paused at the door. “I’m kind of nervous knowing my roommate is missing. Does someone want to go downstairs with me?” Her gaze was pointed at Aric.

Aric looked to me for help.

“I’ll go with you,” Paris said. “I want to call Scott anyway.”

Kate’s face flushed with disappointment. “Oh, okay.”

“Why are you calling Scott?”

“Well, aside from seeing how that previous task we gave him is going, I figured he might be able to hack into the registrar’s office and see if Heather is still enrolled here.”

“Oh, good idea.”

Once Kate and Paris were gone, I turned back to Heather’s room. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to have to report her missing,” Kelsey said. “The longer you wait now, the guiltier you look.”

“I already look guilty,” I said.

“The good news for you is that Paris is the one in the house with the motive this time,” Aric said, shifting in behind me and resting his chin on top of my head.

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“It was supposed to be encouraging,” Aric said.

“Big, fat fail,” Kelsey said.

Aric flicked her on the ridge of her ear with his fingernail. “You’re obnoxious sometimes. You know that, right?”

“Maybe I should just call Perkins and tell him,” I said. “I might earn points with him for being forthcoming.”

“Or you might end up in a jail cell,” Aric said.

“He’s going to find out.”

Aric stepped away and stalked around the room. The way his nose was turned upwards told me he was scenting it. I was used to it at this point, but it was still weird.

“What is he doing?” Tally asked.

“He’s a method actor,” I said. “He’s trying to channel a detective.”

“Oh, he’s very good.”

Kelsey shot me a look that was so humorous I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

Kate appeared back in the doorway, her face drawn and ashen. “I talked to Heather’s mom.”

“And?”

“And she never came home for Christmas.”

“What? Why didn’t she call the police?”

Kate shrugged. “She says Heather is a free spirit and she often takes off for weeks at a time.”

“Does she often take off for three months at a time?”

Kate’s face wrinkled. “She’s dead, isn’t she? Oh, God.” She blew through the room, scattering Kelsey and me to the side, and threw herself into Aric’s arms. “My best friend is dead!”

“You haven’t been worried about her at all,” Kelsey scoffed.

“I’ve been worried inside,” Kate said, pressing her face into Aric’s chest. “How often do you work out?”

“Well, great,” I said. “Now what?”

Kelsey motioned for me to follow her out into the hallway. The death glare Aric sent me for leaving him with Kate was pointed, but I figured he deserved it for encouraging her little crush.

Once we were out in the hallway, Kelsey unloaded quickly. “You’re going to be blamed for this.”

“I know.”

“They might try and take you to jail.”

“I know.”

“We have got to come up with a plan to minimize the risk for you – and everybody else in this house – before we call the police,” Kelsey said.

“And how do you suggest we do that?”

“We have to think,” Kelsey said. “Don’t do anything until we all agree on a plan of action. We’re all in this together now.”

Tally breezed out of Heather’s bedroom and headed toward her own.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m bored.”

“Well, maybe not all of us are in this together,” Kelsey corrected once Tally’s bedroom door swung shut. “I’m going to go and check on Paris and see if Scott has come up with something.”

“Great. I’m going to go and extricate Aric from Kate and her eight arms.”

Kelsey giggled. “She’s getting more and more brazen. I think she thinks she’s running out of time to steal him.”

“I’ve noticed.”

TWO
days later, I was still struggling with that exact question. Everyone was settled in the living room to watch a movie when I walked into the room with two beers and a bowl of popcorn.

I set the popcorn on the coffee table and then carried the beers over to the large armchair in the corner where Aric was sitting.

“Zoe, there’s room over here,” Kate said from one of the couches.

Aric took the offered beer and then tumbled me into his lap. “She’s fine over here.”

“Oh, that can’t be comfortable,” Kate said.

“It’s comfortable.” Aric was clearly starting to chafe under Kate’s constant machinations. We’d spent the past three nights at the house, brainstorming to figure out what we were going to do about the Heather situation. We were still exactly where we started.

“She must weigh a ton,” Kate said.

“Thanks.”

Aric rubbed his nose against my cheek. “I like that she weighs a ton,” he said.

I smacked his arm. “You’re on thin ice.”

“So, what are we going to do?” Kelsey asked. “I think we have to call the police. If she turns up dead and we never reported her missing, we look like assholes.”

“We already look like assholes,” I said, leaning my head back against Aric’s shoulder. “She accused us of being self-absorbed, and look, we didn’t bother to see if she was missing for three months. I’m thinking she had a point.”

“We’ve had other stuff going on,” Aric said. “It’s not like you even know her that well.”

“Still … .”

Aric brushed his lips against my temple. “I hate to say it, but I agree with Kelsey.”

Kelsey smiled.

“This once,” Aric stressed. “We have to call Perkins. I’ll call my dad tomorrow and see how he thinks we should go about it.”

Everyone focused on the movie for the next half hour, the conversation stagnating. My mind started wandering about the same time Aric’s hands did. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to convince you to go to bed with me,” Aric said. “Is it working?”

I caught Kate’s scowl out of the corner of my eye.

“Can’t we finish the movie?” I asked.

“The good guys win in the end,” Aric said, scooping me up in his arms as he stood. “Now I want to win.”

“You have a one-track mind.”

“You have no idea.” Aric carried me into the bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him. He tossed me on the bed, reaching up to the collar of his shirt to pull it over his head when he stilled.

“What?”

Aric wrinkled his nose. “I’m not sure. I think someone is outside.”

I jumped up from the bed. “Can you smell them? Is it a vampire? Maybe it’s just Fiona?”

Aric shook his head. “I’d recognize it if it was her. It’s definitely a vampire. Two of them.”

“Well, just stay here,” I said. “They’ll go away.”

“You don’t want to see what they’re doing?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I do.” Aric was moving through the room and throwing open the bedroom door before I could give voice to an argument.

Kate bolted into a sitting position when she saw us stride back out of the bedroom. “Did you two have a fight? Did you break up? Oh, poor Zoe.”

“We’re not breaking up, Kate,” Aric snapped. “Can you get that through your head?”

Aric stepped out onto the front porch, fixing me with a pointed look. “Stay here.”

“Like hell.”

“Zoe,” Aric groaned. “Please don’t be a pain.”

“Aric, please don’t tell me what to do.”

Aric pressed his lips together and then grabbed my hand. “You stay right next to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Aric dragged me outside, his eyes busily searching the night sky as his nose lifted to the heavens. “I think they’re gone.”

I felt oddly detached when my gaze fell on the lawn. The snow was almost gone, the only remnants of winter remaining at the edge of the road where the snowplows had built extensive banks throughout the past three months. That meant the lump on the lawn was something other than snow.

I took a step forward, causing Aric to shift his attention to me. “What is it?”

I pointed. “Is that a … a body?”

“Oh, shit,” Aric said, confirming my worst fear. “It’s just one staggering piece of crap after another.”

“And you have no idea how a body found its way onto your front lawn?”

I was sitting in a dingy room at the police station, a small metal table in front of me, and Detective Perkins was sitting on the opposite side. I’d watched enough television that I knew people were probably watching from the other side of the mirror along the far wall.

“I told you, we thought we heard something outside,” I said. “When we went to check it out, we found the body and called you immediately.”

“Did you touch the body?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like touching dead bodies,” I said.

“How did you know she was dead?”

“I didn’t even know it was a she,” I said. “I just had a feeling she or he was dead.”

“Why?”

“Because, who would drop a live person on our front lawn?”

“And, what makes you think someone put the body there?” Perkins asked.

“Because it didn’t crawl there itself,” I said.

“And who would try to frame you?”

“I already told you my top suspect,” I said.

“This Professor Blake,” Perkins said.

I glanced at the mirror worriedly.

“It’s just a mirror,” Perkins said. “Not everything is like television and movies.”

I still wasn’t sure.

Perkins leaned forward. “Ms. Lake, I think you’re in a whole mess of trouble here.”

“What was your first clue?”

“My first clue was your roommate disappearing three and a half years ago,” Perkins said. “It’s just snowballed from there.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Where is Aric?”

“He’s being questioned in another room.”

“Well, maybe I should just sit here until my lawyer arrives,” I suggested.

“That’s certainly your prerogative,” Perkins said. “You sit there and let me talk for a few minutes.”

“Great.”

“I think someone is trying to set you up,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows, convinced he was setting a trap. “Uh-huh.”

“I was leaning toward the theory that you were simply the unluckiest person in the world until we got the tip about the necklace,” Perkins said. “That was a directed tip, pointing us straight at you. Since your name was never released to the public as a witness, I figured it had to be someone who knew you.”

“I make friends wherever I go.”

“You know, we’ve been following you for months,” Perkins said. “Even when I became convinced that you were being set up, there were others in this department who didn’t believe it.”

“I’ve seen the others all over campus,” I said. “I’m not stupid.”

“You’re definitely not stupid,” Perkins said. “Even though you often try to put on an act to convince others that you are.”

“I do not.”

“I get it,” Perkins said. “You want people to underestimate you. You want people to look at you and see a cute and helpless blonde.”

I rolled my eyes. “If you have people watching me, how come you didn’t see someone dumping a body on our lawn?”

“Who says we didn’t?”

I froze. “What?”

“Ms. Lake, the one thing you have going for you is that we did have someone out watching the house this evening,” Perkins said.

“Then why am I in here?”

“Because the two officers on your detail tonight aren’t sure what they saw,” Perkins said.

I waited.

“They said they thought they saw a blur, and when they looked more closely, there was a body on the lawn,” Perkins said. “Then you and Mr. Winters were racing outside.”

“So, if they were already there, why did we have to call the police?”

“They wanted to see what you would do.”

I furrowed my brow, my mind busy. “Do you know who the body belonged to? I tried to look, but I didn’t want to touch the body in case any of my … you know … body stuff transferred.”

“Her name was Heather Senter,” Perkins said. “We’re trying to get some background on her right now. The only reason we know her identity is because she had a student identification card in her pocket. Someone obviously wanted her identified quickly.”

“Heather Senter? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You know her?”

“She’s my roommate,” I said.

Perkins sighed. “Of course she is.”

“Do you happen to know how long she’s been dead?”

“We won’t know that until the coroner finishes his report. Why do you ask?”

“She’s been missing since Christmas.”

Perkins eyebrows shot up, nearly melding with his hairline. “And you’re just telling us this now?”

“To be fair, we didn’t know she was actually missing until a few days ago,” I said. “We were trying to figure out a way to tell you without looking like assholes.”

“How do you not know your roommate is missing?”

“Well, she had a big fight with another one of our roommates the night before break,” I said. “She said either the roommate went or she did. I just figured she did.”

“And what was this fight about?”

“Oh, Paris slept with her boyfriend.”

Perkins rubbed his forehead tiredly. “I can’t take college kids. What finally made you think that she was missing?”

“We broke into her room and found all of her stuff was still there.”

“I see.”

“I don’t suppose you can tell me how she died, can you?”

“No.”

“You seem mad.”

“You have no idea.”

I pursed my lips. “So, now what happens?”

“Now? Now you … .”

Perkins was cut off by a knock at the door. He motioned for me to remain seated. I watched him from my chair. I didn’t recognize the police officer talking to him through the partially-opened door, but whatever he was telling Perkins wasn’t good news.

After a few minutes, Perkins glanced back at me and pushed the door open. “Ms. Lake, you’re free to go.”

“What?”

“You’re free to go.”

I pushed my chair out, confused, and then shuffled to the door. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m sure you will when you get out to the lobby,” Perkins said. He grabbed my arm before I could leave. “Ms. Lake, you need to be careful. I don’t believe you’re behind this, but I do believe you’re a target.”

“I’m always a target.”

When I got out to the lobby, the trio of faces staring at me was serious – and only two of the men were ones I’d seen before. Aric was pulling me into his arms before I could voice a question. “Are you okay?”

“You got to me just in time,” I said. “They were about to get out the rubber hoses.”

“You’re hilarious.” Aric ran his hand down the back of my head, smoothing my hair. “We can go.”

“Perkins told me.”

I focused on the other two men. “Mr. Winters, I can’t thank you enough for … whatever it is you did.”

James held up his hand. “It was really nothing,” he said. “Let’s just say I don’t like seeing innocent people railroaded.”

“No one wants to see that, Senator,” Perkins said, appearing in the lobby behind me. “I was just telling Ms. Lake the exact same thing when we were so rudely interrupted.”

The smile on James’ face was one I was certain had earned him millions of votes throughout the years. “I’m a big proponent of law enforcement,” he said. “I’m also a big proponent of my son, and I even like his girlfriend, when she’s not spouting off at the mouth.”

I frowned.

“Senator, I’m sure you understand we have a job to do here.” Another man had entered the room. I didn’t recognize him, but he looked important.

“Chief Witherspoon,” Aric whispered in my ear. “My dad and our lawyer pretty much beat him into the ground to get us cut loose.”

“Oh, that’s Sheldon Whats-his-name,” I said, glancing at the third man. He looked exactly like a high-priced lawyer should. His hair was perfected coiffed, and his suit looked really expensive.

“Yup.”

“Chief Witherspoon, I understand you have a job to do,” James said. “I do, too. If you have further questions, please call my lawyer. We should be going. Kids.”

Aric and I filed out of the police station, not stopping until we were standing in front of James’ Ford Explorer. “Sheldon, thank you for dropping everything.”

Sheldon shook the senator’s proffered hand. “No problem.” He turned to us. “Don’t answer their questions without me.”

Once he was gone, James focused on us. “I think we need to talk.”

“We can go back to my apartment,” Aric said. “I don’t think we should do it out here.”

“I agree.”

“We’re going to need a ride anyway,” Aric said. “They taxied us here in cruisers.”

James frowned. “How undignified. Well, get in.”

I started to move to the other side of the vehicle when the sound of footsteps stilled me. I could feel Aric stiffen behind me, his arm coming around my shoulders protectively.

James and Aric leveled gazes at each other across the hood of the Explorer, something unspoken passing between them.

“Well, well, well. I should have known.”

I recognized the voice, although I couldn’t quite figure out from where. I peered around Aric’s shoulder, my heart catching in my throat when I caught sight of Kennedy Reagan. Yup, the governor was in the house – or in the parking lot, to be more precise.

“Kennedy,” James said. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Oh, I just heard that your son was in a spot of trouble,” Reagan said. “I thought I would offer my help. I see that’s not necessary.”

“No, it’s not,” James said. “It was a misunderstanding.”

“How can a dead body be a misunderstanding?”

“You’ll have to ask the police,” James said. “I am curious, though, how did you find out about this so fast?”

“I guess I just have my finger on the pulse of the state,” Reagan said, his voice smarmy.

James’ face was placid. “That must be it.”

Reagan focused on me. “Ms. Lake, it’s so good to see you again. I hope this whole evening hasn’t been too traumatizing for you.”

Aric moved in closer. “I’ll live,” I said.

“I’m sure you will,” he said. “You seem very … resilient.”

“Well, since we don’t need your help, Kennedy,” James said. “We should be going. I was just about to take Aric and Zoe home. They’ve had a long night.”

“Of course,” Reagan said. “I don’t want to interrupt. If you need anything, though, don’t hesitate to call.”

“We’ll be fine,” Aric said, opening the back door of the Explorer and ushering me inside. “We’ve got things under control.”

“Obviously.”

ONCE
we got back to Aric’s apartment, I excused myself for a few minutes and disappeared into the bedroom. I figured father and son needed a few minutes to talk, and I need a little time to decompress on my own. I changed into a pair of track pants and one of Aric’s oversized sweatshirts, and then rejoined them twenty-five minutes later.

Aric was at the door, paying the pizza-delivery guy, and his father was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a beer.

Once it was just two steaming pizzas and the three of us, James began to talk.

“Someone obviously has Zoe’s downfall as a goal,” he said. “Do we know who?”

“Professor Blake,” I said. “He’s my prime suspect.”

“And he’s the head of the Academy?”

“He is.”

“Well, we have a problem then,” James said. “I’ve been trying to track down information on this Blake, and it’s really hard to come by. It’s almost as if he exists on paper and not anywhere else.”

Aric slapped two slices of pizza on a plate and slid it in front of me. “Eat.”

I’d lost my appetite somewhere over the course of the evening. Go figure. “What do you mean he only exists on paper?”

“He has all the proper records,” James said, rolling up his sleeves. “He has a birth certificate, school records, a driver’s license, and a teaching certificate. He seems to pay all of his bills on time, and he doesn’t have a criminal record.”

“That sounds pretty normal,” I said.

“Yes, but when I try to delve deeper, I can’t come up with anything,” James said. “This pizza is good. I don’t get to eat pizza nearly often enough. Anyway, I’ve had two investigators on this Blake since Christmas. They can’t find anyone that knows him.”

“I know him,” I said.

“Not like that,” James said. “No one from his graduating class at Michigan State knows who he is. People who were in the same classes with him have no idea. We even showed them pictures.”

“So, what does that mean?” Aric asked, tapping my plate again. “Eat, baby.”

“It means that I don’t think he is who he says he is,” James said. “I think there’s more going on here.”

“Like?”