Death Gone A-Rye

by Winnie Archer

  “Pulling up in five minutes,” I said, circumventing any opportunity for her to tell me not to come. “How are you holding up?”

  Another sigh. “As well as could be expected, I guess. I still can’t believe it.”

  “I know what you’re going through.”

  “The whole school board is here and it’s a zoo. Some officer has gathered everyone together.” She lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “I think he suspects that one of us did this to her.”

  Captain York, no doubt. “Hang tight, Candy. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I pressed a button to end the call and pressed a bit harder on the gas pedal. The car kicked into gear, surging forward with a burst of speed. Was Candy right? Did York suspect one of the school board members? Did he have a reason to think so? It seemed perfectly plausible, and digging into the relationships with the people closest to the victim was a good place to start. Other than visuals and brief bios, I didn’t know anything about the other school board members. Any one of them could have had a beef with Nessa, though, and it would have been easy for them to arrange a meeting at the boardroom in the district office. Too obvious, though? If it was a board member, wouldn’t they have gone to great lengths to distance themself from the connection to the board?

  “Earth to Ivy.”

  Mrs. Branford’s voice brought me back from my musings. “Did this Nessa Renchrik have political aspirations beyond the school board?” I asked.

  “I assume you’re posing that as a rhetorical question, correct?” Mrs. Branford asked.

  “It was more of a wondering than a question,” I answered, “but rhetorical nonetheless.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Just considering possibilities. School board member. Political opponent? Someone who had something to gain politically by eliminating Nessa Renchrik? And, of course, we have to look at her family members. Her husband?”

  “Sadly, it is often the husband.” Mrs. Branford had jotted down information but now closed her notebook as we turned into the parking lot for the Santa Sofia district office. The building was a low squat brown structure that lacked windows and personality. It felt oppressive. Like a murder had happened here and the building was keeping the secrets.

  Which was actually the truth.

  I tended to see the best in people and I wanted to believe that Nessa Renchrik was a good person, but there was an equal chance that she was horrible. Someone had killed her, after all.

  I had scarcely parked when the passenger door flew open and Mrs. Branford, moving as if she were in her twenties instead of her eighties, bounded out of the car. I caught up to her. “You’re speedy today,” I said, catching up to her. She swung her cane, rather than using it for support. Her orthotic white sneakers were pristine. Not for the first time, I wondered if she had white shoe polish and cleaned them after each wear. There was nary a scuff on them. She had on her daily uniform, which consisted of a velour tracksuit. Today’s color was periwinkle. She was Sporty Spice, the senior generation.

  “No time to waste,” she said as we approached the building. She clasped hold of the door handle and gave a yank. I grabbed hold of the door over her head and let her pass through first. If the outside of the building had been nondescript, the lobby was no better. It was a study in beige. Tan walls, uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs with brown upholstered seats, and beige carpet. The designer term might be “neutral tones,” but to me it was plain boring.

  The receptionist looked to be in her early thirties. She had dirty-blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, with long strands pulled out in front framing her narrow face. Her lips, which were a rosy pink, drew all the attention. They popped compared to her light eyebrows and equally light eyelashes. I smiled and said, “Hi. I’m here to see Candace Coffey.”

  “I need a photo ID,” she said, barely acknowledging my presence. I considered giving her a good chastisement about her lack of customer service, but of course, she was probably in shock. It wasn’t every day that the school board president was found dead on the dais.

  “Sure.” I handed over my California REAL ID.

  She took it, looked at it, then finally looked up at me. Her eyes narrowed as she studied the license again. “This is you?”

  Granted, it wasn’t a great picture. My hair was untamable on a good day. That hadn’t been a good day. I’d ended up pulling my hair into a topknot to keep it out of my face, my freckles were out in force, which I generally liked, but in the photo they didn’t quite work, and, well, did anyone ever look great in a driver’s license photo? I gave her a tilted nod and equally tilted smile. “It is.”

  She shrugged, then turned away to enter my name into whatever system the school district used.

  “Candace was a student of mine at the high school,” Mrs. Branford said. If she thought being amiable was going to get her a green light to bypass the district’s protocol, she was mistaken. The woman behind the desk went through her spiel again, asking for Mrs. Branford’s picture ID. Mrs. Branford pulled a little change purse from her tracksuit pocket and retrieved her license, holding it out. I strained to see catch a glimpse of her photo, which I’d never seen. I wondered how old it was. How often did you have to have a new driver’s license photo taken, anyway? The woman behind the desk snatched it from between Mrs. Branford’s fingers before I could get a look. It took several minutes for her to do whatever it was she did. We lifted our eyebrows at each other in a silent communiqué but waited patiently. Finally, she returned our licenses to us. We each tucked ours away as she gestured to a small kiosk in the corner with a monitor and a card-reading device connected to it. “Sign in, please.”

  “Candace knows I’m coming—” I started to say, but the receptionist’s cold stare froze the words on my lips.

  “Everyone has to sign in,” she said.

  “Right. Thanks.” I was pretty sure nothing I did or said would improve the young lady’s attitude. I smiled anyway as I stepped up to the kiosk screen, tapped it to bring it to life, and typed my name in on the digital keypad. It wasn’t until after I was done that I realized I could have simply laid my driver’s license on the card reader.

  Mrs. Branford stepped up after me, also realizing too late that she could have used her license. I’d started to tell her, but she was halfway done typing in her name. “Next time,” she said.

  Once we were both signed into the system, the receptionist came around and opened the door for us, leading us down a hallway, around a corner, and to a large room, the door crisscrossed with yellow crime scene tape. The placard read: Board of Education Meeting Room. Mrs. Branford ignored the police tape, ducking under it as easily as if she were in a limbo dance competition. I followed right behind her, completely in awe, as I often was with her. I wanted to be Mrs. Branford when I was in my ninth decade.

  A group of people were clustered in the corner of the boardroom, sitting on chairs it looked like they’d dragged over there. I spotted Captain York right away. His voice suddenly broke through above everyone else’s. “Is that right?” he asked, but I couldn’t see who he was speaking to. He’d had his back to the door, so he didn’t see Mrs. Branford and me come in, but now, as if he felt a shift in the air, he stopped and turned. He looked right at me, acknowledged me with a slight nod, then went back to the conversation he’d been having.

  Mrs. Branford and I stopped for a minute in the entrance and I took in the details of the room. Two long rectangular tables were pushed up against one of the side walls. A bunch of folding chairs were open and lined up in rows facing the dais where the school board held court. The American and California State flags hung from flagpoles on the left side of the dais.

  It was another nondescript space in this nondescript building, but this room had a secret, because there, in the center of the room, was a big empty space cordoned off with crime scene tape. I used my novice investigative skills to deduce that the marked space was where the board president’s body had been found. Whatever chair she was hit wit
h was probably now in possession of the regional laboratory services operation.

  I spun in a slow circle, cataloging the details in the room so I could report everything back to Emmaline in a comprehensive email. I ended up focusing on the spot where I was sure Nessa Renchrik’s body had been. I moved closer to get a better look and saw bloodstains on the carpet. A chill swept through me. There really had been a murder here.

  The crime unit had come and gone. If television, the movies, and my knowledge were correct, I’d venture to say that they’d used numbers to mark and photograph every spot of blood, every bit of potential evidence, everything that looked even mildly suspicious. With the exception of the marked place where the body had been found, the scene had been cleared since then.

  “What in the world happened here?” I murmured.

  * * *

  Candace Coffey was nothing like I remembered her, although I did still recognize her. She hadn’t grown in height, but she’d plumped out quite a bit. Her cheeks were round, rosy apples and her chin had a chin. I remembered her always being put together with neatly applied makeup, painted lips, and nicely coiffed hair. Today, though, she was a hot mess. Her eyes were red rimmed and her mascara was not waterproof. The murder had happened a day and a half ago, but she’d been crying fresh tears, which had left fresh dark crescents under her lower lashes. The short blunt cut of her tawny hair made her face look rounder and her cheeks seem fuller. It looked like she’d started the day with dark lipstick, but it had faded, leaving her lips looking stained and tired.

  It was clear that she was taking Nessa’s death hard.

  She sat alone. “That’s Candace,” I started to whisper to Mrs. Branford, but when I turned, she wasn’t there. Without my knowing, she’d waltzed off and was talking with a man at the opposite side of the room. I left her to it and walked over to Candy. With my flattened palm on my chest, I started to say, “Candy, um, Candace? It’s me; I—” but she jumped up, stopping my words in their tracks.

  “Ivy!” She swiped at the smudges of mascara under her lashes. Her hands held a wad of tissue mashed between them. “I’d recognize you anywhere. You look exactly the same. I’d have recognized you anywhere.”

  I could say the same about her. We were both older. Maybe a little wiser. But we still resembled our younger selves.

  “Candy—or should I call you Candace?”

  “Candy’s good. Reminds me of old times.”

  “Candy, then. You look great.” I gestured to my eyes and smiled. “Minus the mascara.”

  She laughed and dabbed at the smears again. “I swear, I can’t get it together. I’m not sure she deserved to die, but this is a little too close for comfort.”

  She wasn’t sure Nessa had deserved to die. That was an interesting way to put the sentiment, I thought. Maybe she didn’t deserve to die, but had she deserved something else? I made a mental note to jot that down later. “Were you good friends?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “We’ve known each other a long time, but we didn’t socialize.”

  “Oh.” That surprised me. “When did you first meet?”

  She thought for a moment before responding. “She moved here from Michigan before she had kids. I first met her when her daughter, Rachel, and my daughter, Ronnie, were in the same kindergarten class. Now they’re seniors.” Her lower lip quivered. She paused for a few seconds as she got control of her emotions. “Rachel’s not going to have her mom at her graduation,” she managed to say through her tears. “It’s heartbreaking.”

  It was incredibly sad. A girl losing her mother at any age was difficult, but as a teenager? Life altering. What struck me, though, was that Candy hadn’t said that Nessa wouldn’t see her daughter graduate, but that her daughter was the one with the loss of her mother. Would it have been more natural to say that Nessa wouldn’t be around to see her daughter graduate? Did Candy’s focus on the daughter, Rachel, instead of Nessa mean something, or did it just underscore the fact that Candy and Nessa hadn’t actually been friends? I needed to think about it.

  After Candy’s tears subsided, I swung my arm out, encompassing the group that had gathered in the meeting room, and said, “It’s nice that you’re all helping each other through this.”

  Candy looked at the cluster of people Captain York was making his way through. I knew he’d seen me, but thankfully he was completely focused on his task at hand. The last thing I wanted was for him to chase me out of here for interfering in his investigation.

  “People do come together in times of crisis,” Candy said.

  That was true. I flashed back to not so long ago when Miguel’s family had gathered to grieve the loss of a close friend. They’d helped one another through a horrible situation. “It’s so sad. Do you have any idea why someone would have done this to her?”

  Candy didn’t answer right away. I was just about to ask her again when she looked around, lowered her voice so no one else could hear her, and said, “How much time do you have?”

  I stared at her, not sure I was getting her meaning. She didn’t seem to have any curiosity about why I was so curious about Nessa Renchrik’s death. She hadn’t asked why I was here, or why any of this was my business. I counted that as a win and just kept going forward with her. “Um, what?”

  She stood up, her tears suddenly dried up, her stained lips in a tight line. “Come with me, Ivy.”

  She started toward the door that led to the side parking lot. The visitor entrance to the board’s meeting room? So during board meetings, maybe people didn’t have to sign in at the special kiosk. Or maybe this was just an emergency exit for the space.

  Either way, I followed her outside, letting the door close behind me. She led me to a bench under a shady tree on the other side of the parking lot. Clearly, she did not want to be overheard.

  We sat side by side. I was dying to prod Candace along, so she’d tell me whatever it was she wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. It didn’t take long for her to pony up the dirt she had on Nessa. “You’ll discover this soon enough, so I might as well tell you.”

  “Discover what?” I asked.

  She lowered her voice, as if she were imparting a great secret. “People didn’t like Nessa.”

  Okay. It probably wasn’t a secret, and I wasn’t surprised after my direct message conversation with @MarisasMama, but it felt like a bombshell coming on the heels of the woman’s death from someone who’d known her for a long time. “Why not?”

  Candace glanced around. Not a soul was within earshot of us. “Because she was vile.”

  I almost fell off the edge of the bench. I don’t know what I’d expected her to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. “Oh yeah?”

  “Is it bad to be speaking ill of the dead?” she asked, but she didn’t look overly concerned. Her eyes were dry and she pursed her lips in what I could only describe as a defiant manner.

  “If you think it’ll help figure out who did this to her . . .”

  “But do we want to figure it out?” she asked.

  Another comment out of left field. “W-why wouldn’t we?”

  “Her being gone isn’t such a bad thing,” she said, sounding rather circumspect.

  “But you said inside that you weren’t sure she deserved this—”

  She waved her hand. “I know. I’m just thinking out loud. She just wasn’t a nice person.”

  “In what ways?” I asked.

  Candy looked around again. We were still alone. “We were at a charity dinner Friday night and she was like a pariah.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, immediately wondering if someone from that charity dinner could be the killer.

  “Let’s just say she was out for herself, and she’d mow down anyone who got in her way.”

  Candace was being incredibly cryptic. I bit my tongue and waited. She definitely wanted to tell me more or she wouldn’t have brought me out here away from everyone.

  She continued a second later. “Look. Nessa made more enemies than fri
ends. It is not a cliché to say that she would stop at nothing to get whatever she wanted.”

  “Sounds like she pissed off a lot of people.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Including you?”

  “Add me to the end of a very long list,” she said with a wry laugh, clearly not concerned that she was giving herself a motive.

  What, then, was with all her tears? “You didn’t really like her and you weren’t friends., but you seemed so upset at her death.” If she could be direct, so could I.

  As if it was a Pavlovian response, her lower lip started up again and she shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. I won’t miss her. In fact, I’m glad I won’t have to deal with her anymore. But Rachel—”

  “Her daughter?”

  “Right. I feel for her. I mean she spends the night at our house and when she goes home she finds her mother is gone.”

  The woman had empathy in spades—at least where Rachel was concerned. “It sounds like you’ll be there for her.”

  Candace squeezed her eyes shut and crinkled her nose for a few seconds, getting ahold of her contradictory emotions. “My daughter and I both will be there for Rachel. For Nessa’s children. Poor girls. Poor Tate.”

  I let that sentiment hang in the air between us for a beat before I said, “Do you know who might have done this to Nessa?” I asked, repeating the question I’d had for her earlier.

  Once again, Candace surprised me. She started naming people, ticking them off on her fingers as she went. “Her husband. The superintendent. At least one of our school principals. And I hate to suggest it, but even a few school board members couldn’t stand her. Hell, even her hairdresser didn’t like her. I don’t think they are killers, though.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Her hairdresser?” The other people Candy suggested were connected to her role as a school board member. Plus her husband. But mentioning her hairdresser was like looking at one of those picture groupings that asked which one didn’t belong.