Death Comes Knocking (The Thea Kozak Mystery Series, Book 10)

by Kate Flora

  Much like the photo that had been in Charity’s bedroom, this was a picture of men in full combat gear. Two men, this time. It’s hard to identify people when they have combat helmets on with chin straps and are swaddled with gear, but I thought one of them was my interrogator, Malcolm Kinsman. I guessed that the other was Charity’s husband, David Peckham, but I really couldn’t tell.

  I pointed to the one I assumed was Malcolm Kinsman. “This one is you?”

  He nodded.

  “And the other one?”

  “Charity must have told you. That’s her husband, David Peckham.”

  I shook my head. “Two conversations,” I reminded him. “All she told me about her husband was that he wasn’t in the picture. No name. No further information except that she’s supposed to name the baby Amaryllis, Amy for short.”

  “Exactly,” he said, pouncing like I’d just revealed a highly guarded secret.

  I checked my watch, hoping we’d be landing soon. Sure enough, as though the pilot had read my mind, he announced that we’d be landing in twenty minutes. I restrained myself from cheering, but I was relieved. Once we landed, I’d be meeting LaDonna and rushing to rent a car, so I pulled out my breakfast bar and stripped off the wrapper. Airplane food, when there is any, has gotten worse and worse. No way MOC and I could get through the morning on a handful of blue potato chips or a packet of mostly chemical cookies.

  I was two bites into the bar when he said, “I don’t know how you can eat when my sister is in such trouble.”

  Ignoring the provocation, and the temptation to say he’d given me no information about Charity’s trouble, I got out another bar and handed it to him. “Eat this. Maybe it will improve your disposition.”

  I was truly surprised when he took it and started eating. I should know by now—even the nicest men, which he was not, get crabby when they’re hungry. When he was done with the bar, I gave him another, which disappeared just as fast. I’m a sucker for hungry guys, but that was all I had to give him. I had to save my last one for MOC.

  “Don’t know what else I can do to help you,” I said. “Maybe if I’d had a chance to get to know her, she might have given me some clues. Though honestly, I think she was planning to settle in there in the cottage until Amy was born. The place is pretty shabby, but she was trying to make it nice. And she was putting a crib together.”

  He studied me and then studied his hands. “She didn’t tell you anything about David?”

  “Not even his name. Just that he wasn’t in the picture. I got the impression that made her sad, but there was something fatalistic about the way she said it, like it was just something she had to accept.”

  I searched my memory for anything else I could tell him. “She was very nervous, like she was afraid of someone or something. During our conversations, which were mostly about our babies, she was careful to not reveal anything about herself. Not where she was from, nor why she was in Maine. Nothing. It was unusual.”

  “David is missing,” he said. “There’s suspicion that he may be a prisoner, held for information. There has been concern that the people who are holding him want to use Charity as a lever to persuade him to…uh…talk.” He shrugged, like these weasel words were enough. “It’s concerning that the agent in charge of protecting her did such a poor job.”

  Concerning to whom? And I thought he knew damned well what was going on with the missing David Peckham. “If that agent was Jessica Whitlow, she died on the job,” I reminded him. “So what kind of work was David doing? Where was he? Who is suspected of holding him? And if the Marshals Service is already involved, what are you doing here?”

  I know. It was a lot of questions, but it seemed like the answers were critical to explaining his presence and possibly figuring out how to find Charity.

  He blew me off. “Not authorized to tell you any of that. What matters now is finding my sister and making sure that she’s safe.”

  Even as I was thinking don’t get drawn in, I found myself saying, “And how do you propose to do that?” I didn’t want to know the answer. I was afraid, given his distrustful nature and poor listening skills, that his answer would involve me. I’d already given him everything I had. Plus, few things push my buttons like people who demand my help but refuse to offer anything in exchange.

  “I’ll have to talk to some people at the Marshals Service. Learn more about the man who called himself Nathaniel Davenport. And talk to your local police.”

  I refrained from telling him the local police included my husband. If he’d done his homework, he’d know this anyway. I also refrained from asking why he wasn’t doing this back in Maine instead of bothering me.

  “That note will have to be examined to determine if it truly is Charity’s handwriting. To see if there are messages a civilian like yourself might have missed.”

  And only moments ago, hadn’t he thought I was a detective? I didn’t mind being demoted to civilian, though. Every now and then, someone asks me if I’m a cop. Probably being around them so much rubs off. But for today, I was very happy to be a mere civilian, getting off this plane and heading out to do my job, leaving this aggravating and desperate man behind.

  He was kind enough to get my suitcase down, and when we got into the airport, he vanished. I hoped he had vanished for good, but thought it unlikely.

  It was only when I was heading to the place I’d agreed to meet LaDonna that a scary thought occurred to me. If bad people were looking for Charity—if they didn’t already have her—they might have seen me talking with her brother. After all, if he could find me, so could someone else. Had he just pointed a big red arrow at me—the detective she had confided in? And had that been a mistake, or was it deliberate?

  Twelve

  LaDonna was waiting for me near the exit, and we hopped on the shuttle to the rental cars. We must have made a very odd pair. LaDonna is a petite, African American/Asian mix with pixie-cut black hair, and she dresses like an 1890’s newsboy, with cropped pants and a short tight jacket. When it isn’t summer, she adds a little cap that matches the jacket and truly awful shoes. People stare at her because she looks so young. When she starts to speak, their stares change to looks of disbelief. If STEM education routinely leaves girls behind, LaDonna didn’t get the message. She’s unabashedly smart and absolutely confident. At more than one school where she’s joined me for a consultation, someone on the faculty has tried to send her back to class. She thinks it’s hilarious.

  Since my pregnancy began to show, she has addressed me as, “Your Roundness,” which I don’t mind. Right now, I am round. When people we don’t need to impress aren’t around, I refer to her as “my pixie.”

  Right now, Pixie and Roundness were trying to rent a car that would allow me to fit comfortably behind the wheel. I’d reserved a Jeep. I know I can easily fit into a Jeep. I do it every day. What they tried to give me was an SUV, but one much smaller and tinnier than I wanted to drive on the crowded roads around Baltimore. Too often these days, what counts for service is whatever is convenient for the folks behind the counter. It took a certain amount of firm pushback before I got the vehicle I’d reserved. I may sometimes suffer from pregnancy brain, but the people behind the counter are not entitled to assume that I’m an idiot who can be given any set of car keys and sent away.

  By the time we were on the road, their uncooperative idiocy was threatening to make us late. They’d probably counted on that, too. The pregnant lady will take whatever car we give her because she’s in a hurry. Not in too much of a hurry to worry about MOC’s safety and her own comfort, thank you very much.

  “Ha!” LaDonna said when we were underway. “I guess you told them.”

  “Would you have done it differently?” I wondered how a woman frequently mistaken for a child gets things done.

  “Depends on where I am. Sometimes I just fold my arms and wait. Waiting without speaking drives them crazy. Sometimes I just look at the car they want to give me, say ‘No,’ and wait. Sometimes
I pretend to call my dad. It’s a fact of life—I’m short. I can’t drive every car they want to give me.”

  LaDonna’s father is a bigwig in the government.

  “I do a lot of different things,” she continued. “Depends on how annoying they are and how much they make me want to mess with them. And how much time I have. So, these folks at Eastern Shore. What will they be like to work with? Am I gonna have to prove I’m smart before they give me what I need?”

  “Don’t think so. I gave you a pretty big build-up. We’ll just have to play it by ear. Watch out!” I swung out a protective arm as a black SUV suddenly swerved into our lane. If we were in Maine, a black SUV would be concerning. In the DC area, which includes Baltimore, they’re common.

  “Thanks, Mom,” she said. “I think you broke my nose.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m practicing for the real thing.”

  “Breaking noses?”

  I handed her the directions, and she instructed Siri to find the best route. Seemed like only yesterday I was learning to read a map. Now I’m usually trying to fumble the phone out of my purse while I’m in awful traffic, and then Siri doesn’t understand a word I say. The joys of progress. That joy had recently been complicated by Maine passing a hands-free driving law, so I have to be sure I’ve entered the necessary info before I set out. So far, it doesn’t seem to have affected those phone-addicts who fail to go when the light turns green, or who absently drift out of their lanes. I never used to be someone who used her horn.

  The directions were easy to follow. Siri didn’t once send me weaving through a strange neighborhood or strand me on a dirt road. Yes. She’s done that. We pulled into a parking space outside the administration building with exactly two minutes to spare, grabbed our briefcases, and headed inside.

  We were immediately conducted to a conference room where four people were waiting for us. Dr. Kingsley, Leora Simms, and their IT guy, Luke Bascomb, I was expecting. The fourth person turned out to be Jesper DiSantis, the instructor whose tests had been the subject of the hack. DiSantis was a young, handsome African-American man who looked very uncomfortable.

  I introduced myself and LaDonna, and we were off to the races.

  Things went smoothly while they brought us up to speed on the situation. There were three students involved who had achieved remarkable turnarounds on their test scores. When the three were interviewed, all of them admitted to receiving the test questions in advance of both tests. All three said they had no idea who had sent them.

  “Did you get the students’ permission to access their computers?” LaDonna asked.

  After an odd hesitation, Bascomb said, “We’ve traced the emails to a computer in the school’s library, but the library, as a matter of policy, does not keep records of who uses their computers, and no one on staff remembers who was using the computers at the time the emails were sent.”

  LaDonna looked at me. Bascomb hadn’t actually answered her question. She asked Bascomb a few more pointed questions he was unable to answer. Maybe thinking he’d do better one-on-one, Dr. Kingsley suggested that he and LaDonna adjourn to his office to dig into the matter further. She left swinging her briefcase like a happy school kid. He left like someone going to his execution.

  There was a vibe in the room, a sense of the unspoken I was picking up on. An extension of the conversation I’d had with Dr. Kingsley. It seemed clear to me that they knew more than I’d been told, and part of the game we were playing was a form of “let’s see if Thea can guess our secret.” Well, Thea, with her able sidekick LaDonna, would certainly try. Thea has guessed people’s secrets before.

  Once they were gone, Jesper DiSantis asked if we needed him anymore. Since he hadn’t yet contributed much, I wondered at his eagerness to be gone, but Dr. Kingsley was a rather fierce presence and Leora Simms, in her few remarks, had demonstrated that she was good at asking insightful questions. Maybe he was uncomfortable being on the hot spot. Though if a few mild questions constituted a hot spot, it was a wonder he could stand up to a classroom full of adolescents. They can be a very tough audience.

  Dr. Kingsley said, “Sure, Jesper, we’ll let you know if we need you—”

  I stopped her. “Before you go, Mr. DiSantis, I have a few questions.”

  He was already halfway out of his seat. With a sigh, he sat back down. I wondered why he would have been so relieved to be off the hook, and what that hook was, exactly.

  “How many students are in the class where the suspected cheating took place?”

  “Uh. Fourteen. There were fifteen, but one of our students has left.”

  “Of that fourteen, the three who showed remarkable improvement, the ones who admit that they received the test questions in advance, were they the only students who were struggling in the class?”

  He shrugged. “To some extent, all of our students are struggling. That’s why they’re in this summer program. I guess you’d say they were doing the least well.”

  “And the fifteenth student, the one who left. Did they leave before or after the tests in question?”

  He hesitated, then said, “After.”

  “And did he or she also show marked improvement, suggesting access to the test answers?”

  He glared at me like I was uncovering a dark secret, then mumbled, “Yes.”

  This should be routine. These questions should already have been asked and answered.

  “I’m sure LaDonna will ask Mr. Bascomb this question as well, but was your computer searched?”

  He nodded.

  “Did they find any evidence of an intrusion?”

  “You’ll have to ask Bascomb. Computers, other than as tools to assist my work, are not my area.”

  “Thank you, Mr. DiSantis. Just a few last questions. The test questions were on your computer?”

  He nodded.

  “Personal computer or one that is owned by the school?”

  “School,” he muttered, as sullen as a teenager.

  Was I getting too close to something or did this guy have issues with authority? “And were the test questions stored on the school’s server?”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know much about computers.”

  I looked at Dr. Kingsley and Leora Simms. “Would you know the answer to that?”

  Either they didn’t, or they weren’t telling me. Maybe this was part of why LaDonna was going to get her big bucks.

  “Do you use email to communicate with your students? Do you have an on-line group they can use to ask questions, get assignments, etc.?”

  An unelaborated “yes.”

  Dr. Kingsley said, “We have a text messaging program for all of our instructors. Luke can give you the details.”

  I nodded and finished my questions for Jesper DiSantis. “Is this the only class you teach?”

  “No. I teach two others.”

  “Are any of the students we’re concerned about here in those other classes?”

  “They are not.”

  “Have there been any issues with students in your other classes also showing the kind of remarkable improvement which concerned you?”

  “No.”

  “Until you began to suspect there was something concerning about these students’ remarkable improvement, did you have good relationships with them?”

  “Of course. I always get along with my students. They like me and I enjoy teaching them.”

  “So there wasn’t any animosity toward you? Your students weren’t taking out their frustrations that they were failing on you?”

  His “of course not” was awfully defensive.

  “One final question. When you became concerned about unrealistic test performance and learned your students had been given the test questions, was there anyone in particular whom you suspected might have hacked your account to obtain those test questions?”

  He shook his head. I refrained from saying, “We need a verbal answer for the tape.” There was no tape, just my curious and suspicious min
d at work.

  “Thank you. I won’t keep you any longer.”

  He was out the door almost before I’d finished speaking, leaving me wondering if I was being too cop-like again. Was he touchy about his teaching because he was insecure? Because he identified with those students who were in the remedial program?

  “I apologize, Ms. Kozak,” Dr. Kingsley said. “Jesper can be a bit touchy at times. I know that he is taking this very personally.”

  “Please. Call me Thea. I hope we can get to the bottom of this quickly and get things settled down again. I’m sure it’s making your students very tense.”

  She nodded. “Making us very tense, as well.”

  “How did the matter first come to your attention?” I asked.

  “Leora can answer that,” she said, nodding at the dean of the summer program.

  Leora Simms reminded me of my friend Jonetta Williamson, who is headmistress of a school for underprivileged Black girls in New York City. Like Jonetta, Leora Simms was a woman of size and color and had a commanding presence. She said, “I imagine Grace, Dr. Kingsley that is, has brought you up to speed on our program. We offer a gap year for promising students who have been underserved by their schools. This summer program is kind of a pre-gap tutorial for promising students who are even farther behind. Much of what we work on are the basics—reading and analyzing materials, understanding grammar, developing some basic writing and communications skills, remedial math with approaches to problem-solving. Little of it actually lends itself to cheating on a test, except for the reading and analyzing portion.”

  I nodded. I’d been wondering about that. “It wasn’t Mr. DiSantis who brought the issue to your attention?”

  She and Dr. Kingsley exchanged glances. If looks had words, she would have been saying, “I told you we couldn’t keep this under the rug.”

  “I was the one who noticed it. Because this program is intense, and it’s all aimed at giving these kids a shot at success in the fall, we monitor their progress closely. I already had my eye on those three students based on their performance when their test scores suddenly improved. Well, four. We were sorry to see that student go.” She shook her head. “Jesper misspoke when he said they weren’t in trouble in other classes. Or if he gave that impression. We have forty-five students here in three sections of fifteen. He teaches the reading and analysis sections for all three groups.”