Dead on the Island Read Online Free PDF Page B

There was a little sun, and the temperature was already
edging up toward fifty degrees. I got the washing out of the
machine and tossed it in the dryer. It was mostly sweatshirts,
shorts, and jeans, so leaving it in the washer overnight hadn't
hurt it.
    I got dressed and drove down to the west end
of the seawall for my run. I wanted to get it done early because if
it warmed up and the sun came out, there'd be a lot more people on
the wall than there had been the day before. Besides, I had work to
do.
    Back at the house, I took a shower, dressed,
and pitched Nameless out. He looked so comfortable balled up on my
bed that I hated to do it, but I wasn't sure when I'd be back in. I
didn't want to deprive him of his early evening rambles.
    The community college campus was over near
Ball High School, so the drive wasn't far. But then nothing on the
Island is very far from anything else. It didn't take long.
    I had a little trouble finding a parking
spot. The college had just built a big new library and classroom
building on the spot that had once been a parking lot. There was a
new lot a couple of blocks away. I parked there and walked back to
the campus.
    At not quite ten o'clock on a Tuesday
morning, most of the students on campus were in class. I stopped
one who wasn't, a girl who was carrying a canned Coke down the
hall, and she directed me to the political science department. They
don't call it "social studies" anymore, the way Evelyn Matthews
had. That's high school terminology.
    The office wasn't large, and there was a
blonde girl sitting at a desk. She didn't look up when I stepped
through the open door because she was too busy stapling papers
together, after she gathered them from the various neat stacks
lined up on the desk. She was muttering something under her breath.
It sounded like, "I hate this. Why is this in my life?" I stood
there for a second or two waiting for her to notice me, but she was
so intent on her gathering and stapling that she never looked up.
Finally I tapped on the door frame.
    She turned and focused a pair of very large
brown eyes on me. "Oh," she said. "I'm sorry. I didn't hear you
come in. Can I help you?"
    "Looks as if you're the one who needs help,"
I said.
    "Oh no." She gave an embarrassed laugh and
glanced at the papers on the desk. "It's just that we do have a collator, but Dr. Samuel always forgets to set the machine
correctly. Then he just brings his papers down here for me to
collate."
    She was dressed casually in jeans and a blue
shirt, but she certainly had nice eyes.
    "You do this for everyone in the
department?" I said.
    "Not everyone. Mostly just Dr. Samuels." She
looked at me questioningly. "Are you looking for Dr. Martin?"
    I asked who Dr. Martin was.
    "He's the department head. But he's in class
right now, but he'll be back at ten-fifty."
    I stepped a little farther into the office
and saw that there was a door connecting this one with another,
larger one, presumably Dr. Martin's.
    "No," I said. "I'm not looking for Dr.
Martin. Actually, I'd like to talk to you, if you're Julie
Gregg."
    "I'm Julie," she said. "What did you want to
talk to me about?"
    "It's about Sharon Matthews," I said.
    "Sharon? What's the matter with Sharon?"
    "Probably nothing. Did you see her here at
school yesterday?"
    She thought about it. "Well, no. But we
don't have any classes together on MWF. Is she sick?"
    "She seems to have left home unexpectedly,"
I said. "Her mother's worried."
    "Her mother," Julie said.
    "Anything wrong with her mother?"
    "No, nothing," Julie said, looking back at
the papers on her desk as if the job of collating and stapling them
had suddenly grown incredibly fascinating.
    So much for keeping Evelyn's past a deep,
dark secret , I thought.
    "Sharon told you, huh?" I said.
    Julie forced herself to look back at me.
"Told me what?"
    "Look, Julie, let's not beat around the
bush. That might work on an essay quiz in history class, but this
is a real live person we're talking about here.