Dark and Stormy

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  He smelled safe and good.

  The jerk.

  I laid the sweater aside and dug through the rest of his stuff. As expected, no green stains, Jell-O packages, or other signs that he was the prankster.

  I zipped his bag shut.

  But…why was his bag still here? He had spent last night in his own quarters…as had Nick. I looked back at Nick’s bag. They couldn’t have a bad reason for keeping stuff in the dorm, but it was odd and warranted looking into.

  I didn’t toss his bag or kick it. I just stuffed my mad feelings down for the moment and moved on to Si’s bag where I fully expected to find what I was looking for.

  In the front pocket of his backpack—the hiking kind with the exterior metal frame—I found a pair of brown leather gloves. The pinky finger side of one glove was discolored. The color was technically just a darker brown, but…it was definitely stained, and he hadn’t worn this pair recently. I took a quick picture with my phone and put them back where I found them. The rest of his stuff was shoved in the pack like it was a dirty laundry bag. The gust of stink that escaped when I unzipped it told me that was an apt description. However, there were no other tell-tale signs of vandalism.

  Garret’s bag was equally disgusting, but tangled up in the mess of clothes was a tan and brown plaid scarf with a bright green end. It looked exactly like it had gotten accidentally dipped in a big vat of green water.

  I took a picture and put it back where I found it.

  The date stamp on the pictures should be enough evidence even if the boys ditched their stuff before we had a chance to call them on it.

  I rocked back on my heels. I didn’t see the point in searching the girls’ rooms now, but a movement outside caught my eye. Isaac was rolling a wheelbarrow of wood this direction. I moved to the hall before he could come in.

  Searching the rooms was better than seeing Isaac while I was mad.

  I went all the way down to Cadence’s room first, since it was the farthest from the common room. I pulled open each drawer and eyeballed her neatly folded clothes. I wasn’t looking too hard, since I had what I needed to pin the job on at least Garret. I peaked under her bed. She had a set of ten pound weights and a pair of running shoes. I pulled out the weights, but there was no tell-tale sign of blood on the ends. Obviously.

  I scanned her bedside table. Her phone was plugged into a charger.

  I was tempted to turn it on to see what she had been up to.

  So I did.

  I’d like to think it was an instinct that led me to do it, but it was morbid curiosity.

  Cadence was our RA, responsible for our social and spiritual life while on campus. Here to listen, to counsel, and to guide. She was fairly good at it if you were actually interested in that kind of thing. But despite her role as confidant to the girls, her own life was mostly a closed book. No pictures pinned to her walls, few stories of her own life to help us learn through her mistakes. She was always handy with a Bible verse and a prayer, but I, at least, knew next to nothing about her life. Of course, my current status as “person you should share your secrets with” was in doubt. Nonetheless, I felt I ought to know Cadence better than I did.

  When her phone was done booting up, I clicked straight to Messenger…the easiest place to get the scoop on what she was up to when we girls weren’t paying attention.

  I scrolled through her recent messages. Lots from her mom. Several from someone named Marshall. I opened one, but felt guilty doing it. Marshall asked what she was sending mom for Christmas, so I guessed he was her brother.

  Those were just the messages from today. I scrolled through to the day before yesterday.

  In between Mom, Marshall, Stina, and Megan Hoffen’s regular chatter, I saw one from Rolf.

  His name hit me like a fist in the stomach. I took a deep breath and sat down.

  Why shouldn’t he text? Cadence had been at Tillgiven for a couple of years. Rolf had been around a long time. They probably knew each other.

  My finger shook, but I opened the message.

  I read them backwards, from the first message that appeared on the screen, as you would if you were sneaking around reading someone else’s messages.

  Rolf: OK CU.

  Cadence: Never mind, that will work.

  Cadence: Maybe so.

  Rolf: Maybe later, then?

  Cadence: Nah. I’ll pass.

  Rolf: I’ll make it easy. Boys’ dorm, yes?

  Cadence: Could be tough with the storm.

  Rolf: I’ve got a fun surprise.

  Cadence: Not sure.

  Rolf: Wanna hook up?

  Cadence: Just the normal stuff.

  Rolf: R U busy tonight?

  I read it again, the right direction. Rolf wanted to hook up with Cadence in the boys’ dorm. The night of the storm. The night he was killed. And she had agreed.

  The air stopped filling my lungs. It just stopped. I dropped the phone and tried hard to breath, but I couldn’t. I held my breath, but that didn’t help. My head floated, not attached. I swayed where I sat. My head bumped the wall.

  I shook myself, then covered my mouth with cupped hands and breathed in and out. I was hyperventilating and needed to cut down on my oxygen intake a little.

  It helped, but as soon as my breathing was right again, tears sprung to my eyes.

  What had Cadence done?

  I pulled on my ponytail. I should take the phone straight to the police, but were they allowed to read messages without a warrant in Sweden? I wasn’t even sure they were allowed to in the US.

  I exhaled slowly. No, if these came from Rolf’s phone, they already knew.

  But they had let Cadence leave the campus, so surely everything was okay.

  Maybe.

  I didn’t want to need Isaac right now, but it looked like I did.

  Thinking it wasn’t wise to A) have covered Cadence’s phone in my fingerprints, or B) walk off with her phone now, I took a picture of her screen with my phone. Odds were it would be unreadable, but I had to try.

  Then I swung out of her room as fast as I could. I took the hall at a sprint and grabbed Isaac by the elbow as I passed him. He dropped the logs he was holding and came with me.

  I took him all the way to his office and shut the door.

  I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t. I held up a finger to indicate he needed to keep his lip zipped for at least a minute more. When I had caught my breath, I still couldn’t bring myself to say what I had come to say. “Why is your stuff still in the girls’ dorm? And Nick’s too?

  “I know I didn’t sleep there last night, but I can’t seem to commit to moving back to my place permanently.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled at me. “I feel like it might be better to stay close. I expect Nick feels the same.”

  I shrugged. It was the least of my concerns, but it had helped me center myself, so I took a deep breath and let ‘er rip. “Okay. Forget that and our other stuff for a minute and look at this:” I held out my phone with the picture of Cadence’s phone on the screen. My hand shook, so I used my other hand to steady myself. “That is Cadence’s phone. She set an appointment with Rolf, to meet at the boys’ dorm the night he was killed. For my own peace of mind give me the three reasons she couldn’t have killed him.”

  “Er—” Isaac looked shocked, but pulled it together well. “She’s not strong enough.”

  “Yes, she is. Have you seen her guns? Plus, she has weights under her bed, so you know, she probably uses them.”

  “She doesn’t have a motive.” Isaac slipped my phone out of my hand and stared at it.

  “She’s a girl. He’s a pig. That’s motive.” I grabbed a pen from his desk and started to write the same thing on Cadence’s card.

  “She has an alibi?” He said it like it was a question.

  “Does she?” I considered the night of the murder. Where had Cadence been the whole time?

  “It seems like she was accounted for the whole time, always with one or the other of
us. I know she never left the common room during the storm.” Isaac kept his voice steady and calm.

  “No, you’re wrong. She went to bed early. What if she went out of the common room and then right out the back door? What if she didn’t go to bed until after she had killed him?” I sat down. My chin was quivering in a way that meant I might start crying any second. I wasn’t willing to do that right now.

  “If you press the point, she may have had opportunity, but I don’t think gender equals motive. She seems to be friendly enough in the messages.” Isaac looked towards the boys’ dorm, eyes narrowed, but he did not look entirely convinced of what he was saying.

  “I suspect Rolf had his phone on him, which would mean the police already know about this.”

  “True.” Isaac turned back to me.

  “Our biggest concern right now is that we let our prime suspect go to town. What if she doesn’t come back?”

  “The other girls won’t come back without her.” Isaac reached for my hand, but I pulled it back and put it in my pocket.

  “It’s not that hard to sneak away from this place.”

  “I’m sorry.” He gave me a soulful, puppy-like look. “I wasn’t really thinking about anything when I kissed you. Just about how I would rather kiss you than argue. It was an impulse—a bad one.”

  “You’re sorry?” A man, apologizing? It took my breath away almost.

  “I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings. But to be honest, I’m only a little bit sorry that I kissed you, and I really want to do it again.” He didn’t make a move for me though, which I appreciated.

  “Well…”

  “You didn’t think…” He looked out the window again. “You didn’t feel forced, or anything, right? I mean, I made a move, but I didn’t…”

  I pressed my lips together. I knew what he was asking. But I felt a little bit like he had stolen my kiss, and I was still mad. My first kiss was mine to give, wasn’t it? “I didn’t really have a choice.”

  “But you didn’t seem to mind.” He blushed as he said it, but I knew what he was referring to.

  I hadn’t seemed to mind. Because I hadn’t totally minded, not at first. Not until it sunk in that my first kiss was because he wanted to shut me up.

  I had kind of liked it for a second. And then I hadn’t.

  But when I stepped away, it wasn’t like he had made me do it again or anything. I mean, he had just…kissed me…because he loved me. And because he loved me, when I got mad at him, he had given me as much space as I needed. I sighed. “It’s complicated.”

  “If it helps, I feel like an idiot, and half the school saw me and also thinks I’m an idiot.”

  I chuckled. “That does kind of help.”

  “Dani…” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “That wasn’t…your first kiss, was it?”

  I looked away. The way he stared at me, all bristly-chinned manliness, made me feel about twelve. But I wasn’t about twelve. I was almost twenty.

  “I am really, really sorry, and I promise I will not kiss you again.”

  “I never said that was what I was after!” I stared at him.

  He laughed.

  “I can wait until you are ready. You can kiss me next time.”

  “I can’t do that! I can’t be forward.”

  He lifted his eyebrow and one dimple popped in his cheek. The nerve.

  “Honest! I could never kiss you first, not in a million years.”

  As we were talking, we had slowly slipped closer and closer. It felt very much like a stiff breeze, or one moment’s weakness, would make me a liar, and I would be kissing him. My eyes were locked on his, and I couldn’t move, but I could smell his minty breath. I wished I wasn’t wearing strawberry lip gloss like a child.

  He leaned in. He was going to go for it, and this time I wasn’t going to storm away.

  “Hey, Isaac?” Cadence’s voice broke through the moment like a cup of cold water in a hot bath.

  I scooted away.

  Isaac leaned back. “What’s up?”

  Cadence looked from me to Isaac and then shrugged. “We’re back. Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  The room was crowded with three people, but I scooted my chair as far to the corner as it would go. I wasn’t missing this conversation.

  “So I took Gretchen to her appointment. Turns out it was a nurse appointment at the health center in Vetlanda. Then we went to the pharmacy, and she got some meds.” Cadence drummed her fingers on her knee.

  “Let me guess, you have no idea what the appointment was about.”

  “I have an idea, but it’s not founded on much.”

  “Lay it on me.” Isaac leaned back in his chair, arms folded behind his head.

  “She picked up some over-the-counter gripe water. It's stuff they give babies here who have colic, or whatever.”

  Gripe water. When I was a kid, my parents would get it for us from Canada. Just…herbs and water. They made us drink it when we had stomach aches even though we knew it was for babies. It had made its way down from Canada to stores in the city…not my town, of course, but you could get it if you went all the way to Portland or Bend. I didn’t speak up. I wanted to observe Cadence, see what she thought it meant. See if she acted like she had murdered someone recently.

  Isaac’s eyes were on Cadence’s arms. It was almost humorous. I could see him sizing her up, seeing if she was beefy enough to bring a bludgeon down on Rolf’s head. He seemed undecided.

  After a moment’s silence he spoke up. “What would Gretchen want with gripe water?”

  “I suspect for nausea. Morning sickness.” Cadence said.

  I suspected Cadence was right.

  Isaac exhaled loudly. “The thing is, she’s married, so the crisis aspect of her possibly being pregnant is gone.”

  Cadence’s eyebrows flew up. “Surely you don’t think that an 18-year-old kid who has eloped and finds herself pregnant is the exact same thing as a real, live adult who has been married a while and planned a family with her husband.”

  “When you put it that way, I see the flaw in my statement.” His face was unchanged, and by that, I guessed it pained him to agree with her. “But a married girl expecting a baby is still a smaller problem than the murdered man.”

  Cadence nodded. Then she closed her eyes. “I agree.” She didn’t open her eyes for a while, but when she did, her face looked sad. “Did I ever tell you that I went out with Rolf a few times?”

  “No, you didn’t.” Isaac leaned forward, more conversational. “Was he all right?”

  Cadence lifted her shoulders. “He wasn’t really my type, but I was bored and lonely. He was the only single person around who was my age.” She laughed softly. “Obviously he’s not the only twenty-five year old in Southern Sweden, but we don’t get out much at Tillgiven, you know? So he was the only single guy I had met in over a year.”

  Isaac chuckled. “I get it.”

  She smiled wryly. “But no, I know what you are thinking of. I didn’t hear about his trouble with Nea until after we had been out a couple of times. I wouldn’t have called him a gentleman, but he didn’t try to take advantage of me.”

  “Troy says Rolf had been different lately. Did you notice anything?” Isaac asked.

  “Yeah, I did. He seemed really morose. I didn’t know what caused it, and I didn’t like it either. His one charm had been his easy going, fun attitude.”

  “So you hadn’t gone out with him lately?” Isaac managed to keep his inquisition in a conversational tone. I was proud of him. I would never have been able to do it.

  “No. I hadn’t. He had asked twice this year, once in September when I got back from a visit home and once more recently.”

  She was referring to the text! The text where she said she’d meet him! I sat on the edge of my seat to see what Isaac would say about it.

  “Did you go out with him?”

  “I almost did, but the last time was the night of the storm. It didn�
�t make any sense, and since he had been so weird, it didn’t feel wise to be out alone with him when I wouldn’t have a safe way to get back.” Her eyes were sad and softer than usual. Like she almost regretted not going out with him. Or…killing him.

  “So you didn’t, then?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. But the weird thing was, the police showed me his phone, and someone had texted him from my phone saying I would go. I have been trying to figure out who would have done that.”

  Isaac’s jaw twitched. Did he believe her? Had his counseling training taught him how to suss out a liar? “Did you land on anyone?”

  She shook her head. “My best guess was Troy. Last year we had a mini prank war running between the boys' and girls' dorms. It was nothing compared to years past—you should ask Xavier about what he and Leah got up to sometime. Compared to that, ours was really harmless stuff, but I had gotten the best of him at the end of the year on the last day. Still, it was really innocent stuff, just to make each other laugh.” She ran her fingers through her bobbed hair. “I can’t see what the point of texting Rolf would have been though.” She held Isaac’s gaze. “Especially now.”

  “It looks a lot more sinister in light of the murder.”

  “Exactly. If it was Troy, he did it as an innocent prank. But if it wasn’t him, it was someone setting up a meeting so they could kill him.” She held her breath for a moment. “Someone with easy access to my phone, which is usually sitting on my bedside table.”

  I exhaled sharply. I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath. “So the killer really was one of us.”

  Cadence turned to me, her eyes wide and scared. “That’s what the police seemed to think when they talked to me about my phone.”

  “While you were in Vetlanda…” I hated to ask this, but I was sincerely scared for her. “Did you happen to connect with an attorney?”

  “Yes. That’s why I went to town. Stina met me and introduced me to a lawyer friend who has promised to help me. Right now, I’m their number one suspect.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Isaac Daniels

  The leap Dani had taken from suspecting Cadence to being her staunch defender was so huge and fast, it must have been painful. It was one I hadn’t been able to make as quickly. Almost as soon as Cadence told us she was the number one suspect, Dani had her in a bear hug.