Sarah slumped into the chair, not aware that she had done so. Mrs. Parkinson, too, sat.
“We wanted your husband to be here, but as you know, we were unable to reach him.”
Sarah sat on the edge of her chair. “What’s—”
Mrs. Parkinson held up her hand and Sarah sat back. “The boys came to school this morning with what they claimed was a toy gun. According to them, your husband’s office manager gave it to them.”
Sarah edged forward and put her forearms on Mrs. Parkinson’s desk, hands clasped. “Maureen knows we don’t allow the boys to play with toy guns. She knows that!”
Mrs. Parkinson held up her hand again. “Let me finish, please.” She waited for a few moments.
Sarah, feeling as though she herself were in fourth grade, moved her arms off the desk.
“At recess this morning, the twins were taking turns showing off this so-called toy gun, pointing it at other children and pretending it was a death ray.” Mrs. Parkinson folded her own hands on her desktop. “The teacher’s aide took the weapon away from them and brought it to me.”
Sarah gawked at the principal.
“The so-called gun is actually a Taser, a sophisticated police weapon.”
Sarah sat still.
“Do you know what a Taser is, Mrs. Watts?”
Sarah shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Mrs. Parkinson reached into her desk drawer and brought out a blocky weapon that looked like a cartoonist’s drawing of a ray gun. She set it down on her desk with a heavy metallic clunk.
“Do you have any idea where the boys might have obtained such a weapon?”
“N-no.” Sarah stared at the Taser.
“Or where your husband’s office manager might have obtained such a weapon?”
Sarah didn’t respond.
Mrs. Parkinson pressed a button on her phone, and when a voice said “Yes?” she asked that the Watts boys be brought to her office.
Zeke and Jared slunk in on either side of a teacher’s aide, a young man barely out of his teens with short, neatly combed brown hair.
“We weren’t shooting anyone!” Jared exclaimed as soon as he saw his mother.
“You won’t tell Daddy?” said Zeke.
“Sit down, boys,” said Mrs. Parkinson. She dismissed the aide with a nod and a “Thank you, Charles.” When the boys were seated, she said, “Why don’t you tell your mother and me how you got the weapon.”
The twins looked at each other.
“Where did you get that thing?” Sarah’s voice verged on hysteria. “Did Maureen give it to you?”
“Please, Mrs. Watts. Let the boys answer.” The principal turned to one of them. “You’re Zeke?”
“No, ma’am, I’m Jared.”
“Tell me from the beginning, Jared, when you went to your father’s shop and he wasn’t there but Maureen was.”
Jared nodded but looked down at his sneakers.
“Well?” asked Mrs. Parkinson.
“Maureen gave it to us to play with.”
“Look at me, Jared,” said Mrs. Parkinson. “Are you sure Maureen gave that gun to you? Think again. You must tell the truth.”
“My boys don’t lie,” said Sarah.
“Mrs. Watts!” warned Mrs. Parkinson. “Well, Jared?” When Jared still looked at the floor, she turned to Zeke. “Would you like to tell me exactly how you happened to have this gun, Zeke?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Zeke, so softly that even Sarah wasn’t sure she heard him.
“Speak up, please,” said Mrs. Parkinson. “Was the weapon in your father’s desk?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Where, then?”
“In the filing cabinet,” said Zeke.
Jared spoke up. “In the top drawer.”
“How did you find it?”
“We was—”
“Were,” said their mother.
Zeke glanced at his mother, then down at his feet. “We were looking for paper to draw on. Maureen keeps scrap paper in the file drawer.”
“And that’s when you saw the weapon?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Jared. “We didn’t take it then.”
“We took it when Maureen went to the post office,” said Zeke.
“Where did you hide it then?” asked Mrs. Parkinson.
“In Zeke’s book bag,” said Jared.
“This was on Friday?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boys said together.
“And you brought the weapon to school this morning?”
The boys looked at each other and nodded.
“You know it’s serious to bring a weapon to school?”
“We thought it was a toy gun.”
“We don’t allow toy guns in school.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Parkinson’s phone buzzed. She picked it up and Sarah heard the school secretary say, “Mrs. Trumbull and Chief O’Neill are here, Mrs. Parkinson.”
“Send them in.”
When Sarah arrived home, feeling badly beaten up after her confrontation with the principal and the police, the phone was ringing. Her two boys dragged along behind her, heads down, hands in their pockets, scuffing their sneakers in the gravel path. She hurried to answer the phone, pointing at the mat just inside the door. “You two stand right there. Don’t move from that spot.”
The caller was her sister Jackie. “Sarah, I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. I’ve got to talk to you.” Jackie lived on the Edgartown–West Tisbury Road, not far from Victoria Trumbull.
“I can’t talk to you now, Jackie.”
Jackie’s voice rose. “This is really, really important. I’m coming over to see you.”
“Don’t even think about it.” Sarah plopped herself down at the kitchen table, the phone held to her ear. “The boys got into trouble at school. I’ve just come back from a lovely session with that dragon lady principal. This is not the time to pester me with one of your damned crises.”
“Sweetie, this is one hell of a lot more important than your nine-year-olds getting into mischief, I promise. I’ll be right over,” Jackie said, and hung up.
“Shit!” Sarah got up and slammed the phone at the wall cradle. It fell to the floor and a robotic voice told her that she hadn’t disconnected.
She glowered at the boys, standing exactly where she’d told them to stand, shifting from foot to foot.
“Go to your room!” She pointed to the stairs. “Homework! Not a sound from you until your father comes home. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Jared.
“Can I go to the bathroom?” asked Zeke.
“You’d better hurry.”
There was a soft shuffling up the stairs. After a minute, the toilet flushed and their door shut.
On the floor, the robotic voice on the phone said, “Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up. . . .” Sarah started to kick that voice, thought better of it, picked up the receiver, and hung it up. What could Jackie have on her mind that was so important? Jackie, the alarmist. Her twice-married, twice-divorced younger sister. The glamour girl. How would she deal with two nine-year-olds who’d somehow acquired a serious police weapon and brandished it around the school yard?
Sarah cleaned up the breakfast dishes she’d left when the school called. She poured a cup of coffee, put it in the microwave, and was about to push the button that read BEVERAGE, when the door burst open and Jackie flew in, her golden hair attractively awry, her large blue eyes looking helplessly appealing. Sarah had seen it all before.
“Well?” Sarah pushed the microwave button.
“Look at this!” and Jackie flung down a small camera.
Sarah turned and glanced at the camera. She opened her eyes wide and stared at it. With a sick feeling, she knew what was coming. She turned back to Jackie. “What’s that supposed to be?”
“A video camera, sweetie.” Jackie folded her arms under her perfect breasts, covered modestly by a blue sweater tha
t exactly matched her eyes.
Sarah sat. “So it’s a video camera. So what?”
Jackie slipped into another chair at the kitchen table, sitting across from her sister. “Mark found it.”
“Who’s Mark?”
“My new boyfriend. Don’t you remember meeting him?”
“Apparently not.”
Jackie sighed. “Well, he was in the john and saw this camera hidden in the heating duct. Aiming at the shower.”
Sarah looked away. Too much was happening. The boys and that gun. And just yesterday, Emily Cameron had given her those two DVDs, “WATTS 1” and “WATTS 2.” Jackie hadn’t appeared on either one, but then, the videos were dated two months ago. How many women had Roy filmed?
“Motion-activated,” Jackie continued. “It’s a remote sensor. Sends pictures to a receiver somewhere.”
The microwave beeped and Sarah got up to retrieve her coffee. She needed those few seconds to regain her composure. She returned to her seat. “Taking pictures of you showering? Why would anyone want to do that?”
“What do you mean?” Jackie sat up straight.
“Oh, come off it. Who put it there, Mark?”
“No, of course Mark didn’t put the camera there. He found it. He removed it.”
“Then who do you think did put it there?”
“I’m getting to that. I need a drink.”
Sarah pointed to the coffeepot. “Help yourself.”
“A drink, I said.”
“Are you kidding? It’s not even noon.”
Jackie strode over to the cabinet next to the sink, opened it, and brought out an almost full bottle of Scotch. She reached down two glasses from the cabinet above the counter and set one in front of Sarah and one at her place.
“Ice?” she asked.
“Don’t bother. You’re right. I guess I can use a drink after all. The boys . . .” She held her glass up and Jackie poured.
“What about the boys?”
“Never mind. It’s a long story. How do you think someone snuck a camera into your bathroom?”
“You want to guess?” Jackie took a large swallow and brushed her golden hair out of her eyes.
Sarah said nothing.
“Your ever-lovin’ husband, LeRoy Watts. That’s who put the spy camera in my bathroom.”
That was exactly what Sarah didn’t want to hear. She stood up and pushed her glass away. “What are you talking about?”
“Roy’s been spying on me.”
“You arrogant bitch!”
“He’s been trying to make out with me for a looong time, sweetie.” Jackie examined her nails, painted a metallic lavender. “Since he didn’t get anywhere, he’s getting his jollies long-distance.”
Sarah pointed to the door. “Get out.”
Jackie remained seated. “Don’t you want to know how I found out?”
“No. Get out. Leave!”
Jackie didn’t move. “Roy and his whacked-out assistant did some electrical work for me a month ago. That camera’s been there a month, Sarah. Your creepy husband has been salivating over me every night for a damn month. Taking my shower.”
“You . . .” Sarah knew Jackie was right. “How dare you accuse Roy!”
At that, Jackie laughed. “Striking a sensitive note, are we?” She lifted her glass and drank. “I don’t suppose Roy watches you in the shower, does he?”
Sarah collapsed back into her seat. What was she going to do? Confront Roy the minute he came home? What?
“He was installing an extra outlet in the hall outside my upstairs bathroom. Actually, they were.”
“Roy and Jerry? Why two people?”
“How should I know? Ask them. I wasn’t even home.”
Sarah pulled her glass toward her. Her face had regained some color.
“Frankly, Sarah, I never trusted that bastard husband of yours.”
Sarah ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “You’re so prejudiced against Roy, you haven’t even considered Jerry. He’s the creep.”
“Ha!” said Jackie.
CHAPTER 13
Now that the knitters had decided to meet every weekday afternoon to finish their quilt by the mid-June deadline, this was the first time they’d met on a Monday.
Maron and Jessica sat side by side on the black-and-white-striped couch, Fran Bacon in the matching easy chair, and Elizabeth Trumbull at the table across from Casper Martin and Jim Weiss. Casper had shifted the pile of atlases and reference books to the floor to give them room to spread out their work.
Reverend Judy MacDonald, the Unitarian minister, sat in a rocking chair, where she had a view of the library’s entrance. Two young women breezed in. One was what Victoria Trumbull would call “pleasingly plump.” She was just over five feet tall, with short, curly dark hair, bright apple red cheeks, and violet eyes. The other woman was tall and slender, with straight light brown hair and matching brown eyes. She seemed pale by comparison to the first woman.
“Well, hello, Cherry, Roberta,” said Reverend Judy.
“Sorry we missed the last couple of meetings,” said violet-eyed Cherry. “Roberta and I were invited to present a paper on tube worms at the Oceanographic.”
“On what?” asked Elizabeth.
“Tube worms,” said Roberta.
“Oh,” said Elizabeth.
“Pogonophora,” said Jim Weiss, a researcher at the Marine Biological Lab. “Long, skinny deep-sea worms.”
“You don’t find tube worms on coral reefs, or we could knit some for the quilt,” said Cherry.
Roberta sat down near Reverend Judy and pulled her knitting out of a basket.
“Where’s Alyssa?” asked Cherry. She set her knitting bag on the table and pulled up a chair next to Elizabeth. “I’d like to see how she’s doing with her kelp.”
“She had to respond to an emergency call,” said Elizabeth. “Somebody hit a tree on State Road. She called and said she’ll try to get here before we break up.”
Jessica tossed her knitting off to one side. “I dropped a stitch five rows back. I can’t concentrate.”
“Now what?” asked Casper.
“I got another call last night.”
Fran Bacon, the retired professor, spoke up. “You know, girls, we really must concentrate on our work. We don’t have much time.”
“What can we do? We’ve tried everything,” said Jessica. “The phone company and the police can’t trace the calls. He’s calling on a prepaid disposable phone.”
“It has to be someone who knows us,” said Maron.
Cherry’s needles stopped abruptly. “What phone calls are you talking about?”
“A breather is calling Maron and me a couple of times a week,” said Jessica.
“No kidding!” said Cherry. “Me, too.”
“That makes three of us,” said Maron.
Roberta set her knitting in her lap. “This is strange. I got a call the night before last.”
“Just that one call?”
Roberta nodded.
“A man?”
“I assume so.”
“Four of us, then. Someone knows all four of us.”
Jim glanced at Casper.
“You know,” said Casper, concentrating on his fringed anemone, “Anemones are carnivorous.”
The group was silent.
Casper adjusted his glasses. “An anemone can capture small fish.”
“Really!” said Reverend Judy, breaking the silence. The other knitters, heads down, worked intently.
Casper lifted the realistic pink woolen tentacles he’d been working on. “These tentacles have stinging cells that fire a tiny dart connected to a thin filament into its prey. Sort of like a stun gun.”
After several moments of silence, Jessica said, “Don’t tell me to change my phone number again. I did that already, and the creep actually said, before I could hang up, ‘changing your number won’t help, girlie.’ ”
“Definitely a man?” asked Fran.
“No question about it.”
Casper set down his anemone. “Let’s be up-front, shall we? You’re thinking Jim or me, aren’t you? One of us.”
There was a murmur from the group, denying any possible suspicion.
“Well, rule me out. I’m not into that kid stuff.”
Fran Bacon checked her watch. “If we’re serious about finishing our quilt by the deadline, people, we simply must concentrate. Mid-June is only a few weeks away.”
“What do you girls have in common besides this group?” asked Casper.
“Women,” said Jim.
“Church? Health club? Bars?”
For the next hour, the group was quiet. Needles clicked. Through the double doors separating the reading room from the main library, came the sound of library patrons conversing softly. Outdoors, a car started up. Children’s voices drifted over from the playground across the road.
A few minutes before six, Casper looked at his watch. “My wife is picking me up early today. Want a ride, Jim?” He folded up his anemone, wrapped tissue paper around it, and packed it and his needles into his briefcase. “She should be here any minute.”
“Great, Casper. Thanks.” Jim tucked his coral into a green cloth bag marked THINK GREEN.
“Good night, all. See you tomorrow,” said Casper.
“Night,” said Jim, and waved.
“Please, don’t think anyone is pointing a finger at you, Casper. Or you, either, Jim,” said Fran.
Casper nodded.
“Good night,” said Jim.
“Bye.”
“Night.”
“See you.”
The door closed behind the two men, and the women continued to work.
After awhile, Jessica set down her knitting. “Well, what do you think?”
“What do you mean?” asked Maron.
“Is it Casper? Or Jim?”
“Good grief, no,” said Cherry.
“Well, why not?” asked Jessica.
“We’re all members of this group,” said Maron. “That’s the connection. The caller knows who all of us are.”
“Much too obvious,” said Reverend Judy. “Besides, Jim and Casper are both too, well, normal.”
“Mathematical knitters? Like, normal?” said Maron.
Reverend Judy laughed. “Point well taken.”
“Girls! Please!” said Fran.
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