by Kate Flora
Gareth looked at me, both of us wondering what was going on and how long she intended to stay. The day had been a constant series of disruptions and we had work to do. We were also wondering why she was dirty and disheveled. I would have thought she never appeared in public looking this unkempt.
She sniffed, and, as a mind-reader, I knew she was thinking that she didn’t care what she ruined, but she hesitated, and that gave Gareth time to whip a green nylon poncho off his coatrack and spread it over a chair. She staggered across the room and dropped into it, staring around in confusion as though, despite her confident entrance, she wasn’t sure where she was. Then she slipped her feet out of her shoes and curled her legs up beside her in the chair. “Scotch, Headmaster. Please.”
At least she said please. But something about her demeanor wasn’t right. So not right that I got my phone out again. Before I started to record, I hesitated. I’m not a cop, so I can do things like this. I am a person with a conscience, so I felt guilty taking advantage of someone who might not be entirely herself. Then I thought about what she’d done—or let be done—to her daughter. I started recording.
“We rather expected you this morning, Mrs. Norris,” Gareth said. “After we spoke on the phone about Heidi’s disappearance.”
She waved a hand airily. “Afraid I was delayed a bit. Had to see my husband off and all that.” She touched her head, as though she was trying to remember something.
Gareth fixed her drink and handed it to her.
When she reached for it, I saw that there was blood on the hand that had just touched her head. Now wrapped around the glass, it was smearing the crystal with reddish streaks.
I watched her closely as I asked my questions. “You and your husband left your inn and headed for the airport very early this morning, didn’t you?” I said.
She nodded. “We were anxious to be away. General Norris had pressing business back in California.”
“But when Dr. Wilson called you, you agreed that you would come back here to Simmons and help us deal with your daughter’s disappearance.”
“Did I? Such a busy time. I’m afraid I don’t recall…”
“And now it is late afternoon,” I interrupted. “When you spoke with Dr. Wilson on the phone, you said you would be here this morning. Where have you been for the past ten hours, Mrs. Norris?”
“Oh, don’t be silly.” She waved the glass for emphasis and liquid sloshed onto her hands and her clothes. “I came straight from the airport.”
By way of where, New York City?
“Did you come in a taxi?”
She looked at me, puzzled. “The General drove me, of course.”
“You just told us that he got on a plane to fly back to California.”
“Oh dear.” She took a bracing slug of her drink. “I seem to be confused.”
Something was definitely wrong. I stepped closer, studying her face and her head. Some of what was slicking down her hair was definitely blood but I couldn’t gauge the extent of any wound. Was it serious enough to make her lose track of time and become incoherent? We had little idea of her normal state, beyond self-centered and imperious, to compare this to.
“Gareth, I think we should call an ambulance,” I said. “Mrs. Norris is injured.”
“I am just fine,” she declared. “And I am not fond of hospitals.”
But we could see that she was far from fine.
“Maybe we should call Miller and Flynn,” he said softly. I nodded, and he stepped out of the room to make that call. We didn’t want to spook her. Who knew how she might react?
“Even if you can’t tell me where you’ve been all day, do you remember how you got here just now?” I asked.
Mrs. Norris pondered about my question. “Escaped,” she said finally. “I wanted to tell someone about…about The General’s aide. About that poor man that got his head bashed in. Dum. No. Uh. Dee. Lt. Crosby. Such a nice boy. My ex-husband calls them Dee and Dum, you see. His aides. The General’s aides, I mean, not my ex-husband’s. If they were Ted’s aides, they’d be nubile twenty-somethings with skirts up to their crotches and tops down to…” Here she fumbled, then gave up. “I had to escape, you see, because The General didn’t want me to talk to anyone about what happened. He said not to be stupid or I’d get him in trouble.”
I took a chance on my next question. “Why would your husband be in trouble?”
“Oh, you know. That whole business with Heidi.” She rolled her eyes. “You see, I really don’t want to talk about that.”
I wanted to pursue the matter, but she was getting agitated and I knew she would resist me, so despite our desperate need to know the details of what happened in the picnic grove, and learn where Heidi was, and possibly even learn something about the baby’s conception, I went back to questions about her timeline. Probably Miller would think I was poaching on his turf, but she was here, and somewhat talkative. I didn’t want to let the moment pass.
“When you left the inn where you were staying very early this morning, Mrs. Norris, did you go to the airport?”
She looked at me blankly. “The General was going to take a plane. And then…” She sipped her drink. “You know, I can’t remember much about what happened next.”
“You got in your rental car. Did you go to the airport?”
“Yes. To the airport. Then we took a taxi to a hotel. Kind of a downmarket place. Not at all what I’m used to. Nor what my husband would normally choose.”
She put a finger on her lips. “But I am not supposed to talk about that.”
“Where is The General now?”
“At the hotel?” She giggled. “No. He’s probably out looking for me and swearing like a sailor because I escaped. I was worried about Lt. Crosby, you see. If he was all right. People kept hitting him, you see.”
People? Did she mean more than one? Obviously, she had been there last night. I would have to probe carefully to get the story without spooking her. Each in their own ways, Ted Basham and his ex-wife were giving us information we weren’t meant to have.
Gareth slipped quietly back into the room and stayed by the door, learning against the wall.
“You escaped from your husband because he didn’t want you to disclose his role in what happened down there in the woods last night?” I asked.
She nodded. “He was in the bathroom and Dum was out getting us lunch and I just slipped away. Then Dum…Lt. Ramirez saw me and chased me, and that’s when I fell down and hit my head, at least, I think that’s what happened. Maybe Ramirez hit me? Anyway, I hid in some bushes because I didn’t want him to find me. Lt. Ramirez is not the nice man he wants people to think he is. It all has to do with my difficult daughter, you know. The General says not, but I wonder if he and Lt. Crosby did something…”
She stopped. “Oh, but The General says we will not speak about that.”
She looked down at the delicate shoes she’d abandoned on the rug. “I was trying to walk here, but I wasn’t feeling so well, so I called an Uber.”
“Can you tell us what happened to Lt. Crosby?”
“Sandy?” Another giggle. “He got hurt. Ted went after him. I remember that. But Ted, you know. Such a wimp. He ran away. Then someone else hit him? Sandy, I mean, not Ted. It wouldn’t bother me if someone hit Ted.”
She tapped her forehead and sipped her drink and I tried not to yell at her.
“I forget,” she said. “It was dark and very confusing and everyone was fighting and Heidi kept screaming. She was very angry with me for bringing her stepfather. I was supposed to go alone. I offered to help her leave Simmons until things settled down, find a quiet place to stay off-campus, which she was eager to do, and Heidi said she’d meet me if I came alone. Of course General Norris wouldn’t let me go to a place like that by myself. Certainly not in the middle of the night.”
Lorena Norris sighed. “She’s always been so unreasonable where The General is concerned.”
She gave us a look, which I presumed was su
pposed to convey what a caring and protective man her husband was. “You know what’s odd?” she said brightly. “What’s odd is that Ted was there. What was he doing there, do you suppose? I cannot imagine Heidi would have asked him for help. We all know how he is.”
Or we were learning.
“So where is Heidi now, Mrs. Norris. Is she with The General?”
“Oh, don’t be silly. Heidi hates my husband. I already told you that. She says he watches her. She says his behavior is inappropriate. Of course she’s not with him.”
I wanted to whack her, but somebody already had. “Then where is she?”
She gave a careless shrug. “Oh, she ran off somewhere. She’s such a willful girl. Maybe…” Another shrug. “Maybe The General is still looking for her? I only hope Lt. Ramirez is more helpful than Lt. Crosby. Sandy. He does upset Heidi, though.”
Gareth and I exchanged looks. Though neither of them had intended to be cooperative, we’d learned a lot from Ted Basham during his mutterings on the ride back to Simmons. Now we were getting information from Mrs. Norris. Everything her parents said and did deepened our concern for Heidi, and our understanding of why she’d needed to come here. Not wanted. Needed.
Mrs. Norris looked around the room again, as though she still wasn’t sure where she was. “I came to get my daughter. Heidi. Have to take her back to California, where we can keep an eye on her. Really. Having a baby at her age. So irresponsible. I really didn’t want children, you know. But Ted did, and then of course he was too busy to raise her. I was right, of course. She’s been nothing but trouble.”
A pause. A sip. “So, Dr. Wilson, do you know where Heidi is?”
“Don’t you? She was down there in the woods with you last night.”
She pondered on that for a while. “Down in the woods? What woods? I don’t understand. Why would I have been in some woods at night?”
She cautiously fingered a fold of her dirty silk skirt. “Is that how I got so dirty?”
I wondered if her injury might have come from Basham’s crutch. “Where Lt. Crosby was killed,” I reminded her.
“Sandy? He’s dead. Oh, that’s so sad. How did it happen?”
She gave us a perfectly innocent look and finished her drink. “I think I want to go back to the inn now and get out of these clothes. It would be so kind if you would drive me, Dr. Wilson, but if you can’t, will you call me a cab, please?”
“Mrs. Norris,” Gareth said, “we haven’t discussed your daughter yet, which is, I presume, your reason for being here. We’re concerned about her whereabouts, and then there’s the matter of the baby.”
“Heidi? Oh, don’t worry about her. We wanted her to come with us, but she ran off with that man while everyone was fighting. I’m sure she’s fine. She’s always been very good at taking care of herself. As for that baby, it is no concern of mine. I don’t like babies.”
Gareth and I exchanged looks again.
“What man would that be?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, Dr. Wilson. That silly old music teacher who has such a crush on her. I thought she’d left all that behind, but now he’s appeared out of nowhere, supporting her in her ridiculous defiance, and believing all that nonsense about Crosby and Ramirez and The General, and now Heidi refuses to come back to California with us.”
So William McKenzie had come.
The plot had now thickened beyond any hope of comprehension, and we were no closer to finding Heidi.
She was staring sadly into her empty glass. We left her to it and stepped back. “Are they coming?” I said in a low voice.
“Any minute,” he said. “Flynn is. Miller is still trying to get a coherent story from Ted Basham.”
“Good luck with that,” I said.
I would be so glad to hand this mess over to Detective Flynn. Except that we still needed to find Heidi, and a new wrinkle—that she might be with William McKenzie—had developed in that area. If Heidi was with him, an adult with access to cars, taxis, hotels, or even planes, she could be anywhere. Could we count on him to understand why Heidi shouldn’t run away? Would there be any way to reach him to even make the argument?
Gareth, having the same thoughts, shook his head.
We stood waiting, silent, hoping for the sound of steps in the hall and a knock on the door. A moment later it came, in the form of a visibly angry Flynn. He swept into the room like an avenging angel, and, ignoring us, crossed the floor until he stood directly in front of Lorena Norris.
She gazed at him blankly. “Are you my cab driver?” she asked.
“Lorena Norris?”
“Yes?”
“Detective Brian Flynn, Mather police. I am arresting you as an accessory to the murder of Lt. Alexander Crosby.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” she said. “If Sandy’s dead, I didn’t kill him. My husband did.”
Twenty-Nine
“Which husband?” I’d only meant to think the question, but it popped out before I could censor it. I guess I was more tired than I realized. MOC’s growing presence was definitely making itself felt.
Gareth and Flynn were staring at me. Mrs. Norris didn’t seem to have heard. She was brushing at some dirt on her skirt. Then she looked at me and smiled, and said, brightly, “Both of them.”
“If you will come with me, please,” Flynn told her.
“We’re at the inn just down the road,” she said. “I assume you know where that is?”
“Excuse me,” Flynn told her, coming back to us and gesturing for us to follow him out into the hall. When the door had closed behind us, he said, “What the hell is going on? What is the matter with that woman?”
“Blow to the head, we think,” Gareth said. “There’s blood in her hair, and she seems very disoriented.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell us that over the phone?”
Gareth spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “Because Lt. Miller didn’t give me a chance to. Because he said you’d be right over and then hung up on me.” He took a breath and then said, “It is not my fault, nor the fault of the Simmons School, that Heidi Basham has the misfortune to have impossible parents.”
He looked at me. “Thea, do you think we should play Detective Flynn the conversation you’ve been recording?”
Before I could answer, Flynn gave me a dirty look. “You and your goddamned phone again? It’s a damned good thing you aren’t a detective, because you’d be bounced out on your ass for this.”
Right now, though I’d never tell him, being bounced out on my ass and letting the police deal with this three-ring circus would be just fine. Except I couldn’t abandon Gareth.
“I know it’s not admissible, Detective,” I said. “Given her impaired state. But I thought it might be our only chance to get some answers, so I took it.”
He held out his hand. “Give me the damned phone.”
“I called for an ambulance,” Gareth said.
Flynn looked torn. Calling an ambulance was the right thing to do. Police have an obligation to look after people, even their suspects, if someone is injured. But even though he’d be walking on eggshells in an effort not to taint anything he learned, he still wanted a chance to speak with Mrs. Norris without the presence, and kerfuffle, of medical personnel.
He sighed, fiddled with my phone, and my discombobulated conversation with Mrs. Norris began.
He listened all the way through, shook his head, and handed it back to me. “Gad, Kozak,” he said. “You are a piece of work. Your husband teach you how to break the rules?”
I didn’t give his question the dignity of a response. Nor did I tell him that plenty of cops—too many cops—as well as some bad guys, had honed my interview techniques. And my opinion that lots of cops know how to break rules, or at least bend them creatively.
It’s hard to make anyone believe that I truly do not want to mix it up with bad guys. It’s just part of the job I do. The part my partner, Suzanne, doesn’t believe is necessary. Maybe next time, she could jump in
as a school’s troubleshooter when something awful happens on a campus. Maybe her tidy suits and ladylike ways would work wonders with cops and bad guys. Maybe sweet smiles and a soft voice were the answer to finding Heidi.
He got out his own phone. “Okay. Do that thing you did with Miller’s phone and send me that interview.”
I had just finished and put my phone away when a commotion down the hall signaled the arrival of the ambulance crew. Usually you get the ambulance, EMTs, sometimes another car full of medical professionals, and often a fire truck as well. We got the works.
“This will help us keep the campus calm and running smoothly,” Gareth muttered. “Will this never stop? This…uh…how do you Americans say it? A dog and pony show?”
“We’re doing okay,” I said, though I didn’t believe it. I’d read somewhere that if you think and act positively, positivity will follow. Don’t believe everything you read.
As we reentered Gareth’s office, Flynn was on his phone, updating Miller. I caught the words “total clusterfuck,” a marvelously evocative term, and not much more as the commotion of helping professionals arrived to take Mrs. Norris in hand. Gareth gave them a quick update and motioned to Mrs. Norris, who appeared to be watching her own hand moving through the air with the wonder of a small child.
Were we ever going to catch a break?
When the commotion, Flynn, and a loudly complaining Mrs. Norris, had departed and the office door was shut again, Gareth and I sat on the sofas and stared at each other in despair. Before our conversation began, he said, “Excuse me. I need a moment,” and headed, I presumed, for the facilities. I needed a trip there myself, but first I had to check my phone.
Two from Suzanne. Important, but not first priority. A couple other client matters I could deal with quickly. Nothing from my mother, which made my breathing easier. And an exuberant message from Andre. “I’ve finally found our house! Call me.”
I called him.
“You may hate me for this,” he said when he answered. “But I’ve gone ahead and made an offer.”