Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead
Read Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead Online
Authors: Janice Kay Johnson
A revelation that could ruin everything!
Instant attraction is the stuff of books and movies. Or so
Alumni Relations Director Madison Laclaire believes…until she meets Detective
John “Troy” Troyer. From closing down the restaurant on their first date to
sharing steamy looks in meetings, Madison is completely into Troy. Even better,
the feelings are mutual. Once this alumni weekend is over, they can pursue the
plans they have for each other.
But those plans get sidelined when the college opens a
decades-old time capsule. Inside, a student confesses knowledge about the
campus’s only murder—an
unsolved
murder. Worse,
Troy’s investigation points to Madison’s father as a suspect. Suddenly her
loyalties are split. And making the wrong choice could cost her a future with
Troy….
“I've been wanting to kiss you all evening, Madison
Laclaire.”
“I have no objection,” she managed to say.
“Good,” Troy murmured, and bent his head.
This was a full-out, hungry demand. Apparently he wasn't a
tentative kind of guy.
He was the one to stiffen and lift his head. Only belatedly
did Madison realize she'd heard the scrape of furniture on the floor behind
them. Oh, heavensâshe sneaked a peek to see that a waiter was upending chairs
and putting them on tables. He very tactfully had his back to them as he worked,
but he must have seen them kissing.
“It's probably just as well we were interrupted.” Madison
wasn't sure she meant it. “I'm usually, um, a little more cautious than
that.”
Wow. Getting swept away like this might make her giddy, but
it was more than a little scary, too.
So what?
she thought with an
unaccustomed feeling of boldness. In her opinion, she was past due to take some
risksâat least with this man.
Dear Reader,
The idea for these two linked stories came to me, I think,
because I loved my college years. I had excellent reason to feel entirely at
home at Wakefield College and in the small town of Frenchman Lake. I was born in
a college town much like this, because my father taught at Whitman College in
Eastern Washington. I later went “home” to Whitman, where I earned my degree in
history.
Of course, I also grew up listening to talk of tenure,
department politics, grades, problem students and the annoyance of having an
eight-o’clock class scheduled for you. After graduation, I worked briefly in
Admissions at Whitman College and then Registration at a community college,
gaining a glimpse into the world of college administration. Quite different from
the student’s viewpoint, I assure you!
As a student I don’t recall ever worrying about my personal
safety. I’d walk across campus at night without a second thought, swim laps late
at night at the athletic center. And who didn’t pull all-nighters during finals
week? Having now put two daughters through college, I’m well aware that college
campuses aren’t as safe as they were when I attended—or perhaps I should say, as
safe as we imagined they were.
Wakefield College has been haunted for thirty-five years by
the memory of a student struck down at a time and place where he never would
have imagined he wouldn’t be safe. What a way to make everyone feel
vulnerable!
Sometimes as a writer it’s fun to research a background or
profession completely new to me. But going home to the familiar and giving it a
small (oh, well, maybe big, or even brutal) twist, that’s fun, too.
Welcome to Wakefield College, where a voice from the dead
resurrects a very old crime. And look for my next book set at Wakefield College,
coming in August 2013 from Harlequin Superromance.
Happy reading,
Janice Kay Johnson
PS—I enjoy hearing from readers! Please contact me through my
publisher at Harlequin Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, ON M3B 3K9
Canada
Where It May Lead
Janice Kay Johnson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author of more than seventy books for children and
adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well known for her Harlequin
Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and
the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel,
Snowbound,
won a RITA® Award from Romance
Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian,
Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington.
She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals,
a no-kill cat shelter.
Books by Janice Kay Johnson
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
1454—SNOWBOUND
1489—THE MAN BEHIND THE
COP
1558—SOMEONE LIKE HER
1602—A MOTHER’S SECRET
1620—MATCH MADE
IN COURT
1644—CHARLOTTE’S HOMECOMING*
1650—THROUGH THE SHERIFF’S
EYES*
1674—THE BABY AGENDA
1692—BONE DEEP
1710—FINDING HER
DAD
1736—ALL THAT REMAINS
1758—BETWEEN LOVE AND DUTY**
1764—FROM
FATHER TO SON**
1770—THE CALL OF BRAVERY**
1796—MAKING HER WAY
HOME
1807—NO MATTER WHAT
1825—A HOMETOWN BOY
1836—ANYTHING FOR
HER
SIGNATURE SELECT SAGA
DEAD WRONG
*The Russell Twins
**A Brother’s
Word
Other titles by this author available in ebook
format.
CHAPTER ONE
M
ADISON
L
ACLAIRE
HAD
hoped no one would mention the murder. It was the one pitfall in what
she believed was otherwise a great idea.
“Wasn’t that the same year as the murder?” Linda Walston,
current dean of students, asked promptly after Madison’s presentation.
Didn’t it figure.
Heads turned toward her around the long table in the conference
room. Several mouths were agape. The dean—a small, intense woman who was
well-loved as a professor in the philosophy department—was possibly the only
member of the Wakefield College administration who had been here thirty-five
years ago, when a student was murdered on campus.
The murder itself wasn’t the stumbling block, Madison
reflected; the real problem was that no arrest had ever been made.
No expensive, private liberal arts college wanted parents of
current or prospective students thinking their precious offspring wouldn’t be
safe on campus. Madison’s impression was that, after the police had thrown up
their hands and designated the case inactive, the crime hadn’t exactly been
hushed up, but close enough.
Her father certainly hadn’t liked to talk about it, and he had
been a student at the time, not an administrator. She supposed that was because
he knew the victim.
“I don’t think we need to be too concerned about it,” Madison
said smoothly. As director of alumni relations, she would be masterminding the
special alumni weekend she was proposing, which would include a full slate of
activities like a wine tasting, dinner at the president’s house and more. She
glanced around. “For those of you who weren’t aware anything like that ever
happened here at Wakefield, it was an awful crime. A senior named Mitchell King
was bludgeoned to death in the McKenna Sports Center sauna during first semester
finals week.”
There were some sharp intakes of breath.
“Just as it is now,” she continued, “the center was open all
night for students who needed a break from studying. At that hour, it was
deserted enough that no one saw or heard anything. The police investigation got
nowhere.”
“If he was a senior,” Babs Carmichael, director of admissions,
pointed out, “every single alumnus coming back for the opening of the time
capsule would have known this Mitchell King. Wasn’t the student body even
smaller then?”
“Yes.” Everyone here knew that Madison’s father had also been a
student at Wakefield at the time. “But the victim wasn’t an English major. He
wouldn’t have contributed to the time capsule even if he’d lived.”
She saw a subtle relaxation in the half-dozen people involved
in the discussion. This whole thing would definitely have been trickier if
Mitchell King had put an item in the time capsule tucked into the foundation of
the then brand-new Cheadle Hall, which housed the English department.
Only a couple of weeks before, Cheadle had suffered irreparable
damage in an earthquake that startled local residents awake but otherwise barely
shattered a dish. Consultants determined that the building, built in the early
1980s, had been erected on a flawed foundation that had required only a mere
nudge to make it shift and crack.
The news that it would have to be demolished and rebuilt from
the ground up was pretty much a disaster. College administrators had hoped to
build a new Student Union building next. The existing cramped and dated one was
commonly left off the tour given to prospective students and their parents. Tour
guides would wave vaguely in its vicinity and say, “Our SUB is over there,”
while hustling their charges along to the music building, which was impressive
with its stained glass and soaring ceiling.
Back when students in the English department had been invited
to put items in the capsule, the plan was to open it fifty years later. Fifty
was a nice, round number, and the then-students would only be in their late
sixties and early seventies when it came time to open it. But only thirty-four
and a half years had passed. The original assumption was that the capsule would
be removed and carefully put back in the foundation of the new building to be
erected this coming year. It was Madison who saw the premature opening as a
splendid excuse to bring a host of well-to-do alumni back to the Wakefield
campus, where they would be wined, dined, entertained and given opportunity to
reminisce fondly about their college days.
They would also be given plenty of opportunities to write
checks to help replace Cheadle Hall so that the current and upcoming classes of
English majors would benefit from the same experiences they had had at
Wakefield.
“Remember,” Madison continued, “that the students all came back
to Wakefield for spring semester despite the murder. And that the majority of
the students who did put something in the time capsule had at least another year
left here, some more than that. They won’t have forgotten the murder, but it
won’t be the first thing they remember about Wakefield, either. As you know,
some of our more prominent alumni from that era often express public gratitude
to the college for providing them with the springboard to their current success.
Clearly, the murder didn’t taint
their
memories.”
She paused. “Sooner or later, the time capsule will be opened. If we don’t do it
now, we’re only postponing the issue for another fifteen years.”
“That’s true.” The president of the college, sitting at the
head of the table, nodded thoughtfully. “Tell us more about what you have in
mind for the weekend.”
She did. By the end of the discussion, everyone in the room
looked energized. They were all excited about the prospect of bringing in a
significant amount of money to replace Cheadle Hall.
The president looked around. “Anyone opposed?”
No one stirred.
“Then it’s a go if you think you can pull it off this fast,” he
said with a nod. He smiled warmly at Madison. “I like your creative
thinking.”
“Thank you,” she said with composure, although privately she
was rejoicing.
“Okay, any issues with residence hall advisors?” he asked, and
talk flowed into the current preoccupation of most administrators: the first day
of fall semester, one month away.
Fast indeed,
Madison thought with
trepidation. Cheadle Hall was scheduled to be demolished in late September, as
soon as it was emptied of its contents and stripped of some salvageable
material, including wood paneling and copper roofing. She had slightly less than
two months to pull her event together.
It was all she could do not to leap up and dash out to get
started. Instead, she tried to maintain a patient, interested expression while
her mind whirred.
* * *
I
GNORING
CLUMPS
OF
students parting to pass around her, Madison stood on the sidewalk that
wended its way through the campus of Wakefield College and contemplated the
handsome brick building currently wrapped in yellow tape that proclaimed, “Keep
Out.” She held a clipboard ready to jot down any last-minute to-do items.
Seven weeks had passed since her proposal was approved. The big
event was happening this coming weekend.
The tape had to go before alumni started arriving on campus,
Madison decided. It was unsightly, even tacky. She made a note to speak to
someone on the maintenance crew. She saw no reason a dignified sign on the door
wouldn’t be adequate.
Leaving the sidewalk, she stepped closer to the cracked
foundation. She knew exactly which block hid the time capsule that was the
raison d’etre for this weekend’s event. Madison had come to envision the time
capsule as a lemon that, when properly squeezed, would make some excellent
lemonade for the college.
She felt really good about how everything was coming together.
There were only a few final details needing her attention.
Smiling with satisfaction, she turned away and started toward
the building that housed administrative offices. One of her student assistants
had called five minutes ago to tell her that the box of programs for attendees
had arrived from the printer. And this afternoon she had a meeting with the city
police department liaison to discuss any security issues that might arise. She
couldn’t imagine there would be any—this
was
Frenchman Lake, after all, a small Eastern Washington town with tree-lined
streets and graceful older homes. It was true that downtown Frenchman Lake
wasn’t the same place it had been ten years ago when Madison was a student here,
thanks to the conversion of wheat fields surrounding the town to vineyards. At
last count, there were thirty-eight wineries in and around Frenchman Lake.
Tasting rooms, bed-and-breakfasts and high-end restaurants had mushroomed in a
town that had never been on the tourist path before. In fact, Madison was taking
advantage of that new fame by including a wine tasting tour on the itinerary for
visiting alumni.
Fortunately, crime had not increased, despite the many
outsiders who flooded the small town seasonally. Making sure the police
department was prepared to back up the college’s small security force in the
event of a problem was only a precaution—but she believed in being cautious. She
hoped the officer assigned to work with her had a good attitude.
After a glance at her watch, she walked more briskly.
* * *
P
RIVATE
LIBERAL
ARTS
colleges claimed to offer the finest in
undergraduate education. They prided themselves on cutting edge labs,
sophisticated online databases, professors who had searched for medicinal plants
in the Amazon basin, served as Under-Secretary of State or come up with a
revolutionary algorithm. Much was invariably made of the fact that this was
where tomorrow’s leaders would be trained.
So why, Detective John Troyer pondered, did those same colleges
always appear as if they hadn’t altered so much as a brick or trimmed the ivy
since 1890? Seemed to him there was an implication of tradition and even
stodginess in the look. But what did he know?
Troy nodded at a group of passing coeds who were noticeably
staring at him. He contemplated the three-story, granite block edifice—complete
with bell tower—that housed the administrative offices of Wakefield College. The
sound of that bell ringing the hours was part of his childhood. His family home
where his mother still lived was only ten blocks away from the campus. Although
his father was a Wakefield grad, Troy had rebelled and attended the University
of Washington in Seattle—on the other side of the mountains. He’d been desperate
to escape the small town where he’d grown up for the imagined delights of urban
living. He knew how disappointed his father had been that his son chose not to
follow in his footsteps.
On a beautiful day like this when the campus looked its best,
Troy had his own regrets. He’d enjoyed his years at UW, but his experience
didn’t have much in common with what students found at Wakefield. With
enrollment of only 1,400, the students all got to know each other and the
professors knew them individually almost from the moment they arrived.
The UW also had plenty of brick buildings festooned with ivy,
but the dorms at Wakefield were a lot nicer-looking, he reflected, admiring
Harris Hall with its long gambrel roof and arched, small-paned windows.
And then there was the fact that he didn’t like thinking he’d
disappointed his dad.
Shaking off the grief that thoughts of his father brought, Troy
let his gaze rest briefly on a few girls wearing skimpy shorts while sprawled in
the shade of an old leafy tree studying.
Nice legs,
he thought, but without much interest. At thirty-two, he’d discovered recently
that college students looked like kids to him.
He scanned the two dorms and the half-dozen classroom buildings
that ringed Allquist Field until his gaze landed on the building that was the
cause of his visit to the campus. Cheadle Hall was scheduled for demolition at
the end of the month. He understood the English department was being forced to
hold classes in miscellaneous rooms elsewhere on campus, including some that had
formerly been used for storage. A new building would go up on the same site—the
college hoped to complete it by next fall.
To his cop’s eye, the yellow tape suggested a crime scene. He
grinned at the thought. College administrators must find the sight exceptionally
jarring.
He was on his way to meet one of those administrators, the
director of alumni relations who had come up with the scheme that involved Troy.
Troy’s captain had made clear that this assignment was not optional.
“You’re the logical choice,” he had informed Troy. “If you have
anything urgent on your caseload, hand it off.”
Fortunately, Troy hadn’t been immersed in the aftermath of a
recent murder, kidnapping or rape. The idea of a few days spent hanging around
the college hadn’t been unwelcome, especially since he’d be here for part of the
festivities anyway in his father’s stead.
Aware of speculative stares—guns weren’t a common sight on this
campus—he cut across the plush green lawn and climbed the broad granite stairs
to enter Memorial Building, which was fondly known at Wakefield and in town as
“Mem.”
A receptionist behind an antique oak counter directed him to a
staircase that led to the third floor. Admissions, Financial Aid and the
president’s office took up much of the ground floor. Made sense, he supposed, as
more prospective students and their parents visited campus than alumni, who
tended to show up only for their reunions. He was amused to see that Career
Planning and Resources had been relegated to the basement. Students were
unlikely to have their parents with them when they plunged into the bowels of
Mem.