Three May Keep a Secret (An Endurance Mystery)

by Susan Van Kirk

  In a separate room were shelves with old yearbooks from various local schools, many of them donated by area inhabitants, especially when their relatives died. Old yearbooks didn’t have much value except as genealogy records.

  Grace set her laptop and purse down on a chair and began looking for the Endurance yearbooks. After several dead ends, she spotted them over in the far corner stacked up in neat rows. She saw first the 1971 yearbook, which would have been Brenda’s graduating year. Turning her head sideways, she looked for the numbers on the spines of the books. Some of them were out of place. Then she found what she was looking for: the 1968 Endurance High School yearbook. That was the year Brenda would have been a freshman. The Kessler kid was a little older than she was, and Nick Lawler would have been, maybe, a junior that year. Now, more than ever, Grace felt she was on the right track. Brenda knew both of those boys, and she had some kind of insight into that fire story. But what? Did she have some idea of where they might find the Kessler kid—Ted—because she knew him so long ago? Grace pulled the yearbook out and took it over to a table where she’d laid her laptop and notebook. Opening up the yearbook, she started at the beginning.

  She was surprised to find a color layout, not black and white, just inside the front cover. It must have been the senior class. They were sitting out on the grass in the park that ran south of the high school. Several had guitars and all were in clothing that shouted late sixties. Instantly amusing. She opened the first page and saw the school insignia and the name of the yearbook, The Maroon and Gold. Browsing through the class pictures—seniors first—she smiled at all the flipped-up hairstyles on the girls and the dark-framed glasses on everyone.

  Grace checked out the freshmen photos and found Brenda right away. She was staring straight at the camera lens with long hair pulled back behind her ears and a mouth that was a straight line across her face. She appeared to be wearing a jumper with a white, high-collared blouse underneath. Pictured up against a brick wall, she was staring straight ahead, a brief glimpse of what she would later become. Grace always felt as if her own students changed so completely in looks from their freshman year to their senior year.

  She turned the pages to see if she could find Ted Kessler. There he was. He wore a buttoned-down, collared shirt with some kind of pattern in the material. His hair was really short on the sides and the top had a wave to it. Huge glasses sat on his nose—a little low—and his eyes stared up through the upper part of the lenses. Ears announced themselves prominently on the sides of his head. His mouth smiled in a closed bow that curved symmetrically, and his Adam’s apple was really protuberant. He looked very young for a sophomore. Strange, thought Grace. You sure don’t look like a killer. Or a football player. But evidently you did play ball. I guess in small towns that happens. The jury is still out on the killer idea, but most people think you did it. She studied his face, looking for some darker cast to his eyes, some sign of madness. I guess you can’t always see that, she thought.

  She fingered the good-luck charm in her pocket and sat back in the straight-backed wooden chair. Edgar Allan Poe fits in here somewhere too. The number in Brenda’s notes, 297, referred to the first page of the short story, “The Purloined Letter.” It was in the much-thumbed Poe tome in Brenda’s office. Grace had taught it a few times when she worked at the high school. It was about the theft of a valuable letter that would have caused a political scandal. It eventually was found hidden in plain sight. No one thought to look for it there. How did that fit with Ted Kessler? Was he, too, hiding in plain sight? She concentrated on his photo again, trying to will him to tell her.

  Maybe I should check out Nick Lawler, she thought. He would have been a junior or senior, depending on when his birthday fell. She turned the pages back to the front looking in the senior section. He would have been between Lathrop and Lester on page eleven. But no photo. So, she thought, let’s try the juniors. Turning multiple pages, she shifted to the back of the book and looked for Lawler among that class. He should have been between Larimer and Leng, but he wasn’t there. Hmmm . . . Maybe he dropped out or perhaps didn’t have a photo taken. Wouldn’t surprise me after reading and hearing about his family. They probably didn’t care and couldn’t afford it.

  She checked the back for an index but didn’t find one. Turning to the sports section, she looked for the football team. The team was huge and the photo was taken on bleachers out at the football field. The quality was grainy at best and made it difficult to see individual faces. She traced her finger along the names under the photo—the print was tiny too—and found what she was looking for: Ted Kessler. He looked about as big as the guys sitting beside him, and, with all those shoulder pads on, it was hard to tell much about his development. Grace squinted at the grainy, gray face. Because everything was colorless, she couldn’t tell what his hair was like or his complexion. She looked back through the names again and found another familiar one: Nick Lawler. Ah, I’ve finally found you. Counting over in the fourth row of the photo, she saw a boy with dark, curly hair staring at the camera, but again the photo was too small and too grainy to make out his features. At least he did exist, she thought.

  She set the volume back down, and decided to glance through the rest of the yearbook. Who knew what she might find? Page after page of black, gray, and white photos of long-ago students, most of them into their early sixties by now. Some, like Nick Lawler, dead. Cheerleaders with pompons, saddle shoes, miniskirts, chalk words on actual blackboards, tug-of-war games at the park, class officers, and candid photos. She turned the pages over, looking at candid shots from the school hallways and ball games. Occasionally she saw names and faces of people she knew in town, or sometimes she knew their children or grandchildren. And then she suddenly sat up and pulled the book off the table again. Her mouth fell open and her left hand flew to her chest. There, on page eighty-seven, was a candid shot. Grace leaned forward and stared at two students sitting on the floor outside their lockers. She recognized Brenda Norris and Ted Kessler. Brenda had known him. Grace was almost giddy and looked around for someone to tell.

  So what did that mean? Were they friends? Could she have known anything about the fires because of her relationship with him? Did she know where he went when he took off that night? He was a grade older than she, but maybe they were more than just casual acquaintances. Brenda had written “The Purloined Letter.” Hide in plain sight. Could it be that she knew where Ted Kessler was, and he wasn’t so far away?

  Frowning, she sat there for several minutes trying to decide how she could find out anything else from this yearbook. How could she make these pictures speak to her? Turning the pages backwards, she looked at the football photo again. She’d like to know what the Lawler kid looked like, but it was impossible in this grainy 1968 photo. How could she make that happen?

  Then she remembered someone who could: Becca Baxter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  “Seriously?” TJ said as Grace spread out the voluminous skirt of the dress for her parade attire on Saturday. “Do you plan to use it for a full set of sails on a float?”

  Grace smiled and picked a small piece of lint from the skirt. “Got it at the college costume shop and also found ones for Deb and Jill. I figured you’d be on duty ‘serving and protecting,’ and besides, you don’t do costumes.”

  “Got that right, but I might reconsider for this. Maybe I could wear a long, dark coat, carry a fake, old-fashioned rifle, and stick a handlebar moustache on my face.”

  Grace hung the long dress up on the back of her bedroom door. “It amazes me that they could put twenty buttons down the back and button and unbutton them just to get it off and on. And, by the way, no corset. I refuse to have my lungs smothered in whale bones. This costume was made more recently so it doesn’t have an eighteen-inch waist, thank goodness.” Grace sighed. “Jill and Deb are supposed to stop by Friday morning to try theirs on.”

  TJ followed her downstairs to the kitchen and Grace poured
two glasses of white wine. “Sit right there while I cut up vegetables. I’m going to make a pot of split-pea soup.” She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bag of vegetables Lettie had brought from her garden. TJ sat on a kitchen stool next to the island where Grace was busy with a cutting board.

  “So,” began Grace, “how is your investigation going?”

  TJ sipped her wine. “Lots of loose ends to tie up and a decided lack of physical evidence, but we found Wakeley’s gun at the scene.”

  “Does that make him your best suspect? And are these two separate murders, or do you think they’re related?”

  TJ went over to the pantry, rummaged around, and returned with a box of crackers. She spread a few out on the counter and shared them with Grace. “Right now I’m leaning toward Wake-ley for both, but I’m not sure I have a theory yet about how they’re tied together.”

  “Really? You think it was the same person?”

  “Would you rather have two murderers loose in Endurance, Grace?”

  “Well, got me there.” She dropped some chopped carrots into the soup pot. “But the method was totally different: fire and bullets.”

  “Sturgis is still a prime candidate for Brenda, but I’m not sure I see him tied in with Ronda. I think Ronda played fast and loose with information she heard and tried to hold up the wrong person for money. My guess is she knew something and whoever she was blackmailing killed her. So the question is—how does Wakeley tie in with both murders, assuming they were done by the same killer? Right now that’s what I’m working on.”

  “On the other hand, if Sturgis killed Brenda, then someone else may have killed Ronda.”

  “That’s a possibility, too,” TJ said, “unless Sturgis is the one Ronda tried to shake down. Not sure why she’d do that since we have no connection between Sturgis and Brenda other than the lawsuit, and Sturgis doesn’t have a licensed gun.” She reached over and took a piece of celery from the counter and popped it into her mouth. “But it’s easy to get an illegal weapon or maybe steal Wakeley’s from his truck. Sturgis could have done that.”

  “What have you found out about Dan Wakeley that makes you think he’s such a good prospect?”

  “Got a search warrant for his bank records. Brenda asked for twenty thousand dollars, if I’m to believe Wakeley. That put him between a huge rock and a hard place. How could he take money out of the bank without his wife finding out? His erratic behavior just before Brenda died points to him becoming increasingly panicked over that prospect. She sure had her clutches into him,” TJ said, and she took another swallow of wine.

  Grace thought for a moment, a puzzled look on her face. “So how does that also put him at Ronda’s scene?”

  “He doesn’t have an alibi for either night when Brenda or Ronda died. Friday night he was out driving around. Seems to do that an awful lot. But we can’t get him to admit Ronda saw him with Brenda at the bar, and even though they left separately, they didn’t fool Ronda. I think Ronda put the squeeze on him for money. That’s why, even after Brenda’s death, he took out a sizable amount, thought he’d pay Ronda off, and then he changed his mind. After all, he’d already killed Brenda. Why not also get rid of the one person who was a problem when it came to him sliding back into the good graces of his wife and children?”

  “Did you ask him about the money?” Grace said, dropping some celery into the pot.

  “Of course. He said he’d decided to take a trip for a week—take some time off he had coming—and let things quiet down a bit at home.”

  “And what about the gun?”

  “He says it was stolen about two weeks back. It’s true that he turned in a stolen gun report and it’s a registered gun. Then it turns up at Ronda’s murder site. But, you know, ‘Oh, officer, my gun was stolen,’ has a ring of ‘Please, I’ve heard this all before’ to it.”

  “So you are holding Wakeley, right?”

  “Can’t do it much longer until I have a stronger case that ties him to one or both murders. I can hold him with the gun evidence, but I still need more. Theories and speculation are one thing, but DA Sorensen likes actual physical evidence. Wakeley certainly had the motive to kill Brenda, the lack of an alibi, and the fire knowledge. He’s a good suspect for that death, but the case for Ronda’s murder is weaker.”

  “I know people are talking all over town about why no one’s been charged and nothing seems to be happening.”

  “Of course. It doesn’t help that your boss, Maitlin, has been reporting on it regularly in the paper. Guess I should be happy the paper only comes out three days a week instead of six.”

  Grace put the pot on the stove, measured several cups of water, poured them on top of the vegetables, and turned on the burner. “So, I’ve thought about this constantly, too, as I’ve worked on the stories for the centennial.” She paused and turned around to face the detective. “TJ, what if Brenda’s death was not about blackmail? What if Ronda’s death was? And what if they were related by something that both women knew? What if a drunken Brenda blabbed something to Ronda at the bar?”

  “I’m listening. Like what?”

  “Remember when Brenda came up to us weeks ago and talked about some story she was working on that would blow the lid right off this town?”

  “Sure, but I figured it was just Brenda, who exaggerated.”

  “What if she did have a story? And what if it threatened someone? I think, TJ, that Ted Kessler may not only be alive, but even living somewhere near here under an assumed name. What if Brenda found him? Think about that for a moment. Blow the lid off this town?” Grace cleaned up the last of the vegetable peels, ran them down the disposal, cleaned off the countertop, sat down, and poured more wine into both her glass and TJ’s.

  TJ was silent for a moment. Then, “Why wouldn’t someone recognize Ted Kessler if he were still around?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet. But he isn’t a teenager anymore.”

  “And what, pray tell, has led you to these conclusions?”

  “I know she was working on some big story. Even Jeff Maitlin says she had something she was keeping under her hat.”

  “We looked at her research.”

  “Me, too, and it sent me to the Historical Society. I examined the old newspaper coverage of the fires back in the sixties. And I also checked out the yearbook that had the photos of Brenda and Ted Kessler. She knew him, TJ. In the ’sixty-eight yearbook I found a candid shot of both Brenda and Ted together as they sat on the floor near lockers in the high school. Kessler’s also in a photo of the football team. Brenda put a number ‘thirty-two’ in her notes. I’m curious about whether that might be Kessler’s football number. The football team photo is really grainy and it’s hard to see faces or numbers. I’m going to have all of those photos blown up and clarified. Maybe that will help me figure out what Brenda was checking. She knew Kessler and she had more information in her head than I do. She didn’t need photos clarified or enlarged. She was there. I hope that if I blow up the photos I’ll figure out her secret story.”

  “But what does this have to do with whoever killed her?”

  “I’m getting to that. What if Ted Kessler’s still alive and she’s figured out where? Maybe she also had his photo blown up and aged so you could see what he looks like now.” Grace excitedly explained the connection to the Poe story and how Ted Kessler could be hiding in plain sight.

  “But why would he come back here?” TJ asked.

  Grace’s face went from passionate to dismayed. “That’s a good question that I haven’t figured out yet. But I’m working on it.” She turned around and lowered the heat under the soup pot and added a lid. Then, “You know this Kessler kid was a loner and sometimes in trouble. Maybe he set those fires prior to the fire at his parents’ house just to get attention. What if his parents found out and he had to do something fast? I’ve thought a great deal about Jeff Maitlin’s description of a similar teenage boy who was a fire-starter. He had a lot in common with this Kessler. And i
f he were a sociopath, it wouldn’t have upset him to kill his parents, especially if they threatened to turn him in.”

  “So why kill the other kid too, the one who was at their house that night—Lawless? Lawson?—”

  “Nick Lawler. I haven’t figured that out either.”

  TJ sat in silence and thought about her friend’s ideas.

  Grace checked the split pea soup and turned down the burner even lower so it would simmer. She pulled the good-luck charm out of her pocket and set it on the counter. “And then there’s this.”

  TJ picked it up and examined it. “And this is—?”

  “A good-luck charm I took out of the cold-case box from the fire.”

  “You’re carrying around material evidence? I should arrest you.”

  Grace laughed. “This case is over forty years old. No one really cares. You know I’ll put it back. It reminds me to think about the facts. It has a hole through the middle, as if it were used for a necklace or bracelet. Or perhaps it was on a small chain like those old rabbit’s foot good-luck pieces when we were kids.” She shivered. “Yuck. I can’t believe people kept those.”

  “So how will you use those photos?”

  “Well,” Grace began, “a good friend in Woodbury named Becca Baxter runs a software company and can do anything with computers. I called her, explained my problem, and asked her how to send these photos. She had me scan them at three hundred percent with a high resolution and send them off to her computer. I scanned the fire photos from the mid-sixties and the yearbook photos of Kessler and Brenda, Kessler’s class photo, and a photo of the football team.”

  “The football team?”

  “Kessler was on the team, but so was the kid who died—Nick Lawler. I couldn’t find any other photos of him and I just wanted to see what he looked like.”

  “You have been really busy, Grace. What does your computer guru plan to do?”

  “I don’t understand all the ins and outs of it, but this is how she explained it. She would put the pictures in her editing program, clean up the dust and scratches, and sharpen them. She’s really good at that so I think I’ll be able to see faces better. After she gets the pictures clear, she’ll burn the files to a jump drive and overnight it to my house.”