So, last year, when Ellie noticed a miserably homesick, friendless, overweight Diana Mackie in her Introduction to Journalism class, she took the freshman under her wing. She helped Diana feel better about herself and ended up feeling better about herself, too.
This year, Diana had come back as a sophomore, ten pounds lighter than her freshman year, with some school friends, and even a potential boyfriend. Meanwhile, Ellie felt stuck in the exact same place she’d been last year at this time. She’d become acquainted with the other teachers, but didn’t really feel close to any of them. While semi-content with her “temporary” job, her garden, and her townhouse, Ellie couldn’t help wondering if she’d suddenly wake up one morning in the same place and realize she was fifty.
That was why she’d been so interested for a few days in writing a story on Hannah and Eden O’Rourke. Ellie felt very close to the subject matter of wandering husbands fathering children outside the marriage. She’d figured getting published again would help break her out of her rut. But now, she felt like that would be taking advantage of these two girls who had already had their share of media exposure.
Ellie wondered if she should just look into an online dating site instead. She had to do something to shake things up.
She was approaching the recreation center—a big, ugly, Soviet-Bloc style building in the newer section of campus. There was a balcony walkway around the structure and windows in the back that looked in at the swimming pool.
Diana’s prospective boyfriend worked there as a lifeguard. Diana had said his name was J.T. Ellie decided to take the long way around and check him out—if he was there.
Steam condensed near the bottoms of the tall, tinted windows. The afternoon sun made it difficult to see inside very clearly. But Ellie spotted a young man strutting back and forth on the deck on the other side of the pool. He was looking at his phone. He wore red trunks and a tank top that showed off his tan, trim body. He had shaggy brown hair, just as Diana had described.
Ellie counted four people swimming laps in the pool. One of them finished up and climbed out of the water onto the deck. She was slim, young, and pretty, and wore a blue one-piece bathing suit. Ellie recognized Hannah, who turned in her direction. Ellie started to wave at her.
But just then, a man swam over to the edge of the pool and hoisted himself up to the deck. He stood beside Hannah and shook the water off his body. Tall, lean, and sinewy, he wore black trunks. He said something to Hannah, and she laughed.
Ellie stood there outside the window, peering in. She wondered what Nicholas Jensen had said that was so funny.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Friday, 3:44 P.M.
At poolside, Hannah turned and seemed to spot her.
Ellie felt as if she’d been caught spying. But she waved at her from the other side of the window.
Waving back, Hannah signaled for her to come in.
Ellie hesitated and then headed around to the recreation center’s front entrance. She showed her ID to the girl at the front desk, who gave her directions to the pool. Ellie had to pass through the women’s locker room to get there.
She felt out of place in her street clothes. Stepping into the pool area, she got a waft of the chlorine smell that lingered in the humid, near-tropic air. There was a slight echo from two swimmers splashing in the pool, when J.T. called out to her: “No street shoes allowed beyond the line!” He vaguely pointed to a dividing line on the deck, where the white tiles met the concrete. Then he looked at his phone again and resumed pacing along the length of the pool.
Obedient, Ellie halted in her tracks, not far from the pool’s shallow end. NO DIVING was spelled out on the floor in blue tiles on that end of the pool.
“Hey, Ms. Goodwin!” Hannah’s voice echoed, too. She approached Ellie, with Nicholas Jensen lagging behind. She’d already dried off somewhat and had a towel wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. But Jensen was still wet and dripping. Ellie couldn’t help admiring his well-sculpted body and the matted-down hair on his chest. But then she noticed the faint, patchy scars, from his shoulder all the way down his left arm.
“Hi...” She worked up a smile. “I had no idea you two knew each other.”
“We didn’t,” Hannah replied. She smoothed back her wet hair. “We just met like twenty minutes ago and realized we were both in your journalism class.”
“Well, it’s sure a small campus.” She nodded at Jensen. “Hello, Nicholas.”
“Call me Nick.”
Ellie wasn’t sure if her contempt for him was working overtime, but he seemed to puff his chest out a bit. She tried to keep a pleasant look on her face. “Do you swim here regularly?”
“Actually, this is my first time,” he replied. “I just got my membership earlier this afternoon, before your class.”
“And right away, you run into someone you know. Well, like I said, it’s a small campus, isn’t it?”
“Sure is,” Hannah agreed. “We were talking about you earlier. Nick didn’t know about your movie deal.”
“That’s odd,” Ellie said. “It’s one of the first things they say about me after the course description.” Ellie looked him in the eye. “It’s strange you didn’t see it.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how I missed it.”
“Did Hannah tell you what the film deal was all about?”
He ran a hand through his wet hair. “Some kind of exposé you wrote, a series of articles, I understand.”
“That’s right. I helped put several murderers in prison—a bunch of narrow-minded lowlifes making themselves out to be crusaders.” Ellie studied him for a reaction and continued trying to goad him. “They started some fires. A few of them were so stupid they ended up burning themselves. They’d be pathetic if they weren’t so dangerous. Because of them, innocent people were killed and wounded. But justice was served.”
Folding his arms in front of him, Jensen nodded. “Well, score one for the good guys.”
“She won a ton of awards for her reporting,” Hannah said.
“I’ll have to Google it,” Jensen said.
Ellie sensed he was lying. She glanced at the scars on his arm again.
He caught her looking and rubbed his arm. “Kind of a mess, isn’t it?” He chuckled. “It’s a souvenir from my reckless, misspent youth. I was in a motorcycle accident.”
Ellie nodded. To her, the scars still looked as if he’d been burned once. While interviewing witnesses, she’d met with enough survivors from the arsonists’ fires to recognize burn scars.
“Well, nice running into both of you,” he said, a hand still partially covering his arm. “Have a nice weekend. See you in class on Monday.” He nodded at Ellie and smiled at Hannah.
“See you, Nick,” Hannah said.
Ellie didn’t say anything.
He gave a little wave and then turned and headed toward the men’s locker room a few feet away.
Hannah seemed a bit mesmerized as she watched him walk away. Then she turned to Ellie. “That was awkward,” she whispered. “Do you think his feelings were hurt? I noticed the scars, too, but I didn’t want to say anything. Actually, they’re kind of sexy, don’t you think?”
“Are you interested in him?” Ellie asked with a wary look.
“God, no.” Hannah laughed. “Please. He’s at least thirty.”
“A veritable relic,” Ellie said drolly.
“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that I’m more interested in guys closer to my own age. But he’s nice—and good-looking, don’t you think?”
“I think he’s not very trustworthy,” Ellie admitted. “And I’d be very careful dealing with him if I were you.”
“Well, like I said, he’s too old for me.” Hannah leaned in close, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Actually, I’m sort of interested in the lifeguard. His name is J.T. Isn’t he cute?”
Ellie glanced at him, still pacing on the other side of the pool. He looked back at them for a moment and then checked his phone again.
“I hear he’s been with, like, half the girls on campus, which should be a real turnoff,” Hannah said under her breath. “But I still kind of like him. I don’t know why . . .”
Ellie figured Freud would have had a field day with that remark, considering the reputation of Hannah’s father. She made a mental note to warn her friend Diana about this J.T. character before she got in too deep with him.
“Maybe I just want to get excited about somebody new,” Hannah said, working the towel over her damp hair. “During the summer, I had this long-distance, text and FaceTime thing with a guy from Boston named Riley. He goes to Northwestern. I thought he might be the one, y’know? We had a date to finally meet each other last weekend, and he postponed. He had a ‘family emergency.’” Hannah used air quotes and rolled her eyes. “We’re supposed to get together tomorrow, but he hasn’t followed up on it. I’ve texted and called, and he hasn’t gotten back to me. So I’m like ninety-nine percent sure I’ve been dumped—or ditched, or whatever.”
Ellie shook her head and sighed. “I’m sorry. That’s rough. You know, when I was with the Trib, a coworker did a feature story about dating in modern times, and some people out there are device-flirters. They’ll talk and text and FaceTime with you, but when it comes time to actually meet you, they back away. They have intimacy issues. Anyway, it’s his loss.”
“Thanks, I think I needed to hear that.” Hannah shrugged and slung the towel around her shoulders again. “God, listen to me go on. You’re my teacher, not my girlfriend. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I think I can be your teacher and your friend.”
“Anyway, I wanted to talk to you after class, but not about that. I felt bad for running off like I did the last time we spoke. The news about Rachel getting Eden and me our scholarships kind of floored me. I had no idea. It was a weird, major surprise—the first in a day full of weird, major surprises.”
“Did you discuss it with Rachel?” Ellie asked.
Hannah hesitated. “Yeah, and she was kind of—disappointed I found out. She planned on telling me later. Anyway, I’m glad you said something.”
“There were other surprises on Wednesday?”
“God, were there ever.” Hannah heaved a sigh. “That night, Eden and I walked into the laundry room, and there was a fire . . .”
“Yes, I heard about that. I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”
“Someone set a doll on fire inside a laundry basket. It was a prank, I guess. Exactly fifty years ago on Wednesday, a freshman in one of the bungalows had a baby in secret. Then she killed it and set it on fire. Can you imagine? Eden heard about it before I did. But when we tried to Google it, nothing came up. Eden swears it’s true, but I think it’s one of those urban legends.”
“No, it actually happened,” Ellie told her. “The archdiocese managed to keep it under wraps at the time. The story was buried in the back pages of the Tribune and the Sun-Times. But you wouldn’t have found anything on Google if you went looking under Our Lady of the Cove. Back in 1970, when it happened, this was Blessed Heart of Mary College. They changed the name shortly after that. There was so much bad publicity for the school back then, mostly due to a series of murders that same year.”
“So that’s why we couldn’t find anything about the murders online,” Hannah said. “Eden and I tried to look them up, too. We were looking under Our Lady of the Cove.”
“You know, I totally forgot it’s the fifty-year anniversary of all that,” Ellie murmured.
The serial killings weren’t discussed much at the school. When she’d first started teaching at Our Lady of the Cove last year, Ellie had been warned by someone who worked for Father O’Hurley, the vice president of the university, not to talk about the murders. None of the teachers were to mention the subject—especially with students. The powers that be at Our Lady of the Cove wanted to pretend the murders had never happened.
And now, someone was reminding everybody about the infanticide that was said to have sparked the “Immaculate Conception” murders.
“I know it sounds paranoid,” Hannah said. “But I can’t help thinking that whoever started the fire on Wednesday night must have seen Eden and me coming. It couldn’t have been going for more than a minute at the most. They must have set it and then climbed out of a back window. The laundry bungalow is the only one that doesn’t have bars on the windows.”
“You didn’t see anybody?”
Hannah shook her head. “The woman from campus security kept asking us that. But Eden and I didn’t notice anything until we were right in front of the place. We were distracted. We were still kind of in shock over—well, something else that went down that day.”
“Something else?” Ellie asked. “Another surprise?”
Hannah opened her mouth, but then hesitated. She glanced over toward J.T. again.
Ellie followed her gaze—across the pool. The handsome, young lifeguard had stopped pacing. He was facing them. The way he held his phone, it looked like he was taking their picture, but Ellie wasn’t sure. He stashed his phone into the pocket of his baggy red trunks. Then he climbed up a short ladder to his lifeguard tower and sat down.
Ellie turned once again to Hannah, who seemed deep in thought. “What is it?” Ellie asked.
She sighed. “You have to promise not to tell anyone. I’m still not sure how I feel about it. The reason Rachel arranged the scholarship for us is because—well, we’re related to her. Rachel was adopted.”
Ellie nodded. She remembered someone at the newspaper mentioning it once. She didn’t think it was a big secret or anything.
“She finally found out last year about her real parents. Her real mother was my mom’s dead sister, my aunt Molly. She had the baby when she was in college and gave it up. And the father was—is my dad. I knew he’d had an affair with my aunt—way back before I was born. But I don’t think he or my mother know Aunt Molly had a baby. She must have kept it a secret. Still, my dad’s name is on the birth certificate. Rachel showed it to Eden and me. Anyway, all of us are half-sisters.”
“God, what a shock,” Ellie whispered. “You poor thing. So—your parents don’t know anything about this? How’s Eden handling the news?”
“It wasn’t such a shock to her,” Hannah replied, frowning. She readjusted the towel around herself. “The woman who raised Eden hired a private detective to dig up everything he could about my dad. That was ages ago, I guess. Anyway, the detective must have found out about the baby. Eden said she’s known for a while. She just didn’t know it was Rachel. I’m not sure how I feel.” She glanced down toward the floor, and her eyes filled with tears. “When I think about how I used to adore my father...”
Ellie took Hannah’s hand in hers. She felt so bad for her, and didn’t know what to say.
“You have to promise not to tell anybody,” Hannah whispered.
Nodding, Ellie squeezed her hand. And at that moment, it hit her. She’d just been handed a major news story. Two years ago, the O’Rourke family had been the focus of a national media frenzy—Dylan O’Rourke, in particular. And, locally, anything concerning the Bonners was news. The meeting of the three half-sisters was a big human interest story, the kind of scoop any reporter would kill for.
But Ellie knew she couldn’t live with herself if she betrayed Hannah’s trust.
“I won’t breathe a word about it to anyone,” she promised.
Hannah wiped her eyes and gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks. I’d hug you, but I’m still kind of damp.” She looked over toward the clock on the wall. “I think I’ll do one more set of laps before I cut out of here. I’m going to some sorority recruitment thing at five-thirty. I’m not sure if I really want to join, but it’s a free dinner. Anyway, thanks for listening. I felt funny after I waved at you to come in here, since you’re my teacher and all. But now, I’m glad I did.”
“I’m glad you did, too,” Ellie said.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed someone in the doorwa
y of the men’s locker room. He quickly ducked back around the corner. But Ellie caught a glimpse of his shirt—that tacky Hawaiian thing with the pineapples on it. Was he listening in on their conversation?
“What is it?” Hannah asked.
“Nothing,” Ellie said. “I think I’ll stick around and watch for a few minutes, if that’s okay with you.” She didn’t want to leave Hannah alone here if Jensen was still lurking about.
“Cool,” Hannah said. Draping her towel over the back of a plastic chair, she padded over to the deep end of the pool and dove in.
J.T. seemed to be watching her.
Ellie glanced back at the men’s locker room and didn’t see anyone.
She couldn’t help thinking that perhaps some of the arsonists from two years ago had never been caught. Maybe one of them had ended up here, and he’d started a fire in the laundry room the night before last.
Then Ellie caught a glimpse of Nick Jensen outside—as he passed by the tall windows.
She wondered how much he’d heard of Hannah’s and her conversation. Did he know about the three half-sisters? She felt very protective of Hannah right now.
On the other side of a partially fogged window, Jensen paused for a moment and gave her a halfhearted smile. He waved.
Ellie just glared at him. She wanted the son of a bitch to know she was onto him.
He looked away and kept moving.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Friday, 4:17 P.M.
Ellie was determined to have it out with Jensen.
She figured he wouldn’t return to the pool within the next hour. Even if he did, Hannah was probably safe. Two more young women had shown up to swim. Ellie had caught Hannah’s eye between laps; then she’d waved and pointed outside to indicate she was leaving. Hannah had waved back and resumed swimming.
Ellie had left the copy of Nicholas Jensen’s registration form in her office in Lombard Hall. His phone number was on it. She planned to call the son of a bitch and find out once and for all what he was up to.
The Bad Sister Page 14
