and called for Max, who didn’t respond. A quick survey of the area told me that she wasn’t home.
She really hadn’t left the house for any significant length of time in the past two weeks, so I was surprised that she was gone. I scribbled a note with the phone number in my room on campus and put it next to a can of paint sitting on the counter.
I looked at Trixie. “Where did this come from?” I asked her. It is not unusual for me to ask her questions and even more common for my questions to be met with adoring silence. I looked at the top of the can and saw a little dab of paint on the label: Million Dollar Red. I had no idea where this had come from or what it was for, but I left it there, thinking that Max might have purchased it to redo a room in her own apartment once she revoked Fred’s squatter’s rights and she returned there. She had been talking about making a fresh start and I couldn’t think of a fresher start than painting a room red.
I pulled together everything I needed: Trixie’s food, bowls, leash, and chew toys. We got into the car and headed back to St. Thomas, never seeing Max.
The director of security, Jay Pinto, was waiting for me when I returned from my trip. He held the door to the dorm for me as I carted in a box with Trixie’s supplies, her leash dangling off my wrist. We made our way down to my room, where I set the box on the ground and commanded Trixie to “sit.” She responded by taking off down the hallway, skidding up and down on the marble floors, investigating her new environment.
I folded my arms over my chest, expecting the worst. “I guess you heard what happened.”
Jay, shorter than me with a thick shock of black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, looked up at me and nodded. A faithful practitioner of kickboxing—a fact I had learned during one of Etheridge’s goofy awards ceremonies—he was in excellent shape for a man in his early fifties. “You know I’m retired from the Job?” he asked, using the term cops normally used to refer to their time on the NYPD. Obviously, it was important for him to establish that I knew that before we got down to the business at hand, namely my exploding toilet. “I really wished your boyfriend would have called me first. We could have kept the whole thing a lot quieter.”
I hadn’t known he had been a cop but it didn’t surprise me. It also didn’t surprise me that he knew about Crawford. “So you talked to Detective Lattanzi?”
“The other one. Marcus,” he said. A couple of students, tanned from their spring break adventures, came through the side door near my room and scampered down the hallway, encountering Trixie on the way. She was thrilled to make new friends. Jay leaned in so that we wouldn’t be overheard. “We’re going to try to keep this quiet anyway. If we can.”
I wasn’t surprised to learn that, either. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Really quiet,” he said meaningfully. He raised an eyebrow. “Understand?”
I nodded slowly even though I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about.
“Sit tight. Do your job. Keep your nose clean.”
“That’s my plan,” I said. The presumption that I wouldn’t do those three things irked me slightly. I wondered how many people had seen two police cars and two unmarked vehicles peel into campus yesterday, and I decided that whoever did was given the evil death glare—the same one I was getting at that moment—from Jay. I guess he was under the same strict orders as everyone else on the campus with the same mantra: “We’re one big, happy family! Nothing bad ever happens here! It’s heaven on earth!”
Except it wasn’t. We now had exploding, drug-filled toilets to add to our roster of “bad things that happen at St. Thomas.” As if murder hadn’t been enough.
“So, we’ll never speak of this again?” Jay asked pointedly.
“I can’t guarantee that,” I said, honest to a fault. Because I was going to find out where those drugs
She really hadn’t left the house for any significant length of time in the past two weeks, so I was surprised that she was gone. I scribbled a note with the phone number in my room on campus and put it next to a can of paint sitting on the counter.
I looked at Trixie. “Where did this come from?” I asked her. It is not unusual for me to ask her questions and even more common for my questions to be met with adoring silence. I looked at the top of the can and saw a little dab of paint on the label: Million Dollar Red. I had no idea where this had come from or what it was for, but I left it there, thinking that Max might have purchased it to redo a room in her own apartment once she revoked Fred’s squatter’s rights and she returned there. She had been talking about making a fresh start and I couldn’t think of a fresher start than painting a room red.
I pulled together everything I needed: Trixie’s food, bowls, leash, and chew toys. We got into the car and headed back to St. Thomas, never seeing Max.
The director of security, Jay Pinto, was waiting for me when I returned from my trip. He held the door to the dorm for me as I carted in a box with Trixie’s supplies, her leash dangling off my wrist. We made our way down to my room, where I set the box on the ground and commanded Trixie to “sit.” She responded by taking off down the hallway, skidding up and down on the marble floors, investigating her new environment.
I folded my arms over my chest, expecting the worst. “I guess you heard what happened.”
Jay, shorter than me with a thick shock of black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, looked up at me and nodded. A faithful practitioner of kickboxing—a fact I had learned during one of Etheridge’s goofy awards ceremonies—he was in excellent shape for a man in his early fifties. “You know I’m retired from the Job?” he asked, using the term cops normally used to refer to their time on the NYPD. Obviously, it was important for him to establish that I knew that before we got down to the business at hand, namely my exploding toilet. “I really wished your boyfriend would have called me first. We could have kept the whole thing a lot quieter.”
I hadn’t known he had been a cop but it didn’t surprise me. It also didn’t surprise me that he knew about Crawford. “So you talked to Detective Lattanzi?”
“The other one. Marcus,” he said. A couple of students, tanned from their spring break adventures, came through the side door near my room and scampered down the hallway, encountering Trixie on the way. She was thrilled to make new friends. Jay leaned in so that we wouldn’t be overheard. “We’re going to try to keep this quiet anyway. If we can.”
I wasn’t surprised to learn that, either. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Really quiet,” he said meaningfully. He raised an eyebrow. “Understand?”
I nodded slowly even though I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about.
“Sit tight. Do your job. Keep your nose clean.”
“That’s my plan,” I said. The presumption that I wouldn’t do those three things irked me slightly. I wondered how many people had seen two police cars and two unmarked vehicles peel into campus yesterday, and I decided that whoever did was given the evil death glare—the same one I was getting at that moment—from Jay. I guess he was under the same strict orders as everyone else on the campus with the same mantra: “We’re one big, happy family! Nothing bad ever happens here! It’s heaven on earth!”
Except it wasn’t. We now had exploding, drug-filled toilets to add to our roster of “bad things that happen at St. Thomas.” As if murder hadn’t been enough.
“So, we’ll never speak of this again?” Jay asked pointedly.
“I can’t guarantee that,” I said, honest to a fault. Because I was going to find out where those drugs
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