by Helen Gray
“We plan to question them. We need to be sure the problems are confined to their household.”
“There have been a lot of people on and off the suspect list,” Toni said thoughtfully, “but my gut says someone from those elite eight couples killed Jake. Most of them have been friends for years. I personally remember that Denver Hewitt and Luke Kingsley ran around together in high school and were often in trouble over practical jokes. One incident I remember resulted in a charge of vandalism. They broke into the school and trashed the girls’ locker room. But their folks hired a lawyer and avoided prosecution.”
“They were spoiled darlings, huh?” Buck said in a long-suffering drawl.
She nodded. “Yep. Do you think one of them would have killed Jake?”
“I’m sure they’re capable, but so are any of them. They do seem to be practical jokers, but I don’t have any gut instincts that say they did or didn’t. Frank Chandler’s biggest offense was when he and his brother were caught poaching,” the chief continued.
Toni snorted. “I remember that. They were scared to death. Somehow Frank doesn’t strike me as a killer. Of course, neither do the others. But I know how deceiving appearances can be. What about Jake’s family? Statistics show that most murders are committed by someone close to the victim.”
“You’re right. We haven’t finished checking everyone on the list. But I remember a time when Bonnie Crawford—she was Bonnie Sheridan then—got caught shoplifting. Her minister let her do community service at the family’s church, and the whole thing was kept quiet.”
“I think her values have improved a good deal since then,” Toni murmured, recalling her tip about the store’s bookkeeper.
“Bonnie’s doing business as usual at the store, as I’m sure you know.”
Toni nodded. “I’ve been watching to see what she would do with the business. You said her sister confirmed her and Bonnie’s whereabouts the night Jake was murdered. What I want to know is if the daughter, Tricia, was with them.”
Buck’s tone sharpened. “Why do you want to know?”
Toni recounted her conversation with Rick—only referring to him as another teacher—without outright stating her suspicion about the daughter.
“That’s interesting information,” Buck said when she finished. “I can see why you might wonder if the girl could have gotten into a fight with her dad and ended up shooting him. But I can put your mind to rest on that. The shopping trip was a girl’s night out sort of thing, and Tricia was with her mother and aunt. The son spent the night with a friend, and we’ve verified that.”
He had read her thoughts. She shifted gears. “Do you know if there was any open conflict in that little bowling group?”
“I wish I knew,” he said wearily. “I just took a break from digging through people’s pasts and knew you would want to know that we’re busy.” There was a slight dig in there.
“Thanks for the update,” she said brightly. “I’d love to hear from you again when you’ve finished the list.”
As Toni returned to her desk, she mentally reviewed the bits of information Buck had shared. She knew that violence happened between friends—and spouses who cheated. She was getting the feeling that some of that could be happening. But right now she had too much work on her plate to dwell on it.
After school, as promised, there was a professional development session focused on techniques in gang and drug prevention. They discussed questions to anticipate and answer from students, and were given tips for identifying signs of gang membership.
As they filed out of the library after the meeting ended, Toni’s principal nudged her to one side of the hallway.
Toni glanced around, sensing that he wanted privacy. As soon as the hall had completely emptied, he spoke. “A student came to me and said he heard a rumor that there’s some kind of dangerous game going on among some students. He doesn’t know what it is, but he’s afraid it has something to do with the rash of vandalism we’re experiencing.”
“The student who reported it should be commended for doing the right thing,” Toni said. “It might be a baseless rumor, but it could be an important connection.”
Ken smiled. “I did commend him. And I promised him anonymity.”
By the time she crawled into bed that night, Toni was exhausted. But she couldn’t let go of the idea that she needed to go see Glenda the bully.
“Can you take the boys with you in the morning?” she asked Kyle as he came to bed.
His eyes on her were penetrating. “How about we drop them with your parents and I go with you wherever it is you plan to go?”
“I’ll text Mom,” she said, picking up her phone from beside the bed and sending a text. Faye replied within a couple of minutes saying they would expect the boys any time after eight.
Chapter 14
Saturday morning Toni drove the van, with Kyle in the passenger seat, to her parents’ house about eight-thirty and left the boys. “We’ll be back for them by eleven,” she told her mom before driving away.
On the way across town, she told Kyle about her conversation with Rick Montgomery, and the subsequent one with Buck.
Kyle listened attentively, only asking an occasional question, his expression thoughtful. “So you thought the daughter might have killed her dad,” he said when she finished. “But she has a mother and aunt providing an alibi. Do you think she might have a friend who would do her dirty work for her?”
That was a new angle. Toni darted a sideways glance at her husband. “You’re thinking of the Hartman boy. I don’t think so. According to Rick, that relationship isn’t exactly based on affection.”
“Ah, gotcha.”
At the edge of town, Toni turned onto Oak Ridge Road and had driven about a mile when she spotted an older turquoise and off-white trailer at the side of the road. A mailbox stood before it with the name Fillmore painted on it in black, uneven lettering.
As soon as she pulled to a halt at the edge of the neglected looking yard, the trailer door swung open. A big gal Toni recognized as Glenda Beckham appeared. They got out of the van and walked across the yard.
“Well, if it ain’t the nosy teacher who was bugging Ray a couple of weeks ago,” Glenda drawled as they approached. She leaned against the door sill to stare at them in scorn. “And she’s got her nosy hubby with her.”
A big gal, Glenda’s long dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Fairly tall, she wore an excess of black eyeliner and skin tight leggings below a loose tunic that came to just below her waist, making her resemble a bubble on stilts. The twist of her face completed the offbeat image.
Toni leveled a steely look at her. “I only wanted to talk to him.”
“Well, he said you did. And he talked back.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “So what are you doing here now?”
“I’m helping investigate your boyfriend’s murder,” Toni said with as much patience as she could muster. “And I’m sorry about your loss.”
A flash of grief was quickly banished from Glenda’s face. “Yeah, yeah,” she mocked. “We’ve heard about your meddling in police cases.” Her stare was belligerent.
Toni’s resolve to be nice hardened into a resolve to elicit information. Didn’t Glenda care if Ray’s murderer was caught?
“The Chief of Police has a lot of confidence in her,” Kyle spoke up, surprising Toni. “Murder is a terrible crime. And after someone commits one, it becomes easier to commit another. Don’t you want Ray’s killer stopped?”
Glenda just glared, her arms folded across her chest.
“People closest to murder victims are generally the killer, so that means you’re a main suspect,” Toni said, no longer hopeful of having a reasonable discussion with this thug-like woman. To Toni’s mind, Glenda’s manner was exactly that. She turned to leave.
“Wait.”
Toni turned back, and thought she detected a slight twitch in Kyle’s mouth. “What?”
“What do you mean, I’m a main suspect?” Glend
a thumped down the steps and charged up so close to her that Toni caught a whiff of garlic from the woman’s breath.
“You had the most opportunity to kill him, and the police are looking into your history and recent movements,” she improvised rapidly, knowing they would be checking all past and recent associates of Ray’s.
“You’re the most logical to have done it,” Kyle added, being unexpectedly helpful.
The elephant girl glared at them. And then her overbearing attitude was slowly replaced by a look of fear. “I didn’t kill him,” she said, a quaver spoiling the bluster of her words.
“That’s only your word,” Toni said, not giving an inch.
“But I didn’t. I loved him, and I …”
“Prove it by telling us who really killed him then,” Toni said, cutting her off in mid-sentence.
“I don’t know,” Glenda practically screamed, the scent of garlic lambasting them.
“Tell us whatever you do know,” Kyle ordered.
“All right, all right,” Glenda yelled, flinging her hands in the air theatrically. “Ray went back to Jake’s store to get the stuff Jake owed him and Norm made him put back, but he didn’t get the stuff because there were two cars there, Crawford’s and another one. He recognized them and came home and told me he knew who killed Jake.”
“Give us the name,” Toni said quickly, hardly able to breath in her excitement.
Glenda shook her head frantically and wailed. “He didn’t tell me. He said I shouldn’t know, so I couldn’t tell.”
“What did Ray do?” Kyle asked.
She looked around wildly, clearly torn as to how much to tell them. Then her shoulders slumped in resignation. “Ray wrote a note and left it somewhere in or on the man’s car saying to meet him and bring twenty thousand dollars. He named a meeting place and a time, and he wouldn’t let me go with him.”
Toni’s heart thumped. “You’re saying Ray went to meet the killer?”
By now Glenda was sobbing, her head bobbing so jerkily that her ponytail flopped around her face. All signs of animosity had vanished. “I waited and waited, but he never came home,” she wailed.
Toni patted the woman’s arm awkwardly. “Thank you for telling us this, Glenda. I’ll tell the police chief how forthcoming you’ve been.”
“Thank you for your help,” Kyle said, turning to leave.
On the way back to town, they rode in silence for a couple of minutes. Then Kyle snorted. “That was almost fun. And, no, I can’t feel too sorry for her. You told me earlier that you remember her as disrespectful in class, and how she bullied younger or weaker students outside of class.”
Toni snickered. “I think she just got bullied.”
He laughed outright. “I believe she did.” Then his demeanor changed, became grave. “I admit it was kind of fun seeing you in action, but I wish you wouldn’t make a habit of it. I worry about your safety. You have to go to the chief with this, and it needs to be done right now.”
She circled back to the police station. “I’ll wait for you here,” Kyle said as she parked.
When Toni entered Buck’s office, the scowl he aimed at her was fierce. “You couldn’t wait for me to call you?”
Toni halted inside the doorway, unsure what to make of the accusation. “Do you have something to tell me?”
The chief released a whoosh of air. “We finished the rest of those background checks. They’re not all that interesting, but I would have contacted you. Get on in here and sit down. It’s making me tired watching you stand there like that.”
Toni moved to the chair facing him. “I’m listening.” What she had to tell him could wait a few more minutes.
“I’ll make this brief,” he said, glancing down at the papers on his desk. “To begin with, the Hartmans are squeaky clean, but so smug about it that it makes me wonder if they’re just sneakier than snakes.”
Toni wanted to laugh at his assessment of the somewhat priggish Hartman couple, but managed to stifle it.
Buck turned that page over and looked at the next one. “The only trouble we can find that our local chiropractor ever landed in was in high school when he got caught and punished for using his computer whiz skills to hack into the school’s grading system and better himself in certain classes needed for his planned college major.”
He flipped to the next page. “Hugh Zambroni borrowed a car to take his sweetheart joy riding. He apologized to the owners, and eventually married the girl. This one,” he continued, flipping to the last page, “was an issue of a different nature. Bart Ramsey got a girl pregnant, and she subsequently disappeared. The general consensus is that his parents paid the girl and her entire family to leave town.”
He closed the folder and looked up. “Nothing in any of these records tells us who killed Jake.” Suddenly his gaze sharpened on her. “You didn’t come here for this information, did you?”
Toni shook her head. “I came to tell you something.”
His expression went stern. “Who have you been hassling?”
She winced slightly. “Ray Fillmore’s girlfriend.”
He glared. “You must have learned something if you’re here. Spit it out.”
Toni related the visit, being carefully honest, but excluding the hostile undertones.
Buck made notes as she talked. When she finished, he slapped the pen down on the desk. “I guess I better go have a talk with the woman.”
“Uh, she’s under the impression that she’s a suspect.”
His face went deadpan. “She is, huh?”
Toni nodded.
He grinned. “You did good, Toni.”
When they were back in the van, Kyle reached over and placed a hand over Toni’s on the steering wheel. “While we’re out, would you like to drive over and take a look at the scene where Ray was killed?”
Toni grinned. “You know me too well.”
She started the motor and drove back to the main highway. Then she cruised out of town toward the airport. A sense of calm lulled her as the rolling hills and peaceful countryside cocooned them.
Toni turned onto the country lane where Ray’s body was reported to have been found and maneuvered the van into the small clearing a hundred yards or so from the highway. When she parked, the sense of peace left her, replaced by a sense of desolation.
They stepped out of the vehicle into the late morning chill and wind that had begun earlier but was growing steadily stronger. She surveyed their surroundings. Visibility from the highway was obscured by the woods, and the air smelled of moss and leaves that were a golden red with tinges of yellow. Toni heard something, probably a squirrel, running through the trees. It was a peaceful place that had been disturbed by violence.
Tire tracks marked the area, but emergency and police vehicles had been there as well as the victim’s and killer’s, so nothing could be determined from them.
“Does it give you a better visual?” Kyle asked.
She nodded. “It makes me wonder why this location was chosen.”
“Glenda said Ray told the killer where to meet him, so he chose it.”
Toni considered that. “He lived in a different area, but he worked on this side of town, or at least he did on his last job.”
“It looks like a nice secluded place to meet,” Kyle observed. “But Ray forgot that it was also secluded for the killer. How could he not realize how dangerous it was to mess with someone who had already killed?”
“I’m under the impression that Ray wasn’t a real deep thinker.” She began walking the perimeter of the area where Ray’s pickup would have been parked.
“Are you convinced that the same person did both killings?” Kyle asked, walking along beside her.
“I think so. Ray must have been mighty positive he knew who did it to make such a foolish demand. He thought he had the upper hand, when he should have been scared silly.”
Toni looked around closely, thinking aloud. “The murders are very different. The first one strikes me as unplann
ed, a conflict that erupted out of control. This one was deliberate.”
“But understandable,” Kyle pointed out. “Once he had killed—and I can’t perceive it being anyone but a man—he had to cover his tracks.”
“It’s too bad these trees can’t talk,” she lamented, studying them. Then she looked again at the ground, hoping to spot an overlooked clue of some kind. But she didn’t.
“Did you forget Gabe’s tournament?” Kyle asked.
Toni drew a sharp breath. “I hadn’t exactly forgotten, but I didn’t realize how late it is.”
“We have enough time to pick up the boys, stop for pizzas, and get to the gym on time.”
“We’ll have to run by the house for Gabe to get his gym bag,” she reminded him. She had been concerned about Gabe playing today, but he insisted he had exercised and felt like it. Faye had checked him over and said he had no injuries that playing basketball should worsen. It was a matter of his endurance.
And Gabe had that.
The tournament started at one, and the team members had to be at the school by twelve-thirty. So Toni and Kyle left as soon as the boys were in the van, knowing Russell and Faye would be there in time for the first game of the tournament.
During the second game, Toni saw Twila Morgan and her sister enter the gymnasium and claim a seat at the end of the bottom bleacher. Twila had her camera, obviously doing a story on the tournament. Not only was Clearmount the host school, but their team was a strong contender, seeded second.
It was a long afternoon, and the team took second place, as predicted by those who did the seeding.
“We’re proud of you, Son,” Kyle said as they all piled into the van to go home.
Gabe said, “Thanks,” and scooted into the back seat next to his brother, who had been out on the parking lot, having left the building ahead of them. Garrett had also spent time in the hallways between games—and sometimes during them. But he seemed to have enjoyed himself.
“That was some good spread offense you guys played in the last quarter of the last game,” Kyle said, glancing at Gabe over his shoulder as he backed out of their parking spot.
“It’s one we’ve worked on real hard.” Gabe’s voice held pride, and he didn’t even wince when it cracked. “We hadn’t been perfect at it very many times, but Coach knew we needed it then. So we got it right, even if we didn’t win the championship.”
