Vero muttered, “That would be a trick.”
I shot her a look. “Going to Theo’s house would only be a dead end. We have it on good authority he’s not living there anymore.” I winced at my own choice of words.
Cam nodded sagely. “Got it. He’s lying low, off the grid. He probably knows you’re onto him.”
“Right,” I said, trying not to picture the AirTag’s blue dot disappearing from the map. “The only way we’re going to exonerate Vero is to figure out who let Theo into her building that night. But not one person in these interviews said they remembered anyone coming into the house who wasn’t supposed to be there. Cam, can you figure out which of these files contains a copy of the security logs?”
He clicked open a few of the saved emails, pausing over one addressed to a police investigator. “Here,” he said, opening the attachment. “Looks like someone imported all the data from the key-card system into a spreadsheet. The left column shows military-standard time. Next is the student ID number on the card that was used to open the front door.” Beside that was a list of names, presumably corresponding to the ID numbers.
“What time would Theo have left the party?” I asked Vero.
“I don’t know exactly. It would have to have been sometime after midnight.”
Cam pulled up a list of residents who had used their cards between midnight and six. “Do you remember any of these girls being at the party?” I asked Vero.
She turned the laptop toward her and dragged it closer. Her finger moved down the list. It thinned out considerably toward the early hours of the morning.
Her back stiffened. “There,” she said, her finger hovering beside Ava Ferrante’s name. “Ava used her key card to enter the building at two fifty-eight. But Ava was at the party with the rest of us that night, and she doesn’t have a car.”
“If she left the party at three in the morning, how would she have gotten back to the sorority house?” I prompted.
“She could have taken an Uber,” said Cam.
Vero raised an eyebrow. “Or someone could have given her a ride home.”
CHAPTER 23
I banged on the bathroom door the next morning. We needed to get that hard drive reinstalled in Celeste’s PC before she came in to work, and if Cam didn’t come out of the bathroom soon, we were going to miss our very short window of opportunity. Javi had borrowed the keys to the Eggplant ten minutes ago, and I had no idea how long we had until he got back from the electronics repair shop where he’d taken Ramón’s laptop in the hope of getting the camera software working.
Vero wrestled her coveralls on over her ankle monitor. “The shower stopped running twenty minutes ago. What the hell is Cam doing in there?”
“He’s eighteen,” I reminded her.
“On second thought, I probably don’t want to know.”
A cloud of aftershave-scented steam blew out when Cam finally opened the door. He cupped a hand over his mouth, breathing into it and sniffing as he met us in the hall.
“It’s about time,” Vero said.
“I feel like a new man.” He rubbed his chin like men in shaving gel commercials always did. “I used some of those scrubs andlotions I found in the cabinet. And before you bite my freshly exfoliated face off,” he said to Vero when she looked ready to explode, “they weren’t yours. They were Ramón’s, and Javi said I could use them.”
She tossed him his coveralls. “Put on your costume, Don Juan. You’re making us late. Did you make a copy of the files?”
“You think I’m an amateur?”
“Just wanted to make sure your head is in the game, and I’m not talking about the one in your pants. Get your laptop and the hard drive and meet us downstairs,” she said, throwing his beanie at him.
Vero and I grabbed our own beanies and headed out to the minivan. Cam heaved an annoyed sigh as he picked up Arnold and followed us. He climbed into the back seat and opened his laptop. “Where to?” he asked from the back seat.
“The mall,” Vero said over her shoulder.
“Why do I always have to ride in the back? If I’m stuck being your virtual chauffeur all the time, maybe I should be the one driving.”
“Just shut up and make it look like I’m shopping.”
“Then what?” Cam asked.
“Zoey said she’d wait for us by the service door behind the sorority house,” I told him. “When the coast is clear, she’s going to take you to Celeste’s office and keep watch over the hall while you return Celeste’s hard drive.”
