Playing Dead_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [68]
“I’m sorry to tell you that Oliver’s dead,” Steve said.
“Oh, oh no!” Shelley looked stricken.
Mitch sat in the one guest chair and put his elbows on his knees. “We’re sorry. We’d wanted to tell the professor the news in person.”
“Maybe he heard and that’s why he canceled his classes,” she said. “Though I can’t imagine that he would do that without telling anyone about Oliver.”
“You don’t know why he canceled?”
“I thought it was a fight with one of his girlfriends. I was late to his eight a.m. class and was running across the lawn. He was standing in the middle of the walkway arguing with some woman. He walked off, angry by the looks of it, and she shouted something at him, but I couldn’t hear it. I got into class like ten seconds before he did. He went to the front of the room and said that he had a personal emergency and was canceling the lecture today. Didn’t even give an assignment. I mean, we only have two weeks until finals. He just walked out.”
“He’s never done something like this before?”
“Don? No way. He’s never sick.”
“What was his relationship like with Oliver?”
“Like, would he be distraught about his death? I guess he’d be upset. I used to be jealous of them—Oliver was his pet, everyone knew it. But then I suspected they had some big disagreement.”
“Over what?”
She shrugged. “No idea. But it had to have been major. I mean, they used to talk for hours in Don’s office, Don got him a choice internship two summers in a row, and Oliver had a key to his office so he could use Don’s personal law books. Then it just stopped. They barely spoke to each other anymore.”
“Just like that? Do you know when this argument started?”
“Hmm, not really. After classes began for the new term. That would have been end of August . . . maybe October? Early November? Definitely before Thanksgiving.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Oliver didn’t have any family nearby. Don always has his best students over for Thanksgiving, unless they go home. I was there with about eight or nine others. Oliver wasn’t. And Don said he hadn’t been invited. Really flip, very unlike Don.”
“That’s very helpful,” Mitch said. “Did you—”
She cut him off. “If you’re from the FBI, is that because Oliver was, like, murdered? And why aren’t the Davis police here?”
“I can’t really share that information with you as it’s a pending investigation,” Mitch said. “Do you have any of Oliver’s things here? Research? Perhaps notes or an outline? His thesis?”
“Oh, no. Oliver was very hush-hush about it. He wasn’t sharing anything. He wasn’t even talking to Don about it. “
“Thank you for your time,” Steve said.
“One more thing,” Mitch said. He knew the answer, but he had to ask the question. “Can you describe the woman Professor Collier was arguing with before he canceled his classes?”
Shelley said, “Pretty, dark hair. Caucasian. Twenty-five or thirty. Older than a college student. She was wearing jeans, I think. A long beige blazer. I don’t remember anything else. Oh, she was kinda on the short side. Don’s on the short side, so I noticed she was at least four or five inches shorter. Five two maybe?”
“Thank you for your time.”
They left King Hall.
“Dammit,” Mitch said. “Claire was looking at his class schedule and left early. I knew it. What does she know that we don’t?”
“I wish I knew,” Steve said.
What was Claire up to? What did she tell Don Collier that had him canceling his classes and acting strangely?
“We have to track down Collier,” Mitch said.
“Got his home address right here. He’s not too far from campus. And now I have a good reason to talk to Claire O’Brien again. Two people have identified her. It sounds like she’s a step ahead of us, too. I don’t want her to get in over her head.”
Neither do I, Mitch thought.
Steve called Oliver’s girlfriend as they walked, and Tammy Amunson agreed to meet them on the ground-floor