The Sorority Murder (Regan Merritt, #1)(36)

She sat at the desk and motioned for Lucas to take one of the chairs. “I’ll put her on speaker, but don’t talk, okay?” she said. “If you have anything you want me to ask, write it down. I think we’ll get more information this way.”

Lucas agreed.

Regan called Annie at their prearranged time. She answered on the second ring. “Hello, Annie Johnston? This is Regan Merritt.”

“Yes. I’ve been waiting—but you’re right on time. I guess I’m nervous.”

“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Regan assured her. “As I told you in my message yesterday, I graduated from NAU, and as a favor to my college advisor, I’m helping Lucas Vega with his podcast, which seeks to solve the murder of Candace Swain.”

“After you reached out yesterday, my boyfriend and I listened to all the episodes. I guess—well, I didn’t believe Lucas when he told me he had Candace’s sister helping. I thought he was lying to get me to talk to him. But I still don’t want to call into the podcast. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing.”

“That’s okay. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me now. You should know that I plan to share whatever you tell me with Lucas,” Regan said, glancing over at him as he sat rigid in the chair across from her.

“I’m fine with that. Sigma Rho, my sorority, sent out an email six, seven weeks ago telling all alumnae that a student was doing a podcast about Candace and her murder and that they had voted not to participate. It made sense when I read it—the idea that the podcast would sensationalize her murder, that we didn’t know whether Candace’s name would be dragged through the mud, or the sorority itself, and the idea that this is better a matter for the police. But then, when I listened to the podcast, while a few things seemed a little over the top, I thought he did a good job being fair to both the sorority and Candace.”

“How long were you Candace’s roommate?”

“Three years. The way our sorority handles recruitment and housing is that we rush our first semester freshman year. Second semester we can move into the sorority dorms at Mountain View, or stay in our own dorm until our second year. Most of us move into the sorority because it’s fun and exciting. I met Candace during rush, but she and Taylor were best friends and roommates in the dorms, so they stayed roommates at Sigma Rho. But something happened, I don’t know what, and they had a falling-out. Second year Candace and I roomed together. She reached out to me, and it worked. We weren’t best friends, but we were best roommates, if that makes sense. She was very considerate, respected my space, things like that. We were both very neat people. She was private. We were close, but we didn’t do much together outside of the sorority.”

“According to the police and media reports, you were away for the weekend and came back late Sunday, correct?”

“Really late. I didn’t get back until after one in the morning. I went home most weekends, to Mesa, south of Phoenix. My grandmother was sick, and I wanted to spend all the time I could with her before she forgot me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was three years ago and she’s still with us, but her Alzheimer’s has progressed. I wouldn’t have traded those weekends with her for anything. So I left Friday morning and didn’t go to the party—which really wasn’t my thing, anyway.”

“Did you see Candace that morning?”

“Briefly. She was just waking up, maybe around eight? I was leaving and trying to be quiet. I told her to have fun for me at the party. She said she didn’t even want to go but had to because she was on the sorority council.”

“Was that like her? Not wanting to go to parties?”

“No. The police asked me a lot of these kind of questions—what was her demeanor, was she unusually stressed or depressed? This was when she was missing. I told them she had been preoccupied for a few weeks and hadn’t talked to me about it. They asked me to speculate. I didn’t know why then, and I still don’t know. I don’t even remember what I was thinking, and I’ll admit I was caught up in my senior project and my grandmother and trying to juggle a bunch of stuff. I just had the sense that Candace had something heavy weighing on her, over and above graduation.”

“Was that unusual? That she didn’t talk to you?”

“No. Like I said, Candace was private. I think she knew that I had my own things and she didn’t want to burden me. But she also never liked talking about her problems. Candace didn’t want other people to know she even had problems.”

“Who was Candace closest to in the sorority?”

“When she died? Just me, really. She had her boyfriends. She seemed to be spending less and less time at the sorority. She started to push people away. Probably I’d say when she came back from Christmas break, that’s when I really noticed it.”

That was good to know. What happened either before she left for the holiday or while she was gone that might have changed her? Regan made a brief note, then said, “Who had she been close to before her senior year?”

“Taylor James. Even after they had their falling-out, they were still somewhat friendly, were on the council together. She was pretty good friends with a girl named Alexa Castillo, and Alexa would sometimes volunteer with her at Sunrise Center.”