Title: Back to School
Author: DancingStar
Crossover: PSI Factor/ Sue Thomas: FBEye/ Castle
Pairing: Connor/ Lindsay, Jack/ Sue, Rick/ Kate
Rating: 12
Category: AU, Crime, Mystery
Summaries: Connor and Lindsay and their colleagues have to solve a mysterious murder at a college.
Comments: To Nilia, who inspired me to write this story.
Back to School
"What are we doing here, Castle? Why are we persuaded to work in this case?", Detective Kate Beckett said while she and Rick Castle were waiting under a street lamp. It was dark and although it was very hot in the past few days, the air had cooled down in this night.
"Let me think," Rick began, "Because of this college is located on the edge of our catchment area and this is the punishment for you when you had hit our prime suspect yesterday, when he said..."
"All right, Castle!", she interrupted him. She didn´t want to be reminded of the shame, "A Murder in a fraternity, that's a joke."
Rick rolled his eyes. Apparently Kate Beckett thought she was destined for higher things.
A black car slowed down and a dark-haired man and a pretty blond woman got out. Rick knew them: It was his nephew Connor and his colleague Lindsay. He had already met Lindsay once again, when Rick had invited his nephew and Lindsay to his last book launch. "My goodness, I thought we have to wait for you until Christmas!" Rick said, but he was relieved that the two were finally here.
"Hello Rick," Lindsay gave him a short attention then she introduced herself to his companion.
"I thought your team would be greater," Rick teased Connor, "Where's Peter?"
"On vacation, so we have to solve this case without him... Good to see you, "Connor was pleasantly surprised his uncle had actually asked him for help. Richard Castle was a famous and wealthy writer of detective novels and Connor had actually thought he was out to solve this case alone.
"What do we have?", Lindsay wanted to know.
"The name of our dead is Lynn Abbot," Kate Beckett replied as she walked up the road, "She is studying here at the college and was found dead this morning in her home by her roommates. Lynn apparently drowned in the bathtub. The macabre is that she was fully dressed and two minutes before the estimated time of death she made a phone call to arrange to meet her best friend." "Suicide?", Connor said.
"Impossible," Kate shook her head, "Her teachers like her. Everybody in college likes her and she´s very popular. She currently has no boyfriend. Her roommates told us there is no one she´s dating at the moment."
"It's a haunted house," Rick Castle said.
"It´s not," Kate again told him, "And you know why? Because there are no ghosts."
"The house is cursed, I tell you," Rick said and then turned to Connor and Lindsay, "This is the sixth murder in three years in this house."
"That must be quite annoying that you haven´t taken the murderer yet," Connor suggested.
"How do you know?", Rick stopped and looked at him in astonishment.
"If you had taken the murderer, we wouldn´t be here," said Connor and Rick was surprised that they shared the same kind of humor.
"Damn, you're smarter than I thought," Rick admitted and Lindsay asked why they had not taken a perpetrator yet.
"The killings happened in a house which is inhabited by ten girls. Their fingerprints are everywhere, so finding the culprit is harder than usual…"
"Assuming the perpetrator is one of them," Kate interrupted Rick and he nodded. So Kate believed the killer was one of the girls who lived in the house.
"The problem is," Kate said at last, when she opened the gate and then lifted up a yellow police caution tape, "Each girl has an alibi for the time of the crime. However, we haven´t checked this because we had no time... The Zeta- house is pretty old. There are some buildings on campus which have been built recently and therefore they are more popular with the students." Indeed, the house looked really old. The wood paneling was now gray and looked as if it would fall apart at any moment. They all suspected the house had seen better days.
"The house looks scary," Lindsay stated, but she and Connor, however, entered the house to take a look. They wanted to have only a quick glance at the house and look at it tomorrow in more detail. Kate and Rick remained outside the entrance door.
"I got an idea, Beckett," Rick began and watched as Kate stared into the darkness, "I´ll give you one million dollar if you spend a night alone in the Zeta- house."
"You´re kidding," Kate laughed, "A night in this haunted house isn´t even worth a billion."
"So you also think it´s a haunted house," Rick grabbed the old theme again.
"Your nephew is here and he seems to think it´s very likely... but that doesn´t mean I also believe it." They saw light was turned on in the first floor then they heard steps for about ten minutes and finally Connor and Lindsay came back. "Lynn died on the first floor, right?", Connor asked, his uncle was nodding, "Doesn´t look like as if there had been a fight. Maybe she knew her killer... Where are the girls who live in the house now?"
"As long as the house is blocked, they live with other fraternities. We wanted to start tomorrow with interviewing them because it´s already very late", Kate said and Lindsay nodded. "The house looks all right," she said, she didn´t understand why Rick wanted them to help.
As Kate said, it was late. And so it was time to see the quarters for the night.
The campus administrator had organized two rooms for them in a fraternity house across the Zeta- house.
"Here are we staying?", Kate asked incredulously, "I thought we got a hotel!" Her boss had told her and Castle they should monitor the girls in the Zeta- house around the clock. However, they didn´t expect they would lodge in a student apartment building across from the Zeta- house. Kate still believed this was the punishment, because she had beaten their main suspect yesterday. Her hand still ached when she thought about it. Losing control wasn´t really her style, but the guy had insulted her obscenely and said a few ugly things about her dead mother, so...
"Pure luxury!", Rick exclaimed in the room next door. Rick didn´t like the idea at all that he had to share a room with his nephew. He would prefer being with Kate.
Kate was relieved she couldn´t share a room with him, but with Lindsay. "Why don´t you and Connor stay in a hotel?", she asked.
"Would I be happy. Unfortunately, all hotels are fully booked for a convention... My goodness, I've almost forgotten how it feels to be in college", Lindsay said, as she dragged in her suitcase.
"Yes, that's about a hundred years ago," Connor teased her when he came in and she rolled her eyes.
"I almost miss the parties, the carefree life and...", when she spoke she noticed Connor's face, "Oh, don´t tell me you've never been to one of those wild college parties!"
"I was in college for learning."
"This college is very expensive," Rick stated, who was leaning in the doorway, "You then can expect certain safety standards." So he wanted to suggest that a murder during the study wasn´t usually planned.
They wanted to begin to interview some of Lynn's friends and went to the cafeteria. Because Kate and Lindsay had no breakfast, they decided to get something to eat there. It was secondary they had to pay the full price because of a lack of student cards. Lindsay ordered for herself and Kate the menu of the day and was surprised when the young man at the counter gave her some cucumber slices with cottage cheese. "Sorry," he said when he saw her puzzled expression, "Some students are on the health trip and therefore burgers and fries have been replaced by vegetables with cottage cheese."
Lindsay assumed this kind of food was better than no food and so she went with her tray to the door, where Kate, Connor and Rick were waiting for her. With the vegetables in their hands they went to the library, where they were stopped by an elderly woman: "Don´t bring any food."
"We aren´t students," Kate protested and they sat down at a table. The four were leafing through some student records, when a young woman stood before their desk. They looked up.
"May I introduce myself? My name is Jasmine", the young dark-haired woman stretched out her hand to them and her brown eyes were shining. Her English was dominated by a Persian accent.
"These are Lindsay and Kate. I'm Connor. We are..."
"You are here because of the murder in the Zeta-house, I know." Jasmine grabbed a chair and sat down at the table with them. "Have you ever heard of Samira Reza?", she asked.
"Who?"
"Samira Reza was studying here eighteen years ago. She was one of the first girls from abroad, which has studied here and she was one of the first girls who lived in the house of Zeta Zeta Gamma and she also died in the house. In the recent years a few girls, who also lived in the house, always reported about strange shadows and voices. Many people in college believe the ghost of Samira Reza returns regularly to kill girls."
"How did Samira Reza die?", Lindsay asked.
"She had an affair with a married professor. When Samira found out she was pregnant, she asked the professor to leave his wife and marry her, because her father would never accept the baby otherwise. One night, when Samiras roommates where at a party, the professor killed her and hid her body in the basement of the Zeta- house in a pit of cement."
"And you know that because...?"
"This is an urban myth," Jasmine smiled, "But in the archives of the college, there are records of the year in which Samira died. Back then many students wrote in the yearbook how much they missed Samira and hoped she was found, soon. I've found these recordings, when I have searched the archives for a book because..."
"But I thought the professor had buried her body in the basement," Connor interrupted her.
"No one knew this when the yearbook was published. Samira's body was discovered at the end of the following school year, when the Zeta-house basement was renovated and the school newspaper wrote about it."
"Why are you telling us this?", Lindsay said.
"Somehow I feel like I have to do this. I mean... I didn´t know neither Samira nor her family, but I think her murder in the Zeta-house has something to do with Lynn's death."
Connor apparently believed this too, because on the same day he read Samira Reza´s file. As Jasmine had told them, Samira died eighteen years ago in the basement of the Zeta- house and one year later, shortly before the summer holidays, her body was found. Even some copies of articles from the school newspaper were accompanied to her files. On the photos Samira was actually a very pretty girl.
Finally, Connor reached for his cell phone and the librarian looked at him angrily. Apparently, even cell phones were banned in the library. Rick also appeared in the library.
"Who are you calling?", He wanted to know and when Connor heard him, he half turned to him.
"Jack Hudson and Sue Thomas. These are our friends and they can help us."
"Why? We´re already solving this case. Give me one reason why we need more help", Rick asked.
"That's enough," Connor raised his hand to fend off. He thought he hadn´t to give Rick a reason when he asked for more help. Rick heard in the conversation, Jack and Sue were willing to come. As her boss wasn´t willing to give them one or two more rooms, this meant only one thing: They would have even less space.
Jack and Sue arrived with hearing dog Levi the next day and Connor, Lindsay, Kate and Rick were just about to check the alibis of the Zeta- girls. As it turned out, the alibis were true. So no one of Lynn's roommates was the murderer.
"We don´t have suspects?", Jack asked and Connor nodded, "I don´t like saying this, but there is no motive, too. We have now talked to Lynn's teachers and classmates. She was the perfect student." There was no bad grade and everyone liked her.
Lindsay and Connor then told Jack and Sue about Samira and showed them her file. They listened attentively. "Was Samira examined after her discovery? If yes, a coroner would have noticed her pregnancy", Sue wondered what had become of the professor. Certainly he became nervous when Samira's corpse was found.
"According to the records of the Archives, Professor Jonah Spencer left college six months before the discovery of the corpse. He then went to Yale." Kate had already been informed.
"Where is the professor now living, who had an affair with Samira?", Connor asked.
"I have researched: This professor Spencer died of cancer six years ago."
"Can we ask Samira's family?"
"I was already thinking about that," Kate admitted, "But I read in her file Samira is an only child and then I tried to find her parents in Iran. Samira's father died fifteen years ago because of a heart attack, her mother collapsed three years later and died at the public market." Kate had read the file of the dead math student forward and backward, but there was no evidence of relatives.
"Are there records about the investigation results of Samira's body?", Rick asked. "Even if professor Spencer was the father of her child", Lindsay began, "That doesn´t help us: Professor Spencer is dead and if Samira's ghost was out for revenge, she should have been pleased after he died."
"Who knows," Connor muttered suddenly, "Maybe it's not Professor Spencer's death, which was in Samira's mind. Maybe there´s another reason why she returns again and again to the Zeta- house."
"That means we only have one chance," Rick whispered, "We need to find out what Samira wants... And why she killed Lynn."
"This folding bed is pretty uncomfortable," Jack complained on the same evening. The day had passed without any significant results of the investigation, but the fact that he had to share a room with Connor and Rick, wasn´t only significant, it was worth complaining. "What Congress is to blame there are no hotel rooms in the entire city?"
"The Star Trek convention," Rick replied, who had made themselves comfortable on a real bed. Rick took some notes then he put down his little black book. "Shall we get something to eat? I have seen a pizzeria on the campus", the writer suggested and when Connor and Jack finally agreed, they went to the Italian restaurant. Before they knocked at Lindsay´s, Sue´s and Kate's room, but they were not there.
On the way back from the pizzeria, they still wondered where the three were and Connor turned around to another house opposite the Zeta- house. It was the home of another fraternity and they heard loud music and some people yelling.
"I'm afraid I know where they are," Connor remembered how Lindsay had told him she missed college party´s a little. He thought they should at least see if the three women were there. So they crossed the street with Jack and entered the garden behind the house opposite.
Obviously this was a motto party: the garden was decorated with palms and flowers. The turf was replaced by a carpet of sand. The students wore bikinis, skirts and Hawaiian garlands. The latest hit of Flo Rida was aired in the stereo system. Connor, Rick and Jack tried to find their colleagues among the students.
"You're actually here!", A voice called out suddenly and Lindsay put an arm around Connor's neck. She was wearing a nice summer dress and had a red flower stuck in her blond hair.
"Have you been drinking today?"
"No. But why shouldn´t we have fun when we're here?", Lindsay replied and pulled him away from Rick and Jack. She proposed to him to get a drink. Rick looked after them stunned then he turned to Kate. "Beckett, I don´t know you like this," he said. He didn´t understand why the cool Kate Beckett was suddenly among a crowd celebrating students. Now he was disappointed because Kate was wearing a blouse and jeans as ever.
"We thought, we interview the classmates of Lynn," she of course knew that Rick thought it was tingling to meet her here at a party, "It was Lindsay's idea," she added when she didn´t want to raise his hopes.
"Lindsay, what are we doing here?", Connor wanted to know from her, as she pulled him through a group of students to a bar in the Caribbean style.
"You said you were never at a college party. We now catch up", she replied.
"Why did you bring me here?", Connor said a little stunned.
"I didn´t bring you."
"True," Connor said, leaning his back against the bar, "You have lured me."
Lindsay laughed at this remark and gave him a drink, which she had ordered for him. "It's alcohol-free," she told him, "I think that's enough for starters."
Rick, Kate, Jack and Sue now came to them. Jack was talking to Sue and pulled her close. Sue's eyes light up and the sweet smile on her face told Kate that Sue was very pleased about Jacks flirting. Obviously the two and Connor and Lindsay misunderstood that "Back to School" - case a little. "I hate college," Kate suddenly said, "I'm glad if this case will be solved."
"My college time was great," Rick told, when the bartender handed him a drink with a small umbrella, "When I was in college, I had already published several books."
"We know," Sue said, "When I was in college, I shared a room with a girl who was also deaf. That made it more bearable."
Rick looked at her intently. He knew Sue was deaf and he also knew she could read lips. Finally he asked: "How do you say "I hate school" in sign language?"
Sue laughed, but showed Rick the appropriate gesture.
Kate's cell phone rang and when she answered, she had to put a hand on an ear she could understand the caller. She talked about two minutes then she went back to Rick, Connor, Lindsay, Sue and Jack. "It was the coroner. They say there are no fingerprints on Lynn Abbot´s corpse." Kate hated to have to tell them this news, because it meant the perpetrator had worn gloves.
"Or our culprit was actually a ghost," Rick corrected and past her.
"Do you know where Connor and Lindsay are?", Kate asked dryly, when Rick handed her a non-alcoholic piña colada with pineapple one hour later. Rick stood right next to her and asked her if she wanted to dance. Of course, Kate said no.
"Come on, Kate. We are the only people at this party at our age", something unusual was in Rick's voice and now he called her by her first name but Kate didn´t want to understand why he believed she would be obligated to flirt with him. "That's not true," she finally said, "Jack and Sue are still here and...", when she looked at the bar, she realized that Jack and Sue rather spent the evening with each other: The two sat close together and laughed. Sue grabbed Jack's hand and held it. Then he leaned toward her and even kissed her.
Kate swallowed. She had always hoped they wouldn´t get into a situation where her friends behaved like teenagers, because apparently Rick wanted her to do exactly the same.
"Well," Rick said and got up from the stool on which he sat. The indifferent tone in his voice hurt Kate a little. "Oh God", she thought. Did she hope Rick would continue to flirting with her? Was she disappointed because he stopped now? What, if he ever completely lost interest in her? What, if he would find another woman and she was alone then?
Rick was now among some students and walked through the dancing crowd. "Rick!", she exclaimed suddenly and after she was afraid she had done it. He actually stopped and looked at her. Before she knew it, she went through the dancing crowd and stood in front of him. The dancers around them pushed her up to Rick to finally she was standing directly in front of him. It was strange he now made no attempt to kiss her, or touch her. She was pleasantly dizzy when she realized his presence again and finally he kissed her...
Connor and Lindsay had gone into the house, where their rooms were and he pressed her eagerly against the door. "We forgot something," Connor muttered, when he broke away from her and tried to get rid of his tie. "We should hang this on the doorknob."
She laughed because her roommates in college always hung scarves on the door when they had a visit. He closed the door again behind him and pulled Lindsay close. Her kiss was impatient and deeper. Connor wanted to lift her up when they heard a popping noise in the house across the street.
"What was that?", Lindsay asked breathlessly and broke away from Connor. She went to the window and saw a figure running away from the Zeta- house. Then she watched how Jack ran after the person in the hood sweater and Levi followed him, barking. Loud stomping on the stairs told Lindsay that Connor was already on his way to help Jack. He ran down the street. Fortunately Jack and the foreign person weren´t too far away. Connor soon caught up with Jack and when he realized he could catch the stranger, he began to jump and pulled the person to the ground. "Not so fast, buddy! We have to talk about a few things!"
From the fall on the hard asphalt Connor had contracted a skin abrasion. "Who is that guy?", he wanted to know from Kate, who could now break away from the student party.
"He has no ID with him and he doesn´t want to tell us his name," Jack observed.
"I'll see if I can find out his identity," Kate nodded and walked to a patrol car. Connor nodded in agreement and went on his way to the ambulance which had arrived. Some students saw how someone had crashed on the street and called a doctor. Even if they didn´t know the story, namely, that the person who had crashed on the street slunk around the Zeta- house in the night.
When Lindsay came to him, Connor sat in the ambulance and looked at the bandage he had received. "You're hurt," Lindsay stated and sat down beside him. She reached for his bandage carefully and wrapped it around his hand. "That's okay. This is probably the consequence if I try to help Jack", Connor tried to make excuses, but Lindsay didn´t let go the bandage. "That was pretty brave of you to run behind the man."
"Well, actually I only wanted to help Jack... No, that´s not true: First, I wanted to impress you."
"You don´t have to do this..."
"But that's the best way to get the attention of the woman you love," Connor shrugged his shoulders and noticed how Lindsay stared at him. In her eyes was something beautiful. She leaned towards him and Connor could already feel her warmth, when suddenly someone opened the door to the ambulance.
"We know now...", it was Rick, "Excuse me, you two lovebirds," he said when he noticed the two had almost kissed, "We know now who is the guy who´s sneaking around the Zeta- house ."
Connor thanked him, got up and left of the ambulance. When he walked away, he turned around again to Lindsay. "That's what we should catch up," he told her. Connor set out with Rick and Jack on their way to the main building of the campus. There, the person who sneaked around the Zeta- house in the night should be interviewed.
"Listen, I have nothing to do with the murders in the Zeta- house," the young man cried, "I wanted to visit Sharon, who currently lives in Zeta house."
"And that's why you sneak around the house at night while everyone is at a party," Jack said.
"Not everyone was at the party, Sharon was still at home. We wanted to be alone a bit!"
"Do you do this more often: sneak around other people´s houses at night?"
The young man immediately knew what he wanted to say. "Listen, I haven´t killed Lynn. And in the night when she was killed, I didn´t see anything. Sharon and I were in the cinema this evening. Then we went to my room. My dad got lots of money and therefore I have a single room on campus."
Rick nodded. They had already checked the alibi of Lynn's roommate Sharon and some people in the cinema saw her with Ted.
After they had finished the interview and Jack thought Ted was innocent, they went to the house where they temporarily lived. Kate, Lindsay and Sue were waiting on the stairs. "Is everything all right?", Sue wanted to know from Jack when she saw him and got up from the stairs. She hugged him and felt how he nodded.
"We are stuck in the investigations," Rick said and Kate nodded silently.
"Maybe we should look at the Zeta- house even more accurate," she suggested. This was, after all, the only thing they hadn´t done yet.
They decided they would take a closer look at the Zeta house next day. Connor and Lindsay had checked the house on their arrival day once, but only in order to see the crime scene. Kate still didn´t believe in ghosts. She suspected a very real person could have prepared the house with traps, so Lynn and her classmates believed there was a ghost and she wanted to find such traces. Kate watched how Connor turned on a camera he wanted to take to the house. Jack, Sue and Lindsay wanted to accompany him.
"Why don´t you come into the house?," Rick wanted to know from her and grinned at her mischievously.
"I could ask you the same," Kate replied. They watched as the four went into the house.
"It's pretty dark in here," Sue declared. For Sue, the house wasn´t only a place without noises but also a place without light. Jack had heard her protest and turned on the light. Immediately a chandelier illuminated the room. The air was stifling: For days, no person had entered the Zeta- house and all windows and doors were locked. "What we are looking for?" Lindsay asked.
"In case Lynn's death wasn´t caused by a ghost, but by a real person who only acted like a ghost."
"A cassette recorder to play the voices?", Sue asked and Jack nodded. Connor decided to go to the kitchen and look around. He looked into some kitchen cabinets and found only junk food, when he suddenly heard a voice which whispered a female name. He turned around to his friends and asked them if they had heard that too. Jack shook his head. "I´ll go upstairs," said Lindsay and Sue came with her. While Lindsay went into the bathroom, Sue wanted to look at some rooms in which students lived. Levi accompanied her.
Lindsay was amazed when she entered the bathroom. "The bathtub is full of water," she noted. Like on the night when Lynn was murdered. She dipped a finger into the water and found out it was warm. The air in the bathroom was damp and also sticky. She turned around and saw the mirror was covered with steam. The word SAMIRA appeared on the mirror.
"Connor!," Lindsay called shocked, "She's here!" Lindsay rushed back to the door and almost crashed with Sue. Of course Sue saw the name that was written on the mirror. "I've seen her at the window!", Sue sounded excited, "It was almost as if Samira is looking through the window from the outside." They were on the first floor of a building.
"Let's go!"
"Is everything all right?", Connor asked anxiously, handing Lindsay a glass of water. They sat together in the living room of the fraternity, in which they were housed.
"Yes, it's all okay," she looked at him when he sat down beside her on the couch, "There is nothing that can´t be made up with an invitation for dinner." She smiled when she noted Connor had understood.
Suddenly, Jack walked into the living room. "I've got news," Jack said and his friends looked at him intently, "Lynn Abbot is Lynn Spencer."
"What?", Sue didn´t understand.
"I had the idea when I read the file of our victim Lynn Abbot. I noticed she was born seven months after Samira's death, "Jack heard Rick murmuring he knew what was coming now.
"Our victim applied here under the name Lynn Abbot, but as it turned out the name in her birth certificate is Lynn Spencer."
"She is the daughter of Professor Spencer?", Sue said and Jack nodded: "His marriage broke up, when Lynn was two years old and she was then raised by her mother. Lynn's mother got married again and Lynn´s stepfather adopted her. From then on she was called Lynn Abbot."
"So this is the connection between Samira and Lynn. This is the reason why Samira killed Lynn: She wanted revenge because she, or rather: her pregnant mother, was the reason why Professor Spencer left Samira", Kate murmured.
"I thought, you don´t believe in ghosts."
"I don´t know," Kate admitted, "But unfortunately, this explanation is plausible and it´s the perfect solution for this case."
"What shall we do now to get rid of Samira's ghost?", Sue asked and she thought for a moment. A sigh of Jack told them he already had an idea: "The girls of Zeta Zeta Gamma won´t like this: The house must be demolished."
Two days later, the girls had left the Zeta-house, had got their belongings and had moved in with other students for a long time. Now the old house should be torn down on a sunny Friday afternoon.
A demolition squad had already prepared the house with explosives and many people had gathered behind the yellow crime scene tape. Finally there weren´t many houses which were blown up in this elite college. "We are ready in two minutes," the explosive expert informed Connor and he nodded.
"I talked to the dean," he told Lindsay. He was talking so quietly that the students couldn´t hear him, but when Sue read his lips, she knew, of course, what he said. "The dean assured me no houses will be built on this land. I hope he´s telling the truth."
Lindsay nodded in agreement.
Kate and Rick were just a few meters away from them and watched the demolition squad as well. "Castle, what if we're wrong? What, if Lynn's death wasn´t caused by Samira's ghost but by a person in flesh and blood?"
Rick shrugged his shoulders. "We won´t know yet," he admitted, "But there is a saying, which I always recall in these situations," he muttered and he remembered how much he loved the sparkling in her beautiful eyes, "If your life went down the drain it will never be the same." Her eyes widened in horror when she heard that and he received a soft kick in his ribs. Rick laughed and when he had calmed down, he noticed how Kate grabbed his hand and pressed it firmly. "Thanks," she whispered, looking at him. Rick noticed it with a charming smile.
The explosives expert behind the crime scene tape counted backwards and when he scored zero, he pushed the lever down and first the windows at the Zeta- house exploded. Then the blast tore the walls to pieces, so that the gray wooden house collapsed into itself. The explosion faded and the dust settled. A woman in the crowd coughed.
"That's all folks, there's nothing more to see," the explosives expert said and the students and teachers all went home. Connor, Lindsay, Rick, Kate, Jack and Sue also went to their cars.
"This case inspired me to write a new book," Rick said and his friends looked at him in amazement, "I think the title will be: The murderer did it."
"You´re kidding."
"Do I look like as if I´m kidding?", Rick replied, "I´ll write a new Nikki Heat- book were Heat and Rook have to solve a murder at a college." When Rick said this, they walked down the street and passed a notice board. A poster, announcing the prom, fluttered in the wind. "A prom, that's a good idea," Rick was excited, "The murder takes place at the prom." He immediately noted this in his little black book.
"I remember my prom very well," Lindsay told.
"I wasn´t at my prom," Sue interrupted her, "The students received personal invitations and they forgot mine."
"I'm sorry," Jack told her. "That's not bad," Sue smiled, "I survived... Was your prom nice, Lindsay?"
"Very well," Lindsay stated, "But actually... it wasn´t my prom: It was the prom of the final grade of the Matthew Brown College and I crept in. I met a boy who was in the final year. He was one year older than me and incredibly sweet. After I accidentally tipped a glass of punch over his shirt and I apologized, he invited me to dance. He said I could only apologize if he could have this dance. I agreed and at one point he kissed me."
"And then?", Kate asked.
"Nothing," Lindsay sighed, "After that night I never met him again. But he had the most beautiful gray eyes I have ever seen and..."
"That was you?", she heard Connor saying and Sue gawped at him.
"Yes, and you... You were... We were at the same time on the same college?", she found it was unbelievable they were working together since years and they never had talked about their college time before. She had fallen in love seriously with this boy from college. An evening with him back then had been sufficient and she found it very sad she had never met him again. Someday, she had forgotten him and when she met Connor, she had never believed he could be the sweet boy form college.
"Come on, guys," Rick said to Kate, Jack and Sue and put his book in his pocket, "We better leave the two lovebirds alone."
While the three and Levi went down the road, Rick turned around again and watched how Lindsay stormy wrapped her arms around Connor and then kissed him. Maybe Rick would write a book in which his characters Nikki and Rook found out they were in the same college. He thought it was a nice ending for his book.
Fin