smart. Not a move to make if you already had him pegged.”
“So why ask? Why let me piece together the bit about the phone?”
Cataldo taps her index finger against her forearm. Considers me. “You’re mixed up in this somehow. You may not know it, or understand it, but things keep leading back to you. Might be because of your meddling in my case, but the sweater and the phone…it’s never fit for me. Why Tipton would run those back to your room.”
“Do you not think he did it?” Something icy grips my heart. This can’t be happening.
“No, I think he’s perfect for it. An adult, a teacher figure, sleeping with a student. He met with her regularly in the very spot where she was murdered. Was there that night. Attacked you. It’ll make a good case. Circumstantial, but solid.”
“But?”
“The phone. If I were him, I would have destroyed it. As he tried to do when he attacked you. Would have been as simple as dropping it into the rowing pool. But it got from the boathouse to your dorm room. And the sweater. There to make you, us, assume she’d gone back to the room.”
“So then someone else returned the phone. Not Tipton. One of the Ivies, maybe. Margot? She knew about the affair. Maybe she was protecting Emma.” With the earring still on my mind, I remember the boot print. “Margot definitely came through the window that night. She’s the only Ivy with a foot about the size of Emma’s. The boot print I mentioned.”
“You really think your friend would do that and still not have fessed up?”
“I don’t know.”
The detective taps her finger again, rapidly. A thinking tic. “You were running your own shadow investigation all along—you’re lucky I didn’t take you to task on obstruction, I’ll remind you. Is there anything you uncovered that you haven’t told me? Every bit of information is critical. Either to nail Tipton, or…” She trails off.
Or find the real killer. The case may be strong, but she’s not sold on Tipton.
“Right now, after his attack on you, we have him on assault for sure,” Cataldo says. “Emma’s murder…? He proclaims his innocence, and we don’t have the texts anymore. It’ll be your word against his. And there’s the blackmail attempt to muddy the waters, help him claim reasonable doubt. So I called you back in. I need all the cards on the table. Everything you found out with your poking around. Anything that might undermine your testimony.”
“What if he faked the bad blackmail to cover his ass? Look, I received threats, too.” I pull up the emails from Quit Meddling on my phone, show them to her. “Both anonymous Gmail addresses. They could be connected, right?”
Cataldo lets out a slow breath as she reads the three increasingly hostile messages. “Possibly. Our techs are trying to chase the origin of the other email address. The texts were sent by a burner. I’ll need you to forward these to me. We’ll add them to the file.”
I digest all this new information. Tipton might be innocent. Which means something else got Emma killed, not the affair with the teacher. I swallow hard. Check my phone for the time. It’s 1:30 p.m. Let’s hope I make it back in time for the party. I have a lot to tell the detective. About the Ivies. About the SATs.
“Coffee,” I say. “I’m going to need coffee.” And then I start from the top.
* * *
—
“Can I offer you some advice?” Cataldo slows her long strides, delaying our arrival back in the lobby after our marathon interview. It’s nearly 4:00 p.m. I tap my fingers nervously against my thigh, thinking of the 4:36 train from South Station I have to make if I want to get back in time to catch Megan. When I checked my phone a few minutes ago, I had three testy messages from Avery, reminding me that her essay tutor was staying late to help me, too. I might have to take a Lyft to the station, and that’ll cost a fortune—
“Olivia?”
I snap back to focus on the detective. “Yeah, sure, shoot.”
“You should find some new friends. The Ivies…They eat girls like us alive.”
“I’m almost free,” I say. “Plus…” I hesitate. Think about how kind Avery has been to me these last couple of weeks. Shown her vulnerable side. “When you get some of them away from the bullshit of school, they’re not so different from us. Just girls.”
Cataldo frowns. “Watch