The Sixes

“Yes, but it wasn’t some conscious decision of mine. There was an older guy in charge when I started here —Hutch Hutchinson. Kind of crusty, but a real gem. Craig was his number two, hired a couple of years ago. We’ve got mandatory retirement here, but we’d found a way to ignore it with Hutch because he was so good at his job. Then word started getting around about it, and people were asking why I was playing favorites. The next thing I knew, Hutch was bowing out late last fall, and we had no legit reason not to give the top job to Craig. Later I came to realize Craig was the one who stirred the pot about Hutch and helped push him out.”

“Too bad.” Phoebe couldn’t imagine the headaches Glenda had to deal with. “So what’s next for you today?”

“Devising a press strategy. And trying to figure out how to inform the students. Feels weird to put news like this in an e-mail blast, but that’s how it’s generally done these days.” They’d reached East Gate, and Glenda pointed toward the curb. “Just let me off here, okay? I want to walk around campus and take the pulse.”

“Call me if you hear anything,” Phoebe said as Glenda stepped out of the car. “I’ll do the same.”

As soon as she was home, Phoebe phoned Stockton on her cell. She wondered if he’d try to blow her off again, using the latest news as an excuse.

“My, you’ve had a busy morning,” he said as soon as she’d identified herself. “Glenda just filled me in.”

“Yes, pretty harrowing,” Phoebe admitted.

“You can tell me more when we meet today.”

So he wasn’t blowing her off after all.

“Noon still good?” she asked.

“Yes, see you then.”

She stripped off her bike clothes and showered. As hot water streamed over her, the image of Lily’s dead body fought its way into Phoebe’s brain—the sodden jeans, the long, wet hair clinging to the bloated face. And then she could see Lily underwater, submerged, terrified. Don’t go there, she told herself, fighting back tears. Stay focused.

Thirty minutes later, she was headed toward campus. Berta’s was to the east of the college, but Phoebe first wanted to check the mood on campus, just as Glenda had. Passing through the western gate, she saw that the Lily flyers were still up—though some had come partly unstapled and now flapped forlornly in the wind.

How many people know by now? Phoebe wondered. The campus seemed busier than she expected. Bunches of students, dressed in jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers, stood gathered together at various spots, talking. Phoebe guessed, from the troubled expressions they wore, that the talk was of Lily.

It was a relief to enter Berta’s. Something about the atmosphere there—the raffia-wrapped dried herb bouquets and the countless rooster tchotchkes—seemed to repel anyone under twenty-five, giving the town at least one student-free zone besides Tony’s. The crowd was generally a mix of faculty and administration, as well as locals, who sat for hours drinking lattes and eating muffins the size of cantaloupes. She surveyed the half-filled room, first for Tom, and then, when she didn’t see him, for a table with a little privacy. There was an empty one against the back wall, and Phoebe snaked her way toward it. Though not even crowded, the place seemed to be oddly energized. People surely had heard about the body pulled from the river and were buzzing about it.

Phoebe ordered coffee and waited. Finally, nearly twenty minutes late, Stockton arrived, ducking his six- something length under the upper doorframe as he entered. He was good-looking in an uptight, Waspy way, and probably in his late thirties. Catching Phoebe’s hand wave, he wove through the tables to the back of the cafe.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, pulling a chair out. “It’s been perfectly crazy.”

“I can only imagine,” Phoebe said.

“Nice to officially meet you, by the way,” he said, reaching across the table to shake her hand. His grip was so hard it pinched her fingers. He shrugged off his navy barn jacket, letting it sag behind him. He was wearing pressed khaki pants with a crisp blue cotton shirt and a belt of buttery brown leather. His dark blond hair was short, worn in a classic side-part style, and his skin was smooth and clear, except for a tiny razor cut on his strong chin. He looked like the kind of guy who should be working at a distinguished college like Williams or Middlebury; she wondered how he’d ended up at Lyle.

“Same here,” she said, forcing a smile. There was a snootiness to the guy that was already rubbing her the wrong way.

“How are you liking teaching?” he asked. “It’s a whole different ball game for you, isn’t it?”

“Completely different ball game,” Phoebe said. “But I’m enjoying it.”

Enjoying was a stretch, but Phoebe was hardly going to be candid with Stockton.

“And I hear you and Glenda go way back,” Stockton said, his slate-colored eyes curious. “You went to boarding school together.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said, hurriedly. She was anxious to abandon that topic and get on to what mattered. Thankfully the waitress came by to take Stockton’s order.

“So, tell me about this morning,” he said, turning his attention back to Phoebe. “You just happened to be downtown in the park when they found the body?”

What the heck was he implying, she wondered. That she was some sort of ambulance chaser?

“Actually I was coming off the bike path after a ride,” Phoebe said. “I saw the commotion in the park and headed over.”

“Was there any bruising on the body? Any indication that she’d been attacked?”

“I never got that close.”

“Did you have any sense of what might have happened?”

“No, just that she’d clearly been in the water for a while. Are there surveillance cameras downtown, do you know? I’ve been wondering if one of them picked up something the night Lily disappeared.”

Stockton scoffed. “I’m afraid we local yokels in Lyle haven’t quite caught up with New York and London in that regard,” he said. Was that a dig? she wondered. Regardless, she wasn’t going to snipe back and risk pissing him off.

“At least more eyewitnesses may come forward now that they’ve found her body,” Phoebe said. “Glenda says Lily was last seen going up Bridge Street—after she’d left the Cat Tails bar. For some reason she turned around and ended up back down at the river.”

“Don’t you think it’s obvious that someone intercepted her walk home?” Stockton said.

“And convinced her to go back down along the river?”

“Convinced isn’t the word I had in mind,” he said.

“What about the possibility of suicide?” Phoebe asked.

“Why start up the hill if you were planning to drown yourself ?”

The waitress arrived with a mug of black coffee for Stockton and slid it in front of him.

“Do you mind if we switch gears for a minute?” Phoebe said. “As you know, Glenda wants me to look into this secret society—the Sixes.”

“I’m more than willing to discuss it, though I must admit it’s fairly low on my list right now.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because Lily Mack’s death is one through ten on that list.” His voice sounded impatient. “Don’t get me wrong. We don’t want any kind of secret society on our campus. But the death of a student takes precedence over everything.”

“But don’t you think there’s a small chance that Lily’s death might be related to the Sixes somehow?”

Stockton leaned back in his chair and pinched his lips together.

“As I said, I’m concerned about the Sixes,” he said. “But even if they do exist—and that’s still an if—I don’t think they had anything to do with what happened to Lily.”

“What do you think, then?” she asked, because it was clear to her now that he had a theory. She took a sip of her coffee.

Stockton narrowed his eyes and stared intensely at Phoebe.

“I think we may have a serial killer on our hands.”