She left. As Nancy unpacked her clothes, she imagined what it would be like to go to college in a foreign country, far from her family and friends. Exciting, yes, but at the same time so terribly lonely.
Nancy finished unpacking and went in search of Bess and George, who were just coming up the stairs to look for her.
“How’s your room?” Bess was asking George. “I bet you took the upper bunk. Penny always sleeps up top, so I lucked out. I was so afraid I’d roll over in the night and go crashing down.”
“Good thing you’re not a mountain climber,” George said. “Once I had to sleep on a ledge that wasn’t more than two feet wide, with a five-hundred-foot drop next to me.”
“And you slept?” Bess demanded, wide eyed. “I would have been trembling so much, I probably would have jerked my way off the edge.”
They all laughed. Then Nancy said, “Something’s happened that we should look into.” As they walked back to her room, she told them about the heart-and-dagger drawing and explained what it meant.
“I think we should find out if anyone saw anything,” she added. “There don’t seem to be many people in the dorm at this time of day, but we might get lucky.”
At that moment they heard footsteps. A guy in jeans and an Emerson College sweatshirt was coming down the hall. He gave them a friendly nod and started past to go on to the stairs.
“Could I ask you a question?” Nancy said. She introduced herself and her friends and explained that they were visiting for the weekend. “I’m staying with Dina. And when we got to her room just now, there was an ugly drawing on her door.”
“The thing with a knife?” the guy asked. “Yeah, I noticed that a little while ago. Pretty creepy.”
“You didn’t see who made it, did you?” George asked.
“Nope. Sorry,” he replied. “I’ve got a test in organic chem on Monday, so I’ve been hitting the books pretty hard. I’m just coming up for air.”
“Do you remember when you saw the drawing?” Bess asked. “That might help us figure out who did it.”
The guy grinned. “I get it—alibis and stuff, huh? Let’s see . . . it’s about six now . . . call it forty-five minutes ago, about five-fifteen, plus or minus fifteen minutes.”
Nancy made a note of the information and thanked him. After he clattered down the stairs, she said, “That’s a start. Let’s fan out and knock on doors.”
• • •
“Nada,” Bess said disgustedly, when the three friends reconvened at the head of the stairs half an hour later. “Zip. Zilch. Nobody home except two girls who saw and heard nothing. If you ask me, you could have sent the college marching band through here, and they wouldn’t have noticed.”
Nancy grinned. “Same here,” she reported. “I guess almost everybody’s off at the dining hall or library. How about you, George? Any luck?”
“A little,” George replied. “I found one guy, Carlos. He took a shower late this afternoon, and on the way back to his room he noticed somebody standing by Dina’s door. The somebody hurried away when he heard Carlos coming.”
“He?” Nancy repeated. “Carlos was sure it was a guy? Any details? Build, hair color, clothes?”
George shook her head. “Carlos was thirty feet down the hall and his glasses were still fogged over from the shower room. He’s only about eighty percent sure it was Dina’s door. Still, it gives us a possible fix on the time: five-twenty. That he’s sure about. He was expecting a call at five-thirty, so he was watching the time.”
“That fits with what we know from Dina and that guy,” Nancy said thoughtfully. “So anybody with an alibi for five-twenty is less of a suspect. Do we know when Vlad showed up at the student center?”
“We got there a little before five,” George said. “So it must have been about five-thirty when he came in. No help there.”
“No,” Nancy said. She felt a shiver run down her spine. “Two nasty incidents in one afternoon. I have a hunch they’re just the beginning.”
“Hey, you guys,” Ned called from one flight down. “We were looking for you. Come on. Let’s get something to eat.”
Cyril was with Ned. So was a guy with delicate features, a dark complexion, glossy black hair, and flashing eyes.
“This is Jay Prakash, known as J. P.,” Ned said. “He’s coming to dinner with us. What do you say to El Taco Loco?”
“I never met a crazy taco I didn’t like,” George joked. “J. P., are you from India?”
“My grandparents were,” J. P. replied. “But I was born and raised in Guyana. That’s a very small country on the northeast coast of South America.”
“I knew that,” Bess announced. “It used to be a British colony, right?”
J. P. smiled. “You could say that about many parts of the world, including Cyril’s homeland, Australia. But yes.”
“Enough geopolitics,” Cyril said. “I’m famished.”
• • •
El Taco Loco was a short walk from campus. Inside, the walls were decorated with sombreros, serapes, and a mural of a cactus. Mariachi music played over the sound system. Their waitress wore a lace-trimmed peasant blouse and a long, full skirt decorated with sequin-covered bullfighters.
Nancy scanned the menu. There were the usual combination plates of enchiladas, tacos, rice and beans, and guacamole, but she spotted some more unusual dishes as well. She chose roast chicken with a spicy sauce made from bitter chocolate.
As dinner went on, she noticed that Bess was talking mostly to Cyril. George and J. P. seemed to be getting along well, too. Good. Nancy did not want her friends to feel neglected or left out when she and Ned took some time for themselves.
“Our steering committee meeting got pretty lively,” Ned said in a low voice. “I’m worried about Dina. I’ve never seen her so on edge.”
“I’m not surprised,” Nancy replied. She told him about the drawing on Dina’s door and what she, George, and Bess had found out.
Ned rubbed his chin. “Hmm . . . it doesn’t have to be Vlad, you know. The way people are choosing sides in this IFC election, one of Vlad’s supporters could have gotten carried away.”
“That’s what worries me most,” Nancy replied. “And if some of those who support Dina decide to retaliate, you could end up with a real mess.”
