“Well, I’m glad you are.” Jeanine put the stack she was carrying down in front of him. “Here,” she said. “I figure this is what you’re interested in.”
Sean was amazed. “How do you know what I’m interested in?”
Jeanine laughed. “Well, you’re not really into local history, so what else could you be here for but the Amethyst thing.”
Sean just stared at her. How had she known, and how had she pulled everything together so fast?
“I’m not a mind reader,” Jeanine said, interpreting his silence correctly. “Actually, I did this before you arrived because I was interested myself. When I saw you coming up the walkway, I ran and got what I’d found.”
“And did you find anything?”
Jeanine shook her head. “Nothing that I didn’t know before. Although I’d forgotten that Bessie Osgood was related to your wife.”
Sean shifted his weight around. “Rose never liked to talk about it.”
“She was like that.”
“Yes, she was.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, my family never liked to talk about Amethyst’s possible role in Bessie’s death,” Jeanine said. “They just pretended it was an accident.”
“But you didn’t think so?”
“No. Absolutely not. And I don’t think they thought so, either. They never said anything, but it was just the sense I got.”
Sean nodded toward the chair next to him. “Why don’t you sit down? Unless you have something else to do, that is.”
Jeanine laughed. Sean decided her laugh was like her clothes. Nice.
“I’m sure my cataloging will wait for me,” she said as she folded herself into the chair he’d indicated. She fussed with her pin for a moment, and then she said, “I don’t like to talk this way about people, but Amethyst was just bad. She always was. That’s why she was in that school, you know. Her mom was afraid of her.” Jeanine leaned forward and lowered her voice. “She got mad at her mom one day and killed her cat. Set it on fire, and then she tried to blame my cousin Natalie.”
Marvin came and stood behind Sean. “How did everyone know it wasn’t Natalie?” he asked.
“Because Natalie loved animals. She was one of those people who always brought strays home with her,” said Jeanine.
“Then why did Amethyst pick her?” asked Sean.
“Probably because she thought it would be funny, you know, Natalie being blamed for something like that. She even planted one of Natalie’s books at the scene. And she was so convincing. If you didn’t know Natalie, you’d really think she’d done something like that.”
“Maybe we could talk to Natalie,” Sean said.
Jeanine’s eyes misted over, and then she blinked, and the tears were gone. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. She died in a plane crash a couple of years ago. Amethyst was so nice on the outside, but inside…” Jeanine shuddered. “I tried to stay as far away from her as I could when I was growing up. One day she and Inez Colley were baby-sitting me—”
“Wait,” Sean interrupted. “Inez was friends with Amethyst?”
“Oh yes,” said Jeanine. She wrinkled her brow while she thought. “Along with Zinnia McGuire and Zachery Timberland and Bob Small. They used to sneak into the school at night and visit Amethyst. I think Bessie Osgood saw them, and she was going to tell.”
“Are you sure?” said Sean.
“No. I’m not sure about anything. I just remember overhearing my parents talking,” replied Jeanine. “Then they saw me outside, listening, and changed the subject.”
“Interesting,” Sean said. “Maybe one of them killed Bessie.”
“Maybe,” Jeanine replied.
“I don’t suppose you kept in touch?” Sean asked.
“With Amethyst?” asked Jeanine.
Sean nodded.
“Kind of. She called when she needed something.” Jeanine fingered her pin. “I spoke to her about four months ago. She wanted to know if I could give her Ed Banks’s private phone number.”
“The guy who owns Lexus Gardens?” asked Sean.
“Yeah.”
Sean remembered that Bernie had tried to get in contact with Ed Banks and had been told by his personal assistant that he didn’t talk to people he wasn’t familiar with.
“He’s not very friendly.”
“He’s a recluse.”
“Like Howard Hughes?” asked Sean.
“Not that bad, but heading in that direction. I wasn’t going to give her the number, but then Amethyst called again, and she was so sweet…That was her talent, you know. She made you believe you were her best friend, and even though you knew it was a lie, you still wanted to believe her.”
“So you gave it to her?” asked Sean.
“Yes, I did.”
“I wonder what she wanted it for.”
Jeanine shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“And Zinnia? What about her?”
“She died a while ago,” said Jeanine.
Sean raised an eyebrow.
“No, no,” Jeanine said. “It was nothing like that. She was in a car accident.” She pushed the stack of articles in front of Sean. “And now I’m sure you’re anxious to get going on these materials.”
Actually, Sean wasn’t at all anxious to get going on his reading. He was having a good time talking to Jeanine, but he smiled and thanked her again for the time she’d taken with him.
“Nice lady,” Marvin said after she’d gone back to her office.
Sean grunted.
“I don’t think she’s seeing anyone,” Marvin said.
“Now why would you say that?” Sean demanded.
“I don’t know,” Marvin stammered. “I thought you might be interested.”
“Well, I’m not,” Sean snapped as he went through the papers that Jeanine had brought him. He separated out all the ones with pictures of the Peabody School. The rest he pushed toward Marvin with the tips of his fingers.
“Read these,” Sean ordered.
“What am I looking for?” Marvin asked.
“Anything of interest.”
“But how will I know what’s of interest to you? I mean, I thought that thing about the turnips being jack-o’-lanterns in Ireland was pretty interesting, and you didn’t.”
“Just read,” Sean hissed. He didn’t know why he was suddenly in such a bad mood.
Marvin opened his mouth, closed it again, and began to do what he was told. As soon as he was settled, Sean took all the pictures of the Peabody School out and spread them on the table. Then he began to compare them with the slides from the View-Master. Half an hour later, he wasn’t any better off than he had been before. He had his hand on the small of his back and was stretching when Jeanine came back out of her office.
“I haven’t seen one of those in years,” Jeanine said, pointing to the View-Master.
“Me either,” said Sean. He explained where he’d gotten it from.
“So what are you hoping to find?” Jeanine asked.
Sean shook his head. “I have no idea,” he confessed. “No idea at all.”
“Mind if I take a look?” Jeanine asked.
“Be my guest,” said Sean. He watched as she went through the slides.
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“Neither do I,” replied Sean.
“These slides are pictures of the Peabody School,” Jeanine noted.
Sean nodded.
“What are they supposed to show?” asked Jeanine.
Sean shook his head. He hated to admit it, but he didn’t have a clue. “I thought if I could compare some photos with the slides, it might give me an idea, but it hasn’t.”
“Maybe you should go talk to Felicity Huffer,” Jeanine suggested.
“That’s whom I got them from. Or rather my daughter did. Felicity Huffer just told her the answer to our problem is there and to go figure it out for herself.”
Jeanine made a face. “I could see her doing that and it having no
thing to do with the solution to your problem.”
“She could,” Sean said, thinking of what she’d been like.
“Age doesn’t necessarily make people nicer,” said Jeanine.
“That’s for sure,” Marvin interjected.
Sean glared at him, and he went back to reading the papers he’d been given.
“What do you think the odds of that are?” Sean asked Jeanine.
“I’ll tell you what,” Jeanine said after a moment had gone by. “Felicity’s daughter is on the board of the Longely Historical Society. Maybe she can help us. Would you like me to talk to her?”
Sean nodded.
“All right then,” said Jeanine. “And would you mind if I kept the View-Master and looked at the slides again? Maybe something will occur to me.”
Sean could feel himself smiling. “That would be lovely,” he said.
“Good,” Jeanine said. “I’ll call you either way.” She gathered up the materials and withdrew to her office.
A few minutes later Sean and Marvin were out the door.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I found?” Marvin asked when they were settled in Marvin’s black limo.
“What?” Sean asked as he fastened his seat belt. He hated riding in this car. It reminded him of riding in a hearse, but as Libby had said to him when he’d complained, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“I didn’t find out anything. All the articles in the papers reported Bessie Osgood’s death as an accident.”
“That’s what I expected,” Sean said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because that’s what was in everyone’s interest to do. After all, if you report a murder at a private boarding/day school, most people will pull their kids out.”
“True,” Marvin said.
“Of course, they did, anyway,” Sean said.
He and Marvin were silent for a moment.
Then Sean said, “Bessie’s death pretty much closed the school.”
“What happened to the owner?”
“George Marak killed himself. He’d put all the money he had, plus his wife’s money, into the place, as well as borrowing from his family and friends. He couldn’t stand the disgrace when it became clear that the school was going to have to close, so he shot himself in the garage. The note he left asked his wife to forgive him for the shame he’d brought on her.
“It would have been more considerate if he’d killed himself somewhere else, because she and his son found his body when they came back from grocery shopping. PS: The kid was in the front seat, so he saw everything. The wife never got over it. I dare say the kid didn’t, either. The wife died in an auto accident six months later. She’d been drinking and ran her car into a tree. Their kid, poor thing, went to live with a relative in Texas or Wyoming, some place like that.”
“That sucks,” Marvin said.
“Doesn’t it, though.” Sean leaned back in his seat. “Like I said, the Peabody School has always been a bad-luck place. And now, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to take a drive up to Lexus Gardens and see if we can talk to Ed Banks and find out what Amethyst wanted from him.”
Sean could feel his gut tightening as Marvin zoomed away from the curb without looking or putting his signal light on. He’d faced coked-up guys and guys with loaded rifles in the line of duty, but they weren’t as scary as driving with Marvin.
Chapter 10
Bernie took in a breath of fresh air as she drove toward Zachery Timberland’s office. It was a beautiful late fall afternoon, and she was glad to be outside driving around instead of inside the shop. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was a little after three, and she figured she didn’t have to start up to the Peabody School until four-thirty, which should leave her more than enough time to talk to Timberland.
She drove slowly, enjoying the sensation of being in the car, imagining what fun a road trip to Vermont with Brandon would be. She was thinking that fall was her favorite season of the year when her cell phone trilled “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” It was her dad’s ring. She fished her cell out of her bag and answered it.
“Dad?” she said.
She got static.
“Dad?”
He was talking, but his voice sounded like a jigsaw puzzle—each syllable another piece. She couldn’t understand a thing he was saying. She tried calling back. Nothing. She’d just noticed she was down to no bars when her phone went dead. That was when she remembered she’d forgotten to charge it last night. Drat and double drat, she thought as she tossed her cell on the seat next to her. She wondered if her dad wanted to tell her something about Zachery Timberland. He was always a big one for armchair quarterbacking. Oh well. Too late now.
She knew Timberland well enough to say hello to. Her only memory of him was the time, last March, she’d met him at Laura’s place. She’d shaken his hand, and it had been unpleasantly clammy.
When she’d called around this morning, it turned out that none of her friends knew him either, not surprising when you considered that his family had moved away after the Bessie Osgood incident, and he’d just come back to town a couple of years ago. Couple that with the fact that Timberland had palled around with Amethyst and Inez back then and you had something interesting going on.
And then there was the fact that Timberland was a volunteer at the Haunted House, although according to her dad, he hadn’t been scheduled to work there when Amethyst had died, not that that meant anything. He could have easily come and gone without being seen.
When she’d called him, she’d told him she was interested in shopping around for a new insurance policy. It was a plausible story, but she was pretty sure he hadn’t believed her. She couldn’t say why she thought that but something in his tone of voice when she’d talked to him on the phone had led her to that conclusion. So, if that was the case, and she was almost certain it was, the question became, Why was he talking to her?
He probably had a pretty good idea of what she wanted to talk to him about. Or maybe not. After all, she hadn’t known that he’d been friends with Amethyst Applegate until Jeanine had told her dad. Or with Bob Small. Or Inez. Or Zinnia. Which got her thinking about flowers for the dining room at the Peabody School. Maybe she should get some more pots of mums to put on the table. In her view, flowers were like diamonds. You could never have too many.
Bernie sighed as she made a left onto Avondale Place. Libby really hadn’t wanted to go back to the Peabody School by herself, and Bernie couldn’t really blame her. If what had happened to Libby had happened to her, she’d be thoroughly freaked out, too. Well, not really. Libby always overreacted to this kind of stuff, even though, according to her mom, she had the “gift.” Or maybe that was the reason she did it. Bernie was glad she’d never been blessed that way.
Usually, Bernie thought of Halloween in terms of crunching leaves underfoot, excited children, hot mulled cider, and pumpkin spice cupcakes with cream-cheese icing on top. But after what had happened with Amethyst, her thoughts were darker.
Try as she might, she couldn’t get Amethyst’s head out of her mind. And even though she’d really disliked her, she wasn’t sure Amethyst had deserved to die that way. She wasn’t sure that anyone did. Although if they did, Amethyst would be up there on her list. She’d made bad things happen wherever she’d gone.
That much was not debatable. And there was a good chance she might have killed someone as well. Looked at in that light, whoever had killed Amethyst had done the world a favor. Not that her father or her sister would agree with that thought. And on that note, Bernie turned into the driveway of the house where the Timberland Insurance Company was located.
The house was a classic wooden, two-story Colonial, painted a boring shade of beige, with white trim. The two front windows had white blinds pulled halfway down. Bernie parked her car, walked up three steps, rang the doorbell, and walked in. The hallway was a different shade of beige. Obviously, Timberland had beige on his mind. Either
that or he’d gotten a deal on the paint.
The receptionist’s desk, which was situated in what had been the sitting room of the house, was empty. Judging from the cup that was sitting there, someone had inhabited that desk not too long ago. She was probably beige, too, Bernie reflected. A moment later Zachery Timberland came out. When he looked at her, Bernie decided he resembled a shark. All teeth. She didn’t remember so many teeth from the last time she’d seen him.
“So you want to change your insurance policy, do you?” he asked.
Bernie smiled her charming smile. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Life?”
“No. Automobile. I told you that.”
Timberland put his palms outward. “Everyone makes mistakes. Some people make more then others,” he said, glancing pointedly in her direction.
Great, Bernie thought as she kept smiling. “I’m sure that’s true.”
Timberland took a step closer to her. “I know it is.”
Bernie remained where she was. She was damned if she was going to move for this guy. She’d been hoping to start with the buying the insurance thing and to gradually work the conversation around to the Peabody School, but things didn’t seem to be going that way.
“So,” Bernie said, trying again, “can you give me a quote on a policy for my car?”
Timberland’s smile got bigger. Bernie decided he’d definitely gotten veneers on his teeth.
“No. But I can give you a quote on a life-insurance policy.”
“Really? You think I’m going to need one?”
“Everyone needs one,” Timberland said in a bland voice.
“Is that the case?”
“It certainly is.”
“So that’s not a threat or anything?”
“What a fertile imagination you have. Why would I threaten you?”
“I don’t know.”
“There you go.” Timberland leered at her. “I like the shoes.”
Bernie considered them for a moment. They were high brown suede boots with a thin gold chain threaded through the top. She’d gotten them at deep discount last summer, when she’d been looking for a convection oven on the Lower East Side.
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