by Kylie Logan
Tillner laughed. He had slim hands and long fingers and he wore four heavy gold rings on each hand. There was a garnet at the center of one of them, and it winked at Jazz and reminded her of the fake gemstones in Bernadette’s cross. “The way our family was … well, that’s why it was so strange…” As if he’d thought through the problem before and wasn’t any closer to finding an answer to it now than he had been then, he frowned. “Well, that’s why I thought it was weird when Bernadette asked me to take care of her cat.”
It was such a surprise, Jazz flinched. “Like she knew she was going away?”
He shrugged. “Well, I can’t say for sure. I mean, at the time, it struck me as odd that she would call me at all, but—”
“She called you? When? Can you remember exactly?”
Another shrug did not fill Jazz with confidence. “Would it make a difference?”
“Sure.” This was important news and it made Jazz feel as if she was finally getting somewhere with her inquiry into Bernadette’s death. Rather than pace the room and let Tillner know how his words stirred her hopes and shot her through with adrenaline, she dropped into her desk chair. “If it was after break started then my whole theory—” She caught herself and felt her cheeks get hot. “What I mean, of course, is that the police think Bernadette was killed the last day of school before break. That’s what they’ve told us, anyway. But if there’s any chance she called you after that, well, that changes everything.”
Tillner shifted in his chair. “It’s hard to remember exactly. I’m sure … I’m pretty sure it was before Christmas. I mean…” His laugh was light and nervous. “It must have been, right? Because like you said, by Christmas, Bernadette was already … uh … She must have already been … uh … d-dead.” He tripped over the word and Jazz understood. One of the things she’d learned from working with cadaver dogs was that people were not comfortable with the idea of death. It wasn’t just overwhelming. It was too much of a reminder of their own mortality.
“I wish I could be more accurate.” Tillner sighed. “But hey, it was three years ago, and at the time it’s not like I thought it was all that important.”
“Except like you said, you never talked to her. And all of a sudden, she called and asked for your help.” Jazz considered the implications and would have gone on considering them if Frank and Eddie hadn’t distracted her by stepping back into the office to refill their coffee cups. Once they were gone, she asked Tillner, “What did she say when you talked to her?”
“Oh, I didn’t talk to her. She left a message. On my voicemail. She asked me to look in on her cat.”
“And you did.”
He nodded. “Bernadette gave a house key to my mother years ago. You know, in case of an emergency. Mother was getting old and forgetful and she was afraid she was going to lose it so she gave the key to me. I found it and went over there and…” He gave his shoulders a twitch. “It was obvious the poor cat hadn’t eaten in a few days. I took care of him, checked again in another few days, and—” He threw his hands in the air and they slapped back down against the arms of the chair. “After a while I stopped questioning it. I’d go check on the cat; Bernadette would be nowhere around; I’d feed the cat, clean the litter box, and leave.”
“How long did you do that?”
“Months.”
“And you didn’t think to call the police?”
“Why?” Tillner’s shrug spoke volumes. “Bernadette told me to stop by. She told me to watch the cat. And it wasn’t the first time she dropped off the face of the earth.”
This was news.
Jazz and Eileen exchanged looks before Eileen stepped forward. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s not like I know any of the details,” Tillner admitted. “Like I said, we weren’t anywhere near close. But Bernadette and I both went to Rocky River High School. And I remember…” Thinking, he closed his eyes. “It was a year or so after we graduated, I think. One of our older distant cousins got married and everyone from the family was there. Everyone but Bernadette. When I asked where she was, Uncle Ben and Aunt Agnes, they just blew me off, like they never heard me. And everyone else … well, no one kept in touch with the family so everyone else was just as much in the dark as I was. So you see, when I thought she went away, I didn’t think anything of it. It was no big deal.”
“No big deal that you got a voicemail message from a woman who disappeared?” Jazz countered.
“Only I didn’t know she disappeared, did I?” Tillner snapped. The next second, he dipped his head and pulled one corner of his mouth tight by way of apology. “All I knew was that she called and asked for a favor. Yeah, it seemed odd, but there was a lot about my cousin that was odd. I figured she needed help and I knew she didn’t have friends. I thought it must have been pretty important if she actually picked up the phone and—”
“Did she?” Something about the story struck Jazz as odd. “Was it Bernadette who picked up the phone and left a message? Did you recognize her voice?”
He huffed out a breath. “It was a long time ago.”
“Yeah, but it seems to me that’s the kind of detail you’d remember. When you listened to the message about watching the cat, are you sure it was from Bernadette?”
The tips of his ears got red. “Like I said…” He put out his hands, palms up, as if that would explain the lack of words, the lack of a real explanation. “We weren’t very close.”
“Which means it didn’t sound like her.”
“Which means I can’t say if it was or it wasn’t her. I was on my way somewhere when I picked up the voicemail. I do remember that. I was in my car, in a hurry, I listened to the message; I grumbled because … well, who could blame me? My holy roller cousin who never had a nice thing to say about me or my friends, or anyone else for that matter, calls out of the blue and suddenly needs me to look after her cat? Honestly, I don’t know if it was Bernadette. I just assumed it was. You think…” He was pale to begin with and his face turned ashen. “You think it was the killer?”
“There’s no way we can know that for sure.” Jazz didn’t know if this was as reassuring as she wanted it to be. Tillner’s hands beat out a nervous rhythm against the arms of the chair. “You didn’t save that voicemail, did you?”
“All this time? Obviously not. I probably didn’t keep it after I listened to it once. I took care of the cat and that was that.”
Jazz was almost afraid to ask. “Is he still alive? Is he being cared for?”
“Pumpkin? Sure.” Tillner pushed out of the chair. “Look, I really appreciate your concern about my cousin, but I have to get going. Thank you.…” He stepped forward and shook Eileen’s hand, then did the same with Jazz. “Thank you both for putting together that wonderful service. Bernadette would have loved it.”
Jazz managed to wait until he’d walked out of the office to tell Eileen, “I wonder how he knows she would have loved it. Bernadette was pretty much a stranger to him.”
“He’s the one who called here and asked about having the memorial in the chapel,” Eileen said. “He obviously knew she taught here.”
“And if they were never in touch, how could he possibly know that?” Jazz asked.
Eileen finished her coffee and took her cup across the room to deposit it on the table with the coffeemaker. “I suppose the police told him.”
“I suppose,” Jazz conceded. Which didn’t mean she was satisfied. She unlocked the file cabinet where staff records were kept and took out Bernadette’s folder and flipped through it.
“He’s not listed as next of kin,” she told Eileen, and held the page out to her so she could see it for herself. “Bernadette left that line blank.”
* * *
It was just as well the school year was winding down.
The end of the school year usually meant the girls were so antsy, they couldn’t sit still. They were anxious for vacation, eager to move up a grade, looking forward to summer jobs and summer adventures.
&nb
sp; At least that’s the way it had always been. Before Bernadette was found.
The day after the memorial service when Jazz walked through the hallways, she realized there was no buzz of excitement in the air, not like usual. There was no chatter, no laughter. Just an errant breeze that fluttered the paintings the girls had done the day Bernadette’s remains were found, as if an invisible hand was rustling the pages, telling them not to forget.
The girls needed the summer to recover.
They all needed some closure.
That thought in mind, Jazz finished up her work as quickly as she could and headed out early and with Eileen’s blessing.
Jazz didn’t warn Taryn Campbell’s dad she was coming. If she had, she knew he would have told her to get lost, go to hell. Instead, she drove to a neighborhood on the west side of Cleveland where the lawns were well-groomed, the beds were bursting with springtime flowers, and the houses were modest but sturdy, like the city itself. She arrived on the front porch of the trim white house with blue shutters, rang the bell, and took a deep breath.
Leon Campbell answered the door, took one look at her, and his mouth fell open. At least for the space of one heartbeat. Then his top lip curled and he growled, “Go to hell.”
“Mr. Campbell—” Before he could close the door in her face, Jazz put a hand on it. “If I could just talk to you for one minute.”
“What, like you and the rest of those rich snobs talked to me and my girl three years ago?” Campbell, a bus driver, was a big man with wide shoulders and a square jaw. His face twisted, his eyes sparked. “I’m done talking to you. I was done talking to you back then. If you had an ounce of sense, you’d know that.”
Jazz had promised herself she wouldn’t be goaded into an argument. That she wouldn’t get defensive. That she wouldn’t lose her cool.
So much for promises.
“It isn’t my fault Taryn plagiarized her scholarship essay,” she snapped. “That was Taryn’s doing. Mr. Campbell, I know you were angry then and I can understand that you don’t want to see me now. But I need to talk to you.”
He’d seen the news; he didn’t need to ask what she wanted to talk about.
“Bernadette Quinn was a nutcase,” he said.
It wasn’t Jazz’s place to agree or disagree. “She had high expectations for her students.”
“Is that what you call ’em? Ex-pec-ta-tions?” There was no humor in his laugh. “She piled homework on those girls until they barely had time to breathe. Made them read and read and read some more. And praying!” A shake of his head told Jazz exactly what he thought. “I expect some praying at a religious school, sure I do. But do you know, on Monday mornings, she actually had the nerve to ask the girls how much prayin’ they’d done over the weekend.”
Jazz did know it. So did Eileen. It was one of the things that had first alerted them to the fact that Bernadette might have been too zealous.
“You argued with her,” she said.
Campbell’s eyes bulged. “You bet I did! I didn’t like the way the woman was always pickin’ on my girl. No father is going to let a teacher get away with that. No father worth calling himself a father, anyway.”
“You can understand how Ms. Quinn might have been sensitive. Taryn was one of the girls who brought the cat to school and—”
“Okay, all right. That was harebrained and me and Taryn’s stepmother, you can believe we told her so. Grounded her for months after. But that one stupid decision about the cat didn’t give that Ms. Quinn the right to watch Taryn like a hawk, to eavesdrop on her conversations and go behind her back when she turned in that essay and—”
“Verify that it was really her work? That was exactly what Ms. Quinn was supposed to do, and you know it. What Taryn did was wrong.”
“And you expelled her.”
He didn’t mean Jazz personally, but she got the drift. “There are rules,” she said, “and—”
“And nothing.”
She had meant to be more polite, to be slicker and bring it up more carefully, but there was only so much Jazz could take. “You threatened Bernadette.”
Campbell froze. Right before his hand tightened on the door. “Are you accusing me of something?”
“No.” She wanted to make that perfectly clear, even if it wasn’t completely true. “But I am trying to find some answers. When we had the meeting about what Taryn had done, when Ms. Quinn explained everything to Sister Eileen and the board, you were there, and you weren’t happy.”
“Did you expect me to be?”
“I expected you’d be upset. But we all heard you after the meeting, Mr. Campbell. Out in the hallway. We heard you tell Ms. Quinn—”
“That I was going to wring her neck and toss her on the garbage heap, just like you all tossed my girl out.”
Jazz let the words settle. “Ms. Quinn was killed soon after that.”
“Yeah, she was. And you know what? I think the world’s a better place without that crazy bitch in it.”
His words still hung in the air when he slammed the door in Jazz’s face.
There was no use knocking again and trying to learn more. Three years and Leon Campbell was still as mad as hell.
Mad enough to kill?
Jazz wondered. She was still considering it when she got back to where she’d parked her car at the curb, three doors down from the Campbells’. Before she could open the door, she heard someone call out, “Hey, Ms. Ramsey! Wait up.”
Taryn Campbell dashed out of the backyard. At the front of the house, she glanced over her shoulder at the door. There was no sign of her dad, and she joined Jazz near the SUV. “I thought that was you talking to my dad,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you—”
The front door opened and Leon stepped onto the porch, fists on hips.
Taryn told her dad she’d be right there, then turned back to Jazz. “I just wanted you to know, that’s all. I just wanted you to know that what happened to me back at St. Catherine’s, I’m not mad about it anymore. I’m good with all of it now.”
It was a remarkably mature thing for Taryn to say. “You like your new school then?” Jazz asked her.
“I’m getting college credits for the classes I take. And it’s public school, so no tuition. My stepmom and dad don’t have to work so hard all the time. And the good news is, leaving St. Catherine’s got me away from Cammi and Juliette.”
“Taryn, you get over here!” Campbell’s voice boomed through the neighborhood.
“Gotta go,” Taryn told Jazz. “Only I know what you came to talk to Dad about, Ms. Ramsey. We heard all about Ms. Quinn on the news. My dad…” Just when she said it, he took a couple steps down the stairs and Taryn backed away. “He makes a lot of noise, but he wouldn’t hurt anybody. But, Ms. Ramsey, you need to talk to Juliette and Cammi. Ask them about the angels.”
CHAPTER 11
Thursday.
Just one more day.
One more day and the school year would be finally—blessedly—over.
Jazz had just finished logging the last batch of summer school applications into her computer and she sat back, sighed, and hoped the way she felt was more a reflection of everything that had happened over the last months and not a result of major job burnout.
She had always liked working at St. Catherine’s. Her job was challenging, fulfilling. It was different every day. The school was second to none, the girls were (usually) great, and the teachers were professional and believed in what they were doing. She adored Sarah and was glad they saw each other just about every day. She liked and admired Eileen and she worked hard to live up to the principal’s high expectations.
But right then and there, on that Thursday afternoon in early June, even with the sun streaming into her office windows and the sound of birdsong floating in from the park, she hated the way she felt. First there was the murder of Florie Allen, who’d once been a St. Catherine’s girl. Then there was Bernadette. It was enough to make her feel as if she was being crushed under a pi
le of rocks. As if the life had been sucked out of her. As if there was nothing left of her but bones.
Just like Bernadette.
Jazz rubbed her hands up and down her arms.
“No way you’re cold.” Eileen sailed out of her office. “It’s sweltering in here. I was just going to go find Eddie and ask him to check the AC. You need a sweater?”
“I need a…” Jazz hated herself for sighing, but sigh she did. “I need answers,” she admitted.
Halfway to the door, Eileen stopped, turned around, and came to stand at Jazz’s desk. “I know you’re looking for them.”
“I’m at a dead end.”
The principal cocked her head. “You sure?”
“You know about something I’ve missed?”
“I didn’t say that. Believe me, if I knew something you didn’t know, I’d be only too happy to share. I just got off the phone with Detective Lindsey.”
Jazz popped out of her chair. “The guy’s a jackass.”
“A jackass with a badge,” Eileen reminded her. “And a bug up his ass. He actually thinks I killed Bernadette. He’s just waiting for the pieces to fall into place and then…”
Jazz refused to even consider the and then. “We’re not going to let that happen,” she told her boss. “I swear to you, I’m going to do everything I possibly can to—”
“I know that.” The warmth of Eileen’s smile was enough to melt the spurt of anger that coursed through Jazz. “I’m not worried. Not exactly. At least not too much.” Her smile faded. “Lindsey can’t find any evidence if there isn’t any, right?”
“That’s how it’s supposed to work.” Jazz didn’t want to upset her, so she didn’t add that she wasn’t sure justice always prevailed. Sure, she’d brought Florie Allen’s killer to justice. But then there was her dad. Michael Patrick Ramsey had been killed in an arson fire more than a year earlier and no one had ever been held accountable for that. Justice? She wanted desperately to believe in it, but these days all she believed was that justice was a slippery thing.
