Toni Donovan Mysteries- Books 1-3

by Helen Gray

  He swallowed. “So it’s still running around town?”

  Toni grinned and shook her head. “The radio carried an announcement for us. I quote, ‘The people at the church across the street have lost their sheep and don’t know where to find it’. But a farmer found it in his pasture, and it was rescued.”

  Kyle chuckled, but then sobered. “So how does this cause Garrett to dream?”

  Toni shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t. But Gabe’s theory is that Garrett liked Harry Rabbit, who went away. He also liked the sheep, which is bigger than a rabbit, and it also went away. Only it’s not black.”

  Kyle’s eyes narrowed in confusion.

  She raised her palms. “I don’t know. There’s probably no connection, but I can’t tell what goes through Garrett’s mind. If his imagination is getting out of control, I want to help him. On the other hand, I don’t want to be an alarmist.”

  Kyle set his half eaten sandwich down and took a big swig of milk. “He’s a good natured kid who doesn’t seem to have problems. I agree that we shouldn’t make too big a deal of him finding things, or dreaming. But let’s pay more attention. If we notice anything too abnormal in his behavior, we’ll talk to the school counselor.”

  Toni drew a long breath, knowing she would be the one doing any talking to anyone. “Okay. I’m feeling more stress than I realized, and I tend to overreact to things when I’m tired. I feel better now that I’ve talked it over with you.”

  *

  After church Christmas morning Toni, Kyle, and the boys went home with her parents for Christmas dinner. Russell and Faye Nash lived in a small subdivision about a mile outside the city limits on a secluded, tree covered hillside.

  Toni’s brothers, Bill and Quint, arrived as she and her mother were setting the table. Bill, two years younger than Toni, lived in Clearmount and worked for the postal service. Quint, five years younger than Bill and three inches shorter than his brother’s six foot one, was in the army and stationed at Fort Leonard Wood. Because of truck problems, Bill had gone to the fort to get him.

  After dinner, they moved to the living room with their coffee and Cokes.

  “So what do you think happened to her, Quizzy?”

  Toni rolled her eyes, as she knew Quint expected. Growing up, their parents had referred to the boys as their dynamos and Toni as their inquisitive child. The boys had dubbed her Quizzy, and still used the nickname when they wanted to irritate her.

  “I have no idea.”

  The subject had come up during the meal, and both her brothers had shown keen interest.

  Bill spoke up. “My guess is she left old Jack, but she’ll turn up after she thinks she’s been gone long enough to teach him whatever lesson she intended. Dear old Jack will be so grateful he won’t ask questions.”

  Toni understood Bill’s attitude. He worked with the brother of Janet Rayford, the wife Jack had cheated on and dumped for their school superintendent.

  Faye topped off the guys’ coffee cups. “If that’s the case, I guess Jack got what he asked for. But I can’t help but wonder if something really bad has happened to her. Maybe she’s been in an accident.”

  “I have a theory,” Bill said, his voice quieter.

  “Let’s hear it.” Russell put his cup down and gave his son a trooper-like stare. Recently retired from the Highway Patrol, their dad was sixty-two and not yet quite sure how to keep himself occupied. Toni knew he would be much more content when baseball season opened in the spring and he could watch his beloved Cardinals play.

  “I think she probably decided she made a mistake in hooking up with Jack, and went back to her former lover for a holiday fling.”

  Toni stared across the room at Bill. “There are no secrets in small towns.”

  “What’s the dirt?” Quint glanced from face to face. Not having been around much since high school, he no longer knew the local scuttlebutt.

  “She’s supposed to have been having a relationship with Jimmie Huff, the director of special services at the school,” Toni explained.

  Quint frowned. “Another man?”

  She shook her head. “Woman.”

  “That’s not such an unusual story in itself,” Bill said. “But I can see where it would cause trouble for the superintendent to be involved with another staff person, especially one below her in the pecking order.”

  “There’s been so much talk that I didn’t give it much credence,” Toni said slowly. “But even if it were true, something in my gut says that’s not where she is.”

  “Want me to track her down?” Quint asked, eyes glinting.

  “No!” was the simultaneous response.

  Faye gathered empty cups and glasses. Then she paused and looked from Toni, to Bill, and then to Quint. Five years younger than her husband, she was about a hundred and fifty pounds and five foot three, with salt and pepper hair. She still worked part-time as a nurse practitioner at the local clinic. A high-energy person, she doted on her husband and children, but she could be stern with them. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with your dad. He lost his glasses back in the summer, and he’s forever hunting his keys.”

  Quint grinned. “What’s he lost now, his patience with you?”

  Faye gave her youngest an exasperated shake of her head and started toward the kitchen. “He’s lost one of his hearing aids,” she said over her shoulder.

  Garrett’s uncanny ability to find things that were lost came to mind, but Toni hesitated to mention it. She went to peek out the door and see if the boys were still in the front yard.

  *

  The remainder of the holiday vacation passed quickly. Bill took Quint back to the fort Monday. Then Toni, Kyle and the boys went to Springfield and spent a couple of days with Kyle’s parents. Dan and Barb Donovan had lived in Clearmount most of their lives, but had moved to Springfield to be near their two daughters and have easy access to hospitals after Dan suffered a stroke and had to take an early retirement from the Corps of Engineers.

  By the time they returned home, the town was buzzing about Marsha Carter’s disappearance. Friday at the beauty shop Toni learned that it had been made an official missing person case and an APB put out on Marsha’s car.

  Shortly after that, she met Sandy Douglas, her principal’s wife, in the grocery store and learned that Marsha’s car had been found parked at the airport at the west edge of town. Three industries shared the industrial park. Local business people and a few aviation enthusiasts used the small airport adjacent to it for business trips, freight, and personal jaunts.

  An eerie feeling crept up Toni’s spine as she envisioned an abandoned car out there. Something definitely was not right. The knots forming in her stomach destroyed her appetite, and she couldn’t concentrate on business for the questions spinning through her brain.

  Toni’s parents spent New Year’s Day at her house. After supper they settled in the living room. The subject of Marsha’s disappearance came up again.

  “That’s an odd place for them to find it,” Faye commented when Toni mentioned where the car had been found. “Could she have taken a private flight out of town?”

  Russell spoke up. “Buck said they’ve checked every flight that’s been in or out of there since last Friday.” Buck Freeman was the Chief of Police and his longtime friend.

  Toni rubbed a hand over the goose bumps on her forearm. “I’m not usually an alarmist, but I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Russell nodded. “Me, too. The police got a tip from someone saying she had been seen out at the river retreat area. They’ve had boats on the water and the K-9 unit searching out there, but they’ve found no sign of her.”

  Toni’s emotions were jumbled. She did not like or respect their superintendent, had even wished she would leave the district. But never once had she envisioned anything happening to the woman. Guilt rose in her because she couldn’t muster more grief at the possibility of Marsha being gone.

  “I’d like to hear the news now,” Kyle said as the m
ovie the boys had been watching came to an end.

  Gabe turned off the DVD player and found the local news channel. A newscaster was already reporting the story.

  “The Clearmount police are investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Marsha Carter, superintendent of the Clearmount School District, who was reported missing Saturday the twenty-second. Yesterday her car was found abandoned at the industrial park. When the police forced the locked doors open, they found some personal items inside, but her purse and briefcase were not among them. No evidence of injury was found.”

  Marsha’s picture appeared on the screen.

  “Mrs. Carter is described as five foot four inches tall, a hundred and thirty pounds, with strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information that might help locate her is asked to contact the Clearmount Police Department.”

  The impersonally stated facts struck Toni hard. She now believed the worst.

  They played a board game until midnight, but Toni couldn’t focus on it. All she could think about was her missing boss. After greeting the New Year, her parents went home.

  “What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep?” Kyle asked an hour later as Toni tossed and turned in the bed.

  “No,” she mumbled. “Too many things on my mind.”

  “What kind of things?” He pulled her into his arms.

  “Dumb things,” she said, afraid he would think her silly.

  “You’re worried about Mrs. Carter.” His hands stroked her back and shoulders.

  “I guess. I can’t stop thinking about it. And there are these crazy pictures floating through my mind, mostly of animals.”

  “Animals?”

  “Uh huh. Sheep …and rabbits with big black eyes …and Marsha’s car sitting abandoned at the airport. It’s all jumbled, like I should be understanding something.”

  “Why don’t we get some sleep? You can think about those things tomorrow when they won’t seem so dark. Happy New Year.”

  Toni woke about six o’clock and tiptoed to the boys’ room. When she opened the door, she heard Garrett tossing and turning. She slipped inside and held him until he stopped mumbling about Harry Rabbit. Then she went back to bed.

  The troubled thoughts that plagued her were beginning to coalesce into a dreadful possibility. Garrett’s dreams about Harry Rabbit, combined with all the circumstances, were forming a picture, an idea that she couldn’t shake. The first time Garrett had found something someone lost, Toni had accepted it as a simple coincidence. Then he had found Kyle’s lost knife. More incidents had followed.

  Other than Kyle, the only person she had ever talked to about those uncanny findings was John Zachary. Should she talk to him about this? No, he would call her crazy if he knew the path her mind was taking.

  And she was going to feel downright foolish tomorrow morning when she arrived at school and discovered Marsha present.

  Chapter 2

  Dark thoughts plagued Toni Monday morning as she dropped the boys at the elementary building, drove on up the street, and pulled into the high school parking lot. She tried to pray, but no words would form.

  Located a mile outside of town in front of a rolling hillside, the school was fronted by a large strip of concreted parking lot. The eastern portion housed the middle school, with the high school to the west. The district served about twelve hundred students, with a faculty of nearly a hundred, and about sixty support staff.

  Toni’s stomach knotted when she noted the vacant parking spot where Marsha Carter’s silver car usually sat. She grabbed her purse and hurried inside.

  In the staff workroom she checked her mailbox and found a memo amongst the usual junk mail and catalogs. When she read it, she breathed a sigh of relief. There was to be a faculty meeting right after school in the cafeteria. Marsha was on the job and running true to form. For once Toni welcomed a meeting on short notice. She hurried to her classroom without stopping to chat with anyone.

  Inside the room, she donned a white lab coat over her red satin blouse and charcoal slacks, flipping the ends of her hair out so that it just brushed the collar.

  Bookshelves crammed with bulky textbooks lined the front half of the right wall. The back half housed a row of computer desks. An emergency eyewash station stood at the front of the left wall, and a multicolor plastic DNA spiral occupied the rear. Student desks and worktables filled the center of the room. A centrifuge and a thermal cycler, used in genetic fingerprinting exercises, sat on the counter along the back wall. An aquarium inhabited by a turtle and a lizard stood in front of the windows. Test tubes and micropipettes graced the desks.

  Toni’s class schedule consisted of three sections of general biology, one of advanced biology, one of forensics, and an anatomy and physiology class that she taught from as much of a medical perspective as she could at a secondary level. The forensics class was an evolving thing, and Ken Douglas, her principal, gave her a lot of latitude with it. She added units or activities when she found challenging ideas or lesson plans at workshops and conferences, as well as implementing ideas of her own.

  Within minutes of the beginning of class Toni realized that her relief had been premature. The students buzzed with speculation about Mrs. Carter’s whereabouts. Toni struggled to keep them focused while the same questions ran on a parallel track in the back of her brain.

  During lunch the staff talked exclusively about Marsha’s disappearance. Back in class, Toni had to forcefully block everything but science from her mind. As soon as the room emptied after her last class, she hung her lab coat in the supply closet and began to put materials away. She was tidying her desk when John Zachary stepped inside her doorway.

  “You ready to see who’s in charge of today’s meeting and hear the latest?”

  Toni shoved her desk drawer closed and grabbed her purse. “Let’s go.”

  When they entered the cafeteria, they saw that several staff members from each building had already arrived. More were filing through different doors and following their natural tendency to cluster by departments. The elementary teachers sat in a group on the east side of the room, the high school staff on the west, while the middle school gang flocked around the refreshment table.

  There was a subdued buzz in the room, an overpowering atmosphere of curiosity and tension. Lingering odors of the pizza lunch served to eight hundred junior and senior high school students three hours earlier blended with the invisible vibrations.

  A crack of thunder startled Toni. She stared up at the row of small windows across the top of the wall. They were cloud darkened, and rain was beginning to splash against them. With a sigh of resignation she accepted that, by the time the meeting ended, it would be too late to carry out the idea germinating in her mind.

  “Let’s sit here.” John indicated a vacant table on ‘their’ side of the room and stepped over the attached bench to sit at one end of it. Toni slid in beside him.

  “I’ll join you if you don’t mind,” someone said from behind them.

  Toni looked up as Coach Jordan Hopper scooted onto the seat to her right, sandwiching her between him and John.

  “I hope this doesn’t take too long,” he said into her ear. About forty, Jordan was still dark haired, tall and athletic. He had three kids, and a wife who taught physical education in another district.

  Toni gave him a stern look. “I should report you for skipping out on the Christmas party.”

  He formed his famous ear-to-ear grin, not the least bit repentant. “I had important computer work to do.” A bit irreverent, he had been with the district longer than Toni and was working on his specialist degree in hopes of becoming a principal.

  “Sure you did,” Toni said, her tone saying exactly the opposite.

  He gave her a wink. “Well, a professional development survey was a lot more important than Marsha Carter’s mandatory party.” His tone turned acerbic on the word mandatory.

  “No argument there. But aren’t you concerned about her now that she’s missing?”


  He shook his head, his lips forming a line that resembled a sneer. “Nah. She’s like a bad penny. She’ll turn up.”

  “Okay if I join you guys?” Lisa Baker stopped behind them. Taking her welcome for granted, she slipped onto the bench to the right of Jordan. Dressed similarly to him in black sweat pants and a bright red sweatshirt, she wore a red headband over her shoulder length ash blonde ponytail, typical attire for the physical education teacher and girls’ basketball coach.

  Attractive in a sporty way, Lisa was divorced with no children, an eight-year veteran of the district. She was tall and wiry, with well-toned muscles. Her voice was deep and husky, probably from the smoking habit she indulged whenever she could sneak outside the building.

  Toni spoke to her across Jordan’s back. “Thanks again for helping me clean up the gym after the Christmas party.”

  “No sweat,” Lisa brushed off the gratitude. “Keeping it clean is one of my duties.”

  The Student Council and Science Club, the two student organizations Toni sponsored, had provided the tree for the staff party, set it up, and decorated it. Then Toni had sent the students home with the assurance that she would dismantle it afterward. Lisa Baker and Ken Douglas had noticed her working alone and stayed to help.

  The principal’s arrival at the front of the room claimed their attention. Ken stepped to the podium, stress lines visible in his face, his body language tense, and his dark hair rumpled.

  “Good afternoon, staff.” He paused to clear his throat. “This meeting was called in an effort to keep you informed. I promise to keep it brief. I know there has been a lot of talk and speculation about Mrs. Carter.”

  He ran a hand around the back of his collar. “As most or all of you know, our superintendent has been reported missing and did not show up for work today. The school board and administrators have met and discussed our situation. I’m afraid I don’t have any solid information for you, but the board wants you to know that they have every confidence in your ability to focus on the welfare of our students and move forward. The police are looking for Mrs. Carter, and any information they give us will be shared with you as we’re able. I’ll do my best to keep you informed. You’re dismissed.”