Chapter Twenty-Six. The Body on The List of Suspects
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE BODY ON THE LIST OF SUSPECTS
I’m not surprised by the soft tap on the door later that evening, though I am a little disappointed he didn’t bring food.
“Is your grandmother okay?” Felix whispers when I answer.
“She took her migraine medicine and went to bed. Do you want to come in?”
“It won’t bother her?”
“We could sit on the balcony.”
He nods, and I open the door wider. As he steps past, I notice the sketch pad under his arm—the one with all the notes from our previous detective work. Felix waits until we’re on the other side of the sliding glass door to make his case.
“Hear me out. Who has more experience than we do at investigating murders?”
“Uh, presumably the police? Who are definitely more impartial?” Even as I say it, I know the truth is murkier.
You don’t act out this many mysteries without understanding that human behavior is wildly unpredictable.
But that doesn’t mean I want to look at my grandmother and her friends as potential murderers.
“Okay, let me put it another way. Who’s really good at solving crimes and doesn’t want to see our grandparents kicked out of their home so a rich guy can get richer?”
Maybe all I’ve been waiting for is someone to give me permission, because my objections crumple like a piece of foil. “Where do we start?”
As is so often the case, the answer is online. Literally.
“The top reasons people commit murder are greed, revenge, and fear,” Felix reads from whatever search result he’s decided to click on. “Let’s start by asking ourselves who stood to gain from Bradley’s death.”
It gives me no pleasure to point out the obvious. “Anyone who was going to be kicked out to make way for the overgrown frat zone?”
“Only if they knew about it,” Felix counters. “We need to narrow down the list.” He opens the sketchbook, flipping past our previous entries. It appears he’s drawn portraits for several of the profiles since I saw them last. Which is odd, since we both know what everyone here looks like.
I put my hand on his arm to stop him. “Can I see the pictures?”
“I was just doodling. It’s nothing relevant.” His blush suggests otherwise.
“Is there one of me?”
“I don’t remember.” He tries to turn several pages at once, but I smack my hand down before he can.
“You are a terrible liar. Let’s see it.”
Sighing, he shows me my suspect listing, now jazzed up with a detailed pencil drawing of yours truly. Three-quarters profile, from the neck up, not quite smiling.
“When did my hair look like that?” I fluff it a little, in case it happens again.
Felix grabs the sketchbook. “If you’re finished admiring yourself maybe we should investigate this murder.”
“Fine.”
Turning to a blank page, he writes PEOPLE WHO KNEW at the top.
“It was the day Claude’s sister moved in.
I came inside from the pool”—my pause is an unspoken acknowledgment of everything that happened immediately prior, including the run-in with Bradley—“and Bernie was there in the lobby with her suitcases. After she went upstairs, I mentioned it to my grandmother, who was sitting with Mervyn … and Mrs. A.”
Both of us wince. It’s the opposite of a locked-room scenario. Once Mrs. A had the intel, it’s a safe bet it spread through the building within hours.
“Don’t forget the two of us,” Felix reminds me. “We got the full spiel.”
“It’s worse than that.” I glance at him to see if he knows what I’m talking about, but Felix shakes his head. “Do you ever think we might have given Bradley the idea? By talking up how great this place is.”
He’s speechless for a second. “Nope. That’s not on us. Are we potential murderers? Sure. But we didn’t tell Bradley to transform this place into a giant man cave.”
My shoulders relax as I exhale. That’s one less thing to worry about.
“I know this is bad,” I admit, “but I still wish it was Cheryl. Only she’s way too relaxed for murder, so I guess we have to eliminate her?”
“Bold word choice, under the circumstances.”
“You know what I mean.” I go to elbow him, but instead of dodging he leans closer, pinning my arm between us. It’s strangely comforting, like a side hug. “I keep wishing there was a random stranger we could point at, to take the heat off.”
“Funny you should mention that.” He turns to a new page and writes SOFIA.
“I thought you liked her.”
“I do. As a friend,” he adds, studiously avoiding eye contact. “But there’s something going on with her. She took off like the building was on fire, right after you left.”
Now that he mentions it, her reaction to the news that Bradley’s death wasn’t an accident did seem intense. “Huh.”
He nods as if I’ve said something profound. “We need to find out why.”
Sofia agrees to meet so readily, it almost feels like she was expecting us to ask.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Sofia says the second she sits down at our table. We chose a coffee shop in walking distance as neutral ground, because it felt weird to ask her for a ride to her own interrogation. “It’s about my sister.”
Felix and I exchange a quick look, rapidly recalibrating our approach. So much for wheedling the information out of her.
“Elena?” I ask.
“No, Carmen.” Sofia takes a deep breath. “She knew him.”
I set down my glass of ice water too hard, sloshing some of the contents onto the table like the smooth operator I am. Felix passes me a napkin. “You mean—Bradley?”
Sofia nods. “They went to the same college. He was a year behind her.”
My thoughts fly back to the first time we met Bradley, at the reading of Claude’s will. “That wasn’t a line? When he acted like he recognized you.”
“Maybe not.” Sofia shrugs. “Carmen and I do look alike. But I didn’t realize who he was until later, when I heard his full name.
” She hesitates, twisting the saucer of her coffee cup, and I’m impressed by her ability to drink a hot beverage when it’s this sweltering outside.
“I could get in trouble for telling you this,” she finally says after looking around the café to make sure no one is paying attention.
Felix and I keep our mouths shut, so we don’t spook her.
“Legally,” Sofia clarifies. “That was part of the deal. Though I guess maybe it doesn’t count, since I didn’t sign it.” She takes a thoughtful sip. “Too bad I’m not prelaw.”
“What deal?” Felix asks, like he can’t hold it in any longer.
“The settlement between Bradley’s family and the college.”
This time we’re stunned into silence.
“What happened?” I ask, once the shock waves from that bombshell have faded.
Sofia takes a deep breath, wrapping her hands around her cup. “There was a girl.”
I hate that there are so many stories that begin exactly like this. The first question that pops into my head is, How bad is this one going to get?
“Not Carmen?” Felix looks to Sofia for confirmation; she shakes her head.
“Someone from her dorm. They all went to a party together, as a group, and this guy kept trying to chat up one of Carmen’s friends.” Sofia gives us a significant look.
“This guy meaning Bradley,” I clarify.
“Correct. You know what he was like, with the cheesy lines and thinking he was all that. He wanted her to come dance with him, wouldn’t let it go, and I guess she felt bad shutting him down in front of everyone so finally she was like, ‘Okay, one dance.’ Only the dancing was in the basement, which maybe seemed a little sketch, but it was also a huge party.
They could hear the music through the floor. Standard frat house scene.”
Felix and I nod like we know what that means.
“But as soon as they start dancing,” Sofia goes on, “he’s all over her.
She keeps telling him to cut it out, and he laughs like they’re having a great time.
So finally, she’s like, ‘Enough.’” Sofia makes a shoving gesture with both hands.
“Meanwhile, Carmen is ready to take off, but because my sister is 100 percent the mom friend, she was like, Let’s go get her.
’ That was their thing, you know? Never leave a woman behind—unless she confirms she’s cool with it. And they’d heard nothing.”
I realize I’m holding my breath and force an exhale. “Was she okay? The girl.”
Sofia nods. “Sorry. I should have said that up front. She’d had enough of this dickhead pawing at her and the nonconsensual grinding, so she took out her phone to get a picture of him.
And he’s all, ‘What are you doing?’ so she told him straight up, ‘Putting you in the Creep File.’ Which is a real thing somebody on campus had started,” Sofia explains.
“Like ‘Watch out for this guy, he stole forty bucks out of my wallet’ or ‘He still has a girlfriend back home’ or ‘He gave me crabs’ or ‘He doesn’t understand the word no.’”
And I thought high school dating was bleak. “Is that what college guys are like?”
“Only the bad ones,” Sofia says. “Hence the list.”
“What did he do?” Felix asks, more subdued than I’ve ever heard him. “When she told him that.”
“He was not happy.” It’s clear from her tone that this is a major understatement. “When Carmen got down there, he was in her friend’s face. ‘What the fuck? Do you even know who I am?’ Like somebody flipped the rage switch. Then he rips the phone out of her hand and throws it against the wall.”
“Shit,” Felix breathes.
“Carmen sees this go down, and she’s like, ‘You, call campus police. You, get contact info for everyone who saw that happen. And you, tell me that guy’s name.
’” Sofia points like she’s the one barking orders.
“Because of course Bradley ran away, which was actually his first good decision of the night. Carmen was ready to pepper-spray him. You do not fuck with my sister. She reminds me of your grandma.”
“I could see that,” I agree.
“What happened then?” Felix asks.
“Eventually the case worked its way through university bureaucracy and Bradley got kicked out of the fraternity. And he had to agree to an anger management program. Plus his family had to give Carmen’s friend a chunk of change, because of the property destruction.
Harass a girl? That’s open to interpretation.
Break her phone? They’ll nail you for that. ”
It takes me a beat to absorb it all. Not just Sofia’s story, but her reason for telling us. “You think this girl—Carmen’s friend—could have wanted revenge?”
The head shaking starts before I finish my sentence. “Absolutely not,” Sofia says with a firmness that would make her older sister proud. “I want to be crystal clear. I don’t think she was involved. At all.”
“But?” Felix prompts.
“But there might be other people out there who had a reason to hate him. If he acted like that once, who’s to say he didn’t do worse to someone else?”
“Would she talk to us? Carmen’s friend.” Maybe there’s some detail she’ll remember, or a direction she could point us in, because otherwise this feels like a dead end.
“She can’t.” Sofia frowns an apology. “They made her sign an NDA so a single ‘error in judgment’ wouldn’t ‘harm a young man’s reputation.’ But you could ask your friend Malia.”
I glance at Felix and see my confusion mirrored back at me.
“Malia as in … Malia?” he asks. “Our Malia?”
Sofia nods. “She volunteers at the counseling center on campus. Her friend told Carmen she was a big help.”
It feels like I’ve been hit by a boomerang, arrowing right back to Castle Claude.