Avoiding The Bad Boy

Part 11

Part 11

"You know, what we are doing is wrong," Tracey pointed out the obvious. It was quarter past seven and Gemma had taken Lauren out for shopping, leaving Tracey and I to do what we needed—to search Lauren's dorm room.

It was not easy to convince Gemma to take Lauren out. We had to give her a valid reason for this favor, so we had no choice but to go for the truth. Fortunately, once we told Gemma why we suspected Lauren, she agreed to take her out, but only on the condition that we would have to keep her in the loop regarding this murder investigation. We had no choice but to agree. Who knows, maybe Gemma could actually help us with this, I mean she was already helping us out.

So now we were in Lauren's room, and normally I felt guilty about invading someone's privacy—scratch that, I still felt guilty—but I had to look at the bigger picture here. There was a possibility that Lauren was the killer.

She said that Janice and Damien had been dating, which is kind of hard to believe because one, Damien made no mention of dating Janice while talking to me, and two, Janice was Ben's girlfriend. I was surprised the poor guy didn't say anything when Dash told us this. If it were any other guy, he would've exploded right there and then. So what was really going on?

"Where is the light switch?" Tracey whispered.

"Tracey, there is no one here, you don't have to whisper." I rolled my eyes.

"What if someone hears us? They will go and report us to the Headmaster for invading another student's privacy," she hissed, her tone barely audible.

I rolled my eyes once again. "Yeah, like people don't have anything else to do but report us. It's around seven, which means students will be busy going to the cafeteria for dinner. So no one will bother us. Just relax and look for clues. Make sure to check everything."

Instead of turning on the dorm room lights, Tracey turned on a flashlight and handed it to me; then she pulled out another flashlight and switched it on. "I am not taking any risks. We do this with the help of the flashlight." There was no arguing with her, so I sighed and set about searching the room.

It was pretty clear which side belonged to Lauren and which side was Janice's. Lauren's side had more stuff in it. Books, clothes, jewelry, while Janice's side of the room was plain—empty, with only a couple of cardboard boxes housing her personal items. But I would not give up. There might be something in the boxes or in the room that could help us. I had to try.

Steeling my resolve, I flipped open the first cardboard box and begun going through the items. I pulled out shirts and jeans along with a couple of skirts. I made sure to check the pockets in case there was a clue hidden in there.

The clothes didn't give me anything. So, I set about to pick out the jewlery that was thrown haphazardly in the box. This was strange. Shouldn't jewelry be kept in a small box or something? Why would they just throw it in like that? The jewelry was nothing special, but it sure was colorful. There were colorful beaded necklaces and bracelets, some funky earrings, but nothing that made me suspicious.

If we don't find anything, we were done for it.

"Did you find anything?" I asked Tracey, who was busy searching Lauren's side of the room.

"Nothing that screams murderer," she replied, tossing her clothes here and there, as if Lauren would never return.

"What are you doing? Stop throwing her clothes all over the place. She will know something is up when she will see all this," I admonished my best friend, who was looking for clues as if someone had put her at gunpoint.