by Diane Hoh
Maybe, Jess thought. Maybe not. “I think I’m going to see if I can find those other letters.”
“What’s the point?” Ian said, sounding annoyed. “The girl is dead. Why do you want to play Sherlock Holmes?”
That rankled. Jess shot him a look of irritation. She had no intention of playing detective. She was just going to look for the letters.
It almost seemed as if he didn’t want her finding any letters to Giselle. But why? What did Giselle have to do with Ian? They’d never even met.
Suddenly she remembered her conversation with the girl named Beth. She said she’d seen someone fighting with Giselle … someone tall, with long, dark hair.
Ian had been on campus last June. He’d said it was to check out the place.
But Jon had been on campus then, too. And hadn’t he said he had a “thing” for blue-eyed blondes like Giselle?
And then there was Milo, who knew Giselle and hadn’t told them. What if he’d never got over his feelings for Giselle?
He could have been fantasizing about her that whole time in high school, built that fantasy into a romance that never was. She’d read about people who did that. And you couldn’t talk them out of it, no matter how hard you tried. Had Giselle suffered because of Milo’s illusions?
“That poor girl,” Cath said softly, glancing over Trucker’s shoulder at the photograph. “So gorgeous … and so unhappy, taking her own life …”
The cellar door flew open and slammed violently against the wall.
Chapter 19
THE SLAMMING OF THE door stirred them all to action. While Trucker closed the cellar door and latched it, everyone else gathered together books and papers, windbreakers, and hooded sweatshirts against the weather, and straggled out of the house.
Between classes, Jess grabbed a sandwich in the student café with Linda. Conversation centered around the Fall Ball. It was a relief to forget about what was going on at the house and concentrate on something else.
“Milo hasn’t asked me yet,” Linda said gloomily. “I don’t think he’s going to. He’s so darn shy.”
“Well, I can’t quite see Milo in a tux,” Jess remarked. She couldn’t see Milo at a dance, either, for that matter. He seemed so antisocial.
“Oh, I can! He’d be gorgeous!”
Jess shrugged. “Maybe if he did something with that hair and that beard … like trimming them, for instance.”
“I like his hair. I think he looks cool, artistic.”
Artistic, Jess thought. Had Milo ever used a black marker in his artistic efforts? As in defacing a photograph? He had said that he and Giselle stopped being friends in high school. But he’d never said that was okay with him.
Maybe it hadn’t been.
When Jess got home, Nightingale Hall looked even more forbidding than usual in the persistent fog and drizzle.
I don’t really want to go in there, she thought, staring up at the dark brick structure.
But where else was there to go? She’d stalled on campus as long as possible, reading in the library. But she hadn’t wanted to walk home alone after dark, so she had finally gathered her things together and walked, slowly, home.
Maybe everyone else would leave tonight and she could hunt for the rest of Giselle’s letters. Where would they be, she wondered.
And that was when it occurred to Jess that maybe she wasn’t the only person anxious to get her hands on those letters. Cath’s missing paper, Linda’s ruined bathing suit, the worms in her dresser drawer … what if … what if those were just smoke screens? What if they were just stupid pranks designed to cover up the fact that someone had actually been hunting for something in those rooms?
Something like … letters to a dead girl, letters that might be too revealing if they were discovered.
You are so melodramatic, she chided herself, shaking her head. You should have been an actress. The letters probably aren’t even here.
But … maybe someone thought they were.
It couldn’t hurt to look for them. If she found them, they might answer some of her questions about Giselle.
Ian was in the kitchen, alone. He helped her remove her soggy windbreaker and handed her a cup of steaming hot chocolate. “Nasty out there. How come you’re late?”
“I was at the library. Research.” She didn’t add that she intended to do a different kind of research the minute she had an opportunity. He wouldn’t understand her need to hunt for the letters.
They sat at the table, sipping silently in the dreary kitchen. Dozens of questions swirled around in Jess’s mind, but she didn’t share them with Ian. He’d think she was being silly. Hadn’t he said, “The girl is dead,” and told her to forget about it?
But she couldn’t do that. Jess wondered if Ian noticed the change in her mood toward him.
“So, did you toss that stuff?” he asked. He was wearing a thick white sweater, sleeves pushed to the elbows, and his high, angled cheekbones were wind-burnished, like hers. His dark eyes remained on her face as he said, “The picture and that letter? Did you dump them?”
“No. Not yet.” Immediately, she regretted the admission. If someone was looking for the letters, maybe she should be pretending she’d tossed the one she’d found into the trash. And maybe … her stomach stirred uneasily … maybe she had made a mega-major mistake sharing the letter and photo at breakfast. If someone really was determined to find the missing letters, and if that person was one of her housemates … Who else would have access to their rooms … ? Maybe she should have kept her big mouth shut this morning.
Too late now.
“Jess, that’s old news,” Ian said, his voice unusually fierce. “What are you hanging onto that stuff for?”
“Actually,” she said nonchalantly, “I think I left it somewhere on campus. So, I guess that’s not really hanging on to it, right?”
“Oh. Well, good. There’s something really morbid about carrying around a picture of a dead girl and one of her letters.”
True. But then, there was something really morbid about the girl having died in the first place, wasn’t there? Especially when there seemed to be some mystery about why she’d died.
The weather kept everyone inside, giving Jess no chance to hunt for the letters.
When Linda absolutely refused to stay in her room alone, saying staunchly, “There is safety in numbers,” they all settled in the living room. Trucker built a generous fire in the stone fireplace, and the room quickly warmed.
Milo and Linda settled on the Persian rug near the blazing orange and yellow flames, while Jess and Cath plopped themselves down on the sofa and Trucker, Jon, and Ian occupied chairs scattered about the huge room.
The drizzle became a steady rain. Driven by the hilltop wind, it slapped against the windows. The room, with its smell of burning wood and the warmth from the fireplace, seemed a great place to be on such a night. Why can’t it always be this nice, Jess thought.
She had barely finished thinking the question when Linda, becoming bored, stirred restlessly and asked Milo, “Why is your notebook so thick? You never finish anything, so what are all those papers in there?” Before he could answer, she made a playful grab for the blue spiral book and began leafing through it.
“Hand it over,” he ordered lazily, reaching for the notebook.
Laughing, Linda held it high, beyond his reach.
Several papers slipped out and drifted to the floor. One landed at Cath’s feet. She bent to pick it up.
And her eyes widened as they scanned the sheet. “I knew it!”
He looked up. “What?”
Cath stood up, staring at Milo, the sheet of paper still in her hands. “This is my essay. The one you said you didn’t take!”
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to focus their attention on Cath, and on Milo, scrambling to his feet.
“It fell out of your notebook,” she said, her eyes on his face. “You really did take it.”
“No, I—”
&nbs
p; “I was so sure at first.” The ever-present lines of tension in Cath’s face deepened. “But then, no one else thought so, and I decided maybe I was wrong. But … but here it is.”
Jess’s heart sank. Had Milo really stolen that essay, and lied about it?
The way he’d lied about knowing Giselle. Hadn’t told the truth, anyway. The same thing, really.
“I didn’t take your essay and I don’t know how it got in my notebook,” Milo said emphatically. “That’s the truth. Believe it, don’t believe it. Your choice.” And bending to grab the blue notebook from a red-faced Linda’s hands, he stalked from the room.
Aiming a disgusted look in Cath’s direction, Linda got up and ran after him.
“Why did she look at me like that?” Cath said, glancing around the room. “I didn’t do anything. It’s not my fault my essay was in Milo’s notebook.” Near tears, she picked up her books and, head down, left the room.
It no longer seemed warm or cozy.
When Jon and Trucker had gone, Jess and Ian sat on the floor close to the fire’s dying embers. “That was Cath’s essay,” she told him. “I saw it. It still had her name on it.”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said firmly, taking her hands in his. “There’s been too much crazy stuff going on around here, and it’s getting to you, I can tell. I thought we had something going, but lately I’m not so sure.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I want you to go to that dance with me. That Fall Ball thing. I think that’s what we need to do.”
Jess smiled. “You make it sound like a prescription. Take one Fall Ball and call me in the morning.”
“In a way, it is.” He grinned. “Dr. Banion, at your service.”
She wanted to say yes, of course she’d go to the ball with him. But—the person who had fought with Giselle on campus had long, dark hair. And Ian had acted so strangely since she’d found that letter to Giselle. Ian could have been Giselle’s out-of-town boyfriend, couldn’t he? And he could have been angry that she’d dumped him. And he could have put the worms in her drawer when he was hunting for the letters …
No!
“Come on, Jess,” Ian urged softly. “Who needs a good time more than us?”
He hadn’t lied about knowing Giselle. It was Milo who had done that, not Ian.
If she went to the dance would she be able to pretend, even for a few hours, that her life was as normal as any other Salem University student? Could she fool herself into thinking, in the brightly colored hall filled with music and laughter and dancing, that when it was all over, she’d be going home to a nice, safe, normal dorm?
Maybe. She could give it the old college try.
But … was Ian still the person she wanted to go to the dance with? Did she trust him?
She studied his face, bronzed by the flickering, dying flames. Anyone could be responsible for all the strange things that had happened at Nightingale Hall. Anyone. Anyone except Ian, she decided.
“Yes,” she said, “I’d love to go to the ball with you.”
Chapter 20
AN OPPORTUNITY TO LOOK for the rest of Giselle’s letters came the following night, when everyone but Jess had left the house to attend a fraternity party.
“Not me,” she announced after dinner. “I have a bad headache. I need a nice, long nap.”
“You’re going to stay here alone?” Linda asked, disbelief in her voice. “No, come with us.”
“I can’t,” Jess said lightly, conscious of Ian’s eyes on her. He looked disappointed, and she was afraid he’d offer to stay home with her.
He didn’t. “Too bad about your headache,” was all he said and, giving her a hug, he left with the others.
She was alone at last.
It made sense to begin her search in her own room, the one that had been Giselle’s. Giselle might have tucked the letters away in a corner or shelf of the closet, if she hadn’t thrown them away.
I would have, Jess thought as she braced herself against the chill in her room and pulled the door open. If the other letters were anything like the one I found, I’d have ripped them into tiny little fragments and fed them to the garbage disposal. No one has the right to threaten someone that way.
She found no letters in her room. Or any other evidence that Giselle McKendrick had once lived there.
Disappointed, she was about to make her way down the hall to Linda’s room and try there, when she heard a noise from downstairs.
They couldn’t be home already. She hadn’t been searching for more than half an hour.
A flicker of light from outside drew her to the window. A pale yellow circle moved near the in-ground cellar doors. Trucker? Hadn’t he gone to the party, too? Ian had planned to invite him. Jon, who was driving everyone, had laughed and said, “You guys are going to be piled on top of each other in my Beemer.” But he hadn’t said Trucker wasn’t welcome to join them.
Maybe Trucker hadn’t felt like going.
Just then, her overhead light went out.
Reaching behind her for the desk lamp, Jess pushed on its switch.
Nothing happened.
She tried again. But her room remained black as night. The bulb must have burned out.
Jess, a small voice somewhere in her head murmured, what are the chances that the bulbs in your overhead light and your desk lamp would die at exactly the same moment?
She was not going to get upset. Maybe Trucker was working in the cellar and had to turn off the electricity for some reason. He could be working on the furnace. He had said he needed to check it out before cold weather hit.
But … hadn’t he said it was a gas furnace? Why would he need to turn off the electricity?
Maybe he was working on something else, something electrical. He probably didn’t even know anyone was home. Probably thought she had gone to the party with the others.
Feeling her way in the dark, Jess made her way across the room to the door and opened it. The hall was pitch-dark. She felt for the wall switch, flipped it several times, but nothing happened.
The electricity was definitely off at Nightingale Hall.
It seemed to take her forever to wend her way downstairs and into the kitchen. When she reached the cellar door, she hesitated.
What if it wasn’t Trucker down there? What if he’d gone to the party when Ian invited him, and someone else, thinking the house empty, was in the cellar … maybe hunting for something? Hunting for, say, some incriminating letters?
No sound echoed up from the cellar. Maybe there wasn’t anyone down there now. If the light she’d seen had belonged to Trucker, he could have finished what he was working on and gone back to his apartment over the garage.
But then … the electricity would be back on and … she flicked the switch beside the door … it wasn’t.
There was only one way to find out. She had absolutely no intention of going down into that damp, musty cellar. But she had to know if Trucker was down there, in which case she would ask him to turn the electricity back on.
And if Trucker wasn’t down there, she’d go over to his apartment to remind him about the electricity.
It wasn’t like him to forget something like that.
She unlatched the cellar door and pulled it open. “Trucker?” she called softly.
Not a glimmer of light shone upward. Trucker wouldn’t be down there without a light. He’d have a lantern or flashlight with him.
He wasn’t down there. She’d have to go find him and tell him about the electricity.
She moved to slam the door shut and latch it.
Too late. A blow between her shoulder blades stole her breath and knocked her off-balance. She teetered precariously at the edge of the cellar stairs, her hands reaching out for something, anything …
And then a second, more forceful blow sent her off her feet and out into the black void, flying out and down, down, down …
She couldn’t catch her breath to scream.
She landed at the foot of the stair
case, her head striking the hard, earthen floor with a sharp crack.
In that last, final second before she lost consciousness, she heard the door at the top of the stairs slam shut and the metal latch click into place.
Chapter 21
JESS CAME BACK TO awareness slowly, painfully. She could see nothing. Her left elbow throbbed. Her head hurt. And she had no idea where she was.
Trying to remember was like pushing her way through a thick, cottony fog. What was she doing in this cold, damp, dark place that smelled of earth and mold and … something else … something sweetish?
A sinister hissing sound off to her left brought her head up, snapped her eyes completely open. That sweet, sickening smell, the hissing … the smell was gas, the hiss a leak. Gas was leaking from somewhere near her.
She remembered then. She had been shoved down the cellar stairs, had hit her head, been knocked out.
She was in the cellar and there was a gas leak.
It took her long, agonizing moments to force herself to a sitting position and then, reaching backward to grip the stair railing for support, pull herself completely upright. If only it weren’t so dark …
Shaky and dazed, she was clear-minded enough to know she had to get out of the cellar, which was rapidly filling with gas.
The door at the top of the stairs was locked, she remembered. She had heard the latch slide into place. Someone had shoved her down here and didn’t want her to leave.
Why not? she screamed silently.
But there was another way out. The outside cellar doors, the ones Trucker used. Where were they? Jess peered into the darkness. Which direction? Where was the front of the house?
She struggled to form a diagram in her mind, using the kitchen above her as a guideline. It worked. There, in that direction, straight ahead. The cellar doors should be there.
She staggered, one hand to her aching elbow, the other hand protecting her mouth and nose from the gas, through a maze of boxes and cartons and trunks, until her sneakered foot bumped against the bottom stone step that led the way up and out through the wooden doors.
