“Are you okay, Professor?” Jenny asked, breathless.
“Yeah,” said Aurelio. “You okay?”
“You didn’t get arrested or anything, did you?” Blanca asked, sounding worried.
“Or get a ticket?” Jenny asked.
“I’m fine.” In fact, Harper felt bizarrely pleased with herself. When was the last time she had been caught being naughty? “No arrest, no ticket, just a stern warning. Which, by the way, I intend to heed. I suggest you do the same.”
“Did you ask them about the weird box?” asked Jenny.
“I mentioned it, but they hadn’t seen it.”
“Probably it was just for Halloween, right?” said Jenny.
“Maybe?” said Blanca, scrolling through the photos on her phone. “I wish you could see it, though. It’s so weird, I took pictures but none of them came out. We’ll go back and take some more to show you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” said Harper, realizing as she spoke that she had virtually no influence over the private lives of her students.
“We have to go back for the podcast anyway. We’ll take Aurelio with us.”
“Sorry we left you, Professor,” said Blanca. “We, like, didn’t mean to? But we didn’t want to get caught.”
“No harm, no foul,” Harper said. “But do me a favor and don’t go snooping around on the old military base, okay? The MP confirmed there are sections there riddled with contamination and unexploded ordnance. Which, I might point out, is one reason studying history is so important: If nothing else, it tells you where your unexploded ordnance is.”
Six
Her phone started ringing just as Harper was letting herself into her office. It was Tariq. His tone was grim.
“I’m sorry to tell you, but Delilah Mason didn’t make it.”
Harper dropped her messenger bag on her desk and sank into her desk chair. Her heart ached for Delilah Mason’s loved ones. Sudden death was so wrenching. Harper remembered finding her mother after she had suffered a heart attack, calling 911, waiting for the ambulance, holding her and imploring her to stay, and then watching as the light went out of her eyes. It was impossible to describe the moments that followed: How one moment her mother had been in this world,ofthis world, and then the next instant she was gone. The abrupt void, the tangible sense that the world had changed forever.
And the ghastly violence of what had happened to Delilah Mason would only make things worse for the survivors.
With a start, Harper realized she was again hearing that requiem in her head—the one she had “heard” when she entered the Perles Mansion. Maybe that was why she keptthinking about her mother; at the funeral mass, they had played a requiem for her mother’s soul. It was a composition that, to her ears, seemed full of yearning and regret, a bottomless chasm of grief.
“Was it suffocation?” Harper asked, her voice sounding hollow to her ears.
“Surprisingly, no. The medical examiner still has to weigh in on the exact cause of death, but she’d lost a lot of blood.”
“What? I didn’t see any blood, did you?”
“No, but with all the dirt and mud on her, I wasn’t really looking.”
Harper recalled a metallic scent at the shallow grave. Had that been Delilah Mason’s blood?
“She’d been stabbed,” Tariq continued. “I got it from a friend who’s a nurse at Natividad Hospital in Salinas, where the EMTs took her. It’s the nearest trauma center. BTW, keep this to yourself, okay? The official cause of death hasn’t been declared yet. I don’t think they’re releasing details.”
“Of course. I’m so sorry. I still can’t really wrap my mind around what happened, and who could have done it, much less why.”
“I imagine Detective Serrano will be asking those very questions. Expect his call; I know I am. Listen, I gotta run.”
“Jellyfish emergency?”
“Something like that.” There was a slight pause. “You okay? For real?”
Harper nodded, her throat tight, then remembered she was on the phone. “I’m…muddling through. How about you?”
