“How about that?” I said, deciding not to leave it there. “What about that phone call I overheard only Mr. Reavis’s end of? Were you able to trace the number?”
“Not yet. The phone company is balking at releasing the information. Legal issues and such, privacy or something.”
“There’s always something. But I’d like to see the look on the faces of those state police officers who were making fun of you now that you’ve been able to prove definitively that it was murder.” I could picture Amos Tupper smiling from ear to ear.
“What should we do next?” he asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I told him. “How are your interviews going with potential witnesses?”
“Well, based on the timeline we’ve been able to put together, only between four and six people we know of for sure were in the building at the time he was killed: two janitors, three teachers, and one student.”
“What was the student doing there?” I wondered.
“He was waiting for a ride.”
“So he could have been outside at the time of the murder. He could have seen the vehicle the killer was driving.”
“That’s what I thought,” Amos Tupper told me. “He was actually inside the building standing by the door at the far end of the building. So he wouldn’t have had a clear view of the other end, where the office was located.”
“Too bad. Did anything at all stand out in the rest of your interviews with the witnesses?”
“Nothing particularly, no. Nobody heard or saw anything out of place. A few of them left through the front door and did mention the lights in the office were turned off, to the best of their recollection.”
“That’s interesting.”
“And one of them tried the door and found it locked.”
“Also interesting. You might want to check Mr. Reavis’s keys.”
“His keys?”
“Yes, because if all of them are accounted for, then the killer would have to be someone with a key to the office. If one of Mr. Reavis’s keys was missing, it would have to be someone who knew which particular key to pinch.”
“Hold on while I write this down, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“Take your time.”
“Say, have you ever done this before?”
“Done what?”
“An investigation—murder, in particular.”
I laughed. “Not unless you include playing along with my favorite television mysteries.”
“Bet you’re pretty good at that, if helping me out is any indication.”
“Walter Reavis was very good to me, Detective. I want to see his killer brought to justice.”
I heard the crackle of paper being scrunched up.
“I wrote this down wrong. I’m going to start again, about the keys. I’ll check right away. I imagine they’d be among his personal effects.”
“Or in his top right-hand desk drawer. That’s where he kept them when he was in his office because there were so many and he hated the weight of them in his pocket.”
I could hear Tupper scribbling down fresh notes to replace the ones he’d discarded.
“Anything else you can think of, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“What time did the witnesses who noticed the office lights were off leave the building?”
“Both said it was around five o’clock.”
I didn’t know what I was looking for and realized I should have been writing all this down, too. “What about the witness who tried the office door and found it locked?”
“The lights were still on at that point. And it was earlier, closer to four thirty.”
I tried to make sense of all this. The conversation I’d overheard had happened around three forty-five, which left plenty of time for a killer to complete his or her work in the timeline Amos Tupper had managed to assemble. I pictured Walter Reavis locking the door to the main office when his murderer arrived, then the murderer shutting off the lights, exiting the office, and locking the door again once the deed was done.
“That phone call I overheard would have been just past a quarter to four, Detective,” I reminded him. “That means the killer arrived sometime between then and four thirty.”
“So it does.”
“You can see what I’m getting at.”
“I can?”
“It’s not just who was in the building closer to five o’clock or so. We need to expand that out to around four, on the chance somebody saw something, anything, that might provide some hint of whom Principal Reavis was meeting with.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Amos Tupper sighed.
“And there’s something else, Detective. Maybe there were sports teams or field trips returning to the building in that same time frame. You should be able to get a list from Alma Potts, the school secretary. The transportation log would be the easiest vehicle for that.”
“‘Trans-por-ta-tion log,’” Tupper said slowly as he wrote that down.
“Yes.”
“Wow, this opens a whole bunch of new doors for me. Would you mind if I called you back to get your thoughts after I follow some of this up?”
“Not at all,” I told him.
“Oh, and there’s something else. The coroner found an object clutched in Walter Reavis’s hand: a tiny gold football made of some kind of composite material.”
I tried to picture how the football that the figurine must’ve been holding had ended up in Walter Reavis’s grasp, but tabled my thinking on that topic for now.
“I did uncover something else in the course of the interviews I’ve been conducting,” Amos Tupper said, sounding like he had to force the words out. “Apparently, there were some rumors about Walter Reavis getting cozy with some female faculty members over the years.”
“That’s news to me.”
“Like I said, it’s just rumors, but I heard it from several different people. Not that they were sure, and I haven’t confirmed any of this independently, but if it’s true . . .”
“Something that needs to be checked out, Detective.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Why would I be mad?”
“It’s just that I know you liked Walter, and it feels wrong to disparage a man after his death.”
“Not when you’re trying to catch whoever killed him,” I said.
“You really believe that?”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”
“I’m starting to think we make a great team, Mrs. Fletcher.”
* * *
* * *
I helped Grady with his homework, but I couldn’t get my mind off my conversation with Amos Tupper, nor had I been able to stop thinking about Walter Reavis’s murder since the moment I’d gotten the awful news from Wilma Tisdale in the parking lot.
What left me truly unsettled was the fact that I’d been in the office not long before he was killed. Maybe if I had stayed and kept our appointment, he’d be alive today. It was even possible that the killer would have shown up and then left when he realized that Walter wasn’t alone.
After all, it seemed obvious that Walter Reavis’s murder had not been premeditated; otherwise, why would the killer have used a trophy as a weapon? No, if it had been planned out in advance, the killer would’ve almost certainly brought the murder weapon with him—or her. This was a crime of passion, as they say, that might never have happened if my overhearing that heated argument over the phone hadn’t chased me away.
Still, Appleton High’s principal had been struck from the front, facing his killer. Yet there was no evidence he had made any effort to defend himself, nor was there any evidence of a struggle inside the office. No upturned furniture or broken fixtures, nothing like that. I tried to envision a scenario where Walter Reavis could’ve been struck from the front without putting up any resistance. H
e was a reasonably young man, bigger than average, and in decent shape. Not an easy patsy, and I could only assume he’d somehow not seen the blow coming.
But how can you be taken by surprise by a strike coming from the front?
I considered the wound: a jagged gash from the top of his forehead all the way to his brow. A strike like that could have been wielded only in some form of overhead blow struck by someone taller than Walter. It was the only explanation that made sense, and I resolved to mention it to Detective Tupper the next time we spoke.
“Aunt Jessica?” I heard Grady say.
“Yes, Grady?”
“You said you’d help me.”
“And so I am.”
“No, you’re not,” the boy said in a whiny voice. “You aren’t paying attention.”
“You’re right,” I said, squeezing his shoulder, “so I’m not. How about we take a break and have some hot chocolate?”
“Okay!”
“I just have one phone call to make while we wait for the water to boil.”
* * *
* * *
“Don’t know why I didn’t realize that myself, Mrs. Fletcher,” Amos Tupper said after I’d passed on the conclusion that had just occurred to me.
“I’m sure you would have, Detective. Or it almost certainly would have been included in the forensics report once that’s submitted.”
“How tall you figure the killer was?”
“Well, I’m five eight, and Principal Reavis was at least two, and probably three, inches taller than I. So I’d say our killer is no less than six feet one or six feet two.”
“I’m five six on a good day or when I wear my heavy shoes.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “It’s not much, but it does almost surely eliminate one entire group of suspects.”
“And what group would that be, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Women, Detective,” I told him as the kettle began to whistle.
* * *
* * *
“What’s eating you, Jessica?” Frank asked, peering over his copy of the day’s Portland Press Herald as the late-evening news played softly on the television before us.
“Walter Reavis’s death. I’ve been wondering what happens to that full-time job now that he’s gone, and I feel terrible for thinking like that.”
“Ahem,” he said, clearing his throat dramatically.
“What was that, Frank?”
“My way of saying you’re not telling the truth.” He laid the newspaper down in his lap. “I’ve never known you to think of yourself, especially in view of a tragedy like this. Nice try, though.”
I sighed, then settled myself with a deep breath. “It’s—well, I’ve never known anyone who was murdered before.”
“Very few people have, given that murder is as rare as it is. Thankfully.”
“You saw more than your share of death in the war.”
“I did, indeed. But nothing that anybody ever stood trial for or that required an investigation. And in war, both sides are equally guilty, aren’t they, each trying to kill the other? No, this is quite different, and nothing I experienced can be of any particular help to you.”
“It’s the unfairness of it all that bothers me more than anything else. I mean, who speaks for Walter Reavis? One minute he was alive and running a high school, and the next minute he was dead, no more than a lab experiment for men who never met him to poke, prod, and measure.”
“Hmmmmm, this really is bothering you. . . .”
“In a way nothing ever has before. Who speaks for the dead, Frank?”
“That sounds like the title of a book.”
“Really? I just made it up. Did I tell you one of my students thinks I should try my hand at writing mysteries?”
“You let a class read one of your stories, didn’t you?” he asked, trepidation riding his voice.
“I did, indeed.”
“And?”
“They hated it. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“There was a girl who thought it would make a great mystery.”
“Nothing wrong with a good mystery in my mind,” Frank said, picking up his newspaper again.
“Except The New Yorker doesn’t publish mysteries. Neither does The Atlantic or Harper’s or even The Saturday Evening Post.”
“What about Collier’s?”
“Out of business for years.”
“Well, cross them off the list, then.”
* * *
* * *
Walter Reavis’s funeral was the following day. I’d heard his ex-wife, Madeline, reluctantly handled the arrangements, since there was no one else to do so. I met her briefly outside the church and hovered near the front of the cortege at the burial site to watch her with two of her children. I couldn’t recall the name of his younger daughter as I watched Madeline try to grasp her hand only to be rebuffed by the little girl, who didn’t look to be more than eight or so. The Reavises’ son had come in his full-dress Marine uniform, remaining at attention through the entire ceremony. Their older daughter, who was a junior at the high school and whose name I seemed to recall was Lisa or something, had skipped the entire funeral for reasons I wasn’t aware of.
I excused myself profusely as I changed positions among the mourners surrounding the grave site, wanting an angle that would let me get a look at as many of those in attendance as possible. I caught Amos Tupper standing unobtrusively in the back. We noticed each other but exchanged only a nod. I knew Amos was there for the same reason I’d changed positions: in the hope of spotting something awry or amiss, someone or something that stood out. The facts we’d assembled so far certainly suggested Walter Reavis had known his killer, which meant that killer was almost surely among us now, perhaps even sobbing like so many of those gathered for the burial were.
Frank had volunteered to accompany me and seemed a bit put off when I told him not to bother. I wondered if he realized I didn’t want him to catch me snooping, eyeballing the grieving crowd instead of simply grieving myself. I focused on men who stood more than six feet tall, of whom there were plenty. Many of the students in attendance were crying and some of the faculty, too. Walter didn’t have much of a family beyond his ex-wife and children, one of whom hadn’t even bothered to show up. There should have been more to bid their final farewells to a man who’d touched so many lives and been such an integral part of the community.
I found my way over to Amos Tupper after the service concluded; he had his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his suit.
“Spot anyone of interest, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Not a one, Detective.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, “me neither. Guess I was hoping someone would throw himself on the coffin and confess.”
“That doesn’t even happen on television.”
“First time for everything, though, right?”
* * *
* * *
The murder of Walter Reavis continued to consume me. Each day left me with less focus on anything else. The vice principal, Jim Dirkson, was appointed interim principal and the assistant principal, Beverly Leander, was promoted to take his position. I didn’t know either very well, and to both I was no more than a substitute. I’d never be able to approach either about the last thing Walter Reavis and I had discussed, specifically my taking over for Bill Gower, especially our new acting principal, who held substitutes in generally the same esteem as he did students. Beyond that, he had been passed over for the principal job originally when the school board voted to appoint Walter instead of him, but he had remained as vice principal out of what he claimed was loyalty to the system.
Meanwhile, the roads I’d directed Amos Tupper down had led nowhere. By all accounts, no groups had been out of the building that day. Tupper, to his credit, had created a mess of a document that filled most of
his memo pad, with a page devoted to each teacher. He had circled the time he or she had left the building the day of the murder, and torn out the nine pages belonging to those who’d left the building after me and thus before the killer’s arrival. In order to create a more accurate timeline and perhaps collect additional clues, he had glued all nine pages to a poster board. But the glue didn’t hold, and he had to start all over again.
That phone call I’d overheard, meanwhile, had still led nowhere. The phone company wasn’t cooperating, leaving Amos Tupper at his wits’ end and bearing the blame from the Appleton PD.
A colleague dropped me home that Friday, four days after the murder, to find Frank seated at our kitchen table with a vase full of roses sitting before him.
“What are those for?”
“We’re celebrating.”
“Celebrating what?”
“Our new house in Cabot Cove, at six ninety-eight Candlewood Lane.”
My knees literally went weak. “Did I just hear you right?”
Frank rose, grinning as broadly as I’d ever seen him. “You only live once, Jess.”
I practically leaped into his arms, never happier in my life. I didn’t ask him how much we’d paid or how he’d managed the down payment. We’d have to sell our house, of course, but that wasn’t about to stop us. Nothing was going to stop us.
I’m not sure what was better: the excitement I was feeling or getting a respite from my obsessing over Walter Reavis’s murder. I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do in that moment than move out of Appleton, and to beautiful Cabot Cove, no less.
“There’s more,” Frank said, after finally breaking our embrace. “Turns out, that real estate agent Eve Simpson knows the Cabot Cove High School principal.”
“I got the feeling that Eve Simpson knows everyone, Frank.”
Murder, She Wrote--A Time for Murder Page 11