“There are cameras, though,” I offered. “I don’t know if there’s one near the front door of that building, but if I had to guess—”
Holiday brightened. “Okay,” she said, “that’s definitely something to check out, then. And do you want to try to see what you can find out from Greer’s suitemates, meanwhile? If Hunter has been giving her a hard time lately, they’ll be the ones to know it.” She took a sip of her latte. “Unless you want to talk to her about it directly?”
“And tell her you and I are working on a theory that Hunter was trying to kill her but missed, even though we have absolutely no evidence to back it up?” I asked. “Not particularly, no.”
“Fair,” Holiday admitted. “Even I would probably have a hard time selling that one.”
“Only probably?”
“I’m very convincing,” she said with a shrug. “But you’re rightthat it makes most sense at this point if we don’t loop her in.” She was quiet for a moment, thinking. I could almost see the synapses firing behind her eyes, exploding like the fireworks over the Charles every Fourth of July. “Not yet, anyway.”
Holiday wanted to see Hemlock House for herself, so we finished our drinks and she walked me back to campus, our feet crunching the dry, brittle leaves. We’d changed the clocks back this weekend, winter barreling down the tracks in our direction like an Acela made of sleet and hail. We passed the wide stone steps that led to Hemlock’s main entrance—“Bingo,” Holiday murmured, nodding at a security camera mounted on one of the columns—then looped through the courtyard and back past the dumpsters behind the building. “Really getting your money’s worth from that private security company, huh?” she asked, smirking at the unmistakable fug of weed smoke drifting out of the alley. Some of the guards liked to take their breaks back there, in particular a couple of skinny white dudes who couldn’t have been much older than us; I’d seen them shuffling smilingly back to their posts a couple of times, their eyes gone a telltale red.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “it’s a full Paul Blart situation. I actually kind of don’t blame Greer for not wanting to go to them about her watch.”
“She didn’t report it?” Holiday asked curiously.
“No, no, she did in the end,” I said, “but they were basicallylike,Cool, we’ll keep an eye out, have you checked the lost and found?”
Holiday hummed quietly, glancing behind her at the alley one more time before pulling her phone out of her coat pocket and scowling at the clock. “I gotta get across the river,” she reported. “I have a rehearsal tonight.”
“What about Hunter?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“I think he mostly rehearses in the morning,” she deadpanned, then made a face at me. “Goodbye, Michael!”
I brought a box of cookies from Flour over to Hemlock that night, partly because it felt like a nice thing to do for a group of girls who had recently lost a suitemate and partly because I wanted to see if I could find out anything else about Hunter but wasn’t one hundred percent sure Greer was done being mad at me, so thought it was best to buy her forgiveness and trust with expensive baked goods. Four of the five of them were camped out in the common room when I knocked on the open door of the suite, Keiko doodling on her iPad while Greer bent over her sociology homework at the breakfast bar. Margot and Dagny were playing gin rummy on the wobbly university-issued coffee table.
“Linden,” Dagny greeted me; her voice was the one you might use to say hello to the annoying neighbor on a TV sitcom from the ’90s, which was how I knew Greer had told them what I’d said to her back at the library. “You’re looking well.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said, lifting the bakery box. “I brought dessert.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Keiko said, holding a hand out without bothering to look up from her screen.
I passed it over, bumping my shoulder against Greer’s. “Hi,” I said softly.
She lifted an eyebrow, noncommittal. “Hi yourself.”
“Anyway,” Margot said, picking up the thread of a conversation that had obviously been in progress before I got there, “my bitchy aunt Jane is using the house to host actual dinner on the Thursday, but they’re all going to clear out on Friday morning and go to Stratton for the weekend if you guys want to drive up that night.”
“We’re going to Margot’s family’s camp the weekend after Thanksgiving,” Greer informed me.
“You should come with,” Margot offered. “My cousin and a couple of his buddies are going to be there, and Celine’s bringing her pervert boyfriend from Bowdoin, so. Really it’s a free-for-all.”
“Fuck you!” Celine called from inside her bedroom, her voice muffled through the door. “He’s not a pervert.”
“Of course he’s not!” Margot called back, then rolled her eyes. “Full pervert,” she assured me, dropping her voice a little. “He literally asked her to send him a picture of her—”
“I’d love to,” I interrupted quickly. “Come to the camp, I mean. Assuming Greer wants me there.”
“I think I can probably tolerate you,” Greer said thoughtfully, biting into a ginger molasses cookie. “Assuming you bring more treats.”
“Hey, dudes?” Celine asked before I could answer, paddingbarefoot into the common room in her bathrobe. “Have any of you seen a necklace floating around in the bathroom or anywhere? That Georgette McKeown one I have, the rose goldC?”
I watched as the rest of the girls shook their heads. “That reminds me,” Keiko said, twisting around on the sofa to look at Greer, “did you ever find your watch?”
“I sure did not,” Greer said, “though to be clear, if my dad asks, it’s safe and sound and you all saw me wear it to class the other day, where I delivered half a dozen clever answers and aced a pop quiz.”
“A stunning performance,” Keiko agreed seriously. “You were truly a shining star.”
