Chapter 23 #2
Hurrying to Les Poplar’s desk, a third year PhD student from Ohio, she searched it. She found some dirty doodles in the back of his lab book and realized this was what he was scribbling during lab meetings. There was a short, stacked woman with curly blonde hair wearing a cowboy hat and high heels.
Her?
She was pretty sure it was supposed to be her.
Ew.
Apparently, the guy didn’t know how to sketch clothes.
That was great. Just great. She snapped the book closed and put it back.
Asshole.
Next, she hit Roger Thompson. The post-doc originally from Yorkshire with a delightful accent and roguish charm. His desk was messy to the point of overwhelm, but no bomb-making manuals or weapons of mass destruction instructions in sight.
She whizzed through the desks of the remaining master’s students, then got to Emilia’s cubby next to hers.
“Incoming,” Regan warned.
She’d just crouched down beside Emilia’s desk when the squeak of the door had her bolting upright and tripping into Emilia’s chair.
“Hey, I wasn’t expecting you back.” Emilia frowned. “What are you doing?”
Daisy steadied herself, then shot her hand to her ear. “I dropped my earring, but I found it again. You startled me. What do you mean you weren’t expecting me back? Like, ever?”
Emilia shrugged. “Well, you know, after all the outcry suggesting you had something to do with Professor Tremblay’s death.”
Daisy wrapped her arms around herself. “You don’t believe any of that, do you?”
Emilia pulled a face. “Well, I didn’t know what to believe at first, and then it turns out you’re hiding a secret FBI boyfriend.” Her glance turned sly. “How come you didn’t mention him?”
They weren’t close, but they spent a lot of time together.
“He’s a close friend and work colleague of my dad’s. He wanted to keep us a secret.”
“Oh, dating the dad’s best friend. Hmm.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Daisy snapped. She wasn’t a cliché. Except, of course, ever since her ex had started screwing around with her best friend she was. “Anyway, it’s over now.”
“Over?” Emilia didn’t look convinced.
“When I was with him over the past couple of days, I found out the bastard had been seeing another woman behind my back.” Tears burned in her eyes at remembered heartbreak that had nothing to do with Jordan, but she used it.
“I broke it off. Came back to work. I was hoping the scandal had died down.”
Emilia placed a hand on Daisy’s arm. “Ridiculous really. Everyone knew what Tremblay was like. No one would blame you if you had—”
Daisy jerked away. “I didn’t throw Francois off his balcony.”
Emilia raised her hands dramatically. “Okay. Calm down.”
Calm fucking down?
“I am calm.” Inside Daisy raged. “I have an alibi for the professor’s death because I was with someone, and I would never murder Francois. For all I know, you killed him. It’s obvious you didn’t like him very much.”
“Easy.” Regan murmured in her ear.
Emilia shrugged, unconcerned. “He was a creepy old man who was always trying to get into someone’s panties.
Why would I like him?” Emilia tossed a heavy textbook onto her desk where it landed with a thud.
“I was surprised you spent so much time with him, but then I hear your FBI boyfriend is old too.”
“He’s thirty-four. But, like I said, he’s not my boyfriend now.”
“When you were eleven, he was twenty-two. How can you say that’s not creepy?”
“When I’m fifty-three, he’ll be sixty-four, which sounds perfectly acceptable. It’s all relative.”
Emilia gave one of those shrugs that said she still believed she was right. “You’re so na?ve, so innocent.”
“Listen, sister, I haven’t been na?ve or innocent since I was thirteen years old and my tennis coach put his hand under my skirt in the equipment room.”
Emilia blinked.
“I was wearing very sexy and provocatively short tennis whites, so it was probably my fault, right?” Daisy took a big swallow as if affected by the memory.
“Motherfucker.” Regan.
“What happened to him?”
“Nothing that day.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I froze.”
Emilia looked both sympathetic and condescending.
“Next time he tried it, I smashed him in the face with a racquet so hard I broke his nose, and I told him if he ever tried to touch me or anyone else again, I would report him to the school and the FBI. That seemed to get his attention.”
“Did he behave after that?”
“As far as I know.”
“But you don’t know for sure.” Emilia crossed her arms over her chest, mirroring Daisy. “You should have reported him.”
“I was thirteen and scared half to death. He made me think it was my fault.”
“You do seem to send the wrong signals sometimes.”
Daisy’s blood pressure surged to the point it felt as if the top of her head might blow. “I do not send the wrong signals. I’m just not a bitch to everyone.”
“Remember the mission,” Regan whispered urgently in her ear.
Emilia waved her rebuttal aside. “Anyway, there are so many stories like that which is why I didn’t like Tremblay, and neither should you have. Did you see the posts all over the internet?”
“Posts?” Daisy shook her head. “I avoided the internet after the thirtieth death threat.”
“Well, let’s say his death was probably more painless than he deserved.”
“What a terrible thing to say.” Daisy didn’t mind a little justified violence, but she also believed in the justice system. A byproduct of growing up with an FBI agent for a dad, she supposed.
“It’s all coming out now how he abused young women.”
“What? Oh, my God. That’s terrible.”
“Yes, you had a lucky escape.” Emilia’s brown eyes flashed amusement. “I bet Tremblay was surprised when your boyfriend turned up and ruined his plans. Maybe that was the final straw. Or maybe your FBI guy threatened him…”
“My FBI guy—ex guy—is not the jealous type.”
Emilia’s lip curled. “Probably because he was busy screwing someone else on the side.”
Pain sliced through her. “Did someone hurt you, Emilia? Is that why you’re so mean?”
The other woman’s chin snapped up. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, but you said yourself he was cheating on you.”
“Yeah.” Daisy’s eyes smarted. “But you don’t have to enjoy it so much.”
Emilia looked uncertain for a moment, but she quickly recovered. “I’m upset about Tremblay abusing students, that’s all.” She visibly shuddered. “It could have been either one of us.”
“I guess.” Daisy forced a tremulous smile because people were buying the disinformation being put out there, hook, line, and sinker. “I’m going down to the lab to set up some stuff for next week.”
Emilia eyed her again. “Professor Williams said you wouldn’t be back until Wednesday.”
“Like I said, I changed my mind.” Daisy shrugged again. “When I found out about the other woman, I decided not to stick around. I don’t think he’s even noticed I left yet and doubt he’ll care when he does.” She gave a bitter smile. “I’m done with men. They all suck.”
“Aw, shucks.” Regan drew out the last word.
“Williams had Amed sorting out some of the things you’ll need for your test array so you might want to check in with him before you touch anything.” Emilia bent to retrieve her lab book from her desk and slid it into her laptop bag.
Rats. Daisy had missed her opportunity to examine it.
“I’m heading home.” The other woman slung the bag over her shoulder. “See you Monday?”
“Yeah, see you Monday.”
She waited for a few minutes until she spotted Emilia through the window, walking swiftly across the forum, north toward the commons and the lake.
“She’s gone. I’m going to check her desk quickly and then meet you down at the lab, although it seems a bit pointless. What sort of terrorist leaves evidence in a semi-public place?”
“The sort who doesn’t want it found in their private space. Wait up, Crisco is coming to you first. Haven’t seen anyone else around yet, but they might be inside the labs.”
Crisco was Regan’s nickname for Cisco. Why, Daisy didn’t know.
“We have been conducting a few searches and,” he coughed, “perhaps Crisco went a bit wild with electronic spookery, but this trip has been very useful. Very useful indeed. Thanks for helping us out.”
“No problem.” But she hated it.
“Were you really abused by your tennis coach?”
“Hell no. My tennis coach was a lovely woman called Elizabeth Boyle. My favorite teacher.”
“You’re a scary good liar.”
“When you have parents like mine you have to be.”
She quickly searched Emilia’s desk and found only research papers, which the FBI might deem suspicious but were basic reading in their field, and a copy of War and Peace, which was more impressive than suggestive.
Wasn’t it?
Dammit. Was she going to be unsure of everyone now?
She placed the tablet she’d used at the conference on her desk and left it there. She assumed the FBI had poked through it but there was nothing to see. It was heavy, and she was happy to lighten the load for her walk home.
Cisco came inside and gave her a shy smile. Then she undid the casing around the light switch and attached something to the wires. Less than 30 seconds later, she had the whole thing reassembled.
Daisy gave Cisco a head start back down the stairs as she didn’t want anyone spotting them together.
She popped her head into her lab and saw Amed had indeed placed a bunch of empty Zirconium alloy fuel rods, as well as some new silicon carbide ones, which she was planning to test next month.
She checked them over, looking for anything unusual, but they appeared normal. It wasn’t as if these would be going into a commercial reactor anyway.
She walked around the large lab space and began opening the cupboards under the benches, one by one, but she saw nothing that resembled explosives or detonators.
“Where do they keep the fuel rods they intend to use in this upcoming experiment?” Regan asked in her ear, making her jump.
“They’re being manufactured at a fuel fabrication plant in North Carolina. Get shipped on Tuesday, and we are all helping and observing the replacement process on Wednesday.”