by Raven Snow
“I figured as much. Are there any suspects?”
“There’s one, but Rowen won’t let us go talk to him,” Willow blurted before Rowen had a chance.
“Willow!” Rowen elbowed her cousin. “He’s not a suspect. He’s more a person of interest, and he might not even be that. It’s just going off of something this kid said.”
Grammy still looked intrigued. “Who is it?”
“Well, Jessica Landis was involved in a car accident, and this little girl died. You probably remember. It happened out in the woods, on those windy roads, you know?”
Grammy nodded indicating that she remembered what Rowen was explaining. It had been the talk of town for a long while. The news had been hard to miss, and Grammy had always paid close attention to the news. “I didn’t realize that was the same woman. I suppose she got her name changed while she was in here. Smart.”
“Yeah, well, there was this kid named Billy. He’s Stephanie’s - that little girl who got killed – that’s her brother. We’ve got people telling us we should check him out, but Rowen and Rose are against it for some reason.”
“That’s not it,” Rowen interjected.
“How old is he?” asked Grammy.
“Eighteen,” Willow said, immediately. “So, an adult.”
“Hardly. He’s still in high school, Grammy. Pressing him for answers is only going to upset his parents and maybe even turn the town against us. I’ve had enough of that, thanks. Besides, only one person has told us to look into him, and that person was a kid.”
“Who was the kid?”
“Terrance, who’s Jessica Landis’ stepson,” said Willow.
“And Billy probably gives him a hard time,” Rowen insisted. “Meaning he has reason to be resentful of him. He probably just wants it to be him. He’s cast him as the villain in his mind. That doesn’t mean he actually is.”
Grammy looked from Rowen to Willow as if weighing both sides. She didn’t have to think about it for long. “You should talk to the kid.”
“Ha!” Willow looked entirely too pleased with herself.
Rowen couldn’t believe it. “Grammy!” She had expected her to be a voice of reason just now.
“There’s no harm in getting more information.” It didn’t sound like Grammy planned on changing her mind. “The town is inclined to be against you either way. If the kid is eighteen, I don’t think this could hurt a whole lot. Besides, I know you girls. You’re not going to harass that boy like Channel 2 harasses people. You’re not going to try and trick him into saying something you can spin. You’re going to do your jobs. Besides… I have a feeling you should give it a try.”
“About that,” Rowen began before Willow could gloat too much. “How have your, um, feelings been lately?”
“What do you mean?”
Rowen hated to say anything about it, but what choice did she have? “The staff said you had been having some poor health recently. They didn’t give too many details, but…”
Grammy immediately looked annoyed. “I told them not to bother you or anyone else in the family with that. It’s no big deal.”
“But your instincts have been a little off lately, haven’t they?” Rowen didn’t want to point that out, but how could she not?
“A little,” Grammy conceded. “It happens to the best of us, I suppose. I’m not getting any younger. These things happen.”
Rowen didn’t like that. Willow didn’t look quite so pleased with herself any more either. “Are you going to be all right?” asked Willow.
“Oh, sure. I plan to hang in there for a while yet.” Grammy reached across the table and took the hands of her grandchildren into her own. “Don’t worry about me. You two do what you need to do. And what you need to do is question that kid. Trust me on this one. My gut instincts haven’t slipped that far.”
Chapter Twelve
“Are you sure you don’t want me to call Rose?” Willow was sitting on the passenger side, looking terribly uncertain.
Rowen had parked in the guest parking lot of the Lainswich Educational Complex. The high school, middle school, and elementary school were all attached to one another. They were in different buildings but shared the same grounds. Rowen knew the place well. She and Willow both did. “You were the one who wanted to come question Billy,” she pointed out.
“I didn’t say don’t tell Rose. I don’t want her to get mad. Shouldn’t we tell her where we are?”
“No way.” Rowen opened the car door and got out. She motioned for Willow to do the same. “If we get into trouble for this, we get in trouble on our own. I don’t want Rose culpable. Worse than that, what if Ben got involved? Nope. If we get flak for this, it’ll be all us… Unless you’ve changed your mind.”
“Nope.” Willow got out of the car. “I just don’t want to get yelled at.”
“I’m not sure there’s any way around that.” Rowen followed her into the high school building. The administrative office was just through the front door. There was a little signup sheet for guests that Rowen went to immediately.
“Can I help you?” asked a white-haired woman behind the front desk.
“Mrs. Hawkins?” Rowen was surprised to find that she recognized this woman from all her years in the school.
Mrs. Hawkins gave Rowen and Willow both a quick once over. “Greensmiths.” It didn’t seem like she knew which Greensmiths they were, but she knew what they were, at least. “I didn’t know you had children.”
“If I did, they definitely wouldn’t be in high school yet!” Rowen finished jotting down her name. “We’re actually here to speak with a student.”
Mrs. Hawkins raised an eyebrow. “Which one?”
“Billy Nielson?” Rowen ventured, not very optimistic they would be able to speak with him now that they were actually trying to.
“Is this for that interview?” Mrs. Hawkins flipped through some of the papers stacked before her.
Rowen was genuinely puzzled at first. What interview? Did this mean that Channel 2 had scheduled an interview with Billy? Was his mother so keen on interviews that she had just okayed them all en masse?
“Yeah, this is for the interview,” said Willow, stepping in. Rowen shot her a look but, technically, it wasn’t like she was lying.
Mrs. Hawkins gave them a nod like it was all above board. “The principal okayed that as long as it doesn’t interfere with his school work, but you’ll have to wait until school lets out.”
“When is that?” Rowen glanced at the clock behind Mrs. Hawkins’ head. It was three in the afternoon now. How long did school last these days?
“Forty minutes or so.” Mrs. Hawkins jotted something down on a piece of paper. “I’ll tell him you’re waiting out front.”
Rowen sighed. She really wanted to get this over with. It didn’t look like that was going to happen. There was no avoiding just waiting around. At least she hadn’t been turned away. “Thanks, we’ll… just… wait a while then.” She began to head for the door, but Willow didn’t follow her.
“So sad that this is all being brought back up, huh?” Willow was still leaning against the counter. She had taken a hard candy from the jar on the counter and was now noisily unwrapping it.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Hawkins, her attention back on her computer screen.
“Willow.” Rowen tried to get her cousin’s attention, but it seemed like she was pointedly ignoring her.
“It’s so weird that someone is trying to kill that woman. Jessica Landis, I mean. Good thing they’ve finally got some suspects in custody.”
Mrs. Hawkins actually looked up at that. “They have someone in custody? Who?”
Willow shrugged. “I didn’t hear who it was. They’re keeping it all really hush hush. You can’t blame them. This whole thing is a media frenzy.”
“As it should be. The people need to know about these things.” Mrs. Hawkins was getting drawn into the conversation now, even if Willow was flat out lying to her.
“Amen, sister.�
�� Willow popped the candy into her mouth. “That’s what Rowen and I are trying to do here. You gotta nose around until you find the truth, you know? Especially with stuff like this. A kid getting killed is just the worst crime there is, don’t you think?”
“Oh, absolutely. They’re innocents.”
“Did you know his sister?” Willow asked, lowering her voice.
“I saw her around. I do work over in the Elementary school offices sometimes. She was an awfully cute little girl.” Mrs. Hawkins gave a sigh. “It’s always so hard when you lose a student.”
“Oh, hey. I have an idea.” Willow glanced back at Rowen. It was obvious to her that this was all a rather elaborate act to get her way. She’d had this “idea” of hers before she had even started talking. “A shot of Stephanie’s old classroom would be good, wouldn’t it? It would really humanize the story, give people around here a better idea of the scale of the tragedy and what was lost.”
“I don’t see why not.” Mrs. Hawkins glanced at the clock. “The elementary school has been out for an hour. If her old teacher is there, I don’t see why you can’t go on back.” She took out a sticky note and wrote a name on it. “Her name is Ms. Coldgrove. She’s in room A104. You’ll still have to stop by the front desk over there and get yourself a guest pass. They’ll try her intercom and see if she’s there for you. I bet she is. She was always working late.” She jotted a little additional note on the same sticky note. “Just tell them I sent ya,” she said with a wink, handing it over.
“I will. I appreciate it!” Now that she had the note in hand, Willow turned and followed Rowen from the office. She smirked at her as they left. “Now we don’t have to wait in the car.”
“What motivation could you have possibly had for that?” Rowen couldn’t argue the value of going to talk to the teacher, she just wasn’t used to Willow taking an initiative. All her cousins were surprising her lately.
“Boredom?” Willow shrugged. “Anyway, that teacher might offer some insight, right? I mean, if the girl’s home life is something you wanna know more about.”
The Elementary school portion of the campus was a lot cheerier than the high school building. Granted, it was also mostly empty. All the students had gone home as well as part of the staff. Rowen and Willow had to hunt someone down in the main office. They finally found a woman filing papers in the back room who agreed to page Ms. Coldgrove for them. “Ms. Coldgrove?”
“Yes?”
“I have a couple of women here who want to talk to you. Mind if I send them back?”
“Um… Sure?”
“Head on back.”
The halls were a little tricky to navigate, but Rowen found her way there with only a little trial and error and minimal instruction from a passing janitor. The room she was looking for was tucked away at the end of a hall near the library. Rowen gave the door a knock before letting herself in. “Hello?”
Ms. Coldgrove was stapling pages of illustrated children’s work to a bulletin board. She looked up when the door opened. “Oh, hi there.” Ms. Coldgrove was a woman with kind eyes and brown hair piled on top of her head like a bird’s nest. It was hard to gauge her age. She was one of those people that looked young at first glance but the longer you looked the more you began to notice the fine lines and the heavy bags beneath her eyes. Maybe this job just disagreed with her and she was tired. Rowen couldn’t say for sure. “I don’t think… Your kids aren’t in my class, are they?”
“Oh, no,” Rowen said quickly. “We’re from the Lainswich Inquirer. I’m sure you heard about that murder at the local prison recently.
The smile on Ms. Coldgrove’s face fell. “That was awful.”
Rowen nodded. “And I’m sure by now you’ve heard that it was connected to the death of Stephanie Nielson.”
Ms. Coldgrove went a little pale. For a second, Rowen thought she was going to lose her balance completely. She moved forward, but Ms. Coldgrove pulled a chair from one of the student tables and sank down into it. “I’m sorry,” she said, a little breathless. “I still have a lot of trouble with that one. I’ve never lost a student before.”
That hurt. Rowen wasn’t sure how best to comfort this woman. Fortunately, Willow had her covered. She had no inhibitions about going to Ms. Coldgrove’s side and placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“Be sorry for that little girl.” Ms. Coldgrove took a deep breath as if to collect herself. “She was such a good student. I’m close to all my students, and she was no exception… You said-- You said you were doing an article on her?”
“Given recent events, the whole thing is front page news again.” Rowen got the sense that Ms. Coldgrove wasn’t as interested in speculating on the recent crime, though. “I’d like to do a human piece on Stephanie, show what kind of a person she was. I’d like to write about her interests, her personality, that sort of thing.” If she was going to run a piece like that on Jessica Landis, it seemed only fair that she did the same for the victim.
Ms. Coldgrove’s eyes lit up a bit at that. “Well, I have some of her old school work if you’d like to see that.”
“That sounds great.”
Ms. Coldgrove went to her desk in the back of the room. There were a bunch of filing boxes back there and it took her a moment to find the correct one. “I couldn’t bring myself to just throw it out.” She placed the box on her desk and opened it up. One at a time, she pulled things out. There were all sorts of school projects and the like inside. From the look at it, Stephanie had been a very creative girl. She liked to draw and had a real passion for mermaids. She wasn’t great in other areas like science and math and geography, but Ms. Coldgrove said she could have worked with her past that.
“Oh, this was lovely. She was so proud when I put it up in the hall.” Ms. Coldgrove pulled out a picture of a family of mermaids. It looked like it had been done by a child, but there was a real eye for color and anatomy there. Stephanie probably would have grown into quite the artist someday. “It wasn’t an assignment or anything. She just did it during her free time.”
“It’s great,” Willow said, smiling down at it. “I love mermaids. Me and Stephanie would have gotten along.”
“It is great.” Rowen nodded in agreement then looked up at Ms. Coldgrove. She couldn’t help but ask. “Why didn’t you give this to her mother?”
Ms. Coldgrove paled again. “I thought about it. I probably should have, but… Have you met Sara Nielson?”
“I went to her house yesterday. We had an interview.”
“Then you know, I guess.” Ms. Coldgrove looked uncomfortable saying anything disparaging about the woman. “I don’t trust that she wouldn’t just… misplace these things.”
Rowen wasn’t sure that was her place to decide, but she did know what she was talking about. “Their house was pretty cluttered,” she agreed, though that was something of an understatement. “Did you have a lot of run-ins with Stephanie’s family?”
Ms. Coldgrove nodded. “They were… Well, I’m sure they meant well. I hate to say anything bad about them. They experienced such a loss. I can’t imagine how they must feel, but…”
“You can say what you want.” Rowen tried her best reassuring smile. “We won’t publish anything unsavory.”
“I didn’t think much of the parents,” Ms. Coldgrove blurted. Rowen was surprised by how quickly she had gotten that off of her chest. “I approached them more than once about their daughter’s education. They never seemed interested. The husband was never around, and Sara had what I can only assume were problems with addiction.”
Rowen had gotten the same vibe from her. “Do you know what she’s addicted to?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Ms. Coldgrove sighed. “It just broke my heart that that little girl had to grow up in an environment like that. I was on the fence about getting child services involved. That’s not the sort of thing you can just take back, you know? She always said she was happy, and she seemed well-adjusted. Wha
t if I had been wrong? What if I had torn that girl from a home she loved? I couldn’t do that.”
“That would be kinda a big step,” Willow agreed.
“I wish I had,” said Ms. Coldgrove. “Maybe if I had, she would still be alive. She wouldn’t have been playing out in the road.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Rowen said quickly. “She wasn’t your responsibility like that. It sounds like you went above and beyond.”
But Ms. Coldgrove didn’t look convinced of that. “It was my responsibility to do right by that little girl. What’s done is done, though.”
“Did you ever have any contact with the brother?” asked Willow.
Rowen saw what she was getting at. That was a good line of questioning. “We have an interview with Billy soon. As I understand it, he attends classes nearby.”
“I suppose he’s a senior this year. I didn’t know him as well as I knew his sister, obviously, but she talked about him a lot. Sometimes, he took her home from school. She seemed to love him.”
“Good kid?” prompted Rowen, looking for more details than that. “Troublemaker?”
“A bit of a troublemaker as I understand it. Of course, I don’t think any kid is inherently a ‘bad kid.’ I would think he has behavioral problems because of his rocky home life. These things happen.”
Rowen just hoped his home life wasn’t rocky enough that he had resorted to attempting to murder someone who had upset it. “How did he take the death of his sister?”
“Like I said, I don’t really know him that well.” It seemed Ms. Coldgrove was going to leave it at that. She hesitated. “Though, I did go to the funeral, and he was there with the rest of his family. He seemed more upset about it than anyone. It made me feel a bit better to know someone in their family had treated her like they should. I have no reason to believe he wasn’t an excellent big brother.”
Rowen felt like she was getting some conflicting reports here. The only option left to her was to go have a word with Billy herself, and she could make her own decision from there. She followed up her question about Billy with more about Stephanie. She gathered what she could, though it wasn’t much. Ms. Coldgrove was a fount of knowledge about the girl. Rowen wished she had had a teacher like her growing up. She really did seem to care.