aterovis_bm_reapthewhirlwind.p65 (30 page)

When I arrived home however, the thought completely slipped my mind. Once again, the curtains were drawn and candles were lit. No enticing aromas filled 274

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the air tonight though, instead I found a trail of rose petals scattered on the floor leading to my old bedroom.

They continued to the window that opened onto the fire escape. There I found Aidan waiting, looking out over the river with his back to me. The red rose petals stood out brilliantly against the background of white snow, broken only by Aidan’s footprints.

“You’re going to spoil me,” I said and he spun around.

“That’s the idea,” he said with a grin. “But this is a special occasion.”

“And why is that?”

“We’re celebrating our engagement.”

“I thought we did that last night,” I said with a grin.

“Several times.”

He answered with a grin of his own. “Why don’t you join me out here on the fire escape? It’s time we replace the bad memories with some good ones.”

I took a deep breath and climbed out with him. It was the first time I had been out here since I had jumped.

Aidan took my hand and gave it a squeeze. Then to my surprise, he went down on one knee in the snow, still holding onto my hand.

“I know I asked you this last night, but I want to do it right this time,” he said. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a ring box.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

He opened the box and took the ring out. It was a beautiful silver ring, with an intricate gold design around it.

“William Spencer Keegan, will you marry me?” he said.

I felt a tear roll down my cheek. “You know I will.

Yes, I’ll marry you.”

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He slipped the ring onto my finger. It was a little big but it didn’t matter. I noticed a matching ring on Aidan’s hand and I drew him up for a lingering kiss.

“Let’s do it now,” he said in a husky voice.

“What? Right now?”

“No, not right this minute, but before Christmas, next week.”

“That’s crazy,” I laughed.

“Why? I don’t want to wait. I want to do this now.”

“Why not?” I said, feeling exhilarated. “But who will perform the ceremony?”

“Well, since it’s not legally binding it doesn’t really have to be a judge or a preacher. Why don’t we ask Adam if he knows anyone?”

“Good idea,” I said with a giggle. “I have an idea.

Let’s not tell anyone what’s going on. Let’s throw a surprise wedding!”

Aidan laughed. “And you thought my idea was crazy?”

“No seriously! I read about it in a magazine once, some celebrities did that. I thought it sounded so cool at the time. We can have everything arranged, tell them we’re having a party and then when they show up we tell them.”

“What if they have other plans?”

“We tell them it’s really important to us that they come.”

Aidan laughed again. “I think it’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, but I love it! Let’s do it!”

“Adam will have to be in on it if we’re asking him to find someone to do the ceremony,” I pointed out.

“Well that’s good. He can help us plan it. After all, I’ve never planned a wedding before, let alone a gay 276

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wedding.”

“Let’s go back inside,” I said, suddenly realizing how cold it was out here. We crawled back in and shut the window.

We went and called Adam right away. He was as excited as we were. He said he knew a gay minister nearby who led a mostly gay congregation who would be thrilled to do the wedding. And he had a ton of ideas for the wedding itself, from flowers to reception favors.

“Whoa, slow down,” Aidan said. “We don’t want to go overboard. We just want something simple and meaningful. It’s just going to be a few close friends.”

“Simple doesn’t mean it can’t be special,” Adam said.

We settled on a date of the following Friday evening and left the planning in Adam’s capable hands.

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After a hectic first half of the week, the second half calmed down into routine. Not blurting out the news of the wedding turned out to be the hardest thing I had to do. Finally, Friday night rolled around and it was time for our meeting.

Killian and Asher arrived with pizza and Caitlin knocked on the door soon after. I had offered to pick her up but she’d refused, saying she was borrowing a friend’s car. Laura arrived not too long after, wearing a disgruntled expression.

“Gabe’s going to be late. He called me a little while ago and told me I was going to have to drive myself.

Something’s going on over at the campus.”

Gabe was the only one of those that went to the school who actually lived on-campus.

“What’s going on?” Aidan asked.

“I don’t know. He was going to go see if he could find out before he came.”

“Should we start eating without him?” Killian asked hopefully.

She shrugged. “Why not? Who knows how long he’ll be.”

We were just finishing up the pizza, with the excep-278

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tion of a few pieces set aside for Gabe, when he finally arrived. Aidan got up to let him in and he appeared in the doorway a second later, looking pale under his dusky complexion.

“Gabe! What’s wrong?” Laura asked, jumping to her feet as soon as she saw him.

“Blake is dead,” he said in a slightly shaken voice.

Everyone seemed to freeze. Killian was the first to recover. “She’s the one who found Joey, right?” I nodded. “How’d she die?” he asked Gabe.

“I’m not sure. There are cops everywhere. I just heard she was dead from someone on her floor. They said her roommate found her this afternoon.”

I saw Aidan glance at his watch. “The news is on,” he said as he started for the living room. The rest of us quickly followed him.

They were giving the weather report when we turned it on. We had to sit through commercials and the sports report before they finally mentioned what we were waiting to hear.

“We have breaking news on the latest death to rock Pemberton University,” the anchorwoman said. “Police have confirmed that the death of a female student, whose name is being held until her family can be contacted, was most likely suicide. She was found in her room earlier today by her roommate. Early reports have indicated that drugs may have been involved. This is the second death of a college student attributed to ille-gal substance abuse in as many months. Is drug and alcohol abuse on the rise on our local campuses?”

Aidan snapped off the set and we all sat in stunned silence. Laura broke the quiet. “Suicide my ass,” she snapped.

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Every head swiveled to look at her.

“What, you don’t think that’s just a little too convenient? She was fine the other day when we were there.”

“She did seem a little scared,” I pointed out.

“Scared isn’t suicidal.”

“Whoa, hold up!” Killian said. “You guys talked to her before she died?”

“Yes,” Laura said shortly.

“We went earlier this week,” I explained. I quickly told them what we had found out from our brief conversation with her and, more importantly, about the note we’d found that appeared to be the rough draft of the one I’d been sent. Everyone sat for a minute, allowing this to sink in.

“Okay,” Gabe said. “So we know that Blake knew more than she wanted to let on, but now she’s dead. So where does that leave us?”

“We need to find out who was with her in the pool house that night,” Killian said.

I noticed Asher start to say something but then he seemed to think better of it and sat back, arms crossed tightly across his chest. Tension oozed from his every pore. Laura spoke up, drawing my attention back to the matter at hand.

“How do we do that? Will and Caitlin might have seen him, but how are we supposed to find him? It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“Not really,” Killian said. “There were only so many people at the party. I’m sure you have to know some of the people who were there. Just start asking around describing our mystery guy. He didn’t appear out of thin air. Somebody there has to know who he was.”

“And if they don’t?” Aidan asked.

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“Somebody has to. Eventually we’ll find this guy.”

Everyone was looking pretty glum by now. “This isn’t over, guys!” Killian exclaimed. “Think of this as a challenge. Nobody said this would be easy. Let’s look at what we did find out this week. Who wants to go first?”

“I might as well go first,” Gabe said. “After all, I came in with the bad news about Blake. The least I can do is give you some good news too. When I went by David’s house no one was home.”

“I heard his parents sent him off to rehab,” Laura in-terjected.

“Whatever, he wasn’t there. But I went around back anyway and found that anyone could have gotten into or out of the back yard. There’s a door in the fence as big as life and it’s not even locked.”

“Great, so that means it could have been anyone, not just someone at the party,” Aidan said.

“That really throws open the field,” I added dolefully.

“Not really,” Killian said thoughtfully. We all turned to face him. He thought for a moment before continu-ing. “Think about it. If it was an outside person, let’s call him Mr. X…”

“Mr. X?” Asher laughed.

Killian shot him a dirty look but kept on speaking without comment, “How would he know Joey was going to be at this particular party? How’d he know to find him in the back yard?”

“He could have followed him,” Aidan suggested.

“Or he could have done what I did and just party hopped until he found the right party,” I said.

“If he party hopped, then he was still at the party; he didn’t have to come in through the back yard.”

“I agree with Killian,” Gabe said. “I think it was some-281

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one at the party. I think the gate was an escape route, not an entrance.”

Everyone started to speak at once.

“Let me explain,” Gabe yelled over the din. “Nothing about this feels planned. It seems like a spur of the moment crime of passion. The killer didn’t check to see if anyone was in the pool house, he left the necklace, which probably fell off in some sort of struggle, and a pool isn’t exactly the most reliable murder weapon.

Chances are he didn’t even mean to kill Joey. I mean, what if someone had found Joey before he died? Or what if someone had just happened to look out the window and seen him bop Joey on the head?”

“Do we even know for sure that he was bopped on the head?” Killian asked.

“Oh yeah, that was the other thing I found out. The cause of death is public knowledge unless it’s a continuing criminal investigation. Your detective was just being a pain. Technically, Joey died of drowning, but—

” Gabe paused dramatically, “—my sources at the police station confirmed that Joey did have a pretty serious head wound which is probably what kept him from getting out of the pool once he was in it. The medical examiner said it could have been sustained when he fell into the pool if he’d struck his head on the edge.”

“Sources at the police station?” Aidan repeated.

“What sources?” asked Killian.

“A good detective never reveals his sources,” Gabe said smugly.

“His cousin works at the police station; she’s one of the dispatchers,” Laura said.

Gabe shot her a look as I wondered if she was the personality-deficient woman I’d met on my visits.

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Killian picked up where Gabe had left off. “So, the head wound could have been from the pool—or it could have been from getting bopped in the head.”

“Exactly,” Gabe said. “While I was in the back yard I looked around a bit. They have these rocks that surround their flowerbeds, pretty good-sized rocks. I found one that looked out of place, like it might have been moved. So I took a closer look at it and there’s something on it that may or may not be blood.”

“What did you do with it?” Caitlin asked.

“I picked it up with my shirt and wrapped it up in a plastic bag. It’s at my house now.”

“Great!” I said excitedly. “That’s solid evidence we can take to the police!”

“Not so fast,” Aidan said. “We’ve tampered with evidence by moving it. You can bet that they are going to be exceedingly pissed.”

“Not to mention,” Caitlin added, “that they’ve already made it clear they don’t think Joey was killed.

What are we supposed to do? Just waltz in, plunk this chunk of rock down on their desk, and tell them that they are wrong? That we, being the seasoned professionals that we are, have solved their little mystery for them? I’m sure they’ll be ever so grateful. Probably even give us the key to the city.”

“And what if it’s just barbecue sauce?” Laura chipped in. “Then we’d really look like idiots.”

I sighed. “You’re right, you’re all right. They already think I’m some crack-head who’s crazy with grief over the death of his best friend. Why prove them right?”

“We’re not giving up,” Aidan said. “We just need to find out some more facts first. Tell everybody what we found out from Joey’s dad.”

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I filled everyone in on our trip to the marina and my ensuing visit from Mr. Taylor. “I think it’s safe to assume that Mr. Taylor didn’t do it,” I finished.

“We don’t really know that Mr. Taylor didn’t do it,”

Killian said, “but I agree with you that it isn’t all that likely. I think we can strike him off the list.”

“So who does that leave? Do we even have a list?”

Caitlin asked.

“Well, we were thinking that maybe it was an ex-girlfriend,” Aidan said.

“But we decided it wasn’t really all that likely,” Laura pointed out. “After all, Shelley doesn’t seem like much of a killer to me and she was the only one that was at the party.”

“That we know of,” Aidan argued. “Don’t forget about the door in the back yard fence; anyone could have come or gone.”

“Maybe it was the boyfriend of one of the girls Joey had sex with,” Gabe suggested.