Dear Debbie, page 19
Please stop!
Don’t worry. This will be over in a minute.
My heart starts to race. I feel suddenly lightheaded—there’s a very distinct possibility I might faint. Lennox is droning on about the course load at MIT and how he still has PTSD from his operating systems class last semester. “I can’t even go in that building anymore,” he jokes.
I take deep breaths, trying to get myself under control. This is just a college frat house room. Nothing more. It can’t hurt me anymore.
You can do this, Debbie. You’re stronger than you were when you were nineteen.
“Hey.” Lennox stops his monologue when the pad of paper falls from my fingers, splaying out on the floor. “Are you okay? You look kind of pale.”
“Fine.” I gulp in another breath as I bend down to pick up the pad of my chicken scratch. “I skipped lunch. Stupid me.”
He smiles sympathetically. “We can wrap things up if you want. Really, the only thing left to see is the basement. We can skip that though, if you’d like.”
“No.” I square my shoulders. The lightheaded feeling has passed, and my sense of resolve has returned. I have come this far, and I’m not about to turn back. “Let’s finish the tour.”
I take one more look around the room. It looks like any other college frat house room, but one thing catches my attention: the lighter on one of the two desks. I hadn’t necessarily expected to see one, but now that I have, I know that this will be the room that I must return to.
Lennox leads me back out of the room, but before I leave, I casually drop my purse on the desk closest to the door. He doesn’t see me do it, but when the tour ends, I will explain to him that I accidentally left it behind, and he’ll let me come back up here to retrieve it.
That’s when I will burn down Zeta Pi.
Today, I will end this.
57
COOPER
Debbie went to Ken Bryant’s house.
I don’t know why, but Debbie was at Ken’s house yesterday. Findly doesn’t say the exact time she was there, but I recognize the address. I’m trying to think of a benign reason why she could’ve been at the home of my soon-to-be former boss who is supposedly on a fishing trip right now.
I can’t think of any.
My daughters are looking at me with concern as I head back out the front door and climb into my car. I want to reassure them that everything is going to be okay, but with each passing moment, I feel less and less sure that this is the case.
But it could be fine. Maybe Debbie just went there to talk to Ken about the job and asked him to consider letting me stay. I’m sure that’s all it was.
Actually, no, I’m not sure of that at all.
Ken lives in a nice house in Hingham, about a ten-minute drive from our place. He has kids, although they’re both now in college. He’s also married, although he rarely talks about his wife, and I get the feeling they may have separated at some point. So it’s entirely possible that Ken now lives alone in that big house.
When I get there, the house looks quiet. The lights all appear to be out, and there’s no car in his driveway, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one parked in the garage. At the very least, it doesn’t appear that there are any signs of life.
I park on the street and get out of my car, holding my breath the whole time. The most likely explanation for the dark house is that Ken is on a fishing trip. Debbie probably came here to plead my case, discovered he wasn’t home, and then left.
But Lexi told me that the app only records addresses that she stopped at for more than ten minutes. So if Ken wasn’t home, what was she doing for ten whole minutes?
I stop at the front door and ring the doorbell. The chimes echo within the house, but when the sound dies down, it’s completely quiet. It’s clear that nobody is going to come to answer the door.
I know from when I watered Ken’s plants for him that he hides a key outside the house. A lot of people do that in our neighborhood, but Debbie won’t let us. She insists that they’re too easy to find and somebody could sneak into our home without difficulty. As I’m checking under the potted plants near his front porch and discover a little bronze key, I have to agree with her.
I return to the front door, this time armed with a key. As I’m fitting it into the lock, I question what I’m doing. I am basically breaking into my boss’s house. He didn’t tell me to water his plants, and he most certainly did not give me permission to enter his home. Even though I have a key, this is breaking and entering.
But after seeing this location in Debbie’s history, I can’t leave here without checking the house. I have probable cause to enter, although I realize that, legally, that excuse only applies to the police.
Like the outside of his house, the inside of Ken’s house is eerily quiet. The lights are out, and it’s so silent, you could hear a pin drop. There’s still enough daylight left for me to be able to look around at his living room, which is a lot nicer than mine. He can afford all the best furniture and a television that looks about twice the size of mine.
“Ken!” I call out.
Unsurprisingly, there’s no answer.
I don’t know what I expected to find here. My boss’s dead body lying bludgeoned in the middle of the living room? He’s clearly not here. He’s probably fishing, just like he said he was.
As for Debbie, I don’t know what she was doing here, but she clearly didn’t come here to trash the place. The living room is immaculate.
For the first time since I saw this address on the screen of my phone, I feel myself relaxing. Okay, Debbie has been acting strangely lately, and we seem to be temporarily unable to locate her. But she didn’t hurt anyone. She hasn’t completely gone off the deep end.
Everything is going to be fine.
And I would have kept on believing that. I would have turned around and gone home, secure in the knowledge that all was hunky-dory at Ken Bryant’s house, except at that very moment, I hear a phone ringing.
And it’s not a landline. It’s a very distinctive cell phone ring. It’s coming from the direction of the sofa.
I approach the leather sofa in the corner of the room, which seems to be the source of the ringing sound. It’s only when I get closer that I see there is a phone nearly concealed by one of the couch cushions. I pick it up and find Mrs. McCauley’s name flashing on the screen.
After another second, the call goes to voicemail. The lock screen alerts me to multiple missed messages and voicemails, mostly from Mrs. McCauley, that have arrived over the last two days.
Would Ken have gone on a fishing trip without his cell phone? I suppose it’s possible. Maybe he wanted to unplug for a few days. But to be honest, that doesn’t sound like Ken. He is never without his phone. And even if he did decide to leave his phone behind, wouldn’t he have plugged it in to charge?
There’s something wrong here.
My gaze falls on the stairwell to the second floor. I had planned to leave without investigating further, but now my curiosity is piqued. I’m already in the house. I need to check out the second floor.
I place Ken’s phone on the coffee table and head in the direction of the stairwell.
58
DEBBIE
I’ve never committed arson before.
I’ve never even thought about it. I get anxious when I have the flame too high on the stove. I don’t even like to barbecue steaks, much less an entire frat house.
I thought putting things right with Zane would make me feel better. I thought it would ease the pressure that’s been building up in my head. But nothing was fixed. I’m glad I was able to help my daughter with her problem, but my own problems were still there. The house where my life fell apart was quite literally still there.
And then the idea occurred to me that I could burn down Zeta Pi. I could light up that house and let it burn to the ground.
It brought me a sense of peace like something I hadn’t felt in over twenty-five years.
I don’t want anyone to get hurt. That’s why I came here in the middle of the afternoon, when most of the students are likely to be in class. Part of me feels like the boys at this fraternity deserve whatever is coming to them, but I don’t know that for sure. Hutch graduated a long time ago, and so did any of his brothers who were protecting him. I don’t want to kill anyone innocent.
Nestled within my purse is a cigarette taped to a book of matches. Before I leave the fraternity house, I will tell Lennox that I forgot my purse upstairs. I’ll run to get it, use the lighter on the desk to light the cigarette, and place it in the bed of the boy who owns the lighter. That’s the best chance to make it look like an accident.
I’ll also lay the cigarette and matches on a couple of pieces of paper. I had some in my purse just in case, but I also saw a few scraps of paper on the desk, and if I use those, it will be more authentic. As the cigarette burns down, it will ignite the matches, and they will in turn ignite the paper, and that will ignite the bedsheets. At that point, the fire will spread quickly.
I’ll be long gone by then.
Lennox leads me back to the first floor, and then he opens the door to the basement. He referred to this as the room where they have their meetings, but it’s clearly also the room where they have their parties. I would recognize that even if I hadn’t been to a party in this very room.
“As you can see, it’s a wide-open space.” He gestures at a few couches pushed against the wall, and there’s even a makeshift stage at the front of the room. “We host a few coffee shop nights here with an open mic. It’s pretty fun.”
“Sounds fun,” I say, barely listening.
He tilts his head. “Do you want to get any photos or anything?”
I don’t want to seem suspicious. He’s giving me the entire tour, and it does probably seem weird that I’m not taking any pictures. “Definitely,” I say. “I’m getting the article written first, but our photographer will be in touch next week for a shoot.”
Lennox accepts this explanation without question. “Oh great.”
I look around the room again, and there are several posters mounted on the walls. My eyes fall on the poster nearest to me. In big block letters, it says, do not leave your drink unattended.
Lennox sees me staring at the poster. “We have that up for parties,” he explains.
I arch an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Nationwide, the risk of sexual assault is higher at fraternity and sorority parties.” To my surprise, he seems very eager to talk about this touchy subject. I would have thought a frat brother would avoid it like the plague. “We take it very seriously here. We don’t have punch bowls, and we encourage female guests to drink from cans or bottles that haven’t been opened yet. And during parties, we close off the upper floors, so nobody’s getting up to the bedrooms. All partygoers are in a place where we can see them.”
“But you can’t prevent sexual assault entirely,” I point out.
“Maybe not.” Lennox’s eyes flash. “But I’m president of Zeta Pi, and nothing like that is going to happen in this house while I am in charge. If I ever suspected that one of our brothers was trying to roofie a girl or take advantage, we’d investigate. Anyone who did that…they would be gone.”
He sounds like he means it. Of course, he thinks I’m a reporter and all this is going in an article. What is he supposed to say? Our members roofie girls all the time! It’s so fun! It’s hard to imagine much has changed since I was a student here. Boys are still boys.
But he does have that poster on the wall. And he brought it up without me even having to ask, with solid rules in place that sound…well, real. He sounded furious at the idea of any kind of sexual assault happening under this roof.
“Anyway,” Lennox says, “that concludes the grand tour. I don’t think there’s anything else to show you, but I’m happy to answer any questions if you’d like.”
“No,” I say, “I’ve seen enough.”
We return to the first floor, and he escorts me to the exit. He offers me an endearing grin. “I’d love to see the article when it comes out,” he says. “Will you send us a copy?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “I’ll send it to Zeta Pi, care of Lennox Newberry, like the comic store.”
He laughs. “You got it.”
Then we’re at the front door. It’s now or never. I came here for justice, and this could be my only shot.
“Oh shoot.” I look down at my right arm and shake my head. “Silly me—I forgot my purse upstairs. I think I put it down on a desk when I started feeling a little loopy.”
“Whoops,” Lennox says. “You better go get it. Do you need me to show you upstairs again?”
What a gentleman. But that won’t be necessary. “No. I know exactly where I left it. I’ll just be two minutes.”
“Okay,” he says without even a trace of suspicion. “I’ve got a ton of studying to do for my thermodynamics exam on Monday, so I’m just gonna be on the sofa over here getting back to it.”
Lennox plops down on the sofa, grabbing the heavy textbook and a pack of highlighters. He doesn’t seem the slightest bit concerned with me anymore. After all, I look completely innocent. I probably remind him of his mother.
He’s not even looking at me as I climb the stairs to the second floor.
59
COOPER
I climb the stairs to the second floor.
I’ve never been on the second floor of Ken’s house. In fact, I’ve only been here twice before, both times to water his plants when he wasn’t around. He doesn’t entertain, at least not for coworkers, and I suspect not at all. I’ve never met his wife, and he’s never met Debbie.
When I get to the top of the stairs, I am presented with five doors, one of which is slightly ajar. The others are closed. I start with the one that is open, and I quickly discover this is a bathroom. I flick on the lights, and it’s empty. No blood in the sink, no dead bodies lying in the bathtub—just a normal, ordinary bathroom that doesn’t look like it’s been used recently. Maybe Ken really did just go out of town for a few days and leave his phone behind.
I work my way down the hallway after that. I check the first room, which is a small room with a twin bed inside and posters on the wall of a band I’ve never heard of called Glass Animals. I assume this is the room of one of his children who has gone to college. The next room I check also has a teenage vibe to it, and I quickly move on.
The next room contains a neatly made double bed and a small dresser. If I had to guess, this is a guest room. It doesn’t look like anybody has lived in this room in a long time. Ken isn’t one to entertain.
There’s only one more. Based on the last three rooms I checked, this must be the master bedroom. If I look in there and it’s empty, I can feel comfortable saying that wherever Ken is, he is not in this house.
(Actually, there’s still the attic. But I’m not going up there unless I hear screams or something.)
I turn the knob of the last door with my right hand. I notice immediately that this room is darker than the others, because all the curtains have been drawn. There’s nothing intrinsically suspicious about it, but I am filled with a sudden sensation of dread. I push the door the rest of the way open.
And I fall to my knees.
I thought that if I saw something truly horrible, I would scream. But at this moment, there are no sounds coming out of my mouth. I can only stare at the motionless body of my boss lying on the bed, his eyes cracked open, his jaw slack, and a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
He’s dead. And he’s probably been dead for a while. At least since yesterday morning, when he didn’t show up for work.
I can’t seem to make myself get back on my feet. A wave of nausea washes over me, and it takes everything I have not to throw up. I put my head between my legs, taking big gulps of air.
Ken is dead. Somebody shot him. Somebody murdered him.
And I can’t forget the reason I’m here in the first place. Because my phone told me that Debbie had been here.
But that doesn’t mean Debbie was responsible for this. It seems like Ken might’ve been going through a divorce, based on the complete absence of his spouse and some comments I heard from Mrs. McCauley. She could be the one responsible. Or…a burglar! A burglar could have shot him. Anything would make more sense than Debbie murdering Ken because he wouldn’t promote me. She doesn’t even own a gun.
Okay, I’ve got to calm down. I’ve got to pull myself together and call the police to tell them what happened.
And then, just as I’m reaching for my phone, another thought occurs to me. One that stops me in my tracks.
It’s true that Debbie doesn’t own a gun. But I’ve got one. It’s registered in my name. And my fingerprints are all over it.
I suck in a breath.
I thought that Debbie might have come here to ask Ken to give me my job back. And I thought there was a chance that when he refused, she got angry and did something terrible. But now that I’m thinking more clearly, I realize that given the guy was shot in his bedroom, it seems unlikely that Debbie was having a conversation with him that went awry. If Debbie is responsible for this, her motivations were very different from what I originally thought.
Shit.
I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to check my garage.
60
DEBBIE
I speed down I-95 south in the direction of home, a pop station blasting on the radio. I spent more time than I anticipated at the fraternity house, but I have completed my task, and now I’m ready for the next step in my healing.
I have to teach someone a lesson he will never forget.
I turned my phone off when I got close to the frat house because I didn’t want there to be any chance someone could prove I was there at the time of the fire. When I turned it back on after leaving, there were dozens of phone and text messages from Cooper. He’s frantic to reach me. The last one was in all caps.
