The Sixes (25 page)

She crossed the room to meet him. His hair looked a little wilder than usual, obviously ruffled by the wind. He was carrying a bag of groceries, and he set it down in order to shrug off his coat. When she reached him, he took her into his arms and kissed her.

“You look a little better,” he said. “Your black eye is more yellow now than purple. That’s a good sign.”

“And a more flattering color for me, I think,” she said.

“I want to hear all about your day,” he said. “But first let me make a dent with dinner. I’ve got two great steaks I’m going to grill.”

She returned to the sofa and to her laptop. As she read, she could hear Duncan moving between the kitchen area and the deck off the back of the house. After so many nights alone in her little house on Hunter Street, it felt both good and odd not to be all by herself.

“So Glenda called this morning,” Phoebe said when they sat down at the table. “I hope you don’t mind, but we’re busted. She’d gone by my house, and I didn’t feel comfortable lying to her.”

Duncan smiled. “I don’t mind. I mean, there’s no policy against it. And people are going to start seeing us in public. Hell, we may become a fixture at Tony’s.”

So he
was
thinking of them as a couple, she realized.

“Well, there’s one person who may
not
like seeing us in public. Val Porter dropped by to see you after you left today. I wouldn’t have answered the door, but she saw me through the window.”

Duncan smirked. “That’s a woman who doesn’t like to take no for an answer. Was she surprised to find you here?”

“Yes—and she even made a snide remark.” Phoebe decided she was too curious not to bring it up.

“About?”

“About how nice it was that your wife left you plenty of money so you could buy this house.”

He shook his head in disgust. “Val kind of redefines the word
feminist
, doesn’t she?” he said. “Though she wasn’t lying. I did end up with a nice nest egg.”

“That doesn’t seem like anyone’s business but yours,” Phoebe replied. She said it nonchalantly, but she knew she wanted him to elaborate.

“True, but I’m happy to explain it so you know the facts. Allison had a small trust fund from a grandparent. Nothing major, but decent enough. To my surprise she left it to me.”

“How does Val even know about the money?”

“There was probably talk behind my back after Allison died. I’ve taken some trips; I’ve gutted this house.” He smiled tightly. “But enough about Val. Any more news about Hutch?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“We should take a look at the notes. You brought them, right?”

“Yes, we can look at them after dinner. I did have
one
interesting insight, though not related to the notes.”

Duncan smiled. “I thought you promised not to keep this stuff to yourself.”

“It just occurred to me a little while ago. I had a terrible nightmare when I was taking a nap. In the dream I was at Hutch’s house, and this time the murderer was right there in the room with me. And it was Dr. Parr.”

“Wait,” Duncan said. He pulled his head back in surprise and then smiled. “Are you saying
Parr
is the murderer?”

“No, no, of course not,” Phoebe said. “But I think what my subconscious was saying was that it’s someone Hutch was
familiar
with. If I buy into the idea that he was killed by someone who he contacted after reading the notes, that would explain how he could find the person so quickly. He
knew
him. I’d already considered that the killer was a local person, but it could even be someone on campus.”

“That’s alarming,” Duncan said. “Any thoughts who it might be?”

“I know so few people here yet, besides the students in my classes, of course. Does anyone jump to mind for you—anyone who’s ever struck you as, I don’t know, strange?”

“Off the top of my head, no, but as we know from history, killers so often wear the mask of sanity. They can seem perfectly ordinary by day. They sometimes even have wives and kids.”

“Maybe something will occur to you when you see the notes.”

Duncan insisted on doing the dishes, and Phoebe repositioned herself on the couch as he worked. A phone rang, and she realized after a second that it was hers. She upended her purse and grabbed it, seeing from the caller ID that it was Glenda.

“Hi there,” Phoebe said.

“Are you sitting down?” Glenda asked.

“Yes, why?” Phoebe’s whole body tensed, and in the kitchen area Duncan stopped in mid-action, sensing something from her tone.

“I’ve got news.”

“What is it?” Phoebe demanded.

“The police have made two arrests in Hutch’s death. Blair Usher and Gwen Gallogly.”

25

“F
EE?” GLENDA ASKED.

“Yes, sorry—I’m just in a state of shock,” Phoebe said. So it
had
been them, she thought. Her breath felt stuck in her chest. “How—how do they know?”

“Typically, Michelson is giving nothing up.”

As she’d been speaking to Glenda, Phoebe had watched Duncan drop his dish towel and move toward the living area. He was standing directly in front of her now. He flipped his hands over, palm sides up, and let his mouth fall open. His whole body was asking, What the hell is going on?

Phoebe raised a finger, asking him to give her another minute. She was anxious to share the news with him, but she wanted to make sure she’d heard everything.

“Are they implicating them in Lily’s death, too? And Trevor’s?”

“I don’t know if they’ve managed to do that, but I assume they’re trying. The only motive I can think of for them killing Hutch is that he linked them to the drownings.”

“How will you handle this?”

“I’ve scheduled a meeting with my staff in five minutes to figure out what kind of damage control we need to do. Word is out about the Sixes. We’ll probably use the old there’s-always-a-few-bad-apples-in-the-bunch approach. But listen, Fee, thank you for all your help on this. If you hadn’t started this ball rolling—”

“—then Hutch would not be dead.”

“You can’t think like that,” Glenda said. “We had no idea they were that dangerous. There’s the doorbell. Everyone’s coming to the house for the meeting, so I better scoot. Let’s catch up tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” Phoebe disconnected her phone and looked up at Duncan. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. She relayed the news.

“Wow,” he said, plopping down onto the couch beside her. “And so it must have been one of them following you through the woods.”

“I guess so,” Phoebe said. She hadn’t been certain if her pursuer had been male or female, but she was having a hard time connecting either Blair or Gwen to the form that had stalked her. She wondered what evidence the police had found linking the girls to the crime.

Duncan raked his hand through his hair. “It’s going to seem like a bomb went off on campus tomorrow. Too bad
U.S. News and World Report
doesn’t measure notoriety for their college rankings. I bet we’d finally break the top one hundred.”

“Yeah, I just hope the board doesn’t hold it all against Glenda.”

“And how are
you
feeling?”

Phoebe let out a long sigh. “Relieved, I suppose. Maybe I can stop looking over my shoulder now. It’s just . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“What?” Duncan asked, his dark eyes quizzical.

Phoebe reached behind her head and shook her hair out from its ponytail.

“I guess I was wrong,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t really think that it
was
the Sixes.”

“But you thought it was a
possibility
.”

“Yes, but . . .” She struggled off the couch and paced before the stone fireplace. “I keep asking myself what Hutch saw in the notes that pointed in their direction. Of course, his contacting them may have had nothing at all to do with what was in the notes. Maybe he got a hold of them for another reason—he’d heard about them from me and might have begun to investigate them separately. And once he made contact with them, they went on the defensive.”

“Could be,” Duncan said. “Here, why don’t you let me see those notes?”

After retrieving them from her purse, she brought them to Duncan, explaining the difference between the two sets. He tugged a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and began to peruse the pages. While he read, Phoebe watched the flames do their repetitive dance in the fireplace. Her good arm touched Duncan’s, and she could feel the warmth of his body through his shirt. It had been ages, she realized, since she’d hung out with a man on a couch after dinner. In the last years with Alec, their lives had been so busy in the evenings. After dinner there was more work, phone calls, answering e-mails, or often packing for a trip.

Duncan scrunched his mouth. “You’re right about there not being a single reference to any college girls in here.”

“Maybe Hutch found out about Blair being in the bar some other way,” Phoebe said. She rested her head briefly against the back of the sofa. She was tired and knew she wouldn’t figure this out tonight. “I probably should hit the hay so I’m fit for class tomorrow.” She turned to smile at Duncan. “But what do I do about my face? I was hoping the bruises would be mostly gone, but they’re turning out to be stubborn little bastards.”

“Hey, you’re the campus hero and those are your battle scars.”

“But as far as I know, I’m still not suppose to disclose that I was at the murder scene. By the way, I never asked how
you
found out I was there.”

Duncan ran a finger back and forth along his lower lip and looked off, thinking.

“It was Miles who told me you were in the hospital,” he said. “I think he said he heard it from Cameron Parr.”

“No, I mean about me being at Hutch’s.”

He paused. “Well, I hope this doesn’t land him in hot water,” Duncan said, tucking his glasses back into his pocket. “But Mark Johns told me.” He eased up into a standing position and tossed the notes on the table.

“Mark?” Phoebe said, totally surprised by the revelation. “Why would he volunteer that to you? Glenda didn’t know about you and me until today.”

“It just came out during a brief discussion we had,” Duncan said. “I think I mentioned to you that he might be teaching a course with us, and I bumped into him in the building on Monday. Miles had just told me you were in the hospital, and I’d also just heard about Hutch’s murder—though I didn’t know the two were related. I brought up the murder to Mark, thinking he might know something via Glenda. And that’s when he said that you’d been injured at the scene.”

“That was before I’d told Glenda the cops were keeping it under wraps, so she wouldn’t have told him yet not to say anything,” Phoebe said, following the sequence but annoyed nonetheless. “And yet he should have known to be discreet.”

“Please don’t let Mark know I said anything,” Duncan said. “I don’t want him ticked at me. Ready for bed?”

“Hmm, yes. Though I might grab some fresh air out on the deck for a few minutes. I’ve spent most of the day indoors, and I could use it.”

As Duncan headed for the bedroom, Phoebe slid open the back door. There was a real chill to the air, but it was just what she needed. The house had grown warm, because of the fire, and she’d been having a hard time focusing.

She crossed the deck to the railing at the far end. A light at the back of the house was on, and she could see that Duncan’s yard was a decent size, nicely landscaped. In the far back were several rows of fir trees, blocking a view of his neighbors. She glanced up. A zillion stars were scattered across the sky, and she could see the filmy swaths of the Milky Way. Orion towered above the trees.

If Blair and Gwen really
had
killed Hutch—and she assumed the police had enough evidence to arrest them—that meant Hutch must have become suspicious of them and telegraphed that to them. They killed him to protect themselves. I was lucky, Phoebe thought, that they only used their scare tactics on me.

So that meant Hutch had stumbled onto something linking them to the drownings or to Wesley’s fall in the river, or both. Something that wasn’t in the notes. But
what
? she wondered, yet again.

Suddenly a thought jumped in front of her, like a night bird lighting on the railing of the deck. Maybe Hutch had contacted Wesley himself. He might have wanted clarification of a few points in the notes, and Wesley could have told him about Blair being in the bar. She would call Wesley first thing tomorrow and find out.

Of course that didn’t explain all the underlines, she realized, but Hutch may have come to see that the clue he’d spotted in the notes didn’t amount to anything in the end.

Phoebe turned to go inside and then stopped. Duncan had shut off most of the great room lights, but there was still a light burning in the kitchen. He must have left it on so she could find her way. She realized that now that Hutch’s killer had been arrested, there’d be no reason for her to have to hole up at Duncan’s. Well, she thought, it would be tough to function indefinitely in a space that was not her own.

When she entered the bedroom a minute later, Duncan was standing by the bed in his gray boxer briefs, setting the alarm clock. Despite her fatigue and achiness, she felt a surge of desire shoot through her. She slipped into the bathroom, quickly washed her face, and changed into her pajama pants and camisole. He was in bed when she returned, propped up against the headboard and staring at a corner of the room, as if deep in thought.

“I didn’t even ask about
your
day,” Phoebe said. She crawled in beside him, mindful of her elbow.

“Mine paled compared to yours,” he said, directing his gaze at her now. “It was all pretty routine.”

“What about your student?”

“Student?”

“The one with the unexpected issue.”

“Oh, yeah. Smart kid, but the statistics part is totally over his head. He’s tried tutoring, and it’s just not working. He’s probably going to have to switch majors. You ready for lights out?”

“Yup.”

He switched off the swing lamp by his side of the bed. Phoebe lay on her right side, facing him, and in the dark she felt him shift his body closer to her. Duncan found her face with his hand, cradled it, and kissed her softly.

“Good night,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll feel even better tomorrow.”

She felt a twinge of disappointment. Should she just boldly announce her intentions? she wondered. But Duncan was already on his back again, pulling the covers up. Of course he’s not going to assume I want sex tonight, she told herself.

She thought she would fall asleep instantly, but when she closed her eyes, an image she had fought off all night made its way into her mind—Blair battering Hutch with a piece of firewood. Tonight should have brought a sense of closure, or at the very least the beginning of closure, but she felt troubled and discontent. And the nap had been too long. As she drifted off nearly an hour later, she realized she’d never heard from Jen Imbibio. She would grab her after class tomorrow. Blair and Gwen might be arrested, but the school still needed to shut down the Sixes.

In the morning she and Duncan took turns showering and drank their coffee quickly at the kitchen counter.

“Look, I know I offered my place while the killer was still at large,” Duncan said, “but why don’t you stay a few more nights? You’re still in recovery mode.”

“What if I take a rain check till later in the week,” Phoebe said. “I need to organize things at home.”

She left a few minutes ahead of him. It was colder out today than yesterday, and as she struggled to put on her gloves, one dropped to the ground. Stooping to pick it up, she felt a thought wiggling into her brain. At the hospital, Michelson had asked what she’d been wearing on Sunday night, and when she’d shown him her coat, he’d said, “Is that all?” The question had perplexed her. For the first time she wondered if the police had found an item of women’s clothing at the murder scene, something they needed to eliminate as Phoebe’s before linking it to the killer. So maybe that was one of the clues that had led them to Blair and Gwen.

Before heading to campus, Phoebe stopped briefly at her place. She unpacked her duffel bag, threw a load of clothes in the wash, and dropped some of the files she’d taken to Duncan’s back on her desk. Before leaving, she scooped up a few pinecones from the edge of her backyard and arranged them in a bowl on the coffee table. She wanted to feel safe again in her little house, but she wondered if she was being naive. According to Alexis, there were at least forty members of the Sixes. If someone else was really pulling the strings, they might still be a powerful force, even with a piece cut off.

She drove to campus. The scene, when she arrived, was just as Duncan had predicted—as if a bomb had gone off. People were gathered everywhere in clusters—talking, gesticulating, shaking their heads in dismay. A strong wind added to the disarray and tore across the quad, grabbing papers and candy wrappers and tossing them aside in a snit.

It didn’t take long to see that Blair and Gwen’s arrest had had a big impact inside the classroom as well. Nearly every student in her first class appeared hyped up, as if they’d dropped a couple of Adderall at breakfast. Though Phoebe had applied makeup over her bruises and scratches, they were still partially visible, but the students seemed too wired to notice. She decided to confront the situation head on.

“You must all be feeling pretty churned up,” she said once all the students were settled in their seats.

No one spoke for a moment, just looked at her in that slack-jawed style they so often resorted to in class, but finally a girl named Jackie lifted her shoulders in bewilderment and called out, “It just feels like, you know, everything’s out of control. All the kids are going ape shit. There’s press everyplace. And our parents want us to transfer.”

“Yeah,” a boy named Andy said. “I mean, I’ve heard of Skull and Bones. But who’s ever heard of a secret society on campus that actually
murders
people they don’t like? That’s freaking crazy.”

“Okay, I’ve got an idea,” Phoebe said, coming out from around the table she generally sat at. “We’re journalists, right? Let’s
cover
this. I want everyone to form a big circle with their chairs. We’re going to pretend we’re a media company, and we’re going to decide how to handle this on a variety of platforms. Some of you will report on it—talking to the police, and the administration. Some of you will write essay-style blogs. A good topic might be how you feel about the intrusion of the press in
your
life, or about the strain of trying to keep your parents from freaking out. You game?”

The students nodded their heads enthusiastically, and for the next hour they talked about the various angles of the crisis on campus and how they might cover it. Then they divvied up the assignments. It was part newsroom, part therapy session. The kids seemed enthralled. How ironic, she thought, that not one of the students suspected how deeply she was entrenched in the story.