Love Can Be Murder

moisture to say what she had to say.
    "Go on," her father urged from his La-Z-Boy, unreclined for the serious discussion they'd been having. "It can't be that bad, Roxann."
    She inhaled deeply. "Dad, when Angora and I were eighteen, we made a deal. I took the ACT test, and the Notre Dame entrance exam for her." She swallowed hard. "And while we were there, I took tests for her whenever she was afraid she wouldn't pass."
    He closed his eyes briefly, and his grizzled mouth pulled down. "In return for what?"
    "She paid me enough to cover most of my tuition."
    "You didn't get a scholarship?"
    "No, my grades in high school weren't good enough."
    He shook his head, his eyes wide and disbelieving.
    "But you made straight As in college—you were a valedictorian."
    She walked around and sat down in the chair. "I studied hard because I was trying to prove something to myself, maybe trying to punish myself for what I was doing."
    Her father's hand shook while her heart broke. "How did you do it? Don't the instructors even know who's in their class?"
    So far, the conversation was meeting her worst expectations. Roxann sighed. "Everyone was always telling me and Angora how much we looked alike. I... wore a blond wig on the days I took her exams." She leaned forward. "Dad, I felt awful the entire time I was doing it, and ever since. I wanted to go to law school when I graduated, but I felt too guilty—like the degree I'd earned was the fruit of a poisonous tree."
    "Well, it was." He got up and walked over to stand in front of the old cabinet-model TV, looking out into the yard that, she suspected, he'd tidied for her homecoming. The sun highlighted his sparse hair and the stoop of his shoulders. Then, to her dismay, she realized his shoulders were shaking. Her father hadn't cried at her mother's funeral, but she'd managed to make him cry on a sunny Wednesday in late October.
    Swallowing her emotion she went to stand behind him and touched his shoulders. "Dad, I did a dishonest, horrible thing, and I'm so, so sorry that I let you down."
    "No," he said, his voice breaking. "I'm the one who let you down, Roxann. I was a hateful, distant father who saw the woman I loved and lost every time I looked at you. I expected you to live your life the way I had it planned, and when you didn't, I thought it was out of spite."
    She turned him around and looked into the face of remorse and regret. "Dad, it wasn't out of spite. It was out of shame. I couldn't face you, I couldn't face the world after I graduated. I hated myself for what I'd done."
    His chin wobbled. "I should've been there for you."
    She hugged him close. "We're here for each other now."
    He pulled back, his face creased with worry. "Roxann, I have to ask—does the cheating have anything to do with all those murders?"
    "No." Then she managed a rueful smile. "Except for the fact that I mistook a message that someone left on my computer as a threat, that they somehow knew what I'd done. My guilt surfaced and I panicked. That's why I was on the run, even before I knew Frank Cape was after me."
    "You mean this Cape fellow didn't leave the message?"
    "He said he didn't, although lying would have been one of his better character traits. Or it's possible that my ex-roommate left it."
    "The girl who died?"
    "Right. Maybe she thought it was amusing, I don't know."
    "What did the message say?"
    "It said, 'I've got your number, you fake.' "
    He scratched his temple and scoffed. "I think that's a line from a book."
    "Really?"
    He walked around the room, poking into different piles of books. "Where did I read that line? Some where... oh, this is the book." He held up a hardcover with a torn jacket. Mac Tomlin, Gumshoe. He flipped through the pages, scanning for several seconds. "Here's the scene, page one twenty-four. The suspect tells Tomlin that he'll never prove that he killed his wife. Tomlin says, 'I've got your number, you fake.' "
    She was inclined to pass it off as a coincidence, but what had Capistrano said—there are very few coincidences in this world? Darlin'. Once she got past the irritation of remembering something he'd said, she thought that quoting a line from a book was just the sort of thing that Richard Funderburk might have done, to be clever. And Cape was a PI—maybe Mac Tomlin was an idol of his. Assuming the man could read.
    "I'll probably never know who left that message," she said.
    Her father returned the book to a shelf, then sat down in his recliner. "I'm glad