by Glen Ebisch
“I’ll look into it and see what I can find out.”
“Great. I’m going to grab an early lunch. After that, I’m going with Andrew to interview Sam Cryer’s guidance counselor.”
“Guidance counselors,” Ashley said with a snort of disgust. “All they do is try to make you fit in with the so-called normal kids.”
“Maybe so, but apparently Sam went to talk with her quite a lot. We’re hoping he told her about what was bothering him. That could be a clue as to why he was killed.”
Ashley nodded and turned back to her computer screen. Clarissa took the path across to the parsonage. She walked into the kitchen, and the aroma of tomato soup immediately overwhelmed her senses. In an instant she was transported back in time and place to being a little girl on a winter day having lunch with her mother in the kitchen. Clarissa had once counseled a former soldier with PTSD who told her that smells were the most direct links to the horrors of war because there was something about the brain that linked scent to recall. Clarissa could well believe it, and was thankful that most of her connections were to positive things.
“You’re early,” Mrs. Gunn said.
“I have an appointment at one, so I have to eat fast.”
“Soup and a toasted cheese sandwich will be on the table in five minutes. Why don’t you go wash up?”
Feeling very much as if she were back home with her mother, Clarissa went down the hall to the half-bath and carefully washed her hands. She looked in the mirror and studied her blue eyes to see if they appeared bloodshot. Although she was feeling stressed and tired, between worrying about Tyler and trying to catch the intruder at the Shipwreck Inn, her eyes appeared fine and her face looked normal. Ashley had said she was beautiful. Clarissa knew that wasn’t the case, at least not if you used the standards of Hollywood stars and fashion models. She had a pleasant face, an expressive one; one that quickly led people to believe that she was a nice person, maybe nicer than she actually was. People were fast to relax around her and seemed to enjoy her company. For the purposes of her “calling”, that was far better than being beautiful.
By the time she got back to the kitchen, Mrs. Gunn was as good as her word, and a sandwich and soup were at her usual place at the table.
“Where are you off to, then, this afternoon?” she asked.
“Andrew and I are going to see the guidance counselor of the boy who was killed.”
The woman nodded. “I suppose the more information you have, the better the chance of proving poor Tyler innocent.”
“Yes, Tyler certainly had the means and opportunity, but no motive. What we have to show is that someone else had a good motive. But so far we haven’t been able to find anyone with a reason for killing the boy.”
“I hate to say it, but when boys get hurt, it’s often another boy who did it,” said Mrs. Gunn.
“You could be right about that,” Clarissa said thoughtfully. “I’ll make sure to ask his guidance counselor if he’d had a fight with any of the other boys at the school.”
Clarissa quickly finished her lunch and was out the door as soon as she saw Andrew pull up in front of the parsonage.
“That’s what I like, a woman who doesn’t make me wait,” Andrew said as she got in the car.
“Make you wait? I thought I was usually several steps ahead of you.”
Andrew smiled. “You’re probably right about that. I have to stay on my toes with you.”
“What’s the name of the woman we’re going to see?” Clarissa asked as the car pulled away from the curb.
“Lora Willemain. She’s the head guidance counselor at Shore Side High School, but I guess she was also Sam’s personal counselor.”
“Did she sound willing to talk?”
Andrew shrugged. “Actually she was a bit hesitant until I pointed out that an innocent man could go to jail unless we had all the relevant information.”
“Have you made any progress in getting a criminal lawyer to take Tyler’s case?”
“I have a good person all lined up, but Tyler refuses to meet with her. He keeps insisting that he wants me to handle it because he knows and trusts me.”
“I can understand why he might feel that way.”
“Sure, but there comes a time when expertise outweighs trust. We need a person with lots of criminal law experience, and I’m not that guy. Maybe you could have a talk with him and change his mind. You seem to be the only one he listens to.”
“I’m not sure that’s true anymore,” she said, thinking back to how her meeting with Tyler in the diner had ended.
“I think you have to take a shot,” Andrew said, giving her a direct look. “Two weeks isn’t very long for his lawyer to prepare even a preliminary case.”
Clarissa nodded and agreed to see what she could do. A few minutes later they drove into the high school parking lot. The high school itself was a building from the early twentieth century with an extension from the eighties tacked on the side. The overall effect was disconcerting: clearly an instance of function dominating form. They found a parking space near the front door. Immediately inside the front door was a sign with an arrow indicating that all visitors had to sign in at the front office. They followed the arrow and ended up standing at a counter where a short woman with gray hair told them to sign in and carefully scrutinized their IDs. She asked who they were there to see, then gave them a map which she marked with the most direct route to the office they were seeking. She firmly asked them not to deviate from the route, and to return to the office to check out when they were done. She smiled at them as they left the office, but her eyes had the wary look of someone memorizing their faces for a future police lineup.
“It’s like visiting someone in prison,” Andrew muttered as they headed down the hall.
“Not as bad as it could be. Some schools have armed guards.”
“Makes you wonder what we’ve come to.”
Clarissa nodded and consulted the map. “We go right down the next hall.”
A few doors down they came to the office they were seeking. The door was open, but Andrew knocked anyway. A voice invited them to come in.
The woman who stood up from behind the old oak desk and introduced herself as Lora Willemain was in her early fifties with short blond hair mixed with gray. Slender and fit, she impressed Clarissa as someone who would be willing to listen but was also practical.
Once they were seated, Andrew gave a brief rundown of why they were there. When he was done, the question of what she could tell them hung in the air.
“Well, I’ve told the police everything I know. But, of course, they already knew about most of it anyway.”
Andrew frowned. “I’m not clear on what you mean.”
“The police never notified you of our conversation?”
He shook his head.
“That is troubling.” Willemain folded her hands and sat for a moment organizing her thoughts.
“You know that Sam’s father died of a drug overdose.”
“Yes,” Andrew said, “we know that.”
“As a result of that experience, Sam became almost fanatically opposed to drugs. It reached the point where he was reporting students who were selling or using drugs on school grounds.”
“Whom did he report them to?” Andrew asked.
“At first he turned them in to the vice principal, but later he developed some kind of connection with the police.”
“He became a police informant?” Clarissa asked.
Willemain shrugged. “I’m not sure of the precise terminology, but that’s what it amounted to. A school is a small world, and it soon got around that he was doing that.”
“I imagine he wasn’t very popular with the other students, especially those involved with drugs,” Andrew said drily.
The guidance counselor gave a grim smile. “That’s how I got to know him so well. He was frequently getting into fights. Usually as the victim and not the instigator. I tried to get him to curtail his activities, but he
was on a mission. You could even say he was a martyr about it.”
“Did you discuss this with Sam’s mother?” asked Clarissa.
“I tried to reach her, but she works so much it was very difficult. And Sam was not really very cooperative about contacting her. Anyway, before I could reach her the fights stopped rather suddenly. It was in May of last year.”
“Why was that?” Andrew asked.
“There were two reasons. By then any students involved with drugs had become very cautious whenever Sam was around, so there was less and less for him to report. Secondly, Cory Malone, a major drug supplier in the school, got in trouble with the police. Part of his plea deal, as I understand it, was that his parents send him to a special residential school out of state.”
“Did his arrest come about as a result of some information Sam passed along?”
“I believe so.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us about Sam?” Andrew asked.
She paused. “He came to see me a couple of weeks after school opened this year. We talked about his new interest in going to college and how he was going to have to improve his grades over the next two years.”
“Is that why he entered the tutoring program?” Clarissa asked.
“Yes. He had already entered that when he came to see me. He definitely needed help in math, which was his weakest subject.”
“We heard that something seemed to be troubling him shortly before he was killed. Did he express any concerns to you?” Andrew asked.
“He told me he was no longer going to help the police track down students involved with drugs because he was tired of getting in fights and it would interfere with his getting good grades. I told him that I thought that was a good idea. Then he said there was still one thing he had to take care of.”
“Did he say what it was?” Andrew asked.
“No, but he said that it had nothing to do with the people in school.” She shook her head. “I warned him not to get in anything that could get him into trouble. He agreed, but he wasn’t listening. You develop a sixth sense for that when you work with adolescents. They pretend to agree with you, but it’s not really registering. Those are the times you might as well save your breath.”
When it was clear that there was nothing more Lorna Willemain could tell them about Sam, Clarissa and Andrew thanked her and left. They returned to the office and signed out under the watchful eyes of the same clerk.
It wasn’t until they were outside walking across the parking lot that Andrew exploded. “I can’t believe that Baker didn’t tell me about Sam’s involvement as an informant for the police. I’m tempted to go to the judge and make a complaint. This opens the door to a host of suspects for his murder. He probably had lots of enemies at school.”
“I think you should definitely get in touch with Lieutenant Baker and find out why you weren’t informed about Sam’s activities. But I’m not sure that another student is responsible for his death. It seems to me that if it was someone he had turned in to the police, it would have happened last year when he was in the midst of his activities.”
Andrew shrugged. “Some people like their revenge to come later. And I am definitely going to ask Baker what he knows about this Cory Malone. He sounds like a prime suspect.”
“I think we should find out more about him, especially how often he comes home from this residential facility.”
“I’m going right to the police department now. Do you want to come with me?”
She shook her head. “No, I have to work on my report for the church board meeting on Wednesday. Plus I think this is a legal matter that should be between you as Tyler’s lawyer and Lieutenant Baker. I’d just be a distraction.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Andrew finally agreed.
Chapter Twenty-One
Clarissa went into her office after saying goodbye to Andrew. Ashley was gone, leaving only a note in the middle of her desk saying she looked forward to talking to Clarissa and Officer R tonight. Clarissa went into her own office and sat in the ergonomic chair that Reverend Hollingsworth had purchased, no doubt at great expense to the church. Although she would never have bought it for herself, she had to admit that it was comfortable. She was somewhat heartened by what they had learned from Lorna Willemain. At least now there was another avenue to investigate that led away from Tyler, and it suggested that Sam had a passion for punishing drug dealers and users that could have gotten him in trouble with the wrong people.
Putting her various investigations out of her mind, Clarissa settled down to working on her monthly report for the church board. She had to briefly discuss all her activities of the month, propose and defend any new budgetary requests, and outline all future plans. She had just completed explaining why it was necessary to replace the floor in the steeple tower when the phone rang. It was Tyler, and he was in an apologetic mode.
“I wanted to say how sorry I am for walking out on you at the diner the other day. And I don’t suppose you needed to hear once again that I’m unhappy we ever broke up. All I can say in extenuation is that I’m very stressed right now, as you can imagine, and my mind just keeps going around in circles about bad things.”
“I can understand that,” Clarissa said. “If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t completely gotten over us either. After all this legal business is over, I hope we can work together to find some sense of completeness.”
“I’d like that, too.”
“It might cheer you up to know that Andrew and I have just discovered another line of inquiry into Sam’s death.” Clarissa went on to explain about Sam’s involvement in drug enforcement within his school, and his hint that he was still pursuing someone from outside the school setting.”
“I knew his father was dead,” Tyler said, “but I had no idea it was a drug overdose. Sam never shared his strong views on drugs with me.”
“So he never gave you a hint about what he might be up to recently?”
“Not a word. Look, how about I get in touch with Ted Sullivan, his math tutor, and ask if Sam mentioned anything to him?”
“Good idea. I’m going to urge the police to dig into the backgrounds of everyone outside the school who Sam saw regularly to find out if anyone had any criminal involvement with drugs.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Tyler paused. “After Andrew suggested that I get a criminal lawyer for my hearing in two weeks, I’ve done nothing but stress. How am I going to be able to pay for that? Now maybe I won’t have to.”
“I still think you should consider it. Even though we now have a hopeful line of inquiry, we don’t know how long it will be before it bears fruit. If money is the problem, I can always loan you some. I spend all my time working, so I’ve got nothing to spend it on anyway.”
Tyler sighed. “My self-respect tells me one thing, but my need to stay out of jail tells me another. But let me wait a few days to decide on this criminal lawyer thing, by then our new lead may have developed into something.”
“Okay. But I don’t think Andrew is going to let you delay making a decision for much longer. He’s starting to feel the pressure.”
“I’m sure he is. He’s been a brick so far, but I know he has a professional responsibility to see that I have competent counsel. If he can’t do it, we’ll have to hire somebody else.”
“I’ll give you a call in a couple of days to see what you’ve decided, and please take my offer of financial help seriously. You can take all the time you need to pay me back.”
“Thanks again, Clarissa, I owe you.”
After hanging up, Clarissa stared at the soothing mahogany walls, letting her mind relax and unknot. She hoped the drug angle would lead somewhere, because otherwise Tyler was going to be in serious trouble. Even though Tyler didn’t have a motive for killing Sam, means and opportunity might easily be enough to convince a jury.
*****
Ashley sat in a wing-backed chair during tea time in the parlor of The Ship Wreck Inn and struggled to stay aw
ake. The tea was definitely not doing it for her, and she was getting progressively more drowsy as she listened to her fellow boarders go on endlessly about topics that hardly deserved a mention. Even her blond wig and bubbly new personality were starting to fade, and she could feel her waistline expanding as she had her second scone with berries and cream, eating to stay awake.
Ashley tuned back into the conversation just in time to hear Leslie Harmon sum up the governance problems in her local quilt guild.
“We had a similar problem in an antiques group I belonged to once,” Denise said. “We were supposed to go around to garage and estate sales together and make purchases. The idea was that we would share knowledge, so everyone would make a better selection. But soon it got competitive with people arguing over who saw what first. After a while we sort of decided to go our separate ways.”
“Do you belong to any organizations?” Joe asked Ashley with a smile.
She shook her head. “I’m sort of a lone wolf. I go my own way.”
“But a pretty girl like you must have a boyfriend,” Leslie said.
Remembering she was wearing her blond wig, Ashley bit back a sarcastic reply. “Oh, I’m always looking for Mr. Right,” she chirped.
“Aren’t we all?” Denise muttered.
Ashley stood up and stretched, planning to go to her room for a brief nap since she was going to be staying up until midnight.
“Do you think we’ll see the ghost tonight?” Leslie asked.
“Only in our dreams,” Ashley said.
“Oh, he’s real all right. You wouldn’t have any doubt about that if you heard him thumping on your door,” Leslie said.
“Or felt his hands on your back,” Denise added with a visible shiver.
“Well, he’d better not bother me. I’m not afraid of any ghost. See you all in the morning,” Ashley said. She smiled to herself as she left the room. If any of these people were in league with the intruder, her smug attitude was certain to have made her the next victim. She only hoped that she could make good on her brave statements.
Chapter Twenty-Two
