Literally Offed Page 13

  “Sheriff…” the detective said; the word was a low growl in his throat.

  “I humored you enough by letting you come out here. I can see now that I shouldn’t have let it happen. Hand over my evidence, Detective.” The sheriff stepped forward again. “Or I will make you regret it.”

  Detective Valdez exhaled audibly. In contrast, I held my breath, waiting for the police drama movie-style, stand-off about to happen, complete with a rousing speech to put this crooked sheriff in his place.

  My mouth dropped open as the man I’d been counting on handed over the glove. The sheriff slipped it on and knelt quickly to grab the evidence from the ground in front of me. Our evidence.

  “But… you can’t—he didn’t—” My wild eyes shifted between the two lawmen.

  The detective held up his hand to stop me. “It’s okay, Miss Brooks. He’s right.”

  “He also never would’ve found the knife if it wasn’t for me.” Exasperation raised the tone and pitch of my voice until I was almost yelling.

  I was about to say something about his tattoo when a gentle hand landed on my shoulder. I glanced over to see Alex standing beside me. His dark eyes implored me to listen. Alex too? My shoulders slumped under the weight of his insistence and my chin dipped toward my chest.

  “Okay,” I mumbled.

  On the walk back to the campground, Alex came up beside me a few minutes in and wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me close while we walked. The sheriff and Alex’s dad were a good ten feet in front of us, but I slowed my pace, making Alex drop back a little more with me.

  “He’s one of them,” I whispered, eyebrows setting in a hard line on my forehead. “He has the TriAlpha symbol tattooed on his arm.”

  Alex swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He watched the sheriff for a moment, then said, “You think he might be trying to protect someone in the group? I thought we’d decided it wasn’t likely it was one of the frat guys.”

  “Maybe not a current member of the frat. But what about an alumnus?” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Remember what Dylan said about past members of the frat being angrier than the active ones? What if the sheriff killed James, but Kevin is convinced it was Matt and he beat him up to get back at him?”

  “Pepper.” Alex sighed. “We’re not back to this, are we? A sheriff did not slit a college kid’s throat in the middle of the woods just to stop him from moving his old frat to another university.”

  Tipping my head onto his shoulder, I wrinkled my nose. The man had a point. “I know, but he’s one of them. Doesn’t that mean something?” Thoughts and worries about my dad flooded the sentiment behind my question, unbeknownst to Alex.

  “Not necessarily.” He shrugged.

  I looked up at him. “Really?” I knew I’d done a bad job of concealing my eagerness when Alex glanced down.

  “What’s up with you?” he asked, stopping and facing me. His fingers intertwined with mine. “Everything okay?”

  Truth was… no, it wasn’t. Ever since I found that symbol in Dad’s book, I had a gnawing worry in my gut. And the terrible feeling was only made worse by the knowledge I was keeping it from Alex. I breathed out my reservations in a whoosh, knowing I could remedy at least one of the things bothering me.

  “Remember when we were looking through the boxes of my dad’s books?”

  Alex nodded. “And you went all weird after you found his copy of Civil Disobedience.”

  I shook my head and laughed. “And here I thought I’d covered it up so well. That’s what I get for dating a cop, huh?”

  He leaned forward to kiss me. “I was trying to give you space with it. Wanted you to tell me when you were ready.”

  “I think my dad was in the TriAlphas, too,” I said, my words almost a whisper.

  Alex’s face contorted into a scowl. “What? Why?”

  “When I was paging through his copy of Civil Disobedience, I saw he’d sketched the three As under his name on the title page.” I grimaced. The words burned like stomach acid in my throat.

  He pulled in a deep breath, then let it go, shaking his head. “Well, I have to admit I didn’t see that coming, but…” He shrugged. “I still don’t think it automatically means something bad about him.”

  “How?” I tried to keep my voice from becoming shrill in my frustration. “Alex, these are terrible people who are not only breaking the law, but seem to have a complete disregard for life. How is it not absolutely devastating that my dad was a part of an organization like this?”

  Alex’s hands moved to cup my face. “Peps, you have to trust that you knew your dad, that the man you loved wouldn’t have done something like this.” He dropped his hands to rest on my shoulders. “When my mom was shot…” He cleared his throat. “She—there were quite a few people who commented on her obituary, saying pretty awful things. They hid behind their anonymous online profiles and said she deserved to die because she was a dirty cop who got involved where she shouldn’t have. Dad and I—” His voice cut out, but he tried again. “We had to remember who she was, and we couldn’t let anything they said diminish it. You have to do the same thing, now.”

  Blinking back tears, I took a deep breath as Alex’s face tightened from the memory. Then I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around his stomach, squeezing tight while I buried my face into his chest.

  “I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.” My words were muffled by his T-shirt, which only made them feel even more insufficient.

  He slipped his arms behind me and held me, resting his chin on the top of my head. “I’m not quite sure what I would’ve done without my dad to help me get through. Do you think talking with your mom would help? She might know something you don’t about the whole situation. Might help clear things up.”

  Pressing my lips together, I said, “Yeah. I should talk with her. I just got so mad at her last time we were there…”

  Regret rose in my throat, making me feel too hot. I’m sure none of this was easy for Mom either, but she’d always been the kind to compartmentalize her feelings and deal with life first. Maggie had taken after her, still able to seem like she was keeping it together even when things were falling apart. Dad and I were the emotional, expressive ones. We quoted literature and cried over poetry and felt every single feeling. And while our way was decidedly messier, I didn’t envy the silent, internal rollercoaster Mom must be experiencing with Duncan moving in.

  Pulling away from Alex, I made a resolution to be more gentle with my mother, and to talk with her about this whole TriAlpha thing.

  “Come on. Let’s go catch up.” Alex kept an arm around me as we pointed ourselves back toward the campground and the two men we could no longer see.

  Alex’s father was waiting in the SUV when we arrived. The sheriff’s cruiser was nowhere to be seen. Once we were inside, the detective donned his sunglasses and started the car.

  “You two okay?” he asked as he pulled out of the campground parking lot.

  Alex looked back at me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sheriff Langley is in the fraternity, though, or was.”

  “Ah,” he said, gracefully leaving off the, “So that’s why you were acting so crazy” part of his sentence.

  “And while I’ll concede there’s not a whole lot of evidence to support him as a viable suspect, I do think he may be committing perjury to keep this whole thing under wraps.”

  The detective’s sunglasses made it difficult to tell if he was watching me in the rearview mirror or if his eyes were remaining on the road.

  “Not covering up for the sake of tourism, but loyalty to a fraternity. Now that makes much more sense. I apologize for the frustration we caused you back there, Pepper. Our showing up here was tenuous at best, but once the sheriff began to call me on it, I had no choice but to concede. He was right. The evidence is linked to his case, not mine. Until we can prove whether or not the two attacks are linked, we’re not going to get that knife.”

  “Makes sense.” Now that I had
a little time removed from the situation, I could see how I had overreacted.

  “Rest assured I will check up on the evidence, make sure it’s submitted correctly. I will also look into the journal. If the sheriff is committing perjury, I will make sure he’s dealt with accordingly.”

  I smiled. “Thank you. I’m sorry I was pushy. Sometimes I have a hard time with things not going how I think they should. But ‘A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone,’ right?”

  Alex let out a little groan, but the detective dipped his head in a nod. “I agree, but with one caveat: only until he knows which things he cannot afford to let alone any longer.” He paused for a moment. “Who said that?”

  “Who else?” Alex chimed in.

  “Thoreau,” I answered, ignoring Alex. “It was one of my dad’s favorite quotes.”

  In the mirror, the detective’s lips tightened into a thin line. “Your father sounds like he was a wise man.”

  Letting go of the sick feeling of betrayal eating away at me ever since I’d found the symbol in his book, I let myself heed Alex’s advice. “He was.” A full smile spread across my face. “I miss him every single day, as I’m sure you know.” My words were quiet, but they felt all too big even for the large interior of the SUV.

  Alex nodded.

  But the detective pulled his sunglasses off, setting them on top of his head before taking his eyes off the road to glance back at me. He could’ve just as easily met my eyes through the mirror, but I guess this was something he felt deserved actual eye contact.

  “I still hear her singing sometimes in the morning,” he said after a few moments. “She used to love singing as she got ready in the morning.”

  I could see Alex glance over at his father, his mouth parted in surprise.

  “Different state, different house, heck… different bathroom, but I can still hear that sweet voice of hers floating through the bedroom, bouncing off the tiles.”

  “What a Wonderful World,” Alex said, the words almost a hum they were surrounded by so much warmth.

  “It was her favorite,” Alex’s father said.

  And then the two of them began to hum the melody together, melting what was left of my broken heart.

  We spent the rest of the drive sharing stories, them about Julie and me about Jackson, my father. As we pulled into Pine Crest, I knew I needed to talk with my mother.

  “Alex, I might take a raincheck on hanging out more today.”

  “No problem,” he said, unsurprised, as if he already knew what I was going to say.

  “Would you mind dropping me off at my mom’s office instead of my apartment, then?”

  “Sure thing,” the detective said.

  Alex directed him there and before I knew it—or was ready for it—we were pulling up in front of my mother’s firm situated in the heart of downtown.

  I paused before getting out. “Thank you so much for bringing me along, Detective Valdez.”

  He turned to face me. “Thank you for finding the murder weapon.” He winked. “I can honestly say we wouldn’t have been able to do that without your literary intuition.”

  I ducked my head in a little bow, then reached forward to squeeze Alex’s shoulder in a goodbye.

  “Oh, and Pepper…” the detective said as I was sliding out of my seat. When I looked back, he added, “Call me, Mateo. Okay?”

  Stunned, I could only nod and close the door. Then I jogged the rest of the way to my mother’s office building. I didn’t know what I would learn about my dad when I entered, but one thing was for certain, I was glad Detective Valdez—Mateo—had ruined our Pepper and Alex day.

  17

  Unfortunately, my mother couldn’t see me, having just connected with what was going to be a long conference call, according to her assistant. So I wandered the streets of downtown for a little bit, poking into my favorite thrift shop, Second Pantses, to see if she’d gotten in anything new.

  It wasn’t until I was trying on a particularly flowy scarf that I remembered my mother might not be the only one who knew my father well enough to give me information about his alleged fraternity involvement.

  After hanging the scarf back on its hanger, I walked out into the summer sunshine and set a course for the English building on campus, only stopping by the bookshop briefly to pick up Dad’s copy of Civil Disobedience.

  The new quarter wouldn’t begin until tomorrow, but I knew my favorite professor would be in her office, preparing an amazing lecture for the knowledge-hungry students about to file into her classroom.

  The reality that I was quite possibly headed toward some answers about my father should’ve made me breathe in deep, relieved lungfuls of mountain air. But all I could do as I walked through campus was think about that damn symbol. When I’d seen it embroidered onto James’s sleeve, I thought I’d recognized it from around the university, but now it seemed just as possible I’d seen it at home. And as much as I tried to hold tight to Alex’s advice about knowing my dad’s true character, I couldn’t help but feel betrayed, led astray.

  I kept up my pace and before I knew it, arrived at the pod which currently housed Professor Ferguson’s office—and used to house my father’s. Keeping my eyes forward, I walked straight.

  “Oh!” She jumped when I stepped inside and knocked on the door frame. “Hello, Pepper. What can I do for you?” the older woman asked, blinking up at me through her thick, red-rimmed glasses. “You do remember classes don’t begin until tomorrow, right?” She tittered at her joke and set down the paper she’d been looking over. “How is that bookstore of yours doing, my dear?”

  Unready for the amount of questions she would have for me, I took a second to collect myself. “The bookstore is great,” I said, finally. “I’m taking a few days off, things were getting a little stressful juggling that and my grad classes, so…” I blinked.

  “Yes, yes, I bet.” Fergie nodded. “I’m glad you’ve been able to take a much-needed respite.”

  Little did Fergie know that my “vacation” had been anything but restful. Since we’d found James’s body, I’d actually been wishing for the albeit hectic, but comfortable, routine of a full class schedule and managing my bookstore. But I wasn’t here to commiserate with Professor Ferguson about my stressful weekend, I was here for some answers.

  “Fergie,” I said, pulling out the Thoreau volume from my bag. “I have something really important to ask you about my father.”

  Her face dropped and paled in color until it was apparent that any rosiness in her cheeks was due only to her bright pink blush. She wrung her hands together on top of the desk.

  “Oh dear, I knew this day would come. But I suppose it’s best to just rip it off, all at once, like a Band-Aid.” She exhaled quickly.

  My heart pounded as I waited. This was it, I could feel it.

  Fergie nodded. “I’m afraid that your fears are, unfortunately, justified. Your father was an unapologetic fan of Thoreau.” She burst into a loud laugh, causing me to jump out of surprise. “His interest in Shakespeare and Dickens were the only things which saved his literary soul, if you ask me.”

  “Bu—hi—” I sputtered out pieces of words, caught off guard by Fergie’s humor.

  All of a sudden, she seemed to recognize the pain etched onto my face and her laughter ceased. “Pepper, tell me you haven’t gone over to the disobedient side, too?” She widened her eyes in mock horror.

  Every fiber of the woman sitting in front of me had a flair for the dramatic. From her bright blue eyeshadow—applied liberally, full lid—to her wispy, blond combover and her long, draped clothing made her look like she was always on her way to some theatrical premier. The odd part was that she appreciated humor almost more than all of the drama, so sometimes it was easy to get caught off guard by her looking on the bright side.

  Through all of my anticipation and anxiety, a laugh found a way, bubbling up and out of me. Giggling for a few moments, I wiped the smile off my fa
ce, slumping into the armchair in the corner of her office.

  “No, Fergie. It’s something serious, really.” Flipping to the title page of the book, I handed it over to her, bridging the space in between her desk and the chair I occupied.

  She clasped the book in her bony fingers and furrowed her brow. Readjusting her glasses, she peered at the page.

  “Have you ever heard of a fraternity called Alpha Alpha Alpha?” They call themselves the TriAlphas.”

  Fergie pursed her lips. “Not very original, if you ask me. The whole Greek alphabet at their fingertips and they simply repeated the first letter three times?” She scoffed, but then seemed to remember she was supposed to be answering my question instead of hers. “Oh, um… no dear. I can’t say I have. But I never got into all of that Greek business, something I was especially grateful for when we lost those poor boys that year.”

  “I know. And up until the other day, I would’ve said my father felt the same way, but look.” I pointed, refocusing her attention. “That’s the symbol for the fraternity, in his book.”

  “Well…” she scratched her long fingernails along her forehead. “It does seem to allude to a level of ownership, but I couldn’t say for sure, dear.”

  I exhaled my hopes of Fergie knowing anything concrete which might help me.

  “Have you talked with your mother about this?” she asked, glancing up from the book.

  “I tried, but she’s busy. I don’t know. I guess I thought since you two were close, and since you knew him as a student and a fellow professor, you might be able to shed some light on things.”

  Something I said must’ve sparked something in the old woman, because her penciled-in eyebrows shot up, along with a single bony finger.

  “Pepper, dear. I may be unable to help you, yes, but I do remember your father and Dr. Wilford were very close during those years. If your mother is unable to help you with the information you seek, it’s possible Gregory might.”

  Gregory Wilford. The name slipped back into my mind so easily since I’d just looked at it mere hours earlier. My toes scrunched up in my sandals as I realized the connection.