“There has to be an easier way than opening every single one,” Elise said, her hair loose on her shoulders. She scrolled down the emails. “Dad merged his MIU and his personal e-mail accounts. At least everything’s in one place.”
There were dozens of e-mails from university employees. Jeremy recognized them from the miu.edu addresses. He opened a few from [email protected]. All the e-mails from the dean were broadcast messages to the staff. There was nothing of a personal nature to his father. Well, that figured. Winter was the quintessential bureaucrat. He knew better than to put anything remotely controversial in an e-mail.
Jeremy searched on [email protected]. He still couldn’t block Liddy’s accusations from his mind. There were only four entries, way fewer than he would have expected. He hesitated before opening them.
“Who’s that?” Elise asked.
“Dad’s graduate assistant. Marina Champlain.”
“Oh. Marina.”
It hadn’t occurred to Jeremy that his sister might be aware of Marina. “He mentioned her?”
“Yeah.” She sipped her water. “I don’t think he was very happy with her.”
“Sure he was.”
“Why would you say so? Have you been speaking to her?”
“She’s been going through Dad’s papers with me.”
“I see.”
“Don’t be upset, Ellie.”
“I’m not upset. I don’t care who you hook up with. I’m just surprised she’d help you. I remember Dad saying he was interviewing for a new graduate assistant.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Marina never said a word about that.”
“Maybe she didn’t know.”
Jeremy opened one of Marina’s e-mails, surprised by how anxious he felt. The e-mail was about the syllabus for an introductory economics class. The other e-mails were equally businesslike. But what if Marina had also communicated with his father from a personal e-mail account? He remembered his father once saying the MIU system was right out of Orwell’s
1984
and he’d never use the university e-mail for confidential communication.
Jeremy scrolled down the entries looking for anything that didn’t say .edu or .org. and for those that sounded as though they may have been pseudonyms for Marina. No French words, no combinations of the letters from her first or last names. Was it possible his father had deleted all nonbusiness correspondence to and from Marina? But why would he have done that?
His attention was caught by an e-mail with the subject line,
“Need to meet with you!!!!!” Five exclamation marks— probably a student. The address was [email protected]. He opened it. It had been sent to his father’s personal account. His father would have done that— given his personal e-mail address out to certain students, especially the ones in his clubs like café j.
“Dear Professor Stroeb,” the e-mail began. “Can we please meet somewhere off campus? I have to talk to you about something very, very important!!!!! Just let me know where and when. Liddy Debajo.” The e-mail was dated in November, which was when the fire had taken place. So maybe Liddy had contacted someone in authority after all. But that didn’t prove anything. She still could have been trying to set Marina up.
“Do you know who Liddy Debajo is?” Elise said.
“A student. She’s active in one of the clubs Dad ran.” Best not to mention Liddy’s accusations against Marina. Not unless he found something more substantive.
He checked his father’s outgoing mail. There was an answer to Liddy the same day telling her he’d meet her at a particular Starbucks that afternoon at four.
He searched on other entries for incoming messages from [email protected]. There was just the one. So she hadn’t put anything about the fire and Marina in writing. It was looking like a dead end.
“Maybe we should look at the e-mails Dad sent out in the last week,” Elise said. “See if he was concerned about anything.”
Jeremy re-sorted the sent e-mails by date. His father had done a bit of e-mailing primarily to professors and students at MIU the week he’d gone to see Jeremy in Spain. There was nothing to Winter, nothing to Marina.
“[email protected],” Elise said. “That’s Dad’s old frat brother, Pete, right? Dad sent him three e-mails in the last two weeks.”
The subject line was: “Special consideration.” Jeremy opened the latest one. It contained a lengthy thread of correspondence. The last entry was:
Dear Pete,
I was disappointed to receive your e-mail, though I must admit, I’m not surprised. I will speak with Ms. Champlain when I get back into town on Monday. I hope this doesn’t present an inconvenience to you with your scheduling. Thanks again for your help and patience.
D.C.
The previous message from Pete was short.
Sorry to bother you, D.C., but I just received a phone call from Ms. Champlain telling me she’s changed her mind and won’t be coming to McGill this semester, after all. What’s up with her?
“I told you he wasn’t happy with her,” Elise said.
The blood had rushed to Jeremy’s head. His father had been trying to get Marina to transfer to McGill University in Canada? Marina had never let on there had been a problem with his father.
Jeremy scrolled down through the e-mail thread to the original email, which his father had sent to Pete in November. It was dated the day after his father had been scheduled to have coffee with Liddy.
Hi Pete,
Hope all is well with you, Kari, and the kids. I have a situation on my hands and wondered if you could help me out. My graduate assistant, Marina Champlain, is a bright, capable young woman, who has unfortunately developed
what I’ll call an unhealthy attachment to a married faculty member. You know how that is. I suggested she continue pursuing her doctorate at another institution, but she refused at first. Then yesterday, I was finally able to persuade her that her interests would be better served elsewhere.
That brings me to my favor of you. Sorry for the short notice, but would you entertain Ms. Champlain’s application to your program for the upcoming semester? I feel fairly confident once she’s left this environment, she can return to being the productive, energetic graduate assistant I once knew her to be.
I’m attaching her C.V. She is, by the way, fluent in French, which I know appeals to you Francophone-loving Canucks.
D.C.
Jeremy felt icy, like he’d fallen into a glacial crevasse.
Elise drew her knees up to her chest. “Do you think he was talking about himself? That she’d had a crush on Daddy?”
“I don’t know, Elise.”
“I wonder why she finally agreed to go to McGill. What could Daddy have said to persuade her? Jeremy? Are you okay?”
“Sure.” His voice was as flat as the rest of him felt.
“Dad had a problem with this woman and she was supposed to have left MIU. Then she didn’t.” Elise sucked on the end of her braid. “Jeremy,” she said quietly, then stopped as though reluctant to go on. “You don’t think—”
Chapter 28
When Jeremy was a freshman at NYU, he’d fallen for this girl. She had reminded him of an injured sparrow. Her jaw and cheek were scarred and slightly askew, which he had supposed made her self-conscious and aloof. But he had pursued her: waiting for her after class, walking with her, trying to make her laugh. He wasn’t sure if he had befriended her out of pity or if something about her apparent needfulness made him feel vital.
One night they were at a bar and a group of drunken upperclassmen began teasing the girl. Jeremy, who’d had a few too many beers himself, took a swipe at the biggest, loudest one. Moments later, they had dragged Jeremy outside and beaten the crap out of him. Jeremy couldn’t get out of bed for three days. He had a broken rib and every time he took a deep breath, the pain just about caused him to pass out.
But when a week later he was walking on campus and saw the girl kissing the bigmouthed jerk who’d started the whole thing, the rage he felt at that moment far exceeded the physical pain he’d borne when he had believed himself to be her heroic protector.
Why had that memory come to him now? Perhaps the heaviness in his chest reminded him of that moment. Or maybe he was once again feeling betrayed.
He turned over the hot, damp pillow as he tried to sort through what he and Elise had discovered. It was difficult to be objective.
Difficult to even consider without feeling as though he was smothering. Each time he tried, a louder voice said, she lied to me. She lied to me. But the extent of the deception went far deeper.
He saw her in his mind— the reluctant smile, the untamed hair, the feral eyes. Marina, you couldn’t have done this. But after a tormented night of reworking what he had learned in his father’s emails, he could only come to one conclusion. The one he didn’t want to accept. He’d found his parents’ murderer. It was what he had set out to do. But there was no elation in the discovery. No satisfaction. How could there be when the murderer was the woman he had fallen in love with?
“Doesn’t look like you slept either,” Elise said, coming into the kitchen in her school uniform. She rotated her head as though her neck was stiff.
He handed her a couple of pieces of buttered toast.
“What’s this? You made me breakfast?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Everything seems strange this morning, doesn’t it?” She sat down on one of the counter stools. “I mean, we should be feeling pretty good, right? It’s like we had a breakthrough.”
“I guess.”
Elise broke off a corner of her toast. “Do you think once it’s over, things will be easier for us?”
“Easier?”
“You know. Having closure.”
“Closure would be good,” he said, knowing that’s what she wanted to hear, recognizing that if it was Marina, he would never know closure. “Do you want some eggs?”
She shook her head. “So what are you going to do?”
He cracked a couple of eggs into the frying pan and they sizzled. Geezer sidled up to the stove and watched. Jeremy wasn’t hungry,
but he had to be doing something. Unfortunately, the sound and smell reminded him of the other night when Marina was making dinner.
“You’re not thinking of talking to her alone, are you?” Elise said. “Jeremy, you can’t. You need to call the police and show them these e-mails.”
“I’m not worried about being alone with her.”
“Right. Because a murderer couldn’t possibly hurt you.”
“I said I’m not worried.”
She slid off the stool and fed Geezer the rest of her toast. “I guess you know what you’re doing.” She gathered up her backpack and car keys. Her eyes were shiny. “So I’ll see you later, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“You know, I didn’t mean what I said yesterday,” she said. “About not caring if Dwight was my guardian.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“I, I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jeremy. You’re the only one I have. You and Grandpa.”
“I know, Ellie.”
“So you won’t do anything stupid? You’ll come home, right?”
“Hey.” Jeremy slid his fingers beneath her chin and lifted her head. She closed her eyes. “Look at me,” he said. Tears were running out from between her lashes. “Look at me, Elise.” She opened her eyes and bit down on her lip. “I won’t leave you alone again, Ellie. Do you hear me?” She averted her eyes from him. “I promise. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said softly.
“Okay then.” And he hugged her— longer than usual.
He drove to Marina’s house with the radio turned up. A couple of talk show hosts were making jokes. Jeremy tried to listen, but couldn’t concentrate.
The morning was overcast with no sign the sun might be breaking through. Even Mrs. Lambert’s green grass was covered by a purplish shadow like a creeping mold. The swing hung motionless on the porch.
Marina, satchel weighing down her shoulder, was walking toward her car as he pulled in behind it. “Jeremy.” She looked surprised.
He opened the passenger door of the Corvair. “I need you to come with me, please.”
“Now? I’m sorry, but I have a faculty meeting this morning. I’m already late.”
Jeremy held the door open. “Please, Marina. It’s important.”
“But where are we going? You aren’t still upset about what that girl said about the fire? You seemed okay with everything last night, no?”
“Would you please come?”
She touched his cheek. He tried not to wince. “What is it,
mon amour
? You seem so—
je n’sais pas
— so unlike yourself.” When he didn’t answer, she got into the Corvair.
Her eyes were on him as he drove. A heavy metal song on the radio and the throbbing of the engine made Jeremy feel as though he’d been chained to a speaker in a club, but he wouldn’t turn the volume down. At least it was drowning out the turmoil inside him. Marina was chewing on her fingernails. They didn’t talk until he got to the gatehouse on Lotus Island.
“We’re going to your house?” she said.
Of course, she’d have known that. She’d been on the island for his parents’ funeral and to drive him home the night his car had been towed. And how many times before?
When he opened the front door, Geezer began barking wildly. “What is it, boy?” Jeremy bent down to calm the dog.
Marina took a step back, away from the dog. Geezer was growling now, a deep guttural sound. “I’m not an animal person,” she said. “I think they can sense that, no?”
Jeremy stood up. “So, this is the place. Have you ever been inside before?”
She shook her head. She was wearing a loose white blouse and looked more like a nervous little girl than a murderess.
“I thought maybe my father had invited you and a few of his colleagues over some time. You know, for an intellectual powwow or something like that. ”
“Why have you brought me here, Jeremy?” Her hair was wild on her shoulders. She gathered it up in her hands, then released it.
“Didn’t you want to see where I live? Our housekeeper has the day off, so it’s just you and me.” The rage he had been holding back rushed to the surface. “Would you like to see where my parents were murdered?”
She turned pale. “I think I’d better leave.”