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“Can’t you come home for a weekend, at least?” she whines. “Why don’t you put on a disguise, wear a wig?”
“Gosh, why didn’t I think of that? I could go the whole way and get some of those crazy glasses like on the Mr. Potato Head toys.”
I can practically see her eye roll down the phone.
She sighs. “You could come and see me. There is no way that if you booked a ticket using cash, and disguised yourself, that anyone would be any the wiser as to you being here. We could stay in the house the whole time and just binge watch movies, eat popcorn, and get drunk.”
My heart tugs wistfully at the image she paints. It would be a wonderful idea to go and just spend some time with Lola right now. I can almost feel the rough texture of her family’s couch underneath my fingertips, and smell that familiar, slightly sweet scent of their house. I never really knew why their home always smelled like a gingerbread house, until I stayed one weekend and found out her mother was an incessant baker. The goodies were delicious too, and their home was fragranced with them for days after.
“Lola, trust me when I say you don’t want to get mixed up in this.”
She replies with a dramatic groan. “So, am I never going to see you again? One minute we’re besties, and the next minute you’re on the lam with your crazy mom.”
“Don’t call my mom crazy.” It seems Mom isn’t my favorite person, but I don’t want her talked about that way.
There’s a long moment of tense silence. I let out an uncomfortable laugh, and she eventually joins in.
Tension resolved, I know I can’t let her go without first asking more questions about the professor. That itch that’s telling me everything is not all right refuses to leave me alone. My heart beats too fast, and my palms are clammy.
“What other juicy gossip can you tell me about the professor?” There’s a tremor in my voice, and I hope she doesn’t pick up on it.
“Like I said, he just disappeared. Never turned up for work, and at first the college thought he was maybe missing—you know, as in disappeared, maybe murdered or something dreadful.”
My stomach forms a knot, but she is carrying on.
“The police—and I only know this because Shelley—well, her dad—is best friends with a guy who’s on the police force investigating it.”
I bite back a smile and feel tears of nostalgia pricking the corners of my eyes as I listen to Lola tell a story the way only she can.
“When they went to his house to see if they could find anything, they had to kick the door down. Inside, the whole place was spotless. It’s like he went on a vacation and never came back and never told anybody. There were clothes missing from his wardrobe, and he’d taken his watch, apparently. Shelley says they interviewed his girlfriend, and she says it’s always on his nightstand.”
Girlfriend? He had a girlfriend? How the hell did I not know about that? God, what a bastard. She’s right, though; his watch is always in a tray on the nightstand.
“His watch is gone, some clothes, and his wallet, even his passport. I mean, why would he need to leave the country? The whole thing is very weird. At first, people thought it might have been a mob hit or something, but then word is he’s been using his credit card and calls have been made on his cellphone, so the cops aren’t looking into it any further. He’s a grown man. He’s allowed to up and leave if he chooses to. There’s no law against that.”
“Right,” I manage to murmur, but her words have rung alarm bells in me.
My mind is spinning. Just because someone has used his credit card and cell phone doesn’t mean it’s him doing it. One of Nataniele’s men could easily have used the card and phone in a different location to make it look like Paxton was still using them. It’s smart of them—put the police off the scent.
But Lola hasn’t finished. “And then it gets even more interesting because he went to the college.”
My heart practically stops. “What?”
She makes a humming noise. “Yep. He went to the college in the middle of the night. He ran in through the front doors. Security saw him. Then on the CCTV it shows he went all the way up to the office—not his rooms, but the main office. He was in there for about fifteen minutes. Students saw him. He walked back out with something under his arm, like a brown file or something, and got back in his car and drove off. And the way he drove away, apparently, is crazy, like I don’t know, they said it was as if he was possessed or something. I think he’s having an affair,” she whispers. “With a student. That’s why he took the file.”
Oh, he was having an affair with a student, all right. The affair, however, ended abruptly.
Violently.
Oh, my God.
My heart starts to pound erratically. I glance at the door as if expecting the professor to burst in at any moment. This cannot be happening.
He’s dead.
He must be. I saw the blood spurting out of him. There’s no way he survived that.
But dead people don’t walk into buildings.
