A Bookmarked Death by Judi Culbertson Page A

in her place for a change? Maybe at the last minute she couldn’t face going through the ceremony without her parents here. Mom told me how upset she was.”
    I jumped in to agree. “There’s so much hype about graduation, it was probably too much to face. They’ve only been gone a week, Hani. Less.”
    My daughter turned her fury on us. “Will you two stop! I get it. But she said she was going to meet us here. If she’d changed her mind, she would have texted me. But she didn’t. That’s what I’m talking about!” Her face was turning red, her eyes growing wild.
    I grasped her shoulders. “It’s okay! Maybe her car broke down. She got a flat tire where there was no one around to help. Anything could have happened.” Considering that it was less than a mile that seemed unlikely, but I needed to calm her.
    “But she would have—”
    “No, Hannah. You can’t make guesses about her phone.”
    “We could check her room,” Jane said. “Drive back along the way she would have come. Just to see.”
    We had just reached the path outside the stadium. It was a beautiful spring day, the sun splashing the leafy campus, red and white azaleas blooming, the dogwood trees making lace curtains over the dark leaves. But I didn’t want to be there a moment longer. “That’s a good idea. The next ceremony’s not for two hours.”
    “I have the keys,” Hannah said.
    “You have the keys to her room?” Jane turned, surprised.
    “Of course I do. She gave me both keys in case she wasn’t back from class yet when I came for a weekend. She has my keys too.”
    But at the parking garage elevator I realized the implications of going back to Elisa’s room. If she was there—and wanted to see us—she would have let Hannah know. If she was not there, it would only raise more questions. Worst of all, if she hadn’t been able to handle the Crosleys’ deaths and had done something to herself . . . but I wouldn’t let that thought take hold.

 
    Chapter Fifteen
    G IN F ACTORY S TREET was half a mile from the campus in a working-class neighborhood that did not seem interested in becoming gentrified. Rossi’s Italian Butcher and I Am Your New Cleaners! appeared to have been facing off on the corners for decades. I had been here once before, the late January morning I had learned that Elisa was a student at St. Brennan’s and rushed up to Massachusetts. After catching a glimpse of her on campus, I had driven to this street and sat for over an hour waiting for her to return to her dorm.
    Today I had no trouble parking in front of the residence hall, sliding in behind Hannah’s creaky blue Honda. A sign warned us that there was an hour maximum for nonpermit parking, but I doubted we would be here that long. My best guess was that we would not find Elisa here, an idea that shattered like a dropped glass when Hannah cried, “Look, Mom, there’s her car!” She was pointing to a black VW Passat farther up the street.
    “Are you sure it’s hers?”
    “It has her Rhode Island license plates.”
    Jane, seeing Hannah holding the balloons, moved back to the van and extracted the roses. Even if Elisa had not been able to let us know she would not be at graduation, she would be glad to see Hannah. I thought for a moment about letting her go up alone to not overwhelm Elisa. But then the darkest thought intruded. Sending Hannah up to find her sister’s body would be a terrible mistake.
    The residence hall had probably been built in the 1920. It had a door with decorative black iron bars and a brass plaque that read “Montfort House.” I was sure it had first been a hotel, then purchased by the college to use as a dorm. We crowded into the tiny black-and-white tiled foyer and clustered around the buzzer system. Hannah had her keys out, but I said, “We should ring the room first.”
    “Well, duh .”
    Behind her, Jane gave me an amused glance.
    Hannah jabbed at the button twice.
    The lobby stayed silent except for our breathing.