“Fine, and what about friends from back home? Did she stay in touch?”
“You know what? I saw her friend Bethany here not very long ago, and she was asking me if we had heard from Paula because she hadn’t. Bethany was pretty heartbroken because Paula had completely ignored her since she moved.”
“Which is too bad,” Kate said. “And she didn’t make any other friends here in Vancouver?”
“Just that one group,” the mother said. “I think they were all the same in that group.”
“I do know the group you’re talking about, but I was hoping that maybe she had somebody special.”
“No, but, if you’re looking for who killed her, I would look at him first. Look at Brandon first.”
“Had they broken up? Was there any reason why he would try to kill her?”
“I don’t know except maybe to get rid of her,” she said in a vicious tone.
Kate winced at that. “I mean, I get that’s a possible answer, but we can’t make an assumption like that. She traveled a long way to come here to be with him.”
“And yet, when she got there, she was pretty upset about him. Something about another woman coming to university for him, I think.”
“So Paula made the move, thinking she would have a serious relationship with Brandon, and they didn’t have one because he had another girlfriend?”
“Yes, exactly. She called me in tears. I tried to get her to come home again, but she was determined to win him back.”
Kate frowned at that. “So, it sounds like a love triangle gone wrong then… in many ways.”
“It was wrong right from the beginning. I don’t know what he said to get her to go there, but he had no intention of being her boyfriend ever.”
“Yet she didn’t seem to know that, right?”
“No, she didn’t at all. My girl used to be naive, but I doubt she is now.”
Ouch, that was an ironic statement, but Kate wouldn’t remind the poor woman that her daughter was dead. That was hardly fair, given the circumstances. At the same time, it was obvious that the mother was overwhelmed and looking for somebody to blame. “I may have to get a hold of you again. In the meantime, just know that we’re working on your daughter’s case.”
“Please find who did this,” she bawled. “My Paula was a beautiful person, and she didn’t deserve this.”
With that, Kate hung up and sat here, frowning at the phone.
“What’s the matter?” Rodney asked from beside her.
“I just talked to the mother of our latest victim. And honestly it’s almost like I was talking about Candy, the one whose room it was, not Paula, not the one who died.”
“Why is that?”
“Just the way the mother described her daughter. Either she really didn’t have a clue about who her daughter was or hadn’t seen the changes she had made after moving here.”
“What do you mean?” Rodney asked.
“She made it sound like her daughter was a complete innocent, with no idea what was going on in the world, until Brandon, the rich kid with his lawyer on tap, lured her into coming out west, like she had no idea what she was getting into.”
“Ah, so Mom isn’t ready to accept her daughter as an adult capable of making choices that she didn’t agree with?”
“Something like that, yeah. I guess all parents get surprised by the decisions of their adult children, don’t they?”
“I think they like to think they know who their children are. But then, when they hook up with other people, and, sometimes under that influence, they become somebody else.”
“Scary thought,” she said.
“Not really. I think it’s part of being a parent. You have to love them enough to let them go, then hope that, over time, they come back again.” Rodney sighed. “And I mean that geographically as well as morally.”