“Tess is the patron saint of misfits,” Vivvie said brightly. “And I’m a barnacle. Pretty sure you’re stuck with us.”
“Pretty sure you’re here to find a way to help my brother,” Emilia countered. “So go. Fix. I don’t need a babysitter, let alone two.”
Something about the way that Emilia had said that we were here to help Asher told me that she was as well. As she strolled into the fray, I tracked her gaze to a boy sitting up on the bleachers. Unlike most of the guys around him, he didn’t look particularly inebriated. Or particularly inclined to chat.
“Who’s that?” I asked Vivvie, nodding toward the boy.
“Matt Benning,” Vivvie supplied promptly. She had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of everyone at Hardwicke, from the students down to the janitor. “He has a little sister. Lizzie. She’s a freshman. Their dad works in Hardwicke security.”
Apparently, while I’d been thinking about who had motive to kill John Thomas Wilcox, Emilia had been coming up with some questions of her own.
I caught up to her just as she reached the bottom of the bleachers. “What do you want with Matt Benning?” I asked her.
“What do you think?” Emilia said, her eyes still on her target. “I want to know why anyone suspects my brother of murder when the whole thing—including the real killer—should have been captured on video.”
Vivvie popped around to stand directly in front of Emilia. “I know you’re not going to want to hear this,” she said, “but you should let Tess talk to Matt.”
“Why?” Emilia returned. “Because my twin is the one the police are desperate to pin this on, or because people don’t like me the way they like Tess?”
“Neither,” Vivvie said softly. “Because if John Thomas was threatening someone, if he hurt someone or blackmailed them or made them do something they didn’t want to do, they’ll talk to you. Not Tess, Emilia. You.”
Emilia took a single step back from Vivvie. I could see her wanting to tell Vivvie that wasn’t true.
The words dried up on her lips.
“I’ll talk to Matt,” I told Emilia. You can do this, I continued silently. I knew better than to say those words to her out loud.
“Fine.” Emilia turned her back on me. She didn’t want to do this, but she would—for Asher.
Matt Benning didn’t so much as glance my way when I took a seat behind him on the bleachers. He was sitting on the edge of a group of guys, close enough to give the appearance that he was part of their conversation, but making no move to actually join it. He gave off an air of being present but not really a part of things.
I’d been that person, back in Montana.
“Not in the mood for a drink?” I asked him.
He didn’t turn around. “Not much of a drinker.”
I managed a small smile. “Me neither.”
I settled into silence then. I rested my forearms on my legs and waited. Before moving to DC, I’d spent my entire life on my grandpa’s ranch. I had a sixth sense for knowing when to approach and when to let a tetchy horse approach me.
Minutes crept by as Matt and I sat on the edge of the crowd, neither one of us saying a word.
“They’re going to catch us, you know.” Matt’s voice was naturally deep and even-keeled. My gut said that he would have been good with horses, too. “There are cameras everywhere on this campus.”
I slid down to sit beside him but kept my gaze focused straight ahead. “Not everywhere, apparently,” I said.
If there were footage of John Thomas’s murder, the police would have already made an arrest. I didn’t bother putting that into words. “Were you and John Thomas friends?” I asked Matt instead.
For several seconds, Matt said nothing. “I have a little sister,” he said finally. “Freshman. She asked me to take her picture the other day.”
It took me a moment to catch the implication—his little sister had been one of the girls to join the ISWE project.
“Did you take the picture?” I asked. If he’d agreed to help his sister with our protest, that told me something about the kind of guy he was.
“I did.”
I turned that over in my head for a second or two before I took a risk. “Do you know Asher Rhodes?” I asked. “Because if you know Asher at all, that means that you know he didn’t kill John Thomas.”
Matt neither agreed nor disagreed with that statement.
“If I asked you who on this campus could get around the security feeds,” I ventured, “would you tell me?”
Matt turned from me to direct his stare back out at the makeshift pool party going on below us. He picked a stray lei up off the bleachers and held it taut between his hands. “You’re assuming I know the answer to that question.”
Yes. I am. I let my silence speak for me.
“You’re also assuming,” Matt continued quietly, “that I’m the kind of guy who likes to talk.”
“You’re not?” I said.
He rubbed his thumb over one of the flowers on his lei. “I’m the kind of guy who likes to keep his head down.”