“Let me help,” Rachel said and took a garbage bag from Vicky’s stash.
Rachel chatted with Vicky, who felt lucky to be able to spend so much one-on-one time with her sorority advisor. Rachel was so smart, an associate professor at just thirty-two, an alum of the University of Arizona Sigma Rho chapter. Plus she had such interesting stories to share. By the time they were done with the cleanup—it didn’t take long with so many people working together—Vicky had forgotten all about the argument between Candace and Taylor.
It was the last time anyone saw Candace alive.
Two
Present Day
Sunday
Lucas Vega didn’t go out to eat often because he didn’t have a lot of extra cash, but he owed Lizzy Choi big-time for all the extra hours she’d put in helping him with his senior capstone project—a podcast called The Sorority Murder.
“I told you, you owe me nothing,” Lizzy said. “This helps me, too. I’ll have to put together a capstone myself next year, and I’ve learned so much more about audio engineering even in the short time we’ve been doing this.”
Lizzy was in the Engineering and Technology Department and one of the smartest people Lucas knew. He was a forensics major and knew he wouldn’t have been able to pull off this podcast without her, as he’d told her more than once.
“Humor me, okay?” he said and bit into a fry. McCarthy’s had the best burger and fries in town, but that wasn’t the only reason Lucas wanted to come to this place. “Do you think I should be worried that we’ve only had those two callers? And no other leads?”
“No,” she said. “It’s a new program, and we’ve only aired two episodes. Give it time.”
“Time is one thing I don’t have,” he said, sipping his beer.
“It’s not only about you solving the cold-case murder, right? Because that’s an incredibly high bar. You’re doing this for your capstone, so it’s the paper you write after the podcast finishes airing that you’re going to be graded on. What you learned from researching the cold case, whether a podcast can help—or not—in solving the case, all that stuff. And if no one calls in, so what? That tells you something right there, doesn’t it?”
He shrugged and nodded at the same time. “I know you’re right.”
“But you want to solve the crime, too. I get it.” She stole one of his french fries and leaned over, said quietly, “Isn’t it the next episode where you’re going to drop the bomb that Candace wasn’t killed at the lake?”
Lucas shot a glance around the pub, to make sure no one heard Lizzy. The music was loud enough to cover their conversation, but he couldn’t take a chance. They were at a high top against the window, but a large table in the middle was filled with sorority girls. He couldn’t be certain one or more of them weren’t from Sigma Rho.
“You think that revelation will prompt listeners to call in?” Lucas asked. “Even more than the last episode where I presented evidence that Candace was alive for the week after she initially went missing?”
“Well, yeah, because no one knows it. I mean, publicly. It’s going to hit hard, and yeah, people will call, even if only to speculate.”
Lucas had loosely scripted out each of the eight episodes, but only the first four were in detail because the others he had planned to develop further after he gathered more information—from callers that hadn’t yet manifested themselves. Someone knew where Candace was that first week she was missing, he was positive. And he’d hoped that once he got that break, other clues and episodes would fall into place. If no one called in to crowdsource good information or viable clues, he could still run with some prerecorded interviews, but they’d be half as interesting.
His first episode was basic: Who was Candace Swain, and why should listeners care about her murder? He documented Candace’s childhood, her time on campus, even scored an interview with her younger sister, Chrissy, a senior at the University of South Carolina. He also had a clip from the director of Sunrise Center, where Candace had volunteered weekly for three years: it underscored her commitment to helping others. He had other interviews recorded to interject throughout the eight episodes. The only person who refused to talk to him was Steven Young, the Flagstaff detective in charge of the original investigation three years ago. Lucas only had a letter from the public information officer that gave the status of the investigation—open, inactive. At least the campus-police community relations officer had talked to Lucas and given him a lot of great background information on how Candace’s missing-person case had been handled. But ultimately, once the campus cops turned the case over to Flagstaff PD, they were no longer involved and thus could provide nothing new to Lucas’s podcast.
At the end of the first episode, Lucas revealed that Candace Swain had disappeared after a Sigma Rho party she’d helped organize, and wasn’t seen again until her body was found the following weekend in the lake on the Hope Centennial Golf Course.
The second episode focused on the basics of the missing-person investigation. Lucas revealed that Candace was thought to have been alive during most of the time she was missing. Per the autopsy, she was killed a week after her disappearance. He’d made a request on air during the last episode that if anyone could remember having seen Candace between the party and the time when her body was found, to call that detail in. With that critical new intel, he might be able to further piece together those missing days and solve her murder.