At Anne’s conference with the school nurse that afternoon, she began to lay some groundwork for the future. After they’d talked about the Lanny Wells situation (Lanny had emotional problems and he had decided visiting the school nurse every day was a good way to deal with them), Anne said tentatively, “Lois, there’s something I wondered if you could advise me on. Offer me some insights.” The door between the offices was open because Anne wanted to be sure Christy overheard this.
“Of course,” Lois Krueger responded, astonished and flattered. Up until now, the nurse’s opinion of Anne had been neutral, which had been easy for Anne to read. But Lois sometimes felt that the teachers didn’t give her credit for her knowledge; Anne had seen that too.
“This man I’ve never seen before showed up here yesterday claiming to be my first husband,” Anne confided. Lois’s eyes widened. Amazingly, Christy had kept mum.
“That’s so strange,” Lois said slowly. “You hadn’t . . . you didn’t know him?”
“I’ve only been married once,” Anne said. “After Brad died, I felt that I would never marry again.” She looked down, her face sad. “But time has helped,” Anne admitted, looking back up with a brave smile. Lois nodded, since the whole school knew that Coach Halsey and Anne DeWitt were going out together.
“Now this man has shown up, making this weird claim, and his conversation is irrational,” Anne continued. “Could he be harmless? I hate to call the police on someone who’s so . . . disoriented.”
“You poor thing,” Lois said indignantly. “I’m so sorry. You really need to talk to a psychologist, not me, I’m just a school nurse.”
“To heck with just,” Anne said. “I’ve noticed how good you are with distraught students.”
Lois tried to hide her rush of pride. “Thanks,” she said. “But really, this man sounds as though he might need to be hospitalized. What a strange fixation! You’d never seen him before?”
“Never. Is that not weird? I have no idea where he came from or who he is. Maybe I’ll never hear from him again.”
“I hope that’s the case,” Lois said promptly, “but I wouldn’t count on it.”
“I’m just glad I’ve got a good security system at home,” Anne said. The nurse patted Anne’s shoulder. Anne suppressed her snarl. Instead, she looked brave and worried.
The rest of the day passed quietly.
That evening, Holt stopped by Anne’s house to tell her he’d heard from David Angola. No one from David’s staff had recognized the photograph Holt had taken. “But my P.I. tells me that Tom Wilson is staying at a Best Western close to the interstate. And he got into the room when Wilson went out for dinner. He took pictures of everything in the room.”
Holt and Anne pored over them. Holt had a second laptop and a second account under another name for just such transactions; he didn’t want them on his work laptop.
Just in case.
The sequence of pictures started with a shot of Wilson’s rental car. Then the private detective had moved into Wilson’s room and photographed an open suitcase, a cheap, black roller bag.
Wilson’s clothes were absolutely average: khakis, plaid shirts, boxers, loafers, all national brands and easily purchased at any shopping center in America. Nevertheless, Holt and Anne examined each picture with a magnifying glass, just to be sure.
The first interesting discovery was that Wilson had more cash than Anne would have expected. Of course, there was no way to tell how he’d come by it. He could have withdrawn it from his own ATM. But there was no transaction slip with it, so maybe the cash had been a payment.
The only other subject of the private eye’s camera was the inside of Wilson’s shaving kit. Disposable razors, shaving cream, comb, Tylenol, toothbrush, and toothpaste. But also, a prescription: pills in the usual golden-brown plastic cylinder. “Why didn’t he turn the pills over so we could read the label?” Holt muttered. When they looked at the next picture, they found the private eye had done just that.
The prescription was for Risperidone.
“That’s for treating schizophrenia.” Holt was grim. “If Wilson is sick enough to be taking it, he’s unpredictable. I assumed we were dealing with a person who could appreciate consequences. We’re not.”
They found out just how unpredictable Tom Wilson was the next day.
Anne was standing in the hall outside her office during the senior lunch period, which tended to be the noisiest. The bell rang, and the oldest kids swarmed out of their classrooms to go down the central hall that ran the length of the school, culminating in the cafeteria. The ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades had all eaten and returned to their classrooms. Getting the seniors to be reasonably quiet as they passed the crossing halls that housed each grade was nearly impossible, but Anne’s presence had an effect, especially since she could greet most of the kids by name.
Two of Holt Halsey’s baseball players went by. “Chuck, Marty,” Anne said. “I’ll be at the game this afternoon.”
“We’ll win,” Chuck said confidently. He and Marty paused to talk. Anne was popular with the baseball players, due to her status as Coach Halsey’s girlfriend.
Anne’s back was to the front doors as she listened to Marty’s analysis of the Panthers’ pitching roster. So she missed Tom Wilson’s entrance through the main doors, his passage through the metal detector without a beep. The startled faces of the boys warned her. Anne swung around, alerted by her survival sense.
Wilson was smiling, his teeth gleaming in the overhead lights.
He decked her. Anne could have taken the blow easily, and it took every scrap of her self-control to keep from leaping on the man and dislocating his shoulders or breaking his arms. But she had to go down, because Principal Anne DeWitt would not know how to deflect a punch.
Anne landed on her back on the linoleum. It was in character for Anne DeWitt to lie there, breathless and stunned. To her immense gratification, Chuck and Marty landed on Tom Wilson like a ton of bricks.
It was all Anne could do not to smile, though she was bleeding from a bitten lip.
The whole school thought it was romantic that Anne had been saved by her own students, and Anne’s popularity soared. It was also delightful that Coach Halsey had dashed out of the teachers’ lounge and ploughed through the crowd of students like an ice-breaker. Coach had checked that the police had been called (they had, by multiple cell phones), that Anne was conscious and wanted to stand (no, she had to wait on the paramedics, Lois Krueger insisted), and that Wilson was being restrained by the students until the police arrived (there might have been some unnecessary roughness involved).
Tom Wilson smiled through the whole episode.
Holt told Anne that night, “I had wondered if the Risperidone might be a cover, or a plant. But he needs it.”
Anne’s face was bruised, and her lip swollen, but since Wilson didn’t know how to hit, nothing was broken or fractured. She glanced in the mirror and away. No one likes to look battered, she told herself. “It took everything I had to just lie there. It was demeaning.”
“But way smart,” Holt said practically. “You’re certainly the darling of the school now.”
“That’s great, but I guarantee the school board is going to have questions about this,” Anne said. “They’re going to wonder why this first husband—one I completely deny having married—is stalking me. They’re going to think I did something to spark this incident. They’re going to wonder if he’s—by some weird chance—telling the truth.”
It was true. Rumors were flying fast and furious through Colleton County. People who’d never heard Anne’s name before were talking about her now. In a very short time, Anne realized she was in peril. Sympathy had swung to curiosity, and then to gossip.
A story like this was not what the people of Colleton County wanted to hear about their high school principal.
“Who would want such a thing?” Anne said to Holt, as she pulled lasagna out of her oven. “Who wouldn’t know my original name, and y
et want me disgraced or dead? Because if Wilson had brought a gun, I would have been bleeding all over the Travis High floor. He didn’t even slow down at the metal detector. He could have shot me from there.”
“Someone that crazy . . . if he knew your real name . . . he would have said it by now,” Holt agreed. “He doesn’t know. But who have you scared or angered that much, as Anne DeWitt?”
“Well, Delia was a ‘suicide,’” Anne said. “And no one has ever hinted any different. I think that’s out. We adjusted Sarah Toth’s situation. We fine-tuned a couple of others. What about your ball-player?”
Holt was getting plates out of the cabinet, and he turned with them in his hand. “The last time I saw Clay’s parents they couldn’t stop talking about what a success Clay is having at U of A. He’s not the starting pitcher, but he’s gotten on the mound several times. They’re in hog heaven.”
“So Clay’s out. Besides, he never knew it was us.” They’d motivated Clay to straighten up his act, so his pitching would lead to glory for the school.
“And Sarah seems to be doing fine at Davidson, according to her mother—who just got engaged, by the way, to Coach Redding.” Sarah Toth and her mother had endured a lot from JimBee Toth, until he’d fallen down the stairs in their home while he was drunk. And alone. The football coach would be a much better spouse.
“I heard. What happened to her brother?”
“He went into the military.”
“So that’s all the Toths accounted for. Let’s see what the police say about Tom Wilson.”
Later that evening, two detectives came to Anne’s house. They had called ahead. “I’ve seen you at the games,” Nedra Crosby said. “We still go sometimes. My husband played football and I played softball at Travis High, back in the dark ages.”
Since Crosby was in her mid-forties, that was a slight exaggeration, but Anne and Holt smiled obligingly. The other detective, Leland Stroud, a very dark man with hair cut close to his scalp, was the strong silent type. So far.
Anne offered the two Coca-Cola or tea, but they both refused. “Can you tell me who this Tom Wilson is?” Anne asked.
“Yes,” Crosby said. “His prints were on record. His mental problems have landed him in trouble before now. Wilson has just gotten out of a mental health facility in South Carolina. His family reported him missing a week ago. He had a legal driver’s license, so he was able to rent a car and check in at the motel here with no problem. He had quite a bit of cash, and a prepaid Visa gift card. We don’t know where he got it. His family members all deny giving him money.”
“So why did he come here?” Anne asked. “Why did he target me?”
Crosby said, “We wonder that too. You’re sure you’ve never seen this Tom Wilson before?” There came the shadowing of doubt.
“I’m sure,” Anne said. Holt nodded in agreement.
“He had some documents in his car,” Crosby began. Anne had an ominous feeling. “Including some personal letters signed by you.”
Anne didn’t have to feign her astonishment. “No, they’re not,” she said. Anne didn’t write letters for that very reason: people could keep them.
Crosby looked thoughtful. “We’ll show you facsimiles, and you can give us your opinion,” she said. “Can we have some samples of your handwriting?”
Anne nodded. “I’ll find some.”
Crosby glanced at Stroud, who took up the torch.
“I know it seems silly to ask you this, Ms. DeWitt, but you can’t think of an enemy you have . . . ?” He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, looking as sincere as a judge.
Anne laughed. “I wish it were silly to ask. Principals do have enemies, Detective. Parents used to back the school administration, but now they back their kid, no matter how stupid or vicious the child is. That seems to be the new idea of showing love. So—yes, there are parents who don’t like me at all. But they’d be more likely to slash my tires or file a lawsuit than do something as elaborate as this.”
“No one else with a more personal motive?” Stroud asked. “Someone you might have rebuffed?”
Anne shook her head. “If there is, I don’t know who it might be.”
“This whole situation is so puzzling, especially since you can’t think of any reason someone would do this to you,” Detective Crosby said. “But please, look through your memory book and let me know if anything comes to your mind.”
“My memory book,” Anne repeated. She and Holt looked at each other. “I hope you brought these letters with you.” She went to the kitchen and got a grocery list and a to-do list. She handed them to Stroud.
Crosby opened a folder to show Anne the letters, obviously copies of the originals. Anne and Holt read them at the same time. The first one began, “Tom, I have been thinking of you every day. I really regret our separation. Please come see me to discuss it? I may have changed my mind by the time you get here, but I beg you to come.”
Each of the three letters had a similar message; they all contained the same contradiction.
“No wonder he slugged me,” Anne said. “These all say, ‘Come here and maybe I’ll take you back or maybe I’ll reject you.’” She shook her head. “Poor guy. But at least you can see that this handwriting is nothing like mine.”
The next day, Anne received a bouquet of black flowers. When the florist carried them into the office and put them down on Christy’s desk, she used the intercom to call Anne, who came out to see them. All the flowers had been dyed black, and black ribbon encircled the black vase.
“Who sent these?” Anne asked the delivery woman, who’d already turned to leave.
“It was an Internet order, and they paid with PayPal,” the woman said. “You’d have to get a warrant or something to try to track that.”
“Is there a card?” Christy asked, taking the words right out of Anne’s mouth.
“No. We asked, but she didn’t want any kind of acknowledgment.”
“She?”
“Well, something she said in the live chat made me think it was a woman.” The florist clearly wanted to go.
Anne said, “Thanks,” and the woman sped off. Anne took the vase into her office.
An hour later, she knew there wasn’t a bug in the bouquet. There was not a secret message, either.
The next day, a young man in a policeman’s uniform arrived at Anne’s office and asked to talk to her. Though Christy noticed he was carrying a CD player, she didn’t think it through, and called Anne out of her office. The “policeman” turned on his music (“Bad Boys”) and began his routine. He’d gotten down to his pants when Anne stopped him with a few well-chosen words that really shocked Christy. Anne told him to sit still until the real police got there.
Detective Crosby arrived in fifteen minutes. In the interim, Anne learned that the young man’s stage name was Randy Rodman, he had a website, and he’d never had a problem like this before.
Even Crosby had to smother a snigger.
“We can get a warrant to search his apartment, maybe,” Crosby said. “Though I don’t know why a judge would grant it. After all, sending a stripper to your office isn’t a terrible crime. Mr. Rodman says he was left an envelope with a cash tip in it, in his mailbox. A note in the envelope told him the time and place and recipient, if that’s what you call it, of the . . . performance. He figured it was for your birthday. I’ll check to see if his apartment complex has any security cameras that might have caught the individual who left the envelope, but Pine Grove is low-end. By the way, Tom Wilson is back in the mental hospital in South Carolina. His mother had him admitted again for observation.”
In the next couple of days, Anne became aware that there were laughs and giggles when she passed students in the hall. It was all too clear that this series of events was doing what it had been designed to do: make her a figure of fun.
Anne didn’t mind being disliked, or even hated. But being an object of ridicule was not only galling, it also threatened Anne’s job. She was furious, espec
ially after she got a call from her superintendent. He asked, in the mildest possible terms, if there was anything he should know? Be concerned about?
It took all of Anne’s formidable self-control to reply calmly that she herself did not understand what was happening, and that she sincerely hoped that these pranks were at an end.
But they weren’t. When Anne got to school the next morning, there was a banner hanging over the front door. It read, “Anne, I love you. Your Booboo.”
Anne called the janitor. He was very lucky he had clocked in on time. Ten minutes later, he had removed the sign and was burning it in the school incinerator. But not before a few early students had taken pictures and sent them to forty of their best friends.
Anne immediately reviewed the security footage from the night before. It showed a figure in sweatpants and a hoodie hanging the banner with the help of a stepladder. There was a knit balaclava further obscuring the person’s head and face. “It’s not even possible to tell if it’s a man or a woman,” she said disgustedly.
Holt watched the few minutes of footage again. “I think it’s a woman,” he said. “There’s something about the way she goes up the ladder that makes me think so.”
“This has to come to an end,” Anne said.
“You’re right.” Holt was as serious as Anne. “We have to figure out who wants to discredit you.”
Anne nodded somberly.
But life didn’t stand still so they could concentrate on the problem. It was baseball season, and Holt was busy until late every afternoon and on some weekends.
Anne used her free time to do some spring cleaning (including her weapons safe: the school board would have been very surprised if they could see inside that) and finally turned her efforts to culling her wardrobe. That didn’t require intensive focus, so her mind ranged free while she sorted and tossed.
This campaign of ridicule was clearly personal. Anne tried to think of anyone local who could take offense at something she’d done; someone so angry they would resort to spending money, time, and thought to playing these elaborate pranks.
Small Kingdoms and Other Stories Page 7