A Boarding Case Mystery Box Set: Vol 1-5 (Laura Greene Mystery Thriller Collections Book 3)

by Laura Greene

  “Yes.”

  “Then the police found his wallet and phone on the side of the road?” Tina says rhetorically. Before Amy can answer her, she begins her next point. The ideas are flooding in and Tina is trying to keep up with them. “Either Nick was kidnapped by someone he knew, or...”

  “Wait, how do you know it’s someone he knew?”

  “Because he left without coercion. Maybe he thought he was going to meet a friend and instead found a foe waiting for him.”

  “That makes sense.” Amy nods her head in agreement. She now understands Tina’s point.

  “The other possibility is that he did leave with a friend, or should I say a partner in crime, then he threw away his phone and wallet to make it look like he was kidnapped when he was really escaping.” The second idea is unsavory for Tina to imagine, but as a good detective, she must turn over every stone and explore all the possibilities. Until she can rule out that Nick didn’t escape, he is technically a suspect in the case.

  Another idea pops into Tina’s head – not about Nick this time, but about the students. Since she’s already in the CCTV room, she decides to look into it and devises a plan with Amy.

  Shortly after, Amy is inching along the hallway walls with a phone to her ear and talking with Tina. “Like this?” she says into the phone. Her voice is curt.

  “Yes, stay close to the wall. I don’t want to miss anything.”

  “Well, can you make it fast over there? These students are looking at me like I’ve lost my marbles.” Through the CCTV camera, Amy looks like she is lowering her neck and upper body to the ground to almost make herself disappear. She looks rather silly and now the students are seeing it all and whispering among themselves.

  Tina laughs, “We’re almost done, just one more turn up ahead.”

  “Good. Because I was going to ask you if you’d rather come down here yourself.”

  Tina sighs into the phone as Amy finishes tracing the wall, then says, “Nothing.”

  “What? You mean, I did all that for nothing?”

  “No, the nothing is something.”

  “Now you’ve lost me, James. What are you talking about?” Amy peels herself from the wall and she walks briskly to the CCTV room, avoiding eye contact with the students. To one student who is giggling, she says, “Get to class, Mr. Miller,” then continues her plight.

  “Ella said she heard voices. I was hoping we could trace them and see if there are any blind spots in the cameras where someone who has studied them can avoid being noticed.”

  “Uh-huh,” Amy responds, and an echo bounces through the phone. Her voice sounds hollow and deep; Tina recognizes the sound from the dungeon stairwell which echoes when she is walking up and down the stairs. Amy is almost back to the room.

  “Well, this mini experiment we just did,” Tina says and turns to look at Amy who now walks in through the door, “it shows us that these cameras are well-placed and there is no way anyone can escape being seen in these hallways.” They hang up the phone.

  “Okay, so how is that something?”

  “It explains why someone cannot travel through the hallways unnoticed. It’s impossible actually. Which means we can rule it out.”

  “So we’re using a process of elimination?”

  “Exactly. Only, the question then becomes, how did they manage to reach the students?”

  “I have no idea, unless they are actually ghosts.”

  “Ghosts…” Tina says, as she taps her jaw, thinking. “Can you take me to Anna’s room?”

  Chapter 4

  By now, Tina has searched Anna’s room multiple times and she knows it like the back of her hand. She is, however, hoping that she can find something, anything, that can let her know how Anna was hearing those voices. When they walk into the room, a musty smell pervades their nostrils.

  Apart from the odd visits to investigate, her room has not seen a sign of life since Anna died. It collects dust as if to preserve the only memory of its once lively owner. The gray, faint lighting suggests the room is still in mourning. Loss is neither quick nor easy to overcome. The bookshelves prop up the last of the prestigious honor Anna was working towards. Those books will never hear from her again, unfortunately. If the room could speak, it would say that it is the looking glass into the hearts of those who still mourn Anna.

  Sensing the pain of loss preserved in the room, Tina promises in her heart to respect Anna’s memory and leave the room in its original state – for as long as the investigation continues, anyway. Carefully, she searches the room while Amy stands at the door, but she returns each item precisely into its place. She ponders how those voices could have been heard. I know you were not crazy, Anna, Tina thinks as she remembers how Anna’s friends and family vouched for her. She looks up, sighs and rubs her neck, Then how did you hear those voices? She sees something up high. “That’s it.”

  “What? What did you see?” Amy steps into the room and leans closer to hear what Tina saw.

  Tina again does not reveal it. Something about this piece of evidence alerts her that this may have been an inside job after all. She stands and ponders internally, So, someone was here. The voices really were real. But who? Tina has a few guesses in her mind, but none are definitive.

  Her phone beeps. It’s a message from an unknown phone number. Tina carefully views it without revealing it to Amy. From here on, she needs to keep evidence to herself until she can clear the names of everyone in the school – and this includes Amy.

  She reads the message and it tells her to visit an address. In Wyoming? There is urgency in the message and Tina uses this to excuse herself from Amy. “I have an errand I need to run. I’d totally forgotten about it.”

  Amy does not seem convinced, but she sees Tina off and locks Anna’s room. Whatever secret was revealed to Tina in that room will apparently remain with Tina. If it was a clue to how Anna heard the voices, then only Tina knows the answer now.

  *

  Tina drives the hour and a half trip from Yampa Valley Regional Airport to Baggs, Wyoming. Until today, she had never heard of this place, and now she is sitting in her rental car, driving on its terrain. To her left are what look like patches of grass, but up close are desert bushes clumped close together; to her right are more bushes, with snowy mountains in the distance. I wonder if those are the infamous Rocky Mountains? She’s not sure, but her clue thus far is that just below Baggs is Colorado state. She has always wanted to visit these mountains, and wonders if she’ll have time to do so once she has visited her latest lead. Knowing her career, though, she imagines she’ll probably visit the lead, talk and be on the next flight out. She hasn’t even made hotel reservations yet, anticipating her short stay. And Nick still needs me, she reminds herself, peeling her eyes away from the majestic mountains.

  The air is fresher on the drive to Baggs. As a city girl, Tina has not had nearly enough time in nature. Her usual idea of fresh air is the air conditioner turned on full blast in the house. She feels her lungs are not as heavy in the less dense air, which gives her bruised ribs a break from the pain that’s easing with each day, just as the doctor advised it would. The empty roads alone are a major tell-tale that she is no longer in the big city and she loves it. She picks up the speed a little to make up time and visit her lead before it gets dark. Who am I visiting again? She thinks back to the file of a Janet Branning that Tim sent to her phone before she boarded the plane. She’s never heard of her. It is a brief file, because the name Janet Branning did not exist until a few years ago. Tina knows it’s an alias. All around her is nature; no house is in sight yet. From the appearance of the deserted surroundings, it looks like she may have been sent on a wild goose chase.

  Who sent me that address? Tina tried to trace the number, but it was yet again from a burner phone. With no clear leads on finding Nick, she took the lead and decided to follow it up. She considers the possibility that with the young age of the file, the address she was sent will lead her to someone pertinent to her ca
se. Tina hopes the result is the latter and she’s not just walking into a trap.

  Tina calls Tim to verify that no other information was found on Janet. She would like to know more about her before she arrives. The cell connection where she is breaks up in certain spots then the call finally connects. “Tim!”

  “James, are you already driving to Baggs?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re making good time. And don’t worry about the scenery, you won’t see much in that area.” Tim then goes on a tangent about the last time he visited his aunt in Colorado and drove through Baggs. Tina listens politely then he says, “Before you ask me, I looked up Janet. Nothing has come up yet, so you’ll need to visit her and see what you can dig up in person.”

  Tina enters the small town of Baggs and follows her GPS – not that she really needs her GPS in a town of less than five hundred residents. She could easily stop the car at one isolated home, ask for Janet by name and locate her. From her first glance, Baggs already looks like the sort of place where everybody knows everyone. “I meant to tell you - thanks for the tip on finding out what might be holding me back as an agent. I now know, and I’ve handled it. You may want to consider being a therapist part-time. You have a knack for these things.”

  “The money sure would help me with my child support.” They laugh as Tina turns into an open trailer park neighborhood. For someone who has just left Hartford to come to Baggs, Tina wonders if she’s in the right place. The seemingly abandoned homes are a stretch from the lavish homes that she has gotten used to seeing. “I’m glad you took the time to find out what was hindering you, James. So, does that mean you and Dale will get back together now?”

  “You would love that, wouldn’t you? I think that ship has safely sailed.” Tina is sure being with Dale is not what she wants anymore. She has her eyes set on someone else now and, just as her luck would have it, her new interest, Nick, has gone missing.

  “Too bad, he was growing on me,” Tim says and drops the matter. He has been a great support for Tina. He jokes about her love life, but he’s careful to not interfere with it and that’s something Tina respects about him, unlike her mom’s indiscreet hints about wishing she had grandchildren and about Tina’s biological clock ticking. If I have to hear one more person talking about my biology… she thinks.

  Love, to Tina, is a precarious matter. It is both gentle and fiercely intense; it is both slow and fast; and if that’s not confusing enough, it is both compromising and selfish to the one who guards it.

  Tina says goodbye to Tim and thinks, It would be nice to enjoy Christmases with someone I love for the rest of my life.

  She has found the address and in front of her is unit 4-D. There are plants on the porch, a wind chime hanging from the ceiling and a Christmas gnome village decorating the windowsill next to the door. Her first impression of the home is that it’s safe and unassuming, but Tina feels differently.

  Her heart pounds forcibly, her palms sweat, and her ears are alert for any sign of danger. Yet there is no outward sign, except for the suspicious number of bolts on her lead’s door. Still, Tina is not yet sure if she is safe or in danger.

  This is it, Tina thinks. She is already here and there is no point turning around. She is about to meet her lead and know once and for all if she is a friend or foe; if she is of help, or a distraction to her case sent to pull her away from the school. Right now, right here, she will find out. Tina takes a deep breath and knocks on the door.

  She hears dogs awaken in the trailer homes around her, but not in the home she’s interested in. She searches her perimeter while she waits for someone to answer the door. The back appears to be clear – there is no chance anyone can run out of the back because it’s hedged up high with a wall surrounding the entire campus. She hears footsteps approaching from inside the home. A woman in her fifties answers the door in a long, dark skirt and lavender sweater. She is guarded and her shoulders hunch forward timidly. Behind her is a brown cat with white frost around its face. “May I help you?” she says, and Tina notices that even her voice is as tender as her appearance.

  For a moment, Tina thinks she is at the wrong home. Though the woman seems kind and gentle, nothing about her suggests that she would know anything about what’s going on in Hartford. She may very well have just interrupted this poor woman from her peaceful dinner. To avoid wasting the quiet woman’s time, Tina flashes her badge and says, “Yes, ma’am. I’m Detective Tina James. I’m looking for a Ms. Janet Branning.”

  “I’m Janet. Is something wrong?” Ms. Branning is a slender woman. Her eyes light with fire, showing that she is strong, but her reclusive demeanor looks like she is someone who has gained inner strength through life experience.

  Tina is sure there must be a mistake. She can’t place any correlation between Ms. Branning and the school case, but she cannot leave this stone unturned. Worried that her time might have been wasted or that she has been sent on a wild goose chase, the one thing Tina wants to ask is, Can you tell me why someone sent me to speak with you? But she opts for a more tactical approach. “Nothing to alarm you, ma’am. Um… what do you know about Hartford Boarding School?”

  “Only that my son works there.”

  Her answer piques Tina’s interest. “And who is your son?”

  “Charlie Clark.”

  Clark… Clark… The janitor? Tina thinks. As though to confirm she just heard correctly, “You’re Charlie’s mother?”

  “Yes,” Janet answers with a questioning look.

  Chapter 5

  Tina is dumbfounded by the connection of Ms. Branning to the school. The last name she expected to hear today was Charlie’s. Her long pause at the door is noticed. “I’m sorry, who did you say you are?” Ms. Branning asks, her face growing suspicious.

  “Detective James, ma’am,” Tina says as she clears her throat and composes herself.

  “Is Charlie in trouble? I can’t imagine any other reason why you would be here or why you would even come to me.” Mrs. Branning says this with her body fully facing Tina, her hand on her hip and covering the door entrance. Her timidity has disappeared, and she is clearly not ready to welcome Tina in.

  From multiple encounters with her leads, Tina has seen people show a great amount of respect for the FBI, but she knows that to really make headway in a case she has to gain the lead’s trust. She does not, however, have much time to do this today. Nick needs her help.

  “Ma’am, may I please come in? I think you can really help me with a case I’m investigating at his school.”

  Ms. Branning’s shoulders drop when Tina states her need; she pauses before speaking for a moment, then she invites Tina in and asks her to call her Janet.

  Tina looks over her shoulder one more time before she furtively enters Janet’s home. Though she has been granted access into the home, she is not yet certain that she or Janet are safe where they are. Her radar is still up as she enters the neatly decorated home. There are corduroy couches framing the wood-floored living room, and a wooden case on one corner houses CD albums, records and a well-kept record player. Perhaps she’s a collector, Tina thinks as she assesses Janet’s seemingly young age. Her file said she was fifty-three. Janet walks past the living room into the kitchen, “I have food on the stove. Please make yourself comfortable while I set it aside.” She disappears around half a wall behind the cat’s bed into what Tina concludes must be the kitchen, while Tina continues to check out the living room. She is not only looking for clues; Tina is also looking for conversation topics to help her build rapport with Janet. Family pictures on the wall immediately catch her attention and she sits closest to them, while keeping a good view of the front window.

  She glances around the room again and down the hallway at the number of doors. Apart from a few meows from the cat and clanking pans in the kitchen, Janet appears to be alone in the home. Tina’s search has revealed two things so far - Janet is a family woman, but she lives alone. This will be Tina’s angle.

&
nbsp; “Shoot!” Janet says loudly from the kitchen.

  “Are you okay?” Tina asks.

  “Yeah, I just spilled some soup. I’ll be a few more minutes.”

  “Alright.” Tina uses this opportunity to take a closer look at the pictures. She recognizes a picture of a mother and son sitting on a swing, smiling. She picks it up and pulls it close to her when she sees that the picture is folded, cutting someone out of the frame. Why would she cut someone out of the picture? Tina turns the frame to open it when she hears someone slam a car door outside. With the picture frame safely in her hand, she peeks out of the window to see who it might be – the cat closely follows behind her quietly, also making sure the home is safe. The feeling of being watched and quite possibly in danger is still lingering in Tina’s heart. She sees a man exit the car and enter a home across the street from her. She does not recognize the person.