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Back The Sorority Murder Save as PDF
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  29. Twenty-Two
  30. Twenty-Three
  31. Twenty-Four
  32. Twenty-Five
  33. Twenty-Six
  34. Twenty-Seven
  35. Twenty-Eight
  36. Twenty-Nine
  37. Thirty
  38. Thirty-One
  39. Thirty-Two
  40. Thirty-Three
  41. Thirty-Four
  42. From the Missing Journal of Candace Swain
  43. Thirty-Five
  44. Thirty-Six
  45. Thirty-Seven
  46. Thirty-Eight
  47. From the Journal of Candace Swain
  48. Thirty-Nine
  49. Forty
  50. Forty-One
  51. Forty-Two
  52. Forty-Three
  53. Forty-Four
  54. Forty-Five
  55. Forty-Six
  56. Forty-Seven
  57. Letter Found in the Journal of Candace Swain
  58. Forty-Eight
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. Booklist
  61. Excerpt

He was surprised he hadn’t thought of that. But then again, he was a college student, and Regan Merritt was a thirty-five-year-old trained law-enforcement officer.

He asked, “So who’s lying? And why?” and half expected her to already know.

“Those are the million-dollar questions. My guess? Someone in the sorority knew a lot more than they told the cops. Whether it directly led to Candace’s murder, I don’t know. But someone may have helped her disappear. No car, no phone, didn’t use her credit cards—but records show she took out five hundred dollars on the day after the party, from an ATM in Flagstaff, the maximum allowed.”

“How do you know that?”

“Detective Young wrote it in a sort of shorthand I recognized because I was looking for it. She withdrew that money after hours, early Saturday morning, after she left the party. If someone was being frugal, they could easily live on five hundred for a week, longer if they had a free place to stay. To find out where that place was, I need to learn everything I can about Candace Swain.”

She tapped his list of questions. “By the way, it was smart of you to think about stolen vehicles. But more than stolen, I think someone may have loaned her a car. If we believe Abby that she saw Candace in Kingman, and the sister who saw her driving to campus on Sunday night, that suggests she left town after the party, returned, and then left again. But why not take her own car? Because of where she was going? Because her car was so recognizable? And if someone helped her that week, why didn’t they tell the police after Candace was found dead?”

“Because they killed her? Or they were scared? Intimidated?”

Regan shrugged. “Any or all of the above. Or they thought they would get in trouble because they lied to the police about not seeing Candace during the missing-person investigation. We need to find that person, and then I think we’ll break this case open.”

“So you don’t buy into the police theory that the homeless guy Abernathy killed her.”

“I can’t say. Would he have had the wherewithal to move her body, as you suggested? I don’t know enough yet.”

Lucas latched onto her comment.

Move the body.

So Regan believed him. That Candace was drowned elsewhere and dumped in the lake. Somehow, that gave Lucas confidence and hope—even if she didn’t explicitly state it.

“Have you talked to Taylor James?” Regan asked.

“You’re not taking that last caller seriously, are you?”

“Yes, I am. You’re not?”