“Not really. The only person he ever said anything about, because he was frustrated, was Ellen Terry.”
“Why? What frustrated him about her?”
“It’s more like ‘what didn’t?’ Oh, you remember John.” He raised his eyebrows. “Mr. Organization. Ellen isn’t exactly what anyone would call your typical teacher. Organization is not her strong point. Sometimes she would ask questions in the lounge, and one of us would try to help her. What that woman didn’t know would—” Suddenly, Bob stopped talking, a shocked expression on his face.
“What’s wrong, Bob? Are you all right?”
“Yes. But I remembered something,” he said, looking at Grace in a most peculiar way.
“What? You remember what?”
“A conversation that happened in the lounge a few weeks ago. Ginny Shadley is rarely in the teacher’s lounge, but she happened to be there that day. Evan was also and Ellen Terry and me and—no, I think that’s all.”
“A conversation? About what?”
He stared at her, a stricken look on his face. “Poison.”
“What?”
“Yes. At the time, I didn’t think much about it because Ellen Terry was talking about putting on Arsenic and Old Lace. I think that’s how the subject came up.”
Grace tried not to let her excitement show. She calmed herself down, took a deep breath, and worked hard not to reveal her interest. “What do you remember about this discussion?”
“Let me think,” Bob said, rubbing his forehead. “I don’t know who started the conversation. I was running some assignments off on the copier, so I didn’t hear the first part of the discussion. By the time I was done and walked over there, Ellen Terry was asking Evan a question about arsenic, since it was in her play. I think Evan said something about his CSI unit, and Ginny Shadley asked him a couple of questions about the kinds of poisons he had upstairs. Evan said something about Ginny coming over to his lab. He’d show her what chemicals he had, and how he set up this unit for the chemistry students. To tell you the truth, I didn’t talk, and I don’t remember the entire conversation. Frankly, I don’t know much about poisons, so I kind of sat, listening, as I was grading papers.”
“Do you remember how people reacted?”
“I remember Ginny was really intrigued because she’s been teaching at least ten years now, and she suggested they might think about a one-semester forensics class where they could team teach. I recall Ellen Terry joking about it, saying she could learn just as much on television or the Internet. She tends to have unusual reactions to things anyway. You never quite know what she’s thinking. Keep that book, Grace, if it will help you.”
“Thanks. It gives me more to think about. I hope you have a good year-and-a-half, Bob.”
Bob smiled. “I plan to.” He glanced at the wall clock. “You might want to slip out before the hallways are crowded.”
The bell rang and Grace grabbed her coat, scooting out of Bob’s room before teenagers began filling the doorway. She said hello to several she knew and went down the stairs, past the office, and down again to the front door and her car. Trudging through the slush and water in the thawing February day, she almost slipped, but caught herself by grabbing the hood of her car. That’s when she noticed the envelope under her windshield wiper.
What’s this? she thought. She looked around, grabbed the envelope, unlocked her car, and got inside. Opening the corner at the short end of the envelope, she pulled out a piece of typing paper, unfolding it. Someone had cut out magazine letters, just like the missing note Liz Hardy claimed she’d received. Holding it by the corner in case TJ might be able to get fingerprints from it, Grace read the note. Her face grim, she reread the note, shaking her head. A killer is still out there, she thought, and now I may have a target on my back.
She climbed back out of her car and looked down the row of three other cars in the parking area. Grace knew Alex Reid’s on the end and Ann Cummings’ car right next to Grace’s. But she didn’t recognize the black car in between them. She walked along the back of the row. The black car’s license plate said, “Liz.”
How easy it would be to slip this under my windshield wiper on the way into the school, she thought.
Chapter Twenty-One
That same morning, TJ Sweeney decided she would call Ellen Terry’s last school before she went to talk with Superintendent Johnson. Might be a good idea to find out what they had to say about her and why she left.
The secretary at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows explained that Principal Kay Bailey was in a meeting, but would call her back. TJ fiddled around with some paperwork, waiting for the call. She went through a mental checklist of questions she needed to ask the principal, and followed it with a written list of possible questions for Johnson.
Her mind wandered back to Grace. Her friend was talking with Bob Godina this morning about evaluations, figuring she and TJ would touch base around lunchtime or after. Grace said Jeff Maitlin had called Todd Janicke to start on Lockwood House again; fortunately, Janicke hadn’t started another huge project in the past week. He was probably too busy still swearing from Jeff’s call telling him to stop work, TJ thought.
Jeff Maitlin. TJ knew his return would cut down on her coffee and pie sessions with Grace. She sat in silence for a few minutes, staring at the wall. She’d never really known Grace when she had a man in her life. Roger Kimball died years ago, so Grace had been alone all this time. She’d been busy for years raising her three children, and had always been pleasant and happy, but more so lately since Maitlin had returned. She had a blush to her face, a gleam in her eyes which TJ hadn’t seen before. Part of her thought it was about time Grace had some love in her life.
Well, she’d check on Grace’s mood if she stopped by later. She dropped her feet from their perch on the desk drawer and pawed through some papers on her desk. Still, introducing Maitlin into their lives on a more permanent basis would change the time Grace had to spend with TJ. Well, she thought, we’ll have to deal with it. I—I will have to deal with it.
When her phone rang, Myers told her he had the principal on the line from Nebraska.
“Hello, Principal Bailey,” TJ said. “Thanks so much for returning my call.”
The female voice at the other end of the phone sounded professional, no nonsense, to the point. “Detective Sweeney. My secretary said you wanted to talk with me about Ellen Terry. What can I help you with? She isn’t in trouble, is she?”
TJ paused. “Would you think she might be?”
“Not at all, but you are a police detective. Let’s see what I can tell you. I still have some records for her here. I’m curious about why you’re asking about her.”
“We’ve had some problems back here at the high school in Endurance, Illinois, so I’m checking on everyone who is new to the faculty in the last year. I am aware she left your school and came here right at the start of the school year.”
“Yes. It was kind of unusual. She made a lot of friends here, and she did a great job. The faculty embraced her because she had no family; her parents had been killed in a plane accident when she was only a young teenager, so I gather she’d been raised in foster homes. The kids were drawn to her also, and her play productions were first rate.”
TJ waited a moment for her to go on, but when she didn’t, the detective asked, “Did you find her at all strange or unusual?”
“Hmm. No, not really. Despite being in her thirties, I think this was her first teaching job. She’d graduated as a nontraditional student from the University of Minnesota a year earlier.”
“Did she give any reason why she left your school? She came here for a part-time job, but I gather she had worked full-time at your private school.”
Bailey thought a moment. “I wish I could answer your question, Detective. The thing is, you asked if she was strange or unusual. She wasn’t strange at all, but her leaving was.”
“How do you mean?”
“She turned in her letter of resignation through the mail r
ather than coming in to talk about it. Surprised all of us. I can’t tell you how difficult it was since her decision was just before the start of our school year. Because she had talked with her students about play selections for the following year, they were devastated when she left. We had no idea she was even considering leaving. Late summer is a terrible time to try to find a quality person to take a teaching job. You know, most of those positions have been filled much earlier in the spring or summer. At the time, I thought it wasn’t like her to leave us hanging. I walked down to check her room, thinking she might have left some of her files and property there. But it was completely cleaned out, and I have no idea when she did that. Ellen simply was gone, leaving her keys in her desk drawer. I received a fax from her new school in Endurance, requesting her information, so I sent it right away.”
“It does seem strange, like she left very quickly. Nothing disastrous happened, or she wasn’t angry or upset about something? What else can you tell me about Ms. Terry? Did she have good evaluations?”
“The best. As I said, everyone really liked her; for a first-year teacher, she was quite good. Of course, a nontraditional, beginning teacher has a real advantage. Maturity makes a profound difference. Your gain is our loss, I’m afraid.”
TJ nodded her head, furrowing her eyebrows as she thought about Grace’s description of Terry. “Thank you very much, Ms. Bailey. I appreciate your help, especially since I realize how busy working people are these days.”
“You’re welcome, Detective Sweeney. Call anytime.”
TJ put the receiver down thoughtfully, going over the conversation in her head while she looked down at the notes she’d written. She’d ask Dawn Johnson about Terry’s quick departure from the Nebraska school since she had interviewed her. Maybe she would know why Terry left her last position.
Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting in Johnson’s office, thinking she had not talked to so many school administrators in one day since she’d been caught putting a box of toads in the air shaft leading into the principal’s office when she was in junior high. Watching people come and go, TJ quietly observed the superintendent’s outer office. Several parents came in with forms for various programs, while one of the two secretaries appeared to be fielding phone calls about transportation issues with the bus driver. She sat back in a leather chair, checked her phone, and stuck it back into her inside coat pocket. A large fish tank sat on one side of the room, water bubbling constantly, fish darting in and out between fronds of moss, and a fat scavenger trolling the bottom. All in all, TJ thought, it seemed like a quiet, orderly place to work, hardly a workplace which had seen two murders recently.
When the door to Johnson’s office opened, TJ heard the superintendent’s voice ushering out whoever had the appointment before her. It was Alex Reid, probably stopping in for a pep talk since he’d been bumped upstairs. Everyone knew he was in over his head, but perhaps Johnson had him in to discuss his replacement for the remainder of the year. The superintendent eyed TJ, and as Alex left, Johnson came over, a smile on her face.
“Come on in, Sweeney,” she said, gesturing for the detective to go ahead of her. She indicated a chair in front of her desk; then, instead of sitting behind the desk, she took the other chair and turned it toward TJ. Pointing to a huge pile of folders on her desk, she said, “This is what education has come to these days. Testing, grant money, paperwork listing facts and figures which must go into the state board, booklets filled with new laws and mandates that must be applied, changes to programs you just put in place which now must be redrawn, and…well, I don’t have to tell you, Sweeney, what we already know since you work in law enforcement. Now we have all this information that has to go in about the new evaluations.”
Johnson put her hands in the air and shook her head, a look of disgust on her face. “John Hardy had a good handle on the evaluation situation, but now I have Alex Reid.” She gave Sweeney a pained look, saying, “That was off the record…the remark about Alex.” She once again shook her head back and forth. “So now, now we have two murders, one an administrator and the other a teacher. Tell me you’ve made progress on figuring this out because I have parents on my back daily.”
TJ chuckled and said, “Me too. You sound like the police chief. You know, I spent a lot of time in the principal’s office when I was in school, so I’m used to being in trouble around here.” They both laughed. “The problem with a murder investigation is you have to put all the pieces into the puzzle very carefully, making sure you dot each ‘i’ and cross each ‘t.’ However,” said TJ, a smile on her face, “I can assure you we are about to put the last few pieces into the puzzle. I’m positive, Ms. Superintendent, we are going to solve this fairly soon.”
“Dawn, call me Dawn. Ah, what a relief to hear. You came here to ask me more questions, I’d imagine. What can I do to help now that I’m done ranting about all the uglier parts of my job?”
“I need to ask you first about fingerprinting. You fingerprint everyone who works in the school, right?”
She nodded. “Even myself. Cooks, aides, janitors, teachers, administrators…everyone.”
“Good answer. I was hoping you would affirm that. I also need to ask you some questions about teacher evaluations.”
“Okay, what do you need to know?”
“Is it true Hardy was supposed to give you recommendations for two groups: personnel he recommended you should keep, and personnel he’d carefully followed and was recommending for remediation or firing?”
“Yes, to both. We have to send the information to the state”—she pointed to the piles of paper—“and we need to discuss it in closed session at the next school board meeting, which is approaching.”
“Had Hardy given you this information yet?”
“No. We were planning to meet on the Monday afternoon following the day he was murdered.”
“Does this mean you have no idea what he was going to tell you about those personnel issues, or had you discussed it more informally before?”
“We had discussed it briefly from time to time, yes,” said Johnson, nodding.
“Tell me about the late Evan Harrington. Had he mentioned to you that Harrington had a negative evaluation, so he was going to recommend remediation?”
Dawn Johnson looked confused. “Evan? Absolutely not. He was one of the shining young stars of the faculty.”
“Would it surprise you to learn Hardy’s recommendation, both in his files and a copy in Harrington’s desk drawer, was negative, and Hardy signed the papers saying Harrington should be remediated? What does that mean, by the way?”
“Seriously? It makes no sense. He spoke to me on several occasions about Evan Harrington.” She drew a deep breath, thinking about the interpretation of this news. “I can’t explain why you would see such findings in his personnel folder. Remediation, by the way, means the principal goes over a list of areas where the teacher needs to improve and suggests ways for him to do so. The following semester, he increases his supervision to see if he has improved. But Evan Harrington would never have been on his probation list.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” said TJ. “Did Hardy mention any of the teachers he was going to recommend for remediation, people who needed to either be let go or helped with improvement?”
“We hadn’t reached that point yet.”
“Hmm…Too bad.”
“Detective, do you think this has something to do with why they were killed?”
“It’s one of the pieces of the puzzle, D-Dawn.” TJ stumbled a bit on the “Dawn” moniker since she was used to school administrators calling her mother, who’d give a much worse punishment than the school. “I just talked with the former principal of Ellen Terry, your high school drama teacher. She gave a glowing report about Terry’s work at their school, but I hear bits and pieces from people at our high school about unprofessional behavior and unusual attitudes on Terry’s part. Perhaps they’re rumors, but it does seem like a bit of smoke that needs to be checke
d out. I have the impression she and John Hardy locked horns occasionally, yet her own personnel record was spotless at her last school and positive in Hardy’s file cabinet.”
“I wish I could help you. He did mention once to me, much earlier in the year, he was concerned about her, but then I didn’t hear anything else. That’s John, however; he usually solved his own problems before he said anything to worry me. He wasn’t one of those administrators who came running to my office with every little thing. I can tell you we hired her at the last moment. In fact, we had to fill in the position with an emergency person before we found her. She actually started the second week of school, relieving John considerably when she showed up with her credentials.”
TJ nodded her head. “Sounds like the person I need to talk with is John Hardy, unfortunately, so I believe I will keep pushing on. But I can assure you, Dawn, we are getting close to solving this. I know this sounds strange, but large chunks of my job involve thinking about the pieces and how they match. I can feel the end coming, and the pieces are beginning to fit together.”
Johnson smiled. “I will be so relieved. Can’t tell you how it’s weighed on my mind, much more than all these piles of paper. Thanks, TJ. Anything else I can do or help you with, just call.”
“I will,” said TJ as she moved to leave. She pulled one of her business cards out of her jacket saying, “Here’s my number if you think of anything else.” Walking into the outer office, she retrieved her phone from her pocket, turning the volume back up. She had felt it vibrate while she was talking to Johnson. Checking the phone, she saw a voicemail from Grace.
“TJ. It’s me. I’m going to head up to the police station. Right now, it’s 11:35, so I’ll meet you there or give the information I have to Myers. I got a warning note stuck on my car windshield. Could have fingerprints. Don’t worry, I was careful. See you soon.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Grace was talking to Myers at the front desk of the police station when TJ walked in. Myers was mildly flirting with her, and had given her coffee and doughnuts. Grace was laughing at something Myers had just said when TJ approached.
Death Takes No Bribes: An Endurance Mystery (Endurance Mysteries Book 3) Page 17