A Wrongful Drift (Seagrove 8) (6 page)

“One of the boys was just being stupid,” Tandy said. “He said he was testing to see if different types of paper would burn at different rates, but I think he just wanted to burn things. He lit a pile of newsprint and ash went everywhere. Luckily, the professor came in and caught him then made him clean it up. So maybe he won’t do it again.”

“Maybe?” Betty asked.

“He’s young and stupid,” Tandy said, “so there are no guarantees.” She looked at Mr. Bradshaw lying under the chair.

“Do you mind if I pet your dog?” she asked. “I’ve got two at home, and I really miss them.”

“Of course not,” Sadie said. “Pat your legs and he’ll jump right up on your lap.”

“What’s his name again?” the girl asked.

“Mr. Bradshaw,” Sadie said, and he perked up his ears.

“Mr. Bradshaw,” Tandy coaxed, “come on up.”

Mr. Bradshaw stood up and shook all over before launching himself into Tandy’s lap and licking her on the nose. Tandy laughed, which made Mr. Bradshaw lick her more, and what followed was pretty much a lovefest between the dog and the girl.

“Thank you,” said Tandy as Mr. Bradshaw curled up in her lap. “There’s nothing like a little dog love.”

“No there’s not,” Sadie said. “You can come visit me at my shop anytime you feel like you need a little attention from Mr. Bradshaw. It’s Timeless Treasures on Main Street.”

“Thank you, Ms. Barnett. I appreciate that. I like college, but sometimes I miss things about home, like the dogs.”

“You’re welcome,” Sadie said. “Don’t be shy, come down any time you like. Come on Mr. B, it’s time to go home.”

Sadie shook Tandy’s hand and Betty embraced her, saying quietly, “you looked like you might need a hug. It can be hard being away from your mom.”

“Well that was a bust,” said Sadie on the way home in the car. “She doesn’t even remember Sylvia Jones.”

“Not really a bust,” Betty said. “She got to meet us, and I think having a couple of local women to look out for her might do her some good.

“True,” said Sadie. “And you never know when having a friend who understands chemistry is going to come in handy.”

A
fter her walk
with Mr. B in the park, Sadie called the number the college gave her for Candy Foster, the last girl on the list. She sounded so nice on the phone that Sadie was afraid it was another dead end, but she agreed to meet Candy at her dorm room first thing in the morning before the girl had to go to class.

She departed before Betty arrived the next morning, leaving Mr. Bradshaw asleep in his bed in the office. She locked the front door and climbed in her car, wondering if maybe she should wait and take Betty with her. Then she remembered how warm the girl had sounded on the phone, and very sensible, too. She did a mental eye-roll at her own skittishness and got in her car.

The drive to the college was uneventful, it was early enough that there wasn’t much traffic and she arrived early. So she dropped in at the coffee shop where she’d met one of the other girls, was it Mandy? She had met so many of them they started running together in her mind. She grabbed a coffee, left her car parked on the street and walked through campus to the dorm.

Candy buzzed her into the building and instructed Sadie to take the elevator to the fourth floor. She would have preferred to walk up the stairs but they weren’t immediately obvious. So she rode the elevator and got off on the fourth floor as instructed. She made her way to Room 417 and knocked.

Sadie was welcomed into a one-person dorm room by an unremarkable girl with long brown hair. “Are you Candy Foster?” she asked.

The girl gave her a friendly smile and Sadie was pretty sure she’d struck out again. This was another perfectly normal college student.

“Yes, I’m Candy,” she said, “how can I help you?”

“This is a nice dorm,” Sadie said looking around at the color-coordinated furnishings.

The poufy bed covering matched the bed skirt. Both were the same shade as the towels neatly folded over the back of a chair. In fact, thinking back to her own dorm room, this girl was one of those obsessively neat girls who Sadie had envied. There were times when she couldn’t see her floor for the clothes and shoes covering it.

“I like things to match,” Candy said. “Everything is in my favorite color for interior decoration, Candy pink.” She positively beamed at Sadie.

“I have different favorites for different things,” she explained.

“Sour apple green is my favorite color to wear,” she pointed to her T-shirt. “Red Hots red for outerwear. My car is jelly bean purple.”

“You must have a colorful personality,” Sadie said, and immediately regretted it. Could she be any lamer?

But Candy laughed and said, “Yes I do!” before looking at Sadie with anticipation.

“I’m sorry to barge in on you so early in the morning,” Sadie said, “but I’m looking into the sororities on campus. Did you rush this year?”

Was it Sadie’s imagination, or did Candy’s smile freeze?

“I did rush, yes, but I didn’t get into the sorority I wanted.” Her chin began quivering slightly but she stilled it.

“She wouldn’t even let me participate in the heinous hazing she had planned. She said I wasn’t their kind. Can you imagine the nerve? I even asked other sorority sisters if they agreed with her, and they didn’t know what I was talking about. She didn’t even ask anyone else their opinion. I’d like to know who she thought she was.”

“Was?” Sadie asked.

Candy had a look of complete satisfaction on her face. “Her days of snubbing are over.”

Sadie put her hand in her pocket and dialed Zack’s number. She had practiced dialing without looking for moments just like this one.

“What do you mean?” Sadie asked.

“Didn’t you know? Sylvia Jones is dead, dead, dead.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Hey! What are you doing? Take your hand out of your pocket.”

Sadie pulled her hand from her pocket and held it up, empty. Candy stepped forward, put her hand in Sadie’s pocket and pulled out her phone. She glanced at it, dropped it on the floor and ground her heel into it. Sadie thought it was a good thing she didn’t get attached to phones because this one came to a particularly brutal end.

“What are you doing on the phone?” she asked.

“Don’t play innocent with me,” Candy snarled. “You were recording. You were going to blackmail me.”

“I don’t think so,” Sadie said, trying to make her way stealthily toward the door, one step at a time.

“Oh yes,” Candy said, looking Sadie up and down.

“You clearly don’t have enough money to successfully blackmail me. No matter. What you don’t know is I can kill you as easily as I killed her.” Sadie bolted for the door.

“No!” Candy yelled at the top of her voice, lunging for Sadie and grabbing her leg.

Sadie struggled to stay upright but lost her balance, going down with a yell of frustration. “Why didn’t I bring Lucy or Betty?” she thought, “or even better, Mr. B!”

She kicked out at Candy but didn’t connect. Candy held on harder and pulled her further away from the door. Sadie kicked again and wriggled free, scrambling away on hands and knees only to be grabbed by the back of the pants and hauled back again.

"You’re strong for such a puny thing," Sadie grunted, and then yelled, "Help me!" as loud as she could.

Candy threw her arm around Sadie's neck, putting her in a headlock and dragging her back toward the bed. Sadie decided that fighting fair wasn't an issue and dug her fingernails into Candy's arm. Candy wailed and tightened her grip, cutting off Sadie's air supply.

Sadie pulled at Candy's arm, but the college girl was stronger than she appeared. That probably came with the crazy. How much time before she lost consciousness? She couldn't remember how long that took. She already was seeing black spots in front of her eyes.

She was about to pass out when the door slammed open and a group of girls spilled into the room. Sadie had a vague impression of baseball bats and scissors. One girl had what looked like a short whip in her hand. They converged on her, pulling Sadie from Candy's grasp.

Sadie fell to the floor and gasped for air. When she no longer felt like she was going to pass out, she turned around to see the other girls had wrestled Candy to the bed and were rolling her tightly in the pink quilt. That done, they sat on her.

Sadie now could see there were only four of them. Somehow it had seemed like there were twice that many when they'd come through the door. Perhaps that was because she was seeing double for lack of air.

"Thanks," She said. "You saved my life."

"Yeah," an athletic-looking girl sitting on Candy's legs spoke up. "It's become a regular thing. We live across the hall and keep one ear open for trouble. I don't know why no one presses charges, I would."

"Probably because she threatens to kill them if they do," Sadie said. "She's a regular horror."

"I am not a horror," came the strangled cry from within the quilt. "I'm misunderstood."

"Yeah, right." Sadie rolled her eyes. "She can go be misunderstood in prison."

At that moment, Zack came crashing through the door loaded for bear. He had his gun drawn and at least two officers at his back. If looks could kill the whole lot of them would have been dead.

"It's okay, Chief," Sadie said. "I've been rescued."

"Sadie, thank goodness. Your phone went dead and I had no idea where you were." He holstered his weapon.

"You need to file flight plans, so I know where to go looking when you are missing."

He reached down and helped her up from the floor. "Are you all right? Your neck is bruised."

"I'll be fine," she said. "Although I think I might be hoarse for a while."

"And who are these young women?" he asked, indicating the group on the bed.

"They live across the hall. I haven't had the chance to get their names yet, but apparently they've made it their mission to rescue folks from Candy Foster.” They finger waved at him.

"Candy's rolled up in the quilt. She's a real nutter," Sadie said, absently rubbing her neck.

"I can hear you," came the muffled voice from inside the bedroll, "and I am not a nutter."

"I'm sure she has a much nicer name for herself," Sadie said, "but I could say a lot worse than nutter."

"We studied narcissists in psychology," one of the girls chimed in. "I'm pretty sure Candy is one Classic symptoms."

"I am not!" The bundle of covers rocked as Candy tried getting free.

"It's not my fault people like to get in my way. If they didn't do that, I wouldn't have to retaliate. Not my fault."

Zack looked at his officers. "Take her out of here," he said. He looked at Sadie, "Did she confess to murdering Sylvia?" he asked.

"She said she would kill me like she killed her. I don't know if that counts as a confession or not."

The officers released the girls from their roles as Candy suppressors. As they slipped off of her and out of the room, Candy exploded from the quilt.

"Of course, I killed that stupid girl," she shouted as she jumped up and tried to dash past the police officers.

"She deserved it!"

She dodged one officer but smacked right into the other. They had her on the floor with her hands cuffed behind her back before she could even blink. Sadie was happy Candy wouldn't be trying her throat hold on her again. That was not pleasant.

"I should be in charge of that sorority," Candy said from the floor.

"They didn't even let me pledge." The two police officers grabbed her by the upper arms and hefted her to her feet.

"That's discrimination," she said as they frog-hopped her from the room.

"They discriminated against my clear superiority." Candy continued talking as they led her down the hall to the elevator, but Sadie stopped listening, preferring to focus on Zack.

"Thank goodness you showed up when you did," Sadie said. "I was going to have to murder her if she talked for much longer."

"While I can sympathize with the sentiment, I can't condone the action," Zack said, but then he grinned. "And anyway, they are going to have a field day with her in court. It'll be a three-ring circus."

"Speaking of three-ring circuses," Sadie said, "we can spring Justin from jail now. Surely Steve Ryan will have to let him go now that Candy confessed? Don't you think?"

"Hard to say, but if you like, we can ride up there in my jeep and talk to him about it." He smiled down at her. "I'd love to take a ride with my girl. Especially as I nearly had a heart attack when your phone went dead!"

Sadie pointed to the bits of phone scattered over the floor. "That's what's left of my phone. I probably should retrieve the SIM card." She searched around until she found the bit of phone that still held the SIM card. When she picked it up she saw something familiar under the bed.

"Zack," she said, "come look at this." She pointed to the scrap of fabric wound into a ball under the bed.

"Isn't that the same fabric as the scarf that was twisted around Sylvia's neck at the lake?" He bent down to look under the bed but then was down on his hands and knees using a pencil to slide the material from its hiding place.

"Does fabric retain fingerprints?" Sadie asked.

"Some do. This one probably not, at least if it was in the water with Sylvia for any length of time." He slid the fabric into an evidence collection bag.

"But we want to keep from contaminating it." He closed the bag and labeled it.

"Do you always have evidence bags in your pockets?" Sadie asked, surprised. She couldn't remember him ever pulling an evidence bag from his pocket before.

"Not usually, I was at a crime scene earlier in the day and had an extra, so I put in my pocket. I had a premonition I would need it." He grinned.

"You have got the lousiest poker face I've ever seen," Sadie said. "Thank goodness or I might believe you were all-powerful."

She slipped the SIM card from her phone into her purse. "Can we get out of here now?"

"Just a minute, I've got to get a team here to go over this room. We'll have to wait until they get here."

Sadie dragged a chair into the hall and settled in to wait, thinking it would be forty-five minutes at least. But she hadn't been there more than five minutes when three officers stepped off the elevator.

The tall, dark one, seeing her surprise, said, “The team that removed the suspect called us. We had a head start on the boss.”

He grinned, his teeth bright and she automatically smiled back. Some people just have a way of making your day a little better. The team went into Candy’s room and shortly after that Zack came out.

“Come on, you,” he said. “Time for lunch. I hear the O’Learys have opened a taco stand on the pier out on Cottage Bay. The fish tacos are to die for, according to Officer Wilton.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever had fish tacos,” Sadie said. “But I’ll try anything once. Can we stop by and get Mr. B on the way? He’s been stuck inside since our walk this morning. I didn’t anticipate being gone this long.”

She tilted her head to see his watch. “Wow, it really is lunch time. It takes much longer to get the air choked out of you than I thought.”

He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “The fresh air will do you good, and after we eat, we can let Mr. Bradshaw run on the beach. I doubt there will be anyone down there, mid-week and all.”

Sadie started to feel better when Mr. Bradshaw was in the jeep with them, and by the time she was tasting her first bite of fish taco she was starting to feel like herself again. “So Chief Woodstone,” she said after wiping her mouth, “where do you plan to take me on our honeymoon?”

“I was thinking the south of France might be nice,” he said, “but you’ve traveled overseas so much that I changed my mind. What I think we should do is to rent an RV and go on a road trip. That way we can take Mr. B with us. And that way we could go wherever we wanted. To the Florida Keys, or up north. West toward the Rockies.”

“Or we could park it on the bluff above Seagrove,” she said, “and not go anywhere at all.” She laid her hand on his. “And roast hot dogs on the fire pit and sleep as late as we wanted.”

“That too,” he said. “If it makes you happy, it’s fine with me.”

“You are too good for me,” she said. “Really, you deserve someone who would make you meals and keep your house clean.”