Chapter 2

Lilly looked at Mike thoughtfully. "Okay, you said you don't know who this girl was that Brian was seeing. Can you think of who might?"

Mike nodded. "Jamie Chen. I was the friend he hung out with and shared a dorm room with but she was the one he really confided in."

"You were friends, the three of you?" Scotty asked.

"Uhhh... well we were all part of this group of friends in high school but in college we started doing our own thing and sorta drifted apart. I was into sports, Jamie was into saving the planet, and Brian was into film-making. Brian did keep in touch with everyone though." Mike looked down for a moment, then up again. "You know now that I think about it, I think they might have been talking about that at lunch the day before he died. I sort of walked in on their conversation but I thought they were talking about her love life." Mike shrugged. "I was kind of a dick back then."

Mike walked into Hurley's, maneuvering past the dozens of students eating on their lunch breaks, and scanned around the room until he saw Brian sitting at one of the corner tables..

Brian didn't notice Mike approaching and continued talking to the young Asian woman sitting across the table. "No, but what do you think of Hennessy's? It's a little pricey but it's a really nice setting."

Jamie nodded. "I like it. It sounds really romantic."

Mike swaggered around the table and took a seat next to Brian, immediately earning a glare from Jamie.

"Oh look who's here!" she said sarcastically. "Wherever there's a gathering he's not invited to, Mike Kelowitz will be there!"

Brian rolled his eyes as Mike shrugged. "Jamie, great to see you too. Don't you have some endangered Alaskan whale to save or something?"

"Do you have useful reason to be here, Mike?"

Mike gestured to Brian. "Well, I was going to join my friend here for lunch but apparently I'm not wanted. You know we all used to eat here all the time at the start of last year, if you remember. Right here at this same table."

Jamie continued to glare at Mike. "Well some of us grow up. I wouldn't expect you to understand."

Mike leaned back in his chair. "So who's the guy you're takin' to Hennessy's? I surprised you'd want to go somewhere that isn't covered in hemp and tofu."

Brian leaned forward. "Actually, it's for--"

"None of your business!" Jamie snapped at Mike, quickly shooting Brian a look. Brian leaned back in his seat and said nothing.

Jamie sighed and stood up. "I got to get going. Don't tell him anything!" She said to Brian, gesturing at Mike before walking off.

"You and this Jamie girl sure didn't get along." Scotty said.

Mike chucked. "Like I said, we were friends in high school but when we got to college we drifted apart. If you want to talk to her, though, I can let her know."

"You two still keep in touch?" Lilly asked, surprised.

Mike began to blush. "Yeah, actually we're uhhh, kind of dating now. I guess you could say we drifted back together."

Lilly and Scotty looked at each other and tried not to laugh.

Jamie gave Detectives Nick Vera and Kat Miller a warm smile as she walked into the squad room. "Me and Mike?" She said, sitting down. "Yeah, not an obvious match I guess but Brian meant a lot to both of us, so we tried to be there for each other after he died." She shrugged. "Misery loves company." Her expression turned serious as she looked at Kat and Vera. "So you really think Brian might have been killed?"

"We're trying to find that out" Kat said. "Can you think of anyone who might have had reason to want to hurt him?"

Jamie appeared genuinely surprised at the question. "Brian? No, no."

"Mike said Brian was seeing someone when he died." Kat said. "Did he ever tell you who she was?"

"Well he wouldn't tell me her name," Jamie started, "but he didn't say no when I asked him if it was anyone I know, and..."

"And you think you might have an idea who that might be?" Vera asked.

Jamie nodded and smiled. "Allison Parks. She went to the same high school as us, but she was a year older than us and fit in more with the popular, blonde, cheerleader-type crowds." She chuckled. "Brian had a crush on her all through high school. He never could work up the guts to say more than two words to her though. It was all that stuff about him having bad luck, which personally, I never bought into."

Vera nodded. "But he finally worked up the guts in college?"

"Not at first. He was still terrified of her and couldn't say a word to her. Not until about two weeks before he died."

"So what changed?" Vera asked.

Jamie chuckled. "What changed was I finally gave him a kick in the butt for his own good."

Sitting in their familiar corner table at Hurley's, Jamie watched as Brian bit into antother slice of pizza. She was amazed how often he could eat here and not get sick of it.

"So how's the petition coming?" Brian asked when he finally stopped eating.

Jamie nodded. "Good, good. I think we're going to have enough signatures to..." she trailed off once she noticed Brian was no longer looking at her. Instead his gaze was fixated on the blonde-haired girl talking to some other students on the other side of the restaurant.

Jamie turned around to see what he was looking at and rolled her eyes. "Oh, God, Brian, this is getting ridiculous. Just go over there and talk to her already."

Brian turned back to Jamie, shooting her a look of disbelief. "Yeah, sure. Why not? I'll just go over there and ask Allison Parks out. Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how out of my league she is?"

Jamie laughed. "Look, Brian, we're not in high school anymore. You've got to get past this mentality that we're all restricted to these social groups that never interact with each other."

Brian shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Look, I just don't want to, all right?"

Jamie gave him a hard stare. "You know what? It's not all right. Now I want you to get up, go over there, and don't come back until you've struck up a real conversation with her."

Brian continued to squirm while Jamie stared him down until he finally sighed and stood up. Walking over towards Allison, he made it about three-quarters of the way there before colliding with a waitress carrying a tray of food. Brian and the girl fell to the floor with a large plate of and the contents of a glass of root beer landing on Brian. The waitress apologized and rushed off to get some napkins while Brian was left on his knees picking off the pasta that was stuck to the grave on his shirt.

"Hard-luck Halley." Brian whispered to himself, sighing.

Allison and a blonde-haired young man she'd been sitting with rushed over. "Oh my God! Are you all right?" Allison asked.

Brian looked up at them, then back down at his food-covered shirt. "Yeah, yeah. I'm fine." He answered, sighing as the young man helped him up.

Allison studied Brian's face once was on his feet. "Hey, you look familiar. Did you go to Ben Franklin High?"

Brian smiled and nodded nervously. "Yeah I- I did. Brian Halley, class of 2003."

Allison smiled, shaking his hand. "Right. Allison Parks. I graduated the year before that." She turned to the blonde haired young man. "Actually, Gary, you two would have been in the same grade, right?"

The young man nodded. "Yeah, right. I'm Gary Parks. Didn't we have Bio together?"

Brian smiled more confidently, shaking Gary's hand. "You're right! I'm sorry I didn't recognize you for a second." He looked at Allison, then back at Gary. "You're brother and sister?"

Allison and Gary nodded.

Brian chuckled. "I'm sorry, it's just for a second I thought you were boyfriend and girlfriend."

Allison and Gary looked at each other and laughed. "No!" Gary said, gesturing to his sister. "Ally here's not even seeing anyone right now!" Allison immediately glared at her brother and gave him a back-handed slap in the chest. "Sorry." He said, timidly.

Allison turned back to Brian. "So what are you taking?"

"Film-making."

"Really? That's sounds interesting."

Brian nodded, smiling. "Yeah, it is." He gestured to the table they'd been sitting at. "It's a lot of fun. I'd love to tell you about it."

Gary sat back down and gestured to one of the empty chairs. "Sure, have a seat." Allison gave Brian a smile as he joined them at the table.

Brian took a quick glance back at Jamie, who was smiling proudly and mouthed a silent "Yes!".

Vera nodded. "So you think this Allison girl was the girl he was seeing when he died?"

Jamie cocked her head. "Well I can't say for sure. Brian really wasn't the type to kiss and tell, but I know for a fact they had lunch together for the rest of the week and spent a lot of time together besides that."

Kat nodded. "Okay, thanks, Jamie."

"Brian was one of the good ones." Jamie said wistfully. "I'd like to think he got to be with his dream girl, if only at the end."

In the editor's office of the Uniter, the Moncton campus newspaper, Allison shook her head sadly.

"Yeah," she said to Lilly and Detectives Will Jeffries. "Brian was a real sweetheart. Maybe not the type I would've gone for in high school, but I like to think I've done a little growing up since then."

"Brian's told his roommate he had a date the day he died." Jeffries said. "His schedule book says he had something planned at 8 P.M. that night. Do you have any idea what that was?"

Allison paused for a moment, then nodded. "Well, I mean I talked to him earlier that day, talked about meeting up at my place around eight when he was done in the film lab." She shrugged. "I guess he was just trying to be punctual."

There was a knock at the door and in popped the head of Gary Parks. "Hey, sis, you ready for lunch? We--" He stopped as he noticed Jeffries and Miller. "Sorry. Am I interrupting something?"

Allison smiled. "No, it's all right. These detectives were just asking some follow-up questions about what happened with Brian."

"Oh yeah?" Gary raised his eyebrows and entered the rest of the way into the office. "I still can't believe what happened. Brian and I were in Bio together in high school. We didn't really get to be friends, though, until he and Ally here started seeing each other."

Jeffries nodded. "Yeah, from what we've heard it seems like Brian got along with everyone."

Allison's smile faded slightly. "Well, not everyone."

"What do you mean?" Lilly asked.

Allison sighed. "Well, I don't know if this means anything, but there was a little incident about a week before he died"

Walking into the chemistry lab, Brian and Allison spotted Gary conferring with a professor at one of the tables surrounded by test tubes. Brian gave him a nod as Gary looked up to see them.

"Hey!" Allison said. "We were just going to see if you wanted to join us for lunch."

The professor, a tall, handsome fellow of about forty, stood up, giving Brian and Allison a smile. "Actually, if it's all right, we were just running over some test results right now."

Gary shrugged. "The price of being a research assistant."

Allison offered the professor a warm smile. "Aw, please? We'll have him back in twenty minutes. I promise."

The professor rolled his eyes and sighed with a smile. "Well, all right."

Brian looked at Allison, chuckling, then offered the professor his hand. "I'm Brian Halley."

The professor shook it firmly. "Dr. Ron Hunter, assistant head of the chemistry department."

Brian nodded, looking around the room. "Good to meet you. You know Gary told me a little about what you're working on here and--" Brian was interrupted as his attempt to gesture to another table knocked over a number of glass tubes, which shattered on the floor.

"Oh! I'm sorry! I'm a little clumsy!" Brian exclaimed, looking down at the shards of glass on the floor.

Dr. Hunter put a hand up while reaching for a dustpan and brush hanging on the wall. "It's all right. Test tubes get broken in here all the time."

Brian backed away from the table nervously, causing his arm to bump a glass jar on another table, which fell to the floor, shattering.

Brian cringed at the broken jar. "Maybe I should get out of here before I do anymore damage." He quickly walked out of the lab with Allison and Gary on either side.

"Sorry about what happened back there." Brian said to Gary, wincing as he gestured back to the lab.

Gary shook his head, chuckling. "Don't worry about it. I guess you never were the chemistry type."

Brian smiled, shaking his head. "No. I know it a little but the truth is I never would've passed in high school without one of my friends helping me." Brian spotted a young woman in a white lab coat walking towards them and smiled. "Oh! Speak of the devil! Hey, Debbie!" He called her over.

Debbie was short, with shoulder-length dark hair. A number of handmade bracelets on her wrists peeked out from under the sleeves of her lab coat, an effort to show some style even in the world of science. While Brian greeted her with a smile, it quickly faded once he saw the cold stare she was fixing each of them.

"You all right, Deb?" He asked.

"I heard it, but I didn't believe it." Debbie glared at Brian. "I can't believe you've actually sunk to hanging around with these two." She gestured at Allison and Gary. "I thought you had better standards than that, Brian."

Gary put his hands to his head. "Can you give it a rest for one day, Debbie? You didn't the job. Get over it!"

Brian looked awkwardly at the other three students. "Um, obviously, I'm in the middle of something here." He tried to give Debbie a friendly look. "Look, Deb, I know we haven't seen much of each other the past year but-"

Debbie put her hands up. "You know what, Brian? Forget it. Have a lot of fun with these two. Just remember, you hang around with people like this, you're headed for a fall." Before he could respond, she stormed off.

"Brian and this Debbie girl knew each other?" Lilly asked.

Allison rolled her eyes. "Debbie Rosenberg. I think they used to be friends in high school or something. I'm not sure why. She's a bitter, mousy, little bitch who attacked Gary and I every chance she got."

"What job was she talking about?"

Gary sighed. "Every year Dr. Hunter picks one chemistry student to work as a research assistant. You get access to better equipment, field studies, things like that, so it's pretty competitive. I got the job a year and a half ago and Debbie didn't take it well."

Allison shook her head in disbelief. "She was convinced I was sleeping with Gary's professor, which I wasn't, and that I convinced him to give Gary the job, which I didn't."

Gary shrugged. "So basically she blamed us and I guess Brian got some of the spillover. But I mean, I can't see her killing someone. Certainly not Brian."

Lilly looked at Jeffries. "Still, interesting choice of words, though: 'headed for a fall.'"