You Again

by Ashlee Mallory

  Terrific. Her royal highness was summoning her.

  Be still her heart.

  …

  Just when Sam thought he was going to avoid an awkward confrontation with Allie, Meredith had to tempt the fates. What the hell was she doing motioning for Allie to come over? From the mutinous look on Allie’s face, that had either been a well-timed power play or short-sighted gaffe. He’d be curious to see which.

  He glanced up. Allie was glaring down at them, her coffee mug in hand.

  Gone was the pretty, form-fitting outfit from the weekend, in favor of a practical, loose, white shirt tucked into a long, navy skirt. Except for the slit in the back that ended just above her knee. He’d noticed it earlier as she’d bent down to place the coffee creamer back in the fridge.

  She seemed upset. Or…something. He wondered if anything else had happened over the weekend. Would she have called him if she needed help? He hoped so. Someone had to watch out for her.

  “Meredith,” Allie said stiffly. “If this is about a planning committee issue, you could have sent me an email. Or called. You didn’t have to come all the way down here to see me.” She was pointedly ignoring him. Cute.

  “No.” Meredith shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s something about Darcy. Maybe we should go somewhere private.” Meredith looked apologetically at him. “Sam, I’ll look forward to Saturday. You have my cell.”

  If Allie’s glare had been chilly before, it became positively glacial at hearing they’d exchanged numbers.

  Wait.

  Was Allie jealous?

  He looked back and forth between the two women. Nah. There was clearly something else going on here than the fact he and Meredith were getting coffee this weekend. Allie whirled before he could say anything and followed Meredith out of the lounge.

  Sam was curious to know what they had to discuss in such privacy. Based on the hostile undercurrents—he’d have to be an idiot not to pick up on that—he wondered if he should be on hand, in case there was blood.

  He’d give them a couple minutes and then mosey on down to her room.

  Just to be sure.

  …

  Allie was not in the mood for small talk with Meredith. From the blazing look in Meredith’s eyes—which Allie had noticed she’d been careful to hide from Sam—Meredith wasn’t in the mood, either. Allie shut the door of her classroom and took a seat behind her desk. She gestured to the chair across from her then took a sip of coffee, waiting for Meredith’s other shoe to drop.

  “I’ve had a rather interesting talk with my daughter,” Meredith said far too casually. “She was explaining to me how she no longer wants to attend the school she’s had her heart set on her whole life. She thinks, for some strange reason, she wants to go to Wellesley College. Incidentally, the same college I seem to recall you attended. To study English, of all things. Do you want to tell me what the hell this is about?” Meredith’s voice rose louder for each word.

  The other woman’s anger only fueled Allie’s own, since try as she might, she couldn’t block thoughts of Meredith’s impending date with Sam. And it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to launch herself across the desk to gouge Meredith’s eyes out…

  With great difficulty, she kept her tone even. “I think it’s about Darcy pursuing what truly interests her. She’s really excited about becoming a writer, and the curriculum at Welles—”

  “I can’t help noticing you already know about her acceptance,” Meredith interrupted. “How long have you known?”

  Crap. Darcy had trusted Allie with her decision to apply to Wellesley back in her junior year, when she first started sending out requests for catalogs and applications. Most of them were for colleges in the Northeast. Neither Darcy nor Allie’d had to vocalize the obvious—that Meredith would freak out if she were to discover Darcy’s intention of moving so far away from her stepmother’s…guiding hand. Frankly, Meredith’s interest in her stepdaughter had always been a bit of a mystery to Allie, who wasn’t used to seeing her former friend act so…selflessly. But Allie had chalked it up to Meredith’s need for control, as opposed to any kind of affection for the awkward teen. And now, if Meredith were to discover her stepdaughter confided in Allie over a year ago… Yeah, it would not go well.

  But she also wasn’t comfortable lying. Even if it was to Meredith. “Last week,” she answered truthfully.

  Meredith’s eyes narrowed. “And how long have you known she was applying to Wellesley?”

  “Since she asked me for a letter of recommendation.”

  Meredith shook her head angrily. “We both know this isn’t about Darcy. This is about you and me. You’ve always been jealous of me, and now you’re getting your revenge by manipulating a vulnerable teen. You’ve stepped over a line.”

  Good heavens. Allie’s patience evaporated, and she couldn’t help but bark back, “Darcy is a smart, independent girl. In case you haven’t noticed, she loves to read, her writing is brilliant, and Wellesley has an excellent reputation for academics. It’s a tremendous honor to be accepted. You should be thrilled.” She stopped herself and took a breath. “Frankly, Meredith, this has nothing to do with you or me and everything to do with what your daughter wants with her life. Maybe you should listen to her sometime, instead of just trying to control her life.”

  Meredith’s nostrils flared.

  Oops. Wrong choice of words.

  “You don’t know anything about me or my daughter. For someone who has a lot to lose here, I would be a little more careful how you speak to me.”

  Allie’s brows went up. “I have a lot to lose? What are you talking about?”

  “You seem to forget I’m the chairwoman of the planning committee. Without my support, your plan to put together some kind of video homage to your precious Mr. Williams will come to nothing.”

  “Meredith, you seem to be a little slow on the uptake here,” she said incredulously.

  Meredith’s eyes tightened into slits. “I beg your pardon?”

  Now Allie was just being peevish, but she couldn’t help herself. “With the fire last Friday, I have nothing to put into the video. Everything in the archives is gone. Destroyed. So your threat seems somewhat pointless.”

  Meredith’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. “Well. Maybe I should have a little visit with the detective who’s investigating Mr. Williams’s death. Mention all the late nights the two of you shared, alone, in the press room. I think there was something more going on than you’ve let on. Maybe when he dumped your sorry ass, you cracked his head a good one and hid the body yourself.”

  She felt like Meredith had slapped her. But she covered it and drilled her with a steely look. “If you think you have valuable information, Meredith, then by all means, go to the police. I’m not afraid of anything you tell them because I had nothing to do with his death. I sure as hell didn’t engage in any type of sordid relationship with him. He had too much respect for me to do that.”

  Meredith’s mouth curved into a smile, but it didn’t dampen the anger in her eyes. She shook her head. “So naïve, Allie. You continue to remember Mr. Williams through rose-colored glasses. I’m so glad we had this chat.” She rose from the chair. “I want you to stop messing in my daughter’s life. Or I will file a complaint against you with the administration.”

  With that, Meredith turned on her high heels and was gone, throwing the door wide so it slammed against the wall. Allie flinched. But she wasn’t worried by Meredith’s threats. The bitch had nothing to lord over her. She had done her worst to Allie years ago. The heartache she’d felt sophomore year when Meredith had bragged about all the parties she and Sam were going to together no longer affected her. Nor did her gleeful tale of their late night hook-up in a dark bedroom at Dan Carothers’s house.

  Allie was over it. Completely. A long time ago.

  And seeing Sam and Meredith together again today, making a date for the weekend, well, she truly couldn’t care less.

  Allie’d had no claim on Sam�
�s heart back in high school. But as Allie’s best friend, Meredith had known exactly how Allie felt about him. She’d initially mocked Allie for her feelings for the quiet, reserved jock who Meredith said had the personality of a tree—solid but deadly dull. But then the bitch had gone out of her way to snare Sam for herself.

  Allie hadn’t really blamed Sam back then for falling prey to her. What did she expect? Sam to ask her out? Hardly. He hadn’t known Allie other than as the dorky chubs in the newsroom.

  But today? Today she wasn’t going to be so forgiving. Forget it. Besides, she had seriously misjudged Sam if Meredith was the kind of woman he wanted to take up with.

  She was better off without the jerk. Much better off.

  She walked over to the windows and gazed out across the barren lot still cordoned off with police tape.

  The final resting place of Jackson Williams.

  It had been over a week since his body was found, and still no official word on cause of death. From what the paper said, the remains had been sent to a forensic anthropologist who should be able to discern how Mr. Williams had died within a week or so.

  The area was still taped off, even though the police seemed to have gathered everything they needed and hadn’t been back since those first few days. The latest word was the school might be able to resume construction in the area soon. Which really should take a huge load off her mind, considering how obsessed she’d been for the past few months, wanting the school’s centennial to be a monumental success.

  So, why she didn’t feel any relief? Quite the opposite, in fact.

  Maybe it was her conscience niggling at her.

  Allie hadn’t been completely upfront with Meredith. It was true that anything down in the archive room relevant to the video project had been destroyed in the fire. Her search this weekend through those last boxes confirmed nothing of interest remained.

  But she wasn’t letting that stop her.

  Jeremy had mentioned Mr. Williams’s personnel effects had all been returned to his family. To a sister. With help from Jeremy’s secretary, Marie, who tracked down the sister’s name and address, Allie had sent her a message through Facebook last night. Although she hadn’t heard back yet, she was optimistic.

  But whether she heard from the sister or not, she still wasn’t giving up.

  Another plan simmered in her brain.

  She could tape live interviews with people who had known Mr. Williams. Get their recollection of what the man was like…and maybe secretly figure out who might have had reason enough to kill him.

  Allie had a few ideas of who she would start with. The fact his body was buried on school grounds might indicate the person had been affiliated with the school. Maybe still was. Someone with access to the building. Where they could have hidden the body until it was nighttime, and they could bury it.

  Someone who could do it again, exactly the same way.

  And she might well be next.

  Chapter Nine

  “I heard what happened to your car over the weekend, Allie. Rotten luck,” Tim Allred, Janine’s fiancé, said Tuesday afternoon as Allie angled her video camera a little to the right to get his face centered. “Did the police think there was any connection to the things going on here at the school?”

  “If they did, they didn’t share any information with me,” she murmured, preoccupied with the camera.

  He nodded. Tall and lanky, Tim looked cramped and uncomfortable as he sat in a chair in her classroom and waited for her to begin. He was being a good sport, though. He didn’t hesitate to accept her request to sit down and discuss Mr. Williams on camera. Unlike a few others.

  “It’s really a shame, though,” he continued. “A hundred years of files and records, and who knows what else…all gone.”

  “I wouldn’t say everything’s lost. About five years ago, most of the important documents were scanned and saved on the school’s computers. Even the student newspaper went through archives and made an effort to preserve the most significant events for posterity. Unfortunately, at the time, preserving memories of Mr. Williams wasn’t on the radar.” She looked up and smiled. “Okay, everything looks good here. I think we’re ready to begin filming.”

  She started with a few preliminary questions about the years he attended St. Andrew’s and how he knew Mr. Williams. He answered as she had imagined he would. He’d had Mr. Williams for English his freshman year, and later, Mr. Williams had been his soccer coach. Nothing particularly earthshattering. She needed him to dig for something more.

  “You were the co-captain of the varsity soccer team two years in a row, weren’t you?”

  “I was. Both my junior and senior year.” He sat up proudly.

  “Who was the captain in your senior year?”

  He looked down at his fingers, studying the cuticles. Even from behind the camera, Allie could see their raggedness. “Sam won out for captain my senior year.”

  She straightened. “Wasn’t he a junior? I always thought the junior co-captain automatically moved into the captain role the next year. Why didn’t you get captain?”

  “Guess even Mr. Williams had his favorites.” He raised his gaze to Allie’s and shrugged. “I didn’t mind so much.”

  “Really? I would have been a little pissed off. It doesn’t seem fair.” She pushed him, hoping to see a drop in his jovial, off-hand manner.

  “Nah. It was all the same to me. I love soccer. Always have. The title didn’t matter. Whether I was captain or co-captain, I still got an academic scholarship to Westminster. And a few dates when I was in a pinch,” he added with a smile. “Besides, Sam was better. He’d really kicked up his game that last year—no pun intended.” He laughed at his own joke, and she tried to join him.

  She drew a long, mental line through Tim’s name on her list of suspects.

  “What can you tell me about Mr. Williams? Was he well-liked by the guys on the team?” Maybe Tim didn’t resent Mr. Williams, but others may not have been so affable.

  “Sure. He was a great guy. In fact—” His thick brows dipped down as he seemed to be remembering something. She didn’t dare speak and risk him losing the thin line to his memory.

  “I remember our senior year when we took State. He was giving us all a pep talk before a game. We were all nervous—we didn’t want to mess up when we were so close. We didn’t want to disappoint our friends and family, the school, even him. He gave the speech about not letting the loss define us, just playing for fun, yada yada. You know the drill. Nothing unique. But it was the delivery. It really got to me and I’m sure every one of us. And we took the title. But even if we’d lost, he’d have been okay. He got us, you know?”

  Allie nodded, imagining Mr. Williams, his brown, curly hair probably wind-blown and tousled, his dark eyes warm and friendly when he delivered those words of inspiration. Tim was right about one thing. With Mr. Williams, it was more than just the words. It was the delivery. He always meant what he was saying. It wasn’t lip-service.

  Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked to avoid Tim seeing.

  “That was perfect, Tim. I think I have what I need.”

  …

  “Eat two more nuggets, and I’ll let you watch some Netflix on my phone,” Allie told Violet later that night. They were seated with Laney around her sister’s kitchen table, munching from bags of Chick-Fil-A.

  Violet shoved a full nugget in her mouth, eyes glowing in anticipation of the unexpected treat of Netflix on a school night. Two minutes later, after depositing her daughter’s plate in the sink, Allie settled Vi in a squishy chair in the family room watching repeats of Wizards of Waverly Place.

  Leaving Allie and her sister alone to talk in the kitchen.

  “I still can’t believe you brought him. I don’t think my grandma will ever forgive you,” Laney lamented.

  Allie plunged a fork into a strawberry. She didn’t really think Ethel’s lack of forgiveness would be much loss but chose not to mention that to Laney. She bit into the j
uicy berry. “Mmm. These are good. You should try one.”

  “Although…I suppose I would see his appeal,” her sister went on, ignoring Allie’s hint to change the subject. “There is something about him… I could almost see how you may have lost your mind and brought him over Saturday. He’s definitely your type.”

  “My type?” Allie asked with skepticism, giving in. “And what type is that?”

  “Oh, hello. Don’t pretend you haven’t seen every Colin Firth movie ever made—and own most of them. Sam has that good-looking-in-a-quiet-way thing going for him. Even if his face does seem a little more beaten up—rugged, I guess you’d say—compared to the guys you usually date. Hockey player?”

  “Soccer, actually.”

  Laney nodded as if that explained it all and pushed a tomato around her almost untouched chicken salad. “And he seemed to be into you. I can’t imagine any man sticking around for an extra helping of lime Jell-O unless he wanted to be there.”

  “You’re definitely wrong about that.”

  Allie hadn’t told her sister about the conversation she had with Sam the other night. When he admitted to being callous enough to use another person’s story for financial gain. She probably wouldn’t, since it would only cause blind panic among Laney and the rest of the family. Instead, she told her about Sam’s upcoming date with Meredith.

  Laney looked suitably disgusted. “You’re definitely better off without him. Although…I will mention one last thing.”

  Famous last words. Allie popped the last bite of her sandwich in her mouth and waited for the kicker.

  “Aside from my mother’s aversion to the guy, even she admitted there were some undercurrents between you. She’s torn between horror that an author universally despised by her community could possibly become a family member and the jubilation her spinster daughter may finally be joined in holy matrimony. Needless to say, she’s praying on this. A lot.”

  Allie nearly choked. “Matrimony? Is she nuts?” Hell, no. Definitely time for a new subject. “Where’s Mark tonight? It’s been a while since I’ve seen him. I don’t think I caught him at Evan’s the other day, either.”