Keyed in Murder

by Helen Gray

  “Your son just called and said your house has been broken into,” the officer who answered said. “Someone is on the way. Wait outside with your boys.”

  Within five minutes the lights of a patrol car appeared, speeding along the road beyond the field between the subdivision and the road that went past the golf course. It turned and came up the lane into the subdivision.

  “You’re becoming a regular customer,” Deputy Dale Brown said, emerging from the cruiser and striding across the yard toward her. He went to the door and did a quick exam. “Did you notice anything missing?”

  “I stepped inside and looked around as far as I could see, but I didn’t go on through the house. I came right back out and called you. I was afraid someone might still be in there.”

  Kyle’s truck appeared roaring along the road in the distance as she finished explaining. So Gabe had called him as well.

  “I sent the boys back to the van as soon as I saw the damage and found the door unlocked,” she explained to the deputy.

  He nodded approval and eased the door open.

  As Kyle’s truck veered into the driveway, both boys bounded from the van and ran to meet him. The three rushed to join Toni as the officer went inside.

  “Gabe called,” Kyle said softly into Toni’s ear as he reached her. “What’s happening?”

  “I found the lock damaged and the door unlocked. I went inside, but only as far as the foyer. I have no idea if anything’s missing. If anyone had still been in there, he’s long gone by now. There was no sign of a vehicle here,” she pointed out.

  “You boys stay outside for now,” Kyle ordered. “In fact, you should go back to the van where you can sit until we let you know it’s all right to go inside.”

  They both looked disappointed, but didn’t argue.

  Kyle and Toni followed Officer Brown, a guy they both knew from high school, inside and caught up to him in the kitchen. Nothing seemed disturbed there.

  The three of them went through each room. Dresser drawers had been emptied in the bedrooms. In the den, the desk had received the same treatment.

  It appeared that a few things had been moved around throughout the rest of the house, but nothing seemed to be missing.

  Dale hitched his utility belt upward around his waist and faced Toni and Kyle. “Do you think that kid who took your purse came back for another try at whatever he’s looking for?”

  Toni spread her palms. “I don’t know, but I don’t think so.” She recalled the theft in Patsy’s office. That didn’t fit at all.

  “I agree,” Kyle said. “This was a methodical search, not a theft or vandalism. I think an adult was here.”

  The deputy nodded. “I need to take fingerprints in here. I’ll also need to take some of you two and your boys for elimination purposes.”

  They sat and watched while Dale got his kit and did his work. When he finished in the house, they called the boys inside and had the family printed. When that was completed, Dale closed his kit. “I need to get back to the station and write up a report. I’ll let you know if we learn anything or need to talk to you some more.”

  They saw him to the door. When he was gone, Kyle placed his hands on Toni’s shoulders and gave her a somber look. “I think we’re on the wrong track.”

  Toni frowned. “What do you mean?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure. But this isn’t about what you saw or know. Someone—I’m guessing the killer—is looking for something. I know there are drugs around, but I’m not convinced that Jake’s death happened because of them. Something else is going on. I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is, you hold the key.”

  Toni froze.

  Chapter 12

  Kyle’s gaze pinned her. “What is it?”

  Toni shook her head to reorient herself. “Huh?”

  “You remembered something,” he said with certainty. “And it scared you.”

  She hauled a deep, steadying breath. “I did remember something, but I don’t see how it relates. It’s crazy.”

  He took her hand and tugged her down onto the sofa facing him. “Tell me about it, and let’s see if we can make sense of it. Was it something someone said? Something you heard?”

  Toni shook her head again, trying to clear it. “You said I hold the key. I found a key.”

  His face creased. “A key? Where?”

  She hated having to explain this. But he would accept no less than a full explanation at this point. “I wanted to see the crime scene.”

  “Of course you did,” he said wryly.

  “Saturday morning after Jake was killed, I drove over to his place. No one was home, and the gate wasn’t locked.”

  “So you went inside,” he said, prodding her along when she paused.

  “I looked around and estimated the location and position of the body based on what Ben Wilkes had told me about finding it.”

  “You had been to see Ben.” The statement was a question.

  She nodded. “I went and talked to him after Patsy Brower and her daughter asked me to help them clear Norman.”

  “Okay, go on. I’m following you now.”

  “Well, after I saw where Jake had been shot, I walked over to the pool. When I saw nothing of particular interest there, I went back outside the fence and looked back at the house in an overview. When I started back to the van, I noticed that the lid of the mailbox wasn’t closed properly.”

  “So you had to close it,” he said when she paused to think back on details of the scene.

  “I didn’t touch anything in the box, or even reach inside it,” she defended quickly. “But I did peek. There was an envelope inside it, with a key lying on top of it.”

  “Sounds like it could have been a post office box key,” Kyle theorized.

  “That’s what I thought. I didn’t tamper with the mail,” she repeated defensively. “I closed the little door lid, making it safer. And then …”

  “And then what?”

  “A glint down in the curbside grass caught my attention. It was another key. It was way down in the ditch, as if it had either been thrown away, or someone had dropped it and kicked it off the sidewalk, and it landed in the ditch.”

  “So you picked it up. What did you do with it?”

  She hated to admit this part. “I’m not sure why I bothered, but I put it in my purse. And forgot about it.”

  He drew an audible whoosh of breath. “Is it still there?”

  “It should be. But I still don’t see how it’s relevant, or could possibly have anything to do with what’s happened.”

  “Go get it.”

  Toni stood and went to her purse. It took a few moments of digging around in the big bag, but eventually she held up the clear plastic baggie with the key in it. “It probably means nothing.”

  Her husband edged up behind her for a closer look over her shoulder. “It looks like an ordinary, older key.”

  She shrugged. “That’s what I mean. I have no idea what it fits. It’s probably just a piece of junk that someone threw away.”

  “But you bagged it like the good scientist you are.” He eased back, his mouth twitching.

  She grinned. “It was automatic.” Suddenly she remembered that she had even gone so far as to dust it for prints. Feeling a little silly, she didn’t mention that.

  Kyle reclaimed his seat on the sofa. “I think you should show it to Buck. Let him decide whether there’s any significance in it.”

  The chief already knew about her visit to the crime scene. No matter how important—or unimportant—it was, she was probably due for an admonishment for not mentioning it. But Kyle was right. “Okay, but I don’t see that it’s urgent enough to bother him this late at night. I’ll take it to him after school tomorrow.”

  “Have John or Jenny accompany or follow you.”

  “Oh, all right, Nag,” she said in the manner of the bickering sisters in the movie A League of Their Own.

  *

  By the next morning Ton
i had admitted to herself that she might have been short sighted. The key in her purse was definitely not a post office box key. Could it be to a bank lock box? A car? Had Jake lost it? Had his wife? One of his kids? She couldn’t stop the spin of questions, or come up with a logical theory.

  “You hold the key,” she breathed silently as she slipped into a forest green pant suit and low-heeled black pumps.

  A new thought struck her. Could the purse snatcher and intruder be looking for something as simple as this key? A feeling of unease crept through her, which was silly, she reminded herself. All she had was a key—and no idea what it fit.

  But not only wouldn’t the unease go away, it escalated. As soon as the bell rang for third hour, Toni grabbed her purse, locked her classroom door, and hurried to the principal’s office. She poked her head inside the door and spoke to the secretary. “I need to run to town for something. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks,” Pam said.

  It wasn’t common, but there had been occasions when Toni needed to go pick up more supplies for a lab, having misjudged how many items she needed. So Pam would assume that was where she had gone. Toni suddenly remembered Kyle’s admonition to not be alone, but she reasoned that she would be safe out in the open among people. And she didn’t want to explain this little excursion to anyone.

  Feeling sneaky, Toni drove off the school parking lot and headed downtown. As she rolled along Main Street, she passed the funeral home where Jake’s service had been held. Maybe she should have gone, but she wasn’t close to the family, and she would have had to use personal leave time from work.

  She pulled into the lot at the hardware store, parked, and hurried inside. Then she pulled the key from her purse and handed it to the clerk on duty behind the counter. “Can you make a copy of this for me right now? I have to be back at my desk in a half hour.”

  “Sure,” he said, taking it.

  When he brought it back to her, along with the duplicate, Toni paid him and shoved the original back into the plastic baggie. She dropped the copy into the pocket of her purse next to her cell phone. As she drove back to the school, she found herself darting furtive glances at each side of the street.

  When she asked John during lunch if he could follow her to the police station after school, he instantly agreed. “Let the boys ride with me, and I’ll take them to the little park behind the building to play until she was ready to go on home,” he insisted.

  The rest of the day seemed to pass at a snail’s pace. Toni looked forward to getting rid of the key, but dreaded facing Buck.

  “I’ll get Gabe and Garrett. You go on,” John said as they faced one another from their doorways while students exited classrooms at the end of the last class.

  Toni nodded that she had heard him over the hubbub and stepped into her room to get her purse and satchel.

  When she arrived at Buck’s office, he didn’t appear thrilled to see her. He did smile briefly, but his raised eyebrows bespoke wariness. He eased back in his chair. “That expression you’re wearing smacks of guilt.”

  He knew her too well. She inhaled deeply, marshalling her wits, and stepped closer to his desk. “I brought you something,” she said, digging the baggie from her purse. “I found this in the ditch in front of the Crawford house when I …was there,” she said haltingly. She tossed the baggie onto the desk before him.

  “What does it mean?” he asked, picking it up and eyeing the key quizzically.

  “Probably nothing, but something Kyle said after the intruder was at our house made me remember I had it.”

  “Sit down and tell me about it.”

  She did, and related how she had found it and its seeming non-relevance. “After putting it in my purse, I forgot all about it.”

  “Hmmm,” he murmured as she finished, turning the plastic bag over in his hands. “It’s definitely not a post office box key. It might be a car key, but it’s more likely a house key. I’ll run over to Crawford’s house and see if it fits their door.”

  Toni breathed a sigh of relief. It was out of her hands now, and the repercussions she had feared had not happened. The copy in her purse would be her guilty little secret—and probably pitched in the trash. “Before I leave, can you tell me if you found any fingerprints in our house that identify the intruder?”

  He shook his head, his mouth pulled in tight at the corners. “It was a waste of time. There are just too many prints in that place of yours. There are some that don’t belong to you, Kyle, or the boys, but the ones we ran through the identification system are unknown.”

  He leaned forward. “There’s another thing you’ll be happy to know. We confirmed Ben’s story about his phone conversations between his and Jake’s phones.”

  Toni smiled. “Thank you for telling me.”

  She went outside and reclaimed her boys, thanked John for watching them, and drove home. When she pulled up to the drive, she found Kyle’s mechanic putting tools in his truck that was parked at the edge of the yard.

  “Your garage door works fine now,” Mike announced as she stopped alongside him and rolled down her window. “You just had a broken spring.”

  His friendly face and good message gave Toni the mental lift she needed. A broad shouldered guy with reddish hair that was definitely receding, Mike had been in Kyle’s high school class, two years ahead of her.

  “Thanks,” she said, picking up her remote and pushing the button. When the retractable garage door began to rise, she clapped her hands in a silly show of pleasure.

  “See you around,” Mike called as he climbed into his truck and drove away.

  *

  The next morning when Toni encountered Rick Montgomery in the teacher’s lounge before classes began, she welcomed the opportunity to visit with him while they checked their mail boxes.

  “What can you tell me about the Hartman boy and Crawford girl?” she asked, tossing a piece of junk mail into the trash container.

  He shrugged. “Well, Steven Hartman is a sophomore, and Tricia Crawford is a freshman. I’ve seen them together quite a bit in the halls, so I assume they’re dating.”

  “Do you think they’re messing around with drugs?”

  Rick’s mouth twitched. “I think they’re probably messing around, but I don’t know if drugs are involved.”

  Toni studied the slight amusement in his expression. “So you don’t think they’re dealing?”

  He shook his head. “I seriously doubt it. The girl has too many problems.”

  “I haven’t had her in class yet, so I’m not sure what you mean.”

  He stopped shuffling his mail and studied her. “She has a lot of conflicts, with teachers as much as students. I think she’s classified as ODD.”

  Oops. Oppositional Defiance Disorder meant she displayed an ongoing pattern of an angry or irritable mood, defiant or argumentative behavior, and vindictiveness toward people in authority. Such behavior often disrupted the student’s normal activities, within the family and at school. Other problems often accompanied the disorder.

  “So she’s argumentative and defiant, and if Steven thought Norm was innocent, she would automatically declare him guilty. Talking to her would be a waste of time.”

  “That would be my guess,” Rick said matter-of-factly. “Were you thinking of doing that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just wondering what kind of connections there are between the Hartmans and Crawfords.”

  “The parents are friends. I think they went to school here at the same time, and maybe even attended the same college. So Steven and Tricia have fairly regular contact with one another, and she’s …”

  “She’s what?” Toni asked when he stopped speaking abruptly.

  He grimaced. “Well, the word is she’s easy.”

  Toni rolled her eyes. “I thought she and a studious guy like Steven were an odd match. Of course, I’ve recently learned that Steven isn’t exactly the mild mannered guy I thought.” She unconsciously rubbed a hand over her
arm and shoulder that had been wrenched when he yanked her purse from it.

  Rick’s expression slowly changed, becoming more serious. “You know, this girl might bear more scrutiny.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Well, if she’s ODD and argues with everyone all the time, that surely applies at home as well as at school.”

  Toni followed his line of reasoning. “If she argues with her parents all the time, she and her dad could have had a big fight.” Her voice lowered. “Do you think it’s possible she could have killed her dad?”

  “You’re the sleuth. Maybe you should look into it.”

  He left her mulling the horrible probability.

  *

  “Of course, no one did it,” Toni said to John as they chatted at the end of Thursday’s schedule of classes.

  She had done the egg in a bottle experiment in each biology class to illustrate the effects of air pressure, but first hour was the one to which she referred. The students had been rapt as she inserted a twisted paper towel into an empty apple juice bottle, dropped a lit match after it to set the paper afire, and then placed a boiled egg over the opening. And they had gasped in awe when the egg slipped through the smaller opening into the bottle.

  An even bigger reaction had occurred when Toni put her mouth over the bottle opening and blew hard into it—and the egg popped back out. And landed on the floor as she jerked her mouth back from the opening.

  But interest had waned with a few of the students as she explained how setting the paper on fire inside the bottle had heated the air, causing it to expand and the oxygen to be used up, and placing the egg over the opening had created a vacuum that sucked the egg into the bottle. When she turned the bottle upside down and blew air into it, the air pressure in the bottle had pushed the egg back out through the opening while keeping it intact.

  At some point during the lecture, Toby Mulligan had fallen asleep. When the bell rang and startled him awake, he had shot to his feet and tumbled onto the floor. Someone—Toni suspected Drake Newberry or Jeff Dent—had seized an opportunity while her back was to them to tie Toby’s shoe laces together. No harm had been done, so she hadn’t sent anyone to the office. Those three boys were constantly pranking one another and getting into trouble. Ken didn’t need the hassle today.