by Nina Wright
I shuddered.
Jenx went on, “Your timing was perfect. You probably saved her life.”
“If my timing was perfect, I would have gotten here before it happened.”
The chief sighed. “I know the feeling, but we do what we can.”
I told her about Chester’s call and the fact that I hadn’t told him anything. She glanced at the State Boys conferring on the front porch.
“I’ll call Chester. You need to tell those guys what you suspect about Lowe. If they think there’s a link, they’ll bring in their crime scene investigators.”
When I hesitated, she said. “I know. We want to be the ones to solve this, but the State Boys got the big guns. It’s the right thing to do.”
The men in blue and gray did look impeccable in their pale neckties and crisp caps. Maybe they deserved to solve this case. Somebody needed to solve it soon so that Magnet Springs could celebrate Christmas with open hearts and no fear.
Troopers Carter and Pawlicki were pleasant and professional when I approached. Jenx had briefed them on my experiences over the past few days. They seemed genuinely interested in what I had seen as well as any insights I could share. Although they listened much more than they talked, I was left with the impression that they planned to interview both Loralee and Anouk—Loralee, regarding her whereabouts today and at the time of the headmaster’s death; Anouk, regarding the gold bangle bracelet she had found and anything else she observed the evening Mark Vreelander died.
When the troopers dismissed me, I was ready to leave. Until I remembered I still had the marriage-porn flash drive in my pocket. In light of the day’s tragic events, it seemed silly to worry about replacing it, but I was mightily aware of my karma. I owed Pauline two flash drives. This was my opportunity to drop the first one back where it belonged. I would return the encrypted one later.
The EMTs had left, Jenx was on the phone with Chester, and the two troopers were deep in discussion. I slipped back inside and hurried up the staircase to the second floor. The door to Mark Vreelander’s office was closed. What if it were locked? I was fully prepared to shunt the flash drive under the door, if necessary. As I reached for the knob, a small voice in my head—probably Chester’s—reminded me that my fingers leave prints, so for once they didn’t. I slipped my right hand under my sweater before trying the knob. It turned, and I entered.
What lay before me bore little resemblance to the messy home office I had seen two days earlier. The space had been ransacked. Drawers were removed, and their contents dumped on the floor. Furniture was pulled away from the walls; many pieces were inverted, as if an intruder had demanded a view of the underside. The couch had lost its cushions, and the lamps were now missing their shades. A person or persons had turned Mark’s office inside-out in search of something specific. A flash drive? Surely not the one I held. Using my sweater-covered hand, I wiped it as free of prints as I could and dropped it into a desk drawer that now lay on its side. I could only hope that Pauline Vreelander would recover sufficiently to take comfort in discovering the location of that pictorial romp.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I whirled to face Jenx. “The right thing.”
Jenx surveyed the room. “Whoa. You said this room was a mess. You didn’t say it was a disaster.”
“It didn’t look like this,” I said. “Someone came after I left.”
“Is that the window where you saw Lowe?” Jenx said.
I nodded. She peered out and turned back to me.
“The bad news is Carter and Pawlicki are securing the house, so we gotta go. The good news is I talked to Chester. Study hall was a success.”
“He decrypted the flash drive?”
“Shhhh. Let’s take it outside.”
We passed the troopers on their way upstairs.
“Looks like somebody ransacked that office,” Jenx remarked. “Have fun, boys.”
Outside, Jenx paused to sniff the air.
“Spring is comin’ to an end,” she declared. “Get ready for a change in the weather.”
“Not until next week,” I said. “I checked the Weather Channel.”
I glanced at Jenx’s face. She was wearing an expression that said I shouldn’t doubt her grasp of certain forces.
“What do you know that I don’t?” I whispered.
“Don’t get me started.”
“I mean, about the weather.”
“Daffodils don’t bloom at Christmas, Whiskey. Something’s gotta change soon.”
She motioned for me to join her in the patrol car.
“Let’s talk about Chester. I’m not sharing this with the MSP.”
Once we had settled inside, Jenx rolled up the windows and locked the doors. She took out her pocket notebook and squinted at her own cramped writing.
“Chester gave me a shitload of info. He said the decryption process was easy. The flash drive has what he called ‘on-the-fly-encryption.’ All you need is the right software. Chester figured out the encryption keys in half an hour.”
“Amazing,” I said.
Jenx shrugged. “Not according to Chester. He said we should expect nothing less from an MIT course graduate.”
She glanced back at her notes.
“Looks like Mark Vreelander stumbled into a mess of nasty truths about The Bentwood School. Chester thinks he had info that could have closed down the academy.”
“Why would Vreelander want to close the school?” I said. “It was his job to run it.”
“Nobody’s saying he wanted to close it,” Jenx said. “More likely, he wanted to save it, and that was his mistake.”
“What’s on the flash drive?” I said.
Jenx held up a hand like she was stopping traffic.
“I’ll get to that. We know Vreelander had already launched a campaign to improve the school, right?”
“Right,” I said impatiently. “Including getting the kids physically fit and assigning them homework.”
“Tip of the iceberg. According to Chester, there were much bigger problems.”
“Like what?” I was on the verge of grabbing the chief’s notebook to read it for myself.
“Well, to start with, somebody was fixing student transcripts and standardized test scores.”
“What do you mean, ‘fixing’?”
“Tampering with. Making them look a lot better than they were.”
“How can you mess with standardized test scores? Aren’t they recorded by the test provider?”
“Yup. But you can falsely report the results.”
“You mean the school was faking reports for the parents?”
“And lying about test results in their publicity. Student transcripts weren’t accurate, either. Chester says there are notes on the flash drive about teachers being pressured to inflate grades.”
“Which teachers?” I wondered aloud.
“Pretty much all of ’em,” Jenx said. “And that’s not the end of it. Chester says there’s stuff on the flash drive about faking faculty credentials.”
“What do you mean?”
“That alphabet soup after people’s names? Mostly bogus. They didn’t all earn those degrees. Chester thinks Vreelander figured it out fast.”
“He was the boss,” I said. “The buck stopped there.”
“Did it, Whiskey? Who did Vreelander answer to?”
I thought about it. “The PTO! Stevie McCoy says the parents practically run that school. It’s all about their money and their egos.”
Jenx checked her notes. “For fifteen thou a year, they’re buying a ‘tradition of excellence.’ They don’t wanna believe that’s not what they’re getting. They also hate change, even when they need it.”
“Right,” I said, putting puzzle pieces together. “Chester told me the Board brought in a new headmaster because they knew the curriculum was getting soft and parents weren’t happy with high school placement. But you’re saying the problems were way worse than that. The PTO pressured teachers to raise grades an
d test scores, and exaggerate their credentials.”
“Not just the PTO,” Jenx said. “The school president, our pal ‘Yale.’ Only he’s not a Yalie, after all. George Bentwood is the first generation of Magnet Springs Bentwoods not to graduate from Yale, or any university.”
38
I blinked at Jenx. “You’re saying ‘Yale’ isn’t even a college graduate? He’s perpetrating fraud at The Bentwood School?”
“Yup. But think about it, Whiskey. He couldn’t pull it off without help.”
“So there’s a cover-up. A conspiracy.”
Jenx nodded.
“How come the Board never figured it out?” I said.
“Bentwood took over for his grandmother, the school founder. She ran the place ’til she croaked. Bentwood handpicked his Board, with input from ‘selected’ parents and alums. The roster reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of Old Money in Magnet Springs.”
“You’re saying the Board is in Bentwood’s pocket?”
“Yup. And some of ’em just don’t care. Chester says Vreelander made suggestions at every meeting. Nobody listened to him.”
“How’s that possible? The headmaster’s the captain of the ship.”
“More like the figurehead in this case,” Jenx said. “Bentwood’s name is on the school. Hell, he is the school.”
I thought about it. “Vreelander was an outsider. From the working class.”
Jenx nodded. “Nobody that anybody on the Board or PTO was gonna respect, but they hired him because their parents wanted a strong-looking leader.”
“Yes. Vreelander fit the bill. He was career Army and a professional educator. He looked like somebody who would bring The Bentwood School into the twenty-first century. Emphasis on looked like. Vreelander’s credentials were all that mattered to George, the Board, and the PTO.”
“Right,” Jenx said. “Nobody wanted him to change a thing.”
“Except admission test scores to private secondary schools,” I said.
“Only because Bentwood hadn’t found a way to fudge those,” Jenx said.
“The school looked respectable for hiring Vreelander,” I summarized. “And the PTO bought into it so long as he didn’t cause them or their kids any pain. But then he did cause them pain, or at least inconvenience. He tried an end run around the Board and the PTO in order to reform the school.”
“’Til somebody stopped him,” Jenx said.
“We’re back where we started! One of the PTO moms must have offed him. If Anouk’s right, it’s a mom who had an affair with Bentwood.”
“It’s an archer, Whiskey, and maybe also a mom who’s involved with Bentwood.”
“Loralee Lowe,” I insisted.
“If’s she’s an archer,” Jenx said.
I ran through the incriminating stuff we had on Lowe. She was Bentwood’s lover, the mother of his child, a vocal member of the PTO and a teacher whom Vreelander was threatening to terminate. Not to mention she had made two visits to the Fresno Avenue house that sure didn’t look like coincidences.
“Two days ago, I see her in Vreelander’s home office, where she doesn’t belong. This morning I see her leaving his house, and I find Pauline seriously hurt and the office ransacked.”
Jenx called my attention to a sticky little issue called cause and effect, which apparently depends upon another little issue called proof.
Fair enough, but I was no fan of coincidence. Loralee looked better for two crimes than anybody else we could think of, even though seeing the State Boys bust Kimmi would have been so satisfying.
“If Loralee didn’t do it, who did?” I demanded.
Jenx was quiet for so long I wondered where her mind had gone. I was about to repeat the question when she said, “Tell me again what Anouk told you. About the kind of clue you should be looking for.”
“She said to look for somebody in a ‘circular relationship’ with Yale—I mean, Bentwood. He needs something from her, and she needs something from him.”
As soon as I said the words out loud, my brain clicked.
“Jenx—Pauline said almost the same thing. How did she put it? She said the killer was probably someone who needed to please or protect George. Who would need to protect him?”
Jenx frowned. “Not his wife, if what you heard about her hiring MacArthur to investigate him is true. She’s not an archer, anyhow. But Anouk is. She might need to protect Bentwood if he’s throwing money at her or her kids.”
“I don’t think he is,” I said quickly. “But Loralee needs Bentwood to support her daughter. She needs to protect him and the school.”
“But we don’t know if she could land an arrow in Vreelander’s back. We’re looking for somebody with the skill to do that.”
That was the catch, all right.
Somebody’s knuckles rapped the passenger side window. I yelped. Trooper Pawlicki was bending down to peer in. Jenx lowered my window.
“We’ve secured the house,” Pawlicki told her. “Except for the broken window. Our crime scene team will take care of that when they finish. They’re en route now.”
Jenx and Pawlicki exchanged a few remarks across invisible, irrelevant me before the chief raised the window again.
“Let’s get outta here, Whiskey. We got leads to follow. I wanna beat the State Boys at this game.”
“Do we have to tell them what’s on Chester’s flash drive?”
She gave me the kind of look I would expect from an officer about to make an arrest.
“Don’t ya mean the victim’s flash drive? The one you illegally removed from the premises?”
“Like you said, you got leads to follow,” I told her, reaching for the door handle. “And I got real estate to sell.”
“Did ya call Jeb yet? Ya know he’s gonna hear about this from somebody. It oughta be you.”
Obediently I whipped out my cell and dialed. When Jeb answered, I took a deep breath and dove into the shortest, least alarming version of events.
“Better call your mom,” Jeb said. “She just texted me that something bad went down at your appointment. One of her friends picked it off the police scanner.”
Many residents got their news that way. The usual “10-whatever” code didn’t apply in Magnet Springs, where we went beyond the standard numerical system. I didn’t have a scanner, but Chester did. He swore that most regular listeners knew the codes for Abra’s assorted escapades, as well as my own dances with danger.
I assured Jeb that I was fine and told him I would see Mom in person at the office. He was in his car, en route to The Castle to retrieve Sandra Bullock. Avery had phoned him when the second photo shoot wrapped. She said she was sorry—right!—if Jeb didn’t like the idea of Sandra in costume on the cover of Cassina’s next CD, but the pop diva would make it worth his while.
“Anouk called,” Jeb added. “She told me to bring Sandra straight over for her first pet psychic session. Later I’ll get Abra, and she’ll have a session, too. Anouk’s also going to try a joint appointment.”
“Will that solve the problem?” I asked.
“Anouk isn’t making any promises. She says the process can take time.”
Ka-ching, ka-ching, I thought and then felt petty. Anouk had been honest with me so far. At least it seemed that way. In Magnet Springs more than a few folks had paranormal talents. Maybe Anouk’s name belonged on that roster. We needed help with our dogs—yes, our dogs, I thought, wincing—and Stevie McCoy had recommended Anouk. For starters, maybe she could teach Sandra to wear fewer hats and Abra not to eat them.
I told Jeb I loved him and would see him soon. When I tucked my phone back into my pocket, Jenx was grinning at me.
“What?” I said.
“Feels good to have a partner again, doesn’t it, Whiskey?”
I started to say that Jeb was my boyfriend, not my partner; that Leo was the only man who had earned that title, and Jenx should mind her own freakin’ business. Except, of course, she was right.
Pushing open the pass
enger door was a lot harder than it should have been, thanks to a sudden frigid wind. The trees were bending over, and the temperature was dropping fast.
Before I could close the door, Jenx shouted, “Change in the weather. I was right about that, too.”
Drawing my leather jacket tight around me, I wished I had left home with earmuffs and mittens. It was beginning to feel a lot like Michigan, if not Christmas.
39
Doing the right thing. An inconvenient notion, yet ever since I’d scrawled that note on my palm, I’d felt compelled to follow it. Never mind that the words had washed off days ago.
Next stop, Mattimoe Realty. I only hoped I wouldn’t find my mother doing receptionist duty in her negligee. Even Odette might fire her for that.
Mom was wearing what she called “Florida business casual”—Capri pants with a bright cotton shirt. Thankfully, she and Howard had managed to pick up their clothes before the rising wind could scatter them across town. She was even more chipper than usual.
“Whitney, isn’t the weather wonderful?”
I waited a beat, in case there was a punch line coming. Nothing happened.
“Mom, the weather’s getting worse. Those are fifty-mile-an-hour gusts.”
“Exactly. We might have sleet soon.” She positively beamed at me.
“And that’s wonderful because … ?”
“You of all people should know. The weather is turning out exactly like it’s supposed to at this time of year.”
“Not quite, Mom. For the past three weeks, it was supposed to be cold and snowy so that Magnet Springs merchants could sell Christmas to tourists. Now that Christmas is almost here, and there are no tourists in Magnet Springs, what’s the point of having crappy weather?”
Irene Houston smiled and sighed. The phone on her desk rang. She answered it with more cheer than I could bear, so I walked rapidly toward my office.
“One moment, please,” I heard her tell the caller. “Whitney, there’s a Stevie McCoy on the line for you. Such a happy-sounding woman. I do hope you won’t bring her down.”
Through gritted teeth, I said I’d take the call in my office. I closed and locked the door.
“Hey, Stevie. Thanks for taking care of the repairs to my property so fast.”