Dark and Stormy

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  “But we were out there working the whole time, how did you slip the stuff outside without us seeing?” Isaac asked.

  “I did it while everyone was headed to lunch. It’s funny how invisible a housecleaner can be when she wants to.”

  “So the iceblock was near enough to the body that anyone could have found it and chucked it at Rolf, right?” I asked. It was inconceivable that Gretchen would have killed Rolf, to my relief.

  “Yes.” The affirmative from the polisinspektör sent a wave or relief around the room.

  “And you are sure that’s what did it?” Isaac asked.

  “It’s not.” Garret said.

  All eyes turned to him.

  “I saw where she had hid it, and, sorry Gretchen, but I thought that was really stupid. Anyone could find it, so that night, after curfew, I moved it. It was frozen solid, so I ran it under a hot shower to get it out of the caddie. Then I took it to the woods. I didn’t just ditch it though. I wanted to be able to use it still, so I set it near the moose blind. I dropped it on accident and the corner broke off.”

  “What happened to the missing corner?” Isaac asked.

  “I picked it up and chucked it at a tree.” He shrugged. “I just wanted to see it break.”

  Isaac nodded like it made perfect sense. Must have been a boy thing.

  “But what about the stain on the carpet?” Dr. Hoffen asked.

  “Oh!” Megan sounded embarrassed. “Right after we had our Thanksgiving party, I was in the boys’ dorm cleaning, and I spilled a whole cup of coffee in the hall, by the back door. Could that be the stain you are thinking of?”

  The polisinspektör scowled. “It could be. We have not had the mark on the rug analyzed yet.”

  “Where did you find the iceblock?” Gretchen sat on her hands, and her lips quivered.

  “I won’t be disclosing that at this time.” Something about the way he answered made me guess it had been found out by the old moose blind.

  “So are we back to square one?” Si asked. “No evidence, no clues?”

  “Tack så mycket to all of you for answering our questions about this issue.” The polisinspektör ignored Si’s question. “Honesty will help us get to the bottom of this more quickly.” He nodded at Dr. Hoffen, ignored the rest of us, and went out. The other police followed him.

  Si slumped in his chair. “If it wasn’t the ice block, what was it?”

  While Si pondered that question, I wondered what on earth had gotten into Bel and decided it was time to find out.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Isaac Daniels

  Bel knew something.

  I wanted to know what it was.

  I followed Dani out of the dining room, and we both found Bel behind the kitchen, having a smoke. Most likely her Spice.

  She cupped the hand-rolled synthetic marijuana cigarette in her hand and held it at her side. She exhaled away from us. “What?”

  “You freaked out.” Dani said.

  “So? It’s a murder.”

  “You don’t tend to freak out.” Dani leaned on the wall next to Bel. “You take things as they come and offer caustic commentary, sometimes, with a lively sparkle in your eye.”

  Bel lifted the cigarette to her mouth and took a deep drag. “You might not realize this, but I have a good reason not to want cops all over my stuff.”

  “Spice isn’t illegal in Sweden.” I guessed, because I wanted her to relax.

  She lifted one eyebrow. “Someone’s been looking in my stuff.”

  “You sure are relaxed now.” Dani gave her a friendly smile.

  Bel exhaled in Dani’s general direction, though thankfully, not right in her face. “That would be the point of this, yes?”

  I scratched the back of my neck. Bel was self-medicating for anxiety? Bel had been shipped away to separate her from bad influences? Bel had picked up the habit from someone here? Which of the many options explained her situation?

  “Who did you think was responsible for the iceblock?”

  “Si.” Her answer was so quick that I didn’t believe her.

  She looked at her cigarette, snuffed it out on the side of the building, and dropped it in the snow. “He loves me, obviously. And has for at least three years. I try not to encourage him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not like a brother to me.”

  “Just protecting Si, then, right?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Bel’s eyes were trained on the far distance. “He’s unworldly and could have gotten himself in serious trouble in there. But whatever.” She began to walk away.

  “Wait.” Dani reached for her, but Bel didn’t stop.

  “Let her go.” I picked up the butt of Bel’s smoke. “I don’t believe her either, but I don’t think she’s going to admit anything.

  “I think we should confer in your office.” Dani led me across the campus to my cramped office in the Skola.

  “Let’s recap, yes?” she asked.

  I sat back in my chair to watch and listen. Mostly because she was lovely to watch, and I wasn’t sure exactly what I had to contribute at this point.

  “So far we know that Si and Garret were involved in the pranks, but they confessed, so our secret knowledge was pretty worthless.” She fanned out her shiny hair over her shoulder.

  “I knew about Bel’s Spice, but that’s not a secret now either.” I added.

  “Gretchen’s secrets are mostly out now, too.” She tapped Gretchen’s name on the wall of notes.

  “But none of these things have led us to Rolf’s killer, so someone still has a secret.”

  “Oh! Don’t forget Nea’s secret.” Dani’s face lit up.

  “But that would make Rolf more likely to kill her than the other way around, right?”

  “Unless she had to do it in self-defense.” Dani scratched her chin.

  “But she wasn’t on campus.” I looked at her web of cards. It was a lot of holes in my wall to little purpose.

  “Dang it. Alibi’s ruin everything.”

  “So which one of us doesn’t have an alibi?”

  Dani flipped her hair again. “Leaving no one out, Dr. Hoffen and Megan only have each other for their alibi.”

  “What about the kids? At least Joshy, their oldest, is old enough to know if mom and dad were really around all night.”

  “That’s true for as long as he was awake.” Dani said. “But it leaves the late night open for them, either together or separately.”

  I leaned my elbows on my desk. “So let’s consider them, then. We’ve got opportunity. What’s the motive?”

  Dani scrunched up her face. “If Rolf was a serial girl-accoster, maybe he had tried something with Megan sometime in the last several years.”

  I considered that in silence. If Joshy was about six, and Truly was 3, and baby—what was his name again? Well, whatever his name was, he was less than a year old. That meant Megan Hoffen had spent most of her years at Tillgiven pregnant, nursing, or as the primary caregiver for a baby. “Would Rolf have ever been able to run into her in a situation he could take advantage of? At the best he could have found her alone at home, but with so many babies around…”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t seem quite likely, but it’s possible, and it gives a possible motive for both of them. Dani pinned a string from the Rolf card to the Megan card. It must help her in some way, but it looked like a tangle to me.

  “Let’s get back to alibis. Nea was in town, so it wasn’t her. But we know she was in town how?”

  Dani drummed her fingers on the wall. “Because she said she was, but she has roommates, and I’m sure the cops have verified that.”

  “Stina was at home, alone. Her possible motive is the same as Megan and Dr. Hoffen.”

  “Yup. Johanna was home with her husband, but since she was a kind of mother figure in Rolf’s life, I don’t think she has a motive. She would be more likely to protect him.”

  “Okay. So Johanna has a solid alibi. What about the rest of the girls? Cadence, Bel, and Gretchen. What are th
eir alibis?”

  “You told me to stick close to Gretchen that night, but I couldn’t find her. I did see Cadence sound asleep in her room, but I don’t know where Gretchen was. Not in her room, mine, or Cadences. I didn’t look for Bel.”

  “So Bel and Gretchen are unaccounted for during the night.” I wrote their names down. “And both are girls who might have caught Rolf’s eye.”

  “Garret is very protective of Gretchen, as is Si, since he’s her cousin. Xavier and Si both have reason to protect Bel. What are their alibis?” Dani tapped each name as she spoke.

  “Which reminds me of Nick.” I wrote his name down. “He might have wanted to avenge Nea, don’t you think?”

  Dani tilted her head. “I think he likes her, definitely. But enough to murder? I don’t know. Especially since Rolf had served his time.”

  “Okay, Nick and I checked out our apartments together, but I didn’t keep an eye on him once we went outside. He came back around the same time I did and spent the whole night in the dorm. I didn’t sleep well and am pretty sure that he didn’t leave. In fact, I’d say no one left the common room that night.”

  “So all the boys have an alibi?”

  “Troy and Xavier searched together and came back in around the same time. One of them could have run across Rolf in the dorm and killed him. But after we shut it all down for the night, I’m pretty sure we were all in the same place.”

  “That’s good.” Dani sat down. “Bel and Gretchen are the only ones with no alibi at all, but Gretchen? She’s completely wrapped up in her own drama, and also really devout.”

  “Which leaves Bel who acts suspicious, does drugs, has a terrible attitude, and is a young, pretty girl.”

  “Yup.” Dani agreed.

  “However, as much as we can assign a possible motive based on that, Rolf was on campus for about two-thirds of the day before the storm. How much time did he actually have to do something that would have made Bel—or Si or Xavier for that matter—incensed enough to kill?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t have enough time. I’m sure. Honestly, I just don’t see how it could have been any one of us.”

  I looked from her wall to my list. “I don’t see it either, but I wish that made me feel better.”

  Dani looked up at my wall clock. “I think I need to go have a heart-to-heart with Cadence.”

  “About anything in particular?”

  “We’ll see.” Dani drew her eyebrows together. “I’ll check in later.”

  It was already pretty late. The sun was long gone, and we’d be having dinner any minute. But it struck me as a good time for a heart-to-heart as well. I needed to tell Xavier about his sister’s Spice collection. I had a feeling it was for just such a thing that he had come along in the first place.

  I found Xavier in the library reading a dog-eared copy of Orthodoxy.

  I pulled a hard wooden chair up next to him. “We need to talk about Bel.”

  He set the book on his knee. Something about this guy always made me feel small. He wasn’t bigger than me, or much older, but he had that well-traveled, almost world-weary thing going that MK’s sometimes had as adults. “Yes?”

  “Has she had a problem with marijuana for a long time?”

  Xavier gripped the arm of his chair. “Excuse me?”

  I held out the evidence. “I wanted to make sure your sister was okay. I found her out behind the kitchen, smoking this.”

  Xavier closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “My parents were dying to send Bel here because it had been so good for me.” His voice was a monotone so I couldn’t tell if he meant that or was being sarcastic.

  “Why didn’t she want to come?”

  “Does she strike you as the kind of kid excited to spend the year studying the Bible?”

  “What happened back home to make her so jaded?”

  “The Mormons.”

  I admit, that surprised me. I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “They have been on the island forever, but there has been a huge swell of LDS activity over the last five years. The Tonganese have been very receptive.”. The Tonganese have been very receptive.” He set Orthodoxy on the table beside him. “My parents have been serving the Protestant mission field in Tonga for thirty years, right alongside Si’s parents. It’s breaking their hearts to see the Mormons take such a strong foothold. And it has knocked some of the MKs for a loop too. Not all of them, of course. But Si, Bel, one of their friends, Jack.” He leaned forward. “Listen, Jack converted, okay? His parents have been missionaries in Tonga, bringing the gospel to the island for eight years, and their son was just baptized in the LDS church.” He sat back. “Our parents tell the kids to pray about it. They’re right, obviously, but Bel, Si, even Jack—they just don’t get it. That’s why Si and Bel had to come here. Because our parents panicked. Si hasn’t even finished high school yet. They ripped him out of the Tonganese school and had him take an equivalency test so they could get him off the island. Bel was the same. She was going to graduate with her friends, but now she’s here instead.”

  “Was Jack sincere? Or do you think he was just rebelling?”

  Xavier lifted a shoulder. “Who can tell? His parents are hard core. He spent a few years at an MK boarding school, but they missed him. They pulled him out and brought him to the island. I think he thought he’d get more of his parents’ time when he got to Tonga, but he didn’t. It can be hard on kids. Harder on some kids. The Mormon missionaries gave him a lot of attention. A lot of praise. A lot of community and fellowship.”

  I stared at the wall of shelves filled with Bible commentaries. How did a kid raised with the truth just jump ship like that?

  “Jack’s a good kid, but he was yanked from his American life as a nine year old and sent to boarding school. Then he had to give up his school life for life on the island. Some kids just have a hard time with that many changes. He may have found something in the LDS church that he needed. Or he may have been trying to get his parents’ attention. Either way, it got attention. He was shipped back to the States to stay with his grandparents, and Si and Bel were sent here.”

  Xavier had spun a good story for me. I believed it was true, but he had failed to tie it directly to the drugs. “So…” I looked at the joint. “How do drugs fit into all of that?”

  “Kids will be kids.” Xavier’s jaw flexed.

  He had a wall up about the drugs. The Mormon story, while fascinating, was a cover. I needed to break through the wall and get to the truth. “Would you like to call your folks about this or would you like me to?”

  “I’ll take care of Bel.” He stood up and walked out.

  How, exactly, was he planning on taking care of her?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Dani Honeywell

  Nea nabbed me before I could catch up with Cadence. “You’re wanted in the kitchen. The cops are eating with us, so the ‘be content with cold supper’ is out the window. Johanna is cooking like crazy and needs a hand.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the girls’ dorm. I wanted to find Cadence. I wasn’t any good at cooking. I was good at unraveling mysteries. That might be an exaggeration, but I had found my missing sister. And I was going to solve this murder, so soon I’d be able to say I was good at unraveling mysteries.

  “No dawdling. We’ve got to go cook.”

  In the kitchen Nick was up to his elbows in spaghetti sauce, Johanna was pulling fresh baked bread from the oven, and Nea started chopping vegetables.

  Johanna pointed to a five pound block of cheese. I knew what she wanted.

  I took the cheese to the electric slicer and did my best not to slice off the tips of my fingertips as I ran it. It seemed like such a waste to do this when I could be pinning down alibis.

  To my good fortune, Cadence joined me in the corner of the kitchen. She helped herself to a slice of cheese “Dani, can I ask a couple of questions?”

  Hmmm, turned t
ables? Interesting. “Sure.” I could hear Cadence well enough, but the noise of the slicer was a nice cover to keep our conversation private.

  “It’s about Troy.”

  “Shoot.” Not that I knew anything about Troy, but she could ask.

  “Do you know where he was during the storm?”

  “Isaac says that he is almost certain no one left the common room that night. Isaac didn’t sleep well and can almost guarantee no one even got up, much less left.”

  She bit her lip. “But what about while they were looking for Rolf?”

  I shook my head. “Xavier would be the one to ask. They were search buddies.”

  Cadence gripped my elbow. “But Troy hasn’t said anything to Isaac at all?”

  “Not that Isaac has mentioned.” All of the cheese was sliced so I turned off the machine. “What’s this about?”

  “I found something. Can you come with me?”

  Before I could answer, Nea shoved a log of lunch meat at me. I’d be slicing ham now, I guessed, and, of course, cleaning the machine after. “It doesn’t look like I can. Just…tell me.”

  “I think I found the murder weapon.”

  I set the ham down and walked out of the kitchen like I had every right to. Once outside, under the cover of the night sky, I grabbed Cadence’s arm. “We have to tell the police.”

  “I know, but I was hoping to just…”

  “To clear Troy first?”

  She nodded.

  “But you don’t believe he could be responsible for the murder.”

  “Of course not.” Her eyes were wide, her usual in-control vibe that had made her seem so grown-up was gone. She seemed…my age all of a sudden.

  “Then have faith in him, and let’s go find the police.”

  We went searching for the police—they had been an ever-present feature at the school for two days now, but were all of a sudden hard to find. When I spotted the head guy stepping through Dr. Hoffen’s front door, I stopped. “Before we go in…why exactly are you afraid for Troy?”