chair when I woke up. And the door was open, remember.”
“Can you think of why she’d return to your room only to drop off her sweater and not otherwise change her clothes? That’s odd. What time would that have been? That she came back? If she did?”
“I don’t know. I was asleep. Could have been anytime after eleven-thirty but before two-fifteen.”
“The missing time between the party and her death.” Cataldo releases a long breath, which blows like smoke between us. “So the sweater indicates that she did go home after the party. What I’m stuck on is what made her leave the dorm, if she did go back to your room. There were no texts on her phone from anyone arranging a meeting.”
I think about Emma’s secret phone and the texts from Beau.
“Are you sure you didn’t wake up while Emma was there?” the detective continues.
I scoff. “And what? Make plans to go to the boathouse with her?” It shoots out of my mouth before I can think. Sarcastic to a fault.
Cataldo raises her eyebrows. “I was thinking more along the lines of your waking up momentarily but not remembering, seeing her get ready to go, maybe her telling you who she was meeting.”
“That didn’t happen,” I mumble. And I know who Emma was meeting. Beau. After the Ivies. A full social calendar. I’m not ready to hand over my Beau lead, but my friends…
I chew on the thought for a moment, and then I decide. “Did you find out about the secret room in the boathouse? Emma used to party there. Maybe that’s where she went.”
I’m going to burn my friends. Maybe they deserve it.
Cataldo’s eyebrows disappear under the rim of her winter hat. “Excuse me?”
“I only found out yesterday. Guess I wasn’t cool enough to be invited. But that’s probably why the security feed was out. They were sneaking out there to party that night.”
I give her a single puzzle piece, watch her eyes go wide with surprise. I don’t know if this is smart or colossally stupid.
“Where is this secret room? What do you mean, you only found out yesterday?”
“It’s behind the boys’ steam room. You need a code to get in. It’s one-nine-zero-two. I found a text exchange I wasn’t supposed to know about and realized my friends hung out there without me.” Half-true. I’ll tell her about Beau later, once I’ve figured out who he is.
“And who is they, exactly?”
This is my last chance to turn back. To be a good friend.
But good friend to who? My friends who ditched me on the regular to party in the boathouse? Who committed acts of sabotage that turn my stomach?
“The Ivies,” I say with one big exhale of breath. “Avery, Sierra, Margot, Emma.”
“And you. You’re an Ivy, aren’t you?”
It seems like a trick question.
“Technically.” It’s an offering. Giving Cataldo an inch on our conversation the other day. “But I wasn’t invited to the boathouse. Like I told you, I only found out yesterday. Tyler said the Ivies texted Emma after they hooked up.”
Cataldo does a double take at that. “I interviewed all three of them, and no one said anything about an after-party in the boathouse.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “You think they’d tell you the truth after someone got murdered?”
“You suspect your friends?”
“I didn’t say that. But…” What am I trying to say? “I know they were at the boathouse that night, and I know Emma went to meet them. Or maybe she was there meeting someone else, and they saw something. I don’t know.”
How did it work? Emma partied with the other Ivies and then texted Beau to meet her there? When would she have had time to come back to the room? But she did. Sweater, door, boot print, earring. Cataldo said Emma wasn’t wearing an earring when they found her, but when else would it have ended up on the study room floor?
The timeline doesn’t make sense. At least, the timeline I’m assuming doesn’t make sense. I don’t actually know when the Ivies were in that room. When Avery burned her hoodie in effigy. And Tyler said there was a text, but Cataldo doesn’t know about it. It had to have been deleted. Was it them?
I’ll have to ask them.
But first I need to hack Emma’s laptop. “Shall we go in?” Cataldo follows me into Austen. I don’t work on Sundays, but I hope Cathy won’t say anything and blow my cover.
I escort the detective into the admin office,