“It’s the insurance assessment from a car fire,” Ellery said as she read it over. “Your car fire, as it happens. There was a seashell earring found among the debris. You don’t recall this?” She gave him the printout to read.
Stone took longer than necessary to examine the scant few lines that detailed the inventory from the fire. “No,” he said finally. “What a coincidence. I guess Teresa must have owned a similar pair of earrings.”
“We asked her,” Ellery told him, her gaze turning steely. “She denies ever owning any earrings like these.”
He snorted. “Of course she would. She’d deny ever knowing me if she thought she could get away with it. Look,” he said, opening his body posture, trying to smile, “I remember now buying those earrings for Teresa. It was a little souvenir I picked up for her on a business trip to Quebec many years ago.”
Reed saw his left eye twitch. “You buy a lot of jewelry.” He pulled out more paper from his notes and put on his reading glasses to consult the list. “Two sets of earrings, a necklace, and a half-dozen bracelets in the past year alone. One of them contained actual diamonds.” He peered over the top of his glasses and across the table at Stone. “You must have had a great deal to apologize for that time.”
Twin spots of rage appeared on Stone’s face. “You’ve been prying into my records? Is that legal? Can he do that?” he appealed to Ava Moss, who dismissed him coolly.
“I’m not here for you.”
“Then I’m not here at all,” Stone said, shoving back from the table.
“You don’t want to know about Trevor?” Reed asked, and Stone halted with his hands balled into fists. “Or maybe you know already. Maybe you’ve always known, deep down.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You abuse your students,” Reed replied. “You grope some and court others. We tracked down that diamond bracelet and found it in possession of a young woman named Shelby Colson. She was your teaching assistant last year. You seduced her, and when she tried to break it off you didn’t take no for an answer. She ended up in the E.R. with a split lip and a broken collarbone.”
“And she says I did it to her?”
“No, she’s sticking to her story that she went over the handlebars on her bicycle.” Reed paused for effect. “I talked to her roommate, though. It seems that Shelby doesn’t own a bike.”
“Beth Frick had next to nothing,” Ellery added. “Her mom blew through the insurance money in under a year and the family was back to barely scraping by. Beth knew the only way out was to go to a good school, and her mother said she knew someone who could help her with that. She turned to you. You met with the girl, showed her around, maybe took her out to a fancy meal at the club on campus. You’re a big man around here, right? She would have been wowed by you.”
“They all are at first,” Reed said. “Isn’t that right? And then when it goes bad, when you push it too far and hurt them, they think it must be their fault. You’re practically a god at this place.”
“I don’t have to stay here and listen to this bunch of lies.” He tried to push past Altman to the door, but the dean stopped him with one raised hand.
“Actually, you do.”
“George, you can’t believe what he’s saying. It’s pure fantasy.”
“Sit down.”
Stone refused. He stood by the table with his arms folded. “You’re wrong about everything, and if you breathe a word of it outside this room, I will sue you for defamation.”
“You gave Beth Frick those earrings,” Reed said calmly. “Whether it was before or after you slept with her, I don’t know. It’s been so long and too many players in this drama are not around to confirm the gaps.”
“Gaps? Canyons, maybe. This is a bunch of horseshit you’re shoveling. George, you can’t be buying any of it.”
“She threw the earrings back at you, probably when she turned up pregnant. I can imagine how terrified she must have been, how angry. Her future had been set and now suddenly everything went to ruin. She set your car on fire.”
Stone’s jaw worked back and forth. “So you say.”
“You’re right. I can’t prove it. But I think you knew who it was even at the time, which is why you tried to prevent any real investigation. You wanted the whole mess to go away quietly, including Beth, and she obliged you by driving her car into a cement barrier.”
Ava Moss stopped taking notes. “Are you saying the girl killed herself?”
“It’s impossible to know for sure,” Reed said. “What we do know is that the day Trevor Stone was murdered, Beth’s mother, Carol Frick, was cleaning out Beth’s room. Something she found in there triggered her to call Ethan Stone at his office. Repeatedly. When she couldn’t reach him, she went to the house. Maybe she was looking for him. Or maybe she was already looking for Trevor.”
He looked to Stone, whose face drained of color, his lips bloodless and waxy. “N—no,” he stammered, shaking his head.
“You took her child,” Reed told him. “So she took yours.”
“No, it can’t be. Someone broke in. A stranger. One of the landscapers.”
“No one broke in. Carol had a key, if she needed it, but the back door was open. She knew where you kept the recycled plastic bags because she often put them there herself. She didn’t grapple with any murderer at the top of your staircase. She went to Trevor’s room, surprised him from behind with the plastic bag, and smothered him to death. Then, in despair and fearing the consequences of her actions, she threw herself off the upstairs walkway onto the marble floor below.”
Reed laid out all the evidence end-to-end on the table. Ethan Stone’s feverish gaze swept over it once and then again. “You’re wrong,” he whispered.
“It’s the only explanation that fits.”
“She killed him. My God, we sent flowers to her funeral.”
“But you didn’t attend,” Reed said. “You probably couldn’t bear to look at her surviving children, knowing what you’d done.”
“She murdered my boy.” He leaned heavily on the nearest chair. “He was innocent. He didn’t ask for any of this.”
“Neither did Beth,” Ellery said.
“Or Shelby,” Reed added. He nodded to the dean, who leaned over to the phone in the middle of the table.
Altman picked up the receiver and hit two buttons. After a brief pause he said, “Selene, could you please send them in? Thank you.”
The door opened and four young women filed inside. Professor Stone looked up in horror as he recognized them. “Neither did Anita,” Reed said, his voice rising. “Or Meredith. Or Isabelle. Or Laurie.”
The women held up their pieces of jewelry as their names were called in turn. They looked on as Stone crumpled under the weight of their names, the strength of their presence. “Please,” he said, tears coming at last, tears Reed knew were only for himself. “You have to understand. She’s the killer. Not me. I never meant to hurt anyone.”
Here Bobby Frick had the answer all along. Reed stretched across the table to speak softly in the professor’s face. “Too late.”