“There’re folks around here who treat their children like little adults when it comes to chores,” another man said. “So, it’s no surprise they consider themselves autonomous when it comes to school.”
Trish Clarkson tugged at Alice’s elbow and shook her head. “They’re ribbing you,” she said in a soft voice. “We have maybe one day each year where we lose track of a child for an hour or two, max. There are so many rules in place around phoning parents to check on sick days, I’m surprised anybody manages to wag school.”
Alice looked around the group who smiled uncomfortably at being caught out. “So, it’s not likely he’s gone off by himself, then?”
The first male teacher who’d started the ruse sighed. “Michael did it last year and gave everyone a heart attack for half a morning. It’s a possibility.”
“He was in tears after that,” Trish reminded him. “The poor boy thought he’d be locked up, and the key thrown away.”
“Well,” the male teacher smiled. “It scared him straight, I suppose.”
“Where is he likely to have gone?” Alice looked around the group, uncertain now if she should believe them even if they answered her.
“Was his dad after more custody?” Trish asked. “I know we had a warning a few weeks ago, but I sometimes can’t keep the children straight.” At Alice’s raised eyebrows, she laughed and said, “It’s not as bad as it sounds. I’m the school treasurer, not a teacher.”
“Yeah, they’re all just numbers on a spreadsheet to Trish,” the male teacher said with a grin.
“That’s right, Donnie. And the number next to your name might be going down if you’re not careful.”
An officer approached the group, accompanied by a “Here comes trouble,” from Donnie. He offered them a half-smile, then pulled out a notebook. “Can you each take turns to say your name, and when you arrived at the school, this morning?”
“I’m not with the school,” Alice said quickly. “I only came along because my friend found the body and is shaken up.”
The officer directed her to stand apart and continued on with his questioning of the teachers. Considering their employer had just been found dead, and a child was missing, they seemed to Alice to be in overly good spirits.
Once the officer had finished, she rejoined the group.
“If that’s the best they’ve got,” Donnie said with a jerk of his head toward the departing PC, “then poor Michael’s in a heap of trouble.”
“Oh, hush,” Trish scolded him. “Somebody’s got to ask the simple questions before they can move on to the more complex ones. If you’re so anxious to find Michael, why don’t you offer up some suggestions as to where he is.”
“Well, he’s not with his dad, that’s for sure,” Donnie said grumpily. “It’s Kevin who’s being fought over. I don’t think Michael’s dad even knows he’s alive.”
“His poor mother,” Alice said, following the woman as she half-collapsed near the office. “I thought Sally was badly off, but she’s in a far worse state.”
“Is Sally your partner?” Trish asked.
“Business partner,” Alice said quickly, having been caught out on the wrong side of that particular question once before. “We run a cafe together, and I supply all the honey products.”
“You know that’s what killed the principal, don’t you?”
Alice turned to Trish, her eyes opened wide. “What do you mean?”
“Somebody bashed the poor fellow over the head with one of your honey jars. As far as I could see, it caught him right on the temple.”
“When were you looking at the body?” Donnie asked with some interest. “I thought the police sealed the office off as soon as they got in?”
“They did. Some of us just turn up to work a lot sooner than others.”
“Don’t blame me for your poor work/life balance.” Donnie grinned at Trish to take the sting of the words away. “Some of us have snooze alarms to service.”
The small group burst into laughter, earning themselves a few pointed looks from the officers dotted around the scene. Mrs. Dunbar came rushing out and gave them a black look that shamed them into silence.
“When did she get here?” Donnie muttered. “Considering the only reason she ever turned up was to yell at Alex, I can only imagine she’ll be happy he’s dead.”
Trish hushed him as the sobbing widow retreated back inside, accompanied by an officer. “They only broke up a short while ago,” she said and sighed. “I can’t imagine being in her shoes, right now.”
Alice shook her head and focused on the item most worrying to her. “I suppose that explains why the sergeant wanted to know about the jars, if that’s how the poor man was killed.” She paused and closed her eyes for a moment. “How awful for Sally. First, she finds the body, then she finds out one of our products was used to kill him.”
“Yeah.” Donnie gave Alice a curious glance that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. After a lifetime of studying facial expressions in books or on flashcards to try to understand them, Alice still came across unfathomable faces far more often than she liked.
The man opened his mouth, perhaps to explain, then turned at the low growl of an approaching engine. “Heads up,” he said instead. “Looks like they’re about to take the body away.”
As the stretcher was wheeled into the office, and a moment later a white-sheeted body was rolled back out, the small group bowed their heads in a collective form of respect. The gesture came so naturally to them Alice was relieved. It meant the principal must have been a well-liked man, after all.
That thought immediately swallowed her in a gulp of sadness. Alex Dunbar had been well-liked by her, too, and now he was gone.
Alice bent her head, and her mind filled with the image of the smiling school principal. The man had been so enthusiastic about the colony of bees the first day they’d met. He’d been so gracious after her talk at the school.
A tear slipped down Alice’s cheek as the hearse engine started up and the vehicle slowly pulled away.
A day before, she’d harbored the notion she and Alex might grow to become firm friends. Now, his dead body was being driven away to its final resting place.
Grief rose up in a great wave, crashing over her and pulling her down into a vortex of sadness. Sally was distraught and drinking, a potential friend was dead and gone, Chester was unconscious with a vet poking and prodding about in his small body.
The law of threes did indeed apply but in a far worse guise than anything Alice could have imagined a few days before. She wiped her eyes dry with the back of her hand, wondering how she could do the same to her troubled heart.
A half hour later, Alice was once again thinking about leaving and getting back to Chester, when a young policeman walked past, holding firmly onto the wrist of an even younger captive.
The woman with the missing child turned and ran like the wind. “Michael,” she called out, scooping up her son and spinning him in a circle. “Where have you been?”
“I found him hiding behind the bike sheds, crouched in the bushes,” the policeman said, grinning. “For some reason, he didn’t want to come out when everyone walked by calling his name.”
The sergeant looked over with a frown, which changed to a relieved smile when he saw the boy. “Pity you didn’t find him a few minutes earlier,” he said under his breath as the PC walked near. “It could’ve saved us the paperwork.”
Alice felt her own breath coming easier as the people gathered around the school grounds collectively relaxed. The murder was a shocking and dreadful thing, but the missing child had been far worse. The teachers began to rib each other good-naturedly again and talked about leaving.
“Are you hanging about here for any reason?” Donnie asked Alice as she cast a glance toward the principal’s office.
“Just waiting for my friend,” she told him with a smile. “I don’t feel right heading off until I know she’s fully recovered.”
“Fair enough. We’re heading
off now since there’s not much more we can offer.” He stopped for a moment, his lips pursed as he scanned the grounds. “I hope the school opens properly tomorrow. It doesn’t do to give children time to consider these things too deeply.”
He waved goodbye and hurried off to join his friends, slapping the back of one man dressed in a groundskeeper uniform halfway there. “Are we still on for the retirement drinks this Friday?”
The man scowled at Donnie and shook off his hand. “Don’t be a fool, mate. I’m not retiring.”
At that, Donnie appeared surprised. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t a joke, I thought there was a celebration coming up. I had an invitation and everything.”
Trish appeared to understand what was happening and grabbed hold of Donnie’s arm, giving the groundskeeper a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry, Wallace. I guess Mr. Dunbar didn’t have enough time to update the message.”
The man seemed about to say something, then shut his mouth and let the scowl from before do the talking. Although he was standing with a rake in his hand, he didn’t seem to be in the middle of a job. Alice wondered if, like the rest of them, he was waiting for the all-clear.
She checked her phone, just in case it had stopped working correctly and a message from the vets was waiting, unannounced. It hadn’t, and there wasn’t.
Alice went back to standing with her arms folded, staring at a patch of ground. The grief from before had faded into a more general sense of sadness. It felt like the entire world was paused on a knife edge, waiting. For what, she didn’t know.
“Did you see Michael arrive at the school?” Sergeant Hogarth asked.
Alice had been wound so deeply into her own thoughts, she took a moment to reply. “I don’t recall seeing him about when I arrived. But I was just looking for Sally. I tend to get a bit blinkered when I have a task on my mind.”
“Oh, that’s right.” The sergeant stood beside her for a second, mimicking Alice’s body language. “I forgot you turned up later than the teachers, and then Mrs. Dunbar turned up after that. I’m getting my sequences mixed.”
“I’m sure you’ll get it all sorted in the end.”
“Are you waiting around for something?”
Alice looked up in surprise. “I’m waiting for you to finish questioning Sally. She asked me to leave, but I just wanted to stick around and check once again she was okay.”
“She’s gone.” Sergeant Hogarth frowned down at Alice, his bushy eyebrows making him look quite cross. “We only had to take down a few timings, and we already had a corroborating statement from Ms. Clarkson to say she’d arrived hard on Sally’s heels.” He checked his watch. “I’d say she left a good half hour ago at least.”
Alice felt the day spinning right out of her control. “I didn’t see her,” she gasped, her breath coming in short pants.
“No. There’s a back exit to the office block, and both Sally and Mrs. Dunbar went out there,” the sergeant explained. “It was more private and closer to their cars.”
“Oh.” Alice hung her head, staring at the ground and feeling a bit queasy. “I suppose I’m doing nothing here, then, except feeling a bit foolish.”
“Join the club.” The sergeant beamed a smile in her direction. “Considering I couldn’t even find a seven-year-old boy, I think you missing a grown woman who was probably trying to avoid detection is understandable.”
“You did find him,” Alice pointed out.
“My youngest PC found him. I don’t feel shown up at all!”
Alice laughed and shrugged. “I guess I’ll be on my way, then.” She glanced over at the steps leading up to the principal’s office, then turned away. Today would be hard enough to get through without another reminder of the tragedy. “I’ll see you around.”
“I hope not,” the sergeant said. “At least, not in my day job. I’ve seen quite enough of you there, already.”
As she walked back to her car, Alice could hear him chuckling at his own joke.
Chapter Seven
While Alice sat in the car, wondering if she should go and check on Sally despite all evidence to the contrary, her phone beeped. With a lump swelling in her throat, she squinted at the screen. “Chester out of surgery. OK to visit now.”
Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her dog had survived the surgery. Even if the rest of it wasn’t good news, at least she had that.
The trip to the vet’s surgical center passed in a blur. Alice pulled up outside without remembering a single stop sign or turn. With shaking hands, she undid her seat belt, then sat for a moment longer in the car.
Don’t be a coward. Go in and find out the prognosis.
No matter how stern the voice in her head, Alice still sat in place for a few minutes more. She’d never get back to this spot, not knowing. For the moment, Chester might as well have been Schrodinger’s Dog.
A car door slammed nearby, startling Alice into movement. The double beep as she locked the vehicle sounded like the shrill siren of a tsunami warning. Even the steps of her soft-soled sneakers were too loud, the light in the sky was tweaking too bright.
Inside the vet’s surgery, it was a thousand times worse. The barks, mews, and peeps from every corner were deafening. Still, Alice tilted her head to one side, trying to pick Chester’s distinctive yap out of the concert of noises.
“Miss Townsend?”
Alice jumped and turned around, clutching her hand to her chest. The small blonde receptionist stared at her with raised eyebrows. What had she asked?
“Yes,” Alice said, trying twice before she found her voice. “That’s me.”
“The vet is just finishing up with another patient, then he’ll be through to see you about Chester.”
The lady smiled and gestured to a seat, and Alice sat down, trying to discern another meaning behind the simple words. Did the vet want to see her because the news was good, bad, or just standard policy?
Alice tapped one hand against another and, when her favorite stim offered no relief, switched to her collarbone.
It was a relief to be able to stand and move when the vet signaled for her to come out the back. Alice followed along, hearing a dozen echoes for every footfall, seeing a thousand splashes of color in each ray of light.
“We might have called you in too early, I’m afraid,” Josh Freeman, the vet, said as he waved her into a surgical room. “He hasn’t come around from the anesthetic yet.”
Chester lay on a table, covered with a blue surgical gown that would have struck Alice as amusing under any other circumstances. A tube was taped around her dog’s mouth, and she winced at the thought of how it would tug at his graying hairs when the vet pulled it free.
“Can I touch him?”
“Of course.” Josh moved aside from her, giving Alice the space to walk over to her dog and pull him into a hug. He was a dead weight, heavier than when he sat on the front porch and refused to budge. His breathing was slow, accompanied by a huff from the machine.
“Usually, we’d expect him to have roused by now.” Josh moved over into Alice’s line of sight. “At this stage, it’s nothing to worry about, but if he doesn’t come back to consciousness soon, then he might be in trouble.”
“What do you mean, soon?”
“In the next few hours.” Josh pulled a chair close to the table, then stood up when another vet entered the room, pushing an unconscious standard poodle, its eyes clouded with sleep.
“We can’t stay in here,” the vet continued. “Come through to my office, and we can talk more there.”
Alice gave Chester another hug, pulling him as close to her as his wound and machinery allowed. Then she followed Josh, her head turned to keep Chester in her sights until the door closed.
“We’ll keep a close eye on him for the next few hours,” Josh said with a sigh. “I’m sorry, but we hadn’t realized at the time we called you. Otherwise, I would’ve given you a heads up.”
“But when will I know for sure whether he’s better?”
The vet sighed again, this time shaking his head in a manner that seared a line of pain straight through Alice’s tight chest. “Let’s just keep hoping he wakes up today. This still might just be an unusual overreaction to the anesthetic.”
“Can I sit with him?”
Josh shook his head before Alice could finish the question. “Not while he’s in recovery. That part of the surgical unit is only suitable for quick visits because we have patients in and out of there.”
“So, I only get to visit with him if he gets better?” Alice’s hands pulled up the base of her T-shirt and began to twist it into a little ball, exposing her midriff.
“If Chester is still under the weather when the other surgeries are finished for the day, I’ll let you know. Then, you can spend as much time with him as you need to, this evening.” Josh pursed his lips and frowned for a moment. “I can have a cot set up if you like. Then you can overnight with him.”
Alice shuddered at the thought of waking in the surgery, on a cot, and not hearing the rhythmic sound of Chester’s breathing. Still, she nodded, the gesture so firm and abrupt her fringe fell forward over her face. “That would be great, thanks.”
“And, if he wakes up sooner, we’ll let you know then, of course.”
The route out of the vet’s office was a blank space. Alice blinked and suddenly stood at the car door, her fingers closed around the handle. The sunlight reflected off a puddle of oil in front of her, bright enough to make her wince.
Birds in the nearby trees squawked with raucous voices rather than sang. The noise of car engines on the main road spiraled ever-upward, an endless crescendo of roaring. A backfire crushed her eardrums, sending a bolt of pain into Alice’s inner ear.
She was close to meltdown. She needed to retreat, to get away from the world. There was no way she could drive home in this state, but she needed to curl up in bed and hide away from everything until the universe settled back down.
Alice switched car doors and crawled into the backseat, her muscles stiffening in resistance against the overwhelming senses battering at her brain. When she closed the door, she wept at the effort.
The Honey Trap (A Honeybee Cozy Mystery Book 2) Page 4
