“Put on your dancing shoes.”
“What are you talking about?” Parker said. “I’m in my pajamas. I’m watching the Twins. They are down two. Bottom of the ninth.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” she said. “Want to catch a killer or not? Put on something that a frat boy would wear. We’re going to a frat party.”
“You’ve got to be kidding?”
She was not.
Within the hour, they had pulled up in front of a large house with Greek letters hanging over the wrap-around front porch. Several guys lounged in ripped chairs clutching beer cans. A beat-up leather couch was the guest of honor in the middle of the front lawn and several girls and guys were sprawled on it.
Tommy looked behind Parker’s car. The young, redheaded cop who was supposed to be tailing her now that Erks was dead was nowhere to be seen. She hoped this new assignment wasn’t his death sentence. If he was out there, he was an expert because she didn’t see a sign of him the entire drive over.
Slamming the car door, she looked back and didn’t see any figures in any of the parked cars on this street. Yeah, if he was there, he was damn good. Thank God. It would help keep him alive.
Parker wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap pulled low. Tommy had worn her most stylish jeans, high-heeled sandals and a gold silk floaty camisole. She’d pulled her red hair back in a messy ponytail and slicked on some bubble gum colored lipstick. She looked 23, five years less than her real age.
This might actually work.
She’d explained her plan to Parker on the way over. They were going to try to infiltrate the frat boy scene and make friends. The latest victim, Cody Johnson, had been a frat boy at this particular house. He’d been drinking and wandered away from the party. He was found dead in the Mississippi River the next day. Her plan was to get into the house and once they had a few of the dead boy’s friends alone, they would grill them for information that might help lead to the killer.
It was a far-fetched idea, but they didn’t have a whole lot else to go on.
And the cops seemingly had no leads.
As they approached the house, Tommy couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder trying to spot the cop tailing them. Kelly was working the night shift tonight. He had specifically told her not to leave her apartment, but she couldn’t sit and do nothing.
Guilt over Erk’s death drove her to get out of her warm comfy pajamas. Now, she wondered if she’d made a big mistake. Maybe there wasn’t a cop tailing her. Maybe someone else was following her. This thought sent a chill through her. What if the killer was somewhere in the shadows right now, watching her? She was freaking herself out. Knock it off. She squared her shoulders and stepped inside.
Inside the party, Parker put his arm around Tommy in a possessive manner.
“Just work with me here. That way we’ll run off all the guys hitting on you and get to the meat of the story.”
“Whatever.” Tommy thought it was just an excuse, but let it go. For now.
The house was packed: shoulder-to-shoulder people. Loud music blared from an unidentified source and people danced and laughed. Tommy and Parker wove their way through the crowd to the kitchen where the keg was. Tommy grabbed a red cup and when nobody was looking, filled it with water from the tap. She had no desire to be drinking with a bunch of college age kids. Plus, she wanted her wits as sharp as possible.
Meanwhile, Parker was chatting up the kid manning the keg. Tommy couldn’t hear what they were saying, but saw the kid point above his head and mouth the word “upstairs.”
Parker jutted his chin at her. Let’s go.
They maneuvered through cute girls in tiny tops sitting on the stairs smoking and made their way to the second floor. It was quieter there.
Parker turned to Tommy and leaned in to whisper in her ear, which was totally unnecessary. His mouth pressed against her skin sent goosebumps racing down her spine.
“Kid told me Cody Johnson’s friends like to hang out in a bedroom down the hall. They’re into some role-playing game or something.”
Tommy shrugged and squirmed away from his warm breath. She pictured Kelly’s face and the zip of desire she’d felt immediately ebbed.
Role playing? Did that mean Dungeons and Dragons or something?
Parker grabbed her hand, entwining his fingers in hers and led the way down the darker hallway. A poster on the front of the door showed some fantastical fantasy world with trolls and other mythical creatures Tommy couldn’t even begin to identify.
Thank God, she had never dated a boy into that stuff.
Parker gave a sharp rap on the door. Nothing. They waited a few seconds. Still nothing. Parker tried the handle. It was locked. He rapped again and put his mouth to the doorjamb. “Hey, I need to talk to you guys about Cody.”
Slowly, the door opened a crack.
“Who are you?” A nerdy looking skinny guy with glasses and a bad cowlick poked his head out.
“We’re with the Twin Cities News,” Parker said. “We want to help catch the bastard who did that to your friend. But we’re going to need your help.”
The kid blinked and his eyes narrowed. “We already talked to the cops.”
“Well, the cops haven’t caught the guy yet have they? Maybe they need a little help?”
The boy scoffed. “From you?” But he opened the door and stood aside.
Inside the room, red candles covered every available flat surface. A giant wooden table was pulled to the center of the room and what looked like a game board with different figures took center stage.
“We were playing the game that night,” said the boy, who said his name was Daniel.
Parker and Daniel leaned over the board and discussed the various strategies for playing.
Tommy was more interested in walking around the room, looking for signs that Cody Johnson had lived there.
She interrupted the talk about the game. “Is anything of Cody’s still here.”
“His folks came and got everything,” one boy with long hair in a ponytail said, pointing to an empty corner with a bare mattress and empty shelves. “That used to be his bed.”
Tommy walked over. She didn’t know what she was looking for. A scratch on the wall naming his killer? Of course, there was nothing there. She stood by the window and looked out at the night sky. In the distance, she could see the Mississippi River. It would only be a short hike down to the river from this frat house.
She was vaguely listening to the boy’s voices, when something in Parker’s tone made her turn. He sounded excited.
Parker smiled. “He was caching.”
Huh? Tommy stopped and stared.
“He just got the last clue and discovered it was right in our backyard,” the ponytailed boy said. “Really weird, huh? We told him to just go to bed, but he said he would just run down and come back. But he never came back.”
“So, he was off looking for this geocache?”
The ponytailed boy nodded.
“How come the cops said he was drinking and wandered off?”
The boys at the table shrugged. “Maybe because we always drink on Friday nights, but Cody wasn’t drunk. He always handled his alcohol really well.”
Daniel answered. “Yeah, there was no way he was so drunk that he stumbled and fell into the Mississippi. We knew that was bullshit. We weren’t surprised when you guys wrote that he was murdered and it wasn’t an accident.”
Caching? Tommy didn’t know what they were talking about. Something to do with that game?
Parker was biting his lip and looking off into the distance, which Tommy knew meant he was formulating a plan.
“Any of you know the clues that Cody had when he set off for the geocache?” he asked.
“We’ve been trying to put them together,” the ponytailed boy said. “In fact, we think we found the last clue right before you knocked.”
Parker didn’t hesitate. “Let’s go.”