Clare must have been examining the photos, too, because when Kent paused in her interview, she pointed to one that Tig had noticed as well. It was of Max Adel and a clearly teenaged Spencer, posed smiling in front of a yellow and white private plane.

  “You’re friends with Adel?” she asked.

  He only gave a hint of a frown as he looked over his shoulder at the picture before answering. “He and my father are business acquaintances, and I only met him that one time. He had flown down to Tacoma for the day to meet with my dad and some other local business owners. I was an undergrad at PLU at the time, a history major, and he encouraged me to apply for the scholarship when I graduated. Of course, I’ve seen him socially since I finished my degree, at the alumni get-togethers.”

  Pacific Lutheran University was a pricey private college in Tacoma. Tig wondered how much of Spencer’s qualifications for the scholarship had been need-based and how much were based on his family connections to Adel.

  Kent opened the folder she had been carrying and put the Cato essay on the desk in front of Spencer. “This is a paper you wrote for one of your classes. Do you recognize it?”

  He frowned more deeply this time as he glanced at the first page. “Oh, yes. I believe this is mine, but it’s been two years since I was in class. I don’t remember the details, but I believe this was for Professor Rivers.”

  Kent nodded and took the paper back before he could read through it. “Interesting topic,” she said. “Can you tell me how you came up with this idea?”

  He laughed, although it sounded forced to Tig, and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “To be honest, Sergeant, I don’t think I can. Graduate school was such a busy time, with all my classes and homework. I was exhausted most of the time, and existing on cold pizza and very little sleep. If I could read through the paper, and maybe go through my notes I still have at home, it might jog my memory, but I can’t recall off the top of my head.”

  “Oh, and I thought it might have to do with skiing,” Tig interrupted with a laugh. She gestured at a photo of Spencer and his friends bundled in ski wear in front of a snowy backdrop. “Since it’s obviously a hobby of yours.”

  She turned away from him to address Kent and Clare, who were staring at her like two people who had their interview dance carefully planned out, and who were surprised to suddenly have a third partner in the mix. Surprised, and not overly pleased.

  “Spencer’s paper is about Cato bringing the poet Ennius from Sardinia to Rome, and how difficult it is to separate actual history from the sometimes-altered versions given by historians and biographers,” she said, then she shrugged. “It’s just an interesting side note that Cato invented skiing on that trip.”

  She smiled at Spencer and gestured at Clare and Kent with her head. “Their expertise isn’t in the field of classics, like ours. Not many people know about the origin of the sport.”

  He laughed, looking pleased at the answer she had given him. “Of course. That had slipped my mind, but now that you mention it, that’s exactly why I picked this topic. Professor Rivers told us about it during one of his lectures, and the anecdote caught my attention. That’s why I chose to write about that journey.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cassidy,” Kent said. “I appreciate you clearing that up. We don’t want to take up more of your time, but I hope we can contact you in the future if we have further questions?”

  “Absolutely. It’s been a pleasure, officers, Professor Weston,” he said as he stood up and opened the office door. As if transported by magic—or more likely because he had been standing outside waiting for them—the receptionist was there to escort them back to the lobby.

  “What the hell was that?” Kent asked once they were in the stairwell. “Skiing? On the island of Sardinia?”

  Clare was leaning against the wall laughing, having obviously held it in while they were in the office. “Maybe she meant water skiing?”

  “Oh, that’s right. Cato didn’t invent skiing,” Tig said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “I was mistaken.” She shrugged. “Oh, well, I was only off by about six thousand years and a few degrees of latitude.”

  “You’re brilliant, Tig,” Clare said. “I thought it was reasonable for him to say he couldn’t remember how he got the idea for the paper, but then he pounced on the explanation you gave him.”

  Kent nodded, a smile tugging at her lips even though she kept her expression neutral. Tig was getting to know her well enough to recognize that she was pleased with Tig’s contribution to the interview. “He should have stuck with his original I can’t recall tactic instead of committing himself to the lie. He has a lot to learn in law school.”

  Tig smiled as they resumed their progress down the stairs. “Maybe Libby is on to something,” she said. “This detective stuff is fun.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  They got back in the patrol car, but Kent didn’t put the key in the ignition right away. She turned so she was facing Tig, and Clare leaned forward from the back, resting her arm on the back of the passenger seat.

  “Thoughts?” Kent asked.

  “I think it’s pretty clear that he didn’t have any idea what was in that paper, or much of what was going on in class,” Clare said. “But why bother with the degree, then?”

  “Look where it got him,” Kent said. “He’s doing quite well for someone who recently graduated, plus he doesn’t have any student loans. He probably wasn’t lying about not remembering much of his two years at the U because he was most likely partying the entire time. It’s not like he had to study. What I don’t get, though, is how he made it through. Davies might have been writing his papers, but he couldn’t sit in the classes and answer questions for him like a ventriloquist with his dummy.”

  “You’d be amazed at the ways you can either adapt or cheat the system,” Clare said. “No one knew I was dyslexic until college, and it still might have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t asked for help. I figured out tricks to help me through, and I carefully chose my classes based on which teachers didn’t require lots of reading, that sort of thing.”

  Tig nodded. “When teachers cover the same topics year after year, they can get very predictable if they’re not careful. Test questions might be repeated, and class structure can be routine. It’s different, too, when we’re talking about Classical Studies, which will cover art, history, and literature with everything in translation, as opposed to Greek or Latin language courses where there’s usually more oral work done in class.”

  She laughed. “Although, there are ways to work around that, too. I had one class in grad school where the professor assigned massive amounts of Homer every night. Bear in mind, I had a heavy load of classes that term, as well as working on my thesis, so I was stressed and overworked. But every class, he’d ask for volunteers, then start calling on people to translate, so I’d make sure I knew just the first couple of paragraphs perfectly, then I’d volunteer to go first. Don’t look at me like that,” she said, shoving Kent playfully in the arm. “I’d spend the remainder of class finishing the assignment, and I learned a lot about how not to teach from him. I have an algorithm for calling on students to read which ensures that I get to everyone, but it seems random to the students.” She smiled at Clare. “When I told Libby I did that, she insisted on sitting in on the class to try to figure out my pattern. Took her less than two days.”

  Kent shook her head. “I’m not sure why I keep fighting her on becoming a cop. This might be the career for her.”

  Tig laughed at the expression on Clare’s face. “Don’t worry, Clare. I doubt she’d truly want to give up her old buildings for a life of fighting crime.

  “Anyway,” she continued. “Spencer probably read enough to be able to keep up somewhat in class, or he was coached by Chase. Luke told me he was very shy, so he cut him some slack as far as class participation went. That might have happened in other classes, too. Plus, if he took every course Chase and Kam had to offer, he could have gotten good grades in them without even showing up or turning anything in.”

  “Shy?” Kent snorted. “He seems to have recovered from his reclusive ways. He didn’t have any trouble communicating with us, and he hasn’t exactly picked a great career for someone who’s afraid of public speaking.”

  “What made Luke think he was shy, anyway?” Clare asked.

  Tig shrugged, thinking back to their conversation. “He didn’t say. He was rather furious at the time. It’s not easy for a teacher to find out they’ve been played. It’s a betrayal. I can call him now and ask if you want.”

  Kent nodded, and Tig got out her phone and dialed Luke’s number.

  “Hey, Lukas,” she said. “You’re on speaker with the police, so be careful what you say.”

  He laughed, his voice sounding tinny through her old phone’s speaker. “Then I guess you wouldn’t want me to tell the story about how you…um…acquired that bust of Homer you have on your desk, right?”

  Tig shrieked, then laughed and waved vaguely at Kent. “He’s just teasing. He has a weird sense of humor.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Kent said, writing something in her ever-present notebook. “I’m kind of busy at the moment, but as soon as we wrap up the murder investigation, I’ll look into this.”

  Tig grabbed the notebook and tossed it to Clare. “Burn that for me, will you?” she whispered before raising her voice again. Clare the Traitor handed the notebook back to Kent.

  “Luke, you told me Spencer wasn’t very outspoken in class. Did you notice just from his behavior, or did he talk to you about it?

  “Neither,” Luke said. “Chase told me at the beginning of the quarter. Apparently, he’d been through some tough shit when he was a child, and he had some residual PTSD. Chase said they found this out while going through his application for the scholarship, but they obviously weren’t going to make it public since…Hey! That fucking liar.”

  “Sorry, Luke,” Tig said with a sigh. “I didn’t mean to dredge this up again, but we needed to know. I’ll call you soon and explain, okay?”

  She ended the call, and Kent started the car.

  “Judging by those photos, poverty wasn’t one of the childhood traumas he faced,” she said, looking over her shoulder before changing lanes. “So, Davies picked Spencer for the scholarship, possibly because of his connections to Max Adel, and then helped him get his degree,” Kent said as she pulled out onto the road.

  “He was writing Spencer’s papers, and Morris was handing out good grades,” Clare continued. “They were also directing him toward classes where he’d have a better chance of getting through with minimum work, and spreading misinformation about him to professors like Lukas.”

  Tig nodded. In theory, every student should be graded equally, but she would have done the same thing Lukas had done. She made accommodations where she could, where there was truly a need, because the traditional school system didn’t always take into account specific students and the challenges they faced. But being flexible and making occasional allowances required trust—trust in the student and in whoever shared the personal information. Trust that Chase had broken.

  “Were these students more blackmail victims?” Kent mused. “If they owed their degrees—and therefore their jobs—to Chase, he might have demanded regular payments once they graduated and were bringing in paychecks.”

  “Invest a few hours in essay writing and reap the reward for years after,” Clare added. “He kept all the evidence, so it would have been easy to threaten them with exposure. They’d lose their jobs, disgrace their families, and possibly face criminal charges for getting fraudulent degrees.”

  “Until maybe someone got tired of paying and living under Chase’s thumb,” Kent finished.

  “Although exposing them would have gotten him in the same trouble,” Tig reminded them, almost reluctant to break into the conversation while the two of them were bouncing ideas off each other. They made a good team, and she could tell that Kent was just as excited when Clare made a smart observation as when she herself did.

  She continued. “Maybe he had some way of pinning this on Kam or the students themselves if one of them decided to tell the truth, by accusing them of stealing the papers or something, but I haven’t seen any sign that he had been prepared for anyone but himself to look guilty if one of the students went public with this.”

  “People can be arrogant,” Kent said. “He might have figured he could get away with it indefinitely, or maybe they had specific time frames and once they finished paying their dues, they were free.”

  “So, you think one of them decided to kill him instead of paying?” Tig asked, still finding it hard to believe that Chase had his own personal version of student loans operating in her department. Well, maybe not hard to believe. Exceedingly aggravating to believe, perhaps. “What about Kam, then? I guess he knew too much, if he was involved in the scheme.”

  “Or he could have tried to take over where Chase left off,” Clare suggested. “But the killer wasn’t going to pay him, either.”

  Tig thought back to Kam’s shaky demeanor when he accosted her in the hall. “I don’t know. He looked like he was about to have a breakdown just after Chase died. He didn’t seem prepared to head a black-market scholarship program.”

  “Well, it’s the best lead we’ve gotten so far, so let’s run with it.” Kent merged onto the freeway, heading back to campus, before glancing at Tig. “I’ll check into young Spencer’s alibis. Tig, you said before that you could get a list of the scholarship recipients. Let’s see if the other papers from that drive belong to them, or if we’re dealing with random students that Davies was helping. One of them might be our killer.”

  “I can do that,” Tig said. “It’s not much more than a dozen since Max started the endowment. Do you want me to ask other professors about the papers, then? See which students turned them in?”

  Kent shook her head. “Not yet. But if we know the students and the classes they took, we should be able to compare that with the list of courses and years you gave us earlier.”

  “Ooh…smart,” Tig said with a grin. Kent turned her head and gave Tig a quick smile.

  “Stop it, you two,” Clare said with a groan from the back seat. “Or you might have to pull over so I can be sick.”

  “All I did was smile at her,” Kent said, giving Clare an unconvincing glare in the rearview mirror.

  “I know,” Clare said. “It’s just wrong. It’s destroying my image of you as a hard-ass sergeant who’d sooner fire me than give me the time of day.”

  “I don’t know,” Kent said with a shrug as she turned on her blinker for the exit to the U. “I’m perfectly capable of firing you and smiling at Tig at the same time. In fact, the firing part would make me smile even bigger. It might even coax a little giggle out of me.”

  Clare pretended to faint.

  Tig watched their antics as they drove back to Denny. She had to admit that after this morning, when Kent had gently dissuaded her from using her savings to delay looking for a new job, she had been wondering if Kent might be convinced to leave her job and follow Tig. It seemed to be another option for them to explore. She was sure Kent could easily find another campus security job, or maybe switch to a different type of department where she might have more opportunities to advance as a detective. She had even thought about how she might phrase the suggestion when they were back at Kent’s house tonight.

  But watching her with Clare today had made her rethink the idea. Not that she wanted Kent with her any less, but because Kent was fitting in here in a new way. She and Clare seemed to have an intuitive sense of how to work together, like during the interview when Kent had peppered Spencer with questions he was easily able to bunt back at her, then she had paused and let Clare come in with one that took him off guard. They had switched roles and used the same tactic right before Kent brought out the essay.

  They were both damned good at what they did, and they seemed to bring out the best in each other. Their bond would probably continue to grow, especially as Clare advanced in the department, putting them on more equal footing.

  Kent had a good friend in Clare, even though they had to be respectful of their working relationship right now. Tig couldn’t ask Kent to give up this partnership, or the friendships she was slowly forming with Libby and the others. All Tig would have to offer would be a new, strange city, and long hours apart as Tig struggled to get her own career back on track after such a major setback. This was Kent’s home, and Tig would be selfish to ask her to give it up.

  * * *

  The three of them headed back to Tig’s office, where Kent and Clare pored over Kent’s notebook and carried on a quiet conversation while Tig compiled her lists.

  The first thing she did after printing the list of Adel Scholars was follow a hunch and send an email to a friend at the alumni association, asking for information on their current whereabouts. Then she accessed their degree requests, the formal applications for graduating that they made to the department when they were nearing completion of their degrees, which included the courses they had taken. After that, it was as easy as Kent had made it sound to match her new list to the one she had made after finding Chase’s essays.

  When she finished, she printed her final pages and laid them out on her desk so Clare and Kent could read them.

  “So, here are the scholarship winners,” she said, pointing at the first one. “Fourteen of them over the past six years that we’ve offered it. Four of them were in my classes, which didn’t have papers written by Chase associated with them. The other ten took a disproportionate number of classes from Chase and Kam, plus they were in classes that overlap with the list I made before. None of the papers we found were for courses other than ones that had an Adel Scholar in them.”