TWENTY-TWO
G racie comes straight to my room and immediately wraps her arms around me in a hug. Her yellow cardigan is soft and comforting on my cheek.
“We’re too late ...,” I say. My voice is cracking. “I don’t know what happened. Why isn’t he here? I should have stayed in the room all day.”
Gracie rubs my back, then lets me go to look at me. “He’s not supposed to go missing for another half hour ... remember ... someone saw him in the lobby at eight.”
“But we don’t know who saw him! Lance could have paid someone to say that!” I sit back on Jay’s bed, hugging Tentacle Ted close.
“Maybe he’s still at his mother’s?” Gracie suggests.
I shrug. I have no way of finding out. No way to know if we saved him, or if he’ll die tonight. I feel a tear run down my cheek.
Gracie sits next to me and puts her hand on my leg. “He would have protected himself, Aleeza. He knows not to go to the yacht club. Or anywhere near the lake.”
“Maybe Lance forced him,” I say. “Maybe he drugged him like he drugged Jack.”
“People would have noticed Lance bringing an unconscious guy to the marina.”
I shrug.
Gracie takes my hand and squeezes. “Aleeza, we’ve done everything we could. He knows something bad will happen, which is way more than the Jay in our timeline knew. We saved him. I can feel it.”
But I can’t feel it. I’m on Jay’s bed, and I can’t feel him here with me. And that’s what’s scaring me. But she’s right. There’s nothing I can do for my Jay now, the one I’ve talked to every day for weeks now.
The one I fell in love with.
Because yeah, that’s what happened. I fell in love with him. Talk about falling for an impossible guy. He’s not even in my fucking universe.
Jay from this time, the only one on the same plane of existence with me, is gone . He’s been gone since before I even met him. I was never going to bring him back for his mother, his cousins, or anyone else. Or bring him back for me. The Jay I know, the one from the past—he and I could never be together anyway. Our connection was only in this crappy dorm room. And as hard as I tried, I couldn’t save him. Everyone in his timeline will hurt all over again. I rub my hand over my face, wiping away my tears. I won’t know what happened to him. I will never know if I helped him at all.
“Why don’t you get some rest,” Gracie says softly. “I’ll stay here in your bed if you want. Maybe he’ll be here in the morning.”
I sniffle, then nod. Maybe he’ll be here in the morning. Maybe he decided to stay away tonight so Lance won’t find him. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
I’m so tired of maybes. I need a definite answer. Where is Jay?
I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep. But somehow I did. I wake up way too early, though, and the first thing I do when my eyes open is check ResConnect.
He’s still not here.
I guess I make a sound, because Gracie stirs, then gives me a sad look. “Still nothing?”
I shake my head. “No.”
She sighs. “I’m sorry, Aleeza. I don’t even know what to say.”
What could she say? That I’m ridiculous to try to change the fate of someone I don’t even know? That I’m an idiot for falling in love with a ghost?
I sit up in bed. “I guess I should give up on the podcast?” I ask. The irony is that my media project—the reason I did all this in the first place—is also a failure. I’ve made a complete mess of everything.
Gracie gives me an annoyed look as she sits up. “We’re not giving up, Aleeza! We have to keep fighting! We know who he was with and where he was on the night he disappeared. We almost have this. We need to bring justice for Jay and give his family some closure!”
I sit up and rub my eyes. She’s right. His family ... the family of present Jay ... deserves justice.
But this might not be as easy. “So we just go to the police tomorrow with Jack? And hope they actually do something? Don’t you remember what Manal said? These are the kind of people who get away with murder . We know who , and where , but without a why , they’re just going to boys will be boys the whole thing and Lance will get a slap on the wrist. Guys like that get away with this shit all the time.”
Gracie suddenly gets out of bed. “Let me get my computer. We have a few hours before politics. I’m positive we can find out the why.”
Ten minutes later we’re sitting across from each other—me on Jay’s bed and Gracie on mine—with energy drinks, bananas, and our computers on our laps.
“Lance is a douche,” Gracie says. I assume she’s looking at the same thing I am—his Instagram account. Douche doesn’t seem quite a strong enough description for the person I am seeing.
TCU doesn’t have fraternities, but if they did, I’d expect some of these pictures to come from frat houses—Lance and his boys drinking and partying and surrounded by skinny, conventionally attractive girls. Lance’s light-brown hair was longer last year, and I can’t find any pictures where he’s not wearing a backward hat. It’s actually weird. I met Lance in October, only a few months after these frat-boy pictures. Now he wears chinos and polos (except on Halloween, when he was wearing a terrible Spider-Man costume) and his hair’s shorter. It’s like he’s trying to appear more respectable.
But also, I can’t wrap my head around the fact that he and Jay were such good friends last year. Jay’s socials from that year are so different. His grid is almost completely pictures of buildings and bridges, or art and food—no open beer bottles to be seen. And I know that Jay’s family income level was nowhere near Lance’s and his friends’.
Why were they friends?
Jay said that Lance initiated their friendship, and they played water polo together. Maybe the friendship itself wasn’t random.
But maybe I’m making assumptions.
“I can’t find anything about Lance’s family,” Gracie says. “His last name, Murray, is too common. Can you ask Mia for Lance’s parents’ first names?”
I shrug. I’m really not interested in getting in touch with Mia right now.
“Never mind, found something,” Gracie says. “Taylor has a picture with her mother on her Instagram at an International Women’s Day event, and she linked back to her account. Her mother’s name is Denise. A lawyer. So, maybe not old money like Jack’s family?”
I google Denise Murray, and it doesn’t take long to find pictures of her at charity events. “Oh, here’s an interview with her from her law school,” I say. I skim it. “She’s apparently a third-generation lawyer. So that’s pretty old money. She also mentions she’s divorced.”
“I’m looking at it now. Hey, this is cool—Denise’s mother is a lawyer, not her father. Have you found Denise’s ex-husband’s name? I assume that’s Taylor and Lance’s father.”
I shake my head. I google every combination of Denise Murray + husband or ex-husband that I can think of, but I can’t find it.
“Jack said Lance’s father has a boat at the yacht club. Maybe he’s listed somewhere?” I ask while I google North Toronto Yacht Club + Murray . Eventually I find something. In an old copy of a club newsletter, there’s a picture of an Andrew Murray.
“Bingo. Denise’s ex-husband’s name is Andrew Murray.” I frown. “Probably should have looked up the yacht club and Murray first.”
“Ah,” Gracie says. “But then we wouldn’t have learned that Lance’s maternal grandmother, Denise’s mother, is a kick-ass trailblazer in corporate law. Seriously. I wonder if she’d agree to an interview. She pioneered corporate ethics in Canada.”
“Can we first figure out if her grandson had a reason to kill our friend?” It takes me about thirty seconds of googling Andrew Murray to see he doesn’t hold the same high regard for ethics as his former mother-in-law.
“Wow, Andrew seems like a dick,” Gracie says.
“Yeah, I think I’m reading the same news story.”
It’s from some business newspaper. The gist is that, about twenty years ago, Andrew Murray went into business with Stephen Everett, Denise’s brother. They started a tech company, but it struggled in the early 2000s, when all the other tech companies were booming. Andrew wanted out and sold his half to Stephen. Stephen kept the business, and it finally started to do well. He sold a decade later for an undisclosed but presumably ridiculous amount of money. Andrew Murray promptly sued Stephen, claiming he was entitled to half the proceeds. He lost the case and probably lost a lot in legal fees. Five years later, Stephen died in a boating accident.
Shit. I think I know the name Stephen Everett. I grab the notebook where I’ve been taking notes on my media project.
“Maybe Lance’s father isn’t all that wealthy anymore,” Gracie says. “I can’t imagine suing my own family. Like ... it’s beyond my frame of understanding. Asian families would never ...”
Finally, I find my notes, and yes, I see the name Stephen Everett.
“I knew it!” I say, pointing at my notes. “I’ve read about Stephen Everett. He’s the Toronto mystery that Mia and I were about to cover in our web series before we stopped. This wealthy Toronto bachelor went sailing in the Caribbean and disappeared off the face of the earth. No one knows what happened. It was a calm day, and he was a very experienced sailor. Locals saw nothing out of the ordinary.”
Gracie whistles low. “And Jay also disappeared in a boating accident, just like Taylor and Lance’s uncle. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Taylor convinced Mia to change the topic of your web series right before you started working on an episode about her uncle?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think there are any coincidences.”
“Wasn’t your web series supposed to be about mysteries associated with the school?”
On my laptop, I open the folder of preliminary research I did on the case months ago. “Stephen Everett did his MBA at Toronto City University and donated a bunch to the school right before he died. Probably with that tech money.” As I scan the article, I find a nugget of information that makes me gasp out loud. “Oh my god, he won the Bright-Knowles scholarship. Gracie, what’s the name of the kick-ass lawyer? Denise Murray and Stephen Everett’s mother?”
“Helen Grant. She must use her maiden name professionally. Her kids have a different surname.”
My hand goes to my mouth, shocked. “Holy shit,” I say quietly. “There’s the link to Jay.”
“What?” Gracie asks, eyes wide.
“Helen Grant is Salma Hoque’s boss,” I say. “Jay’s mother has worked for Lance’s grandmother for years.”
Gracie looks up at me. “That’s some coincidence.”
“It’s not a coincidence! The motive was the scholarship , not the trust. Lance’s dad doesn’t have much money anymore because of Lance’s uncle, Stephen. I assume Grandma, Helen Grant, took her son Stephen’s side. Maybe helped get great lawyers. So when Lance’s new friend Jay tells him about his mom’s boss, who sponsored him for a scholarship, Lance was angry, because Jay took what he thought was his birthright. Angry enough to hurt Jay.”
Gracie whistles low. “Wow. That’s got to be it. Which means ...”
“It means Lance killed him intentionally. It wasn’t an accident.”
We sit with that information for a while. I can’t believe it’s Lance. Mia’s boyfriend. I shake my head. All this happened a few weeks after Mia and Lance met. They were “talking” then, not exclusively dating. Did he tell her about the late-night boat ride? Did he tell her that he drugged one friend, and threw another overboard?
Has Mia been covering for Lance this whole time?
“How do we let past Jay know this?” Gracie asks. “We need to tell him, because if he was able to save himself last night, Lance might still want to hurt him.”
“We can’t. Not unless he comes back into the room while I’m here.”
“Well, I hope he does.”
I exhale. “Me too, Gracie.”