Threads of Suspicion(43)

“It’s possible, yes.”

“I’ve had that text anchoring me to the apartment because the phone was there. But Jenna’s phone could have been anywhere when that text message was sent. No one looked at Jenna’s apartment until Monday. That gives a lot of time to return those items without being seen. Wait till it’s absolutely clear, deliver them to the apartment. That’s pretty easy to do if you’ve got forty-eight hours to figure out when to walk up those stairs.”

“We’ve been looking too closely at her apartment as the location for this,” Ann confirmed.

Evie nodded. “I think Jenna went for a walk that night, and then trouble happened. The things put back in her apartment, the text to her a mom, are probably simple cover-your-tracks steps to throw off the original investigation—and now me. I’d be better off looking at the person with the strongest motive to kill Jenna, then just back into how they accomplish the crime to fit the facts I have.”

Ann smiled. “You’ve got your hands around this case now.”

“Hopefully I do. Saturating myself with the facts seems to have put it all into better order in my head. I need to ask Steve if Candy ever tried to make up with him after Jenna disappeared. He didn’t offer that information in our first conversation, but jog his memory a little and maybe it’s there—he’d brushed off Candy’s overture as not going to happen so had forgotten it.”

Evie scanned house numbers as they entered the right subdivision. “According to my researcher, Candy’s working as a hostess at a restaurant three nights a week, does sales work at a car dealership on weekends. She drives a red Toyota. There.” She spotted the car and house and slid into a place at the curb.

They walked up the sidewalk, and Evie knocked. The door opened within a minute.

Candy Trefford was a beautiful woman, significantly more stunning than her driver’s license photo suggested, and thin as a rail. Evie had her badge out and showed it as she spoke. “Ms. Trefford, I’m Lieutenant Evie Blackwell. I have a few questions for you regarding Jenna Greenhill.” The blank look lasted a few seconds before the name clicked. Disgust was the emotion that passed across Candy’s face first, Evie noted, surprised.

“She’s finally been found, that boyfriend-stealing cheater?”

“I gather you weren’t friends,” Evie dryly responded.

“She shows up freshman year, hangs over my guy like a piece of gum on your shoe, and manages to poach him when I’m out of town seeing my folks. She wasn’t anybody’s friend if they happened to have something she wanted.”

“You mind if we have this conversation inside?” Evie asked. The woman was a talker, and to Evie’s view of things, that could make her a gold mine of an interview.

Candy pushed the door wider and stepped back. “You didn’t answer my question. Did she finally show up? And who’s this with you?”

“Ann Falcon is working with the task force looking at the case. Jenna’s not been found, Ms. Trefford. We’re talking with those who knew her.”

“I knew her. Didn’t like her. And those who saw under the surface mostly steered clear too.”

The house was a basic floor plan, maybe twelve hundred square feet, but it had been carefully decorated, modern in style, furnished more for looks than comfort, Evie thought. They weren’t asked to sit, thankfully, as they stepped into the living room. “Besides your boyfriend, what else did Jenna acquire?”

“Grades, for one. She was tight with the TAs. You’d see her back in the professors’ offices, the labs where grad students worked. She was getting inside help to make those grades. Steve was so enamored with how smart she was, but truth be told, she was mostly a cheat.”

“Any particular TA she hung out with more than others?”

“Jacob something. A grad student who ran the lab area. I know she was two-timing Steve with Jacob—I saw them kissing.”

Evie’s attention sharpened at the remark. Candy stalking Jenna was like a camera clicking nine years ago. She might be the murderer, but if not, she had made herself the reporter on the scene. “Jenna have any other guys hanging around?”

“The drummer Kyle Lee with the school performance band would be around her place, and the guy who manages the music shop, Tyler something, she’d be out with him for coffee.”

“Were you around the campus that weekend Jenna went missing?”

“Steve was reporting on an away game. I went to the game, which is what a girl should do when her guy is there.”

“Did you speak with Steve?”