Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Oh, God—she didn’t sound like herself at all. That had come off as canned, which it was.

  “What?” His voice shimmered with fury, although he spoke barely above a whisper. “Who the hell said that, Madison?”

  “I don’t really know.” She squeezed her hands together. “It was somebody in a group, you know, just talking about the murder. I couldn’t tell who said it.”

  “If the police start investigating, then that’s who they should talk to.” Every word sounded bitten off. “The only reason to sling around that kind of accusation is to deflect attention.”

  Madison couldn’t help noticing that her scrupulously honest father hadn’t said, I wasn’t there.

  She closed her eyes, unable to look at Troy. “Did you go to the gym at all that night, Dad?”

  There was another of those quivering silences, this one raising goose bumps on her arms.

  “You know me better than that,” he said harshly. “At least, I’d like to think you do. No, the police didn’t talk to me. They had no reason to.”

  “I wasn’t accusing you.” The quaver in her voice made her mad. She had always quailed before her father’s usually quiet, scathing anger, and she despised herself for it.

  His anger was quiet, she reminded herself. Guy Laclaire had a biting tongue, but he had never been violent. Never even threatened violence. As Dad would put it, he might have chewed Mitch King a new one, but he certainly wouldn’t have bludgeoned him.

  Not my father.

  “It’s a mistake to reopen that case,” he said with finality. “If anyone asks you, that’s what you’ll tell them. I have calls to make, Madison. Glad this thing went off well for you. I only hope it didn’t stir up crap that had settled at the bottom where it belonged.”

  She barely had a chance to say goodbye before he ended the call. After a moment, she leaned forward and hung up her phone. Then, reluctantly, she raised her gaze to meet Troy’s.

  * * *

  HE FELT LIKE an asshole. Damn, Troy thought. He should have followed his first instinct and taken his father’s testimony-from-the-grave to Davidson. He should never have involved Madison, who looked miserable.

  My doing.

  Yeah, hindsight was a wonderful thing, he thought sardonically. Too little, too late.

  “This is hard on you. I shouldn’t have asked you to call him.”

  “I offered. I wanted to,” she reminded him.

  “Did you?”

  “I wanted...” What she wanted died unspoken.

  “To turn suspicion from your father. I know.” He hesitated. Say it. “I’m not so sure we managed that.”

  Alarm flashed in her pretty brown eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean,” Troy said, as gently as he could. “Your dad worked around the question real hard. He never said, ‘Hell no, I wasn’t anywhere near McKenna Center that night.’” Troy held her eyes. “You were right. He is an honest man.”

  Madison gave a cry of despair and buried her face in her hands.

  Moving swiftly, Troy left his chair and sat beside her, pulling her into his arms, though she stayed stiff and even briefly struggled.

  “Hey,” he murmured into her hair. “We knew it might not be easy. Don’t panic.”

  She sagged against him, her face buried into the crook of his neck. While he was expecting tears from her, he didn’t feel any. A couple of long shudders shook her body. Troy kept on with the reassurances, his hand making soothing circles on her back. At last he felt her take a deep breath, after which she carefully separated herself from him. However reluctant he was to let go, he didn’t try to hold on to her.

  Face set, eyes dark, she looked at him. “You’re right. At least he didn’t lie.”

  Troy wouldn’t have put it quite like that; Guy had definitely tried to lie by omission and misdirection. But to give him his due, that was a step above the flat-out, direct lie he’d told his best friend the morning after the murder.

  “Impressions?” he asked Madison.

  She curved her mouth into a smile that fell flat. “He’s utterly opposed to the investigation being reopened.”

  In turn, Troy grunted something like a laugh. “Yeah, I got that. Are you going to follow orders and tell me it’s a mistake?”

  “I think we can call it too late.” She made a face at him. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Except for the one betraying moment, she was hiding what she was feeling well enough. She’d promised to help him get at the truth, and she was following through, however personally devastating the process was. And whatever the truth might turn out to be.

  Madison Laclaire had guts. He hadn’t realized until now how much he valued that particular quality in a woman. Somehow the issue had never arisen before. Probably because he’d never been really serious about any woman.

  Or it could be that this surge of admiration and even relief came in response to his recent observation that his own mother lacked this brand of moral courage.

  Nice thought.

  He shook it off. “Coffee would be good.”

  He followed Madison to the kitchen and leaned one hip against the tiled edge of the countertop, watching as she poured from the carafe that sat ready. He liked the room even though, according to her, it was a work in process. The cupboards were old, dating from the 1940s or ’50s, he guessed. Instead of replacing them, she’d laid on a new coat of paint—a dark, rich red—then tiled the counter and backsplash in a checkerboard of white and dark red. The floor had been stripped to the original oak planks and refinished.

  After she handed him his cup, Troy carried it to the round oak table by a window that looked out on her small backyard.

  She sat across from him, cradling her own mug.

  “He was there that night, wasn’t he?”

  “Sounded like it to me.” He hated seeing her distress. “Remember, he may have been there but saw nothing, and was only trying to stay off the police radar.”

  “But why would he care?”

  Whatever her father had done wrong, Troy thought, he’d done one thing very right. He had taught his daughter to face the truth without flinching. You have to admire that.

  She shook her head. “If he was there and didn’t see anything, why wouldn’t he have volunteered a statement? Kids that age like nothing better than being the center of attention.”

  Troy had been thinking about this. “You know,” he said slowly, “another possibility is that he was in the same boat as my father. He did see something or someone—but he didn’t want to tell tales, either.”

  Her eyes fastened hopefully on his. “You believe that?”

  He had already decided he wouldn’t lie to her. “I’m keeping an open mind.” That was the best he could do.

  The change in her expression was subtle but unmistakable. She pressed her lips together and nodded.

  “One thing I couldn’t help noticing,” he said slowly. “When he insisted that if there’d been any witnesses, they would have spoken up back then.”

  She stared at him with a deer-in-the-headlights look.

  “He sounded smug,” Troy said flatly.

  Madison winced. Yeah, she’d noticed that, too. The tone had been subtle, but unmistakable. Until his daughter’s phone call, Guy had been real confident that no one had seen him that night. The passing years, all thirty-four plus of them, had given him faith that he was safe.

  Guy Laclaire, Troy thought, was a powerful man accustomed to getting his way. If Guy had had any idea what his old buddy Joe Troyer had put in the time capsule, chances seemed good, Troy speculated, that the capsule would have disappeared from that foundation stone beneath Cheadle Hall. When she looked for it, Madison would have uncovered a gaping, empty hole, and been left without a clue who had taken the capsule or why.

  Her mouth had stayed stubbornly closed when he said that about her dad sounding smug. Troy watched her, not wanting to push too much.

  “Now what?” she asked finally,
probably with the hope of diverting him, he suspected.

  He let her get away with it. “Now I talk to other people. I’ll start with the original witnesses—the students who admitted to being there at some point that night. What I need from you is current contact information.”

  “That won’t be any problem for the alumni who have stayed in touch with the college. We do lose track of a certain percent along the way, though. I’ll search old records so you at least know where they were at our last contact with them.”

  “Do your best.”

  She frowned. “Will you be getting in touch with men only?”

  Troy shook his head. “Presumably women wouldn’t have been in the men’s locker room, but they could just as well have noticed who was at the pool, the gym, the indoor track or coming and going.”

  “Don’t you think women would have been less likely to be there in the middle of the night?”

  “Maybe,” he agreed, “but some may have gone in pairs or groups.”

  “Yes.” Her jaw firmed. “Okay.”

  “This is going to take time.” Troy set down his mug and stretched his arms above his head. “I’d much prefer talking to every potential witness face-to-face, but I can’t justify any kind of travel budget at this point.”

  “A surprising number do live in Washington. We work at attracting out-of-state and even foreign students, but still a substantial majority is from Washington, Oregon and Idaho.”

  He’d sort of known that, but hadn’t thought through the logical corollary—that many of those same grads would stay in the Northwest.

  “If that’s the case, I can set up a bunch of appointments in the Seattle area. Or, worse come to worst, I have buddies with Seattle P.D. I can ask to do the interviews there.” Seeing the strain on her face, he had the feeling he’d worn out his welcome for the evening. He hoped she had something to do besides worry once he left her alone. He stood and carried his mug to the kitchen sink. “So,” he asked, “have you really taken up quilting?”

  She followed him. “No, but I’ve been thinking about it. Heaven knows why. I was dangerous with my foot on the pedal of a sewing machine when I had to take Home Economics in high school.”

  Troy laughed at her. “Needle get away from you?”

  “Yes!” She made a comical face and held up her right index finger. “Literally. I poked my finger in the wrong place and the needle went right through it. Missed the bone, thank goodness, but it hurt.”

  Troy winced. “I can imagine.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, sure. You’ve probably been shot or stabbed or something way more dramatic than a sewing accident.”

  “I have been shot.” He rotated his arm, recalling the pain, then grinned. “It was a flesh wound, just like yours.”

  “Couldn’t help one-upping me, could you?”

  “Nope.” He waited while she dumped out the remnants of her own coffee and placed the mug in the sink. When she turned to face him, he gathered her into his arms. Placing his chin on top of her head, he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  Her lips moved against his throat. “You don’t have to be.”

  She meant it, which blew him away. Even so, something had changed between them, and he didn’t think it was all in his head. Madison rested against him, her arms around his torso, as if there was nowhere else she’d rather be. But her expressions were more guarded now; some reserve had created a wall that hadn’t been there before.

  Troy usually had a near-limitless store of patience. He wouldn’t be good at his job if he didn’t. Cops with a short fuse didn’t last long, and they sure as hell didn’t make it to detective. A long, involved investigation would drive an impatient man crazy. Talking to the same people over and over, listening for new shades of meaning and deviations from their original story. Sitting with the phone pressed to your ear, on hold, with nothing better to do than stare into space. Anyone in law enforcement spent a lot of time on hold. Then there was the rest: studying reports, poring over driver records, watching piss poor quality video recordings made by store and parking lot security cameras in hopes of one useful glimpse of a face or a vehicle or a license plate.

  Troy was hanging on to that patience right now with a sweaty, tight grip. Madison must have mixed feelings about him. She might like him, she might be attracted to him, but he had become a major threat to the person she most loved and therefore he was a threat to her world as she knew it. He’d watched her closely as she talked to her father. Her hands had given away tension her expression didn’t. Her fingers had knotted rhythmically into fists on her thighs. They would loosen, flatten, then squeeze tight again the next second.

  He’d give anything to have met her weeks or months ago, to be able to know their relationship had roots deep enough to ensure they survived this. Some primitive male instinct insisted he ought to get her in bed now, as if he could bind her that way.

  Troy suppressed a groan. Man, he wanted to take her to bed. He had since he set eyes on her, but then he’d had patience and common sense on his side. Now...shit, now he was battling panic.

  Leave her alone and you’ll lose her, the primitive side of him growled.

  The modern man—yeah, he still kept his grip on the more evolved part of himself—knew that expecting her to choose sides too soon was asking for her to pick daddy. And why wouldn’t she? The man had raised her. He was her rock. For God’s sake, she’d gone to daddy’s alma mater and now worked there, as if this was home because he had said so.

  She’d known Troy for less than a week. They’d kissed half a dozen times. On the surface, whatever they had was new and tentative, even if it didn’t feel that way to him.

  Holding her close, breathing in her scent, he told himself not to be an idiot. Madison wasn’t rejecting him. Yeah, she had some major internal conflict—and who wouldn’t in her position. She was handling it well.

  And she’s leaning against me as if she trusts me.

  A smart man would take what he was offered and not screw up by demanding more.

  I can be smart.

  He pulled back enough to let her look up at him. The wariness on her face was a hammer blow. All he could do was pretend not to see it.

  “You okay?”

  “Of course.” Her lips formed a smile he recognized as the one she trotted out on the job, if a little weak—practiced and not necessarily reflecting what she felt. He didn’t like it.

  “Can I come by your office in the morning?”

  “Yes, of course.” Without making it obvious, she had backed away. Now, arms crossed, she rubbed her hands up and down them. “I’ll have the class lists from those years and all the available contact information ready for you.”

  “Good.” He frowned. “I didn’t ask. Does everyone know you’ve been asked to do this?”

  Madison shook her head. “Lars asked me to keep it quiet for now. Word will eventually spread, but we prefer that current students don’t hear rumors.”

  “You must have alumni email loops and chat groups and what have you. They’re going to light up by the time I’ve talked to three or four people.”

  “Probably,” she agreed with a sigh.

  They walked to the front door, but he didn’t reach for the knob. Instead, he faced Madison. Her eyes met his shyly. “I’d like to kiss you,” he said, his voice low and rough.

  Her mouth trembled. “Please.”

  At the exact same moment he reached out, she launched herself at him with a cry. Troy took her mouth with starving intensity, driven by the fear that he’d found her only to lose her. Rising on tiptoe, pressing herself against him, she kissed him with as much passion and desperation.

  She’s afraid, too, he realized with the small sliver of his brain that was still functioning.

  Her fear, her need, eased his and allowed him to gradually gentle the kiss. His hands stroked her from the delicate nape of her neck to the lush curve of her hips, savoring the womanly contrast. She turned him on, big time—but now was not the m
oment, however painful it was going to be to take his hands off her.

  He let his lips travel from her mouth across her cheek to the complex whorl of her ear and the tiny gold hoop she wore. He nibbled it, flicked it with his tongue then traveled upward to her temple. Then he kissed her closed eyelids, feeling the quiver of movement beneath the thin, delicate skin.

  Reluctantly, Troy lifted his head, looking down at her uplifted face. For a long moment, she stayed like that, her eyes closed, her lips parted and slightly swollen. This time he did groan.

  “I’d better go while I still can.”

  Her lashes fluttered before lifting. The brown of her eyes was melted into a soft chocolate. “Part of me wants to ask you to stay.”

  God. Every muscle in his body seemed to clench. “But the other part of you?”

  “Isn’t quite ready.” She looked apologetic.

  He kissed her forehead and tried to smile. “The timing isn’t the best.”

  Gathering herself seemed to include taking a step back. She crossed her arms as if to hug herself. “I know he sounded strange tonight,” she said in a sudden burst, “but you’re wrong about my father. He wouldn’t murder anyone. He wouldn’t.”

  Troy had never heard a plainer warning. She might have kissed him fiercely one minute, but she was defending her father with equal strength the next.

  Yeah, the timing completely sucks.

  He nodded, accepting what she’d said. “I’ll do my damnedest to find out the truth,” he promised.

  His reward was a shaky smile. “Thank you.”

  Troy didn’t try to kiss her again, didn’t dare. “See you in the morning.”

  He thought she said “Good night” just before she closed the door behind him. He got in his SUV and slammed the door before he let himself swear, a long litany that didn’t come close to being the release valve he needed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TROY FROWNED AT the ream of paper Madison had just handed him. “Can you email me this file?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He watched as she did so in front of him. “All employees are allowed to use the facilities, right?” he asked. “It occurs to me that I’m going to want the names of Wakefield College employees during that year, too.” He glanced up.