Particles of Murder (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Series Book 1) (4 page)

* * *

J
ohn follows closely
behind me until we reach the front door. He presses the doorbell. Nothing happens.

“Did you really think the doorbell would work at a frat house?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Sorry, I didn’t spend a lot of time at fraternities when I was in school. Did you?”

“No,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand the probabilities of an old house’s electronic systems working.”

“I was just trying to—”

The door jerks open. A man in sweatpants and disheveled dyed blue hair with his blond roots showing opens the door. He slides his hands in his pockets as he looks me up and down.

“Hey, lady,” he says. “I hope you’re not looking for any of my friends because I hate to steal from any of my boys.”

“Uh, I am looking for one of your friends,” I say. “But I’m…I was a friend of Victoria’s. I was hoping to talk to her boyfriend. I’m just…”

I turn to John, hoping he’ll contribute something worthy to the conversation—such as the reason why he’s here.

“And I’m here as moral support,” John says.

I’d say I’ve met worse liars, but then I’d be a liar, too.

“He’s moral support,” I echo. “The college counselor advised that he should be with me while I…process Victoria’s death.”

“Ahh,” he says, nodding for three seconds longer than necessary. I would think he’s stoned, but there’s no sign that he is other than his complete lack of self-awareness. “I heard about that. It sucks.”

I stare at him. “So…is her boyfriend here?”

“Right. Right.” He nods four more times before gesturing for John and me to come into the house. The moment I step in, I’m hit by the smell of body odor that someone desperately tried to cover up with way too much cologne. The blue-haired man leads us to the first room, where three other men are sitting on a ratty brown couch. Two of them are playing a video game while the third one appears to be texting.

The blue-haired man gestures to the one who’s texting. The man has dark hair that’s about to grow past his ears and square-framed glasses. Other than the fact that he’s relatively good-looking, he’s not who I would picture in a fraternity.

“Dominic, this lady is here to see you,” the blue-haired man says.

Dominic doesn’t react.

“Hi, uh, I’m a friend of Victoria’s,” I say.

He finally glances up at me. He slides his phone into his pocket. “I’ve never met you.”

I force a laugh. “Well, uh, have you met all of Victoria’s friends?”

“Yes.” He glances to John, at my side. “Hello, Dr. Zimmer. Don’t you have classes today?”

“I do,” he says. “But they’re not for another hour and a half.”

“What are you doing here with this woman?” Dominic asks.

“She’s a friend of Victoria’s that needed moral support—”

“No,” Dominic interrupts. “I don’t think so. I knew all of Victoria’s friends and she’s definitely not one of them. I’m sorry, whoever you are, but you’re not the type of person Victoria would hang out with. She loved the bo-ho chic, all her friends loved it, and you’re…you look like you got the clothes a homeless man rejected. Also, you’ve clearly got a stick up your ass, which she wouldn’t have tolerated.”

“I don’t know…she was dating you, so clearly she did tolerate it,” I say.

The two men on the couch stop playing their game and the blue-haired man covers his mouth.

“Do you need an ice pack after that burn?” he whispers to Dominic.

Dominic grinds his teeth. “I’d think a policeman—who I assume you are since you’re pretending to be someone you’re not—would be a bit more respectful to the grieving boyfriend.”

“I’m not the police.” I turn to John, whose eyebrows are raised at me. “Tell them. I’m not the police, right?”

“No, she’s not,” he says. “She just does forensics.”

“That’s right,” I say, turning back toward Dominic. “So, if you have even the slightest presence of drugs in this house, I could find them. You could scrub every inch of this dump and I could still find it. And if I find drugs, that could mean academic probation, expulsion, criminal prosecution. Even if the college decides to go easy on you, at the very least, they would probably take away any financial aid you receive. Dominic, I’m sure your parents cover your tuition, but some of your brothers here might need that little bit of help.”

Dominic crosses his arms over his chest. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“Where were you when Victoria died?”

“She died really early yesterday, right?” he asks.

I nod.

“I was here.”

“Sleeping?” I ask. “Alone?”

He shakes his heads. “I was drunk, but any of my brothers could confirm I was here.”

He smacks the blue-haired man in the shoulder.

“You were here all night, weren’t you, Alex?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Alex—the blue-haired man—says. “He was here all night and he left for his nine o’clock class around 8:40.”

“You two know each other’s schedules?” I ask.

Dominic shrugs. “We’ve lived together in this house for a couple years now. We feel like actual brothers. Besides, he likes to bitch about how early I have to get up.”

“I don’t bitch about how early you get up,” Alex argues. “I remind you kindly to shut your damn alarm off within the first ten minutes that it goes off. Nobody likes when it goes off for a whole half hour—”

“Okay, I get it,” I say. “Just like brothers. Dominic, do you know if your girlfriend was going to meet someone yesterday morning?”

He indicates to John. “She was just supposed to teach the beginning of Dr. Zimmer’s class.”

“Can you tell me anything else?” I ask. “Was she having problems with anyone?”

He smirks. “Are you kidding? Did you guys not even go to the campus police or the Dean?”

“Why?” I ask.

He rolls his eyes. “She was having issues with her R.A. His name is Justin. I don’t know his last name. He was stalking her, but the school pretty much said that because she didn’t have concrete evidence, her only choice was to move out of her dorm to another floor. She liked everyone on her floor and she liked her roommate. She didn’t want to risk getting a bad roommate, so she decided to suck it up and try to avoid him.”

“Do you know her dorm room?” I ask.

He smiles. “Of course I know it. This house isn’t the most private area and her roommate liked to go home on the weekend. We had made some great memories there.”

“Can you just give me the dormitory name and room number?”

“Favare Hall. Room 324.”

* * *

“
V
ictoria’s boyfriend
didn’t seem upset at all,” I say as we wait for a student to come through the entrance doors of Favare Hall. The doors lock as soon as they’re closed, making it hard to get inside without an invitation. As a student walks out, we slip into the building. We head to the left and find the elevators. I click the
3
button.

“People mourn differently,” John says. “I’m sure you do something when you mourn that other people would think is weird.”

“What makes you so certain that I’ve mourned anyone?”

“I just get that general sense about you,” he says. “I’ve learned people’s deepest secrets through their writing, and when you learn people’s secrets, you start getting a general sense of what that secret feels like.”

“Are you trying to say you’re psychic?” I ask. The elevator stops and we step out onto the third floor. “Because I don’t believe in that.”

“I’m saying that you carry yourself like someone who has mourned for a long time,” he says as we pass by the rooms until we reach 324. “Can I ask who it was that died? Your mother or your father?”

“My mother and father work at a magic shop called
Magician’s Suitcase
,” I say, knocking on the door. “You can go there sometime and see that they’re both alive and well. My mother even does yoga.”

The door opens. A short woman with her hair pulled back into a ponytail stands in front of me. I note she has a small scar under her top lip—possibly from healed over piercing—and that her eyes are puffy and outlined in red. Her breaths are a little shaky as she wipes at her eyes.

“Hi,” I say. “Are you Victoria Glassman’s roommate?”

She nods. “My name’s Kiona. Are you the police? I already talked to them.”

“I work with the police. My name is Mira and this is Dr. Zimmer.” I tried to lie to the frat boys, but apparently these college students aren’t idiots and I don’t see any positive outcome from lying to Victoria’s roommate. “Can I ask you some questions about Victoria?”

“I already told you guys everything I know,” she says.

“Kiona.” John steps forward. “You don’t know me, but I was Victoria’s professor for a few years and she was my teaching assistant. Victoria once told me that you two would make muffins every Sunday night. She really enjoyed that time she got to spend with you, especially when your schedules were so hectic.”

The smallest smile tugs on Kiona’s lips.

“Yeah. We made chocolate chip muffins a few days ago.”

“Did you two talk about anything while you were baking?” John asks. “Maybe something had been bothering her or she was stressed out about something?”

Kiona shakes her head. “She had been pretty happy. We talked about normal things—classes, jobs, her boyfriend.”

“What about your R.A.?” I ask.

Kiona’s smile disappears. “She was having issues with him. He’s a bit creepy, but she didn’t want to move, and he never did anything that would cross the line. He just showed up wherever she was and always tried to talk to her. It was annoying more than anything, but she was always aware that something worse could happen.”

“What’s his name?”

“Justin…Brewster? Or Brewer? I don’t know. He lives in room 301.”

“Do you think Justin would hurt Victoria?”

“I…honestly, I don’t know. I want to say that he wouldn’t, but I’d known him since he was a freshman and I hadn’t thought he’d stalk someone until he began following Tori around.”

“Tori is Victoria?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I think her boyfriend and her professors are the only ones who called her by her full name. I—”

She stops talking as a lanky man with short brown hair stops in front of us. His shoes are worn out and caked with mud, but the rest of his clothes are brand new. Not sure what to make of that—he either wears down his shoes through athletics and can’t afford to constantly replace them, or he’s oddly attached to those particular shoes.

“Uh, Mira and Professor Zimmer, this is Justin…our R.A.,” Kiona says.

I look closer at him, but it’s not like insanity is detectable on someone’s clothes or hands.

“Hi,” he says. “I was just wondering what’s going on. Is this about Tori?”

“Why?” I ask. “Did you want to be part of the investigation? We could start a Scooby Doo gang—me, you, the professor here, Kiona…all we’d need is a dog and we’re set.”

“Uh, no,” he says. “I just wanted to know if you found out what happened to her. There are a lot of rumors going around, but it seems like nobody knows what really happened.”

“Or maybe you just came around because you wanted to appear innocent while also figuring out what we know,” I say. “You were stalking Victoria, weren’t you?”

He frowns. “That was a misunderstanding. It’s a small campus—at least in comparison to some other campuses. We just ran into each other a lot and I thought we were on friendly terms. Apparently, she didn’t think so. I backed off after that.”

“But, then, she dies and you become interested again?”

“I’m just being a concerned R.A.,” he says, balling his fists. “Is that against the law now?”

“I’m just asking questions,” I say. “Why are you getting so angry?”

“I’m not,” he snaps. “I just don’t appreciate being interrogated for being a friendly guy.”

“You seem to be getting angry to me.”

“I am not getting fucking angry. I’m just—” He slides his hands in his hair and grips onto it as if he wants to tear it out. “You people keep talking like I’m a lunatic, but you just didn’t see Tori like I did. She was amazing. She was so passionate and I…I was enamored with her passion. She was in love with everything. She threw herself into her writing and I just wanted to be there for her. I wanted her to see me and throw herself into me in the same way she did with everything else. But, she just…didn’t see it that way.”

He turns to John. He points straight at him.

“But you…you two were close. She looked up to you. Why you? What’s so special about you? What did you have that I don’t?”

“Nothing,” John says. “Absolutely nothing. I was just her professor. She looked to me for approval. I was like a father-figure to her except…more present. People in the writing community can become very close to each other because we share our personal stories—even in fiction there’s always a kernel of truth—but I always made sure she knew our relationship was strictly between a professor and a student. She had no interest in me either. She was in love with her boyfriend.”

“Dominic,” Justin scowls. He releases his hair, shaking his head. “What an asshole. He doesn’t care about her at all. But the two of us…we could have been something great. Now she’ll never know.”