The Sorority Murder (Regan Merritt, #1)(82)

She did a thorough check of the windows and locks. Nothing looked disturbed, just as it had been when she last looked.

Regan turned to face him, holding up the file she had gotten from campus police. “I have Adele Overton’s missing-person report here.”

He stared at her. Didn’t say anything.

“I know you also have it. But you didn’t share that with me. Do you remember three days ago when I agreed to go on your podcast? I asked to see all the information you had.”

“That report has nothing to do with Candace.”

“Taylor was interviewed by campus police about Adele’s disappearance. She and Candace were the last people to see her before she disappeared off the face of the earth, and you don’t think that’s relevant?”

He didn’t say anything.

“If I can’t trust you, I am of no use here.”

“Okay. Okay! I withheld the campus-police report because I was hoping to use it on the podcast as a bombshell once I had more... I mean, I needed a direct connection between Candace and Adele before I could make it public. Otherwise, it all just sounded like a nutty conspiracy theory.”

“I don’t know what your theory is, but you sure as hell haven’t told me everything. I thought we were a team here, Lucas. I want to help you, but you intentionally withheld important information. What else have you been holding back?”

He seemed nervous, and she wasn’t sure why. Because she was angry with him? She wasn’t going to apologize or coddle him. He was a grown man, on the verge of graduating from college. He could come clean now, or she would walk away.

And investigate whatever was going on without him.

She tried to push back on her temper, to get to the heart of what was going on. “Adele is the missing sister of your ex-girlfriend. You knew her a long time.”

“I’ve known Adele most of my life.”

“Would you have done this podcast on Candace Swain if you didn’t think that she was connected to Adele’s disappearance?”

“Yes, of course, she was my tutor.” Then he plopped down on the couch and said, “Maybe not.”

Regan sat in the chair across from him.

When he didn’t say anything, she prompted. “From the beginning, tell me what you did, what you thought, who you talked to. Leave nothing out.”

He had tears in his eyes now, but he wiped them away and began.

“In my Intro to Criminal Justice class my first semester here, one of the lectures was about campus police and their role versus local police. One of the officers came in to explain what they did, and he brought up missing persons—how many college students go missing, why you need to tell someone where you’re going even though you’re an adult, et cetera. I thought of Adele, and after the lecture I asked him if it was possible to get a missing-person report. I told him why—that my girlfriend’s sister had disappeared, and I wanted to know what they did, what the troopers did, that kind of stuff. I was polite, and he said it was public information and to come into the campus-police station and fill out a form. So I did. And in that report was Candace Swain’s name.”

“And Taylor James’s.”

He nodded. “Yeah, but Candace was more accessible, and Taylor was kind of a bitch. I know that’s not nice to say, but I did try to reach out to her, and she ignored me as if I were a gnat. Candace was genuinely a nice person. She worked in the writing lab, and so I made an appointment. I could use the help, anyway. I didn’t know how to approach her, so I went to her for several weeks before I worked up the courage to ask her about Adele. She went from friendly to blank.”

“Blank?”

“Like, we’d chat about a lot of things, and she was nice. Not flirting or anything but just friendly. And at the time, I wasn’t thinking she had anything to do with Adele going missing—I just wanted to know more about her friendship with Adele, to find out if maybe she’d said anything, if she’d been depressed or struggling, had a stalker, I don’t know. Something that would explain why her car was found in New Mexico.

“But as soon as I mentioned Adele, Candace shut down. Went blank. She canceled our next session. Then said she didn’t have time to tutor and recommended someone else. I tracked her down because I knew that it was me mentioning Adele that changed everything. She just said she was upset about what had happened and knew nothing about it, and she was sorry. It was just...weird.”

He stared at his hands, and Regan let him take his time. The truth was coming out, but maybe he was still processing it because he hadn’t told anyone.

Finally, he said, “I tracked her down right before winter break. I was angry because I didn’t know why she had reacted that way, and I laid into her. I told her that Adele’s parents had no idea what happened to her, they’d never found her body, that Mrs. Overton thought her daughter was still alive and she spent her days and nights on missing-person websites looking at pictures. She called hospitals monthly. Probably still does, even now, six years later. Amanda, my ex-girlfriend, couldn’t stand it and never wanted to go home. She told me she might as well be dead because her parents remained so focused on Adele that they forgot all about her. Their lives were in limbo, and her parents didn’t have money for a private investigator, so I asked Candace if Adele had said anything to her about her plans, why she was going to New Mexico, if there was a boyfriend, anything that would help find her or discover the truth. All she told me was that she barely knew Adele, they’d had a class together and sometimes had lunch together, and that was it, and to leave her alone.”