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“At first he didn’t want to talk about her,” Porter said. “But then he told us she’d taken one of his tours that day and just wanted to ask more questions about the school and all, so they had coffee. She paid.”
The headmaster tapped a pen on a pad of paper he was using to take notes. “Did he tell you her name? There’ll be a record of her if she took a tour.”
“Karla something,” the boy said. “I can’t remember. But Tommy would know.”
“Why would Tommy know?” I asked.
“Because he likes to fish and her last name was like some kind of lure.”
Pelham looked at me, said, “I’ll find Mr. Grant when we’re finished here.”
After I’d come down hard on him, the headmaster had turned out to be a decent enough guy, and I nodded.
“Anything else?” he asked.
Porter looked at the floor, but Sylvia said, “Just that when I went by him, going to the jitney, I told Damon he was going to be late, and he said he’d be right there. But he caught up to Porter and said he had a ride all the way home.” She choked, said, “Damon was a great guy, Dr. Cross. He was special and I …”
She broke down again. Porter rubbed her back, said, “They were like—”
“No, we weren’t,” Sylvia shot at him.
“Damon said he liked you, and you said you liked him!” Porter said. “What else is there?”
She rocked her head back, wiped away her tears, and said, “We liked each other, and that’s what makes this so awful.”
I reached over, patted her hand, and said, “Thank you for liking him.”
Sylvia nodded, her lower lip quivering.
“Dr. Cross,” Porter said. “There was, like, one other thing.”
“Okay …”
“The lady, Karla, she said something to Damon, and he told us, and anyway we … we all thought she was messing with his head.”
“Just tell them,” Sylvia said.
“I am,” he snapped. “She
told Damon to leave his window unlocked and open because she just might climb in one night, and … you know.”
The headmaster drew his head back. “Those were Damon’s exact words?”
“I dunno. Yeah, I think so,” Porter said. “I might be, like, paraphrasing, but go get Tommy Grant, he remembers everything that’s got to do with sex.”
CHAPTER
50
TOMMY GRANT LIVED UP to his reputation. A little while later, when Pelham brought in the hoops player who’d talked about Damon in the chapel, he not only knew the name of the woman who’d taken my son but remembered exactly what Damon had said about her.
“Her last name was Mepps, like the lure,” said Grant. “And she had a tattoo of some kind of black cat on her left arm.”
“She did not,” Porter said.
“She did so,” Grant shot back. “Most of it was covered, but you could see the tail for sure. And what she said to Damon was that he should keep his window unlocked and open because some day she might sneak out of the woods behind the dorm and climb in.”
Sylvia sat up and frowned.
