Page 143 of Good Girls Lie

“I must call my chief of staff, we need to prepare a statement.”

“We have time,” the detective says. “The school isn’t going to make any announcements.”

“No, I simply do not believe this,” Ellen whispers. “How?”

“I don’t—”

“How?” The command is unmistakable this time.

“She was found hanging from the school gates.”

Dear God, Becca. What sort of message were you trying to send?

“Suicide? Impossible. I would have known if she was unhappy, if there was a problem. I spoke to her—” Ellen stops. Whendidshe speak to Becca last? “Sunday. We talked Sunday and she was chipper and thrilled with the positive feedback she’d received on her thesis proof. She was happy.”

“A thesis? In high school?”

“Goode isn’t just any school, Detective.”

The chaplain starts to speak again, but Ellen shakes her head and holds up a hand. “I don’t need comforting, not right now. I need answers. There is simply no way my daughter committed suicide.”

“We agree. The sheriff in Marchburg agrees. The death is being investigated as a possible homicide.”

The race is hers.

“Someone killed her? Oh, my God.”

The chaplain jumps in again. “I understand this comes as a shock, ma’am. Especially with a child so far away from home.”

The judgment is clear. Senator Ellen Curtis has abandoned her child to a faraway school because she isn’t mother enough to handle her senatorial duties as well as raise a willful teenager. She’s seen enough of it from the press, she isn’t about to take it from some random chaplain the detective dragged along, no matter how soft and kind her features. Screw that.

“Stop. Seriously, just stop. You don’t know me, you don’t know my daughter, and you certainly don’t know the situation. For your information, Becca begged to go to Goode. Begged. I didn’t send her there. Detective, I want answers. I want to speak with the dean immediately.”

Harris nods again, gravely. “We don’t have all the information yet, ma’am. The investigation is ongoing. Dean Westhaven wants to speak with you, too, as soon as we can determine Becca’s last knowns before she disappeared and was found. There is an investigation underway. But there’s been a complication.”

“What?”

“A number of things. The last few days leading up to her death, for starters. There was some trouble, some infighting among the girls at the school. Dean Westhaven mentioned a secret society prank that went wrong...”

He goes quiet again, but she isn’t falling for it. She knows all too well how few people like a silence, how quickly they jump in with words to fill the pause. She is not normally one of those people. But now, she can’t help herself.

“When was she found?”

“Four hours ago.”

“Four hours! Why wasn’t I notified immediately? They kept a student’s death quiet for four hours? My daughter’s death? Me, of all people?”

“The locals needed to positively identify the body. Fingerprints took longer than we thought. We needed to be sure.”

“My God, if you had to fingerprint her...”

The detective takes a breath. “Her face was mutilated. Whoever killed her put out her eyes.”

If they think she is going to cry, they’re wrong. She is filled with fury, and it is all directed at Ford Westhaven and her egregious handling of the school. Ellen shouldn’t have been subtle about her bid to make the school coed. She made that endowment happen, she knows what the expansion will do for the school. She should have marched right into that shit hole of a town and told Westhaven that she owns the school now.

No more. She isn’t going to let Ford fucking Westhaven ruin any more girls’ lives. Or Jude, either, for that matter.

She stands, righteous fury on her face. “I am going to tear that school to the ground.”