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  “So she finished the seminar?”

  “Oh, yes. Made an A. Came back after Christmas break. She wasn’t in my classes second semester.” She paused, gathered her strength. “Then I got all tied up with Janie Rose. It was probably the end of March before I realized Maylene had dropped out. I asked about her in a faculty meeting and no one knew what had happened. Even her faculty adviser didn’t know, which is unheard of. I know the administration made calls to her parents, but like I said, I got tied up with our problems and never followed up.”

  “So when you read she had been living with a homeless man who killed her…?”

  “I assumed she’d gone to live out there to learn more. Or to live in solidarity. Or something.” Ina Rose held out her palms in a gesture of bewilderment.

  Branigan sat back in her chair, dumbfounded. “I had no idea. Even when I talked to her at Jericho Road, I didn’t pick up on that. I mean, she was getting hit by this guy she was living with. I’m amazed that she’d take any project or philosophy or do-goodness that far.”

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” Ina Rose said. “But given what I knew of her, that’s where my mind immediately went.”

  Branigan shook her head, then rattled Maylene’s seminar papers. “Anyway, thanks for these. They’ll be a big help. And probably a comfort to her family.”

  “I hope so. Please tell them how sorry I am. She was going to make a difference.”

  Branigan walked a few feet down the hall from Dr Carlton’s office and found a bench. She sat down and called her colleague Lou Ann, already in Gainesville. She filled her in on Ina Rose Carlton’s theory of why Maylene might have been living among the homeless, and read sections of the girl’s papers to her.

  “And one more thing. Ralph claims Maylene was making phone calls on Friday, and went to the bus station to price a ticket home. Ask her family if she called them about coming home.”

  “Those two things put a different light on her, don’t they?” said Lou Ann. “Man, if she was at the point of trying to ‘come in from the cold’, it’s even sadder.”

  “Yeah, but it might make the family more likely to talk to you,” said Branigan. “Maylene as missionary rather than crackhead.”

  “Got it. Thanks, Branigan.”

  Branigan checked her watch and saw that she still had half an hour before she was due at her grandparents’ house. She wanted to talk to journalist-in-the-making Anna Hester.

  When Branigan pulled her Civic in front of the Kappa Epsilon Chi house, two girls were exiting, rolling huge suitcases. She stopped to ask them when exams ended.

  “Most are already done,” said a redhead with no make-up. “A few poor suckers have them today. And some of us stayed for one more party night.” She grinned and widened her eyes. “Nothing like heading home hungover.”

  “How about Anna Hester?” Branigan asked.

  “Oh, she’s still here,” said the redhead. “I think she postponed an exam because of that story in The Swan.”

  Branigan thanked the girls and walked through the front door they’d left ajar. Finding no one in the living room, she wandered into the kitchen. Two girls were spreading preserves on wheat toast and eating while standing at the island. A pot of coffee brewed on the counter.

  “Can we help you?” asked a blonde whose hair was piled messily on her head. Branigan remembered the glorious relief of finishing that last exam and heading home, no make-up, hair uncombed.

  “I’m looking for Anna Hester.”

  “I saw her upstairs. I’ll get her.”

  A few minutes later, the blonde returned with Anna, wearing black and white plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt with red and green Christmas cats. “Pardon the fashion statement,” Anna grinned, pouring herself a cup of coffee and holding out the pot to offer Branigan one. She declined.

  “Anna, I read your story in the student newspaper. Very good, by the way. I wanted to ask you about it.”

  “Sure. Want to sit in the living room?” She padded into the living room in bare feet and tossed some magazines off the couch. She put her feet on a leather ottoman and sipped her coffee.

  “We got permission to run the Rambler story,” she said. “Georgia state patrol wouldn’t return our calls.”

  “But you did talk to Detective Scovoy about the hearse in the woods,” Branigan said. “Nice work. What I want to know, though, is how you connected Maylene Ayers to the hearse.”

  “Maylene was on my hall freshman year. So when Detective Scovoy said there was a Ralph and Maylene in the hearse – it’s an unusual name and I remembered her interest in the homeless – I put two and two together.”

  Branigan was pleased with this confirmation of Ina Rose Carlton’s information. “But where did you see Maylene to get the quotes?”

  “I went under the bridge. Detective Scovoy said she lived there in a tent before finding our hearse. I lucked out. She’d moved back there.”

  Branigan looked at the young woman with admiration. “You are going to make one heck of a reporter.”

  Anna looked down and blinked. “Thanks. But by the time the story came out, Maylene was dead.”

  “Tell me how she seemed to you. Why was she there? Was she planning to leave the camp? Did she say anything like that at all? It’s okay if I record this, isn’t it?”

  Anna nodded. She told Branigan much the same story that Ina Rose Carlton had, about Maylene’s passion for social justice and her determination to work in homeless services.

  “During our first semester as freshmen,” Anna went on, “she spent her Saturdays taking blankets and canned food down to that encampment under the Garner Bridge. Also to the bus station, places like that. Then she stopped. I asked her why one time, and she started talking about ‘empowering’ rather than ‘enabling’. You know – giving someone the tools to help themselves rather than simply handing out stuff. She talked about that a lot.”

  “Makes sense,” said Branigan. She’d heard much the same thing from Liam.

  “Then the next thing we knew she was gone. Disappeared. We thought she’d moved back home or transferred to another school. I had no idea she had moved to that homeless camp until Detective Scovoy mentioned her name in connection with our hearse. I mean, she’d been gone nearly a year.”

  “And she didn’t mind being quoted in your story?” Branigan asked.

  “Oh, she minded.”

  Branigan looked up from her notebook.

  Anna shrugged. “I told her she could talk to me or I’d make up quotes. Isn’t that what reporters say when they want someone to cooperate?”

  She stared at Anna in horror. “No, that isn’t what reporters say at all.”

  “Well, she didn’t want to talk, and I had to get the story.”

  Branigan hardly knew what to say. She regretted the praise she’d given Anna earlier. “Do you have a journalism class here? Or a course in journalistic ethics?”

  “No, just a newspaper workshop.”

  “Well, just so you know, professional reporters do not make up quotes or threaten to do so.” She paused for a moment. “So, did Maylene say the things in your story?”

  “Most of them.”

  Branigan shook her head. “I’m a little surprised that you were willing to compromise your friendship like that.”

  “We were hall mates, but it’s not like we were sorority sisters.”

  “So she wasn’t a Kappa Ep.”

  “Nah. A do-gooder like that, she was a Gamma Delt.”

  Branigan paused in her note-taking. “A Gamma Delta Phi?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The same as Janie Rose Carlton.”

  Anna nodded.

  “In the same pledge class?”

  “Um hm.” Anna slurped her coffee, then noticed Branigan’s face. “What? Is that important?”

  “I could have sworn she
said she didn’t know Janie Rose.”

  Branigan and Anna sat in silence for a moment. Anna shifted on the couch. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Because they were pretty good friends.”

  “No, I’m not sure.” Branigan closed her eyes and recalled her conversation with Maylene in Jericho Road’s computer room. Maylene had asked what crime the hearse had been used for. Branigan had answered that the hearse had run two UGA students off the road. Maylene had asked their names, and Branigan had responded; “Two girls from Grambling. Janie Rose Carlton was killed. Charlie Delaney was driving, and she got banged up pretty bad.”

  Maylene had looked shocked at the news, Branigan recalled. But then she had asked only about Charlie. So no, she didn’t deny knowing Janie Rose, exactly. But she didn’t offer that she and the dead girl were friends. Why not?

  And right afterwards, she’d gone to Charlie’s hospital room.

  Branigan opened her eyes. “I was wrong,” she said. “She didn’t say that. But she sure didn’t acknowledge that she knew Janie Rose either.”

  “That’s weird,” said Anna.

  “Anna, do you know when Maylene left Rutherford Lee?”

  “Second semester freshman year.”

  “Yes, but when during second semester?”

  “I have no idea. Before spring break, I think. That’s late March. But I’m really not sure.”

  Branigan got up to leave.

  “Miss Powers?”

  “Hm?”

  “So you think it’s wrong to tell a source whatever you have to to get them to talk?”

  “I certainly do. There are lines we don’t cross.”

  Anna’s eyes were trained on her coffee cup. Her voice got quieter. “When I heard that Maylene was dead, I was scared her boyfriend had gotten mad at something I wrote. But then I realized she was killed on Friday night, before The Swan came out. So it wasn’t anything I did.”

  Branigan nodded. “But that’s why you always want to be careful,” she said. “And accurate. So if something bad does happen, at least you know you were honest with your source and that you told the truth.

  “Plus, burning a source is not worth it. He – or she – will never talk to you again. In a town this size, that’s a career killer.”

  As Branigan shoved her notebook into her purse, her eye fell on a cardboard box sitting on the fireplace hearth. A furry red and white Santa hat lay on top. “What’s that?”

  Anna saw where she was looking. “Leftover hats from our Christmas concert.”

  Branigan walked over and peered inside. The box was full of Santa hats. “What do you use them for?”

  “All the Greeks compete in a Christmas concert in early December. And we all wear hats in our sorority or fraternity colors. Luckily, ours are red and white. These Santa hats are easy to find. The others buy elf hats in navy and green, or green and yellow, whatever. Some can’t find their colors and have to make them.”

  “How many fraternities and sororities are you talking about?”

  Anna looked up from her coffee cup. “All of them.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Branigan would have liked to walk from campus to her grandparents’ house to give her time to think, but she didn’t want to leave the Civic in front of the Kappa Epsilon house. Her brain was churning.

  Did Charlie really see some sort of hat through the passenger window of the hearse?

  Most homeless men wore a baseball cap, stocking cap, do-rag or hoodie – sometimes two at once. So presumably Ralph did too.

  And what about Roy? She steered with her left hand while scribbling a note to call Emma Ratcliffe. Roy – hat?? she wrote, underlining it.

  And apparently, the whole frigging student body at Rutherford Lee wore holiday hats. Or at least its Greeks did. And they did have access to that hearse. Of course, it was the hearse’s passenger who wore a hat, she conceded, not necessarily the driver. Still, to find one would lead to the other.

  Branigan pulled into her grandparents’ winding driveway. Their rambling cedar-shingled house blended into the gray-brown vegetation. A metallic red Toyota Prius, parked where the driveway flared in front of the house, provided the only splash of color. Sylvia Eckhart must already be inside.

  Branigan approached the front door figuring – correctly – that her grandmother would have Dr Eckhart in the formal living room. She hugged her grandparents, then shook Sylvia Eckhart’s hand. The political science professor was an attractive woman in her mid-fifties, with stylish white hair cut into a soft bob. She wasn’t in a dress, as Rudelle Powers was, but she’d no doubt changed out of her exam-grading clothes. She wore fitted black trousers and a tunic-length beige sweater, with a black and tan scarf knotted in front.

  “Branigan, what a pleasure to finally meet you,” she said. “I’ve been a fan of your writing for years.”

  “Ah, someone who hasn’t given up on newspapers,” Branigan said.

  “Couldn’t do without mine. Computers are for work, not for sitting down with a cup of coffee.”

  Branigan smiled widely. “I thank you, and the industry thanks you.”

  She turned to Rudelle. “Where do you want us, Grandmother?”

  “Well, Marisol has baked chocolate chip muffins, and we have coffee. Shall we sit in the dining room?”

  The four took places around the dining room table, already set with dessert plates and forks. A woman in white trousers, shirt and sneakers pushed through the swinging dining room door with a silver coffee service.

  “Marisol!” Branigan squealed, getting up to hug the housekeeper, who was only a decade younger than her grandparents. “How are you?”

  “Just fine, Miss Branigan,” she said, placing the service on the table and accepting Branigan’s embrace. “It’s good to see you. I was sorry I missed you last week.”

  Marisol had worked for the Powerses for more than thirty years, and had done her share of babysitting Branigan, her brother Davison and their cousins.

  “Sylvia, as you can tell from Branigan’s greeting, this is Marisol Weaver,” Rudelle Powers said. “Marisol, this is Dr Eckhart.”

  Rudelle Powers’ formality-that-could-come-across-as-snobbery didn’t extend to Marisol, who was more like family than employee.

  “Call me Sylvia, please.”

  Marisol smiled a greeting, poured coffee all round and retreated to the kitchen.

  “So, Branigan,” said her grandfather, “we’ll let you tell us what you need.”

  She took a deep breath. “As you might imagine, we’re exploring the deaths of Janie Rose Carlton and Maylene Ayers. Turns out both were freshmen at Rutherford Lee last year, both were Gamma Delta Phis, in fact, and both left school second semester. Both of them are connected to this hearse owned by the Kappa Epsilon Chis – Janie through the wreck, and Maylene through living in it. None of which makes any sense. I can’t connect the dots.”

  She paused and looked at Sylvia Eckhart. “I guess you and Granddaddy know as much behind-the-scenes stuff about Rutherford Lee’s Greek system as anyone. So I wondered if you could tell me about it. Is it piddling? Or does some of it rise to the level of criminal behavior?”

  She sat back and sipped coffee from her grandmother’s china cup, and let her words sink in.

  Sylvia Eckhart was the first to speak. “Ira assures me we are off the record?”

  “If we need to be.”

  “For now, let’s do that. If we say something you want to use, you can ask us specifically later.”

  “All right.”

  “That’s a tough question to answer. In theory, if something is against the law, the Grambling police handle it. The campus is within the city limits. In practice, it can get muddier. Say a girl is raped at a fraternity party but absolutely refuses to report it to the police. She, or more likely the administration, may bring a case to the Hono
r Council against the fraternity for creating a hostile environment.”

  Sylvia Eckhart outlined several more scenarios handled by the Honor Council where the school wasn’t anxious to bring police in, such as underage drinking, academic cheating rings, hazing.

  “The teeth we have with the fraternities and sororities,” she said, “is the ability to put them on probation. That cuts their January rush parties from five to one. They kick up a huge fuss over it, claiming it can ruin an entire class. They even have a name when it happens, ‘probation class’, meaning a class that’s not quite up to their standards.”

  “Ouch,” said Branigan.

  “Tell me about it,” sighed Dr Eckhart.

  “What groups at Rutherford Lee give you the most trouble?”

  Dr Eckhart and Ira Powers exchanged a glance. “Our problem children,” she said, “are the Kappa Eps, the Robies, and the Sigma Etas.”

  Branigan was startled. “Really? The hearse girls? What can you tell me?”

  “Well, full disclosure. I was a Kappa Ep myself. University of Michigan. But every chapter has its own personality. And they tend to keep that personality over time. The Kappa Eps at Rutherford Lee – and the Robies and the Sigma Etas, for that matter – are huge drinkers. They are in constant trouble with over-consumption and underage drinking.”

  “Tell her about the weekday morning party,” said Ira.

  “About two years ago, the Kappa Eps and the Robies held a Bloody Mary party at 7 a.m. on a Friday. Most of them had the sense to skip class afterward. But a handful stumbled into their classes absolutely blitzed. The administration locked down both of the houses by noon.”

  Ira Powers added, “Something like that happened just about every year I headed the council.”

  “What about the Gamma Delta Phis?” Branigan asked.

  “Never a peep out of them,” said Dr Eckhart. “Have you been in their house?”

  “Yeah, I thought I was in a time warp.”

  Dr Eckhart laughed. “Exactly. Those girls are a throwback. Big on legacies. Their grandmothers were Gamma Delts. Their aunts and mothers. The first time I went to their faculty and wives’ tea I didn’t know about the heels and pearls. I was horribly underdressed.” She turned to Branigan’s grandmother. “You were there, Rudelle. You were the only one from our side dressed appropriately.”