by Sara Rosett
Marie, today in a pink shirt and white short-sleeved sweater, reached out to steady the tray of sandwiches. “I’ve been watching for you all morning. You said you’d check with me first thing this morning about . . .” She stopped speaking abruptly as a line of students walked through the lobby. Ms. McCormick, the skirt of her blue shirtwaist dress swishing, was in the lead. As she passed us, she glared at me, and instinctively I fell back a step. She looked nothing like Livvy’s description of a fairy tale princess. Instead, with her angry face, she looked more like an evil villainess.
As Ms. McCormick disappeared into the cafeteria, Marie let out a whoosh of breath. “I’m glad I wasn’t standing any closer to you. We’d both be in cinders if looks could kill.”
“Why is she mad at me? What’s happened?” I asked.
“Detective Waraday was in first thing this morning, asking all sorts of questions about Klea,” Marie said. “He started with me and Peg in the office. Why didn’t you tell me about the note you received?”
“Detective Waraday told you about the note?”
“Showed us a copy, even.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t expected Detective Waraday to show the note to anyone at school, but of course that was silly. How could he question people unless he mentioned the note? And if he showed them a copy he could watch their reactions.
“Of course we were floored,” Marie continued. “But then he wanted to speak to Ms. McCormick, which I thought was odd. Why her, of all the teachers? But now that I’ve done that little bit of research for you, I think I understand.”
It didn’t seem odd to me. Mrs. Kirk, Marie, Peg, and Ms. McCormick were the four people left on Klea’s list, but of course Marie didn’t know about the list. Although why Detective Waraday would include Marie in his questioning, I didn’t understand. Marie had been out of town the morning Klea died, but I guessed he was just being thorough.
“Oh, it’s sub sandwiches today,” exclaimed a teacher coming out of the cafeteria, and I said to Marie, “I’d better get this set up.”
She nodded. “Meet you back here in a jiffy.”
I put the tray in the teachers’ lounge and set up bags of chips alongside it, with napkins and paper plates, then headed back to the lobby. Marie emerged from the office with some papers, which she handed to me. “Look at this.”
The page on top was a job application form.
“Ms. McCormick’s job application? How did you get this?” I asked.
Marie smiled. “I have my ways.”
She was the longest employed person at the school. She’d been here even longer than Mrs. Kirk, so I supposed she knew how to get a hold of files. “Remind me never to cross you,” I said with a grin.
“Wouldn’t be wise. Now, look at that.” She pointed to the job history.
“It’s blank . . . but she said she worked before. Even if it was only substitute teaching, shouldn’t she have put it down as prior experience?”
“Yes, she should have,” Marie said as I quickly scanned the rest of the form. Ms. McCormick had a degree in elementary education from a university in North Carolina and had listed her address as an apartment in Charlotte.
I thought of Detective Waraday’s comment about Ms. McCormick and a potential lie.
“There’s more,” Marie said.
I flipped to the next page and realized it was a wage and earnings statement. I pushed the papers back into Marie’s hands. “No. That’s too personal.”
Marie frowned at me. “This has nothing to do with the amount of money she makes. Look here, at her name. See how it’s spelled?” Marie pointed to the wage form.
“Jill McCormick,” I said, not seeing her point.
Marie flipped back to the other page. “And here, on the job application? I don’t think you looked at it very carefully.”
She pushed both papers back at me, pointing to the names. I had read them too quickly. The name on the job application had an extra letter. She’d listed her name as “Jill MacCormick.”
“So the job application has MacCormick, but her wage and earning statement has McCormick? Which one is right?”
“Her name is Jill McCormick. I checked the database. We have to verify everyone’s name with a government-issued ID, so I’m pretty sure that’s her real name,” Marie said.
“So the name on the application must be a typo,” I said. “It looked like it was filled in on one of those online application systems. It would be easy to make a mistake. She probably caught it when she was hired.”
“I don’t think so. I know the process. The job application is the basis for the background check. Jill MacCormick would have been the name that was checked, not her real name. Once an individual clears the district’s background check, and they’re hired, then they fill out all the tax paperwork. I was curious what a background check on the name ‘Jill McCormick’ would bring up in North Carolina, so I did a little searching online on my own this morning.”
She handed me the last sheet of paper. It was a printout of a newspaper article. I recognized Ms. McCormick’s face under the headline, which I whispered, “ ‘Teacher arrested in drug bust’? Ms. McCormick was involved in a drug arrest?”
Marie nodded, her lips pressed together.
“Oh, this is not good,” I said, looking at the ceiling. While parents might not like a teacher writing erotica, a teacher with a drug arrest in her past was a completely different level of complication. Just for starters, the school district held Red Ribbon Week, which taught students the dangers of drugs and warned them away from them, every year. Everyone—the parents, Mrs. Kirk, the other teachers—would be upset at the news about Ms. McCormick.
Marie said, “You can see why she changed her name. Just one little letter, and she becomes a whole new person. The background check doesn’t show anything—no drug bust—nothing.” Marie pointed to the name of the newspaper. “That’s actually in South Carolina, so I assume she put North Carolina as her permanent address, hoping to confuse the issue even more. I found a record of a Jill McCormick employed at an elementary school in Lexington, South Carolina.”
“Which didn’t show up on the background search because the name that was checked was spelled with an extra ‘a.’”
“Right. And then once she had the job here, she gave us the correct name and Social Security number, probably hoping that the district wouldn’t check into it again. And, of course, they didn’t. We can’t afford to do yearly background checks.” Marie fiddled with a rubber band that was around her wrist. “Do you think Ms. McCormick had anything to do with Klea?”
“I honestly don’t know, but this is quite a secret.”
Marie nodded. “Something worth killing for.” She lowered her voice. “She’ll lose her job, for sure, once this comes out. And then what will she do? She won’t be able to find work again.”
“Well, she found this job, didn’t she?” I said grimly.
Marie’s forehead wrinkled. “Do you think she could do it again? I don’t know. I think she was lucky. Someone should have cross-checked her ID with the name on the background check and her application. If Klea found out somehow . . .”
“How could she have known?” I asked.
Marie shrugged. “I don’t know. Klea was always going through the trash. She was supposed to just dump it, but I saw her, digging around in the papers. She liked to know things. If she did find out about Ms. McCormick . . .”
“Have you shown this to Detective Waraday?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t dig into it until after he asked to see Ms. McCormick this morning when he finished talking to Peg and me.”
“So did he talk to Ms. McCormick?”
“No, she was in the office and told him that she had classes to teach, but she could talk to him during lunch. We’re shorthanded today. Mrs. Kirk has already had to call for another substitute for a second-grade teacher who got sick. Mrs. Kirk is actually covering the class until the sub arrives.”
“But this must be Ms. McCor
mick’s lunch,” I said. “Remember, she just went into the cafeteria.”
“That’s her students’ lunch. She stays with them until they go out to recess, then she gets a thirty-minute lunch while they are outside.” Marie glanced at the hall clock. “I’m sure she’ll be along shortly.”
A sheriff’s car pulled up into the drop-off circle and parked in front of the main doors. “There’s Detective Waraday,” I said. “You better make sure he sees those papers before he talks to her.”
“Me? But you asked me for it. Remember, you wanted me to do a little digging?” She pushed the papers toward me.
“No.” I held up a hand. “I can’t. You heard about the note. I’m out. No more questions. It’s too dangerous. I told Detective Waraday last night that I’m done. I can’t go running up to him with all this now. You found it. You should be the one to tell him about it.”
A car door slammed, and Marie went a shade paler. “I’m not supposed to be in these files. I could lose my job.”
I looked at her, trying to imitate Rex’s pleading look. “You’re retiring in—what?—two weeks. What can they do to you?”
“My pension may be tiny, but I want it.” She flapped the papers. “Say you found them on the counter with your name on them. A little bird left them for you. Please, Ellie.” She looked at me beseechingly. “I need that pension.”
“Oh, all right.”
She pressed the papers into my hands and twirled away, her pink skirt flaring out as she skittered back to the office.
I turned toward Detective Waraday. As he came in the doors, I held out the papers. “You know what I said about not being involved anymore? Well, turns out it’s not so easy to bow out. People know I’m involved. I was given this today.”
Detective Waraday frowned as he took it. “Did this person have a name?”
“Yes, but they would prefer you didn’t know it came from them.”
Detective Waraday scanned the documents. “Well, we’ll see if that is possible. Depends on what . . .”
He must have picked up on the discrepancy in the last names because he looked back and forth from the first two pages for a few moments, then went on to the last page, the newspaper article. He looked up at me. “What did I tell you? Lies are always interesting.” He went into the office, and a short time later, Peg came out of the office and went into the cafeteria. I went into the teachers’ lounge, checked the sub platter, put out more napkins, and cleaned up a plate with crumbs someone had forgotten. When I left, I automatically headed for the office, but realized I’d forgotten to sign in in the first place.
I’d barely cleared the threshold of the office when Peg burst in, bumping into my shoulder and causing me to stumble. “Ms. McCormick is gone.”
Chapter Thirteen
I caught the counter and steadied myself.
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Detective Waraday asked.
Peg drew in a breath. She’d obviously been hurrying through the hallways. “She’s not in the cafeteria or the teachers’ lounge or her classroom.”
Mrs. Kirk came out of her office. “What is the problem?”
“It’s Ms. McCormick,” Peg said. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” Mrs. Kirk said. “She didn’t schedule the afternoon off.” She scowled. “And I just got a substitute in for second grade.”
“She’s probably in the restroom,” Marie said.
“No. I think she left the campus,” Peg said. “Her purse is gone. I checked when I was in her room.”
“Why did you do that?” Detective Waraday asked.
Peg, whose face had been bright with excitement, suddenly looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure . . . except when I walked in there . . . it felt like she was gone. The lights were off in her room. No one turns their lights off except when they leave for the day. I know she keeps her purse in her desk—most of the teachers do, and I’ve seen her put hers away. So I checked. Bottom left drawer. It’s gone.”
Marie turned toward the windows. “Her car is a little blue one.”
We all moved to the windows and spotted a blue Ford Fiesta as it careened along the aisle, then turned at the exit. Its brake lights flared for an instant, contrasting with the royal-blue bumper sticker that read, KEEP CALM AND MATH ON; then the car surged out of the parking lot and went down the residential street, breaking all the school-zone speed limits.
Detective Waraday ran out of the office, and in a few seconds, we heard the wail of his siren as he pulled away from the front doors of the school. His car disappeared down the street. With the sound of the siren fading, we all looked at each other for a few seconds. Then Mrs. Kirk said, “What could have happened?”
I caught Marie’s eye, then let my gaze fall on the papers that I had given to Detective Waraday. He must have set them down on the counter while he was waiting for Ms. McCormick and forgotten them when he left to pursue her out of the parking lot.
“I think it had something to do with these papers.” I pushed them across the counter to Mrs. Kirk. She marched across the room and swiped them off the counter so quickly that the papers snapped. Mrs. Kirk read over the pages, her frown of irritation transforming into an expression of alarm. Marie hovered behind her shoulder, her hands linked together at her waist in such a tight grip that her knuckles showed white. Peg moved back around the counter to her desk, but her pace slowed to almost non-movement as she strained to get a glimpse of the papers.
Mrs. Kirk reached the last page, scanned it quickly, then briefly closed her eyes. She opened her eyes, noticed Peg and Marie hovering, and folded the papers in half. Peg and Marie retreated to their desks as Mrs. Kirk said, “Let me know the moment Detective Waraday returns.”
“Do you think he’ll be back?” Peg asked.
“I’m sure of it,” Mrs. Kirk said, and braced her shoulders. She turned back toward her office. “For now, we must do something about Ms. McCormick’s classroom.” She looked at the clock. “Recess will be over in five minutes. I believe she has her planning period after this period. I can ask Mrs. Cross to cover for her after that, but we are already stretched quite thin today.” She sighed and then a speculative look came into her eye as she turned her attention to me. “Mrs. Avery. May I impose on you for an hour of your time?”
“What?”
“I believe your daughter, Livvy, is in Ms. McCormick’s class, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve volunteered in that classroom before, haven’t you?” Mrs. Kirk’s voice was becoming more upbeat as she spoke.
I had a feeling I knew what was coming. “A little, yes. But it was before Christmas break—”
“Excellent. You have already done so much for the school that I hate to ask for anything else, but we’re in a sort of emergency situation right now. Could you monitor Ms. McCormick’s classroom for the next hour until Mrs. Cross can take over? I’d do it myself, but”—she glanced at the papers—“I have some calls that absolutely must be made, and then I’m sure Detective Waraday will return and need to speak to me as well.”
“Mrs. Kirk,” Peg said, pointing out the windows, where the sheriff’s car was pulling slowly to the curb. “There he is now.”
“I can give you an hour,” I said, partially because I wanted to see what happened, but also because Mrs. Kirk looked more frazzled than I’d ever seen her. She was always upbeat and encouraging, and exuded an air of calm competence. Seeing that the school had hired someone with a drug arrest in her past, Mrs. Kirk had been shaken. I was sure she was wondering what the fallout would be.
Detective Waraday came into the office. “She had too much of a head start for me to catch her, but the county and the city police will be on the lookout for her.” He spotted the papers in Mrs. Kirk’s hands. “I’ll need to take those with me.”
“Yes, I assumed so,” Mrs. Kirk said, her shoulders braced again. “And I believe you have a few questions for me as well?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Kirk nodde
d and handed off the papers. “Fine. If you’ll wait in my office, I’ll be right with you. I must get Ms. McCormick’s class settled.”
The bell rang, indicating the end of the period, and I knew the fifth-grade students would be trudging in from recess.
Detective Waraday frowned and looked as if he was about to protest, but Mrs. Kirk said, “I assure you, Detective, I will not go AWOL. It is important that I speak with Ms. McCormick’s class. I don’t want to have any rumors circulating. Well, any more than are already going around.”
She motioned for me to come with her, and I followed her across the lobby to the fifth-grade hallway. I let her enter Ms. McCormick’s room first. Students were milling around and talking. The volume level dropped immediately when they caught sight of Mrs. Kirk. Students quickly slid into their seats.
“Something unexpected came up, and Ms. McCormick is not here this period. Mrs. Avery has kindly agreed to fill in for her and monitor your class today.” She looked toward the board. “I see your assignment for the day is listed. I suggest you get to work. Mrs. Avery, if you’ll see me at the end of the hour?” She looked toward me, and I nodded. Then she ran her gaze over the class. “I’m sure you won’t have any problems because fifth-grade students are really so grown up and responsible.” She nodded her head and exited the room.
Every head in the class swiveled to look at me, except for Livvy, who had her attention focused on her stack of textbooks. She looked like she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her.
I glanced at the board. “Well, let’s get on with this. Chapter ten, lesson seven,” I said, reading the board while mentally estimating how far away Abby’s classroom was in case a question came up that I couldn’t answer or a riot broke out. Moving so slowly that they reminded me of the sloths we’d seen on a recent visit to the zoo, the students took out textbooks and flipped pages.
Remembering Livvy’s mention of the computer game in Ms. McCormick’s classroom, I said, “And if you get your lesson done and there is still time left, you can take turns playing the game on the computers.” Monitors lined the back wall of the classroom, their screens dark. A murmur of what sounded like halfhearted approval ran through the room and several students, including Livvy, bent over their desks.