Beryl put cups on the table and then put the coffee pot on a hot pad in the middle of the table. I got the cream pitcher and sugar bowl and set them on the table next to the coffeepot.
“At least we’re safe with a cop in the house,” I said.
“I’ve got cookies,” Beryl said, holding up a cookie jar.
We sat down and made small talk for a few minutes and poured the coffee. I hated to make it obvious that I was here to see what he knew about the murders, but I doubted they would have been surprised by it. After a few minutes, I turned and looked at Robert. “What’s new with the murder cases?”
He shrugged. “We’re looking at everything and interviewing people. Nothing solid just yet.”
“What about those muffins? Anything on them?” I asked. I thought the only thing that had raised his suspicions about Peggy was the fact that she had gone out with Darren a couple of times and there were muffins on the ground near his body. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t enough.
“Nothing other than whoever made them knew what they were doing.” He raised an eyebrow when he said it.
“Like I said, Peggy didn’t do it,” I reminded him.
“I know. Or at least, I think I know. Just a strange thing to find at the murder site.”
“I blame Opal Adams,” Daniel said and took a bite of a chocolate chip cookie. “Everyone knows sweet old ladies know how to bake and no one would suspect one of being a killer. That stuff about not being able to hear the murder is a cover up.”
“That’s not a bad thought,” Beryl said. “Although it might have been an accident. She might have forgotten her glasses and ran him over when she couldn’t see him. She probably thought she hit a rosebush, but then when she realized it was a man, she tossed the muffins at him just in case he wasn’t dead.”
“Right?” Daniel said. “It’s the sweet old lady.”
“There has to be more than muffins at the first crime scene. What else was there?” I asked him, ignoring Daniel and Beryl’s insane theory.
He shrugged. “Fingerprints are being processed. There was a missing painting at Darren’s house and missing shoes at Bill’s.”
“Wait. What? Missing shoes?” I asked.
“Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t mention it to anyone, especially not Peggy.”
“Why? I thought you didn’t think she killed anyone?” I asked suspiciously.
“Think is the operative word here. I don’t know it. It’s still early and I’m still working on it.”
I took a sip of my coffee then added more cream to it. “What do you mean there were missing shoes?”
He sighed. “Bill was in his sock feet when we found him, but there were shoe prints in the mud near his body.”
That was weird. “Someone stole a dead guy’s shoes?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“Someone stole a dead guy’s shoes,” he confirmed.
“How do you know the shoe prints weren’t the killer’s?” Daniel asked. “Maybe they caught Bill at home with his shoes off and he didn’t put them on when he answered the door.”
“That’s possible, but when we measured the shoe prints against some of Bill’s other shoes, the prints were the same size. So we think someone stole his shoes. Plus, the bottoms of his socks weren’t dirty enough for him to have walked outside in them.”
“Or it was a man with the same size shoes Bill wore and the prints are his,” I said thoughtfully.
“Could be. Still, no dirt on the bottom of his socks.”
“If the killer wears the same size shoes as Bill, maybe he admired his shoes and stole them,” Daniel suggested.
I snorted and took another sip of my coffee. “A shoe admiring killer.”
“They’re the worst kind, you know,” Daniel said. “You can’t trust them around your shoes.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back to Robert. “Okay, so the thing is, we need to find a man with the same size shoes as Bill. What size did Bill wear?”
“Size eleven.”
“I wear size eleven,” Daniel said.
I peered around the table at his feet. “So we need someone with feet the size of yours. My first bet is Principal Jefferson. I bet he wears a size eleven.”
“As much as I dislike Principal Jefferson, I don’t think he did it,” Robert said, refilling his coffee cup.
“Why not?” I asked. I was really hoping we could get a new principal. This would be the perfect excuse to do it.
“He has an alibi.”
I sighed. “What kind of alibi?” I asked.
“He was at his mother’s house, cleaning her rain gutters that evening.”
I stared at him, open-mouthed. I closed it. “It’s Principal Jefferson,” I informed him. “You need to arrest him right away.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “What do you mean? I said he has an alibi.”
“He took two weeks off work three years ago when his mother died. And even if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t clean anyone’s rain gutters. He isn’t the helpful type.”
Robert stared at me. “Are you serious? She really died?”
I nodded. “She really died. We sent flowers.”
He looked at Daniel and he nodded. “We sent flowers,” Daniel confirmed. “Didn’t you ask to speak to his mother?”
Robert put his coffee cup down. “I guess I better go have a talk with Jefferson then.”
“Right now?” Beryl asked him. “Can’t it wait until the morning?”
“No. What if he tries to leave town? Or kill again?” He got up and headed for the front door.
“Let us know when you arrest him,” I called after him. I turned to Beryl. “Sorry to send your husband out into the night. But Principal Jefferson is the killer. I knew it. I can’t wait until I tell Peggy.”
“Does this mean we’re getting another principal?” Daniel asked hopefully.
“It does.”
I was so happy, I celebrated with another cookie. Or maybe it was three. If Principal Jefferson was the killer, as I had suspected, then he was going away for a long time. I hated to see anyone fall on bad luck, but he had brought it on himself. He had to pay for his crime.
***
Daniel and I stayed and visited with Beryl for another hour and then she put Marcus to bed. We were getting our coats when we heard Robert’s car outside. “Robert’s back early,” I said, surprised. I had expected him to be stuck down at the station processing paperwork.
When the door opened, Robert stood there, smiling at us. “Well, it's nice to see the two of you are still here.”
“What happened?” I asked. I didn’t like the look on his face.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind himself. “Principal Jefferson was at his mother’s cleaning rain gutters. Just like he said.”
“Then who’s in the casket that was buried three years ago?” Daniel asked. “And why did we spend money to send flowers?”
“His mother.”
“Don’t confuse them, Robert,” Beryl said. “Tell them what’s going on.”
He took his coat off and hung it in the hall closet. “His mother that was buried was his real mother. But the mother he was with the night of Darrin’s murder was an aunt that he considers his mother.”
I groaned. “Seems convenient he would forget she was really his aunt when he talked to you,” I said suspiciously. “Why would he say that?”
He shrugged. “He said his real mother wasn’t much of a mother. His aunt raised him most of his life and he always called her Mother. But, when his real mother died, he didn’t want to tell anyone the truth, and so you bought flowers for his real mother. Which is reasonable.”
I was disappointed. I wanted the murders solved so we could all sleep at night.
“I don’t believe he’d clean her rain gutters, though,” Daniel said. “That’s a lie. He still could have killed both Darren and Bill.”
He shrugged again and chuckled. “I can’t argue with you there. I can’t see it, either.
But she’s willing to back him up. I called and spoke to her. I might stop by tomorrow and talk to her face-to-face just to be sure everything’s as he said it was. But she sounded sure that he was at her home that evening. Said she made him peach pie and served it with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.”
“Did she make any blueberry muffins when she made that pie?” I asked hopefully.
“She didn’t mention it. Sorry to disappoint everyone. Would anyone like to have another cup of coffee?”
“No, we’ve got to get home. We’ve been bitterly disappointed and we’re going home to bed,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
“Of course,” he said with a grin. “I’ll talk to you both later.”
“Sure,” I grumbled. Daniel and I headed out to the car.
“That really stinks,” Daniel said.
“You can say that again.” I probably shouldn’t have been sad that Principal Jefferson wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life in prison. Especially if he really hadn’t killed anyone. But I couldn’t get over him not being the killer. If Robert had made a mistake, then I hoped he discovered it before someone innocent was arrested.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The weekend found me feeling melancholy. I had hoped the killer would be discovered before now, but Robert swore it couldn’t have been Principal Jefferson. I did feel a little guilty for hoping as hard as I had been that it was him. The truth was, I didn’t really care who it was, I just wanted them found and put behind bars. It felt like open season on high school teachers in this town and I wanted that open season closed.
“Are we going to the spring concert?” I asked Daniel when we’d gotten home from work Monday afternoon. Most of April had been unseasonably warm and all I really wanted to do was kick my shoes off and sit in front of a fan. We were guaranteed a cold spell before summer finally set in. It happened that way every year.
“Do we have to?” he asked without looking up from his newspaper. He’d already removed his tie and his shoes were on the floor next to his chair. Seemed he had the same thought I did.
“Not if you don’t want to,” I said trying not to sound too hopeful. I glanced at the clock. It was just past 4:00. We had plenty of time to change our minds.
“I don’t want to.”
“Sounds good,” I said and headed to the kitchen. I had forgotten to set anything out to defrost, so I searched the cupboards. “How does tuna fish sandwiches sound?”
“Sounds good,” he said and folded over the newspaper.
I put a can into the refrigerator to chill and went to my sewing table. I had plenty of smaller pieces of fabric and I thought I might be able to find enough to make a baby blanket for Christine. It could be her graduation gift. I never gave the students gifts—there were too many of them. But I could make an exception for her.
“If you change your mind about the spring concert, we have plenty of time to go,” I said, picking up a piece of the yellow swiss dot fabric I had used on Suellen’s baby blanket. Her baby would be born five or six months before Christine’s and I wondered if she would have clothes that hers had outgrown by then. I’d ask and hopefully, she wouldn’t be planning on an eighth baby and want to keep everything.
“I don’t want to change my mind. My feet hurt and I’m hot,” he said without looking at me.
“I know,” I said. I began rummaging through my scrap box, pulling out cute prints and solids. If I could find a piece large enough for the top of the blanket, I could use the smaller pieces to make appliques as I had done for Suellen’s blanket.
“Anything new from Robert?” he asked.
“Not a thing,” I said. “Seems like someone somewhere had to have seen something.” In a town as small as Salyers, it was a surprise no one had seen anything when the murders had taken place, let alone hadn’t heard anything. Gossip flew in this town when something happened. Once, when the used car dealership had been vandalized, the culprit, Billy Hanes, had bragged to his friends that he had done it. Billy had just graduated high school and was feeling his oats and smashed a few windshields with bricks from the deteriorating hotel on third street. Unfortunately, the bragging got around town and Billy spent some time in the county lockup. You can’t talk about things in a small town and not expect it to get around to people you wish wouldn’t hear it.
“The missing shoes. Those are going to lead the police to the murderer,” he muttered.
“You think so?” I asked, laying a piece of white fabric out on my sewing table. It might be just about big enough to be the top side of the blanket. The bottom could be a patchwork of different fabrics. I had a lot of pastel pieces and it would be cute.
“I do. Don’t you?”
“Yes. What kind of shoes did Bill wear on his day off I wonder?”
“Athletic, I imagine,” he said, folding the newspaper over.
“If the same person that killed Darren, killed Bill, then there’s a connection somewhere, and it makes me wonder if the connection was something other than them both being teachers. I mean, it wouldn’t just be some random murderer running teachers over, right?” We’d been over this and over it, but there was something we were missing. I pulled out a small piece of blue and white check fabric. It would make a cute puppy applique. I didn’t want to make the blanket just for a boy or just for a girl, so I was going to make appliques that could be for either.
“It would be a really big coincidence,” he agreed.
“What about a school board member?”
He chuckled. “You know how those board members hate to approve raises. Maybe they thought they’d save some money by running a couple of teachers down.”
I laughed. “It’s not a bad idea, actually. But they should have run over Millie Erickson or Dave Winn. They’ve been teachers since the turn of the century. I bet they make more money than anyone else.”
“You’ve got a point there,” he said and put his newspaper down. “Bill couldn’t stand Darren, so it’s not like they were hanging out together after work. I think you’re right in there has to be some other connection.”
I sighed. All of this had to come together somehow. Blueberry muffins. A missing painting. Tire tracks. Footprints. Missing shoes. Who on earth would take a dead man’s shoes? The painting could have been something Darren had gotten rid of months earlier or the spot was for the painting on the easel. There was no way to tell how long ago the painting had been taken off the wall. But missing shoes? Why shoes?
“I like little yellow ducks for a baby blanket, don’t you?” I asked him.
“You know, I was thinking the exact same thing. You can never have too many little yellow ducks,” he teased.
I snorted and kept sorting through the box. “Lots of yellow ducks. But then, I’ve got this white fabric. I could make little lambs. And pink bunnies. I wish I knew if it was a boy or a girl.”
“You could make the blanket and add the appliques after the baby is born,” he suggested absently.
“I could,” I said and held up a piece of pink gingham. It would have been fun to make the entire blanket from the pink gingham if I knew she was having a girl. I didn’t want to wait to add the appliques. When I started a project, I wanted to dive right in and finish it. The baby wouldn’t be born until fall, but pastels fit anything baby related.
“Maybe Darren’s family would donate some of his paintings to Christine so she could decorate the nursery with them,” he said and chuckled. “It might give the kid nightmares, though.”
“Some of those paintings would give anyone nightmares. Although the dog with the three faces is kind of kid-friendly—” And then I knew. I turned to look at Daniel. “We have to go to the spring concert.”
Daniel laid his newspaper down in his lap and looked at me. “Why?”
“Because missing things don’t just wander off by themselves.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The spring concert was an event that students and their families looked forward to all year. It was the final sc
hool program before graduation and the seniors would get to show off their musical skills in both choir and orchestra for the final time in their high school careers. Many of these kids would go on to college, but most would find jobs locally, marry, and start families. In some ways, it saddened me, not only because the girls I had in my classes for four years would be moving on, but because I always hoped for more for them. Even though college wasn’t my first choice, I was glad I had attended and graduated. A career was nice, but I still longed for that family. I hoped my students would get a chance to spend a few years learning about themselves and what they were good at before they married and had children, but I knew most wouldn’t.
Daniel parked the car in the teacher’s parking lot, and we headed for the auditorium. I’d called Robert and asked him to meet us here, and so I scanned the crowd for him as we headed for the front door.
The excitement was palpable in the air. Some of our students were quite talented musically, and it was always a joy to watch and listen to them play or sing. The underclassmen were excited about moving up a grade and hoping to be picked for honors choir and orchestra based on their performances here tonight. I hoped the families with graduating seniors cherished this night. And I hoped that what we were about to do wouldn’t ruin the moment for them.
“There’s Robert,” Daniel said, nodding in his direction.
“Excuse us,” I said to a small group that had stopped to talk in the middle of the stream of people headed to the auditorium. We scooted around them as they moved a bit.
“Robert,” Daniel said. He stopped and turned toward us. Robert was dressed in a black suit and Beryl was on his arm, dressed in a spring print dress splashed with pink tulips.
“How are you two?” Robert asked when we got to them.
“We’re fine,” I said. “We should see if we can get around to the back of the auditorium.”
“Let’s wait a bit. Let people find their seats. Maybe we’ll let the show go on.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” I asked, worried about how things would go.
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