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“Does he? Maybe I’ll feel better once the papers are signed and it’s all official. You have to understand that this baby means more to me than anything else in the world. When I decided to have this baby, I decided that I was going to do this right. I want what’s best for him and that means I have to do whatever it takes to protect him. I won’t let anything or anyone hurt my baby. And that includes you, Will.”

I felt a chill run up my spine at her words. Was she threatening me or just trying to make me understand how much the baby meant to her?

“The baby means a lot to me, too, Caitlin,” I assured her. “I want what’s best for him or her too. If that’s what this is all about, then understand that I’m not going anywhere. I want to be a part of this child’s life and I’m certainly not going to do anything to intentionally hurt it.”She smiled. “Thank you, Will. I feel better now.” She patted me on the cheek and slipped past me back into 303

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the hall. I got her coat for her and I let her out.

Killian and Aidan were still in the living room. They sat close together on the sofa with their heads bent toward each other, speaking in soft voices. They stopped talking abruptly as I approached.

“What were you guys talking about?” I asked as I sat down on the other side of Aidan.

“Nothing,” Aidan said, slipping his arm around me.

“If you were talking about nothing, then why’d you stop when I came over?”

They exchanged glances.

“What’s going on?” I pressed.

“Maybe we should try calling this Robbie person,”

Killian suggested.

His attempt to change the subject wasn’t even subtle.

But I suspected my chances of getting anything out of either of them was slim to none, so with a sigh to let them know I knew what was going on, I gave in, “Okay, but what about Laura? She wanted us to wait.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to wait,” Killian said.

“What if the same thing happens to him that happened to Blake? Then we would never get the chance to talk to him and we’d never know what, if anything, he saw that night.”

“Good point,” I agreed. I slid out from underneath Aidan’s arm and went to find the phone book. When I came back, I wiggled my way in-between the two cousins so we could all look at the pages.

We quickly discovered that we didn’t know which spelling Robbie used on his last name. There were two Robert Mead’s, one Rob Mead, three Robert Meade’s, one R Meade, and no guarantee that any of them was the Robbie we were looking for. We decided that there 304

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was no way of finding out except to just call them all until we found the right one. We took turns calling, striking out on the first five tries. Although all the Robert’s were perfectly nice, they weren’t the guy we were looking for. I dialed the next number.

“Are you Robbie Meade?” I asked. By now this was our standard question.

“Yeah,” said a male voice cautiously.

“Do you go to the tech school here in town?”

A pause, then, “Yeah.”

For a second I didn’t know what to say. I’d gotten used to all of us receiving negative answers to that question, after which we’d politely tell whomever we were talking to that we had the wrong number. I felt my pulse quicken. “Were you at the party the night Joey Taylor died?”

The line was perfectly quiet. For a panic-stricken moment I was afraid he’d hung up. “Hello?” I said.

“I’m still here,” Robbie said quietly. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“My name is Will Keegan; I was there too. Joey was my best friend. Please don’t hang up.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t think it was an accident. I think someone was with Joey right before he died and I think they killed him.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“We talked to Blake,” I said and I heard a sharp in-take of breath.

“Look, I’m sorry about your friend but there’s nothing I can do to help you,” he said with finality.

“Wait!” I called. “Please, just answer a few questions.

Please! What can it hurt?”

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“Ask Blake that question, why don’t you? Oh wait, you can’t. She’s dead. And that’s what I’ll be if I get involved.”

“You’re already involved. You were in the pool house with Blake that night. What you know could help catch a killer.”

“I don’t know anything. I’m telling you, I can’t help you. I’ve been hiding in my apartment ever since Blake wound up dead in her dorm room. Then a friend of mine called and said some guy was asking around about me at the school he goes to. I’m not dumb; I can see what’s going on. I’m next on this homicidal maniac’s hit list. I’m leaving town tomorrow for good. I’m moving to Maine to live with my dad.”

“If you’re leaving, then it can’t hurt to tell us what you saw.”

“You’re not listening to me. I didn’t see anything.”

“Then you heard something. Blake told us you said you heard voices. What did you hear?”

“For God’s sake, why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Because I need to know.”

“Shit! If I tell you what I do know will you leave me alone?”

“Yes, I promise,” I said.

He sighed heavily into the receiver. “I heard something—well, someone—talking to the guy who ended up dead. At least, I assume it was the same guy. I wasn’t paying attention at first, except to hope they stayed out of the pool house until we were done. Then they got louder, like they were mad or upset.”

“Did you recognize the voices?”

He let out a short burst of nervous laughter. “Hell, no. That’s why this is all so fucking messed up. I don’t 306

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even know anybody at Pemberton except my friend.

He’s the one that invited me that night. Damn, I wish I’d never gone. Look, all I know is that they sounded like they were arguing. The guy sounded—I don’t know, pissed off. He was loud, sounded kinda drunk.

The girl was quieter, but if I had to say, she sounded more upset than he did.”

“A girl?” I latched onto the word.

“Yeah.”

My heart was pounding. “What were they saying?

Could you hear anything they were saying?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t listening and I was kinda busy, you know?”

“But you’re positive it was a girl?”

“Look, I’m not sure of anything. It coulda been a couple of fags for all I know. Okay? Now I’ve told you all I know. I gotta go; I have another call beeping in.”

“Wait—” I tried, but I heard the click of the phone as he hung up and then the line went dead.

I hit the end button on the phone and then stood staring dumbly at it for several seconds.

“It was a girl?” Aidan asked.

“That’s what he said. He said they sounded like they were arguing, but he didn’t hear what they were saying because he wasn’t paying attention.”

“A girl…” Killian said thoughtfully.

“What are you thinking?” I asked him.

“Nothing,” he said, but he exchanged a meaningful look at Aidan, who nodded ever so slightly.

“Okay, that’s it. What the hell is going on? What were you guys talking about earlier and what was that just all about?”

“Calm down,” Aidan soothed.

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“Not until you tell me what is going on.”

He sighed. “Killian and I were talking while you were in the back with Caitlin. He pointed out that the way things have been happening with this case it almost seemed like the killer knew what we were doing every step of the way.”

“Well, we’ve not been very secretive,” I pointed out.

“Still, it does seem to be just a little too coincidental.”

“So what are you suggesting? You think the killer is one of us?”

“Not just any of us,” Killian pointed out. “According to Robbie, it was a girl.”

“There are only two girls in our group,” I said. “And I know it isn’t Laura or Caitlin.”

“How do you know?” Aidan asked gently.

“What? You can’t be serious! I’ve known Laura forever. Just because you two haven’t hit it off doesn’t make her a murderer. And Caitlin was with me when Joey was killed, so it couldn’t have been her. Besides, what did she have to gain with Joey dead?”

They exchanged another look.

“Will you stop that!” I yelled.

“Will, think about it,” Aidan tried again. “You’d known Joey forever too, but his behavior took you completely by surprise. So much so, in fact, that you didn’t even believe me when I first told you about it. You had to see it for yourself. You have to admit that Laura’s been acting strangely; the way she left here so suddenly tonight, as soon as Gabe told us Robbie’s name?”

“That’s why I thought it was important that we call him right away,” Killian explained.

“And you remember she stayed in the hallway the day we talked to Blake after we left. Maybe she went 308

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back in there as soon as we were gone. There’s just too much that doesn’t fit.”

“So you’re convinced that Laura is the killer?”

“No, not convinced. It’s just a possibility that we have to look at. To be honest, Caitlin is just as good a suspect except that she was with you. She didn’t have to have anything to gain from Joey’s death. We’ve already decided that it was a crime of passion, committed in the heat of the moment, not planned out like Blake’s murder.”

“Well I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it was either one of them. Caitlin just isn’t a killer and, for all we know, there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the way Laura’s been acting.”

Aidan and Killian exchanged one more glance.

“I hope you’re right, Will,” Aidan said with a sigh. “I really do.”

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The next morning at work, I was busy in the back room, trying in vain to force some sort of organization on the mess that had accumulated back there over the years. Hearing a noise, I looked up to find Nikki in the doorway with a worried expression on her face.

“Will?” she said. “There’s a Detective Grafton here to see you.”

“What?” I asked. The clipboard I had been taking notes on slipped unnoticed from my hand.

Grafton’s unpleasant face appeared over Nikki’s shoulder.

“I’ll talk to Mr. Keegan right here if that’s all right with you, Ms. Avanti,” he said in a manner that made it clear that he was going to whether it was okay with her or not.

Nikki looked to me and I gave her a curt nod. She turned and walked stiffly back to the gallery. Detective Grafton stepped in, letting the door shut behind him.

“Mr. Keegan,” he said conversationally, “since we last spoke some very interesting things have been happening and your name keeps popping up everywhere I turn.”

“Oh?” I asked carefully. I had decided that the less I 310

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said the better.

“Yes, oh. Do you have anything you’d like to tell me?”

“Maybe. What things are we talking about?”

“I think you already know the answer to that. Miss Hammond’s untimely death? You probably heard about that on the news. What you don’t know is that while we officially released a report of suicide, we were still investigating the whole incident. As you well know, Miss Hammond was the person who reportedly found your friend, Mr. Taylor. There were many things about her death that didn’t wash. I couldn’t help but remember our conversation about your suspicions concerning the death of your friend. We took a second look at Mr.

Taylor’s death and we found a few things that took on a different shade in the light of Miss Hammond’s death.”

“Why are you telling me all this now?”

“Two reasons. Number one, you and your junior detective club have been royally fucking up our investigation. You’re blundering through this whole thing like the infamous bull in the china shop. You’re destroying evidence everywhere and where you’ve not destroyed it you’ve outright stolen it.”

“I—we—”

“We know all about the rock Mr. Maza so kindly kept for us. We swung by and picked it up on the way here.”

I was starting to get nervous. Was I in trouble?

“What’s reason number two?” I asked, even though I didn’t really want to know.

“Number two is simple. For your own protection, you need to stop this stupidity now. This is not a game. You kids are in way over your heads. You’re playing with a cold-blooded killer. This whacko has already killed three people; I don’t want you to end up number four.”

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“Three?” My blood ran cold as his words sank in.

“Joey, Blake and—who?”

“It happened last night. It’s not even hit the news yet.

We’re trying to keep a lid on it as long as possible.”

“Who?” I insisted, fighting a rising feeling of panic.

“Who was it?”

“Robert Meade, age 19, student at the tech school, attended the party the night Mr. Taylor died, was with Miss Hammond when she found Mr. Taylor. But you already knew all that. You talked to him on the phone last night.”

“What? How—”

“We checked his phone records.”

“When was he killed?”

“Most likely very shortly after you hung up from talking to him. His friends found him less than half an hour after your phone call was logged in.”

“He got another phone call while we were talking.”

“We know. It was another of your cronies, a Ms.

Duvier I believe.”

My mind whirled. Laura had called Robbie? Why?

And then he’d been killed shortly after.

“You might be interested to know that our killer is getting sloppy—or cocky—or desperate. Of the three that last one is the most dangerous. Desperate people do stupid things.”

“What do you mean?”

“He gave up all pretense of making it look like a suicide. Put six holes in him and left him on the doorstep.”

“He was shot?”

“Yep, five more times than was needed to kill him.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“Are you scared, Mr. Keegan?”

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I nodded numbly.

“Good. You should be. You’ve been poking a bee-hive and if you don’t stop you’re going to get stung. I hope you’re scared out of your mind. It’s the only thing that’s going to save you. Now, I want you to get out of police business and stay out.”