A TIMELY MURDER (HARDCOVER)

Chapter 1

"What a difference from Blackwood Cove!"

Jasmine smiled as she jogged along, pulled by her enthusiastic friend. Luffy was correct in his observation. While their hometown was cold and clammy and gray, this place was green and bright and full of life. Blackwood Cove, even in summer time, was possessed of a certain leaden weight, as though the heart of winter resided somewhere deep in the ground beneath it and bled its influence into the town all year round.

Together, the two friends raced down a wide asphalt path. To their right was a guardrail and a two-lane road, the main line that stretched between New Market and Wildwood College. To their left was nothing but forest, an untouched and unmapped vastness where the wild spirit of the old frontier still seemed to exist. Ancient trees brooded tall and heavy over everything else, filling the understory with shadow and calm and silence. A chipmunk chittered; a car ambled by at forty miles an hour, its tires a whisper on the surface of the road.

Luffy looked back, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. "Pretty dang hot out here for a Spring day!"

"Getting tired on me?" Jasmine asked between breaths, grinning as sweat streamed over her forehead and upper lip. She reached up and wiped it out of her eyes, looking at the brand-new GPS watch her father had sent her as a birthday gift. Four and a half miles in. Nearly there.

The journey from her apartment at the edge of New Market to the school was six miles. And a lot could change over that distance. Civilization became wilderness. The hustle and bustle of a large town was reduced to the faint buzzing of insects and the trilling of birds as they swept to and fro on their unknown missions.

This was the middle of Jasmine's first semester at school. Wildwood was not a cheap school, and to make ends meet she had foregone the purchase of a car. She had a bicycle, but she rarely used it.

"Tired?" Luffy asked. "Never. I could run all day, you know that. How about you, huh? Can you keep up?"

She answered him with action rather than words, picking up her pace and blowing right past. He leapt to keep up, and did so easily. With four legs, the eight-minute pace Jasmine usually went at was nothing to him.

Twelve minutes later, the path began to drift away from the road and wind into the forest itself. At first this seemed like a pointless meandering, but suddenly the forest opened into a vista of the college. It sat on fifty acres of cleared space and took up only half of that, leaving the rest as sports fields, walking trails and empty expanses of grass where students and staff often had their lunch.

Wildwood was a symmetrical grouping of granite buildings that had stood here for close to two hundred years. Minor renovations had been done, electricity, water and telephone added and then, much later, internet, but it existed pretty much as it did when it was first built. The asphalt path transferred into ancient flagstone pavers as Jaz and Luffy crossed the threshold of the school grounds. They slowed down, walking the rest of the way, both craning their necks to survey the looming school. Because of the forest surrounding it, much of Wildwood stood in deep shadow at this early hour. All but the clock tower, which rose up into the sun, its face blazing like a beacon.

"It's quite a sight, huh?" Luffy asked.

Jasmine nodded. In a moment they were surrounded by other students, lounging on the grass and studying for whatever class they were about to go into. Only a few of them looked up at Luffy in surprise; most were already used to the dog's presence here.

The two friends circled around the back of the building and approached a smaller structure that stood a short distance away from the main cluster. It used to be a carriage house or some such thing, but it had, sometime in the first half of the last century, been retrofitted as a gymnasium. Wildwood did not have a large athletics program. In fact, the only two programs it offered were track and field and wrestling. But it had a long history of excellence, and part of keeping the mind sharp lay in training the body. It was one of the tenets of the college, and every student was encouraged to use the gym any hour, any day.

Jasmine had taken that encouragement and ran with it. She and Luffy entered the building and skirted around a pilates class that was already underway. They went into the locker room. Jasmine approached a bench and lowered her heavy backpack onto it. From inside she pulled out a change of clothes and a metal bowl. The latter she filled with water and left on the floor for Luffy. The former she took with her into a shower stall to wash off the stench of the run. She used her hands to scrub sunscreen from her face and arms.

While she was in the middle of washing, she heard someone else enter the locker room. The newcomer began talking to Luffy, no doubt scratching his ears and rubbing his belly and all the other things the Golden Retriever liked.

Jasmine shut off the water and patted herself dry. She was still self-conscious about wandering around the locker room with nothing but a towel to cover herself, so she quickly dressed inside the stall and stepped out to find a familiar young woman giving Luffy his very own massage treatment.

"You big ham," she said, shaking her head.

Luffy let out a groan of contentment. "Being a dog does have its advantages."

Alicia Newman looked up, smiling. "Luffy's a good boy. Aren't you Luffy?"

"Sheesh," he said, still smiling. "And that's one of the disadvantages. People think they need to talk to you like you're a baby."

Jasmine smiled, lowering herself onto the bench to put her shoes back on.

"He likes you," she said.

Alicia shrugged. "Dogs like everyone."

Jasmine shook her head. "Not true. I know someone who Luffy doesn't like at all."

"Oh? Who?"

"Just someone from back home," Jasmine replied. "What brings you in here, anyway? Are you in that pilates class?"

"Me? God, no," Alicia said, laughing. "I'm about as flexible as a steel rod. I'm pretty sure I'd snap in half if I tried doing any of that stuff. I just saw you heading this way so I thought I'd stop by."

Jasmine grinned. "You didn't do the homework, did you?"
"Well..." Alicia returned the grin, looking sheepish. "It was either that, or get the four hours of sleep I managed to get."

"Did you ever think about, I dunno, taking less of a workload?"

Alicia nodded. "Next semester. I just don't want to be in school forever, you know? So, are you gonna help me out?"

Jasmine sighed, reaching for her bag. "You owe me."

"I still owe you for last time," Alicia said.

"Okay. So you owe me double."

She pulled out her worksheets. But rather than simply give Alicia the answers, she tried to be as instructional as possible. There was no point in cheating if you were going to come away from it just as ignorant as before.

"So, let me get this straight," Alicia said at the end. "A weird teenager and a scared old man were really all it took for this guy to completely change his mind? It was enough to make him see how screwed up the world is?"

"No!" Jasmine said, laughing. "There's more to it than that. You just need to actually read the book."

"I will, I promise," said Alicia. "This weekend. But I just need to get through this class. Please, Jasmine."

She shook her head firmly. "You've gotten all the help you're going to get from me."

"Not fair. You've probably already read the book five times."
"I admit nothing," Jasmine replied with a smile.

Alicia gave her a playful slap on the arm. "Well, if I fail it's all your fault."

"You won't fail. You're smart enough. College is half knowing the answers and half knowing how to stumble into them. Right?"

"Something like that." Alicia looked at the time on her phone. "Crap! We'd better go."

Luffy jumped up. "Are we running again? Let's go!"