by Ellery Adams
“I would indeed,” he answered, a smile in his gray eyes. Olivia felt a prick of doubt. Flynn was so lively, so capable of lightening even the gloomiest of her moods with his ready humor and affable manner. As she stared at him now, she had to admit that he was awfully easy on the eyes too.
Dixie skated from the Cats booth to take Flynn’s order, betraying not the slightest surprise over finding him sitting across from Olivia moments after her friend had claimed that she and Flynn were finished. “Your tomato and mozzarella omelet will be out shortly, ma’am,” Dixie said to Olivia and winked as she shot off toward the kitchen.
Olivia gazed at Flynn over the rim of her coffee cup. “The word around town is that you and Diane have become friendly.”
“She’s a fun gal,” he replied nonchalantly. “Except when she’s loading me down with endless amounts of reading material on raising kittens. Life as a single parent.” He sighed theatrically. “It is so hard.”
Olivia laughed. “Have your little felines been given names?”
“Oh, yes. Digory and Polly, after the children in C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew.” Dixie arrived in the middle of Flynn’s sentence, carrying Olivia and Haviland’s meals as well as a cup of coffee for Flynn.
“My kids entered your contest, but I think they wanted to name your cats after video game characters or pop stars.” She fluffed the lowest ruffle of her tutu. “And my youngest boy was real set on you callin’ one of them Chinese Takeout.”
Flynn chuckled. “I should have given him an honorable mention for creativity, but you’ll be happy to know that the winner is from a family facing hard times. When I told this kid that he’d won and could pick out fifty dollars worth of books, he grinned from ear to ear. One of the books he chose was a dictionary. He said his folks didn’t see a need for one, but he’d been asking for this particular book since his sixth birthday. I sold him a leather-bound version at cost and he petted the thing like it was a puppy.”
Dixie wiped a tear from her eye. “You’ve gone and made my mascara run. Shame on you, Flynn McNulty.”
“Will you forgive me long enough to put in an order for Grumpy’s apple pancakes?
“I suppose I might.” Dixie sniffed and skated away.
Olivia cut into her eggs, allowing a vent of steam to escape from the molten mozzarella interior. “Returning to the subject of you and Diane . . . I wanted you to know that I am—”
“Madly jealous?” Flynn reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “She and I are friends. You’re the only woman I want to make burnt toast for in the morning.”
A movement close to the window drew Olivia’s attention. She looked outside to see Rawlings, in uniform, carrying a cardboard beverage tray filled with coffee. He handed the tray to the officer in the passenger seat of a double-parked cruiser and then hustled around to the driver’s side, sunlight winking off his mirrored shades.
“Damn it all!” Withdrawing her hand from Flynn’s, Olivia took a bite of her food and chewed mechanically, her gaze fixed on the police car. When it turned out of sight, she sighed. What had Rawlings seen? She and Flynn holding hands like the lovers they’d been? After all, she was the only one who knew she no longer wished to have a physical relationship with Flynn, as she hadn’t managed to break it off.
I’ll make things clear to Flynn first and then I’ll tell Rawlings he caught a glimpse of our final moment of intimacy.
Flynn was watching her curiously. “What’s going on in that beautiful mind of yours? World domination, complex mathematical problems, physics formulas, the plot of a future bestseller?
Olivia put her fork down. “I asked about you and Diane because I wanted you to know you are free to pursue a relationship with her. Not that you needed my permission, because you and I never set parameters as to what we were to one another, but I think she’s lovely.”
“Why do I have a hunch that parameters are about to be firmly put into place,” Flynn murmured unhappily.
“I find in these situations that it’s best to be completely honest,” Olivia said matter-of-factly. “What we have isn’t working for me anymore. Let’s part amicably and continue our book discussions fully clothed in the future.”
In the heavy silence, Dixie arrived with Flynn’s pancakes. She prattled away as he spread several pats of butter across the surface of the stack and then poured liberal amounts of warm, pecan-flavored syrup on top of the butter. When he failed to laugh at Dixie’s joke or take a single bite of his breakfast, she put her hands on her hips and gave him a frank stare. “What’s wrong with your food?”
“There could never be anything amiss with your fine fare,” Flynn answered dramatically. “But Olivia just broke up with me and I’m wishing she’d waited until I was done with my pancakes. I’ve been dreaming about these all week.”
Dixie shot Olivia an accusing look. “Did you put this man off his breakfast?”
Ignoring her, Olivia took some money from her wallet, slapped it on the table, and rose. “Have a nice day. Both of you.”
She patted her thigh to stir Haviland, who was dozing contentedly against the diner’s wall, oblivious of the mixed emotions filling the air above his head.
Neither Flynn nor Dixie interfered with Olivia’s leaving. She reached the Range Rover and felt an immediate and powerful sense of relief. Rolling down all four windows, she turned on the radio and pulled away from her unlawful parking space in front of a fire hydrant and headed for Laurel’s subdivision. The combination of Aretha Franklin and the autumn air sweeping into the car’s cabin tasted sweetly of freedom.
Laurel welcomed Olivia by promising that the coffee she was in the midst of brewing would be fresh and strong.
“I bought myself a new machine with the money from my first paycheck.” She proudly stroked the appliance’s stainless steel façade and Olivia agreed that it was most impressive. After pouring two cups, Laurel offered Haviland a bowl of water and several dog biscuits she’d purchased especially for his visit. The two women then settled at the kitchen table where Laurel had laid out three yearbooks on the sticky tabletop.
“That’s just some jam leftover from breakfast. The boys get more on their clothes and the furniture than in their sweet little tummies,” Laurel said with a laugh, swiping at the surface with a sponge. “Here. You take my sophomore year. I’ll go over my wonderful days as a junior. When I was—”
“Why are there only three books?” Olivia immediately cut short her friend’s high school reminiscences.
Laurel frowned. “I think my parents have my freshman yearbook. I must have left it behind after marrying Steve and they just packed it with the rest of their stuff when they moved to Florida. I could easily picture my mom looking through it every now and then.” Laurel seemed pleased by the thought. “Anyway, I rooted around in the attic as soon as I got back from dropping off the twins this morning but could only locate these three. If we don’t find any suspicious photos in here, we’ll have to pay a visit to Ms. Glenda at the school library.”
Olivia opened the first book and carefully scanned page after page of young faces. The photos revealed evidence of acne, thick glasses, gawkiness, mouthfuls of metal braces, minor facial scars, and one wheelchair-bound student, but nothing struck Olivia as out of the ordinary. Like any group of photographs representing a large population, there were attractive faces, unappealing faces, and altogether unremarkable faces.
Laurel was turning the pages with agonizing slowness, chuckling over the comments written or waxing nostalgic over memories of homecoming or prom. She held one-sided conversations with the smiling visages on almost every page and even giggled a time or two, sounding very much like a teenage girl.
“Slide over your senior year,” Olivia commanded impatiently. “I have no doubt it was unforgettable, but we’ve got a job to do. Stop reliving the glory days as a pompom shaker and search for deformities, would you?”
“Spoilsport,” Laurel retorted and pretended to sulk, but by the time she�
�d reached a spread featuring the junior class candid shots, she was laughing again.
Olivia finished scrutinizing the second book but found nothing. She insisted on paging through the one Laurel finally set aside. Finding no clues in the third yearbook, she carried her cup to the sink and rinsed a splotch of grape jelly from her wrist. “Let’s head over to Pampticoe High. I’ll drive.”
On the way to the school, Laurel chatted about how much she was enjoying her new career and how comfortable she felt interviewing members of the Oyster Bay Police Department. “Chief Rawlings has been so kind to me. I really hope he can make it to our Bayside Book Writers meeting on Saturday. I loved his chapter! I wrote down so few criticisms that he’s going to think I’m buttering him up in order to get information for my articles.”
The two women discussed Rawlings’ chapter and what progress they hoped to make on their own manuscripts. Olivia didn’t tell Laurel that she’d reached a writing roadblock since receiving the vial of blood from Will Hamilton. It was now impossible to dream up plot lines focusing on Kamila, her fictitious Egyptian concubine, in the face of such poignant real-life drama. Luckily, Laurel was brimming with ideas for a contemporary romance novel and discussed these for the remainder of the ride.
Pampticoe High was bustling with activity when Olivia and Laurel stopped by the front office to collect visitor badges. Students were in the middle of changing classes and poured through the dingy hallways, talking, laughing, shouting, and slamming lockers. Half of the teens wore ear buds and listened to music as they moved while another large percentage was talking or texting on cell phones.
Olivia thought back to the boarding school she’d attended—the strict dress code, the rule of silence when in public areas, the insistence on politeness and proper etiquette at all times. Had these students attended Olivia’s school, most of them would have been immediately hauled off to detention for inappropriate dress and the use of foul language, their electronic devices confiscated and all privileges revoked.
“This is a different world,” she commented under her breath after an oblivious young man barreled into her and then shuffled off without so much as an apology.
Ms. Glenda’s domain was refreshingly quiet and orderly. Olivia only had to watch the woman interact with a single student to see that she ruled the library with a blend of softness and steel. She was also remarkably unsurprised by Laurel’s request that she recall the names of former students with notable physical deformities.
“A nice young police officer asked me the very same thing yesterday afternoon,” Ms. Glenda whispered, removing her reading glasses to clean off a smudge on the left lens. “It was no small feat to consider the unusual birthmarks, burns, scars, missing limbs, additional fingers or toes, and excessive overbites of two decades worth of students!” Having finished with her glasses, she put them back on and gazed at Laurel with interest. “I see your experience with the school paper eventually blossomed into a career. Journalism suits you, my dear. I’ve followed your recent articles with pride, knowing I once taught you how to conduct research.”
Laurel blushed prettily. “You certainly did, Ms. Glenda. Believe me, your coaching has come in handy more than once over the last few weeks.”
Ms. Glenda preened and Olivia suspected the woman deserved every accolade she received. It couldn’t be easy to instruct the group of unruly miscreants Olivia had seen in the school’s hallway. “I don’t know why the police were interested in my memories of days gone by, but I suspect it has something to do with the Cliché Killers. Didn’t you come up with that nickname? Quite catchy.”
Nodding modestly, Laurel held her blank notebook page in the air. “I think we’re chasing down the same lead. Were you able to assist the police?”
“Not at first.” Ms. Glenda indicated they should follow her into the stacks. She pulled a yearbook from the shelf, found the page she was looking for, and then held it open against her chest with the blue cover facing outward. “I thought I’d be of no help until the officers used the words ‘cliché’ and ‘tease’ in the same sentence. Two faces quickly surfaced in my mind.” She studied Laurel. “Surely you remember a student being teased for the strange sounds she made when she tried to talk. Does the phrase, ‘cat got your tongue’ help you remember?”
Laurel began to shake her head, but then stopped. She paled and reached for Ms. Glenda’s yearbook. The librarian pointed to a group of photographs featuring the senior class. “See there? It says, ‘Absent from this group: Andrew Davis and Ellen Donald.’ ”
“Ellen Donald.” Laurel’s words were barely audible. “I remember her now. Oh! I may have . . . I believe I joined in when the older girls made fun of her.”
Ms. Glenda seemed satisfied by the admission. “Her older brother was Rutherford. He graduated three years ahead of Ellen and was also severely tongue-tied.”
Olivia accepted the yearbook and put her finger on the place where Ellen’s photograph should have appeared on the page. “Wasn’t their condition reparable?”
“I imagine so.” Ms. Glenda reclaimed the yearbook and shelved it, clearly signaling that she didn’t want to discuss the matter any further.
“Can you provide us with a more concrete answer?” Olivia demanded, sensing the librarian knew more than she was willing to let on. “Or point us to a faculty member who might have a more complete recollection of the Donald siblings?”
Her pride stung, Ms. Glenda crossed her arms over her chest. “I do not like to gossip, especially when it comes to former students of mine.”
“Of course you don’t!” Laurel whispered passionately. “You must feel protective of them. I’d never quote you without your permission, but people have been hurt, Ms. Glenda. You could help bring an end to the robberies, to the violence, afflicting two counties.”
Listening to the plaintive tone of another former student, Ms. Glenda capitulated. Turning slightly, she spoke solely to Laurel. “The Donalds were a Jehovah’s Witness family. There were six children in all, Rutherford and Ellen being the youngest. Those two rarely spoke at school, and when they did, it was almost impossible to understand what they were saying. Their words were garbled. The guidance counselor and several teachers attempted to talk the parents into seeking medical treatment, but Mr. and Mrs. Donald refused to listen. It was their belief that their children were perfect in the eyes of God and that they had been born with twisted tongues for a reason.”
“Those poor children,” Laurel murmured sadly. “They faced ridicule their entire childhoods when it could have been avoided?”
“I’ve heard that the procedure is fairly straightforward. I don’t remember what it’s called, but apparently it’s performed on infants quite often. A surgeon cuts away the extra tissue the child was born with, allowing the tongue to move more freely. At their age, the Donald kids would have had to go into the hospital. A local doctor offered to do the surgery for free, but the parents wouldn’t even consider it.” Ms. Glenda pursed her lips in disapproval.
Olivia’s eyes had strayed to the row of yearbooks on the shelf. “The robbery victims were classmates of the Donalds. We can safely assume that at least one spouse of each couple contributed to the misery of the Donalds’ high school career.”
“Let’s test that theory before we leave.” Laurel pulled another yearbook from the shelf. “I’ll try to find Christina Quimby. I know her maiden name.”
Laurel found Christina’s photo quickly. After that, she looked up Felix Howard, followed by Sue Ridgemont’s husband. “Chief Rawlings was a step ahead of us. Unless the Donalds are using false identities, he’ll have them in custody today.” She glanced at her notebook. “I wonder if their parents are still local. I should try to find their house. It would make the perfect photographic accompaniment for my article on Rutherford and Ellen. Maybe I could even get an interview before they know what their kids have been up to. I could pretend to be doing a piece on Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Olivia was more than a little astonishe
d that her friend was able to remain so detached from the story. After all, the crimes had been inflicted on her schoolmates and she knew, if only by distant acquaintance, one of the perpetrators. “Come on, Diane Sawyer. I need to let Haviland out of the car. We can do a search for the parents using your home computer.”
Laurel thanked Ms. Glenda and followed Olivia out of the library. After passing through a pungent hallway smelling of sweat and disinfectant, they both exited the school and drew in grateful breaths of refreshing autumn air.
On the way back to Laurel’s house, the women exchanged title ideas for the next piece on the Cliché Killers. Olivia’s phone rang and her heart fluttered. Was it the lab? At the next stop sign, she looked at the screen. Her contractor had called to let her know the work on the lighthouse keeper’s cottage was done and she was free to move furniture back in.
“Our writer’s group can meet at its usual locale this weekend. That was my contractor calling with the good news.”
“I’ve heard about him from April Howard. She told me that you’d offered her a job,” Laurel said as Olivia parked the Range Rover. “When I’m done breaking this story, I’m going to do an article on you, Oyster Bay’s behind-the-scenes benefactor.”
“That’ll be the end of your career for certain,” Olivia growled. “I’ll buy the paper and fire you. And I’m not joking. In any case, everyone in town is fully aware of every move I make without any help from you or the Gazette.”
Ignoring her, Laurel told Haviland he was free to take care of business in the strip of woods separating her property from her neighbor’s. “Their dog does it on our front lawn all the time and they never pick up after her.” Laurel glared at the Georgian house next door. “Go wild, Haviland!”
Cocking his head at the sound of his name, Haviland trotted off to the specified area. The women waited until he’d complied with Laurel’s wishes and then Olivia called him back into the house, promising to take him to the park immediately after lunch.
