by Kylie Logan
Jazz found Maddie seated with the other girls from her homeroom, her arms wrapped around herself in a hug that did nothing to hide the fact that she was shaking so violently, it was a wonder she didn’t fall over.
Jazz positioned herself at the end of the row, caught Maddie’s eye, and with a crooked finger beckoned her over. They were in the chapel. Maddie was surrounded by her schoolmates. Her homeroom teacher was watching.
She had no choice but to do as she was told.
She stepped around the other girls and out into the aisle and Jazz led the way out of the chapel and into the hallway, all the way to the stairwell just to be sure no one would overhear and they wouldn’t disturb anyone.
“It looks like you could use a little fresh air,” Jazz told the girl.
“Not really, I’m—”
“Fine? Yeah. That’s what I always said when people asked me how I was doing after my dad was killed.”
Maddie gulped. “It’s not the same, I don’t think.”
“Because…”
“It’s not like Ms. Quinn was anything to me,” Maddie said. Jazz might have actually believed her if a tear didn’t slip down the girl’s cheek. “I mean, not like your dad must have been to you. I didn’t feel…” Maddie looked at her shoes. “I didn’t feel anything for Ms. Quinn.”
“Except yesterday, you told me you hated her.”
Maddie sniffled. “I felt guilty about saying that yesterday.”
“Because it was something you shouldn’t have told me?”
“Because…” Her words caught behind a sob. “Because it isn’t true. I was just so…”
“Angry?” Jazz ventured.
Maddie shrugged. “I guess. Maybe angry. All this time…” Her words stuttered over a long breath. “I thought she left me. Just like that. I thought she left and never said good-bye.”
“And of course that made you angry.”
Maddie glanced up at Jazz. “You mean I’m not a bad person for feeling that way?”
“We’re all feeling that way.”
Maddie scrubbed a finger under her nose. “Really? I know Ms. Quinn … I know she wasn’t exactly a favorite around here.”
As if Jazz couldn’t have guessed, she asked, “Who told you that?”
“She did.” It was obviously a confidence, and already feeling bad about for betraying it, Maddie blushed. “She didn’t want to seem like she was whining. She didn’t want to say anything about it to anyone else. But she told me. She told me—”
“What?”
Maddie’s cheeks were streaked with tears. “I know she was going to get fired.”
“If that’s what Ms. Quinn told you, she was wrong. That wasn’t official. In fact, we were trying to work with Ms. Quinn to help her settle in here at St. Catherine’s. We even offered her a different job if it would make her more comfortable, a job in the library. Did she tell you that?”
The girl nodded. “She said that would have been the easy way out, and because it wasn’t what God wanted, she couldn’t do it. She had to keep going, no matter what it cost her. You know, like the early martyrs. She had to bring girls into Christ’s light by teaching religion. She said it was her mission.”
“Did she say who told her so?”
“You mean the angels?” Maddie wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t believe her. Not at first. I mean, I was just an eighth grader and there was this teacher, telling me she talked to angels, that they talked to her. And I was…” When she shook her head, Maddie’s long dark hair twitched around her shoulders. “I guess I was confused. At least until she proved it to me.”
“She proved that she talked to angels? Maddie, you might have believed that when you were in the eighth grade, but now—”
“No! It’s true, Ms. Ramsey. You were there the day it happened. Don’t you remember?”
* * *
It was a Friday, late. Except for the Drama Club going over their lines for The Crucible in the media room and the girls on the cross-country team who, along with Jazz, had just returned from a meet, the school was quiet, empty. If Jazz hadn’t been careless and left her phone somewhere before they headed out to the meet, she’d be home by now. The way she remembered it, she had the phone at lunchtime. She’d called her dad about dog training that weekend. After that …
With a sigh and a grumble, Jazz took the steps two at a time, hurrying up to the third floor.
They’d had a florist in that afternoon to look over the chapel and give them an estimate on the cost of flowers for the celebration of Saint Catherine’s feast day on November 25, and Jazz wondered if she’d left the phone up there. She hoped so. She knew exactly where she’d sat as the florist went over flower suggestions, pricing, and his vision of having palms—a symbol of the saint—in clusters at every pew. If the phone was in the chapel, she’d have it in a jiffy and be back downstairs in a flash.
She’d better be. It was already after six, and she had a date at seven thirty.
On the steps that led up to the school’s third floor, Jazz paused, caught her breath, and smiled. She’d met Nick Kolesov at a friend’s wedding the weekend before. At the time they’d shared a table and a dance, exchanged smiles and phone numbers, and the next thing she knew, though Jazz swore she’d never date a guy whose job was public service like her firefighter brothers, she had agreed to go out with a cop.
A cute cop.
She didn’t need to remind herself about that. Just thinking about Nick—tall, honey haired, blue-eyed, and as sexy as they came—made her tingle with anticipation. He was the total package, and normally Jazz would know better than to surrender to the craziness that seeped into her brain and made her blood whoosh inside her ears.
But this was different.
Nick was different.
They’d agreed to meet for pizza at Edison’s, a place right in the neighborhood. Not exactly formal, but still, Jazz wanted to get home in plenty of time to get ready. She didn’t know many cops and she’d never dated one, but she knew if they were anything like firefighters, Nick’s time off was precious. She wanted to make the most of every minute they had together.
Still smiling, she got to the third floor, pushed through the chapel door, and stopped cold.
Bernadette Quinn was already in the chapel.
And Maddie Parker was with her.
They were sitting side by side in a pew on the far side of the chapel, and at the sounds of Jazz’s footsteps and her rough breathing they both whirled toward the door.
At the same time Jazz moved toward the pew where she’d sat earlier in the day—her phone was there and she scooped it up and tucked it in the pocket of her windbreaker with the St. Catherine’s Panther on it—she pasted a smile on her face and closed in on Bernadette and Maddie.
“It’s late. What are you two still doing here?”
“Ms. Quinn, she’s telling me about the—”
“Maddie’s been having a little trouble with testing.” Bernadette cut the girl off. “We’re coming up with a plan for her to work on her reading.”
“That’s … great.” By now, Jazz was closer to them and she saw that whatever they were talking about, Maddie didn’t look upset or tense. In fact, she was grinning.
“You must have come up with a good plan,” Jazz said. “You look happy about it, Maddie.”
“It’s just…” Maddie shrugged. But then, what did Jazz expect? Maddie was in eighth grade, a conscientious kid who was eager to please but sometimes, thanks to her dyslexia, was on the wrong end of her classmates’ not-so-funny jokes. Maddie got to her feet and she and Bernadette exchanged looks. And smiles.
“And you’re right, Ms. Ramsey,” Maddie said. “It is late. My mom had to work a few extra hours at the hospital. She should be here soon.” She gathered up the pile of books on the pew next to her. “I’ll see you on Monday, Ms. Quinn.”
Once Maddie left the chapel, Jazz braced her hands on the front of the pew and leaned forward. “You’re spending a lot of time with Maddie.�
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Bernadette slipped into the black sweater that was on the seat next to her. “She’s trying very hard and I know her parents have arranged for tutoring to help with her reading, but it never hurts to give her a little extra reinforcement. I developed some study strategies in college that really helped me, and I’m just passing them on to her. She’s…” Bernadette’s chest rose and fell. “Maddie’s a great kid.”
Jazz stepped back to indicate that she’d let Bernadette walk out of the chapel ahead of her. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to meet with her privately?”
Bernadette was already out of the pew. She genuflected, bowed her head toward the altar, and popped up again. “Are you suggesting something’s going on between me and Maddie that’s improper?”
Jazz knew better than to fight that battle. At least here in the chapel where there were no witnesses and no one to back up what either of them might—or might not—say to each other.
“I’m saying that’s exactly what we don’t want anyone to say,” she told Bernadette. “We can make sure of that if you’d have your tutoring and counseling sessions in your classroom like Sister Eileen asked you to do.”
Halfway to the door, Bernadette stopped and turned to face Jazz, her hands clutched at her waist. “You’re right. Of course you’re right, and so is Sister Eileen. But Maddie’s a shy kid and she hates it when the other girls see us working together.”
“If any of them are giving Maddie a hard time—”
“You can be sure I won’t let that happen.” Even Bernadette was surprised to hear the sharpness of her own words when they echoed back from the dome above their heads. She winced, drew in a long breath, forced a smile. “What I mean, of course, is that I’m keeping close tabs on how the other girls treat Maddie.”
“If there’s a problem—”
“If there’s a problem…” Bernadette steadied her shoulders and raised her chin before she turned and marched away. “You can be sure I’ll deal with it.”
* * *
There in the stairwell with the last strains of the last prayer of the service for Bernadette filling the air, Maddie lifted her chin and clutched her hands at her waist, the gesture so like what Jazz had seen Bernadette do a dozen times, it made her feel as if she saw a vision from the grave.
“Don’t you see, Ms. Ramsey, Ms. Quinn proved it to me that day you found us in the chapel together. About talking to the angels, I mean. Back before she…” Her voice and her breath wobbled. “Back before she died. She proved to me that she talked to angels. And you know how? Because that day you came up to the chapel and saw me there with Ms. Quinn, she told you a little white lie. She told you we were talking about my reading, and that is usually what we did. We worked on reading exercises, and she really helped me. You know that, too. She really helped me with my reading and with my oral presentation skills. But that’s not what we were really talking about that day. Because see, that was the day Ms. Quinn told me about the angels. She told me the angels told her about Alanda Myers and that guy she was dating. Seth … Seth Somebody.”
It had happened three years earlier and all Jazz could say for sure was that she remembered Alanda was a senior at the time, a kid with decent grades and a good head on her shoulders. Why she and her boyfriend would be of any interest to angels was anybody’s guess.
“What about them?” Jazz asked.
Too excited to keep still, Maddie rolled up on the balls of her feet. “They broke up!”
Apparently, Jazz’s blank expression wasn’t what Maddie was expecting.
“Don’t you get it?” the girl asked Jazz. “One day, the angels told Ms. Quinn that Alanda and Seth broke up. And Ms. Quinn, she told me about it. Then the next morning … well, that’s when the story went all around the school. Alanda told her friends what was going on. She really did break up with Seth. Don’t you see that this proves everything? Ms. Quinn, she knew all about it before anyone else did. She knew because the angels told her.”
Maybe it was a good thing the memorial service ended and the doors of the chapel swung open. Jazz wasn’t sure how to deal with the rush of exhilaration that made Maddie’s eyes spark. When the crowd started for the stairwell, Jazz and Maddie descended to the next landing and stood back as a long line of girls, many of them with swollen eyes and tears on their cheeks, headed back downstairs.
Jazz turned to Maddie. “You can wait here for your homeroom,” she told the girl. “And I’ll—”
Jazz’s words dissolved. She’d been looking at Maddie. She couldn’t be sure. She stood on tiptoe and scanned the crowd, searching for the man she swore had just walked past.
A man who rolled from side to side as he walked. Like he was used to being on a boat.
CHAPTER 10
It was nearly impossible to break into the steady stream of girls and teachers coming down the steps. Jazz stood back and waited for just the right moment and managed to wedge her way between one junior homeroom group and another, inching through the crowd with them, step by step, trying to catch a glimpse ahead. Even when she stood on tiptoe, she didn’t see the man with the funny gait, and she wondered if her eyes had been playing tricks on her.
Most of the girls left the stairway at the second floor to return to the upper-class homerooms, and by the time Jazz got back to the first floor the hallway was empty except for Frank and Eddie from Maintenance and Loretta Hardinger, chatting outside her office.
They told her they hadn’t seen the man she described and Jazz ducked out the front door of the building and glanced up and down the street.
If the man Marilyn had pointed out as the one who visited Bernadette—and argued with her—had been at the memorial, he was gone now.
Or maybe he’d never been there at all.
Wondering if it mattered, she dragged back inside, and since Frank and Eddie and Loretta were still there, she offered them coffee from her state-of-the-art (and donated) machine, and while she was at it she poured one for herself, too. Loretta declined. The coffee she made in the old percolator she kept in the cafeteria was better by far than anything Jazz’s fancy machine could produce and they both knew it. Frank and Eddie weren’t so picky. They grabbed cups of coffee, and before they had a chance to walk out of the office Eileen walked in with a man at her side.
“I was hoping we’d catch you.” Eileen set down the stack of prayer cards she’d brought down from the chapel with her. The cards featured a picture of Saint Francis of Assisi (Eileen and Jazz had decided it was what Bernadette would have liked) on one side and information about Bernadette, including her birthday date and where her ashes would be interred, on the other. Done with that, she got a cup of coffee for her guest and poured one for herself, too.
“Jazz Ramsey,” Eileen said, “Sam Tillner, Bernadette Quinn’s cousin.”
They shook hands, and Jazz took a moment to think how much Sam didn’t look like Bernadette. He was tall, thin, and his hair was a color that reminded her of oak leaves in autumn. It fell around his shoulders in luxurious waves and brushed the black-and-white-striped silk scarf he had looped at his throat. He was arty, flamboyant. He didn’t have to say a word; she just knew it. By the way he walked, relaxed and easy. By the way he stood, shoulder slightly forward, chin up. Tillner was thirty-five or so. He had a small nose, full lips, a scar shaped like a half-moon on his left cheek. He wore khaki pants that were a little too baggy for his slim frame and a white cotton dress shirt.
He wasn’t used to formal occasions like funerals, Jazz decided. He didn’t own a suit.
Or maybe he didn’t think enough of his cousin to wear one in her honor.
Jazz pushed the thought away. “I’m very sorry about your cousin,” she told him. “Thank you for coming today.”
“I wanted to be here.” When Jazz waved toward the guest chair in front of her desk, he sat down. “I’m not a religious person. but Bernadette sure was. She’s going to be cremated and her ashes will be buried at Calvary Cemetery next to her parents’ grave.
This was her only chance to get the kind of church send-off I know she would have liked.”
Send-off.
Jazz thought it was a flippant way to think of a memorial service, but at the same time, she wondered something else.
“What did you do three years ago?” she asked Tillner.
He shifted his coffee cup from one hand to the other, waiting for her to explain.
“I mean…” Jazz sipped her coffee. It gave her time to think. Time to line up her questions. “Bernadette never came back to school after Christmas break.”
Tillner nodded.
“And we never thought anything of it…” Eileen was standing over by the windows and Jazz glanced her way “because her resignation letter was waiting here for us when we came back to school after the first of the year.”
Another nod. Tillner had, no doubt, heard all of this from Detective Lindsey.
“But by the first of the year when we got that letter,” Jazz explained, “she must have already been dead. So what did you do?” she asked him. “When she didn’t show up for Christmas dinner? When she wasn’t at a New Year’s Eve party or some holiday brunch? When you called and she didn’t answer?”
He leaned forward so he could set his coffee cup on Jazz’s desk. “The police have already asked me,” he said. “And I’ll tell you what I told them. Bernadette and I are all that’s left of the family and it was never very big to begin with. My mother and her father were brother and sister. My mom was years younger than Uncle Ben; they didn’t have much in common. Mom was a trained opera singer. Uncle Ben worked at a gas station. They didn’t exactly travel in the same circles.” He fingered one end of his scarf. “Consequently, Bernadette and I were never close. So you see, it didn’t matter about Christmas dinner or New Year’s Eve, or anything else. Bernadette and I … we never saw each other.”
In Jazz’s world, not spending the holidays with family was a mortal sin. When she realized Tillner was watching her, trying to make sense of her confused expression, she smiled. “Big family,” she explained, and pointed a finger at herself. “Brothers, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Very close. Sometimes too close. It’s great to have them around. And it can be crazy making, too. But…” She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to not have them in my life.”
