by Linda Keir
“Maybe he was high and drove off the cliff or something. The guy liked to party.”
“Seems like a long shot, Dad.”
He thought for a while as billboards appeared on the outskirts of Bloomington-Normal.
“I still think it’s Roy. Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”
“Except when it isn’t,” she said, spying an exit with a gas station, a Starbucks, and a Panera. “I really have to pee, and I’m hungry.”
He smiled and put on his turn signal. “Cassidy, I’m so impressed with you. I’m not happy we have to relive this episode, and I’m obviously hoping we can keep your mom out of it, but she and I will help as much as we can. Do you think I should meet with Mr. Kelly and offer to talk to him? Maybe we could keep it off the record.”
Cassidy pondered the offer. On the one hand, it felt like a scoop. On the other, since Dad had already told her everything he knew, it seemed kind of redundant. She had no way of knowing if Mr. Kelly would agree to keep it “off the record,” and it was possible it might leak out anyway. And what if, once they started talking, Dad gave Mr. Kelly shit about letting her go see Roy in jail, even though he hadn’t known anything about it? And if Tate got involved . . .
Rolling up the off-ramp, they coasted to a stop and considered the options.
“Starbucks,” she said. “And please don’t talk to Mr. Kelly. Tate was with me, and he can’t get in trouble again.”
“Tate was with you?” he asked sharply. “Why are you just telling me now?”
“It doesn’t matter, Dad. He wasn’t in the interview, so he didn’t hear everything.”
Rolling through a stop sign, he accelerated too quickly. “I know he’s your boyfriend, but do not tell him. The last thing we need is to get more people involved.”
Andi had kissed and hugged Cassidy goodbye and watched them drive off, confident in the knowledge that Ian would answer any of their daughter’s lingering questions while reassuring her that her parents wouldn’t stand by while an innocent man was convicted for a crime he didn’t commit.
Last night, after they’d made love like their very existence depended on it, gotten ready like nothing out of the ordinary had happened between them, and spent the evening mingling at a perfectly pleasant cocktail party, she and Ian had agreed to support whatever efforts Cassidy felt she needed to make on behalf of Roy, if only to restore their daughter’s confidence in them. Even if it meant coming forward about Andi’s affair with Dallas.
Of course, since Roy had to be guilty, they both agreed—without saying so—there was no reason to worry it would ever come to that.
The second Ian’s Audi left the driveway, Andi ran up to Cassidy’s room to open the class Google Drive she hadn’t checked since Roy was officially charged.
Cassidy’s bedroom looked just as she expected, with the bed unmade, a wet towel tossed over the upholstered chair, and two pairs of shoes on the floor in front of the open closet. Unfortunately, her computer, the only thing Andi really cared about at the moment, had been powered down.
With plan A as a nonstarter, she moved on to plan B. It was even less on the up-and-up, but she’d been thinking about it all weekend. More accurately, talking herself into it.
She needed to know what was going on in Ian’s head. Not the adult Ian, who she thought she knew as well as she knew herself, but the seventeen-year-old Ian, during the five months she hadn’t known him at all.
Creeping past the family room, she checked to make sure the twins were happily hypnotized by the Xbox or PSwhatever. Then she ducked into Ian’s study and silently closed the door. Once inside, she began an inch-by-inch search of every bookshelf, cabinet, and drawer. Certain she hadn’t missed anything in plain sight, she reached into a pewter mug on the fireplace mantel and extracted the key to his locked desk drawer. Inside, there was plenty to look at, including a copy of a $1,000 receipt for a Prohibition-era bottle of bourbon, but not what she was hoping to find. She moved on to the wall safe in his closet and entered the combination. No surprises there: birth certificates, passports, a few prized photos of the kids from before everything went entirely digital, and some heirloom jewelry that had belonged to her mother.
Before moving on to another room, Andi looked around one last time—and then it hit her. At Glenlake, she’d once watched Ian hide airline-size bottles of liquor on a wooden lip underneath his dorm room desk.
She rolled the chair out of the way, then crouched down under his cherry desk, a far cry from the particle board–and–melamine dorm standard, and looked underneath the center drawer and both sides of the desk.
Nothing.
Just because she felt like it, she turned and ran her hand underneath the decorative arch at the base of the nearby credenza. Her fingers stopped on a protrusion, what felt like the spine of a book. She grabbed her iPhone from her pocket, swiped on the light, and shined it underneath.
The Glenlake crest and IAN COPELAND were embossed on the cover in silver lettering.
Just as shiny was the matching silver lock.
Chapter Fifty-Two
She’d been gone only a few days, but when her dad dropped her off, Cassidy felt like she was returning after a long break. She felt older somehow, and wondered if she’d ever be able to look at Glenlake without thinking of her parents’ secret history there. As she fell in with the crowd of kids, she thought, We have no idea what really happens around us.
Rounding the corner of the writing center, she saw Tate walking with Hannah Chang and a couple of other girls. As she hurried up and opened her mouth to yell hello, the warmth flooding her chest turned suddenly cold. Tate and Hannah were too close, their sides brushing while Tate leaned in to hear what she was saying.
“Tate,” she called, her voice sounding icy even to her. Her legs frozen.
He turned and, seeing her, lit up in a way that should have removed all doubt. Without even a word to Hannah, he jogged right over and wrapped her up in a hug.
“Longest weekend of my life,” he told her, kissing her square on the lips.
Cassidy hugged him back, closing her eyes so she wouldn’t see the eye rolls from the other girls.
“Missed you,” she whispered.
Maybe her parents’ story was screwing with her memories. But she couldn’t let it mess with her feelings.
After considering options that included dining alone at the Old Road Inn and watching a movie alone in his room at the Old Road Inn, Ian impulsively plugged an address into his phone and watched as the map zeroed in on a spot near Fulton Market. Putting the car in gear, he headed back down to Chicago.
After getting off the expressway, Ian pulled up across the street from the Brandt Group storefront in a former industrial space where the sidewalk ran at loading-dock height. A CLOSED sign was hanging on the front door, but there was a light on in the back.
He lifted his phone, opened his contacts, found Preston’s number, and called, hoping to once again broach the 1957 J.T.S. Brown, in light of a vintage bottle of Four Roses a customer had just tried to return for a similar reason.
Preston answered on the fourth ring. “Hey, Ian, what’s up?”
“I’m in Chicago unexpectedly. I know it’s a long shot, but I thought I’d see if you wanted to grab dinner.”
Preston didn’t answer right away. There was a sound of something moving.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No, I’m actually at the store, just getting some work done.”
I’m right outside, Ian almost told him, stopping because it would have sounded weird showing up before making the invitation. Instead he said, “I’ve never seen your space. Would you mind if I came over and checked it out?”
“Let’s do that another time,” said Preston. “I’m doing inventory, the place is an unholy mess, and I’m up to my eyeballs right now.”
“I understand,” said Ian, trying not to sound disappointed.
After they hung up, Ian watched
the storefront. They were both in the business, and Ian wasn’t going to be put off by seeing back-room clutter. Why didn’t Preston want him to come in? Before he could start the car, the light in the store went out. Ian waited, not wanting to be spotted driving away.
A couple of minutes later, Preston came out the front door with three liquor boxes on a hand truck. He wheeled them over to the nearest dumpster, lifted the lid, and tossed them inside. Returning the hand truck to the store, he locked up before waiting for the Uber that rolled up at the curb to take him away.
Ian got out of his car, crossed the quiet street, and lifted the dumpster lid. Fortunately, it was half-full, and he didn’t have to lean in to reach the boxes Preston had tossed. He opened the flaps on the first one and found empty bottles of a little-known but inexpensive bourbon. Odd, but not unexplainable. Maybe they’d had an in-store tasting.
He opened another box. This one contained label blanks in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes—only they weren’t entirely blank. They looked like misprints, but they also looked antique. For good measure, there was a glue pot with a brush applicator that didn’t look like any commercial brand Ian had ever seen.
Breathing hard, Ian opened the final box. New bottles of exotic liqueurs, cordials, and aperitifs. All empty.
Andi couldn’t commit the ultimate sin and break open Ian’s journal.
That’s what she kept telling herself.
In truth, she tried a couple of times to pick the lock without obvious tampering but didn’t get anywhere. When Owen needed a ride to a friend’s house, ostensibly to work on a science project, and Whitney suggested they girl it up and go get pedicures, Andi resisted the urge to smash the thing open with a paperweight and reluctantly put it back where she’d found it.
That evening, she was distracted from trying yet again by a call from Cassidy, who apologized for getting into your personal shit. In the brief conversation that followed, and without scolding her for the profanity, she told Cassidy the weekend’s conversations had been a shock, but that she appreciated her candor and was thankful to have a daughter high-minded enough to care whether justice was truly being served. Andi thought she might have laid it on a little thick, but Cassidy, already bolstered by Ian, responded positively to the praise.
Andi then “leveled” with her daughter, admitting that knowing the bracelet she’d given Dallas encircled his skeletal wrist had rattled her badly. And though she was glad she hadn’t actually seen it, she felt she needed to look through the photos of the scene to make sure there wasn’t anything else that had been missed. Something only she would notice.
Thankfully, Cassidy agreed that was a good idea.
While she was at it, Andi suggested she examine everything that had been collected about Roy’s involvement, in case she could shed any light on something that might prove him innocent. Cassidy shared her computer log-in information enthusiastically.
Andi had already made a habit of checking Google Drive, so she knew there wasn’t anything in it that would change the outcome of Roy’s case. Her real focus was on the new photos, even though looking at them was the last thing she wanted to do.
With every photo of the rusted Dodge Charger’s watery exhumation, she thought about how much Dallas had adored his car. How he fretted over the dangers of narrow parking spaces and rogue shopping carts, even errant scratches from the rivets on a leaning student’s jeans. How out of character it would have been to risk the brush and rocks on the narrow road to the cliff.
She thought about the poetic justice of him spending eternity with his baby. Maybe his only true love.
In the end, she flagged only one photo that showed the slightest hint of a bracelet among the bones of a man she’d mistakenly believed she loved.
And then she erased it.
She’d cried when Dallas slapped her. She’d cried multiple times over the following weeks before she moved on, back to where she’d started, and where she would end, with Ian at her side.
At least she hoped that was where all this would end.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Still shaken by his discovery the night before, Ian went for a run in the morning. While the loop around Lake Loomis was in many ways the best choice, he didn’t think he was up for it. The weather was eerily close to what it had been on the long-ago day he’d followed Andi to her meeting with Dallas Fucking Walker, and that was one memory lane he didn’t want to jog down. Instead, he started from the Old Road Inn and jogged several blocks before reaching the bike path that paralleled the commuter train tracks.
His mind had raced all night. Should he diplomatically end his business relationship with Preston? Report him to the police for fraud? Or simply do nothing and carry on as usual?
Forgoing the extra income would make it hard, if not impossible, to pay Simon Bloom back on time. Obviously, it was risky to continue selling the counterfeit bottles of “vintage” liquors, but even if he stopped, he couldn’t count on anyone believing that he himself had been duped. He’d lose all credibility in town regardless.
After four miles in the crisp spring air, he still didn’t know what to do.
He showered, changed, checked out of his room, and headed to the Glenlake campus, parking in the small visitors’ lot in front of McCormick Mansion, to deal with the primary reason for his trip, one he hadn’t told Cassidy. With Copeland Hall looming behind him, he had a sudden memory of his first year at Glenlake, when every time he’d passed the building bearing his family’s name he’d felt spotlighted, as if people were looking at him. Or worse, talking about him. A year later, he’d learned to laugh off the connection and even make fun of it. Once he’d gone so far as to stick a fake mustache on the bust of old Augustus, just to show his friends he didn’t think the hereditary connection made him better than the rest of them.
But later, when no one was around, he’d returned to make sure the fake mustache’s adhesive hadn’t gummed up the bronze.
Ian was acutely conscious of the status conferred upon him by his family name and, more importantly, the titanic sum of money the family had bequeathed to the school over the past century. Where some parents would be stopped at the first desk, he was recognized, known by first name, and waved through every door.
He planned to use every ounce of that privilege to his advantage today.
Smiling and greeting Mrs. Hodges in reception, he kept moving, striding up the stairs to the main offices on the second floor. Beyond the heavy oak doors of the headmaster’s sanctum, he checked in with the executive secretary, who’d been there as long as anyone could remember.
“That’s a nice scarf, Doris,” he told her. “Is Josh in?”
“Thank you,” she said, touching the floral print draped loosely over her shoulders. “He’s between calls for the next forty minutes. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
He touched her handset gently before she could pick it up. “Let me surprise him.”
She smiled helplessly as he crossed the room to the headmaster’s office. As he did, he caught a glimpse through a half-open door of Sharon Lysander, the assistant headmaster, with a phone to her ear. She’d taken it stoically when the board told her they were filling the headmaster’s position with an external hire.
She’s a good soldier, Cope had said about her then.
Ian knocked twice and opened, catching Joshua Scanlon in the act of squinting at a spreadsheet on one of his two screens.
As Scanlon looked up, Ian spotted a side table covered with newspaper and magazine clippings featuring headlines like DEAD POET SOCIETY?, a mere fraction of what had appeared online.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, as Scanlon rose to greet him.
“Not too bad,” Scanlon said, shaking hands. “It’s weird, though. You go through the days and weeks thinking nobody notices or cares what’s going on in your little backwater—that sure changed in a hurry.”
“Well, they don’t care, until something goes wrong,” said Ian.
Sca
nlon guided him over to the couch by the coffee table and settled into a comfortable chair. “I just got a call from one of those cold-case investigation shows, if you can believe it.”
“I assume you said no?”
Scanlon shook his head. “We’ve said no to just about everything, but the board decided we should cooperate. They’d run their piece anyway, so we don’t want to look like we have anything to hide. I’ll just stick to the script and try to talk about all the positive things happening at Glenlake.”
“And hope they don’t edit it out.”
“Damn right,” Scanlon said with a chuckle. “Coffee?”
“That would be wonderful,” Ian told him.
Scanlon jumped to his feet.
Lincoln Darrow would have shouted at Doris to fetch the coffee, thought Ian, but Scanlon looks ready to make the coffee run himself.
“Student union?” said Ian, rising. “We can walk and talk.”
Because McCormick Mansion had been connected to two newer buildings, they were able to walk most of the way indoors, popping outside just briefly before crossing into the student union. Ian caught a glimpse of the new writing center, now fully constructed but with stickers still plastered across the newly installed windows. It certainly looked on schedule to open the following fall.
“I expect you’re here about Dallas Walker, too,” Scanlon said.
Ian nodded. He’d thought a lot about how to play it, and the words came easily.
“My wife and I feel a connection to this case beyond our obvious strong feelings about the school’s reputation. As you may or may not know, we were both seniors during Walker’s time here, and Andi was even a student in his poetry seminar. He encouraged her a lot, and they worked together on the first-ever poetry slam.”
“I’m sure his disappearance must have been a terrible shock,” Scanlon offered sympathetically as they arrived at the union and got in line to order coffee.
“I think it was traumatic for everyone,” said Ian, remembering instead the almost giddy excitement that had percolated on campus in the following weeks. Nobody knew Walker was dead, so nobody grieved. Guessing what had happened became a fun game that everybody played.
