by MJ Rodgers
“Mr. Sistern—” Matt began, after releasing his hand.
“Now you just call me Judd. Everybody does. So, what’s a big city P.I. doing here in Sweetspring?”
“We’d like to look through your editions of the paper from fifteen years back.”
“I should’ve known. Even after all this time, folks are still interested in that murder.”
“I’d also like to see the papers from about six weeks before it happened.”
“Now why would you be interested in them?” Judd asked.
“Just to help me get a flavor for the town happenings before the murder.”
“Wasn’t much. Just births and deaths and town meetings to complain about this and that. But you’re welcome to judge for yourself. Come on into the back and I’ll pull out the roll.”
Matt and Jamie followed Judd into the back room. He stopped in front of a long, deep closet.
“I know a lot about this murder. My daddy and me were the ones who found Kyle Kleinman.”
“Why don’t you tell us about it,” Matt said, knowing the newspaperman was just waiting for an invitation.
Judd leaned his back against the closet door. He crossed his arms and looked like he was settling in for a spell.
“Well, it was like this. We were watching television when we heard the shotgun. It was so loud we knew right away it had to be coming from Kyle’s place.”
“How far away did you live?”
“Next door. We went right on over to check it out. I thought at first Kyle had shot himself.”
Judd stopped to heave his chest and shake his head sadly.
“There was so much blood it was hard to know what had happened. And Kyle was lying on his stomach in it.”
“When did you realize the wound wasn’t self-inflicted?”
“When Daddy and I turned Kyle over on his back and saw the gash in his neck. Daddy’s retired now, but he was still doing most of the doctoring in town then. He tried to stop the bleeding. Wasn’t any use.”
“You both touched the body?”
“Had to. Kyle was six-two and at least 240 pounds. Daddy could never have handled him by himself.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, when I straightened up was when I saw the open window and the bag near it. Right then I knew this was going to be a whole different shooting match. Daddy was still working on Kyle, so I started toward the phone to call Deputy Plotnik. Then one of the neighbors up the block came in all out of breath asking what the shooting was all about”
“Who was it?” Matt asked, as though he didn’t know.
“Oscar Lagarrigue.”
“Did you know this Oscar Lagarrigue well?”
“Naw. He and his family had only moved in a few weeks before. He sold insurance. Real timid sort.”
“Yet he came to investigate a shotgun blast,” Matt said.
“It was his wife who sent Oscar to investigate the shooting. On his own, I doubt he would have done it. As it was, old Oscar took one look at Kyle lying there in all that blood and he passed out cold.”
“Mr. Lagarrigue fainted?” Jamie asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Dead away. I dragged him out and waited with him a minute or so until he came to, just to be sure he was all right. Then I sent him on home to his wife, went back inside and called Plotnik.”
“No one else showed up in response to the shotgun blast?”
“Not right off. They were having a to-do over at the school. Most of the neighborhood was there dancing up a storm to a live band while pretending to chaperon the kids. Unless someone was outside of that auditorium, he wouldn’t even have heard the shotgun. Deputy Plotnik went over there about an hour later to tell Kyle’s wife and son the news. Sad thing, that.”
“Was there anything you saw that night that didn’t make it into the newspaper, Judd?” Matt asked.
“Well, I never told my readers that Lagarrigue had passed out. Figured it would have embarrassed him. Needn’t have worried. He moved his family out real quick. The rest of what I saw and Deputy Plotnik’s investigation is all written up in detail. I reckon you heard it was Lester Wilson who did it?”
“Did he?” Matt asked.
“No doubt in my mind,” Judd said. “No doubt in the minds of any of the folks here in town, either. Sold out every paper that came off the press about that business.”
“Did you get some out-of-town competition when the news hit?” Matt asked.
“Several reporters drove into town interviewing folks and taking pictures and all.”
“How about national coverage?” Matt asked.
“Oh, sure. Made the wire services. But it was a one-time shot for them. Sixty-second blurb and they were onto something else. Only the Sweetspring Star carried the story right on through to the end.”
“So even though no one was ever caught and tried for the murder, you still believe it had an end?” Matt asked.
“The day Lester Wilson got his due in that shoot-out put it to rest in the minds of most folks here in town. Except for Wrey Kleinman. He ain’t never going to forget that Lester Wilson died before he got a piece of him.”
“Did Lagarrigue ever try to sell you life insurance, Judd?”
“Well, now, that’s a mighty strange thing to ask.”
“Is it? I thought he was an insurance salesman.”
“Well, yeah, he was. But he never tried to sell me any insurance. Oscar was a quiet, polite kind of man, not at all pushy about poking into folks’ personal finances and such. Why you interested in Oscar?”
“Just background details. Being a newspaper reporter, I’m sure you understand what I mean.”
“Yeah,” Judd said, trying to sound knowledgeable, when it was clear to Matt that in reality Judd didn’t have a clue as to what he meant.
Judd leaned away from the door and opened the closet. He rummaged through an interior full of what looked like large long rolling pins. He pulled out the one with the label 1982 on it. He laid it across a long wooden- table in the back room and beckoned for Matt and Jamie to take a couple of the chairs.
Judd unraveled the editions of the four-page weekly newspaper that had been wrapped and stored on the long rolling pin.
“They’re sequential, January on top,” he said. “Help yourself. I have to get back to work. You need anything, just holler.”
Matt thanked Judd and held out a chair for Jamie to take.
Together, they flipped through the yellowed weekly editions of the Sweetspring Star. Judd was right. Until the murder had come along, things had been pretty dull around town.
Matt found what he was looking for in the services column, two weeks before the murder.
Need Life Insurance?
Come see Oscar Lagarrigue
109 Kleinman Lane
He pointed it out to Jamie.
“Pretty uncreative ad,” Jamie said. “Not at all enticing. He didn’t even put in his telephone number. If someone wanted to buy from him, they had to go see him. How did he expect to sell insurance that way?”
“Interesting question. This is where the murder coverage starts.”
Matt could sense Jamie’s interest flagging. She sat back as he perused the stories of the murder, which took up all the space of every newspaper for four weeks straight.
He thought he understood. She was probably bored. He imagined she had gotten her fill of this murder fifteen years before, when she was a teenager in this town.
Most of the stories consisted of interviews with the locals.
It looked like anyone who had ever even talked to Lester Wilson had been asked to give his opinion. And none of those opinions had been favorable. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that public opinion had clearly tried and convicted Lester Wilson long before the knife had made its appearance.
The only thing new Matt learned from looking at the newspapers was what was in the sack left by the interrupted burglar. They were antique rifles and guns-some of them one of a kind, all extremely valu
able.
“They were the cream of my husband’s collection,” Mrs. Kleinman had been quoted as saying. “He had acquired some of them only six months before. It would have ripped the heart out of Kyle to have lost them.”
So he fought for them and got his throat ripped out instead.
“You finished?” Jamie asked.
Matt realized that he’d been staring at the filing cabinet on the opposite wall, his mind absorbing and trying to make sense of what he had read. He turned to her.
“How well do you remember the murder?” he asked.
“Too well.”
Her husky, even voice was at odds with the sudden look in her eyes. Matt began to realize that he had been wrong. She was not bored. This murder still affected her quite strongly.
“You knew the Kleinman family, of course?”
“Yes.”
“Did you think Lester Wilson did it?”
Jamie exhaled a long breath. “Lester was violent. It certainly was the kind of thing he could do.”
“You knew him?”
She rose. “Everybody knew everybody in this town. Can we go now?”
Matt rolled up the newspapers and returned the enormous rolling pin to the closet where Judd stored it. They retraced their steps to the front room of the newspaper office and thanked Judd for his help.
Matt was opening the car door for Jamie when he asked his next question. “Where’s the junior high?”
“Combined with the high school on the street behind Kleinman Lane. But you can’t get to it from Kleinman Lane because it dead ends into the big Victorian.”
“The Kleinman house. Where Kyle Kleinman was killed.”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone at the dance that night hear the shotgun?”
“It’s like Judd Sistern said,” Jamie answered. “If you were inside the auditorium, you couldn’t have heard over the music.”
Matt followed Jamie’s directions and found himself in front of an old wood-slatted two-story building set back twenty feet from the street by a thirsty brown lawn.
“That’s the auditorium where the dance was held that night?” he asked pointing to the two-story building on the far right.
“Yes. The administration office is in the building to the left, second floor up those stairs,” Jamie said. “I’ll wait for you here.”
“You’re not coming in?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t need me to ask questions about Tony. I might even prove a hindrance to that smooth Texas charm of yours, seeing as how this school has always been run by women.”
Matt saw her words were accompanied by a smile. She had meant her comment as a compliment. But the smile didn’t reach her eyes this time. There was another emotion there that blocked out all others. It accompanied that now familiar frown that had settled in from the moment they drove into Sweetspring.
“I could be a while.”
“It’s all right.”
Matt turned off the engine and got out of the car. Just before he entered the school building, he looked back at Jamie. He noticed the frown was still on her brow.
She had kept the windows rolled up despite the pleasant warmth of the day. Matt supposed that if a body lived in Sweetspring long enough, the feedlot smell would just become part of the background.
Except Jamie never seemed to have gotten used to it. She said the first fresh air she had was the day she left. Unless she was speaking metaphorically. What was it about this town that bothered her so much? What had happened to her here?
In a way he was glad she had decided not to come with him. Now he could ask a few questions that he wouldn’t have been able to had she been along.
Matt approached the counter. It was unmanned. At a desk in a far corner sat a thin, thirtyish, dark-haired woman chewing voraciously on some gum. She had her shoes off and was painting her toenails bright red to match her fingernails and lipstick. Her shoulder-length earrings bobbed as she listened to some music through the earphones over her head.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Matt said, waving to try to get her attention.
She looked up wearing a bored expression. But as soon as she saw Matt, her eyes went wide. She recapped her nail polish, and set it quickly on her desk. Matt could see the gum she was hastily swallowing traverse down her thin neck.
“Lordy, I don’t believe it. You’re Matt Bonner, that guy on ‘Finder of Lost Loves’!”
Matt smiled at her, happy not to have to go through introductions. “Yes, ma’am.”
She scooted out of her chair and bounded barefooted, toes up, toward the counter. Her bony hand shot across it for a shake. Matt obliged by taking it.
“Etta Oates Kleinman. But everyone just calls me Etta. I’m the assistant principal. You come about Tony Lagarrigue now, haven’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. I assume you watched the show?”
Matt was doing his best to retrieve his hand. It was a challenge. Etta’s hold was more like a death grip.
“Never miss it, Mr. Bonner. Never, never, never. Soon as I saw Tony’s picture, I elbowed Wrey-he’s my husbandand I says, ‘Honey, there’s that foreign boy who was in school with us, remember?”’
“Foreign?”
“Well, he weren’t from Texas now, was he? Anyway, Wrey said he didn’t remember him. That’s probably because Wrey’s a year older. But I was in the same class with Tony fifteen years ago. Yep, I remember him real well.”
Matt finally reclaimed his hand. “I could use your help in trying to find Tony.”
“Mine? But I would’ve called ya if I knew anything. The thing is that Tony wasn’t in this town all that long.”
“But you were in his class. Surely you talked to him?”
“All the girls did. He was the best-looking thing to ever come to Sweetspring, I can tell ya. He weren’t backward like the other boys, neither. He could talk so fine like.”
“Did he say where he was from?”
“Just back east somewhere is all I recall.”
“Would you still have his records from fifteen years ago?”
“I reckon. We never throw out anything here.”
“I’d like to take a look at his transcripts.”
Etta looked behind her and then scooted closer, lowering her voice.
“Now, Mr. Bonner, as ya probably already know, these are confidential records I got here. I’m not supposed to show them to anyone outside of the school system.”
No, she wasn’t supposed to, but Matt could see that she was just dying to. “You can trust me,” he said in his most confidential tone.
Etta leaned toward him and smiled seductively. “My mama always told me never to trust a man.”
Matt didn’t like this change of direction the conversation was taking. Etta was apparently one of those insecure women who had to give every man she met a come-on to reassure herself she was attractive.
He reminded himself he needed Etta’s assistance and forced a smile to his lips. “Your mama was right.”
Her laugh was harsh and grated on Matt’s ears.
“You just give me a minute, honey,” she said as she turned and swiveled her bony hips out of the room.
Etta was good to her word. She was back just a minute later with a green folder in her thin hand. She slipped it across the counter to Matt as though it were the secret formula to a new doomsday weapon.
The telephone on her desk rang. She scurried over to answer it. Matt quickly surveyed the contents of the file. There wasn’t much.
In the three weeks’ time that Tony had been a student at Sweetspring High, he had earned an A in math, English, geography and history, and a B in sociology and physical education.
Matt’s eyes then focused on the transcript that had been sent from the Saint Tammany Parish public-school system in Louisiana for Anthony Mercedes Lagarrigue, born December 3, 1967. The home address in Louisiana matched that of the Erline Lagarrigue he and Jamie had spoken to the day bef
ore. Tony had received all his required immunizations.
At the Louisiana school, Tony had earned C’s in all his academic subjects and an A in physical education.
Matt looked up to see Etta was hanging up the phone.
“Is this the entire file?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“If a request came in for a transcript to be sent to Tony’s new school, would that request be shown in this file?”
“Well, sure. Any time a copy is made of a student’s file, it has to be noted where it was sent. That’s one of our rules.”
“Then why isn’t there a notation of a request from Tony’s next school?” Matt asked.
Etta returned to the counter to look at the file. “Well, now, that’s right strange. Somebody must of screwed up. They should have written it down and kept a copy of the request right here in this file.”
“Could it have been filed somewhere else?” Matt asked.
“Nope. Right here in this file. Nowhere else.”
“I see.”
“Now is there anything else I can take care of for ya this morning, honey?”
Etta’s suggestive voice and smile left no doubt what she was offering.
“Matter of fact there is,” Matt said. “You must remember a girl by the name of Jamie in your class?”
“You can’t be talking about Jamie Lee Lamay?”
“Yes, that’s her.”
Etta’s smile slid off her face real fast “Hold on a minute here. Am I getting this right? Are ya telling me hers was the face you ran next to his? She’s the Jamie looking for Tony?”
“You seem surprised.” Actually Etta seemed more than surprised. She seemed downright astounded.
“But it didn’t look anything like her!”
“Folks do change. Was your class pictured in a yearbook that you can show me?”
Etta snatched Tony Lagarrigue’s file off the counter and clutched it to her bosom. She glared at Matt, all vestiges of flirty friendliness gone from her sharp features.
“Ya not getting one blessed thing more out of me. If I’d known ya was working for Jamie Lee Lamay, I never would have let ya see anything.”
