I had a sudden urge to hug her, but held myself in check, knowing it’d be weird. Still, I was grateful for her answer.
“Do you have any theories about who could’ve murdered Ben?” Cole asked.
“Yes, in fact.”
“You do?” Cole and I said together, shocked.
That made her laugh. “I do,” she said. “But the police weren’t about to take my word for it.”
“What do you mean?” Cole asked.
“Well,” she began, “a few weeks before my brother was murdered, a man came to our house and threatened him. I have no idea over what, but he shoved my brother and told him that he would kill him. Amber was with me that night, and I always suspected she knew who the man was.”
“But you didn’t know him?” Cole pressed.
“No. But my brother called him Bishop. That always stuck with me. I didn’t know if Spence was referring to the man’s name, either first or last, or if it was perhaps a title. I just heard him call the man Bishop, and then a few weeks later both Ben and Amber were dead.”
“And you told the police?” I asked as something tickled at the back of my mind. That name. Where had I seen it?
“I did,” Mrs. Drepeau said. “Well, at least I did indirectly. I told my mother, and she went to the police station. She came back hours later to tell me that a detective had promised to follow up, but as far as I know, he never did. Once Amber died and her suicide note basically confessed to the crime, the police closed the case.”
“How come you never told me this?” Cole asked.
Mrs. Drepeau took a long sip of her drink before answering. “Because you never asked, and I didn’t want to stir up the past. It’s also something that I’ve never been able to reconcile, honey. I mean, this man showing up and threatening my brother and then possibly killing him—what was my brother mixed up in? I’ve always believed that Spence was, like, this larger-than-life character. He’s been my hero my whole life, and I don’t really want to find out otherwise.”
Cole’s mom glanced at her watch. “Oh, God! Look at the time! Honey, I’ve got to get back to work. If you want to ask me more questions later at dinner, that’d be okay.”
We said good-bye to Mrs. Drepeau and watched in silence as she raced back across the street. When she disappeared through the doors of the clinic, Cole turned to me and said, “Well, that’s a crazy twist.”
Suddenly, I remembered where I’d seen the name Bishop. “Can you give me your keys?” I asked, jumping to my feet with excitement. “I need to get something from your car.”
Cole eyed me curiously, but handed over the keys. I raced off the porch of the coffee shop and was back a minute later with Spence’s junior year yearbook. Flipping frantically through the pages I stopped on one where Amber and eleven other students were posing with a teacher. The caption read, Mr. Bishop congratulates the top three GPA students from each class! Swiveling the book around I held my finger next to Mr. Bishop’s name.
“Do you think it could be the same guy your mom saw threatening Ben?”
Cole studied the photo. “She did say that she thought Amber knew the guy,” Cole said. “Is he in any other photos?”
I pulled the yearbook back around and skimmed through the index, then went to the corresponding pages.
“He taught algebra,” I said. “Freshmen class math.” Flipping to the next photo I gasped. “Cole,” I whispered, turning the page back to him.
He leaned over and studied the photo, which was captioned, Mr. Bishop administers the SAT exams on an early Saturday morning.
“That’s my uncle,” he whispered.
Seated in the first row was Ben Spencer. “They knew each other,” I told him.
Cole sat back and looked at me like he could hardly believe it was that easy. “I think we just found our starting point.”
“What’re you thinking?”
Cole got to his feet and motioned for me to follow him. “First, I want to go back home and check the murder file. Mom said that she told the police about this guy Bishop, but I don’t remember any mention of him in those pages. At the FBI seminar they taught us that no tip goes undocumented, no matter what the source.”
“You think it was swept under the rug?”
“If the detective wanted to make his case stick—that Amber killed Ben? Maybe.”
We arrived at the car and, after getting under way, I said, “You know what’s really weird to me?”
“Besides us investigating our own murders?” Cole said with a wink.
That gave me pause. “Yeah, besides that. What I think is strange is that Ben was shot and Amber was stabbed.”
Cole glanced at me. “Why is that strange?”
“If we think that the same person murdered them both, then why didn’t he just shoot Amber or stab Ben? Why change the method?”
“Huh,” Cole said, tapping the steering wheel thoughtfully. “That’s a good point. Maybe it’s because he wanted to frame Amber, and shooting her would’ve made it look like a murder.”