Dan Forrest.
Or Brigit Pierce.
Brigit followed me down the shadowy aisle. When we reached the front row, I took the second seat. My purse sat on the floor by my feet. I reached down, opened the flap, and flipped on my tape recorder.
Brigit plopped down next to me, dropped her books carelessly on the floor. "I don't see what difference it makes who my mom talked to on Friday. She didn't know somebody was going to shoot her Saturday." She spoke of her mother's murder without emotion.
"I understand your mother was angry?" She thought about it, gave me a sideways glance. "Hmm. Yeah. I guess. She was in a rotten mood Friday morning. I know she was hacked at Mr. Selwyn." "Was this when she gave him an icy look?" "Yes. He was coming out of her office as I went in. He was going fast, like he couldn't wait to be outta there." "Why did you go by your mother's office?" She thought about it just a shade too long. "I had a note in my locker."
"Why did she want to see you?" She looked at me blandly. Entirely too blandly. "Franci. Mom asked me how Franci'd been acting lately. I couldn't see why she'd care, but I told her Franci was weird, glop-ping around like the world was coming to an end. But Franci was always kinda weird." Brigit chattered on, disdain in her voice. "… 'course, 1 didn't know about those notes then. I mean, you talk about weird! I've heard those notes are real sicko."
"Do you have any idea who might have written them?" She shrugged. "No." She frowned. "Somebody who's not very nice."
"Is that all you and your mother discussed?" She was gathering up her books. "Hmm? Yes." "She didn't talk to you about going away to school?" Her eyes skidded toward me, then away. "No." Her voice was harsh. "Not a word."
If you've ever watched a duel with swords, you'd have a sense of my joust with Dan Forrest.
I edged my purse and the silently whining recorder a little closer to his chair. Surely I could get something-even if it was just the tone of his answer-to buttress my suspicion.
Like his mother, Dan was undeniably attractive. Crisp, short black hair. Finely chiseled features. Smooth skin. Deep-set dark blue eyes. Clean-cut enough for a Norman Rockwell cover. He didn't appear to have a care in the world. A smiling face.
Ted Bundy smiled a lot.
It would take rock-solid proof to ever convince a jury of Dan's guilt.
"You talked to Mrs. Matthews Friday morning."
He was smart enough not to deny it. "Yes, ma'am. About a paper I'm doing." He was relaxed, casual, smiling, his sapphire eyes courteously attentive.
"What kind of person wrote those letters to Franci?"
"How should I know?"
"I'm asking you to give me an idea. Do you suppose it was a nerdy little creep?"
The smile looked iced on his face.
I gave him a swift, thorough scan. His hands were loose in his lap. There was no room for a gun beneath his blazer. He did have on a backpack. There would be plenty of room in it for Patty Kay's missing gun. Before he could get to it, my Mace would be out and in use.
But I was very glad that the young policewoman wasn't more than a shout away.
However, if I could somehow entice Dan to attack me…
He still smiled, but it wasn't reflected in his hot, angry eyes. And was he really so handsome? Wasn't there a hint of
cruelty in his mouth? A feline secretiveness in his polite gaze?
"A second-rater, somebody who isn't good enough to succeed. A coward, of course."
One eye flickered. A nervous tic.
I jabbed again, hoping to draw more blood.
"Maybe somebody like you. Vice president. Not president. Not on your own steam. You're jealous of Walt, aren't you? Walt always beats you. In grades. In sports. In elections. They don't like you as much as they do Walt."
Glittering blue eyes never left my face.
"You decided to tyrannize Franci because you knew it would upset Walt. She didn't really cooperate, did she? It would have been better if she'd told him. But you really got to Walt finally-because poor Franci killed herself and that drove Walt out of Walden School. You couldn't have hoped for a better result, could you? Now you're class president. Well, I can promise you, Dan, you won't be class president for long."
He pushed up from his chair, stood, glared down at me.
Oddly enough, I wasn't frightened.
How did Patty Kay feel when she looked into her murderer's eyes?
"Where were you at five o'clock Saturday afternoon, Dan?"
"Home. I was home."
"How about yesterday afternoon, Dan? Around three o'clock."
"I'm on the cross-country team."
"Out running by yourself?"
"Yes. Yes, I was."
"You wrote those damn notes."
"You can't prove a thing. Mr. Selwyn said-"
He broke off.
I reached down for my purse and stood, facing him. "Yes, Dan. What did Mr. Selwyn say?"
Panic swept that handsome face. Dan turned and ran up the aisle.
I looked after him. Then I clicked off my recorder.
22
The bright sunshine stung my eyes. But I wasn't particularly aware of my surroundings. There was too much turmoil in my mind.
I was certain Dan Forrest came to the Walden campus late Thursday night to put yet another nasty pink note in Franci's locker.
Patty Kay had seen Dan.
All the tragedy of this week flowed from that moment.
Dan wrote the tormenting messages. He was bitterly jealous of Walt and desperately wanted to hurt him. Dan saw Walt as vulnerable through his sensitive, gentle sister.
I stepped onto thick grass to angle my way across a broad sweep of lawn to the path leading to the old house and Selwyn's office.
Yes, Dan wrote the notes. My description of the letter writer infuriated him.
But Dan made no move to attack me.
Of course, he must have realized a policewoman waited in the foyer of the auditorium.
Yet he was angry and upset, surely as threatened by my knowledge as by Patty Kay's.
Perhaps Dan felt all he had to do was deny any knowledge of those letters. I had no concrete proof. Not like Patty Kay, who had actually possessed-
I stopped short.
The trashing of Patty Kay's office. The attempted arson
Of course. Dan did both.
And how it must have amused him to tell me about the open back door and the sounds he'd heard upstairs Monday. His lies would cover his presence behind the Matthews house if he had been observed that afternoon.
It was Dan who rifled through the files and, when he didn't find the note, he'd angrily damaged the office. It was Dan who splashed gasoline against the house and escaped into the darkness.
But I was still surprised that he'd run away now, making no attempt to silence me.
He must feel as long as I had no visible proof, it was his word against mine.
After all, Dan was a Forrest.
I smiled grimly and began to walk swiftly across the lawn.
Dan didn't know I had recorded our conversation, including that terribly revealing "Mr. Selwyn said…"
Chuck Selwyn. I couldn't wait to face him down. The sorry jerk. Dan's artless comment meant Selwyn knew that Dan wrote the notes that drove Franci to suicide. The headmaster had done nothing about it. Just as I had surmised before I talked to Brigit and Dan. But the critical difference was that Dan Forrest knew that Patty Kay had told Selwyn about him.
Why kill Patty Kay and leave Selwyn to tell the tale?
How could Dan have counted on the headmaster keeping quiet?
Would a murderer take that chance?
But the desperate gamble had succeeded, hadn't it? Publicly, the headmaster had given no hint he knew the identity of the writer of those cruel notes. But he'd talked to Dan.
I didn't understand.
Was I wrong on all counts? Did Patty Kay's discovery about the notes have no connection with her murder?
I stopped in the shadow of a huge fir.
The lovely campus brimmed with life and movement. It was almost noon. I shaded my eyes. The cafeteria, a low-slung one-story building, sat to the west of the auditorium.
Think, Henrie O.
Patty Kay told Selwyn about those letters.
What then?
I felt confident the headmaster's immediate instinct was to object to any public revelation.
The Patty Kay who stood up to a fundamentalist attack against her efforts to provide a public forum for AIDS education certainly wouldn't yield to Selwyn.
Patty Kay called the meeting of the Walden trustees. She told the headmaster she intended to bring the matter before the board.
Just how determined was Selwyn to prevent her from passing along what she knew to the board?
Or was it deeper than that? Did Patty Kay give Selwyn an ultimatum: Agree to public punishment of the letter writer or I'll demand your resignation?
Selwyn had angrily insisted Patty Kay's murderer wasn't a student.
Perhaps he had the best reason in the world to be sure of that.
Okay, Chuck baby, time for a showdown.
But first I'd find the policewoman and get in touch with Captain Walsh.
I stepped out on the path.
Birds chattered cheerfully in the blooming redbuds Soft running steps sounded behind me.
"Mrs. Collins."
She looked almost like a young boy in the hooded navy sweatshirt and sweatpants and mirrored sunglasses. But I instantly recognized that soft, silken voice.
"Hello, Brooke." Brooke Forrest was the last person I wanted to see. She'd been so distressed at the ugliness of the notes. She would be devastated when she knew what her son had done.
"Chuck Selwyn wants to see you."
"I'm on my way there just now."
"He's not in his office. He wants us to meet him on the other side of the lake. At the pavilion." The shiny mirrored sunglasses glittered in the sunlight. She stood a foot or so from me. A nylon jacket was draped over her right arm. "I'll show you the way."
Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake.
But nobody's ever painted me as stupid.
I kept it casual. "Why over there?"
"He didn't say exactly. Something about Franci." The words flowed from her quite-perfect lips, touched so lightly with a subtle pink, lips with tight lines etched at each corner. "Something they found. He and that Captain Walsh.'
Clever.
The only giveaway was the rigidity of her face, the skin tight over her cheekbones, those harsh indentations by her mouth.
And the jacket-draped hand.
I rested my fingers on the flap of my purse.
I lifted my left arm, glanced at my watch. "I need to make a phone call, Brooke. Why don't you wait here for me? It will take me only a moment."
"They want you to come directly."
I shrugged and started toward the administration building. "Oh, they can wait."
"Stop, Mrs. Collins." She briefly pulled back the jacket to provide a quick glimpse of the gun in her hand. "I'll shoot you now if I have to."
My right hand still rested atop my purse.
But I couldn't get the purse open and reach the Mace on my key ring before I would be dead.
Unless I was very careful and quick indeed.
I faced her. I spoke quietly but firmly. "It won't do you any good to shoot me in front of witnesses-and that's what you'll have to do. Because I won't go with you, Brooke."
"Yes, you will." Brooke's soft, silky, lovely voice contrasted eerily with the hard, intractable words that spewed from her mouth. "Do you see the policewoman coming toward us? I'll shoot her and then I'll move so quick and put the gun right up against you and shoot and scream and then I'll tell everyone you had the gun and you shot the policewoman because you thought she was coming for you, that they'd found out that you killed Patty Kay, that you planned it with Craig."
She said it all so fast, the words blurred in my mind, but I understood.
Brooke was desperate.
She would do whatever she had to do.
I might possibly be able to save my own life.
But the young policewoman would die.
It was a wild and dangerous gamble on Brooke's part. But it was the only chance she had.
It could work.
"You were listening-when I talked to Brigit and Dan."
"Yes." A brittle smile. "I was on the stage behind the curtain. All right, let's start walking toward the lake. That's right-stay a little in front of me and to my left."
She prodded me forward.
"You shouldn't have talked like that to Dan." Her voice shook with anger. "It was a prank. That's all it wasv He didn't realize how serious it was."
"To write obscene letters? To brutalize a gentle, helpless spirit?" I heard the tremor in my voice. "He didn't realize?"
The young policewoman came closer, nodded hello, passed us by.
Brooke set a fast pace. We were even with the lovely old mansion. Only a few yards more and we would reach the path by the lake. The path soon plunged into trees.
If I ducked away…
A little boy-a sandy-haired little boy about twelve-ran past us, calling to a friend. I stumbled to a stop.
There was something about the high, happy sound of his voice that brought back a bright, quick, poignant memory:
"Mom, Mom, look at the key!" His eyes dancing with delight, Bobby held up the massive iron key that was six inches long at least.
I could smell the dank, dark corridor in the centuries-old monastery that had been converted to a hotel, see the massive oak door, and hear the happiness in Bobby's voice.
The barrel of the gun gouged my back. "Do as I say. I'll shoot. And not just you."
I began to walk. The little boy broke into a run.
"Hurry. Hurry
!"
The sandy-haired little boy was well past us now. Safe. And alive.
We turned onto the path. Our shoes scuffed little bursts of dust.
Brooke was watching my every move.
I gripped my purse. How could I open it? When?
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