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I whirled around to see that the man at the bulletin board had dropped his stapler. His mumbling grew louder as he rushed to pick it up.
I turned back to Waverly, and she shrugged. “My mom wouldn’t let me ride my bicycle more than a block away from home for, like, a year after that.”
With an affected shiver, I said, “I bet. The killer was never caught, right?”
“They never even had a viable suspect,” Waverly answered with a sad shake of the head. “It was all so crazy. Nothing like that ever happens here, so everyone was super paranoid for a while. I think the university instituted a campus-wide curfew that stuck for the entire semester.”
“Wow,” I said. “Well… I, uh, I stumbled across this box of old stuff in the attic,” I lied because I didn’t feel as if I could come right out and tell her that I’d gotten my information straight from the mouth of a dead girl. “And I think it’s some ofherstuff, you know…”
Waverly shifted closer with interest. “Really? Wicked. So have you ever seen any paranormal activity? I hear freaky stuff happens there, like, all the time.”
I shrugged out a hesitant wince. “Well… Yeah,” I admitted. “I might’ve seen and heard some…things.”
Eyes growing wide with awe, Waverly murmured, “That is so cool.”
“I guess,” I agreed with a wince. If you were the type of person who actually got into that. “But at least she seems to be a friendly ghost, so…” I shrugged. “I don’t know if it means anything at all, but I found some papers, like, letters maybe…”
And I almost bashed myself over the head for that really vague, confusing explanation. Library Girl was going to see right through me.
But Waverly seemed wholly invested in whatever I had to say. Leaning forward, she nodded. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And it made me think she was having some kind of…relationship, possibly…with a married professor on campus. And she was threatening to expose him to his wife.”
Waverly gasped. “No way. Andthat’swhy he killed her?”
I shrugged and bit my lip. “I don’t really know. I don’t know if he’s even the one who killed her, but… It kind of sounded like itcouldbe him.”
“It does.” Bobbing her head in agreement, Waverly seemed totally on board with the idea. “Thatdefinitelysounds like something that should be explored.”
“Right?” I agreed, pointing at her. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. So I was wondering how I could go about getting a list of all the faculty on campus ten years ago who had the first name Josh.”
Eyes widening more, Waverly leaned in and whispered, “Wasthathis name? The married professor who—”
When I nodded, she shifted back again, looking stunned. “This is big,” she said. “If we could figure out who he was, we could solve a ten-year-old murder mystery.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, only to make a face. “Or it could be a dead end.”
“I’m going to research and see what I can come up with,” she stated decisively.
“That would be awesome,” I said, getting excited. “Can I give you my number so you can let me know what you find?”
“Sure.”
She pulled up a post-it note and pen, and I jotted down my name and number before handing her the sheet.
“I’ll get right on this,” she swore, lifting the paper to let me know she meant business.
“Thanks. I really hope we can find something. To give Thalia a little peace, you know.”
“And her family too, I bet,” Waverly agreed.
Exactly. I swallowed painfully as I nodded, thinking of Damien. I really wanted to help him solve this since he’d wanted it so badly for the past ten years.
“Looking forward to hearing back from you,” I called as I waved farewell to Waverly, who waved back as she answered the service desk phone that started to ring.
And that was that. I’d officially become a criminal investigator.
Feeling pretty awesome and proud of myself, I turned away to start for the exit, only to trip over something on the floor and nearly go sprawling onto my face.
