Second Chance (Hudson Valley Murder Mysteries #2)

Chapter Six

T he science building is an easy thirty years newer than every other building at Lobell Tony has been in. The sleek glass exterior and long, twisted shape, not conceived of until the 2000s, make it stand out on an otherwise cozy and overgrown campus. It’s very impressive, even if it lacks the antiquated charm of Daniel’s office.

Tony tugs at the top button of his black dress shirt, undoing it. The relentlessly muggy weather makes it too hot for long sleeves. He doesn’t own any short-sleeved button-ups, though; they look too much like something his dad would wear.

In front of him, Lia gurgles in her stroller, batting at the pacifier dangling from the top of it. She’s gotten really good at understanding cause and effect, and she follows the motion as the toy sways after she hits it.

After the noise and bustle inside got to be too much for her, Tony took her outside by the back entrance, away from the reception but still in the protective shade of the building. It does absolutely nothing to help with the humidity. The only thing worse than upstate New York this time of year is the city, where the air not only feels like soup, it smells of garbage.

Tony is maybe a little biased. He hates going to memorials for people he didn’t know. Which isn’t something he has to do often. It is weird it’s happened twice in a year. Attending this one has been less painful than Mario’s, at least. That was a trial to sit through, from Gianna crying quietly next to him to Colette presenting the story of Mario’s life as if his death was a horrific tragedy. Retrospectively, Tony understands it was, but at the time, he was filled with so much rage toward Mario it was hard not to cheer when the students started asking questions about the rumors going around that he behaved inappropriately toward his students.

On the whole, this one has been much more bearable, not least because he’s spent most of it outside with Lia.

At least Tony managed to snag a champagne flute full of orange juice and a cup of olives from the servers setting out refreshments for after the speeches. He doesn’t remember Mario’s memorial being catered. On the other hand, if memory serves, that event was organized by his killer. It stands to reason she would cheap out on the amenities.

Then again, Tony doesn’t know who organized this shindig. It could easily be the killer, and it could easily be a ruse to get their next victim to the scene of the first crime. Daniel might be ignoring the letter threatening him, but Tony can’t forget about it.

When the noise level inside begins to rise, the speeches now replaced by the low hum of conversation, Lia starts to complain. Tony pushes her stroller back and forth slowly, trying to get her to relax.

“C’mon, little girl,” he mutters to her. “It’s only boring grown-up talk.”

She gurgles a little, squirming in place, one chubby little arm stretched, her tiny fingers spreading apart.

“You’re still so small.” It’s embarrassing how, despite his best intentions, Tony always starts baby-talking to her. “How are you so small, huh?”

She gurgles at him again, which is close enough to an answer for an eight-month-old.

“Oh, hey, man,” a voice says behind Tony.

Lia stills.

Tony flinches at being caught out in his sentimentality and turns around.

“Sean, right?” Tony plasters his customer service smile onto his face. “How’s that Camry doing?”

“Huh?” Sean frowns briefly. “Oh, the car. Yeah, it’s fine, good as new.”

“Great.”

Sean pulls out a pack of loose tobacco and cigarette papers and starts rolling. “You want?” he asks after he finishes making his own cigarette and sees Tony staring at him.

“No thanks.” What Tony wants is to take Lia and go for a long walk away from the secondhand smoke. Unfortunately, he promised Gianna he’d stay close. Also, this guy is her friend, and he’s probably going through some shit right now. Tony makes it a rule not to be rude to people whether or not they deserve it. Sean doesn’t deserve it.

“Yeah.” Sean lights up, takes a drag, and exhales a long breath of smoke. “Probably better. I’m not actually a smoker, y’know. Just, like, at parties and stuff.”

Tony eyes the mix of academics and students in black and gray through the door, milling around and making small talk. “Not sure I’d call this a party.”

Sean laughs. The upward curve of his mouth makes the mustache even less fitting on his face.

Tony reminds himself he doesn’t hold a monopoly on facial hair. If some guy younger than Tony’s baby sister wants to experiment with looking like Magnum P.I. in puberty, that’s his prerogative.

“Nah, man.” Sean leans against the building in a way he probably thinks makes him look cool. “Not my idea of a good time in there.”

“What brings you here, then?”

Sean sighs, flicking ashes onto the ground. “My girlfriend made this whole thing about it.”

“Lily, right?”

“Yeah. Good memory, dude.”

“My, uh—” It seems weird to mention his boyfriend in this context, especially given Sean might not even know who Daniel is, let alone that he regularly tells Tony personal information about Sean’s girlfriend. Worse, he probably doesn’t know Daniel and Colette are friends. No one wants to be reminded that people talk about them behind their back, but Tony imagines it would be especially brutal to hear about a trusted advisor telling two other unconnected people about your relationship difficulties. At the last second, Tony changes tack. “My sister said Lily found Professor Lawrence.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot you were Gianna’s brother.” Sean says it like a revelation, as if he barely bothers to remember personal information about his friends.

Tony takes a breath and tries to stop himself from judging. He knows way more about this guy than he should, a guy who has so much going on he has no reason to remember Tony. “Seems traumatic. No wonder she wanted to be here.”

“I guess.” Sean sounds doubtful, as if discovering a stabbed woman doesn’t count as a life-altering event in his book. “She’s a little…” He gestures at his temple with his free hand, drawing lazy circles to indicate insanity.

Sean leans in, too close for comfort. Tony smells the cigarette smoke on his breath and notes how unsteady he looks. The skin under his eyes is red, and something about them doesn’t seem right; the pupils are the wrong size.

“Just between us, dude,” Sean says, “there was no fuckin’ deer on the road when she lost it and crashed the car. Had to tell y’all I did it so she’d stop fucking crying.”

It takes supreme effort for Tony to keep his expression neutral. “I figured. Story didn’t quite add up.” The deer story didn’t add up, and an absence of deer still doesn’t explain how they got a flat tire hitting the guardrail. Tony didn’t guess that Lily was driving, though, and Sean covered for her. Presumably, she’s not insured to drive his car. It’s nice of him to lie for her. Illegal and bound to get them both in trouble, but nice.

“Yeah, well.” Sean shrugs. “Storytelling’s not my thing. I may be a film major, but I’m more interested in, like, autobiographical filmmaking. Was hoping to screen this short film about my parents in this cool theater in Germantown, but that place went up in smoke.”

Last semester, Daniel took Tony to a screening of student films—not an experience he looks to repeat. Colette threatened to take them both to similar screenings in Germantown. Tony’s never been so happy to see a small business die.

“So, Lily is…” Tony starts, trying anything to distract Sean from the topic of his films.

Sean drops the stub of his cigarette and crushes it with the heel of his dress shoe. What kind of college student has dress shoes lying around in his dorm room? The rich kind, probably. “She’s not even here.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah. Texted something about how she was feeling sick, and it was too much for her when it was too late for me not to show up.”

“Sounds tough.” The customer service voice turns out to be a good trick for expressing sympathy and condolences while simultaneously prodding for information. Tony thinks it’s probably tougher for Lily, but he’s still curious to hear what Sean has to say.

“Yeah. It’s…hard. I want to support her and stuff, but it’s hard when she keeps changing the tune on me, y’know?”

“Mm-hm.”

“And I need to do better at school this year, and it’s all getting to be too much right now.”

Tony nods sympathetically. “Do you have anyone to lean on?”

“Huh?” Sean looks up at him with a frown.

“It sounds like your girlfriend needs support, and you’re doing your best to give it to her. It’s a lot to take on though. You probably need someone to talk with too.”

“Oh.” Sean looks as if it’s the first time he’s considered that his own emotional needs are also worth taking care of. As much as Tony suspects he’s a spoiled rich kid who needs to rethink his major and his grooming choices, he gets it. He knows intimately how it can be more comfortable to offer support than to admit you might need some yourself. “I have this professor. She’s…she’s been helping me out.”

Hoping Colette will forgive him, Tony says, “That’s great. Maybe you should make an appointment with her to talk about it?”

“Good idea, bro. Thanks.” Sean starts rolling another cigarette, and Tony decides he’s out of energy for comforting people he doesn’t know and also out of patience with secondhand smoke.

Tony knocks into Lia’s stroller accidentally-on-purpose. She starts crying immediately. “Sorry. I’d better take her for a walk, calm her down.”

“See ya.”

Tony waits until they’re around the corner to breathe a sigh of relief. “You,” he tells Lia, “are the best wing woman on the planet.”

She doesn’t stop crying, so he picks her up and starts to rock her until she settles a little. They’ll do a quick loop around the building, enough time for Sean to finish his cigarette and fuck off but not so much that Gianna will come looking for them and freak out.

“What a mess,” he mutters, still holding Lia. “Don’t tell your mom I said that about her friends. It’s true though. None of them are ready to be in relationships.” He thinks guiltily of Daniel and wonders if he’s ready to be in a relationship with all the baggage he’s carrying from last year and all the years before. Tony hopes he is. He hopes he doesn’t lean on Daniel so hard Daniel crumbles.

By the time they pass the front entrance, Lia calms down enough to go into the stroller again, and Tony realizes it’s a very bad idea for Sean to cover for Lily. He shouldn’t let someone who isn’t insured drive the car. He’d be the one on the line for the money as far as the insurance company is concerned if they found out. If Sean and Lily tell the truth, they have a chance at getting partial coverage. Tony knows much more about car insurance than either Sean or Lily, so they probably think Sean is getting her out of trouble. Someone should let them know that’s not the case. Not now, when they’re both struggling, but maybe Tony can find Sean’s number in their shop files on Monday to let him know he ought to change his statement for the insurance company. What a fun conversation to start his week with.

He feels bad for Lily. After everything she went through last year, she deserves an easy start to the semester, not all of this. No wonder she’s struggling. Tony wonders if maybe she’d have been better off starting fresh somewhere else. The country has more than enough tiny liberal arts colleges dotted around it. Returning to the one she almost died at might not have been the best choice. Especially given Lily was on edge before Professor Lawrence was killed.

Tony feels bad for Sean as well. The guy has probably never taken responsibility for anything in his life, not if he’s the kind of kid whose parents can pay for this place out of pocket, buy him dress shoes for college, and not bat an eye at a hefty bill for a car accident. He’s trying, at least. Telling him about the insurance will be a load off Sean’s shoulders. But now also seems to be a bad time to add more fuel to the fire of Lily’s stress.

Mercifully, Sean has left when Tony returns to his spot by the back door, saving Tony from making the decision of when to let him know about his insurance. Even better, he didn’t spot the olives where Tony left them in the shade past the door. Lia’s playing with her pacifier again. Tony sits on the steps leading down from the paved walkway surrounding the building to the parking lot, one hand on Lia’s stroller and the other free to nibble.

He makes it about halfway through his olives before the noise inside escalates again. Preemptively, Tony rocks the stroller, hoping the motion will keep Lia calm. She already made her preference for constant motion known when she was a fetus. Whenever Gianna was up and walking around, Lia was calm and quiet, but as soon as Gianna sat down, she’d start to kick. Tony remembers the first time he felt it. Gianna called him into the front from the workshop. She sounded so freaked out he sprinted to her in the office. He found her slumped in the office chair, hands cupping her belly under the thick high school sweatshirt she stole from Blake W when he went to college and forgot it at their house.

“C’mere.” Gianna waved him over impatiently. “Touch.”

“You hate when people touch your stomach.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, strangers I didn’t ask. Come on!”

He put his hand on her stomach tentatively and, only seconds later, was rewarded by the reverberation of the person who would one day be Lia. “Oh my God.”

Gianna nodded wordlessly. She’d been feeling it for a few days, but no one else had been able to yet.

“Hey,” Tony whispered, rubbing the baby bump. “Hi, little person.”

It was the first time he fully realized Lia was going to be real, and the sense of awe hasn’t diminished since then.

From behind, the door opens, and a wave of noise crashes over them. Lia cries out in discomfort. It’s bizarre because she doesn’t mind the godawful Top 40 station Gianna likes to play in the front office at full volume or the sounds of the workshop. Lia naps there with no problem, but this memorial appears to be an issue.

Tony struggles to his feet and picks Lia up, shushing her softly.

The door closes, the noise diminishing.

Moving slowly so he doesn’t jar Lia, Tony turns to see who it is. Hopefully, not Sean.

“Sorry,” whispers a little girl barely as tall as the door handle. “Am I allowed to be here?”

“Of course.” Tony tries to school his face into something calm and welcoming. “Are your parents in there?”

She nods. A black bow fixed in her hair leans a little lopsidedly, hard to see against the tight, dark coils of it. “My dad’s inside.”

“He knows where you are?”

Again, she nods. Her dark purple dress, with its little flowers, pairs with a white blouse. She probably doesn’t have any black clothes. Why would she? She can’t be older than five.

“I’m Tony, and this is Lia,” he says, and Lia chooses to mark the moment by pulling at the top button of his shirt. “What’s your name?”

“Francie,” she says.

“Nice to meet you, Francie. You seem a little young for college.”

She gives Tony a look. “I don’t go to school here,” she says with supreme dignity, and she’s right to. Tony should obviously have known better. “My mom is a professor.”

“Oh yeah? What does she teach?”

A little frown line creases on Francie’s forehead. “Sigh…” she tries. “No, puh-sigh… Something with Zebrafish.”

Lia fusses again when Tony tenses up.

“Zebrafish, huh?” he says, jostling the baby. “They sound pretty cool.”

Authoritatively, Francie nods. “They’re called that ’cause they have stripes. Like zebras. And their brains do stuff like human brains.”

It could be a coincidence. Probably lots of psychology professors do research with Zebrafish. It’s 5:00 p.m. on a Thursday, not the easiest time to get childcare. Maybe her parents brought her today because she met Amelia Lawrence too.

Except, she said only her dad was there. And she said her mom was the professor of the two of them.

Tony sets Lia down. Her nap time has been and gone. Gianna was supposed to get out in time so she could nap in the car, but at this time of day, a nap will mess up her bedtime. If her fussing over the last half hour is any indication, she’s close to meltdown. Tony offers her the pacifier to tide her over.

“What’s that?” Francie points at the string of beads it’s connected to.

“That’s her pacifier. We keep one for her in the stroller so she always has it when she needs it.”

Francie comes a little closer and peers over the top of the stroller to watch Lia suck at the pacifier. “Where’s her mommy?”

“Her mom is my sister. She’s inside. She wanted to go to the memorial. She’ll be out any minute.”

Francie doesn’t look away from Lia. There’s something unnerving about how steady her focus is. “They’re talking about my mommy in there.”

“Mm-hm.” Tony doesn’t know what else to say. He doesn’t want to reach out and touch Francie. It seems too familiar for a little girl he doesn’t know. At the same time, her being out here alone feels very wrong.

Francie turns to look at him. “Why are they talking about her like she’s not here?”

Panic grips Tony, tightening around his throat. “What do you mean, sweetie?”

“Daddy said she wasn’t coming home yesterday, but he didn’t say when she would. And everyone keeps talking about her like she won’t come back to work, but she loves work.”

This is not a situation Tony is even slightly equipped to handle.

Thankfully, the door swings open again, this time on a disheveled, unshaven man in his mid-thirties.

“Francie, there you are.” The man runs a hand through his thick, dark hair. Francie must get it from him. “You can’t run off, querida.”

“I told you I was going outside.” Francie pouts. “I don’t like it when you get loud, Daddy.”

The man winces. His tie is a little crooked, and the suit doesn’t fit him too well. He must have gained a little weight since he bought it. There are deep circles under his dark eyes.

“You must be Francie’s dad.” Tony holds out his hand to shake. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.” The man who must be Mr. Lawrence attempts a smile. “Sorry about her.”

“No, she’s been great. Clever kid.”

Mr. Lawrence’s grimace of a smile becomes marginally more real. “Don’t I know it. Hey, kiddo, you want your book until Dad’s ready to go?”

Francie nods and holds out her hand.

From the inside of his suit jacket, Mr. Lawrence produces a Magic Tree House book. Francie grabs hold of it, sits on the steps, and immediately opens to somewhere in the middle. The font is enormous; Tony should have gotten his prescription checked six months ago, and he can read it over her shoulder.

With a sigh, Mr. Lawrence leans against the side of the building. He loosens his tie. It doesn’t help his generally disheveled appearance. “Sorry,” he says to Tony. “We’ll leave in a second. I just need—I need…”

“Take your time.” Tony risks a glance at Lia. Her eyes have fallen shut. Her bedtime will be fucked for today, for which he sends a silent apology to Gianna. “I can go, if you—”

Mr. Lawrence shakes his head. “No, no. It’s fine. I need to catch my breath or something.”

“Can I get you anything? Some water? Coffee?”

“Nah. Had enough of that in there.”

“That bad, huh?” Tony can’t imagine listening to other people give eulogies for his dead wife. If it was Daniel, he’s not sure he’d have shown up to this. It would hurt too much.

Mr. Lawrence snorts. “It’s a memorial for my wife, man. Of course it’s hard to take. All of them talking about Amy’s work here like…like it didn’t…like this place wasn’t why.” The last he says with an eye on his daughter, clearly aware she doesn’t understand what’s happening yet.

Tony’s not sure how to respond, so he makes a vague sound of agreement and hopes for the best.

“You work here?”

“No. My sister’s a student.” On a whim, Tony adds, “And my partner’s a professor.”

“Tenured?”

“Yeah.” At least, Tony thinks Daniel is tenured. He’s tenure-track, whatever that means. The way he said it when he told Tony made it sound as if the college gifted him a baby unicorn.

“Lucky, then.” Mr. Lawrence lets out a long sigh. “Amy was trying for it. For years. They kept giving her more classes and responsibilities and putting off the tenure for next year. She worked late every night the week before…before… And what did it get her? Some whacko with a knife. You know she was alone in her office for hours before anyone found her? She went in early. Thought this was her semester. And none of them are even sorry.”

“Jesus.” Tony doubts the college’s tenure policies are to blame for what happened to Amelia Lawrence. They weren’t the ones holding the knife, unless there’s another psychotic administrator hiding in the woodwork. He understands the rage though, especially since there’s no one else to blame right now.

“It’s all, oh, she was such a hard worker, she gave so much.” Mr. Lawrence pulls his tie all the way off. “Never what she gave up. She didn’t get to say goodnight to Francie the night before…and the morning before, she left before Francie was up. I’ve had to do her hair all week, and I suck at hair.”

Silently, Francie nods at her book.

“I think you’re doing pretty good,” Tony offers. “Better than I would. And I know they’re doing their best to find the person who…”

“Yeah.” Mr. Lawrence gives him another weak smile. “Yeah, I know. I have no idea what we’ll do without her. We live here for her job, you know? I took her name when we got married. Everything is just…her.”

“I can’t imagine,” Tony lies. He can imagine how he would feel if Daniel were gone, did for one brief, horrifying minute in January. He’s not in a hurry to repeat the experience.

“C’mon, I don’t exactly look like a Lawrence.” He barks a laugh, misunderstanding entirely what part of it Tony can’t imagine. “And the in-laws won’t let me forget it either. More jobs in IT for a Lawrence than a Martínez though. It all made sense with Amy. Now nothing does.”

Tony claps him on the shoulder. “Give yourself some time. You don’t need to know what to do right now. Take each day as it comes, and you’ll get there.”

“Yeah.” Mr. Lawrence manages a slow, steady exhale. “Thanks, man. I’m really…this is really hard.”

“Anytime,” Tony says, although he doubts they’ll see each other again.

“C’mon, Francie. Let’s go home.”

Francie gets to her feet, brushing off her dress. “Dad?” she asks. “When’s Mommy coming home?”

For a moment, Tony’s sure Mr. Lawrence is going to crumple to the ground, knees cut out from under him. Instead, he keeps himself steady, his back ramrod straight.

“I don’t know, querida.” He rests a gentle hand on her cheek. “I don’t know.”

Tony watches them set off across the parking lot with a lump in his throat. He never thought Lia was lucky to have lost her father before she was born, but it might be better than having to go through it when she’s old enough to remember it.

He feels strange, as though he’s floating above his body. Over the course of the last hour, he said a bunch of helpful and supportive things to two people who needed it much more than him, but what he can’t work out is why it was him who said them. What qualifies him for that? He doesn’t know anything. He’s totally adrift and clinging to Daniel like a lifeline.

Maybe he should take his own advice to Sean and find someone to talk to.

It doesn’t take long for Gianna, Daniel, and Colette to come out.

“Oh, shoot, she fell asleep already?” Gianna winces as if it’s Tony’s fault she stayed much longer than either of them thought she would.

“Sorry.” Tony isn’t sorry. He also isn’t in the habit of using his customer service voice on family. There’s a first time for everything.

“It’s fine. I gotta get her to the car though.” Gianna takes off toward the lot, carefully maneuvering the stroller down the steps and not asking for help. “Thanks.” The last is thrown over her shoulder, barely an afterthought.

Tony rolls his eyes. “Anytime. Happy to help.”

She can’t hear him anymore.

“What a nightmare,” Colette announces.

For a second, Tony wants to defend Gianna—she’s a pain in the ass, but she’s not that bad. Then, he realizes Colette’s talking about the memorial. “I only caught the Cliff notes out here. What happened?”

“Amy’s husband happened,” Colette says sourly. “That is a man with anger management problems.”

A bad feeling sinks low in Tony’s gut. Francie did say she didn’t like when her dad got loud. He wonders what Mr. Lawrence said or did when his daughter couldn’t hear it.

“He’s going through something awful.” Daniel’s more measured, but he doesn’t deny the anger issues. “People react to grief all sorts of ways.” The last, he says with a pointed look at Colette.

“I suppose that’s fair.” She sounds begrudging about it at best. “Still, I never yelled at three separate faculty members in front of the entire student body.”

Tony raises his eyebrows. “Guess I missed some pretty wild stuff.”

“Eh.” Daniel makes a weighing motion with his hands. “Extreme emotions happen at funerals. To be honest, it seemed like he and Amelia had been having some issues for a while. She was working too much, he didn’t approve, you know.”

Colette crosses her arms and inspects the fingernails on her right hand closely. “If you ask me, he should be the prime suspect after the show he put on.”

Daniel doesn’t protest.

Tony shakes his head. “I don’t see it.”

“You didn’t hear it,” Colette points out.

“He came out this way after.” Tony wonders if he should repeat the things Mr. Lawrence said, the naked desperation in his tone. He doesn’t think it would help. “He didn’t seem like a killer, just a grieving husband.”

Colette sighs, put-upon. “All those seasons of Bones , and you learned nothing.”

“Sure, I did.” Tony grins. “Police violence is justified when it’s the good guys.”

Colette scoffs in disgust, heading for the car. “America,” she mutters under her breath as she goes.

Daniel follows her. “You don’t mean that.”

They bicker across the parking lot about the merits and lack thereof of the USA, the tone light and teasing to hide their unease. It’s familiar, which is why Tony started it. Familiarity is comforting. He wonders if he’s been hiding behind it for too long now. Maybe he should have broken up the slow, steady routine at the garage to have a real conversation with his father about Daniel. Maybe he should have broken up his weeknight routines with Daniel to talk about Stacy and Mario properly. Maybe he should have broken up his own routines to find someone professional to listen to all the things he didn’t know he needed to say.

Tony considers breaking up this routine to tell Colette about Sean needing more hands-on counseling or about Mr. Lawrence and his utter devastation. Instead, Tony says nothing as he slides into the passenger seat, still thinking about Francie and her father.

When they pull up in front of the apartment, Tony’s shocked out of his daze by the sight of a knife taped to the door.

“Um,” he says.

Colette doesn’t hear him as she passionately defends something by Rousseau as being “easily a better foundation for democracy than the Federalist Papers.” Daniel, occupied with listening closely to Colette’s argument and trying to find the holes in it, hears him but doesn’t respond.

“Guys,” Tony tries again.

When neither of them responds, he slides out of the passenger seat and walks up to the door. Masking tape, fraying at the edges, attaches the knife to it—a hunting knife with a flat blade and, from what Tony can see around the tape, a stupidly ornate handle. The kind of thing people who are really into weapons would get, or someone who enjoys the Ren faire a little too much or who genuinely wants to kill deer. The blade is clean, but that doesn’t mean anything.

There’s no note, no cutout magazine letters. It feels much less like a student prank and much more like a threat.

“Daniel,” Tony says. He should probably raise his voice, but as soon as someone else notices, this will be very, very real.

Tony tears his eyes away from the knife and glances at the car, where Daniel and Colette are getting out. Daniel grabs his briefcase from the trunk and looks over to Tony, to the door, and freezes.

Colette stares at the knife over Tony’s shoulder. “That’s…”

Tony clears his throat. “I think we found the murder weapon.”