“Actually, I came here to talk to you.”
“You did?” she asks. “How did you find me?”
“The alumni information from the school,” I say. “You gave them your address.”
“So they could send me the newsletter,” she says. “Not so they could send people to my door. Look, I’m running late for work. I’ve really got to go.”
“I can walk with you,” I say. “The school didn’t send me. I actually came to talk about Julia.”
She pauses and looks over at me. “Julia? Did they find her? Has somebody heard from her?”
I shake my head. “No.”
Lynn starts walking again. “Then why are you here? Why do you want to bring her up again?”
“Because nobody knows what happened to her. And I want to find out,” I say.
“Everybody says she just walked away. That she decided that she didn’t want this life and wanted something else,” Lynn says.
“Do you honestly believe that?”
She stops and looks at me. There’s something in her face that tells me there’s more. There’s something she’s been holding inside her and it’s killing her to both hold it back and think about saying it.
“Did she ever tell you about the scarf?” she asks.
I remember the note in her day planner. I reach into the messenger bag on my hip and pull out the book. Opening it to that day in December, I hold it out to her.
“She left this note. ‘Return scarf.’ I have no idea what it means. What scarf?” I ask.
“Just a few days before she disappeared, I borrowed her car. She ended up having to walk home because somebody was supposed to give her a ride and didn’t show up. It was cold and she borrowed a scarf. It looked exactly like one I had seen before. And the last time I saw it, that girl ended up murdered. Look up Samantha Murray,” she says.
Lynn starts down the sidewalk again and I chase to catch up. “Do you know where she was when she borrowed the scarf?”
“No,” she says.
“Every week in her day planner there are days when she just says ‘visit’. She lied to her family about volunteering at the hospital so that she could go on these visits. You have any idea what that’s talking about?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “Look, we didn’t get along very well. We were fine. But it wasn’t like we were friends. She didn’t open up to me or anything.”
“Just because you weren’t buddy-buddy doesn’t mean she didn’t mention things to you. She didn’t say anything about who she was visiting or why she was lying about it? Where she was or even a hint? A neighborhood? How far she had to come to get back to the apartment?”
She slows down slightly like she’s thinking. “She had to ride the bus. She walked from wherever she was to the bus stop, and she was really upset about it,” she says.
I look at the day planner again. “Do the names Jeremy or Corey mean anything to you?”
She shakes her head. “No. I didn’t ever hear her mention either one of those.”
“Are you sure? She mentioned both of them very close to when she disappeared. It seemed as if she wasn’t particularly happy about seeing either one of them.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember ever hearing her say either one of them,” she says. “And I don’t even know if the scarf means anything. It could just be a coincidence. But it really bothered me. That’s all I can tell you.”
“The notes that she has in here talk about a guy. It never mentions him by name. It just refers to him as ‘he’. As if she was trying to conceal who he was from anybody who might stumble on the book. Do you have any idea who that could be? Or do you remember her ever talking about a guy she was seeing? It sounds as if they were in a pretty serious relationship and they’d been seeing each other for a while, but it wasn’t going well.”
“I got the impression she was seeing somebody,” she tells me. “But as I told you, we didn’t sit around and have girl talk or anything. I never met anybody. Nobody ever came to the apartment. It just seemed as if there was somebody. If that makes sense. She would really suddenly get worked up and get dressed and do her makeup and hurry away. She was always busy, even though she was really on top of all of her classes. It looked as if there was always something she needed to be doing. There were a few times when I got the impression that she was meeting up with somebody or trying to get somewhere so she could see somebody.”
“Just no idea who,” I comment.
“No,” she shakes her head. “I wish I could be more help, but I’ve really got to go.”
“You helped a lot. Thanks,” I say.
Lynn jogs the rest of the way down the sidewalk and around the corner to where I assume her car is parked. I scan over the notes in Julia’s day planner again, then take out my own notebook and pen and write down Samantha Murray’s name. I don’t know what this means, but it’s something.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Samantha Murray is an unsolved murder case from 17 years ago. She was strangled and left naked, wrapped in a blanket in an abandoned store just outside of campus,” I tell Sam on a video call. “There were clear strangulation marks on her body, but there was no sign of a weapon. Her friends said she was wearing a scarf when she left the party that night, but that scarf was never found.”
Sam’s eyes widen on the screen. “And Julia had that scarf?”
“Lynn says the one she had looked exactly like it. She was worried that Julia had
