by Gayle Roper
“Will you be alone?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Today there are meetings all morning and final prep in the afternoon. I’ll be alone in my room, but surely no one would risk coming into the school with all the others around.”
“Let me check with Sergeant Poole.”
“Oh, I’ve got some new information and photos for him,” I said.
Natalie opened her cell and relayed my comment. “What time is lunch?” she asked me. “He’ll come see you then.”
“The cafeteria’s not open today. We’ll have to meet off campus.”
At lunchtime, Natalie escorted me to Ferretti’s, one of Amhearst’s better restaurants, where the sergeant waited in a booth. All that was left of his lunch was a smattering of crumbs on his plate. He looked at the prints I’d made of the pictures of Ken and Whoever with great interest.
“Do you know if he was much of a gambler?” I asked. I knew the spouse was always the primary suspect in a murder like Dorothy’s and assumed they’d been doing lots of research on Ken. “Maybe he’s in debt to the Mob or something?”
“Thanks.” Sergeant Poole waved the pictures. “We’ll check this out very carefully.”
And I knew he wasn’t going to tell me anything about the status of the investigation. I snarled mentally.
Natalie returned for me at three, and she stayed with me until Gray showed for dinner at six-thirty. She appeared again Tuesday morning to take me to school. When the students appeared, she disappeared.
The interesting and hard thing about teaching art is that I have all the students in the school at some time during the week. I knew almost everyone in seventh and eighth grades by name, but the sixth-graders, all one hundred and fifty of them, were new to me. It makes for a confusing time until I get them all straight.
Imagine my delight when I discovered that I had Skip Schumann’s class the very first day of school. Welcome to the new school year, Anna.
It wasn’t that Skip or the other kids in the class did anything overtly wrong. Oh, no. He was too clever for that, but his subtle disrespect poisoned the attitude of the whole class. I felt as if I were watching a union boss overseeing a work slowdown or as if I were living in a slow-motion film. Everything that took five minutes in real time took ten.
The smug look on his face when the passing bell rang and half the classwork was still undone drove me nuts. I showed great restraint and said nothing to him, but I wanted to pop him one. When he left, he practically strutted from the room, clearly king of his own small hill. I smiled sweetly at him just to let him know he hadn’t gotten to me, though he definitely had.
We teachers are supposed to stand in the hall outside our rooms when the kids change classes or are at their lockers. We’re supposed to prevent riots and control the chaos. With my typical luck, Skip’s class was assigned lockers between my room and the next. At the end of the day the kids were clanging their doors, slapping their books, and talking at a dull roar. The girls’ high-pitched squeals and giggles mixed with the deeper guffaws of the guys. A typical close of a school day.
In one of those lulls that sometimes happens in a crowd, Skip’s voice carried clearly to me.
“Of course she’s the murderer,” he told the cluster of guys around him. “Why do you think my sister’s been assigned to keep her in custody?”
I rolled my eyes. It took no brains to figure out who the “she” was that he referred to, especially since some of the boys shot furtive glances my way, glances I was careful to ignore. As the noise level increased once again, I moved closer to hear what other fabrications Skip was telling. He and his covey of pigeons were so busy concentrating on what he was saying, they never noticed me practically joining their circle.
“It was a very bloody crime, probably a crime of passion.”
“You mean she killed the lady because she’s in love with her husband?”
“Looks like it to me,” Skip assured them. “And I’ve got inside information, don’t forget.”
Right. I could just see Natalie telling her kid brother all the details of the case.
“Boy, that makes A-TAG all the more important, doesn’t it?” asked the largest kid in the group, a wonderful but somewhat slow boy named Jason.
Everyone nodded solemnly.
“Speaking of which,” Skip said, “we still need some more supplies to finish headquarters since she messed us up the other night. Nine-thirty at the shed.”
“I can’t come,” Jason said. “My dad’s really mad at me since I took his riding mower for us to make into a tank. He watches me like a hawk.”
“Well, you did steal the thing and hide it in the woods for three weeks,” Skip pointed out. “He even reported it stolen to the cops.”
“Yeah, but it was for A-TAG.”
What, I wondered, was A-TAG? Maybe Natalie could tell me.
Skip patted Jason on the shoulder. “It was a good effort.”
The boys all made affirmative noises.
“Nine-thirty.” Skip shook his finger at them. “Don’t forget.”
More mumbling noises, though many sounded negative to my ear. Skip seemed unconcerned. Apparently even if he was the only one at “the shed”, he’d still get the supplies he needed.
“So why don’t they arrest her?” asked Pete, a sharp kid with too little parental supervision.
I couldn’t wait to hear Skip’s take on this question, and wished Natalie were here. And then she was. She appeared beside me as if in answer to my wish, just in time to hear her brother pontificate.
“The cops are building their case. Nat says they can’t act too soon, or she’ll get off on a technicality when she goes to trial. I hate to say this, but we’ve got our very own murderer teaching right here in our school.”
Over the kids’ gasps and shivers of delighted fear Natalie’s voice thundered with all the authority of her uniform. “Skip Schumann! What are you talking about?”
Skip jumped and spun, blinking wide-eyed but unrepentant. The other kids’ eyes skittered from me to Natalie and back as they wondered how much we’d overheard.
“Hey, Nat!” Skip said. “Gotta go!” And the troops scattered.
Natalie’s face was red, her mouth pursed. “I am so sorry, Anna!”
I held up my hands palms out. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You do know that I’d never discuss this case or any other case with the kid, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Natalie, what’s A-TAG?”
She groaned. “It’s Skip’s summer project. It stands for Amhearst Tactical Army Group. It’s the boys’ attempt to keep Amhearst safe ‘from all enemies, both foreign and domestic.’ That’s a quote. They wear cammies, and they built themselves a headquarters in the woods behind my parents’ house, and they skulk around in the woods training.”
“They don’t have any real weapons, do they?” It was so sad that courtesy of Columbine and similar tragic incidents, I had to ask this question.
Natalie shook her head. “My father’d skin him alive if he thought they had guns.” She grew thoughtful. “Of course they all have BB guns, and I did walk into the garage this summer to find Skip with a Molotov cocktail he’d just made using gasoline from the lawn mower.”
I was shocked, though I wasn’t certain why. My brothers had all been fixated on anything that went boom when they were Skip’s age. One of them even made a bomb out of a piece of aluminum pipe he stuffed with match heads. He crimped the ends closed and using a nail, tried to hammer a hole for his fuse. The thing exploded. Because he’d used aluminum pipe instead of iron, the metal didn’t shatter. No shrapnel, just a loud boom, a blinding flash, and one scared kid.
But I knew my brother, and he wasn’t a nasty kid. Dumb, perhaps, but not nasty. Skip, on the other hand, was inclined to be nasty. I didn’t trust him one inch.
“Don’t worry,” Natalie said, though she was clearly worried. “I’ll talk to Mom and Dad. I’m supposed to have dinner there this evening. I go once a week to get a good h
ome-cooked meal.” She grinned. “I’m lousy in the kitchen.” The grin faded. “We’ll all keep a closer eye on him.”
“You might set him straight on the question of my guilt while you’re at it,” I suggested dryly.
She nodded. “The curse of the late-in-life child. Everyone’s too tired or too busy to train him.”
On the drive home, she told me that they’d found out the identity of Ken Ryder’s blonde. “Starr Goodnight.”
“You’re kidding.” A laugh bubbled up. “That’s her real name?”
“On her birth certificate.”
“Sounds like something an exotic dancer would name herself.”
“Her mother saved her the trouble.”
I blinked. “She’s an exotic dancer?”
“At a gentlemen’s club in Atlantic City.”
Dorothy, a partner in an accounting firm, sound, stable, reliable, and Starr Goodnight, an exotic dancer, exciting, sexy and uninhibited. Was Ken as schizophrenic in all his dealings?
We climbed out of the car and walked to the house. I could hear Rocky barking inside.
“Poor boy. It’s a long day for him.”
I opened the door, and he raced out, taking time to jump on me in greeting as he passed. He tended to nature’s needs, then raced back inside.
“That was quick.” I lugged my tote bag inside, Natalie on my heels.
Rocky ran to me but turned away when I reached out to pet him. He sat by the closed cellar door, quivering. Tipsy sat on the kitchen table, glowering at Rocky.
“Come here, baby.” I pulled a treat from the cabinet and held it for him. He ignored it.
“Sergeant Poole, please.”
I spun to Natalie. She was on her phone, her eyes on the cellar door, her easy manner gone.
“I think we’ve got a situation at Anna’s. I need backup.”
That’s when I realized that Tipsy wasn’t glowering at Rocky but the door. Both animals were telling us in no uncertain terms that something was very wrong.
EIGHTEEN
Natalie and I waited on the front porch, Rocky pulling on his lead, desperate to be taken somewhere more interesting than a slab of concrete. Tipsy had taken himself to safety under Lucy’s bed.
“Do you think he’s down there again?” I rubbed at the goose bumps puckering my arms. Natalie’s alert demeanor unnerved me.
She shrugged. “I don’t know, but we’re not going to find out by ourselves.”
I stepped off the shaded porch into the sunshine, hoping the radiant heat would warm the chill inside. “Why won’t he leave me alone?”
Natalie looked at me without speaking.
“Yeah, I know. I’m an eyewitness. But wouldn’t he be using his time better trying to escape than chasing me?”
“Anna, do you seriously expect logic to be the strong point of someone who kills people for a living?”
I lengthened Rocky’s lead so he could wander around the front lawn. “How does a person ever decide to become a professional killer? It’s not a job they tout at Career Day.”
“You’d be surprised at the evil men are capable of.” Natalie looked both distressed and cynical. “I’m only a small-town cop and haven’t even been on the force all that long, but I still have nightmares about some of the things I’ve seen.”
I nodded. I hadn’t seen evil up close like she had, but I read a lot. I knew of historical figures from Caligula to Hitler. I knew of Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin and other brutal dictators. I’d watched the Towers collapse on 9/11.
“Original sin gone mad,” I said.
Natalie shrugged. “Maybe. All I know is that someone has to hold the line, and for some unfathomable reason, I want to be that person.”
We watched the police cars swoop up the drive, lights flashing, though thankfully no siren blaring.
“Along with the help of several other armed people,” she added with a slight smile.
Lucy and Meg arrived just after the police and had to park out on the road. They stumbled up the yard, faces full of concerned distress. I met them halfway.
“What’s wrong now?” Lucy didn’t even acknowledge Rocky’s exuberant greeting, a telling sign of the depth of her anxiety.
“The animals were all upset and hovering at the basement door.”
“He’s down there again?” Meg was incredulous.
I shrugged. “We don’t know.”
After a brief consultation with the other officers, Natalie approached us. “Stand with your backs against the house,” she ordered. “We don’t expect any trouble, but just in case, the bricks will offer you protection. Just don’t stand in front of a window.”
While we were blinking at those words, she pulled her weapon, and with the other responders cautiously circled the house. As I watched the professional Natalie handle her firearm with intelligent ease, teaching intermediate art suddenly seemed like a safe and sane profession. In my own way, I might be holding the line too, but facing down Skip Schumann was vastly different from facing down a professional murderer. My respect for her and all those who worked with her rose.
We stood nervously, our backs against the bricks, waiting to hear what new threat lay in wait for me. I held Rocky by my side on a short lead. He seemed to sense something wasn’t right because, alien to his nature, he sat quietly. When we heard the cops’ cursing, their voices carrying clearly through the air, we looked at each other with trepidation.
The front door slammed open, and we jumped, waiting for the man in black to rush out. Instead it was a uniform.
“You can come in. The house is clear.”
Thank goodness! We had just begun to smile at each other when he continued, his face carefully neutral, “Sergeant Poole wants to see you downstairs.”
My stomach sank. My work. My sewing machines. My projects. My wave!
“Don’t let the animals down there,” the cop said when Rocky pushed his way to the cellar door, impatient to learn what had been concerning him for who knew how long. “There’s glass all over the place.”
I shut him in my room, and after making sure Tipsy was still under her bed, Lucy shut her bedroom door too. Then we went down to chaos, my heart crashing against my chest like storm waves crashing against the rocks.
Even before I saw the damaged machines, I saw the words on the wall, done in red spray paint that dripped impressively: You’re dead. Believe it!
Then I saw the shattered sliding glass door. The ruler Gray and I had put in the track had held it shut, but a rock through the glass had circumvented our burglar proofing. The rock lay not too far inside the door beside a large stick used to finish the B&E. Shards of shattered glass crunched underfoot.
I groaned when I saw the yards of material that had been unrolled, tossed on the floor, and sprayed with the same red paint that marred the wall. Hundreds of dollars of fabric, spitefully ruined. The shelf for spools of thread that Dad had made me was ripped from the wall, the thread pulled from the scores of spools and knotted into a huge, useless tangle. My paintings that had rested against the wall at the far end of the basement had all been slashed repeatedly, the canvas hanging limp, the frames no longer square.
Most painful of all to see was what remained of the work I’d done on my wave mosaic. The part already stitched had been cut to shreds. The small squares waiting their place in the work had all been gathered in a pile and thoroughly sprayed with the red paint.
The devastation was so complete that I couldn’t take it in. Lucy and Meg cried, but I stood stony-faced, the slashed mosaic bits hugged to my chest. I felt violated, invaded, shriveled by evil. I looked at the torn canvases and felt a wrenching pain as if somehow I hadn’t properly kept The Promise. And the scraps of material I clutched were pieces of my heart ripped from my chest.
Melodramatic, I know, but true. And what scared me most was that there was no purpose in this violence except intimidation. The man in black wanted me afraid. He wanted me trembling, jumping at shadows, flinching at any sudden moves, un
able to sleep. He wanted to dominate me as he played with me, the menacing cat batting around a helpless mouse for the fun of it before he took that first big fatal bite.
I have to admit that I felt like running home to Daddy. But choice doesn’t have to be made on the basis of emotion. It can be made for other reasons like right and good. I could be Marshal Will Kane standing for his principles against Frank Miller in High Noon, or I could run away like the good townsfolk of Hadleyville.
My decision.
“Anna! Anna! Where are you? What’s wrong?”
“Gray.” I heard the panic in his voice as his footfalls thundered across the floor over our heads.
He exploded down the steps, his eyes sweeping the room until he found me. “Are you hurt?” he asked as he grabbed my shoulders and studied my face.
I managed to shake my head, but the sight of him and his obvious concern started the tears and the shaking. I fell against him, my arms still clutching the mosaic pieces, sobbing out all the fear and pain of the past week.
He wrapped his arms around me and just held me, rocking me gently, making soothing noises. I cried harder.
“Take her upstairs,” Sergeant Poole said. “You girls go up, too.” He sounded very tired. “We’ll be a while down here.”
We went up, Gray helping me with an arm around my waist. It was a good thing because I couldn’t see the steps through my tears. The four of us went to the living room and sat, Lucy and Meg in chairs, Gray and I on the sofa. He pulled me close with an arm around my shoulders. I let my hands fall to my lap, and the bits of ruined fabric I’d been clutching tumbled onto my hands, the sofa, the floor.
Meg made a distressed sound and began to pick up the bits. I watched without the energy to help. When she had collected them all, she held up a fist with fraying edges sticking out between her fingers. “Do you want them?”
I shook my head. “Throw them out.”
“You can make another, Anna.” Lucy sat forward, her face intent, her eyes wet. She swiped at a tear. “It’ll be even more beautiful.”
I managed a wobbly smile. What wonderful friends these two women were. By rights they should be asking me to leave their home before I got one of them killed or brought the literal roof down on our heads. Instead they were encouraging me to make another go at the wave. “Maybe.”