“Did I ever tell you why your mother’s house smelled like death sometimes? One night, we’d gone out for a nice dinner and a show,” Dad prattled on. Oblivious to my discontent, he walked happily alongside me, beaming up at the familiar architecture. “We’d left Nadine to watch you, and when we came home, she was napping on the couch while you sprinkled pecorino romano across the carpets. The place smelled like rotting cheese for weeks.” He chuckled and shook his head. “It’s funny now, but it was terrible back then. Nadine felt horrible. I wonder if she remembers. I’ll have to ask her.”
I had just decided on stopping at Bill’s Restaurant and Bar to pull off my ruse when, up ahead, an absolute miracle occurred. As if by some act of God, Nadine emerged from a stationery store, shoving a stack of new journals and a set of fresh pens into her oversized purse. When she looked up, I waved. She smiled, but when she spotted my father, she literally jumped with glee like an excited bunny rabbit and leapt into his arms.
“Nathan Frye, is that you?” she demanded, pulling away. She adjusted my father’s collar and looked him up and down. “You’ve gained weight.”
“Don’t remind me,” he said, patting his belly. His eyes glowed with warmth. The sight made my stomach sink; Dad hadn’t looked at me with such love in a stunning number of years. “I’m so happy we’re having lunch today.”
The panic returned and overwhelmed the sadness. As Nadine shot a questioning look at me, I mimed from behind Dad’s back. Eyes wide, I brought my hand up to my throat, made a “cut it out” gesture, and mouthed, “Please.”
Nadine, as perfect a human being as she was, went along with it. She switched on her high beams and took Dad by the arm. “I had no idea you were joining us, but I’m so happy. We agreed on Bill’s. Right, Jack?”
I rushed to fall into step beside them, stunned by Nadine’s willingness to save me. “Bill’s it is. It’s right up there.”
Fifteen minutes later, we all shared a table at Bill’s Restaurant and Bar, but if anyone looked over at us, they surely wondered why only two of us participated in the conversation. Dad and Nadine had so much to catch up on that they barely spoke to me. As they swapped stories about working in academia, past encounters, and Mom, I sipped water and nibbled free bread like a bored teenager.
“Do you remember when that terrible undergraduate student of hers threw a wad of cow manure across the classroom?” Nadine asked, chuckling as she daintily sipped wine.
My father wheezed with laughter and turned bright red. “Priya almost killed that boy. I’ll never forget that day.”
“I’ll never forget Professor Pearson, picking up a fistful of poo in her bare hand, smearing it across that student’s essay, and telling him that’s what he might as well have turned in because his diction was so poor.”
They howled with laughter while I disguised a gag. When the food arrived, I wolfed my warm chicken salad too fast. Minutes later, my stomach protested such an abrupt feeding. I excused myself to the toilet. When I came out, I caught sight of Dad laughing uproariously at something else Nadine had said. I grabbed a passing busboy.
“Is there a back exit?” I asked him. “I parked on the next street over.”
He pointed. “Through there.”
With one last look at Nadine and Dad, I slipped out of the restaurant and into the streets. On my phone, I searched Henry Alcott’s name and clicked on the first link that appeared: his Facebook page, which told me everything I needed to know. Henry lived in a dorm room nearby, so I made a beeline for the building. In the courtyard, I parked myself on a bench and settled in to wait.
At the top of the hour, I spotted Henry as he returned from his last morning class. My suspicions fell through when I saw him in person. He was smaller than he’d looked on the news, no taller than five feet and ten inches. Additionally, his hair was darker than the killer’s. Henry Alcott was certainly not the man I’d spotted in Mitre Passage two weeks ago. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to talk to him.
“Henry!” I called, getting to my feet.
He looked me over as I approached him. “Sorry, do we have a class together or something? I don’t recognize you.”
“I’m not a student.” I shook his hand. “My name is Jacqueline Frye. I’m a private investigator working on the Whitechapel murders.”
Henry quickly withdrew. “Look, the police have searched every inch of my dorm room and questioned me and my friends multiple times about that night. I wasn’t there. I was in a study session with a bunch of other people. I didn’t kill anyone—”
“I believe you,” I said.
His eyebrows rose. “Oh. Why did you track me down, then?”
“I wanted to know why the police arrested you in the first place,” I said. “Why would they think you were in Whitechapel if you were here, nearly two hours away? Did someone give them the wrong information?”
Henry hitched his backpack higher on his shoulders. “They found a strand of hair on the victim’s sweater. Apparently, when they did a DNA test, it belonged to me.”
“Did you know Rosie Brigham? Had you ever met her before?”
“Not once,” he replied. “I hadn’t heard of her before the police barged into my dorm and arrested me for murder.”
“So you have no idea how a strand of your hair ended up on her sweater?”
“I know how it looks,” he said uneasily. “I see people whispering at me as I pass by. They think I’m lying. They’re all convinced I was involved
