Murder by the Slice

by Livia J. Washburn

  “Who found the body?” Haney interrupted.

  “We don’t know yet,” Mike replied with a shake of his head. “We’re still interviewing witnesses. All we know is that someone found her and started screaming, and that brought quite a few other people on the run. According to the school principal, Frances Hickson, a woman named Lindsey Gonzales was on the scene and appeared to be very upset. It’s possible she was the one who discovered the body.”

  “Has she been interviewed yet?”

  Again, Mike had to shake his head. “We haven’t located her. It’s possible that any number of people could have left the school before we arrived and locked down the campus, and she must have been one of them.”

  “They’re bound to have her address in the school office,” Haney said. “Get it and find her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What about the murder weapon? Was it in or near the body?”

  “No, sir, but I recovered a knife from the school cafeteria that might have been used to kill Mrs. Dunston.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Mike hesitated, but there was no way he could get around answering the question. “The cake frosting,” he said.

  The sheriff stared at him but didn’t say anything.

  Mike went on, “One of the paramedics found what appeared to be cake frosting on the dead woman’s blouse, at the point of entry. I happened to know that there were a lot of baked goods in the cafeteria, including cakes, so I thought the murder weapon might have come from there.”

  “And how did you happen to know that, Deputy?”

  “Because my mother and her friends were here helping out with the carnival bake sale. Well, it wasn’t a bake sale exactly… .”

  “Your mother?” Haney said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She’s not conducting her own investigation, is she?” Haney asked dryly.

  Mike felt a flash of irritation at the sheriff’s tone. “No, sir, she’s not involved at all,” he said. “But if you recall, she has a pretty good record at clearing homicide cases.”

  Haney frowned and said, “Be sure to tell her that I don’t think we’ll need her help on this one.”

  Mike nodded but didn’t say anything. He didn’t really trust himself to speak at that particular moment.

  After a second or two, Haney went on, “So we’ve got, what, a couple hundred suspects?”

  “There are probably more people than that still here, and as I said, we don’t know how many left before we arrived. But a lot of them are little kids, sir, and I’m sure that most of the adults wouldn’t have had any reason to want Mrs. Dunston dead.”

  “But there are that many who could have taken the knife from the cafeteria and then returned it there after the murder, correct?”

  Mike had to nod in agreement. “Correct, sir.”

  Haney grimaced and said, “Keep interviewing everyone, for as long as it takes.”

  “People are getting impatient,” Mike pointed out.

  Haney grunted. “Let ‘em. I don’t care if some of them are here all night. They’re not leaving until we’ve talked to them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now show me the murder scene.”

  They had already ducked under several strips of crime scene tape that were crisscrossed across the hallway where it joined the lobby at the front of the school. The two lawmen walked down to the far end of the corridor, where a knot of deputies stood at its junction with the short hallway. They stepped aside to let Haney take a look at the body, which still lay where it had been found. The medical examiner had moved Shannon onto her back, but only after numerous photos had been taken.

  “Got a time of death yet?” Haney asked the ME.

  “It’s still tentative, but I’d say within the past two hours,” the man replied. “Cause of death appears to be a stab wound to the chest. I can give you the details after the autopsy, but I’ll be mighty surprised if it turns out to be anything else.”

  Haney looked at the closed metal door to the right of the hallway. “What’s in there?”

  “According to the principal, that’s the book room, where they store all the textbooks when they’re not being used,” Mike said. “It’s supposed to be locked up, but we haven’t tried the knob yet. We’re waiting until it can be dusted for prints.”

  “Get busy on that, and on the rest of the crime scene, as soon as you can.” Haney looked down at Shannon’s corpse and shook his head. “And find out who’d want this woman dead badly enough to stick a knife in her. That’s the big question we have to answer, gentlemen.”

  Chapter 12

  Phyllis sat with Becca in the cafeteria until the little girl’s father appeared, his face pale and haggard. Even though Joel Dunston had been divorced from Shannon, seeing her dead body appeared to have aged him considerably.

  “Becca,” he said hoarsely, and she practically flew into his arms, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly as she sobbed. He patted her awkwardly on the back and muttered, “We’ll get through this somehow. I promise you we will. At least … at least we still have each other.”

  While Joel was attempting to comfort his daughter, Marie Tyler came into the cafeteria through another door and hurried over to the table where Phyllis and the others sat. “I can’t find Russ anywhere,” she said, her voice tight with tension and worry. “Have any of you seen him?”

  Carolyn said, “Not since before … Well, not lately.”

  “I don’t understand it. Where could he have gone?” Marie took her children’s hands and walked off through the cafeteria, looking despondent and more than a little lost.

  A horrible thought flashed through Phyllis’s mind. If Joel had caught Shannon and Russ together, he might have killed both of them.

  But then Russ’s body would have been found there, too, wouldn’t it?

  Unless Joel had killed Shannon and Russ had fled. Joel could have gone after him and killed him elsewhere… .

  But in that case, then how had the knife gotten back to the cafeteria? It really didn’t seem likely that Joel would have stabbed Shannon, chased down Russ, killed him, and then returned to the carnival to put the murder weapon back where he had gotten it. It could have happened that way, but Phyllis didn’t believe it.

  That still left Russ Tyler’s whereabouts a mystery. Maybe he was hiding somewhere, afraid that Joel would get him, too.

  Phyllis wasn’t sure she could accept that scenario, either. The school was swarming with deputies now. If Russ had witnessed Shannon’s murder, all he had to do was come forward and tell what he had seen.

  Unless he was the one who had stuck that knife in Shannon’s chest. Then, in a panic of fear and guilt, he wouldn’t want to talk to the authorities.

  Or maybe the killer wasn’t either Joel or Russ. Marie could have found her husband with Shannon and lost her head, in which case Russ was hiding out because he didn’t want to be forced to reveal that his wife had killed the woman he was having an affair with … if he was really having an affair with her, which Phyllis certainly didn’t know for sure … and didn’t the fact that the knife had been taken from the cafeteria mean that the murder hadn’t really been a spur-ofthe-moment thing but instead had been planned … ?

  The theories and questions whirled around inside Phyllis’s head until she was dizzy. She was glad when Sam said, “Let’s all get out of here and go home.” Phyllis nodded gratefully. She wanted to lie down for a while.

  Carolyn looked at the remains of the auction and snack contest and said, “I guess we’d better pack up everything that’s left and take it with us.”

  Mike came up behind her in time to hear her say that. He shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wilbarger, but you can’t do that.”

  Carolyn turned around to face him. “Why not?”

  Mike waved a hand at the tables. “All these cakes and such might be evidence. Maybe we can match the frosting that was found on Mrs. Dunston’s blouse to o
ne of them.”

  “So you’re impounding all of them?” Phyllis asked.

  “That’s right.” Mike shrugged. “Sorry.”

  Phyllis looked at the jack-o’-lantern cake and shook her head. “I don’t suppose it really matters. I don’t think any of us are in the mood for snacks or sweets right now, anyway.”

  Sam asked Mike, “You boys come up with anything yet on the killin’?”

  “I can’t really talk about that.” He looked around at the four of them. “You weren’t fixing to leave, were you?”

  Sam nodded. “We thought we would. These ladies have had a hard day.”

  Mike shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, but you can’t go. Not until you’ve been interviewed.”

  “Interrogated, you mean?” Carolyn asked with a touch of resentment in her voice. She hadn’t forgotten about how both she and her daughter Sandra had been considered suspects in another murder before being cleared, largely through Phyllis’s efforts.

  “Just some routine questions,” Mike said. He took a notebook and pen out of the pocket of his uniform shirt. “I can go ahead and get that out of the way, so you folks won’t be stuck here.”

  Phyllis sighed and sat down at one of the tables. “All right,” she said. “Whatever it takes to get us out of here.”

  The other retired teachers sat down, too, and Mike perched a hip on the table as he asked, “Did all of you know the murdered woman?”

  “Carolyn and I did,” Phyllis said. “I’m not sure if Sam and Eve ever met her.”

  “I didn’t,” Sam said.

  Eve said, “I’m not sure if we were ever introduced, but I know I saw her somewhere before.”

  “She was the president of the PTO, right?”

  Phyllis nodded and quickly sketched in the details of how she and Carolyn had gotten involved in putting on this school carnival. Mike wrote quickly as she gave him the names of the PTO board members.

  “There’s a chance this Mrs. Gonzales was the one who discovered the body,” he commented, “but it appears she left the school before we got here.”

  “I saw her down there at the end of the hall,” Phyllis confirmed. “She looked awfully upset, as she had every right to be. Shannon lying there like that was a terrible sight.”

  “Yep, I imagine so. How familiar are you with the school? How long could the body have been there before somebody found it?”

  The four of them looked at each other. Still taking the lead, since Mike was her son, Phyllis said, “None of us ever taught here. Carolyn and I attended a few meetings to discuss preparations for the carnival, but those were the only times I ever set foot in the place until today.”

  Sam said, “I was out here a few times, too, helpin’ the custodians build those booths out on the playground. Never poked around the school much, though. But I don’t reckon there would have been much reason for anybody to go all the way down to the end of that hall this afternoon. Nothin’ to do with the carnival was down there.”

  “So Mrs. Dunston’s body could have been lying there for fifteen minutes or even half an hour without anybody coming along to find it?”

  Phyllis said, “That seems reasonable to me.”

  Mike looked up from his notebook and frowned. “What do you reckon she was doing down there in the first place, if there was nothing connected with the carnival going on in that part of the school?”

  Because it was an out-of-the-way corner where she could get together with Russ Tyler. Phyllis couldn’t stop that thought from going through her head. But she didn’t say anything. She had nothing to go on but a brief glimpse of Shannon and Russ going into a restaurant in Fort Worth. She wasn’t sure she wanted to build a damning theory on such fragile evidence, especially when it might put several people at risk of being considered murder suspects.

  On the other hand, she didn’t want Shannon’s killer to get away with it. Despite her flaws, Shannon hadn’t deserved to be wantonly murdered like that.

  She needed to think about it some more, Phyllis decided. She knew that what she was doing could be considered withholding evidence … but she just needed to think.

  Nobody had an answer for Mike’s question about Shannon’s reasons for being down at the end of the hall, so he moved on and asked one that made Phyllis even more uncomfortable. “Can any of you think of any reason why someone would want Mrs. Dunston dead?”

  Carolyn said, “You mean besides the fact that she treated all the volunteers who worked with her like dirt?”

  Mike’s eyebrows rose. “Hard to get along with, was she?”

  Phyllis sighed and nodded. “We didn’t know her all that well, you understand, but it was obvious that she was a perfectionist and browbeat everyone else on the board. She piled work on them and didn’t like it when it wasn’t done just to suit her.”

  “She didn’t mind telling you when she wasn’t pleased with something, either,” Carolyn put in.

  “So the rest of the board hated her?”

  Phyllis said, “I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say that.”

  “Some of them did,” Carolyn declared, outspoken as always. “And the rest of them were afraid of her.”

  “I’m sure they’ll all be interviewed,” Mike said. “I understand she was divorced?”

  “Twice,” Phyllis said. “Most recently from Dr. Joel Dunston.” There was no point in keeping quiet about that. The Dunstons’ divorce was a matter of public record, and the authorities would have no trouble finding out about it, no matter what Phyllis said.

  “The ear, nose, and throat guy,” Mike said. “I’ve heard of him.”

  Phyllis nodded. “Yes. He and Shannon had a daughter together. The girl’s name is Becca. She goes to school here. I don’t know what grade she’s in. Third or fourth, I’d guess.”

  Mike wrote in his notebook again, then asked, “How did they get along?”

  “Shannon and her daughter?”

  “No, I meant the exhusband. How did Mrs. Dunston get along with him?”

  Phyllis hesitated, then said, “Not well. Joel Dunston brought Becca to the carnival today. They were late getting here, and Shannon wasn’t happy about it. They had an argument here in the cafeteria, right after Dr. Dunston and Becca arrived.”

  “A violent argument?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “No, not violent. Intense, I’d say. You could tell they were both angry, but they didn’t raise their voices, and they tried to put on a good front while the little girl was around. Not that they fooled her. Children are usually sharp enough to see right through that.”

  “But maybe the argument continued and got violent later,” Mike suggested. “Did any of you see Dr. Dunston later in the afternoon?”

  Carolyn said, “He came back into the cafeteria not long before the cake auction got started.”

  “Which was … ?”

  “About four thirty,” Phyllis supplied.

  “Was he still here when the auction started?”

  She had to shake her head. “No, he left sometime before that. I didn’t really notice when. We were busy.”

  “I didn’t see him go, either,” Carolyn said.

  Phyllis could tell that Mike was excited. She supposed that in any murder, the spouse or ex-spouse was the most logical suspect. In this case, there were the added factors of the open hostility that existed between Shannon and Joel Dunston, and the proximity between the two of them this afternoon. When the classic questions of means, motive, and opportunity were asked, Joel was a possible answer for all of them.

  “We’ll definitely want to talk to him,” Mike said. “He’s still around, isn’t he?”

  “He was here with his daughter just a little while ago. I didn’t see him leave; I’m sure he’s still somewhere on school property, unless one of the other deputies talked to him and let him go.”

  Mike shook his head. “Not likely.” He looked at some of the notes he had written farther up the page and went on. “You said Mrs. Dunston was divorced twice. Do y
ou know anything about her first husband?”

  “Just that she had a son with him,” Phyllis said. “And that they were childhood sweethearts and got married right out of high school.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a name for that first husband, would you?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “No. But her son’s name is Kirk. I suppose he has his father’s last name, but I have no idea what it is.”

  Carolyn frowned at her in puzzlement and asked, “How do you know all this?”

  “Well, I told you I ran into Shannon in WalMart that day—you know, when she talked me into entering the healthy snack contest.”

  “I know,” Carolyn said.

  “Her son was with her that day, and when Shannon and I were talking, she mentioned those things about her first marriage.”

  “Does this kid still live with her?” Mike asked. “How old is he?”

  “I don’t know where he lives. But she said he was born when she was eightteen.”

  “That would make him twenty-one or twenty-two, depending on when his birthday is, so he’s not really a kid. If he’s that old, he’s a grown man.”

  “She didn’t treat him like one,” Phyllis said. “It seemed like she was as rough on him as she was on everyone else.”

  That caught Mike’s interest, too. “Really? I don’t suppose he was here this afternoon, was he?”

  “I didn’t see him. Of course, there were a lot of people around, and he might not have come inside the cafeteria. Even if he did, I might not have noticed him … although he’d be a little hard to miss.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Oh, he’s one of these young men … you know … with all sorts of tattoos and … piercings … and he has his head shaved—”

  “That’s him!” Eve said.

  The others all turned their heads to look at her. “What do you mean, ‘That’s him,’ Mrs. Turner?”

  “That’s the young man I saw arguing with Mrs. Dunston earlier this afternoon,” Eve said. “I knew when I saw the body that she looked familiar. They were outside on the playground, near the ticket booth, and they were so angry with each other, I swear I thought he was going to hit her!”