Vero’s eyes widened as her mind made the next logical leap. “Ava was vice president. She had a master key.”
I nodded fervently. “Mia said Ava was completely freaked out because the police were in the house. That she was terrified you would all get in trouble if they found the money. What if Ava let herself into your room to hide the cash before everyone started looking for it?”
“But Celeste said in her report that she inspected everyone’s room. The money wasn’t anywhere in the house.”
“Because it wasoutside,” I said, waiting for Vero to catch on.
Light dawned over her face. “Ava dropped the money out the window.”
“Which means she would have needed someone to pick it up. To whisk it away and hide it for her before anyone saw it.”
“Someone she trusted,” Vero said, a wrinkle forming between her eyebrows.
“When you were in trouble with the police and you needed someone to protect you and keep a secret for you, who did you turn to? Who did you ask me to call for you just now?”
“My cousin,” Vero said without a moment’s pause.
“Exactly. Jackson had just dropped Ava off at the sorority house, which means he was probably still close by. And he and his friends knew about the money. Jackson, Theo, and Ben had offered to take it off Mia’s hands. If Ava called Jackson in a panic and asked him to hide the cash, he wouldn’t have hesitated to rush back and get it for her.”
“And if Jackson told Theo and Ben he had the money, that could explain how Theo ended up with it.”
“Assuming he did.” If Jackson and Ben were as close to Theo as they seemed, why wouldn’t they have trusted him to hold on to it?
“We should go to Frat Row and find Ava. We’ll confront her with what we know and get her to confess. You can record the whole conversation on your phone.”
I shook my head. “If you were in her shoes, and your cousin risked his own ass to save yours, would you roll him under the bus? Even if Ava confesses to throwing the backpack out the window, she can still claim she has no idea what happened to the money after that. A landscaper, a maintenance worker, another student… anyone could have found it and picked it up. The only way we’re going to get a confession out of Jackson is to catch him with the cash. To do that, we need to find him.” I did a quick online search for Jackson Ferrante on my phone. His social media accounts were all set to private, his profiles devoid of any personal information.
“Check his LinkedIn,” Vero suggested. “Maybe it will say where he works.” She hovered over my shoulder as I tapped and scrolled. I could feel her frustration in the quiet, persistent clanking of her handcuffs. I was slower at internet sleuthing than Vero would have been, but under the circumstances, we didn’t have much of a choice.
“There’s not much here,” I said, skimming Jackson’s employment profile. Vero scooted closer, craning her neck to see the screen. His job history had been brief in the year since he’d graduated. “It just says he’s freelancing as a graphic designer.”
“If he’s self-employed, he’s probably working from home, which puts us right back where we started.”
“Not necessarily,” I said, remembering the day we’d gone to the sorority house for the first time to find Zoey. Jackson and Ben had been there, delivering a box of party flyers to Ava. “Zoey said Jackson designs flyers. She said he prints them at a discount for some of the frats. There was a logo on the side of the box he delivered to Ava. I saw the same logo on a box of flyers at the bar where Theo worked. And also on those empty ones we saw in his basement. That’s probably the shop where Jackson does all of his printing. Maybe someone there knows how to find him.”
“Or he works out of the shop,” Vero suggested.
I ran a quick search on my phone for any local print shops. The list was fairly short, and I clicked open each one until I recognized one of the logos. The black-and-white graphic on their website header was the same one I’d seen on the side of the box Jackson had been carrying.
“This is it.” I held up my phone so Vero could see it.
“U-Save Printing. The logo seems appropriate.” Vero wrinkled her nose at the image of the dollar sign coming out of the printer.
I clicked on the shop’s address.
“Wait,” I said, recognizing the cross streets on the map. “Isn’t this the same industrial complex where we tracked Theo’s car?”
Vero and I stared at the screen. There was an auto repair shop, a glass-replacement center, a commercial printer, and a trucking supply warehouse. “That’s definitely the same place,” Vero said. “Theo’s car stopped in that parking lot after it left Frat Row. From there, it drove to the river.”
Then into it.
“You really think Jackson could have killed Theo?” Vero asked, as if she still couldn’t wrap her head around it. “They were fraternity brothers. They were friends.”
“So were you, Ava, and Mia. And look at how quickly they turned on you when you disagreed over what to do with the money. Who’s to say Jackson, Ben, and Theo weren’t fighting about it, too? People have committed murder for far less,” I pointed out.
Maybe Jackson hadn’t trusted Theo to hold it. Maybe Jackson had wanted it all for himself. Whatever the reason, every piece of circumstantial evidence we had suggested Jackson was involved. If we could find him, we might also find the money. Then we could get him to confess to everything he’d done. That would be all the evidence we’d need to get Vero’s theft charges thrown out. We could worry about what to do withmineif we made it that far.
“What now?” Vero asked.
