Murder by the Slice

by Livia J. Washburn

  Now that she had been murdered.

  Phyllis’s breath hissed between her teeth as that thought occurred to her. Sam looked over at her and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “What happened to her?” Phyllis asked as she nodded toward the body.

  “I don’t know. With that much blood, there must be a wound of some sort… .”

  “She was murdered.”

  Principal Hickson overheard Phyllis’s comment and turned sharply toward her. “What was that? What did you say, Mrs. Newsom?”

  Phyllis stiffened her spine. “I said Shannon was murdered. Somebody killed her.”

  “I thought it must have been some sort of terrible accident. It … it never occurred to me that … oh, Lord! Someone was murdered! In my school!”

  “Who found her?” Phyllis asked. “Who was doing all that screaming?”

  “I … I’m not sure. When I got here, Mrs. Gonzales was leaning against the wall. She was crying and she had her hands over her mouth. I suppose it could have been her.”

  “Lindsey Gonzales?”

  “Yes. But she could have come up after someone else screamed. There were already quite a few people here.”

  Phyllis looked around but didn’t see any sign of Lindsey. The blonde must have been one of those making their way down the hall, away from the scene of the murder. Someone would have to question her and find out exactly what she had seen.

  But that wasn’t her job, Phyllis reminded herself. True, she had figured out who had committed that murder at the Peach Festival, but she was no detective. The only reason she had started poking around in that crime, and the others that had plagued Weatherford during that tense summer, was because a friend of hers had been under suspicion.

  Still, some things were just common sense, and someone needed to speak up now. “This is a crime scene,” she said. “Everyone needs to stand back and not disturb things any more than they already have.”

  “That’s right,” Sam said. He raised his voice and went on, “Everybody move back now! You don’t want the cops to find you trompin’ all over the scene and disturbin’ evidence!” During his years as a basketball coach he had shouted out hundreds of defensive alignments to his teams, so his deep voice was powerful and carried authority. The crowd in the corridor began to move back.

  Someone came pushing forward urgently, though, calling, “Let me through! Let me through, damn it! Somebody said my wife was hurt!”

  Joel Dunston broke through the crowd. His eyes were wide and panicky. As he started to lunge around the corner, Phyllis said, “Sam, stop him!”

  Sam got in Joel’s way and grabbed him, but not before Joel had caught a glimpse of the bloody figure lying on the floor. He let out an inarticulate shout of pain and grief, like the cry of a wounded animal.

  “Hang on to him, Sam,” Phyllis said as she saw Becca Dunston slip through a gap on the crowd. She stepped quickly toward the little girl. It was bad enough that Joel had seen his ex-wife’s murdered body. Phyllis wasn’t going to allow Becca to witness that terrible sight. She caught hold of the girl’s shoulders and said, “Wait right here, honey.”

  Becca looked up at her with tear-filled eyes and asked, “Is … is my mom all right? Somebody said she was hurt.”

  “Why don’t we go back up to the library and wait?” Phyllis suggested without answering Becca’s question. “I’m sure your father will want to talk to you later.”

  As she steered Becca back up the hall toward the front of the school where the library was located, the crowd suddenly parted to let several uniformed men through. They were Parker County sheriff’s deputies, Phyllis realized, and the one in the lead was her own son, Mike. He stopped short when he saw her.

  “Mom?”

  Phyllis kept her hands on Becca’s shoulders and nodded her head toward the far end of the hall. “Down there,” she said quietly. Mike looked like he wanted to ask questions, but instead he returned her nod and led the other deputies toward the scene of the crime.

  Of course, it might not be the scene of the crime, Phyllis reminded herself. Just because Shannon’s body had been found down there in that little blind hallway didn’t mean that she had been killed there, although it certainly seemed likely.

  And there she went, thinking like a detective again when she had no business doing so. “Come on, dear,” she said as she guided Becca toward the library.

  Phyllis wasn’t surprised that the sheriff’s department had responded to Principal Hickson’s 911 call. While the school was fairly close to town, it was outside of the Weatherford city limits, meaning that the sheriff had jurisdiction here. His men would handle the investigation into Shannon’s death.

  Phyllis and Becca went to the library, but the doors were locked. That left the cafeteria. Phyllis would have preferred the quiet of the library, but she had no choice in the matter. She wanted to keep Becca occupied for a while. She took the girl into the cafeteria and asked, “Would you like something to eat?”

  Becca shook her head. “No. My stomach doesn’t feel too good. I … I’m worried about my mom.”

  “So am I, dear. But we’ll just have to wait until someone comes to talk to us.” Phyllis tried to wrestle the subject away from Shannon. “Did you go to all the carnival booths and ride all the rides?” She had already noticed a flower painted on the little girl’s cheek, so she knew Becca had been to the face-painting booth.

  Becca managed to nod. “Yeah, I did just about everything there was to do. My dad bought me a bunch of tickets.”

  “Did he stay with you all afternoon?” Phyllis told herself that she wasn’t checking on Joel Dunston’s alibi. She was just trying to keep Becca talking. But she already knew that Joel hadn’t been with Becca all afternoon. She had seen him come through the cafeteria by himself a little earlier.

  Becca shook her head. “No, he doesn’t like to do all that little kid stuff. He can stand it for a while, but not all day. He told me to go on and have fun, so I did.”

  “What about your mom? When was the last time you saw her?”

  “I don’t know. She and my dad had that fight in here, right after my dad and I got here. Then I saw her again out on the playground after that. She asked if I was having a good time.” Becca sniffled. “I told her I was.”

  “Where did she go then?” Phyllis wanted to bite her lip. She hadn’t brought the little girl in here to interrogate her, but that seemed to be the way it was turning out.

  “I don’t know. She went back into the school. She said she had to go see about some money.”

  Phyllis frowned. “What money?”

  Becca shook her head and said, “I don’t know. Just some money. That’s all she said.”

  Marie Tyler had been collecting the cash from the concession stand and putting it somewhere safe. Phyllis supposed she had done the same with the money taken in by Eve and the other volunteers who were selling tickets. But as the PTO president, Shannon could have been doing the same thing. Phyllis found herself wondering just how much cash was generated by an event like this. The carnival was a fundraiser, after all. The goal was to raise as much money as possible. She supposed the total could be well up in the thousands of dollars.

  Stop thinking about possible motives, she told herself. It wasn’t up to her to solve Shannon’s murder. That would be the responsibility of Mike and the other members of the sheriff’s department.

  Marie Tyler came into the cafeteria with her kids in tow. She looked around, spotted Phyllis, and started toward her.

  “Have you seen Russ?” she asked as she came up to the table. Her face was pale and drawn, and Phyllis was pretty sure she had heard by now what had happened to Shannon. She might have even seen the body, although Phyllis hadn’t noticed her among the crowd at the far end of the hallway.

  Phyllis shook her head and said, “I’m sorry. I haven’t.” Not since I saw him following Shannon, she added silently.

  “I have to find him,” Marie said. She looked around a little wide-e
yed, then returned her gaze to Phyllis and said, “Would you mind keeping an eye on my kids for a minute? Thanks.”

  Then, without waiting for an answer, as usual, she hurried off, leaving Amber and Aaron standing there beside the table, looking a little confused and scared.

  “Sit down, you two,” Phyllis said, since there was really nothing else she could do. “Would you like something to eat?”

  “I’m hungry,” Amber said, and her little brother nodded.

  Phyllis looked at Becca and said, “Are you sure you don’t want something?”

  The little girl shrugged. “I guess I could eat something.”

  “Fine. All of you stay right here. I’ll be right back.”

  Phyllis stood up and went toward the tables at the front of the room where the auction goods and the snack competition had been set up. With all the commotion going on, everybody had forgotten about the auction. Some of the items were gone, though. Either the people who had donated them had come by to reclaim them, figuring that under the circumstances the auction was off, or else some sticky-fingered youngsters had simply carried them off.

  That was certainly the case on the snack table, which was practically empty by now. With Phyllis and Carolyn gone and all the confusion filling the school, kids had simply helped themselves to the goodies. Phyllis felt a flare of anger at such behavior, but she told herself to forget about it. There were much more important things going on.

  Her jack-o’-lantern cake was still on the auction table. It would have been difficult to carry off without somebody noticing. If anyone had a right to cut it, she did, she decided, so she looked around for the knife she and Carolyn had used earlier and spotted it lying on the table. She planned to cut three small pieces off the cake, one each for Becca, Amber, and Aaron.

  She had just picked up the knife and had it poised over the rounded edge of the jack-o’-lantern cake when Mike hurried into the cafeteria and said, “Mom, no! Don’t use that knife!”

  Chapter 11

  Phyllis froze and stared silently at her son, startled into speechlessness by Mike’s words and actions. He came toward her, one hand outstretched, and went on, “Just put the knife down now. Please, Mom.”

  Phyllis finally got her tongue back. She said, “Michael Newsom, what in the world is wrong with you?”

  “I just need you to put the knife down.”

  She waved it. “This knife?”

  Mike winced. “Yes. Please.”

  “Well, just what do you think I’m going to do with it?” Phyllis demanded. “Do you think I’m about to go berserk or something?”

  “Of course not. But that might be the murder weapon.”

  Phyllis’s eyes widened. She tore her gaze away from her son’s intent face and turned her head to stare at the knife in her hand. Then she said quietly, “Oh,” and her fingers opened involuntarily. The knife clattered to the table.

  Mike rushed forward, taking a plastic evidence bag from his pocket. He turned it inside out, used it to pick up the knife, and then pulled the bag right side out again. He blew his breath out in relief as he ran his thumb and forefinger along the bag’s opening, sealing it.

  “There,” he said. “Now the evidence won’t be contaminated any more than it already is.”

  “Mike, what are you talking about?” Phyllis cast a worried glance toward the table where Becca Dunston and the two Tyler youngsters were sitting. She didn’t want them overhearing anything they shouldn’t, but she had to know what was going on. “What makes you think that knife is”— she lowered her voice—”the murder weapon?”

  “The ambulance and the paramedics got here right after the other deputies and I did,” Mike explained. “Calvin noticed something on Mrs.—”

  Phyllis lifted a hand to stop him from saying the name.

  “On the victim’s blouse,” Mike went on. “The medical examiner and the crime scene guys aren’t here yet, but it’s pretty obvious that the cause of death was a knife wound. And on the edge of the hole in the blouse that the knife made, Calvin found something.”

  Phyllis knew her son was talking about Calvin Holloway, an emergency medical technician who was one of Mike’s best friends. She said, “What was it?”

  Mike looked down at the bagged knife in his hands. “Calvin said he thought it was cake frosting.”

  Phyllis stared at the knife, too. She and Carolyn had used it quite a bit during the afternoon to cut samples from the various snacks, including a carrot cake with sugar-free icing. She saw some of that frosting dried on the blade. “Oh, my God,” she said softly. “My God. You mean we used it to cut … and somebody used … Oh, no.” She suddenly felt sick to her stomach.

  Mike put a hand on her arm. “Take it easy, Mom,” he said. “We don’t know anything for sure yet. Anyway, there’s a good chance that even if this is the murder weapon, the killer lifted it from here not long before he used it, then put it back during the confusion after the body was discovered. I don’t imagine it was used for anything after the murder.”

  “But I was about to—”

  “That’s why I stopped you. When Calvin said that about the cake frosting, something clicked in my brain, and I realized that this was the most likely place anybody could find a knife with frosting on it. So I came to see if it was still here.”

  “Thank goodness you got here when you did,” Phyllis said fervently. The idea that she could have used the knife to cut a piece of cake for the murdered woman’s daughter was grotesque. Just thinking about it made her stomach even more queasy.

  “I’ll turn this over to the lab and let our forensics experts decide whether or not it’s the murder weapon. I’ve got a hunch it is, though.”

  So did Phyllis. With all the people going in and out of the cafeteria all afternoon, anyone could have picked up the knife without her noticing and slipped it back onto the table after all the commotion broke out.

  She stiffened as she remembered that Joel Dunston had been standing beside the table not long before Shannon was killed. And since she hadn’t noticed him leaving the cafeteria, it went without saying that he could have pocketed the knife and carried it off with him.

  And he had said that he was looking for Shannon… .

  Phyllis’s eyes went to Becca again. How terrible it would be for the little girl to not only lose her mother to a killer but also to have her father convicted of the murder.

  She was getting way ahead of herself, and she knew it. There could be dozens of other explanations. Phyllis was glad it would be up to Mike and the other deputies, instead of her, to figure out what had really happened.

  People began coming back into the cafeteria, among them Sam, Carolyn, and Eve. They walked over to Phyllis and Mike, and Sam said, “The medical examiner is here, and he’s got that whole wing of the school blocked off now.”

  Mike nodded. “I’d better take this knife and get back to the investigation.”

  Eve looked at the knife and said, “Oh, dear. Is that what I think it is?”

  “Could be, Mrs. Turner,” Mike told her. He nodded politely to the four retired teachers—Phyllis had raised him too well for him to do otherwise—and hurried out of the cafeteria.

  Phyllis asked Sam, “Did you overhear anything while you were down there?”

  “The paramedics said it looked like a stab wound to the chest. Probably got the heart. Mrs. Dunston wouldn’t have lived long after that.”

  A little voice piped up, “Mrs. Dunston? You mean Becca’s mama?”

  Phyllis looked around in horror and saw that Aaron Tyler had come up to the table without any of them noticing. He went on. “You said you were gonna get us somethin’ to eat.” Then he turned his head and shouted, “Hey, Becca, did you know your mama got stabbed in the heart?”

  Phyllis felt like her own heart had plummeted all the way to her feet. It got even worse a second later when Becca covered her face with her hands and began to sob, great racking wails that shook her slender body.

  Phyllis hurri
ed over to the table and sat down beside the little girl. She couldn’t do anything except put her arm around Becca and say comfortingly, “It’s all right, Becca. There, there. It’ll all be all right.”

  That was a lie and Phyllis knew it. For Becca Dunston, it would probably be a long, long time before everything was all right again—if it ever was.

  The carnival had been almost over when Shannon’s body was found, and after that grisly discovery the festivities were definitely finished. But the deputies issued orders that no one was to leave just yet, which meant that the parking lot was full of cars with angry, impatient people sitting in them or milling around them. Sheriff’s department cruisers with their red and blue lights flashing were parked across all the exits, blocking them.

  Of course, there was no way of knowing just who and how many of the people in attendance at the carnival had left before the deputies arrived. The killer could have slipped away in the confusion and been long gone by the time the law got there. But no one else could leave without at least a cursory interview with one of the deputies. Those orders had come directly from Sheriff Royce Haney when he found out that a murder had been committed at an elementary school. School violence was always a powerful magnet for the news media, and the sheriff wanted to get on top of this case as quickly as possible.

  Mike couldn’t blame him for that. And he knew that Sheriff Haney was more concerned with finding the killer than he was with the impression his department would make in the media. But it never hurt to keep the uproar under control as much as possible.

  Haney himself arrived shortly after the ME did, and sought Mike out immediately, since he knew that the young deputy had been one of the first on the scene. Haney took Mike over to a corner of the hallway and said, “What have we got here, Deputy? Boil it down for me.”

  Mike took a deep breath before he started his report. “The victim is Mrs. Shannon Dunston, age forty-one. Pending the medical examiner’s findings, cause of death appears to be a single stab wound to the chest that probably nicked her heart. She was found lying in a short hallway at the end of the main hall that runs through this wing of the school.”