Read Surfing Detective 04 - Hanging Ten in Paris for Free Online Page A

find her at home.
    It was late. You can’t get into the Marco Polo at night without a pass card, so I followed a resident in. Meighan lived on the 27th floor, in a studio apartment facing the mountains, rather than the water. I knocked. The blonde opened and didn’t look surprised to see me.
    “Meighan, I know now Ryan was murdered,” I said. “I’m here to give you one last chance to clear yourself. Some of your classmates already have.”
    She didn’t even blink. “Come inside.”
    Meighan led me into her tiny studio apartment. We sat on the edge of her bed, which also served as a couch.
    “Tell me everything,” I said. “And don’t leave anything out this time.”
    “Okay, I was telling you the truth when I said I found Ryan hanging in his room naked. I couldn’t believe he’d do that.”
    “He didn’t.”
    “I know he didn’t, but I didn’t know it then.”
    “When did you find out?”
    “Later that morning. When Heather, Kim and I got Brad and Scooter, they all acted shocked, like I told you, but I could tell they were faking. They were saying phony stuff like, ‘Oh, it’s so sad.’ None of it seemed real.”
    “What happened next?”
    “I finally said ‘I don’t believe this. Ryan wouldn’t hang himself.’ Then Brad snarled, ‘You better shut your face. You’re involved as much as we are.’ Brad could get violent when he was angry. I’d already seen that.”
    “What did you see?”
    “About a week before, Heather came to class one day with a black eye. She said she fell on the stairs. We all knew she was sleeping with Brad and we all figured he just went off on her, for whatever reason.”
    “She didn’t confide in you or Kim about it?”
    “Not me. Maybe Kim,” Meighan said. “But Heather usually defended Brad—made excuses for him. You know how it goes.”
    “Unfortunately,” I said, “the cycle of domestic abuse.”
    “Anyway, that’s why I was scared of him,” Meighan confessed. “That’s why I went along when he said we all had to stick together. He said if Ryan’s death looked suspicious, the cheating might come out. If it did, Brad might not graduate and his rich dad would cut him off. Brad was freaked about that.”
    “Did you already have the exam answers when Ryan died?” She bowed her head and lowered her voice.
“Yes.
They gave them to me a few days before. But I didn’t use them—”
    “Until afterwards.” I completed her sentence.
    She nodded slowly. Her eyes moistened.
    “Why did you cheat? Aren’t you on scholarship?”
    “That’s just it. I have to maintain an A-minus average to keep my scholarship. I wanted to have fun in Paris and I thought—
stupidly
—that the answers would give me a little more time. I had no idea any harm would come to Ryan. Honest!”
    “How did harm come to him?”
    “When he found out Scooter and Brad had the exam answers and wouldn’t stop cheating, Ryan told the rest of us. Then Heather went straight to Brad.”
    “Brad wasn’t sharing the exams with her already?”
    “I don’t think so,” Meighan said. “But he gave them to her then. And to Kim and to everyone else.”
    “To Ryan?”
    “He tried, but Ryan wouldn’t take them.”
    “Who hanged him?”
    “I never asked. It was too horrible. And too stupid. Ryan was hanging there naked. So unlike him. That’s why I slipped the board shorts on him—before I knew what really happened. Later Heather put the photo of Marie under him. And Kim typed the suicide note on Ryan’s laptop. She didn’t know much French, but she did know
au
revoir.”
    “Was Marie involved?”
    “No. She still thinks Ryan hanged himself. And she still feels guilty. Like it was her fault—because she moved in with Pierre.”
    “Then why did Marie cheat?”
    Meighan looked surprised. “How’d you find out?”
    “We detectives have our ways,” I said. “Anyhow, wasn’t Marie a brilliant student?”
    “Yes, but when she moved in with Pierre she sort of flipped. She’d