What Janie Saw

by Pamela Tracy

  “Why?”

  Max made a face. “I can’t believe you’re asking that.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not giving me an answer.”

  “Brittney was blonde, gorgeous and guys were all over her from day one. Amanda and I cramped her style.”

  “Did she know Derek? Was Derek in any of those classes with you?”

  Max sighed, reminding Janie of how she’d felt that Thursday morning—only three weeks ago—in Rafe’s office when he’d wanted her to repeat all the information she’d already given.

  “He was in our math class. He sat in the back row and I never saw them together. But, as I told the cops already, that doesn’t mean anything. She did mention once that she thought he was ‘scary interesting’. Her words, not mine. Even Amanda seemed fascinated by him.”

  Finally Max, looking resigned, stopped fidgeting and came to sit in the guest chair. He was no longer apologetic. He just seemed young.

  “This is hard for you,” Janie observed.

  “You have no idea. Ever since Brittney disappeared, it’s as if Amanda’s my responsibility. I don’t have a choice. I like being Amanda’s friend, but being her protector is a bit much. This semester, my mom told Mrs. Skinley my schedule and right away, Amanda’s enrolled in the same classes.”

  “The Skinleys are overprotective?”

  “No, not really. It’s just that they’ve already realized that Tommy’s not heading for college. He’s working at some construction job in Scorpion Ridge. I think they’re afraid Amanda’s gonna mess up if she doesn’t have someone to guide her.”

  “Well, would she?”

  “That’s just it. Not a chance. Amanda’s a good girl. She’s good without even trying. She’d rather draw than eat. And she’s really smart.”

  “Was Brittney smart?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Max admitted. “She was more interested in impressing her friends. That was easy for her to do.”

  The way he said that indicated to Janie that Brittney’d sure impressed Max. If he’d been assigned to protect Brittney, he’d have considered it an answer to a teenage boy’s prayer. He scooted the visitor’s chair closer to Janie’s bed. “You don’t really think Brittney’s dead, do you? I mean, she could have just run away.”

  “I’m not sure. Was she the type of girl to run away?”

  For the first time, Janie saw the man that Max would someday be, and she was very impressed. Soulful brown eyes carefully studied Janie. Janie figured her face revealed the truth.

  “No, she wasn’t the type to run away. She had it too good.” Max rose and backed a few feet away from Janie. “She’s dead.”

  Janie opened her mouth and wished she’d let whatever drugs they’d been giving her put her to sleep. Anything so she wouldn’t have to tell Max she agreed with him.

  “Max Carter, you’ve saved me a trip,” a voice cut in. Detective Williamson stood in the doorway, making it look both small and blocked.

  Max froze.

  “We’ve got a few more questions for you, but first I need to talk with Janie here. Wait for me in the lobby.”

  Max started fidgeting again. Still, it didn’t reduce his speed. He slid past Detective Williamson, and Janie could hear his feet hitting the polished floor as he ran down the hallway.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Detective Williamson said. “He’s not involved in whatever’s going on at Adobe Hills Community College, but he might know something he’s not even aware he knows.”

  “Like that Brittney thought Derek was scary?”

  Detective Williamson nodded. “And some girls like guys who scare them.”

  He looked at her as if expecting her to agree. She did, but wasn’t about to have this conversation with a guy—especially not one with a badge who reminded her of why she didn’t particularly trust cops.

  The detective came into the room and took the chair Max had just vacated. “I wanted to ask you a few questions, but first, why don’t you tell me about the conversation you just had with Max.”

  “He mostly wanted to apologize. He assumed it was his fault. Then, he talked about being responsible for Amanda and in awe of Brittney.”

  “Pretty much what we got out of him yesterday.”

  “He’s worried about Amanda. She’s missed school for a couple of weeks, and he’s been trying to get ahold of her nonstop, but she’s not answering. I didn’t think I should mention that they’ve gone out of town. I didn’t want to have to lie when he asked why.”

  “Amanda’s a good student?”

  “She’s very talented in art.” Carefully, Janie gathered the covers and sat up. She needed to be alert for whatever Detective Williamson threw at her. Lying down made her sleepy. Of course, sitting up made her dizzy. She paused for the wooziness to ease and then waited for Detective Williamson’s next question.

  “She keep an art book, too?”

  “All the students did.”

  “Tell me what was in Amanda’s.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “She mostly draws clothes. I think she hopes to be a fashion designer someday.” Janie smiled. Amanda often was guilty of taking what the other students were wearing and drawing mix-and-match attire. She’d pair one student’s cowboy boots with another student’s shorts and yet another student’s T-shirt.

  “So, you’re quite comfortable with her style? You’d be able to identify her artwork?”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Did she ever draw anything about her brother, Tommy?”

  Janie almost said that Rafe had been asking questions about him, too, but she didn’t.

  Detective Nathan Williamson didn’t inspire her trust. Not like Rafe did.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  RAFE STARED AT the stack of papers on his desk. Some contained information he’d already memorized inside and out. Other files had joined the heap during the last few weeks, when he’d been focused on the Travis case. Now it was time to pay the piper, switch on his computer, start hobnobbing and catch up.

  The benefit of being a small-town sheriff was a small paperwork-to-hands-on ratio. He’d met sheriffs who did nothing but paperwork and political posturing. Their ulcers were bigger than his.

  But maybe they were slightly more sane.

  Not that he could turn his back on paperwork and political posturing. It was as much a part of the job as grading was to teaching—

  Speaking of teachers...

  He picked up the phone to dial Janie’s hospital room, thought better of it and dialed her sister, Katie, instead. “Call her yourself, Rafe,” Katie ordered before he could even get the words out.

  If Janie were in the Scorpion Ridge Hospital, he’d call either her doctor or one of the nurses. The hospital was small and he knew most of them. But Adobe Hills was bigger, and there’d be more red tape.

  He glanced at the phone and then at his desk. Truth was, he didn’t need to talk to Janie; he simply wanted to. Bigger truth was, he had to get some work done, and today was booked solid with responsibilities.

  Janie should be just another item on his to-do list.

  An hour later, he’d dealt with a dispute between a member of his custodial staff and one of his volunteers. Apparently, only he had the authority to appease both parties. Next, he approved the date for the next Bike Safety Day. Candy Riorden wanted a bike rodeo, but so far, Rafe had managed to rein in her exuberance. Though according to one of the memos on his desk, she’d already made the Bike Rodeo signs, so it seemed his hold on the reins was at best tentative.

  Settling back, he perused a court case two of his officers served on. It had returned a guilty verdict. Good. A repeat offender had not only been caught in the act, but had resisted arrest and had actually bitten one of the arrest
ing officers. Same thing had happened a year earlier, but thanks to a technicality the kid had been put back on the streets.

  This time, the jury had found the guy guilty and Rafe sighed in relief, in triplicate. In police work, everything was in triplicate.

  After sending an email to the lieutenant on a job well done, Rafe caught up on statistics—so far this week there’d been twenty-five incidents, nine arrests, twenty traffic tickets, twelve jail bookings and nineteen civil papers served.

  Other than the Travis case, he’d call this a slow month.

  At noon, after returning a dozen phone calls and what felt like a hundred emails about tomorrow night’s awards banquet, he headed out the door for lunch.

  Lunch was uneventful. Instead of the Corner Diner where the locals, especially his mother, would be hovering for information about the Travis case, he headed for home, a little two-bedroom that he’d bought from his uncle Leo.

  It hadn’t changed much from Leo’s day. Leo, a bachelor, had been a long-distance truck driver, and hadn’t needed much when it came to “home.” It made for an empty look. The brightest spot in the room right now was the painting over the couch.

  Crisco in all his glory.

  His mother had already noticed it and remarked that he could use Janie’s touch in all the rooms. Rafe was well aware she wasn’t talking exclusively about paintings.

  Rafe grinned as he cleaned up his sandwich and left his empty house.

  His next responsibility was giving a speech at the high school. Scorpion Ridge High had just over six hundred students. He would be speaking to the graduating class, about one hundred and fifty-two students. Rafe knew about half of them.

  When Rafe had sat in the audience of the high school as a graduating senior, his dad had been the speaker.

  At the door, Rafe was met not by Sam Winslow, the principal, but by Sam’s father, Sam Senior. He’d been Scorpion Ridge’s high school principal for fifty years before retiring.

  “Good to see you again,” he boomed.

  Rafe clasped the older man’s hand. Sam had been one of his grandfather’s cronies. And while Rafe had been hoping to speak to Sam Junior, find out what he thought about Amanda Skinley’s connection with Brittney’s case, it was like old times to talk to Sam Senior. “Good to see you, too. What are you doing here?”

  “Sam’s at a conference, and he’s got one vice principal out because his appendix decided to burst last night, and the other vice principal—” Sam Sr. checked his watch “—is probably just now hearing the words it’s a boy.”

  Rafe laughed. “I didn’t realize how much I missed you.”

  “And it’s as if I’ve never been gone.” Sam Senior led Rafe down the hallway. “I hear that one of our students might be in a bit of trouble....”

  “Just one?” Rafe chuckled.

  “I’m talking about Amanda Skinley.”

  Rafe followed Sam Senior into the auditorium. Except for a janitor sweeping up something in a corner, it was empty. But the feeling of chaos—organized chaos—was in the air. Just as a high school should feel.

  “Amanda here today?” Rafe asked. The thing about Sam Senior was that he claimed to be too old to care about student-confidentiality issues. He believed a community raised a child, and if a parent wanted to fight him because of something that happened in school, let the parent try and fight. Sam Junior was more a let’s-leave-the-office-door-open-so-we-have-a-witness principal....

  “No, and we’ve been informed that she’ll not be finishing out the school year. You want to explain that? We send our brightest to that college for concurrent enrollment, and now one is missing, probably dead, and the other is about to have a nervous breakdown. She’ll not even be at graduation. Did you know that?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t.”

  It was past time to call the Skinleys again. Rafe had their new cell number.

  “You just have the two seniors taking classes at the college?” Rafe asked.

  “Five started,” Sam supplied. “Two dropped out and one moved out of state.”

  “How does that work, high-school seniors taking college classes?”

  “It’s a special program, fairly new,” Sam replied. “High-school seniors can take college classes, usually the core subjects like English, math and such, and if they pass, it counts for both high-school credits and college credits.”

  “So mainly your college-bound students are interested in the program?”

  “The top two percent, mainly those who are sure about what they want to do in the future,” Sam said. “Like you were.”

  No one had been surprised when Rafe majored in criminal justice. He’d entered the police academy right out of college and was hired on in Scorpion Ridge at the ripe old age of twenty-two.

  And his mother had cried.

  Seven years later, at the tender age of twenty-nine, he’d successfully run for sheriff.

  “Can the high schoolers take any class they want?”

  “It’s not encouraged,” Sam answered. “There’s a block of six classes we prefer them to take. The students pretty much go in as a unit. The five we sent were considered a cohort. They had a counselor who guided them.”

  Whoever that counselor was, he or she would be getting a visit from Rafe soon.

  “How well do you know the Skinleys?” Rafe asked.

  “Well enough to form the opinion that they’re too easy on the son and too protective of the daughter.”

  Rafe’s opinion also. “How about Brittney Travis? Are you familiar with her?”

  “Lee’s my insurance agent. Brittney is a bright girl, school comes easy for her. She didn’t always apply herself, though. Likes the boys. Her parents kept taking her car away trying to get her on the straight and narrow.”

  Nothing Rafe hadn’t already heard, but he was surprised by how much information Sam Senior had. The man still had his finger on the pulse of Scorpion Ridge High.

  “Adobe Hills Community College is a bigger venue—more kids, more things to do—and that attracted Brittney like a moth to flame,” Sam continued.

  “Who would you say Brittney’s friends were?”

  Before Sam Senior could answer, the main auditorium door opened and a student poked his head through. He looked undecided about entering, but whoever was behind him wasn’t undecided. The door opened and students careened forth.

  A few minutes later, standing before the graduating class, Rafe said the words he’d said for almost a decade, but he felt as if he was in a vacuum.

  Brittney should be in the audience. She should be poised to bolt into her future, make all the mistakes and have all the successes a teenager is supposed to make and have. Amanda Skinley should be in the audience, too. Something wasn’t right in Scorpion Ridge, and Rafe needed to find out what. A sea of graduating seniors, now and in the future, depended on him.

  Which meant he had to distance himself from Janie, stop thinking about her 24/7 and start thinking about the case 24/7.

  As he reached the auditorium door, he switched his cell phone back on. A message beeped.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour,” Nathan complained.

  “Now you can appreciate how I felt on Tuesday.”

  Rafe wasn’t sure how to read the silence that followed. Nathan was usually a straightforward, let’s-not-waste-time kind of guy. At least, when he wasn’t sending get-out-of-my-jurisdiction signals.

  “We found something in Patricia’s apartment during our investigation, and I recently finished going through it. It’s Amanda Skinley’s art book.”

  “It would have been nice to hear about this sooner,” Rafe said.

  “Patricia had more than two hundred student art books in that house. It took us a few days to go through them. Amanda’s appears to be newer than the rest. I
also want to impress you with the fact that we can find an art book and not lose it,” Nathan said drily. “We’ve had time to look through Amanda’s book, at the drawings and words. Probably with as much care as you gave Derek’s art book.”

  Rafe recognized a dig when he heard one.

  Nathan continued, “The last few pages are the most interesting. They’re a fairly detailed description of Brittney’s death.”

  Rafe didn’t believe it. He’d sat with Amanda as she drew their only investigative lead. She wouldn’t have failed to mention that she’d also drawn the crime scene.

  And there’d been no other female mentioned in Derek’s art book.

  Nathan continued, “Now we have two art books with leads. Janie should do a comparison. I stopped by her hospital room this morning. She indicated that she’s familiar with Amanda’s drawing style, and could say whether this is legit or a wild-goose chase.”

  “It’s a wild-goose chase,” Rafe said.

  “Maybe,” Nathan admitted, “but Amanda’s parents are not returning my calls or emails, and Amanda’s account of what happened to Brittney is nothing like Derek’s.”

  * * *

  JANIE WATCHED AS her sister, Katie, went from the stove to the fridge to the sink and then started all over again. Soon, there’d be enough ham, mashed potatoes and green beans to feed the whole neighborhood. Today she’d also cleaned the house from top to bottom.

  Her brother-in-law, Luke, simply shook his head and waited. He knew Katie would break any moment and whatever was bothering her would all come spewing out.

  Janie figured whatever it was, it had to do with her. Katie had been on big-sister-overload ever since they’d driven home from the hospital. Janie almost wished she hadn’t spilled the details of Max and Nathan’s visit.

  “I really need to call Rafe,” Janie finally said. “I want to find out what he thinks about Amanda’s art book showing up in Patricia’s apartment. Plus, I should tell him everything Max Carter said when he visited me.”