The Sorority Murder (Regan Merritt, #1)(38)

“Other than you,” Regan asked, “who else did the police talk to in the sorority?”

“Taylor, because she and Candace had had the argument about Abernathy. Probably other girls who were at the party, our advisor, but I didn’t keep track of all that. Everyone was talking about it, but no one really had an idea about where Candace was. After her body was found at the lake, they talked to me again, but I didn’t have anything new to add. They probably talked to Taylor again as well, but she was in shock—she almost left school. I don’t know that she would have graduated at all if we hadn’t all rallied and helped her with her finals.”

“Did you see Candace with anyone you didn’t know or recognize?”

“I really can’t remember. She spent a lot of her free time at the library because she liked the quiet. She spent more time there that last semester, but that could have been because of her finals.”

Regan looked down at her notes and was about to ask about Taylor when Annie exclaimed.

“Oh! Her journal! She kept a journal and wrote it in often. Not every day, but a couple times a week.”

A journal would be a valuable piece of evidence. Things that Candace had said or done, people she might have had conflicts with. If she was scared or intimidated, depressed or worried. “Do the police have the journal?”

“I don’t know. I can’t even remember if I mentioned it to the police. Chrissy asked about it, but that was a couple weeks after she died, and I said I didn’t know where it was.”

The police would have eventually given it to the family, unless the journal was considered evidence. Regan made a note and underlined it.

Where is Candace Swain’s journal?

She glanced at Lucas. By his expression, he didn’t know about a journal, either.

“One more thing,” she said. “Are you still in contact with Taylor James?”

“Taylor pretty much disappeared at the end of the semester. She didn’t even come to the graduation ceremony or the last Sigma Rho party. I heard she was still living in Flagstaff, but I have no idea where or what she’s doing.”

“Do you remember her major?”

“Chemistry, or maybe biology. Some sort of science. At least two-thirds of Sigma Rho were STEM.”

Regan glanced at Lucas to see if he had any questions to add. He shook his head.

“If you think of anything else, please reach out to me,” Regan said.

“Actually, I don’t know if this is important, but when I was listening to the podcast and Lucas said that tests proved she didn’t drown in the lake, I was stunned. I mean, that’s what we all thought. That’s where she was found, and the police didn’t tell us anything different. Anyway, Candace was very close to her sister, as I said. Chrissy is a swimmer, a huge deal, got a scholarship and everything. Candace was extremely proud of her. Whenever she was homesick, she’d go sit at the aquatics center and watch them practice. She told me it helped her decompress.”

That was valuable information. The aquatics center was a five-minute walk from the sorority. It wasn’t the only pool in town—in addition to private pools, there was a recreation center downtown that had both an indoor and outdoor pool, and there was a pool at the high school, not far from the college. But knowing that Candace regularly went to the aquatics center on campus seemed important. By the look on Lucas’s face, he thought it was significant, too.

Regan thanked Annie for her time and ended the call.

She said, “Well.”

“The police don’t have her journal,” Lucas said. “I don’t think her sister, Chrissy, has it, either, but I can ask her.”

“How do you know the police don’t have it? They might have kept it for evidence, not turned it over to the family.”

“I have a list of everything they collected from her car and room.”

She wasn’t certain he was legally allowed to have that information, but she didn’t comment.

“She drowned on campus,” Lucas said.

“You can’t know that.”

“It’s logical. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Why would she disappear for a week, then go to the aquatics center and not her dorm? Or if she was scared, why not go to the police?”

“Maybe she felt safe there, or was thinking things through, whatever was going on with her,” Lucas said. “Haven’t you ever gone someplace because it gave you peace? Or to work through a problem? A place where you could be alone?”

Regan was going to deny it, but Lucas was right. She often went on long walks or horseback riding when she was upset. It’d started when her mother was diagnosed with cancer: Regan needed the time to just be without worrying about her family. When she was married, it had irritated her ex-husband, Grant, that Regan could walk out of the house on foot and disappear for hours. But there was something about those walks that instilled calm, focus, so she could think through her problems. For her, it wasn’t so much where she went as the activity—walking alone, especially in the woods or along a country road.

“Maybe she was meeting someone there,” Lucas pondered.

It was possible.

“I’m going to incorporate this into my podcast. But,” he said quickly, “I won’t let on that you let me listen to Annie. I can get a lot of this information from Chrissy.”