Schooled in Death

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Schooled in Death Page 27

by Kate Flora


  “Did she have any luggage with her?”

  “Just a couple of bags from a local store and one from CVS.”

  So, as far as we knew, The General was still among the missing.

  “What about Mr. Basham?”

  “Oh. His arrival brought real fireworks. The school called to reserve a room for him—I gather he was staying with the headmaster and it wasn’t working out—and he showed up shortly after I’d taken Mrs. Norris to her room. I was just checking him in and he was being very impatient about it because the machine was slow when Mrs. Norris came down to ask for something.”

  He hesitated. “Demand something, I mean. A nail file, maybe? When she saw him, she started yelling. He yelled back, and I was forced to raise my voice to get them under control.”

  He swept a hand across his brow. “I do not like to raise my voice.”

  “You’ve had a hard day,” I said. “Starting very early this morning. I’ve only met Mr. Basham and Mrs. Norris briefly, but my sense is that their relationship is pretty toxic.”

  “I can bear witness to that,” Palmer said. “There’s one further complication…”

  He didn’t get to finish before there was another knock on the door. A rather heavy fisted knock. I had visions of Miller and Flynn, coming for a cozy visit, or Ted Basham, swinging his crutch.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “The man of your dreams,” a voice said. And of course, it was.

  I let Andre in, introduced to him Austin Palmer, and Palmer excused himself. “Mr. Lemieux, can I bring you something? Sherry? Coffee? Some dessert?”

  Bless his handsome heart, the man of my dreams didn’t correct poor Austin Palmer and say, “Detective Lemieux,” something he is known to do. Nice of him, since Palmer had already had a very bad day. But my guy is a professional reader of people.

  “Coffee and chocolate cake would be great,” Andre said, grinning at me and looking past me at the bed. “We are both very fond of chocolate cake.”

  It was true. Andre and I liked to have bed picnics, where we spread everything out on a picnic towel, climbed under the covers, and snacked while we watched old movies. Chocolate cake was an essential part of those picnics. Alcohol usually was, too, but for MOC’s sake, I was abstaining.

  “I’ll just be a moment,” Palmer said, and left us.

  “I am insanely glad to see you,” I said.

  He stopped whatever else I might have said with a kiss.

  Andre and I have spent the years since we met doing a dance called “Don’t rescue the little woman. She wants to rescue herself.” Sometimes, the little woman had needed rescuing. Sometimes, she’d even rescued him. But tonight, I was delighted to see him. He probably hadn’t come to rescue me. More likely, he’d been lonely, I wasn’t that far away, and the man loves to drive. But if he had come to the rescue, I was more than willing to be rescued. Maybe I’d proved whatever I needed to prove. Maybe I was grateful for a sounding board who was neither an anxious client nor a skeptical local cop.

  Maybe I just loved my husband.

  Oh. God. That was so sappy.

  There was a tap on the door, and once again Austin Palmer entered with a tray. He set Andre’s coffee and cake down beside my plate of desserts, and turned to go. Then he hesitated. “There’s something…”

  Another hesitation. “That is, there’s another guest here. Two guests actually. Who can’t be allowed to meet some of our other guests. That is…maybe I shouldn’t even be telling you this. Only you work for the school and I know you are concerned about that girl’s welfare. And quite honestly, I don’t know what to do. They were already here when Mrs. Norris arrived. And then Mr. Basham. It really is…”

  He shrugged and spread his arms in despair. “Just a nightmare. I’ve run this place for a dozen years and never had anything like this.”

  He’d said, “they,” so I braced myself. Either General Norris and Lt. Ramirez were hidden somewhere in the building, or it was Heidi and William McKenzie.

  I went for the second possibility. “Heidi Basham and William McKenzie?” I asked. It was so improbable it had to be true.

  “Yes. Oh yes, indeed. They’ve gone out, I sent them down the back stairs, but when they come back, I fear all hell is going to break out. And we’ve got other guests.”

  Andre was looking at me, waiting for an explanation. As quickly as I could, I brought him up to speed.

  Austin Palmer waited until I finished. “Maybe you can head them off,” he said. “Or sneak them in. Or something?” He ended on a pleading note.

  Maybe I, or we, could. If we knew where they had gone. If we could do it without arousing the wrath of Miller and Flynn. “Do you know where they’ve gone?” I asked, hoping Palmer’s talkativeness had gained him this information. They might even have asked for directions.

  “To the hospital. To see the baby.”

  “How long ago did they leave?”

  “Maybe an hour ago. She slept most of the day, poor thing. At least that’s what Mr. McKenzie said. He seems like a very nice man.”

  Another time, I might find Austin Palmer’s gossiping troublesome, but he’d been an invaluable help in this case.

  If we hurried, we might get to the hospital while they were still there. It looked like coffee and cake would be postponed.

  Thirty-Three

  After Palmer had departed, Andre looked ruefully at the cake. “I’m guessing you want to try and find this girl.”

  I nodded.

  “Can I drink my coffee first?”

  I nodded again. I wanted to stay in, eat cake, and snuggle up with this guy while he told me all about how he’d found the house of our dreams. Instead, I quickly used the bathroom. I combed a few clinging cobwebs from my adventures in dark and dirty barns out of my hair while he drank his coffee, then I grabbed my coat and followed him out the door.

  “I’ll drive,” he said.

  I didn’t argue.

  “The local cops going to be pissed if you don’t tell them where to find this girl?” he said.

  “Heidi Basham,” I said. “Yes. But I really don’t know whether she’ll be there or not. Or whether they already have some kind of alert to let them know if she shows up there. Maybe, since she allegedly abandoned the baby, they didn’t anticipate she might show up. Or whether the hospital refused to let her see the baby and she’s already on her way back here. And local cops have got a murder to investigate.”

  “Which she may be involved in?”

  “Or a witness to.”

  “Tell me what you know about this girl.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  He was fiddling with his phone, finding directions. He seemed to fiddle for a long time before he set it down and Siri began telling him what to do. “We’ve got some time. So tell.”

  I told. The initial event. The psychiatrist’s thoughts. The stories her friends told—initially and during subsequent contacts about Heidi’s vulnerability, the presence of Crosby and Ramirez in the house, and her mother’s inaction. The ridiculous rivalry between Heidi’s parents that didn’t show any concern about their daughter. The initial call to the picnic grove after finding Heidi’s coat, my finding the body of a man we later identified as Lt. Alexander Crosby, and the incoherent versions of the events given in subsequent interviews by Ted Basham and his ex-wife.

  I described our retrieval of the drunk Basham—with a quick aside about Amad—and Basham’s subsequent disruption of the school meeting. The arrival of Mrs. Norris in a bedraggled condition and her story about escaping from her husband and her accusing her husband of murder. Told him about Jaden’s painful and reluctant revelations about Heidi’s drugged rape. Amad’s and my fruitless search for Heidi on the campus. The possibility that she was with her music teacher, who had come from California to rescue her.

  “Why the music teacher, if he isn’t the baby daddy?”

  “I think he’s her knight in shining armor, come to her rescue because everyone else wh
o ought to be helping her is pathetic, irresponsible, and self-involved.”

  “The poor girl,” he said.

  Then, after navigating a snarl of Boston drivers, “And that poor baby. What will become of her?”

  “So far, neither of the girl’s parents has shown any concern for the baby. Mrs. Norris proclaimed herself too young to be a grandmother and said the baby wasn’t her problem. The dad, who’s kind of a past-it Peter Pan, can’t even care for his daughter, never mind an infant.”

  “Tell me about Sgt. Miller and Detective Flynn.”

  “Like you said, I think they’re pretty good guys. Good interviewers. Impatient, as you’d expect. You’ve talked to them, haven’t you?”

  He made an affirmative sound.

  “And of course, since I’d recorded Basham and Mrs. Norris, they kept trying to take my phone,” I said. “I am tired of cops trying to take my phone.”

  “Maybe you should start carrying a ‘drop phone’ the way cops used to carry ‘drop guns.’ Make your recordings on a burner that you can hand over and go on with business as usual.”

  “In the future, Lemieux, I’ll add a burner phone to the list that includes pepper spray and a flashlight. But the conversations I recorded with a drunk Ted Basham and a disoriented Mrs. Norris were on my real phone. They badly wanted the phone.”

  I stared out the window. “I wasn’t giving it up. You’re in my phone. Our house pictures are in my phone. My work is in my phone.”

  I was going to say my life was in my phone, but in truth, my life—Andre and MOC—were right here in the car with me.

  “Your training officer should be shot,” he said. “Don’t you know that’s all inadmissible?”

  “Sure. But I’m not a cop, Detective Lemieux,” I said. “Just a consultant. Even though Sgt. Miller doesn’t quite believe that. I still wanted to make a record of what they were saying. Now, can we talk about something else, please? Something that isn’t related to the rape of a child.”

  I shuddered as I said the words, realizing how horrifyingly true they were. “I want to know how you found that house.”

  I waited while the GPS chirped out a series of directions.

  “The house? Guy at work,” Andre said. “His brother had been out to a domestic at the house. Third time cops have been out there. I guess they did a lot of the renovations themselves—part of their dream of living in an old farmhouse in the country—and the process was ruining their relationship. Next day, the cop is gassing up his cruiser and sees a big moving van go by. Just out of curiosity, he follows it and yup, it goes right to that house. He decides to check it out, just to be sure one of them hasn’t killed the other and is now heading for points unknown. Couple comes to the door, all smiles, says they’ve learned their lesson. They ran out of money, decided to finish the work themselves, and discovered home renovation is not for them. They think they can save their marriage if they get rid of the house. They ask if he knows of anyone who’d want to buy it, because they are in a real hurry to leave it behind. Guy says his brother knows someone—that would be me. I get the call, go look at it, and boom! We got a house.”

  “So much for realtors.”

  “Yeah. You wanna buy a house? Call a cop.”

  “As a marketing tactic, I doubt that it will fly.”

  “Worked for us.”

  There was a moment while he considered what to say next, then added, “There is still a lot of work that needs to be done. I only sent you pictures of the good parts. MOC’s room needs…uh…a ceiling?”

  “But you like that sort of thing. And you’ve got your dad, and your brothers.”

  “But will you be okay, living in a construction site?”

  “We’ll have to see about that. As long as it has a working kitchen and that beautiful tub, I should be okay. Just don’t expect much help from me. Experience to date says I’m not very handy.”

  He flipped on his blinker and turned into a road that led to a parking garage. Parked, backing in the way cops do to be ready for quick escapes, and we headed for the hospital.

  “Don’t get nervous or anything,” he said, “but we were followed.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Nervous? I’ve got a big tough cop with me. Probably we’re being followed by more big tough cops.”

  He rolled his eyes. “We’ll see.”

  I hoped it was just Miller, or Flynn, or some of their people. I wasn’t in the mood for a confrontation with bad guys. I never have been, yet bad guys have a way of appearing in my life.

  When we asked for the neonatal ICU, we got a dubious look from the woman at the information desk, and a rude glance at my rounding midsection. I was on the verge of huffily saying it wasn’t for me when Andre showed his badge and we were on our way.

  “I know you hate hospitals,” he said, “but we’re on a mission here.”

  I’d never been to a neonatal ICU, but I knew they were scary places. Doubly scary if you are a pregnant woman who has already lost one baby.

  The man who reads minds put an arm around me and said, “You’re okay.”

  Heidi Basham was sitting in a rocking chair, holding a tiny bundle with a little pink cap on its head. She wore a beatific Madonna smile as she bent over her daughter. It instantly brought tears to my eyes. The man watching her through the glass with a smile of his own had to be William McKenzie. He started when he saw us, his eyes darting like he was looking for an escape route.

  Because I see him through the eyes of love, I forget what a formidable figure Andre can be—all six foot plus of him, broad and muscled and bristling with what the cops call “command presence.” He looks at you and you want to confess every misdeed you’ve ever done. Well. Other people do. I don’t. I’ve seen the guy in a teeny red Speedo. He looks at me and I get other ideas.

  “Relax, Mr. McKenzie. We aren’t here to arrest you,” Andre said. “We’ve been looking for Heidi.”

  He nodded toward the girl and the baby. “I guess we’ve found her.”

  “Poor girl’s scared to death that the school will throw her out. She can’t go back to her mother’s house,” McKenzie said. “And she can’t live with her father. He’s a useless charmer who thinks he’s a good dad. We just didn’t know what to do. She’s a wreck. I thought maybe seeing the baby would help.”

  He studied Andre. “You’re a cop, right?”

  Andre agreed that he was.

  “And you’re William McKenzie,” I said. “You came all the way from California to do what? How do you plan to protect her from them?”

  McKenzie shrugged. “I guess I haven’t thought that through yet. Heidi needed help. She was afraid her mother would bring her stepfather, and that her stepfather would bring her rapists. And they would do whatever was necessary to keep her from revealing what they did. She begged her mother not to bring him. But her mother has never done anything Heidi asked. That hasn’t changed.”

  “Does her mother know about the assault?”

  McKenzie shrugged. “Not unless her husband told her. Heidi didn’t know about it herself. Or have any memory of it. Or however you describe the aftermath of a date rape drug. But I think her mother knew something had happened. Even after Heidi was accepted, she was on the fence about Heidi going to Simmons—the expense and all—and suddenly it was a done deal.”

  McKenzie’s clothes were rumpled and dusty, like he’d come straight for a plane and then spent some time in that dirty grain bin. He had flyaway curly hair and the vague blue eyes of a dreamer. A knight not in shining armor but in loosely woven hemp.

  “Look,” he said, “I know her abandoning the baby looks bad. But she honestly didn’t know she’d had a baby. Not until she went to the hospital. And then bits of memory started coming back and she began to realize what had happened. What was done to her. And then she was panicked. She’d asked her mother for help. Then she asked her father for help. And she asked me for help. She had no idea what she was stirring up.”

  Another look at Andre, as though he
was the one to be convinced. “If she needs corroboration, her friend Stephanie can provide it.”

  Despite her protective mother, it sounded like Stephanie and Heidi were still in touch. “We’ll need to talk to Stephanie,” I said. “Her information will be helpful in ensuring that Heidi isn’t charged with a crime. I tried to reach her earlier but her mother stonewalled me.”

  McKenzie nodded. “Stephanie’s a victim, too,” he said. “Please tell me you’re not here to arrest Heidi? She really didn’t know she’d had a baby.” His dreamer’s eyes pleaded with us.

  I wanted to say “save it,” because in many ways, assisting Heidi to run away could have made things much worse. Instead, I explained. “We’re not the cops,” I said. “I work for Simmons.”

  A quick look at Andre. “What are you trying to pull here?” McKenzie said. “He’s a cop. He said he was a cop.”

  “He’s such a truth-telling boy scout, isn’t he?”

  He gave me a puzzled look and turned back to look at Heidi, peaceful in her rocking chair. “She’s an amazing girl. A real survivor. She’s survived a birth defect, and her toxic parents, and a nasty divorce and a perverted stepfather. She’ll weather this, too, if she can stay at Simmons.”

  “Helping her stay at Simmons is what I’m all about,” I said. “Gareth is in her corner and will keep her at school if he can. But she has to stop running and hiding and tell her story to the local cops.”

  And spend months in therapy, I thought, as the ugly memories surface.

  “And who is going to protect her from Norris and his little toadies?” He looked at me, and then at Andre. “You two?”

  I thought he was in the clearing last night with Heidi. Had he not seen what happened to Crosby? Had she seen it? Questions to be answered later. I bit back several retorts and merely nodded. “Why didn’t you and Heidi go to the police?” I asked.

  “Heidi didn’t want to. She didn’t think anyone would believe her. She’s just a young girl who’s been traumatized. She’s scared.”

 

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