The Night Walker (Nightmare Hall) (11 page)

She wanted to talk to Tobie. But she had to eat, and Tobie might not be home yet. They could talk after dinner. “Okay. See you then.”

Tobie wasn’t in the room, and there was no sign that she’d been there.

Quinn wrote her a note, asking her to please wait in the room if she got back before Quinn did. Then she took a quick shower and changed into jeans and a sweater. Now that the sun had gone down, it would be chilly outside.’

While she was waiting for Simon, she called Ivy’s room, asking for Suze. She still hadn’t found out why Suze had lied about Reed’s purse.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ivy said. “Do you really expect Susan to be in on a Saturday evening? Quinn, you know better than that. But I’ll tell her you called.”

I am just not getting
any
answers, Quinn thought, annoyed, as she hung up. All these questions, and not a single answer in sight.

As she turned away from the telephone, her eyes drifted past the clock on her nightstand, and then, when she noticed the position of the hands, returned to it in surprise. Ninety minutes had gone by since she and Simon had parted. Ninety minutes? He’d said an hour. And he’d said he was starving, and would hurry.

Simon was never late.

She called his room.

No answer.

She waited fifteen minutes and then called again. It didn’t take Simon more than a few minutes to walk from Lester to Devereaux. It wouldn’t have taken fifteen minutes.

She called Danny at the frat house. He wasn’t there, either.

Then she called Simon’s room again.

All she heard was the sound of the telephone ringing in an empty room.

Quinn didn’t know what to do. Almost eight o’clock. Where was he?

Maybe he’d run into someone in the lobby or the elevator and was out in the hall caught up in a conversation. Probably political. Simon never could resist a heated political argument.

There was no one in the hall when Quinn opened the door of her room and peered out. The sixth floor was quiet. Everyone had gone to dinner.

Something crawled up Quinn’s spine. Who was she kidding? Simon wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t be this late without calling.

She hurried her steps, heading for the elevator.

Pushed the button, bouncing nervously from foot to foot as she waited for it to arrive.

At last it did.

The door slid open.

To reveal Simon, lying on his back on the floor of the cage, his eyes closed, a small but very red pool of blood puddling underneath his sandy hair.

Q
UINN STAYED WITH
S
IMON
at the infirmary until, although he hadn’t regained consciousness, she was sure he was okay. It hurt to see him lying there, so still, a white bandage wrapped around his head like a turban.

“He was hit from behind,” one of two policemen who had been called to the scene told her in the tiny waiting room. “Stepped into the elevator, someone was waiting for him there, and wham! Must have been someone he knew, or he wouldn’t have turned his back on them, the way things have been going on this campus lately. Probably never knew what hit him.”

Quinn winced.

“Maybe he saw something, maybe not,” the policeman continued. “When he wakes up I’ll see what I can find out’.”

The infirmary physician wouldn’t let Quinn stay. “Simon will sleep all night,” she assured Quinn. “He’s going to be fine. Someone’s aim wasn’t too accurate. You go on home, get some rest. Call here in the morning and someone will tell you if he’s ready to be discharged.”

On her way out of the infirmary, Quinn spotted the policeman she’d talked to at the station. He was standing in the doorway, alone.

On an impulse, Quinn hurried over to him. “Officer,” she said, “did you ever find out the names of those people?”

He stared at her, a blank expression on his face. “What people?”

She felt like a fool. He didn’t even remember who she was.

“I’m Quinn Hadley. Remember, I talked to you this afternoon about the Peter Gallagher case? In Riverdale? You said the police thought that Gunther Brach’s girlfriend or some of his pals might have been in the car that night. You said the girl was in the courtroom every day. Did you call Riverdale and get those names?”

The big, beefy man thought for a minute. “Oh, yeah, I did call over there. Guy at the desk said he didn’t remember any of the names and was too busy to look it up. They’re having some kind of Founders’ Day celebration over there, said the place was a madhouse. But he thought the girlfriend’s name started with an S. Said it was an unusual name, that’s why he couldn’t remember it. Going to call me back, when he has time. You might want to check with me at the station later today or tomorrow.”

The only girl’s name beginning with an S that sprang into Quinn’s mind was Suze. Nothing unusual about the name Susan.

Did the names really matter, anyway? If you’d been involved in a criminal trial, wouldn’t you change your name? And what better time to change your name than when you went off to college? No one there would know what your real name was, unless you were unlucky enough to run into someone you knew.

Someone you knew …was that the connection they’d all been looking for? If one of Gunther’s friends really was at Salem now, maybe the couples who had been attacked were all from Tobie’s hometown, people who knew and recognized Gunther’s friends.

No. That wasn’t right. Tobie was from Riverdale, but Reed and Jake weren’t. They wouldn’t know anything about the case.

Then what
was
the connection?

When Quinn got back to the dorm, she took the stairs to the sixth floor. Just looking at the elevator where she’d found Simon, unconscious, was enough to make her sick.

Simon was the only person to be attacked when he was alone. Did that mean anything?

Tobie still wasn’t home. Quinn called Nightmare Hall, and Cath Devon told her she hadn’t seen Tobie all day.

Where was she?

Quinn didn’t want to stay in the room alone. She needed to talk to someone about what happened to Simon. No one knew yet.

Ivy and Suze would sympathize. Even if they had been against Quinn being “involved” with him, they liked Simon. And while she was up there, she’d ask Suze why she lied that day.

Quinn left Tobie a note, telling her where she was going.

Ivy had just washed her hair and was in the bathroom, wrestling with pink foam rollers when she yelled at Quinn to “Enter!” Suze hadn’t come home yet.

Ivy sagged against the bathroom door, her face chalky white, when Quinn told her about Simon. “There goes our theory about some maniac who hates all loving couples,” she said. “Simon might be perfectly loving,” sending Quinn a sympathetic gaze, “but he certainly wasn’t a ‘couple’ in that elevator.”

Quinn collapsed into the chair beside Suze’s bed. “The doctor says he’s going to be okay. Have you seen Tobie?”

Ivy shook her head. “Probably out with Danny.” She retreated into the bathroom, leaving the door open so they could talk while she finished her hair.

“Ivy,” Quinn said, “I’m getting a little desperate here. Especially after what happened to Simon. Do you have any new theories? I still wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with what happened to Tobie and Peter Gallagher.”

Ivy’s pink-dotted scalp peered around the corner of the bathroom doorway. “I don’t see how. Simon didn’t have any connection with that business.”

Quinn frowned. “I know. I can’t make the connection, either. I talked to one of the policeman over at the infirmary. He’s checking on some names for me. They think there were other people with the guy who robbed Tobie’s boyfriend. The policeman said that Tobie got death threats before she testified against the guy, so someone must have been really angry with her. Maybe they followed her here, to get even.”

“But why would they go after Simon?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.” There was a small gold ring lying beside a delicate gold chain on Suze’s bedside table. Quinn
_a
bsentmindedly picked it up and began rolling it around in her fingers as she talked. “If Gunther’s girlfriend or his pals followed Tobie here to pay her back for sending him to prison, why is Tobie still okay and every couple on this campus is afraid to go out at night? Maybe I’m reaching, making a connection where there isn’t any.”

“You’re right,” Ivy called from the bathroom. “You
are
reaching. Mixing apples and oranges, if you ask me. I don’t think one thing has anything to do with the other. We already decided it was someone who hates romance, who can’t stand seeing people in love. Maybe Simon wasn’t part of a couple when he was conked on the head, but he
is
in love. That’s enough explanation for me.”

Quinn slid the small gold ring onto her pinkie finger and began nervously tapping out a rhythm on the wooden table. She didn’t know how to broach the subject of Tobie. Ivy might be horrified that she would even suspect her. She decided to go about it indirectly. “I keep thinking how angry you’d be if you saw your boyfriend killed right in front of your eyes.”

Ivy stuck her pinked head out again. “Well, you won’t like this, Quinn, but I personally think your roomie could use a little heavy-duty psychiatric help. I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, but that girl is really moody. It’s not healthy.”

Well, at least Ivy wasn’t shocked and horrified. It was out in the open now, her fear about Tobie. But she still didn’t know what to do with it. “I can’t believe Tobie would hurt anyone.” She should tell Ivy about Tobie’s stay in the hospital. That was important, wasn’t it? But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. It didn’t seem right, to share that information with someone.

“She wouldn’t hurt anyone in a normal frame of mind,” Ivy said. “But it seems to me that Tobie hasn’t been in a normal state of mind for a while now. Who could blame her? I’d feel the same way in her shoes. But how well do we really know her, Quinn?”

Good question. Quinn was about to return the pretty gold ring to Suze’s end table when she noticed engraving inside. Curious, she held the small circle closer to the table lamp, and peered at the writing. The cursive letters were tiny, and hard to read.

Quinn squinted, trying to make out what it said.

Love Gunther, forever.

Quinn bolted upright in her chair, the ring still in her hand. Gunther? How many Gunthers could there be?

The ring was in Suze’s room, on Suze’s table. Suze was blonde, and although she wasn’t heavy now, she could easily have lost weight since the trial. Watching someone you love being convicted and sent to prison would probably take the pounds off. Suze wasn’t quite as cynical about romance as Tobie and Ivy, but she never dated any guy more than once or twice.

Because … because her heart belonged to Gunther Brach? Forever, like it said on the ring? After all, she’d
kept
the ring, hadn’t she? She hadn’t tossed it away and planned to make a new start when the prison doors closed behind Gunther. She must have been wearing the ring all this time on the chain lying on the table, under her clothes where no one could see it.

Suze …

Impossible. Or was it?

Quinn’s mind was rushing along like the river behind Butler Hall. Suze could easily have put those things in her room. But it couldn’t be Quinn she was trying to frame. It had to be Tobie. It was Tobie she was angry with, not Quinn.

And Tobie was such an easy target for framing. Tobie was unstable. She’d been ill, in a hospital, shattered by Peter Gallagher’s death. No one who knew that, including the police, would have any trouble believing that Tobie couldn’t stand seeing other couples in love and happy.

Quinn remembered then, that Suze had been the one to approach her at registration. She’d been cheerful and friendly. Quinn had liked her right away. Now, she wondered if Suze had made friends with her only to get closer to Tobie.

Had Suze thought the yellow raincoat and the skirt and blouse and sneakers were Tobie’s? Quinn was taller than Tobie, but they sometimes wore each other’s sweaters and blouses and skirts short enough not to hang to Tobie’s ankles.

Suze was a chem major. She would know all about sulfuric acid, wouldn’t she? The stink bomb had had a timing device on it, so Suze could have been out there on the dance floor, merrily dancing away with Leon when the foul thing went off.

How she must have laughed when everyone panicked!

Quinn rolled the ring around in the palm of her hand, staring down at it.

Love Gunther, forever.

I’m so self-centered, Quinn thought with disgust. I was so sure someone, maybe even Tobie, was trying to make me think I’d done those terrible things while I was sleepwalking. I completely ignored the fact that there are
two
of us living in that room.

It wasn’t
me
someone was trying to frame. It was never me. It was Tobie.

Gunther’s girlfriend had found the perfect way to get even with Tobie Thomason for sending Gunther away for a very long time. She was going to send Tobie away, too.

She was going to send Tobie to prison.

“I
T’S NOT
T
OBIE,”
Q
UINN
said, her voice low and dull. “It’s Suze.”

Ivy stuck her head out of the bathroom again. “What are you mumbling about?”

“I said, it isn’t Tobie. It’s Suze. But she’s been trying to make it look like Tobie’s guilty. And she’s done a good job.”

“Suze?” Ivy’s eyes widened. “My roommate?”

Quinn was about to explain when the door opened.

Quinn looked up.

Suze stood in the doorway.

“What
about
your roommate?” she said to Ivy as she advanced into the room to stand beside Quinn. “Quinn, I heard about Simon. I’m really sorry.”

Oh, I’m sure, Quinn thought angrily.

“Is he going to be okay?” Suze asked with concern.

Hypocrite! Quinn shrugged. “I guess so,” she said coolly.

Then confusion set in. What should she do? She couldn’t stay here in this room, with the person who had bashed in Simon’s skull. She had to
do
something … .