Everyone's A Suspect

The Next Lead

Alyse searched Facebook for someone named Calvin Broyd, and sure enough, she found a profile with a picture of the guy who was staring at her when she left. She didn't find anything concerning or any evidence that would link him to Kayla's death. "Jeez, are the twins just trying to throw me off?" Alyse thought to herself. Calvin looked like a normal guy. He was tall with brown hair, blue eyes and a charming smile. Alyse had class tomorrow morning, so she'd have to wait until after school, but she could do some more digging if needed, then maybe go to his house.

As Alyse fell asleep, she hoped that her dream would be another vision of Kayla falling off the cliff. She saw Kayla fall off one cliff, land on a ledge, then when Kayla fell off the ledge, it looked like she was struggling to keep her balance. Just as Kayla fell, Alyse woke up. Her alarm was going off. Her first class was at 7:00 this morning, so she had to get up at 5:30. It was dark outside. Alyse checked the temperature. It was about 19 degrees outside. Surely her car was frozen over.

Nonetheless, Alyse got up and took a quick shower. She dried her hair, styled it and went downstairs to eat breakfast. Her mother had prepared some pancakes with sausage and toast. Kali was sluggishly getting ready for school around 6:00, just as Alyse was cleaning up. Before she could walk away, Blair stopped her. "Alyse Montgomery, I'd like to speak to you for a moment." Alyse stopped in her path, turned around and went back to the kitchen.

"Yes?" She says, half annoyed. "Are you going to focus on school and not solving Kayla's case?" Blair was giving her a very serious look. It was the same look that she gave both her and Kali when they got in trouble with other adults when they were kids. Alyse didn't know what to say. She couldn't promise her mother that she'd drop the investigation, but she wanted her mother to be at ease. "Alright. I'll focus on school." Alyse says. Blair comes up to her, and kisses her on the forehead. "Thank you sweetheart. Have a good day at school." Alyse started making her way upstairs. "Can you tell your sister to hurry up?" Blair calls after Alyse. "Sure thing!" Alyse calls back. Once she reached the top of the stairs, Alyse knocked on Kali's door. "What!?" She yells. "Mom says to hurry up." Before Kali could snap, Alyse just walked away. After she brushed her teeth, she started her car.

Alyse had 10 minutes before she had to leave for school. She decided to read her biology chapter as a refresher before going to school. It wasn't snowing out, but it was icy. Everett had already left for work, since he had a surgery to start at 6:00. As Alyse drove down the highway, it was busy and icy. People kept speeding up and slowing down. "Am I even going to make it to school?" Alyse asked herself. Once Alyse finally got to school, she parked and jogged inside without slipping on the ice.

Alyse Speed walked through the building, running into a few last minute classmates. She happened to speed walk past Ashton Hart, who Alyse has kind of liked since the beginning of the school year. He was on a trip at the end of September and was a year older than her. He followed her to her first class, which was her core class for social workers. She was just in time. Alyse remembered how earlier this week, Grace Abbott looked off, so she wanted to see if she was off today, but she didn't appear to be. When the professor walked in, all the chatter stopped immediately.

Alyse seemed to feel like the class went on forever. Before going to her next class, she wanted to see if she could find Ashton. He was likely still in his class, so she just continued to her next class, which was biology. She was early, so she sat down, and looked through Calvin Broyd's facebook account again. There really was nothing off about this guy. What reason would the twins have to tell Alyse to talk to him? Because he stared at them every now and then? Sure, that's creepy, but it's not like he had a reason to kill Kayla, unless...

Alyse pulled out a notebook and turned to a blank page. She wrote down her suspicions. If Calvin Broyd was spying on Kayla, maybe he was there the day she died. Did she threaten to call the police on him, so he snapped and killed her to avoid going to prison? Did he have some kind of obsession with Kayla and it got out of control? It was flooding Alyse's head. She felt the sweat as she wrote down her notes, at least until she heard her name. "Miss Montgomery? Are you here?" Her teacher calls. "Oh, yes professor!" She replies, quickly putting away her notebook and raising her hand at the same time. Her teacher cocked an eyebrow at her.