Quinn nodded, not as sure. He didn’t want to go off in a wrong direction here. “It was only a feeling,” he said. “We have no reason to believe he was lying about anything.”
“The college itself looks too good to believe,” Pearl said. “So picturesque, and isolated from the town. Snooty as hell, too. They play lacrosse and only lacrosse.”
“I lettered in lacrosse,” Helen said.
“I bet you played field hockey, too.”
Quinn shot Pearl a warning look. If a spark was struck, the two women sometimes deliberately tried to get on each others’ nerves. Go easy, Pearl.
“Good game, lacrosse, if you’re up to it,” Helen said, apparently primed for an argument this morning.
“We’re not concerned about their athletic program,” Quinn said, heading off trouble. “Anyway, it isn’t the kind of place you’d think would have a bowl contender.”
“Football,” Pearl said. “Beats the hell out of lacrosse.”
“Maybe we oughta go back up there,” Fedderman said, coming to Quinn’s rescue before Helen could reply.
“I don’t think so,” Quinn said. “Schueller might just have been nervous, like a lot of people when they come face-to-face with the law. Especially if it concerns a murder investigation. That sort of thing would be foreign to the Waycliffe campus.”
“We would hope,” Helen said. “What about Macy Collins’s friends there?”
“She didn’t seem to have any close friends. She was in something called the Vanguard program, for gifted students. Sounded to me like everybody in the program had to work too hard to have time for friends.”
“Not like the jocks,” Pearl said. Jab, jab…
“They must have a basketball team,” Helen said, as if every institution with more than five people did.
“No,” Quinn said. “Only lacrosse. I didn’t see any obvious jocks. The women we saw looked like college types. Trendy, studious. The men were Ivy League types, or nerds. Everybody looked like they spent too much time on Facebook and Twitter.”
“Of course,” Pearl said, “we didn’t see many students. Summer classes were in session. But Quinn’s right; the few students we did see looked like nerds or future bond salesmen. The geeky kids who did all their homework in high school.”
“Sounds like you need a perfect SAT score to get near the place,” Fedderman said.
“Or perfect bank account,” Pearl said.
“They should have a basketball team,” Helen said.
“Only lacrosse,” Quinn said, before Pearl could.
“Macy Collins have a roommate in her dorm?”
“No,” Quinn said. “Vanguard students room alone.”
“And die alone,” Harold said. He’d been silent on the other side of the office, listening.
Quinn sat wondering if this conversation was getting them anywhere. It seemed to emphasize the paucity of hard facts in the investigation. A serial killer (if he was one) like Daniel Danielle who butchered his victims (if there was more than one) didn’t seem to have much to do with an exclusive and secluded college, even though the dead woman had been a student there. Quinn was beginning to think they’d taken a wrong turn.
“I were you,” Helen said, “I’d drive back up there.”
“Why?” Quinn asked.
“No basketball team.”
17
S omething was wrong with Ann Spellman’s laptop computer. Her wallpaper that formed the background of her desktop on her screen when she turned on the computer had somehow changed from blue sky to a news photo of victims lying under blankets on the side of a highway after a horrible head-on collision between a car and truck.
Her computer had been hacked. Great! Another disruption in her life.
Everything else seemed the same when she went online, so not exactly wrong… but different.
This was the third day of her unemployment. Her personal possessions had been delivered from her desk at work at Clinton Industrial Designs, and she was sure she’d be persona non grata if she ever so much as entered the building.
One good thing was that the worries of her job had melted away. Being among the unemployed was unsettling, even scary. Yet it was undeniably liberating.
She had to smile. Being thrown out of a high window probably creates the same sensation, and where does that get you?
One thing, though. Life was simpler now. All she had to do was find another job. And stop thinking about Lou Gainer.
She clicked on her computer’s history and saw the familiar sites she’d recently visited. Various business networks. Matchmaking services. But were they in the same order as when she’d last left the computer?
They seemed the same. She didn’t know a lot about computers, but thought you had to go online in order to change your wallpaper. Then it struck her that someone might not have hacked into her computer remotely, but could have gone online here, in her apartment, and simply noted her browser’s history and visited the sites in the order in which she’d left them.
If they knew her passwords.
She reached over and tilted her heavy desk lamp sideways so that the weighted base lifted. There was her folded slip of paper with her handwritten passwords and screen names.
But was it folded in the same way? Hadn’t the quarter-folded sheet of printer paper been pressed perpendicular to the desk edge, rather than at an angle?
She couldn’t be sure.
She replaced the list beneath the lamp base, thinking how dumb it was to keep it hidden there. Probably half the people who used computers kept their passwords and screen names list hidden beneath the base of their desk lamp. It had to be the first place any self-respecting thief or hacker would look. Of course, as far as she knew, somebody who really understood computers could get to her sites without knowing the passwords. That was one of the reasons she’d decided on the desk lamp, with its heavy base. That, and the list was handy.
Who the hell would want to look at my computer?
Clinton Industrial Designs, maybe. Because they might want to know who she was contacting in her attempts to find another job. Lou Gainer had told her they didn’t want her taking trade secrets with her to use as leverage when interviewing for employment. The industrial design world was a shark tank.
She took several deep, calming breaths. This was silly, she told herself. Losing her lover and her job simultaneously was making her suspicious of everything. Wouldn’t anyone get a bit paranoid after such an experience?
She leaned back and considered the items on the desk. Her laptop computer, a green, leather-bordered desk pad; a pen holder with compartments for paper clips, stamps, and whatever; a phone and answering machine; an Edward Hopper print mug that held pens and pencils; a cork coaster borrowed from Ellie’s Lounge; and a small Rolodex. The symmetry of the objects’ placement seemed the same as always.
A quick check of her desk drawers revealed nothing even slightly different.
Ann sat very still, aware of her heartbeat, and after a few minutes she felt satisfied that nothing had been moved in her absence.
A sudden thought sent a chill through her. She got up from her chair and hurried to the door to the hall. After opening the door, she stepped into the hall and glanced both ways, making sure she was alone. Had a shadow moved near the banister’s turn in the stairwell leading to the foyer? Someone hurrying down the steps? In a far part of her mind she wondered if she’d been lured out of her apartment. Was it possible that someone very smart, and very malevolent, was manipulating her? Toying with her?
No, no, don’t be an idiot!
