This is how I like my city: all but empty.
God, I really am a jaded New Yorker.
Still, pretty as the town looks, I’m relieved when I pull open the door to the sports complex and am able to stomp the snow off my boots and onto the rubber-backed mats inside. My face slowly defrosts as I pull out my ID and show it to the security guard, who waves me through the hand scanner. The building, as always, smells of sweat and chlorine, from the pool. It’s pretty empty—most students don’t seem to feel the need to brave the elements in order to get in their daily workout.
Not so with the Pansies basketball team, though. I spot them as I look over the atrium railing, down on the parquet court below, practicing the slam dunks they aren’t allowed to try during a game, hanging on the rim, that sort of thing. The court looks bigger with all the bleachers pushed back. As I watch, someone passes Mark—I recognize his flattop—the ball.
“Shepelsky,” his teammate says. “Go for a layup.”
Mark expertly catches the ball, dribbles, then shoots. I swear there are three feet of air at least between the soles of his sneakers and the court. When he lands, I hear the same squeak of rubber on a smooth, shiny surface that I heard last night, when Manuel’s masked assailants fled the scene.
Not that that means anything. I mean, all sneakers sound like that. Besides, Mark and his friends were probably in the locker room while Manuel was being stabbed, getting reamed out by their coach. They couldn’t have had anything to do with what happened to him.
Unless.
Unless Coach Andrews was the one who sent them to do it.
I’m letting my imagination run away with me. Best to take myself and my box to Coach Andrews’s office and see if there’s actually anything to this crazy idea of mine before I start making up scenarios in which Steven Andrews is a Svengali with the ability to convince late-adolescent boys to do his smallest bidding… .
Maybe in Division I schools, where the basketball coach is second only to God—even more important than the university president—would someone like Coach Andrews have his own personal assistant to guard his privacy. As it is, there’s just a snarky student worker sitting in the outer part of the Athletic Office, reading a battered copy ofThe Fountainhead.
“Hey,” I say to him. “Coach Andrews around?”
The kid doesn’t even look up from his book, just jerks a thumb in the direction of an open door.
“In there,” he says.
I thank him and approach the doorway, through which I see Steven Andrews sitting at a desk covered with what looks like playbooks. He’s got his head in his hands, and is staring dejectedly down at a piece of paper with a number of X’s and O’s on it. He looks, for all the world, like Napoleon planning a battle.
Or maybe me, making room assignments, since I still haven’t figured out how to work the Housing Department computer system.
“Um, Coach Andrews?” I say.
He looks up. “Yes?” Then, as I pull my hat off and all of my hair tumbles down in a staticky mess around my face, he seems to recognize me. “Oh, hi. You’re… Mary?”
“Heather,” I say, lowering myself into the chair across from his desk. I don’t mind pointing out that the office furniture in the Winer Sports Complex is way nicer than the furniture in my office. No orange vinyl couches here, no sirree. Everything is black leather and chrome.
I’m betting Coach Andrews makes more than twenty-three thousand five hundred a year, too.
Although he doesn’t get all the free Dove Bars he can eat. Probably.
“Right,” he says. “Sorry. Heather. You work over in Fischer Hall.”
“Right,” I say. “Where Lindsay lived.”
I watch his reaction to the name Lindsay carefully.
But there is no reaction. He doesn’t flinch or go pale. He just looks questioning. “Uh-huh?”
Man. This is one tough nut to crack.
“Yes,” I say. “I was just wondering… did anybody clean out her locker?”
Now Coach Andrews looks confused. “Her locker?”
“Right,” I say. “Her locker here at the sports complex. I mean, I assume she had one.”
“I’m sure she did,” Coach Andrews says. “But that’s something you’d probably be better off asking the cheerleading coach, Vivian Chambers? She’d be the one who’d be able to tell you which locker was Lindsay’s, and what the combination is. She’s got an office down the hall. Only I don’t think she made it in today. On account of the snow.”
“Oh,” I say. “The cheerleading coach. Right. Only… well, I’m here now. And I’ve got this box.”
“Well.” Coach Andrews looks like he really wants to help me. Seriously. I mean, the guy has a big game coming up, and he’s actually willing to take the time to help out a fellow New York College employee. One who makes way less money than he does. “I think I could probably get the number and combination from Facilities. Let me give them a call.”
“Wow,” I say. Is he being so super-helpful because he’s actually a nice guy? Or because he feels guilty over what he did to Lindsay? “That is so nice of you. Thanks.”
“No problem,” Coach Andrews says, as he picks up his phone and dials. “I mean, as long as the guys made it into work today… ” Someone on the other end picks up, and Steven Andrews says, “Oh, Jonas, great, you made it in. Look, I got a woman from the Housing Department who needs to clean out Lindsay Combs’s locker. I was wondering if you guys had access to the combination. Oh, and also which locker it was, since Viv didn’t make it to work this morning… . You do? Great? Yeah, that’d be great. Okay, yeah, call me back.”
He hangs up and beams at me. “You’re in luck,” he says. “They’re gonna look it up and call back with it.”
I’m stunned. Seriously. “That’s… thanks. That was really nice of you.”
“Oh, no problem,” Coach Andrews says again. “Anything I can do to help. I mean, what happened to Lindsay was so terrible.”
“Wasn’t it?” I say. “I mean, especially since Lindsay—well, she was so popular. It’s hard to believe she had any enemies.”
“I know.” Coach Andrews leans back in his chair. “That’s the part that gets me. She was, like, universally liked. By everyone.”
“Almost everyone,” I say, thinking of Kimberly, who honestly doesn’t seem to have been all that fond of her.
“Well, right,” Coach Andrews says. “I mean, besides whoever it was who did that to her.”
Hmmm. He doesn’t seem to be aware of the animosity between Kimberly and Lindsay.
“Yeah,” I say. “Clearly someone didn’t like her. Or was trying to shut her up about something.”
Steven Andrews’s blue eyes are wide and guileless as they gaze into mine. “About what? I mean, Lindsay was a good kid. That’s what’s been so hard about all this. For me, I mean. For you guys, I’m sure it’s worse. I mean, you and your boss… what’s his name again? Tom Something?”
I blink. “Snelling. Tom Snelling.”
“Yeah,” the coach says. “I mean… he’s new, right?”
“He started last month,” I say. Wait. How did we get off the subject of Lindsay, and on to Tom?
“Where’d he come from?” Coach Andrews wants to know.
“Texas A & M,” I say. “The thing about Lindsay is—”
“Wow,” the coach says. “That must be a big change for him. I mean, going from College Station to the Big Apple. I mean, it’s been rough for me, and I just came down from Burlington.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I imagine that was tough. But Tom’s handling it.” I don’t mention the part about how he wants to quit. “About Lindsay, what I was wondering was—”
“He’s not married, is he?” Coach Andrews asks. Casually.
Too casually.
I stare at him. “Who?Tom? ”
“Yeah,” he says. Suddenly I notice his cheeks are turning sort of… well, pinkish. “I mean, I didn’t see a ring.”
“Tom’s gay, ” I say. I realize he’s a Division III college basketball coach and all. But really, how dense can
