Honestly, at this point, anything is possible.
"Yeah… I pulled up the file," a sleepy Marcel says. "Let's see… Princeton… Princeton… Shit." A pause. "All went to Princeton."
Both me and Bianca share a look.
"Did they all happen to be in the same fraternity too?"
"Yes. Sigma Theta Epsilon."
"Thanks. We'll call you back."
"I can't believe they missed this the first time," Bianca adds.
"They focused only on jobs and finances. God… there's a real possibility that's where it all started."
It doesn't take us too long to reach Princeton, and luckily, it's pretty early in the day, so when we knock at the fraternity house, we get a response.
"Yeah?" a guy wearing only a pair of boxer shorts answers.
Bianca gives me a wink, and I know she wants me to let her handle this.
"Hi. I'm sorry for coming in so early. My father was an alumnus, and he recently died. I was wondering if you have some old photo albums I could take a look at?" Her voice is almost too sugary sweet, and it seems to wake the guy up as he looks her up and down.
I try to keep my hands to myself. It wouldn't do to go around punching college students…
"Yeah, sure… We got some upstairs. Come in."
"Yo, Mark, what's up." Another guy comes up towards us, but this one is wearing more clothes.
"They want to see some of our photo albums. Her dad was an alumnus," Mark says in a bored tone. The new guy turns towards us and regards us suspiciously.
"Who was your father?"
"Martin Ashby," Bianca replies, and I can see the guys recognize the name.
"No shit… wow. He was a legend."
"Was he?" Bianca adds, a little bit too ironically. But the guys don't seem to notice.
"Yeah, hell… I'm sorry for your loss. I heard about his death."
Bianca tells them to look for class of '82, and they show us to the second floor where there is a library of sorts. The walls are filled with recent alumni pictures.
Mark goes to one wall and pulls out an album with 1982 on its spine.
"Here." He hands it to Bianca.
"Does this have underclassmen or upperclassmen too?"
"It should have the full brothers from that year. Are you looking for someone else?"
"Just another relative. He told me he was in the same fraternity as my father."
"Here." Mark pulls a few more albums spanning the early 80s. "You might find him in here."
They talk about something else and leave us alone, telling us to put them back when we're done.
We divide the albums between the two of us and comb through them.