“Kelly, please,” Stephanie said, propping open the back door to let smoke out. Volunteers were shoving to get past her and outside. “Your shift is over, anyway. Can you all get out of the way so I can find the extinguisher?”
Suddenly Sheriff Keller stood in the open door. He tracked the smoke to its source, reached up to a shelf above the sink, and grabbed the extinguisher. In mere seconds, the fire was out.
Stephanie looked at me. “Grace, can you make a sign that says we’re out of popcorn?”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, not looking in the sheriff’s direction. “Is there anything else I can—ruin for you?”
“Go stir the nacho cheese while Grace makes the sign,” she said.
“I’ll pay for the burned popcorn,” I said. “And the machine.”
“It’s not the first time that thing has been on fire,” she said, moving away from me. It was clear she didn’t want to be near me. When I turned toward the back door, Keller was gone.
AFTER THE HALFTIME rush, I staggered out of the Boosters hut to the fence, my new Parks High School shirt stained with nacho cheese and my hair smelling of smoke. The game was a goner. I checked along the bench for Joshua.
“He’s on the field,” Mullen said. I hadn’t noticed him there in his street clothes and Parks High green ball cap pulled low.
I peered into the fray of boys on the field until I found him. He was running along the edge of the field nearest us and, just as I spotted him, caught a long pass and fell wildly, ass over helmet into a group of players from the opposing side. I gripped the fence, my heart in my throat. “Oh, my God—”
Mullen was clapping. “Stop being a mom for a second,” he said. “That was a fine catch.”
Joshua hopped up, Frankenstein monster’s padded shoulders on top of skinny white legs. He passed the football to a referee and ran back to the other boys, who pounded at his back and slapped at his helmet.
“Was Charity Jordan Bo’s mistress?”
Mullen went still. “Where did you hear that?”
“Just . . . in the air,” I said. “Is Leila a drug user?”
“After just one shift in the Boosters kitchen?” he said. “What else did you learn?”
That a very young woman officer had a crush on the sheriff, but I didn’t say that. And after the episode with the fire extinguisher, I couldn’t deny that he was the kind of guy women got crushes on. So was Shane, I noticed. No wonder Grace was on alert.
“They found a packed suitcase in Charity’s garage,” I said.
He stared at me, licked his lips. “That’s news to me.”
“I think it’s news to everyone,” I said. “I guess she had some big plans coming up.”
“I guess so.”
“So the drugs . . . are they homemade in Parks or do they come in from other places?”
Mullen leaned back on the fence and watched a play on the field. “If we knew the source, Russ would clamp down on it. But it’s out there, no matter what we do.”
“Any new leads on Leila Ransey?”
“Most people ask about Aidan,” Mullen said. His eyes flicked behind me, along the stands, and then to his other side. “Leila Ransey was supposed to be off somewhere, getting clean, but we can’t seem to find her to make sure her hands are as clean as some people want us to believe.”
“Some people? Her family?”
“I think the Ranseys are all she’s got,” he said. “Bo and Mama Ransey. Bea, I mean. I’m talking about local do-gooders, sticking their necks in. Russ threatened a warrant, but it’s no good. She’s not here. Town’s too small to hide a missing woman for this long.”
A matter of opinion.
“And that receipt, anyway,” he said. “She’s on the run now.”
“She used her mother-in-law’s credit card,” I said. “How’d she get it?”
“Stole it,” he said.
The thing that really bothered me, though, was Charity’s death. It didn’t make any sense. If I hadn’t seen that grocery list and those cramped, scared letters crowded into the only space they were allowed to take up, I might have been picturing a baseball bat in Leila’s hands, too. But she hadn’t used it on Bo—why bother with killing Charity? And where could she be?
Something occurred to me. “I forgot something at the booth.”
“Hey,” Mullen called as I walked away. “Keller hasn’t deputized you, has he?”
At the back door of the Boosters booth I stuck my head in and surveyed the damage. The rush was over and the volunteers left behind were busy cleaning up.
“Hot dogs, definitely short on hot dogs,” Stephanie said, jotting some notes onto a notepad on the counter. When she saw me, she whipped the notes over.
“Can I talk to you?”
“Grace, can you watch the cash bag? I’ll be right back.” She followed me outside, pulling at the neck of her T-shirt to fan herself. “What’s up?”
“I want to help,” I said.
“I think you may have done enough for your first day,” she said.
“No, I mean—with Leely.”
She stared at me.
“And Sommer House, right? That’s what it’s called?” I threw myself into the void. “Your card. It doesn’t have an address and—well, I have what you might call relevant experience.”
“If the sheriff sent you—”
“He didn’t.”
“I don’t know where she is,” she said, her eyes darting all around us. “I really don’t.”
“But you know where she used to be.”
She sighed. “She hates that name. Leely.”
I did, too. “What can I do?”
“If you have actual relevant experience, you’ll know already,” she said. “Practically nothing. The system is stacked against her.”
“I don’t think she killed that woman.”
Stephanie looked at me as she had when I’d given Grace a generous reading of her handwriting. “The problem is, you and I and the real killer are the only ones who believe it.”
Chapter Fifteen
On Monday morning, Sherry called again. Early, but I was wide awake, facing a large mug of tea and the day’s work. After the call I would be disappointed I hadn’t been in bed; with any luck I could have missed the call entirely. Sherry said, “Sheriff wants to know if you’ll go check out something for him.”
“He—what?” I had already written off the entire experiment with local law enforcement the night he’d been in the apartment. Yes, I’d been drawn into the Ranseys’ case through a few odd parallels between past and present, and finally, I hated to admit it, through the magnetic charms of the sheriff. That man, I’d found myself thinking after he’d left. I was sitting at the table where he’d lectured me on things he knew nothing about, and now he had another bug up his ass? He was something else. He really was. “I thought I was done with all the samples he had,” I said.
“This is something new, I think,” Sherry said. “He wants you to go meet with someone at the high school.”
“Does it have something to do with Aidan?”
“I wouldn’t say so. I mean, Aidan is two. His mom and dad went there, you know, like years ago, but we all did.” Sherry’s voice was taking on a lilting, singsong quality the longer she talked, as though she didn’t often get asked for theories.
“The high school,” I said, remembering that Aidan did have a relative at that school. “Could it be the junior high school? It’s the same building.”
“Oh, maybe,” she said. “I don’t know what he teaches. He was a few years ahead but I remember him anyway. When I was in the sixth grade, Joe Jeffries was all-state football, and what an ass he had—”
“Joe Jeffries. You mean the guidance counselor.”
“The sheriff called him a teacher, but, sure, if you know who he is, then you’re probably right. Hot. I wish I got assignments like this.”
“I’m supposed to go see Joe Jeffries.”
“Soon, like today. And report
back to me when you’re done.”
“Back to you?”
Sherry’s voice lost its song. “Don’t sound so surprised,” she said. “The sheriff trusts me.”
“No, that’s not—look, that’s fine with me,” I said. “In fact, it’s more than fine. Did he happen to mention what I’m supposed to be asking Mr. Jeffries?”
“He said Joe would know,” she said, still wounded.
“Did you say you all went to high school together? You, Bo, your husband . . .”
“Jimmy,” she said.
“Jimmy, of course. Grace and Shane Mullen—”
“They were a few years ahead.”
“Leila?”
She didn’t answer right away. “She was there.”
“Was she a friend of yours?”
“It’s going to sound bad,” she said.
“Say it.”
“She was . . . in a different crowd,” she said.
“Which crowd were you in?”
“The fun one,” she said. “You know. We just had laughs, drank on the weekends.”
I thought back to high school. “So which way did she go? Jocks and cheerleaders? Nerds?”
“Stoners,” she said finally. “Kind of. I mean, really? I don’t think she had any friends at all. She was more like a ghost.”
THAT AFTERNOON I went to the café early and waited for school to get out and Jeffries to disentangle himself from football practice. I hadn’t wanted another meeting in his office—Joshua aware of my presence there, the other Boosters ladies talking it over later—but now it seemed like a better option than meeting in broad daylight in the center of town.
Too late to make a change of location. Anyway, I had a crisp copy of the Spectator and a fat raspberry scone slathered with butter in front of me. Rather a nice assignment from the sheriff. Out of the apartment, out in the sun. The leaves were turning, and it wouldn’t be long before the wind became chilled and unwelcoming, and I’d find any excuse to stay inside. Across the street, the courthouse rose above the square in cold, limestone majesty. The world, soon enough, would seem as though it had been cut to match.
Jeffries arrived earlier than expected and greeted me warmly. He left his satchel by the side of the vacant chair and went inside for a cup of coffee. I watched him through the glass door. The old man behind the counter lit up at the sight of him. Jeffries gleamed like the statuette on a trophy. Today, all my senses piqued, I couldn’t help but notice.
He came back out, sitting across from me and stretching his legs into the sidewalk.
“Thanks for meeting with me on short notice,” I said.
“Please. It’s a pleasure.” He shrugged out of his suit coat and folded it carefully over the next chair. “May I?” he said, one hand over the knot of his tie. I smiled. He pulled at the knot until it hung loosely around his neck, and one button at the neck of his shirt had been sacrificed to his comfort. “I’m glad to get this chance to follow up with you. About Joshua.”
I tensed. “This isn’t about Joshua. The sheriff—”
“No, I know,” he said. “I have good news for you, though, if you don’t mind. Whatever you said to him—well, it worked.” He sat back, elbows on the arms of the chair, his hands folded over his stomach. “I’ve heard some good reports already. Homework finished, at least.”
“He was getting hung up on the aesthetics, I guess you could say,” I said. “But I’m glad to hear good results so soon.”
“I’m amazed to receive results so soon. He’s really turning himself around, from what I hear. Our head librarian—we monitor first lunch together every day—she mentioned how industrious he was. Usually, library periods are treated like recess.”
We smiled at each other until I finally looked away. I liked the affection in his voice when he talked about the students. He seemed to understand them, to accept the wildness in them that might make other adults—me—nervous. If Joshua still needed a mentor, here was the best candidate. It made sense. It made so much sense that I nearly cried from relief. He already took an interest. He seemed willing to share his insights. A local sports god.
I couldn’t ask if he played video games. Instead I said, “The sheriff seemed to want us together?”
“Right,” he said, a strange Mona Lisa twitch on his lips. “You’re saving me from a pile of work in my office.”
“What about football practice?”
His hand stopped on the way to his satchel. “It was in-service for the teachers today. No classes for the students, as you know, so no practice.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.” Except if I’d known about it, I’d forgotten—and where the hell had Joshua gone at seven this morning?
Jeffries extracted a manila envelope from his bag and slid it across the table. “This is what we’re dealing with. Keller said you might be able to help. Not solve the case or anything, but maybe—I don’t know—give us some ideas.”
The envelope was heavy with a set of eight-by-ten glossy photos. I slid them out onto the table and held one, then the next, by the edges. There were six altogether, each one capturing a different section of bright graffiti on the side of a brick building. When I placed them side by side in two rows, the spray-painted words connected and congealed into a smattering of swear words, epithets, drawings that might have been sexual—they were terribly drawn, but I sensed the intent.
“Is this the school?”
“One of the outbuildings,” he said. “The school keeps lawn equipment there. There’s been a rash of these lately around the county. A bridge, I think. Nothing yet on the school itself. They did us that bit of courtesy, I suppose.”
“Kids.”
“I—well, I suppose that’s the going consensus,” he said. “Keller came out when they first went up, or when Griffin—the maintenance guy? Carl Griffin?—when he discovered them. We had the yearbook advisor take those pictures. Keller thought maybe you could wave your magic wand over them and tell us who left us the mess.”
Magic wand. I wondered what the sheriff actually said, if he thought I could really help or if he weren’t playing some sort of trick on us all.
“I can try to tell you something about them,” I said. “It’s not foolproof and won’t stand as evidence in court. But getting some kid to confess might be easier if you’ve already figured out he did the deed.”
“Anything you can offer.”
I gazed down at the prints for a while. “It’s more than one kid.”
He leaned forward.
“I would say three separate people. To be fair, I can’t say definitively that they are boys, but I think you’re safe to say that. From the—” I waved my hand toward the corner where a sexual organ had been reconstructed by someone either sloppy with the paint can or inexperienced sexually, or both. “Probably young.”
“We get sixth graders when they’re eleven or twelve.”
“Thirteen. Maybe fourteen, tops,” I said. “Again, not definitively—these just seem so . . . juvenile.”
“I understand,” he said, looking off into the distance for a moment. “There’s a line—a maturity line. Not always determined by age.”
“There’s one boy who’s hesitant,” I said. “He only has a couple of examples of his work in this entire, uh, project. Probably didn’t want to be there. If you could find him, he’d break down and feed you the other two. The other two are more practiced. One of them is rather a pro with his lettering. No drips.” I turned the photo around, pointed. “That’s your ringleader, your idea man. He’s very confident. His work is all over the wall—he’s your Picasso. You need to get that boy into art class, Mr. Jeffries.”
“Joe.”
I glanced up but returned quickly to the prints. It was fascinating, the interplay of ego and ethics that played out on the side of this brick wall. One boy was all bravado, sweeping gestures and full, round lettering. Another boy was less so, but willing. I could almost picture the second keeping an eye on the first, to guide his own efforts
. His lines were thicker, slower, clumsier—but they, like the strokes of the first boy, were well represented. He’d enjoyed himself. He had wanted to be there. “Here’s your number two,” I said. “He’s a follower. Probably not heading up the junior high student council, but you guessed that already. He’s a lefty, too, by the way.”
“A lefty who is not on the student council. Got it.”
I grinned at the prints. “Like I said, it’s imprecise as an identification tool. What would work much better is to look for a dumping ground for about six nearly empty spray-paint cans, and then use the fingerprints on them as your evidence. Or have the sheriff go around to the places that sell the paint to see who’s been buying a variety. Will they sell spray paint to young kids around here? Lots of urban areas don’t.”
“We’re a little behind the crimes in Parks.”
“Your third guy here,” I said, drawing a finger over the blocky letters of a shaking-lettered obscenity. “He doesn’t want to be there, and probably hasn’t done it before. He’s your weak link.” I peered at each print, searching for the work of this particular boy. “Righty. Not very tall. Not as tall as the others, I mean. None of them are tall, or they would’ve painted higher on the building.”
Joe took earnest notes, as though they could somehow tell him what to do next. For the third boy I described a sense of self-preservation, a wavering ethic of right and wrong. He was clumsy fisted—perhaps chubby, for all the grace lacking in his few attempts at lettering—and he probably stumbled through a great deal of his miserable days with his head turned toward his buddies. He was sloppy. He would still have some of the paint under his nails.
I had been jotting notes for my report back to Sherry, and when I finally pulled myself out of them, I’d nearly forgotten Joe was there. He was silent, watching the progress of my pen across the page. I turned my notes away. “Sorry. I—I get caught up, I guess.”
“No wonder. It’s really interesting. All very logical, but with just a little touch of something like—”
Don’t say hocus-pocus. Don’t say magic. Just this once.
The Day I Died Page 12
