were hung according to color, and the hangers were evenly spaced. Everything looked ironed, and tucked into the top shelf was one of those plastic boards people used to fold their shirts into perfect little rectangles. Her shoes were neatly sorted in what appeared to be the most used at the front and special occasion at the back.
Her toiletries were still in their cubby at the top of the closet, and there was only one pair of shoes missing.
“How old was this girl?” Holden asked, startling me. I’d forgotten he was there.
“Eighteen.”
“Have you ever seen an eighteen-year-old this…meticulous?”
“I’ve never seen anyone this meticulous.”
On her desk was an alphabetized stack of folders, one for each class, but they only held old assignments, nothing to indicate any sort of sinister plot against Lucy. I fired up her laptop and was delighted to find that her webmail stored her password for her.
Mom. Re: Valentine’s Day Card. Boring.
Andy B. Next Tuesday! I opened that one. It was just a message from a classmate asking if she was going to be at the bar next week. Lucy hadn’t replied.
G.H. Seminar Selections . G.H.? I clicked on the link, hoping it was a coincidence.
Lucy,
Professor Mayhew mentioned you wanted to do your presentation on Spencer’s The Faerie Queene . Several other students have expressed an interest in this same poem. Why don’t you come by my office on Friday, and we can discuss some other options?
Sincerely,
G. Holbrook
“Son of a bitch. ” I slapped the laptop shut and scrubbed my face with my hands. So Gabriel knew Lucy. And he’d asked to meet with her roughly the same time she’d gone missing. Then he’d gotten accused of murdering another girl who happened to be in the same literature class as Lucy. I was all for minor coincidences, but this stunk to high heaven.
“What?”
“Do you ever get the distinct impression you’re being played?”
He arched a brow and looked at the closed laptop. “Did you find something?”
“No. Nothing yet. But I have about twenty minutes to make it to Lucy’s Medieval Literature class.”
Medieval Literature was an evening class held in one of the older humanities buildings on the Columbia campus. The room was small, only holding enough seats for about fifty students, and the whole place smelled of dust and stale coffee.
I’d left Holden in the library, figuring a permanently early-thirties vampire would stick out like a sore thumb in a third-year English class. I had no idea how right I was until I got there. The room was filled to capacity, and in spite of knowing two students were missing, I had difficulty getting a seat.
I slid into an empty desk near the back of the classroom and took stock of my surroundings. Every seat was filled with a young, pretty girl. I looked around twice, but my search was fruitless. There wasn’t a single male in the entire room. It was like a midnight screening for a new Sex and the City movie.
The smell of estrogen and desire was thick in the air, not exactly what I was expecting to smell coming off these girls at seven thirty in the evening. At first I thought maybe Gabriel was the reason they were all here. A smart, handsome guy offering to help them decipher ye olde English? I could appreciate the draw.
Then the professor came in, and the entire room let out a collective, feminine sigh of approval.
From the reaction, I expected some Daniel Craig lookalike with a piercing gaze and an ovary-exploding accent. Professor Mayhew was not at all what I’d envisioned.
He was short, for starters, maybe five-foot-eight or five-foot-nine. He was about fifty, judging by the creases wrinkling his forehead and deepening the frown lines around his mouth. His eyes were gray, an unsettling stormy color that peeked out from hooded lids but was alight with some sort of spark I couldn’t pinpoint. Once-dark hair was peppered with silver and had been hastily swept back but was already falling
Her toiletries were still in their cubby at the top of the closet, and there was only one pair of shoes missing.
“How old was this girl?” Holden asked, startling me. I’d forgotten he was there.
“Eighteen.”
“Have you ever seen an eighteen-year-old this…meticulous?”
“I’ve never seen anyone this meticulous.”
On her desk was an alphabetized stack of folders, one for each class, but they only held old assignments, nothing to indicate any sort of sinister plot against Lucy. I fired up her laptop and was delighted to find that her webmail stored her password for her.
Mom. Re: Valentine’s Day Card. Boring.
Andy B. Next Tuesday! I opened that one. It was just a message from a classmate asking if she was going to be at the bar next week. Lucy hadn’t replied.
G.H. Seminar Selections . G.H.? I clicked on the link, hoping it was a coincidence.
Lucy,
Professor Mayhew mentioned you wanted to do your presentation on Spencer’s The Faerie Queene . Several other students have expressed an interest in this same poem. Why don’t you come by my office on Friday, and we can discuss some other options?
Sincerely,
G. Holbrook
“Son of a bitch. ” I slapped the laptop shut and scrubbed my face with my hands. So Gabriel knew Lucy. And he’d asked to meet with her roughly the same time she’d gone missing. Then he’d gotten accused of murdering another girl who happened to be in the same literature class as Lucy. I was all for minor coincidences, but this stunk to high heaven.
“What?”
“Do you ever get the distinct impression you’re being played?”
He arched a brow and looked at the closed laptop. “Did you find something?”
“No. Nothing yet. But I have about twenty minutes to make it to Lucy’s Medieval Literature class.”
Medieval Literature was an evening class held in one of the older humanities buildings on the Columbia campus. The room was small, only holding enough seats for about fifty students, and the whole place smelled of dust and stale coffee.
I’d left Holden in the library, figuring a permanently early-thirties vampire would stick out like a sore thumb in a third-year English class. I had no idea how right I was until I got there. The room was filled to capacity, and in spite of knowing two students were missing, I had difficulty getting a seat.
I slid into an empty desk near the back of the classroom and took stock of my surroundings. Every seat was filled with a young, pretty girl. I looked around twice, but my search was fruitless. There wasn’t a single male in the entire room. It was like a midnight screening for a new Sex and the City movie.
The smell of estrogen and desire was thick in the air, not exactly what I was expecting to smell coming off these girls at seven thirty in the evening. At first I thought maybe Gabriel was the reason they were all here. A smart, handsome guy offering to help them decipher ye olde English? I could appreciate the draw.
Then the professor came in, and the entire room let out a collective, feminine sigh of approval.
From the reaction, I expected some Daniel Craig lookalike with a piercing gaze and an ovary-exploding accent. Professor Mayhew was not at all what I’d envisioned.
He was short, for starters, maybe five-foot-eight or five-foot-nine. He was about fifty, judging by the creases wrinkling his forehead and deepening the frown lines around his mouth. His eyes were gray, an unsettling stormy color that peeked out from hooded lids but was alight with some sort of spark I couldn’t pinpoint. Once-dark hair was peppered with silver and had been hastily swept back but was already falling
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