“No, I’m sorry. She was one of the few non-science majors, and we didn’t have any classes together or anything like that. She had her own group of friends, plus she graduated before I did.” She paused. “Candace was mentoring Vicky Ryan, a first year who, I saw from the sorority newsletter, is now the president. I’m not surprised. Vicky had that personality, that she wanted to be in leadership, and she was very organized and together. Everyone liked Candace, but no one was her confidante.”

Taylor James. Her name kept popping up. Regan wrote down the other two, Vicky and Alexa. But Taylor was definitely someone they needed to track down.

“When you returned on Sunday night, you noticed Candace wasn’t there.”

“I came in really late, she wasn’t in bed, but at the time I didn’t think anything of it, and I told that to the police. She was seeing two different guys at the time—I told her she should choose. She said that Tyler was a sweetheart and they had fun together, but Richie was someone who listened to her and had more life experience. I don’t think she was serious about either of them, to be honest.”

“Did the two guys know about each other?”

“Richie knew about Tyler; I don’t think that Tyler knew about Richie. Richie dated other girls, but the funny thing is I think he really liked Candace. If she had split with Tyler and wanted to be exclusive, Richie would have jumped at it.”

“You knew both of them?”

“I knew Tyler better because Candace had been seeing him on and off for two years. Very nice guy, the typical too nice, if you understand?”

Regan smiled. “I do know what you mean, Annie.”

“No backbone,” Annie said. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to date a guy who just did everything I wanted and never had an original thought on his own. It’s nice for a while, but it gets old fast.”

“According to the police report, you didn’t notice that Candace’s phone was in the room until you woke up the next morning.”

“I was exhausted when I got in. I unpacked and crashed. In the morning I saw her phone in the charger and thought she was around, but I didn’t see her. Her bed was made, it didn’t look like she’d slept there, but I didn’t really think much about it until I came back that afternoon and everything was the same. I called around to see if anyone had seen her—then I started to worry. I looked at her phone—I didn’t have her passcode—but I could see that she had a lot of missed calls and texts. That’s when I contacted campus police.”

“You were worried.”