I cocked a brow. “Nice doesn’t always mean innocent. You never know what people are hiding.”
“True. Sometimes I’ve even wondered if he’s a little too nice. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
Adam’s face suddenly fell. “Wait. I just remembered why I was never all that suspicious of him in the end.”
“Oh? Why?”
“He wasn’t in town that weekend. I remember because Lindsay told me she wanted to break up with him—finally—but she had to call him or text him to do it.”
“Where was he?” I asked, ready to make a note on the paper next to his name.
“On vacation. The fall term started a week late last year, so a lot of people were still away when it happened.”
“Where was he specifically, though?”
“New Zealand.”
“So there’s no way he could’ve done it, then,” I said, crossing out Kairo’s name.
“I don’t think so, no.”
“You said she cheated on him several times. Do you know who it was with?”
He nodded and took the notepad and pen from me. “These are the guys from school who she saw a few times behind his back,” he said, jotting down four names. He quickly crossed out the second one on the list. “This guy moved away before she was killed. So it can’t be him. And this one—” He paused while he crossed off the third name. “He ended it with her pretty fast and got a girlfriend. So I can’t think of any reason he’d want to hurt Lindsay.”
“And the other two?”
“We’ll keep them on the list for now,” he said, handing the pad back to me. “I can’t think of any reason why they’d want to hurt her, but they were definitely in town at the time.”
“Maybe it wasn’t just a fling to one of them,” I suggested. “Maybe he was in love with her, and he flew into a rage when she didn’t feel the same way.”
Adam nodded. “If we’re going with the unrequited love angle, then there’s five more guys from school I should add to the list,” he said. “And one girl.”
As he wrote down some more names, I chewed on the inside of my cheek. I’d considered that the killer could be an RFA student, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it could be a girl. There was no reason it couldn’t be, though. Girls were just as capable of violence as boys.
I knew that all too well.
“Did she have any enemies at school?” I asked. “Girls who hated her, or girls she hated? Or guys?”
“Yes. A lot. I’ll write them down now, and we can figure out whether they were in town or not later.”
We fell into silence as he wrote everything down.
“Are you sure that’s all of them?” I asked when he pushed the list back to me.
He frowned. “I think so, but there might be a couple I forgot. Also, there were quite a few girls Lindsay didn’t like much, but I wouldn’t say she hated them or vice versa.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Like the Medusa Society girls. Even though they were just as popular as her, she avoided them like the plague.”
My brows shot up. “Why?”
“I don’t think they actually did anything bad,” he said with a shrug. “But I remember Lindsay telling me that Dad warned her to stay away from them.”
“Do you know why?”
“No. I assumed it was because the Medusa girls are mostly scholarship students. So they’re…” He trailed off, cheeks flushing slightly pink.
“They’re poor compared to most of the other RFA kids,” I said flatly. “And therefore not well-bred enough for Charles Connery’s daughter to hang around.”