by Leona Fox
Sadie felt horrible when the call ended. Eliza had been missing for weeks, and her parents didn’t even know. She supposed it was good she’d brought it to light, but at the same time it had to be a huge blow to her mother to get that call. To top it off, Sadie had a bad feeling about the outcome. Why had no one heard from the girl for weeks?
The next morning, drinking her second cup of coffee from the bakery, and sorting the previous day’s mail, Sadie found something unusual. There was an envelope addressed to Sadie that was unstamped. Obviously, it had been shoved into the mailbox to be found with the regular mail. She turned it over in her hands, looking for signs of a return address, before opening the letter. Inside was a single piece of paper. It was an invoice from the local storage center made out to Curtis Beaudry. Someone wanted her to know Curtis had rented a storage container. She called Zack and asked him to come over.
“I can’t do anything with this, Sadie. I have to turn it over to Oxford, as distasteful as that is. No judge will give me a search warrant. In fact, I’d probably be in contempt of court just for asking. All I can do is give this to Oxford.” He picked up the invoice and stood to go.
“Wait,” Sadie said.
“Let me give it to him. I shouldn’t have involved you to begin with. It came to my mailbox, I should tell him about it. And maybe this will get him off my back.” Wishful thinking, she thought, but it had to be worth a try.
Oxford was not pleased that the bill had come to Sadie. He looked at her through narrowed eyes while he examined it. Then he handed both the bill and the envelope off to evidence collection to be fingerprinted.
“You claim this was in your mail?” Oxford asked.
Sadie noticed the lines of strain around his mouth and almost felt sorry for him. Her instinct was to offer him her assistance, but as he was investigating her, it was impossible. He was going to be embarrassed when he realized he was barking up the wrong tree. Not that he didn’t deserve it.
“Yes, it was in with my letters,” she said. “Obviously, someone shoved it through the mail slot.”
“Was it on the top or the bottom?” he asked.
“It was in the middle, as far as I could tell,” she said.
“If someone shoved it through the slot it would have been on the top or the bottom, not the middle,” he said, his eyes gleaming.
“Not in my mailbox,” she said.
“The mail goes in, hits the back and settles in vertically. They don’t lie flat on the bottom because it’s the wrong shape. So if there is mail in there, and someone dropped another piece on top, it potentially could slide down somewhere in the middle; not the top or bottom of the stack.” He looked at her like she was crazy.
“Come here,” she said starting down the stairs, “I’ll show you.”
He followed her down to the front door. She took a stack of antique postcards, opened the door and slid them through the letter slot. She closed the door and opened the box attached to the door on the inside and gestured to Oxford to take a look inside. The postcards all were standing on edge, upright in the narrow space.
“I see,” he said.
“But that doesn’t prove you didn’t just put it there yourself.” Sadie couldn’t help herself, she rolled her eyes at him.
“The longer you insist on investigating me as the murderer, the harder it’s going to be to find who really did it,” she said. “It’s like that time we spent together never happened. Like you don’t know my character at all.”
“Because maybe I don’t,” he snapped. “You can’t tell someone’s character by a few days spent together. If you are any kind of an actress you easily could fool anyone, even me.”
“But I’d have to be fooling Zack as well,” she said. “And I know you trust his instincts. At least, you used to.”
“I can’t trust anyone based on instincts. I have to follow the evidence. Right now the evidence tells me the victim was found in your shop so you are the most likely culprit,” he said.
“Funny,” Sadie said. “The evidence tells me I’m being framed. This invoice in my mailbox likely is going to be bad news.”
“On one hand you tell me there is no evidence; on the other you tell me you are being framed. You can’t have it both ways. Either there is evidence or there isn’t.” Oxford was looking down his nose at her.
“The picture, the necklace and the body in my shop aren’t exactly evidence because they don’t prove I did anything wrong. However, they certainly point you in my direction don’t they? The clear implication is you should be investigating me. And you are, so they’ve succeeded.” She glared at him. “You played right into their hands. Zack didn’t.”
“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Just because you say you didn’t kill Curtis doesn’t mean you didn’t.”
He left after that, leaving Sadie steaming mad and with no clue as to where to look next.
Chapter Five
The phone rang not long after Oxford left. Sadie didn’t recognize the number and almost didn’t answer. She was tired of bad news. But she did answer and was glad because it was the sorority mother.
“I think you should come back and talk to Ida,” she said.
“She knows something but she doesn’t want to tell me, and she won’t tell the police or that horrible man from Oxford. He really was quite nasty. I don’t know how they expect anyone to talk to him.”
“I think the strain of the investigation is getting to him,” Sadie said. “But I’ll happily talk to Ida.”
Sadie drove with Mister B up to the sorority. She wondered if she should’ve called Betty or Lucy, but she thought she could handle this pretty easily on her own. Mister Bradshaw sat in the front seat of her little car looking at the scenery as they drove out past the college. It was a sunny day and Sadie got a glimpse of the ocean as she drove along the bluff.
Sadie and Mister B sat in the same living room waiting for Ida to come down. The house mother had let them in and gone to get Ida, but it was taking much longer than Sadie thought it should. Finally, the house mother came in with Ida trailing behind her. Sadie just sat across from them and looked at the floor.
“You have something you’d like to tell me?” Sadie finally asked after the girls sat in silence for a good five minutes.
“I’m not sure I should tell you,” Ida said haltingly. “I could get someone in trouble.”
“This is a murder investigation, Ida,” Sadie said. “If you know something you need to tell me. Me or the police anyway.”
“I’d rather tell you,” she said, a little bit of spirit in her voice.
“Right then, what is it?” Sadie sat back on the couch. She noticed Mister Bradshaw was leaning against her leg and making no effort to make friends with Ida. That was a little unusual.
“There’s this boy,” Ida said. “David Schmitz, he took chemistry with Curtis. They studied together, and Curtis got an A in the class, but David Schmitz failed. David was complaining that Curtis tricked him.”
“He thinks Curtis fed him false information so he would fail?” Sadie just couldn’t square this version of Curtis with the boy she knew. She shook her head.
“Oh, you didn’t know Curtis like I did,” Ida said. “He was slippery. He had the professors totally snowed.”
“Not all of them,” Sadie said. “Professor Ives says he knows Curtis was cheating.”
A funny little smile lit Ida’s face for a moment and Sadie felt, rather than heard, Mr. B growl, his little body vibrating against her leg. But when she looked at Ida more closely, the smile had gone and she was staring at the carpet.
The fact she wouldn’t make eye contact made Sadie uncomfortable. When she’d been in this house, the girls were confident and strong-willed. They should be more so now, so many years later, not less.
“How long have you known Curtis?” she asked.
“I met him when I started college this fall,” Ida said. “He was working at the computer help desk and I needed help.”
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Now that sounded like Curtis, working the help desk. She absolutely could see him there. She felt the tears prick at the back of her eyes and focused on the task at hand.
“And was he helpful?” Sadie asked.
“Very. He knew just what to do to fix my problem. We spent some time chatting after that.” Ida traced the pattern on the carpet with her toe.
“And when did you find out he was selling cheat sheets for tests?” Sadie watched Ida’s toe with curiosity. What was the girl thinking?
“Oh, almost right away. He brought up the fact he did tutoring and then said he could get test answers, too, for a price.” There was that little smile again.
A chill went down Sadie’s spine. She began thinking the smile was a tell, that it appeared each time the girl lied. But then she chided herself. She only wanted to think Ida was lying because she didn’t want Curtis to be a cheat.
“Do you know where David Schmidt lives?” Sadie asked.
“Schmitz,” Ida corrected her.
“He lives in the big frat house at the bottom of the hill,” she said. “You can’t miss it. There’s a statue of a lion in the yard.”
“The big white house with pillars?” Sadie asked.
“Yes, that’s the one. He has a room there. Although his grades are so bad, I’m not sure how much longer he’ll be able to stay. That fraternity requires you pass all your classes if you want to live there. Drunken brawling is reserved for the smart boys.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Sadie said, although she secretly thought it made a lot of sense.
“Seems like the dumb boys would need to let off steam just like the smart ones. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” she asked, hoping the answer was no.
Ida shook her head, not looking up from the carpet, and Sadie got up to leave. Then she thought better of it and handed Ida a business card and a pen. “Could you put your name and phone number here in case I think of a question later?” she asked.
Ida did as she was asked and handed the card back to Sadie. But she dropped Sadie’s pen into her pocket before she got up to leave.
The house mother waylaid her at the door with a hand on her arm until Ida mounted the stairs. Once Ida had disappeared, she looked Sadie in the eye.
“I’m not sure how much credence you should give her. She’s been acting very strangely, and I don’t know what to make of it.”
“What do you mean?” Sadie asked. Mr. Bradshaw was straining toward the door and she pulled him back to heel.
“Believe it or not, she used to be a very open girl. She looked people in the eye and had some self-confidence. You’d never know it to look at her now.” She frowned in the direction that Ida had disappeared.
“She’s become so strange.”
Sadie thanked her and let Mr. Bradshaw pull her out the door. She sat in the car a few minutes, thinking. Her heart was heavy. She thought she’d known Curtis, but now she didn’t know. Could he have fooled her? She shook her head. She just didn’t know.
She started the car and drove slowly down the hill. Mr. B curled into a ball in the passenger seat. She was tempted to drive right on past the fraternity and just keep going. At the last moment she saw a parking spot right in front of the house and stopped. Even then it took her several minutes to make up her mind to get out of the car.
A grubby looking guy opened the door. Sadie couldn’t bring herself to think of him as a man, even though he had to be in his early twenties. He was unshaven and his clothes looked as though he’d been sleeping in them for a week.
“I’m looking for David,” she said. “Is he here?”
“Um, it depends. Which Dave are we talking about?” he rubbed his face. “We’ve got a few.”
“Schitmit, Shmidtz. I think that’s it. No, it’s Schmitz. David Schmitz.”
“Oh, Davey. He’s downstairs playing pool, I’ll show you the way.” He led Sadie and Mr. B to the stairs.
“You’d better pick up your little dog,” he said. “Barney is down there. He wouldn’t hurt anything on purpose, but he’s kind of big.”
Sadie nodded and picked Mr. Bradshaw up before following her guide down the stairs into a finished basement. He opened the first door in the hall and they went into a large room with a pool table in the middle, and a conversation pit with a giant TV at the other end. The near end was home to a bar stocked to the rafters. A huge Saint Bernard stood up and came over to touch noses with Mr. B in Sadie’s arms. Mr. B wagged his tail and Barney let out a deep sigh and collapsed on the floor.
“Davey, you’ve got company,” her guide yelled and a head appeared above the back of the couch at the far end.
“Sorry dude, I thought you were on the table.”
“I was,” came the groggy reply, “but I got tired.”
“Well, get up. This lady wants to talk to you.”
Davey dragged himself up off the couch and waved off his housemate. There was clomping up the stairs, and Sadie focused on David Schmitz. He was dressed a little better than the boy who had opened the door, and his clothes were clean and pressed. He had a head of tousled blond curls and he’d grabbed his glasses from the edge of the pool table.
“What can I do for you?” he asked. He had a crease between his eyebrows and clearly didn’t have any idea why she was there.
“I understand you knew Curtis Beaudry,” Sadie said.
“Oh. Curtis. Yeah, I knew him. He was a cool dude.” His face had gone from confused to sad.
“It’s really too bad, what happened to him.”
“So you weren’t mad at him?” she asked.
“Lord, no. Why would I be mad at Curtis? He did his damnedest to help me pass chemistry. He spent hours over here drilling me, but I just couldn’t get it. He was a bro.”
“Huh,” Sadie said. “Someone told me that you hated Curtis; that you two studied together and he got good grades and you didn’t; that he tricked you.”
“Ida,” he said flatly. “She’s been telling that to anyone who will listen. She used to follow Curtis around. Creepy.”
He saw her frown. “No, really. Ask any of the guys. Curtis tried, I mean really tried, to help me. I just couldn’t get it. We were hanging out the day before he died. We were at the art co-op playing cribbage. I’m sure someone there will remember.”
“Curtis was the best,” Sadie said quietly, tears threatening again. “He didn’t deserve to die.”
“No,” David said. “He didn’t. I hope they find who did it.”
“Me, too,” Sadie said. “Thank you for talking with me, David. You’ve restored my faith in Curtis.”
“Anytime, Bra, I mean Ma’am.” He smiled sheepishly.
“I’m going to miss him.” He put his hand out to shake and Mr. Bradshaw wagged his tail and licked him when Sadie switched him from one arm to the other so she could shake David’s hand.
“You know,” David said as he showed Sadie to the door.
“I thought it was a travesty Curtis was accused of cheating. He never would cheat. He didn’t need to, and if you needed help, he was more than willing to spend time getting you up to speed. I was satisfied when he was cleared. Whoever accused him of cheating had a bad case of intelligence envy and no facts.”
Sadie and Mr. Bradshaw went home. She still was confused, but it helped that David obviously had liked Curtis. There was something odd going on, but maybe it was in the sorority and didn’t have anything to do with Curtis at all. It wasn’t until she was almost home she remembered that the first time she’d met Ida, the girl had told her she didn’t know Curtis at all.
She called Zack and told him about her day. “I’ve got some news, too. Eliza’s parents are insisting we mount a search for her,” Zack said. “And that girl at the sorority, Ida, I think she’s called…”
“Yeah,” Sadie interrupted, “she’s the girl I was just talking about.”
“Well, she told us Eliza somehow was connected to Curtis and we should search his room for clues.”
“Are you going to do that?” Sadie asked.
“I can’t, it would be infringing on Oxford’s investigation, but I think he’s going to have to give in and search Curtis’ rooms and the storage unit. He thinks it’s irrelevant, but enough people are making a fuss that it’s going to have to happen, and soon. Eliza’s parents threatened national news coverage of Oxford’s case if he didn’t act.”
“Doesn’t he think the two cases are related?” Sadie asked. “He could let you do the searching if you are looking for Eliza and he’s investigating me.”
“He’ll eventually figure out you didn’t do it and move on,” Zack said.