“Still, there is a connection,” he said, leaning back. “I don’t see where I have any choice but to ask for you to take a leave of absence.”

“For drinking?”

“For all of it,” he said.

“I’m in the middle of teaching classes—”

“We will find coverage.”

“And I have a responsibility to my students. I can’t just abandon them.”

“Perhaps,” he said, with an edge in his voice, “you should have thought of that before you got drunk.”

“Getting drunk isn’t a crime.”

“No, but your actions afterward . . .” His voice trailed off, and a smile came to his lips. “Funny,” he said.

“What?”

“I heard about your run-in with Professor Trainor years ago. How can you not see the parallel?”

I said nothing.

“There is an old Greek saying,” he went on. “The humpback never sees the hump on his own back.”

I nodded. “Deep.”

“You’re making jokes, Jacob, but do you really think you’re blameless here?”

I wasn’t sure what to think. “I didn’t say I was blameless.”

“Just a hypocrite?” He sighed a little too deeply. “I don’t like doing this to you, Jacob.”

“I hear a but.”

“You know the but. Are the police investigating your claim?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer so I went with the truth. “I don’t know.”

“Then maybe it’s best that you take a leave of absence until this is resolved.”

I was about to protest, but then I pulled up. He was right. Forget all the political mumbo jumbo or legal claims here. The truth was, I was indeed putting students in harm’s way. My actions had, in fact, already gotten one student seriously injured. I could make all the excuses I wanted to, but if I had kept my promise to Natalie, Barry would not be lying in a hospital bed with facial fractures.

Could I take the risk of letting it happen again?

Lest I forgot, Bob was still out there. He might want vengeance for Otto or, at the very least, to finish the job or silence the witness. By staying, wouldn’t I be endangering the welfare of my students?

President Tripp started sorting the papers on his desk, a clear sign we were done here. “Pack your things,” he said. “I’d like you off campus within the hour.”

Chapter 16

By noon the next day, I was back in Palmetto Bluff.

I knocked on the door of a home located on a quiet cul-de-sac. Delia Sanderson—Todd Sanderson’s, uh, widow, I guess—opened it with a sad smile. She was what some might call a handsome woman in a sinewy, farmhand kind of way. She had strong facial features and big hands.

“Thank you so much for making the trip, Professor.”

“Please,” I said, feeling a small ping of guilt, “call me Jake.”

She stepped aside and invited me inside. The house was nice, done up in that modern faux-Victorian style that seemed to be the rage of these spanking new developments. The property backed onto a golf course. The atmosphere was both green and serene.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you coming all this way.”

Another ping. “Please,” I said, “it’s an honor.”

“Still. For the college to send a professor all this way . . .”

“It’s not a big deal, really.” I tried to smile. “It’s nice to get away too.”

“Well, I’m grateful,” Delia Sanderson said. “Our children aren’t home right now. I made them go back to school. You need to grieve but you need to do something, you know what I mean?”

“I do,” I said.

I hadn’t been specific when I made the call yesterday. I just told her that I was a professor at Todd’s alma mater and that I hoped to stop by the house to talk about her late husband and offer condolences. Did I hint that I was sort of coming on behalf of the college? Let us say I didn’t discourage that thinking.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

I’ve found that people have a tendency to relax more when they are doing simple tasks and feeling as though they are making their guests feel comfortable. I said yes.

We were standing in the foyer. The formal rooms, where you’d normally take guests, were on the right. The lived-in rooms—den and kitchen—were on the left. I followed her into the kitchen, figuring that the more casual setting might also make her more apt to open up.

There were no signs of the recent break-in, but what exactly did I think I’d find? Blood on the floor? Overturned furniture? Open drawers? Yellow police tape?

The sleek kitchen was expansive with great flow into an even more expansive “media” room. An enormous television hung on the wall. The couch was littered with remotes and Xbox controllers. Yes, I know Xbox. I have one. I love to play Madden. Sue me.

She headed toward one of those coffeemakers that use individual pods. I took a seat on a stool at the kitchen’s granite island. She showed me a surprisingly large display of coffee-pod options.

“Which would you like?” she asked.

“You tell me,” I said.

“Are you a strong-coffee guy? I bet you are.”

“You’d win that bet.”

She opened the machine’s mouth and put in a pod called Jet Fuel. The machine seemed to eat the pod and piss out the coffee. Appetizing imagery, I know. “Do you take it black?” she asked.

“Not that much a strong-coffee guy,” I said, asking for a little milk and sweetener.

She handed me the cup. “You don’t look like a college professor.”

I get that a lot.

“My tweed jacket is at the cleaner.” Then: “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

I took a sip of the coffee. Why was I here exactly? I needed to figure out if Delia Sanderson’s Todd was Natalie’s Todd. If he was the same man, well, how was that possible? What did his death mean? And what secrets was this woman in front of me maybe keeping?

I had no idea, of course, but I was willing to take some chances now. That meant that I might have to push her. I didn’t relish that—prodding a woman who was so clearly grieving. Whatever else I thought might be going on here—and really I didn’t have a clue—Delia Sanderson was in obvious pain. You could see the pull in her face, the subtle slump in the shoulders, the shatter in the eyes.

“I don’t know how to ask this delicately . . . ,” I began.

I stopped, hoping she’d take the bait. She did. “But you want to know how he died?”

“If I’m prying . . .”

“It’s okay.”

“The papers say it happened during a break-in.”

Her face lost color. She spun back toward the coffeemaker. She fiddled with a pod, picked one up, dropped it, chose another.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We don’t need to go into this.”

“It wasn’t a break-in.”

I stayed quiet.

“I mean, they didn’t steal anything. Isn’t that unusual? If it was a break-in, wouldn’t you take something? But they just . . .”

She slammed down the mouth of the coffeemaker.

I said, “They?”

“What?”

“You said ‘they.’ There was more than one burglar?”

She still had her back to me. “I don’t know. The police won’t speculate. I just don’t see how one guy could have done . . .” Her head dropped. I thought that maybe I saw her knees buckle. I started to rise and move toward her, but really, who the hell was I? I stopped and quietly slid back onto the stool.

“We were supposed to be safe here,” Delia Sanderson said. “A gated community. It was supposed to keep the bad out.”

The development was huge, acres upon acres of cultivated remoteness. There was a gate of sorts, a little hut at the development’s entrance, a steel arm that had to be lifted to drive through, a rent-a-cop who nodded and pushed a button. None of that could keep the bad out, not if the bad was determined. The gate was possibly a deterrent for easygoing trouble. It maybe added an extra layer of hassle so that trouble chose to find an easier mark. But true protection? No. The gate was more for show.

“Why do you think there was more than one?” I asked.

“I guess . . . I guess I don’t see how one man could cause that much damage.”