She glanced out over the river at the pedestrians strolling along the path on the other side. The flags along the bridge waved in the breeze. The water was calm. And standing next to her was a lummox of a partner working her last nerve.
“The problem I have is that I don’t trust you.” Her eyes met his.
“Your problem, not mine,” he said.
She exhaled. “Like I said.”
They met Ashley Tighe outside her residence hall sitting cross-legged on a bench, a philosophy textbook in her lap. She seemed nervous and sneaked furtive glances at the doors when anyone went in or out. Tighe, petite and barely five feet tall, with blinky black eyes and a mess of brunette curls, didn’t look like she ate enough to keep a bird alive. Foster wondered if it was Stella she was worried about.
“I expected you to come in, like you agreed,” Foster said.
There was another glance toward the door, a shift of body weight. “I changed my mind. I really don’t want to get in the middle of anything. I don’t know anything about what happened to Peggy.”
“It’s Stella Dean I want to ask you about,” Foster said. “She says she was studying with you Sunday. Is that true?”
Lonergan stood by. He hadn’t said much since the bar. Foster was fine with that. Tighe checked the doors again. Students passed, paying them little attention, too focused on their own thing, lugging heavy backpacks or riding bikes or talking on their phones.
“Yeah, we studied Sunday.”
“Studied what?” Lonergan asked, his voice a little softer than Foster was used to hearing it.
“Econ. I get As. Stella’s lucky if she pulls a D.” She looked up at Foster. “Stella’s why I didn’t come. She’s been burning up my phone. She wants me to say she was with me all day, but she wasn’t. We met up at noon, and I was back in my room a little after two. It wasn’t my idea to study with her, but Stella . . . she insinuated herself. She makes it almost impossible to say no to her about anything.”
“Some friend,” Lonergan said.
“Stella doesn’t have friends,” Tighe said. “She has . . . hostages. I thought I’d left mean-girl cliques behind in high school, but they’re here, too, and Stella’s their supreme leader, at least here in Barnwell.”
“So you can only vouch for her between noon and two,” Foster said. “You have any idea what she was doing before or after that?”
Tighe shook her head. “I try not to think too much about Stella.” She clasped her hands in her lap, squeezing them tightly, then checked the door again. “She’s probably watching us right now.”
“Did she threaten you?” Lonergan’s jaw clenched, and it looked like his eyes had shrunk down to two steely blue marbles.
“Stella never comes right out and says stuff, but she made it real clear she wanted me to lie and say we were studying longer than we were. What happens when she finds out I didn’t? You don’t know how she can get.”
Foster could feel her entire body coil at the thought of Tighe, Stroman, and others tiptoeing around campus trying to stay out of Stella Dean’s orbit. Had Peggy Birch done the same? Had she gotten on Dean’s bad side somehow? Had Stella done something about that, and things had gone wrong?
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Foster said. She hated bullies. Always had. She had a little something for Stella Dean. Foster scribbled her number in her notepad, then tore the page off and handed it to Tighe. “If you can think of anything else we should know, call me, please?”
Tighe took the number and stood. One last look at the door. No Stella. Tighe rushed off.
“Well, Dean’s a liar,” Lonergan said.
“Twelve to two,” Foster said. “And then in bed by nine, so she said.”
Lonergan slid his sunglasses on. “First part’s a lie, the second part’s gonna be a lie too. That leaves a lot of holes in her day.”
“So let’s plug some of them up,” Foster said.
CHAPTER 25
Stella Dean wasn’t so tough, Foster thought, as she stared at her across the table in the interview room. Detective Li sat beside her, her dark eyes holding Stella’s without expression. Foster knew they made a formidable-looking pair, and from the guarded look on Stella’s face, she could tell the intimidating effect was working.
The team was outside in the office making calls, checking Dean’s background, diving deep looking for arrests, reports of disturbances . . . anything related to Peggy Birch that might indicate she had a motive for killing her.
Right now, though, Foster wanted Stella here at the table with the silence. She placed her notebook in front of her, then folded her hands on top of it and waited for the girl to get uncomfortable. There’d been no pizza from Zippy’s Sunday night; that had been easy to check. The place had no receipt, no video, no employee with any recollection of Stella walking into the place that day. It was a campus spot. Faces were remembered easily, and no one had seen Stella’s on Sunday. There’d also been no deliveries made to her dorm that night, so pizza from Zippy’s and then an early turn-in had been a lie. So now Stella was here, and Foster and Li sat waiting, watching to find out what else she’d lied about.
“Look, I told you, I wasn’t with Peggy Sunday. I never saw her. I don’t know what happened.” Stella glanced around the smelly, tight, depressing room. “God, this room is fucking awful.”
Foster knew the room didn’t impress. It wasn’t meant to. The space was the last stop before a locked cell for some and where others received the worst news of their lives. It was a holding pen, a sweatbox, a swift and jarring reality check.
Stella’s eyes widened. “Or did you bring me here to tell me you found out who killed her? Is that it?”
How odd, Foster thought, that Stella would think she’d be their first call when Peggy’s killer was found. Odd and curious, but she said nothing, just watched, letting time stretch out while the team worked and Stella worried.
Lonergan was back on campus to talk to as many of Dean and Birch’s dormmates as he could, and he hadn’t been happy about it. Griffin, though, had made the assignment, and frankly Foster was glad to have the time apart from him, if only for a few hours. The boss was why Li was here in the room, which was fine, she supposed, though she couldn’t help but feel that the pairing was some kind of test.
Stella looked to Li, then back to Foster. “Nobody’s going to say anything, really?”
The picture they had gotten so far of Stella Dean hadn’t been favorable. She was manipulative, bossy, intimidating, and volatile. Foster wondered why she’d been allowed to run roughshod over her classmates. Why had no one stopped her? Had Peggy defied Stella’s attempts to intimidate her as she’d so obviously intimidated Stroman, Tighe, and the rest of their circle? Had Stella lost that temper of hers?
“It’s like I’m a criminal or something.” Stella tittered, but Foster could see the worry building and the anger that was coming up right behind it, all showing in the young woman’s eyes.
Foster would know the right time to break the silence. She would hear it in Stella’s voice the moment her confidence gave way to uncertainty, the very second she realized that her tricks and schemes and cunning ways weren’t going to work with them and that she had no power here.