Murder Is Our Mascot

by Tracy D. Comstock

  She contemplated this dilemma on the way up the stairs to her classroom. She hated to admit it, but she was frightened of Barnes. She truly believed he could be Jim's murderer. If only Helen would turn up! She hadn't seen any signs of a hostage while skulking around Barnes's house. But still…

  There was no getting around it—she was going to have to tell Tad about her and Gabby's visit to Barnes's last night. She considered and discarded several different ways to break the information without Tad blowing up, which kept her mind occupied during morning classes. Thankfully, a large part of each hour was filled with a showing of some clips from the 1997 Odyssey miniseries with Armand Assante as Odysseus. She was prepping the students not only for a reading of Homer's Odyssey, but also for a writing assignment that would detail their own personal odysseys. All of the students seemed excited as they discussed the various clips shown, and Emily felt the success of seeing true interest glowing in her students' eyes.

  As soon as her conference hour rolled around, however, she steeled her spine and headed over to Tad's classroom. She took the precaution of shutting the door behind her in case he reacted as she highly suspected he would. Tad stopped grading papers and listened closely as she detailed the what, when, and why of her and Gabby's spying expedition. Emily could hear Tad grinding his teeth, but he remained calm. When she had finished, she chewed on the edge of an already-ravaged fingernail, waiting for his pronouncement on her stupidity. Instead, he cleared his throat and asked quietly, like a man trying not to shout, "Are you scared, Emily? Is this something we should take to the police?"

  Emily's pride flew out the window, and she confessed to feeling truly terrified of Barnes now. "Still, we can't go to the police because we have nothing but suspicious feelings. Trust me, I've considered it, but I don't think the police have taken up the practice of arresting people for being despicable."

  Tad tapped his red grading pen as he considered. Emily hated that pen. She had never graded in red because no student was ever encouraged by finding his or her paper bleeding with critiques. Now the color also reminded her of that terrifying moment when she had discovered Jim. Tad interrupted her morbid thoughts. "Okay, then, we need to find some concrete facts. You said you did some research into Barnes's past, but all you found was the allegation from the girl of inappropriate conduct, right?" When Emily nodded, he continued. "So we dig some more."

  They hunkered down behind his desk, but the list of sites that filled Tad's screen were the same ones Emily had read and discarded as unimportant the other day. "We have to narrow the search further," Tad said as he confined the search to Richard Barneses in Missouri. Still, their search was unproductive. Tad got up to pace, and Emily watched him, at a loss for ideas. Suddenly, Tad whirled back to the computer and started a new search. His eyes were full of excitement as he turned to her. "His car!" he exclaimed.

  "What about it?" Emily asked. "I mean, we could look up the VIN number or the dealer he purchased it from, but what would that tell us about his past?"

  "No. His car itself," Tad corrected. At her blank look, he prodded, "His license plate?"

  "I give up. I know nothing about cars, and I have no idea what you're talking about."

  Tad shoved at his hair. He really needed a haircut, but Emily found the lock of hair that fell over his forehead oddly endearing. "He has one of those vanity plates. Didn't you notice?"

  "No," Emily admitted. "I didn't pay that close of attention. But how will that help us narrow our search?"

  "We can use his middle initial." Tad looked like an eager puppy, and Emily found her heart melting a bit more. She ignored the feeling and tried to picture Barnes's license plate instead. Nothing came to mind.

  "I think it says something like R-Man. I can't remember the first part," Tad said.

  "I'll look through the teachers' lounge window. You can see the parking lot from there."

  "Perfect," Tad beamed.

  Emily checked the hallway. It was clear, so she made a mad dash across the hall to the lounge. The Mission Impossible theme song played in her head as she flattened herself against the wall next to the window and peered around. The window was foggy. Laughing at her own James Bond-like behavior, Emily swiped at the window and squinted, trying to make out the letters on the Cobra's license plate. She could clearly see the R, and the third letter was B, but the middle letter could be an L or an F or an E.

  Straining her eyes, she was distracted by a movement between two of the other cars in the lot. A man in a black trench coat and a navy baseball cap was moving slowly. Something about him seemed familiar, and when he looked up to scan the row of windows at the back of the building, Emily had a clear view of his face. She gasped. It was the same man she had seen sneaking away from Jim's funeral!

  Emily spun toward the door. Glancing at Tad's classroom, she debated stopping to tell him what she was doing, but there was no time. She careened down the back staircase, bursting out the back doors. She sprinted to the spot where the man had been standing moments ago, but he was nowhere to be seen. The man moved like a bat. Frustrated, she headed back toward the school doors. As she passed Barnes's car, however, she stopped to get a clear look at his license plate. Now she could see that it read "REB-MAN." She snorted. "Man," her foot. The "man" was a toad all the way.

  Halfway back up the stairs, she ran into Tad. "Where did you go?" He looked bewildered. For the second time in the space of an hour, Emily admitted to her reckless behavior. "He disappeared into thin air, just like before," she huffed.

  "Do not do that again," Tad told her firmly and headed back to his classroom. Emily bit her tongue to keep from sticking it out at his retreating back. Mature, she knew, but as much as she wanted to see where this thing, if there even was a thing, was going between her and Tad, she didn't need a keeper. She could take care of herself just fine, thank you very much. Except for her broken arm. And her broken window. Oh, and her lack of wheels…whatever.

  Trailing behind Tad, Emily remembered she had seen Barnes's license plate. She relayed the information to Tad, and he scooted behind his desk to narrow his search further. They spent the rest of their shared conference hour skimming through several pages of uninformative articles. Tad pushed away from the computer with frustration. Emily continued to stare at the screen, desperately trying to come up with another way to get some proof that Barnes was a dangerous criminal. The last hit on the results screen caught her eye, and she laughed. It was a picture of a Harlequin Romance. She pointed it out to Tad, joking that she highly doubted he was the lead character in a woman's romance novel.

  "Why did that come up in our search?" Tad wondered aloud, clicking the link. The page that came up was an article on best-selling Harlequin Romance writer Carrie Brannon. Emily shrugged and turned away.

  "Doesn't seem to have anything to do with Barnes. I guess I'd better go get ready for my afternoon classes." She was almost to the door when Tad let out a hoot of laughter.

  "You have to see this, Em." Tad's laughter shook his shoulders. He pointed to the last line of the article.

  Emily leaned over him to read aloud, "Readers might be interested to know that Carrie Brannon is the pen name for Richard E. Barnes, school teacher by day, romance writer by night."

  Emily dropped into the nearest chair, staring at Tad in disbelief. "A romance writer? Barnes? Please tell me this is a sick joke."

  Tad continued to snicker as he pointed out, "It all makes sense. That's where he got the money for that car. It's probably also why he's so secretive. I highly doubt he'd want this information to get around. The students would have a heyday with it. He'd be the laughingstock of Ellington, no matter how much money he makes writing."

  Emily fumed. Barnes? Life was so unfair. She was the English teacher with a creative writing minor. She was the one who dreamt of writing a best-selling novel one day. Barnes? Dang it all, there was no way he could be the bad guy in all of this if this was the secret he was covering up.

  Tad read her mind. "Guess t
his puts Barnes at the bottom of the suspect list, huh? He'd have no reason to blackmail anyone. If anything, it would be the other way around."

  "I guess so," Emily grumped. This was certainly an unexpected, and unwelcome, revelation.

  She hated to ask it, but she had to. "You don't think Helen could have been blackmailing him, do you? She had to need the money, and clearly, Barnes has it."

  "Then why was Jim the one murdered? And that still doesn't explain anything about his missing nephew."

  "True," Emily agreed.

  Before the bell rang and they both had to get back to work, she and Tad looked up the article on the missing Olsen child. It was a heartrending story. A young, wealthy couple, both on the rise in their law careers, had a baby boy. The mother was suffering from severe postpartum depression. In a move he hoped would help her, her husband, Stephen Olsen, hired a nanny, Bridget McMillan, to help care for their son. The nanny had taken him out to the park one day so that the young, overwhelmed mother could take a nap. A little girl had fallen off the swings and the nanny went over to help her up. When she turned back to the baby carriage, the baby was gone. The police searched and searched. At first, the nanny was suspected, but once the police cleared her, she moved away, apparently devastated by the kidnapping of the child on her watch. The parents were overcome with grief, offering all kinds of rewards for any information concerning the missing child. Jim Olsen, the younger brother of the father, became a spokesman for the family. He swore that he would not rest until his nephew was found.

  In a follow-up to the article, Tad and Emily silently read about the suicide of the young mother. It was a tragic story. Years passed, and the father gave up hope of ever recovering his lost child. His world had been too completely shattered. Jim, however, had never given up the search.

  "Wow," Emily whispered. "Who would have known Jim was hiding such a past?"

  "Goes to show you never know what's going on in someone else's life behind closed doors. No matter how much of an open book they may seem," Tad said, echoing Gabby's sentiments the night of their stakeout.

  Emily began to cry softly, once again filled with grief at the death of a good man, a kind man. Tad wrapped her in his arms, letting her cry. Emily dimly thought, This is becoming a pattern. She pulled back, looking into Tad's eyes. She saw a matching grief there. Wanting to soothe him and herself, she closed her eyes and leaned forward, and—the bell rang. They sprang apart like they'd been shocked with a cattle prod. Emily ducked her head, appalled that she had been about to kiss Tad right here in the middle of a school day. Without looking back, she hurried to her own classroom to get on with her day.

  * * *

  Emily ate lunch in her classroom, hoping to avoid both Barnes and Tad. She tapped out a new list of questions they still needed to answer:

  1. Was Jim murdered because he was on the trail of his nephew?

  2. Who did Jim meet with at the high school that night?

  3. Was Stephanie involved? She had an inkling of Jim's past…

  4. WHERE WAS HELEN? Was her disappearance tied to Jim's death, or was it something else entirely?

  5. Who ran Gabby and me off the road? Who threw the brick through my window? Was it the same person?

  Emily read over the list and tried to make connections between the questions. If all this was tied to Jim's nephew, did that mean the boy was here in Ellington? The true implications of that sunk in, and Emily found herself staring at the list of names in her grade book, wondering if one of the boys listed there could be the missing Olsen child. It seemed like quite a stretch, though, as she knew the parents of 99 percent of her students. She wanted to run her new idea by Tad, but the bell was ringing. It would have to wait until after school.

  * * *

  As afternoon classes got under way, Emily was anxious to see how Stevie would react to the movie clips. She hoped that writing about his own odyssey would draw him out, giving him a chance to express his feelings about all the moves he and his mom had made. True to his word, he had been putting more effort into class. Small victories like this made teaching worthwhile, in Emily's opinion.

  To her disappointment, though, Stevie wasn't in class. None of the students had any idea where he was. A couple of the football players said he hadn't been at practice the night before. Since she hadn't gotten a note for homework to be sent to the office, Emily was curious where he was. As soon as the final bell rang, she went down to the office to inquire what Arlene had said when she phoned in Stevie's absence that morning. The secretary double-checked her pile of notices twice, but Arlene had never called. Emily thanked her and headed back up to her classroom.

  She tried to do some grading to pass the time until Tad was done with his Mathletes' practice, but she couldn't concentrate. An unsettled feeling was roiling in her belly, and she was too restless to sit still. The fact that Arlene hadn't called in to report Stevie's absence seemed uncharacteristic. She came across as the type of person who was always on top of things. She wouldn't want Stevie to have an unexcused absence on his record.

  Emily began straightening her desk for something to do since she couldn't concentrate on grading. Shuffling a stack of mythology notes to one side, a Maxine Post-it Note fluttered to the floor. Emily picked it up and saw it was the contact information she had written down for Arlene Davis. Emily recalled Arlene's serious face and anxiousness to help her son in any possible way. But then she pictured Stevie, hair in his eyes, a hangdog expression on his face. True, he had promised her that he would do better in class, and he had been trying, but she couldn't forget the lost look he had given her when he said he was sick of moving. An idea struck Emily—could Stevie have finally decided to rebel against his mother? Did he cut class today? Or even worse, had he run away? Before she could second-guess herself, Emily scooped up her cell and dialed Stevie's home number. It rang and rang, but no one picked up, and the answering machine never kicked on.

  The uneasiness she had been feeling grew to the point that she felt physically ill. She thought about interrupting Tad and telling him her worries, but she was sure he would think she was being hysterical. And maybe she was. But the fact remained that this all seemed out of character. She had to talk to Arlene to make sure Stevie was okay, but on the off chance he wasn't, she didn't want to alarm Arlene unnecessarily. It would be better to have this conversation in person.

  Her worry building, Emily thought of Helen's disappearance. Could Stevie be in the same situation as Helen? There were too many frightening scenarios to consider. She had to focus on one thing at time. Stevie might very well be at home, too sick to answer the phone. The best way to find out for sure would be to talk to Arlene. She scooped up her purse and headed out the door. Halfway to the stairs she remembered she was lacking transportation. She stomped her foot in frustration. If she ever got her hands on the person who ran Gabby and her off the road, she'd throttle them. She missed her PT as much as if it had been a real live person.

  After a quick internal debate, she decided not to interrupt Tad's Mathletes' practice again. He would be tied up for at least another hour, so she had plenty of time to borrow his Prius and dash over to Masterson Real Estate to talk to Arlene. They would probably have a laugh over her ridiculous imagination, and then she could be back before Tad even knew she was gone. In her years of teaching, she had learned it was better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission, and if things went well, she wouldn't have to ask for either.

  Tad had left his classroom door unlocked, per usual, so she slipped inside without turning on the light. No need to draw attention to the fact that someone was in his room when he was busy with the Mathletes. Emily silently slid open the top, right-hand drawer of his desk. He kept a carved wooden box in there that a student had given him as a thank you gift his first year of teaching. That student had gone on to be a math teacher himself, and that box had become one of Tad's most prized possessions. He normally kept his keys and some loose change in the box. Emily prayed that he had not c
hanged his ways. Lifting the wooden lid, she let out a whoosh of relief. Thank goodness—Tad was predictable even when nothing else in the world was. She grabbed the keys to his Prius and sent him a silent apology. Tad would never knowingly allow her to drive his precious car. But since she would be back before he could even notice she'd borrowed the Prius, what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A sharply dressed man in a gray suit and a red power tie hopped up to greet Emily as she pushed through the front door of Masterson Real Estate. His rectangular, gold name tag read "Gil," she noticed as he flashed her a trust me and I'll sell you your dream house smile. Repulsed by his slightly desperate air, Emily took some small satisfaction in asking for Arlene Davis in response to his query of how he could help. Gil's trust-me smile momentarily disappeared as he emitted an unprofessional snort, but then a predatory shark smile, all teeth, spread across his face as he smelled new blood in the waters. "Unfortunately, Ms.…" He waited for her to fill in the gap, but Emily remained silent, returning his toothy grin. Gil shrugged and continued. "Arlene abruptly quit this morning."

  "What?" Emily was startled into asking. She understood the words—she just couldn't fathom the meaning behind them. "Why?"

  Gil attempted to pull off a sympathetic look, but Emily wasn't buying it. "Something about her son being unhappy at Ellington High. Her world revolves around that kid, I swear. Anyway, she said as how she'd already found a new job, she planned to leave immediately. If you were working with her, I'd be happy to help you. I've taken over her listings, and—" Gil continued his spiel even as she turned and pushed blindly back out onto the sidewalk.