Sharpe Image: Prequel Novella (Maycroft Mystery Series Book 0)

by Lisa B. Thomas

  “Hello?”

  “We have a lead,” Detective Evans said.

  “We? I’m just a teacher.”

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “By the way, I interviewed Lacy and showed her the picture. She’s mad as heck at Derrick, but she thinks she can get him to come back home now that he’s been cleared.”

  Deena spotted one of her more hyper students headed across the room. She covered the receiver with her hand. “Hayden! Don’t run with scissors!” Then back in the phone, “Freshmen. What are you going to do? Am I right?”

  “I know you’re busy,” Evans said, “so I’ll make this quick. Harlan Granbury said he was taking pictures of the old stadium sign when Carl Greene snapped that picture at the end of the football game. He says he’s writing a book on the history of Maycroft.”

  “That’s great. Were you able to see the Baldwins in the picture? Was it Mr. Baldwin or Justin Metz?”

  “Justin Metz? What are you talking about?”

  Oops. Had she really said that out loud? “Sorry. I was talking to a kid in my class.” She crossed her fingers behind her back.

  “Whatever. Anyway, I haven’t seen the pictures yet. He was using a film camera and the police lab can’t process it.”

  “So, run it up to the drugstore. They can have it ready in an hour.”

  “It’s black-and-white film. I’ll have to send it off to a lab and it will take at least a week to get back.”

  “A week? Where are you sending it? China?”

  “Believe it or not, a possible homicide in Maycroft isn’t the only crime the forensics lab in Dallas has on its plate. I was hoping you might know someone who could process it locally. Like you said, Lacy is genuinely afraid of her father. The sooner we see these pictures, the sooner we can get this all straightened out.”

  “Let me think,” she said. “The community college has shut down their photo lab. They’ve gone all digital. I don’t know any local photographers who still do their own processing.” She bit her lip. Did she really want to get further involved in this mess? She pictured Lacy’s sad eyes. “I guess I can do it. I teach a short unit on film development and enlarging photos.”

  “Great!”

  “But I won’t be able to do it until after school,” she added quickly.

  “Perfect. I’ll drop it off at the front desk. Granbury said the pictures we need should be the last three or four on the roll. You can call me when it’s done.”

  Part of her dreaded being responsible for the only evidence in a possible murder case. Another part of her was strangely excited. She’d be the first person to lay eyes on those images. She’d know before anyone else if Mrs. Baldwin died of an accident or was murdered. She’d help bring justice for Lacy.

  That part of her, the justice seeking part, couldn’t wait for school to let out.

  • 9 •

  Her hands shook as she entered the darkroom with the metal reel and canister to load up the black-and-white film left by Detective Evans. Not only was it the best evidence they had to solve a crime, but it also contained pictures taken for Harlan Granbury’s book. She didn’t want to mess it up.

  But a number of things could go wrong. The film might not wrap correctly on the reel. There may be a light leak in the ancient darkroom. The chemicals may have gone bad and may not work. She might drop the lid of the canister while shaking it. She might be attacked by zombies.

  Curses, Ansel Adams! Why had she agreed to do this? She tried to put all the previously ruined rolls of film out of her mind. It was time for lights out.

  Her hands trembled as she opened the end of the metal film reel, being careful not to cut her fingers on the jagged edge. She squinted her eyes shut even though it was pitch-dark. That one trick helped her better visualize with her mind’s eye what she was doing. She felt around and found the scissors on the counter in front of her and cut the end of the film off with a slight arc, the way she had learned in college. Taking the reel in her left hand and the tip of the film roll in her right, she eased the edge under the clip. The key here was making sure the sides of the film were perfectly centered so that the film would load onto the spiral reel correctly the first time.

  Since the digital camera revolution, she had fallen out of practice. Ten years ago, she could do this in her sleep. Now, she only did it a handful of times a year when she taught her film unit.

  She held the tips of her fingers against the edges of the metal and gently squeezed the sides of the film as she spun the reel in a circle. So far so good. Generally, she worked with film with just twelve exposures. This one had thirty-six. The longer the film, the higher the possibility that it would get off track and stick to itself during development. She could feel the sweat in her armpits. Finally, she came to the end of the roll. She felt for the canister, dropped the reel inside, and put the lid on it. Just to be sure, she felt around the edges of the lid to be certain it was all the way on.

  She held her breath and felt on the wall in front of her for the switch to the room’s safety light. Turning it on, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the room’s dim, yellow glow. The canister looked good from the outside. She let out her breath, satisfied she had successfully jumped the first hurdle.

  The genius who designed the photography set up put the main light switch on the wall opposite the darkroom entrance. She maneuvered her way around the boxes of old yearbooks that were stacked in the middle of the room. When the English department complained they were taking up too much space in their storage closet, she had moved them into the darkroom temporarily. She hit the switch and light flooded the room.

  Step two. She measured out the developer and inserted a thermometer. The temperature was a little colder than usual, which meant a longer developing time. According to the chart, she would have to process the film for seven minutes, inverting the canister every forty-five seconds. Some people inverted every thirty seconds, but she didn’t want it to come out too grainy. It would be the longest seven minutes of her life—next to the last seven minutes of a boring professional development meeting, that is.

  She set the timer and began the developing process. She wondered what all was on the film. What other pictures had Mr. Granbury taken? Hopefully there were no x-rated shots of him and the missus.

  Ewww! Why had she thought that? The man was nearly seventy.

  She picked up the bottle of fixer. This was the chemical that stopped the developing process and made the images permanent. Whenever she taught students how to develop film, she would compare it to getting a perm for your hair. The first chemical curls it, and the second chemical neutralizes the first chemical so that the curls will last. Nowadays, though, the kids just looked at her as though she’d just stepped out of an episode of Little House on the Prairie. Did these kids even know who Laura Ingalls Wilder was?

  Oops. Time to invert the canister. She realized she wasn’t wearing protective gloves and safety goggles as per the school’s safety regulations. That was from another one of those boring meetings she had to attend year after year. She reached under the sink and pulled out a pair of each and put them on. If she ever had a situation where she wanted to do things by the book, this was it.

  Her mind wandered as she imagined the scene at Judy Osborne’s house when Evans showed Lacy the picture with Derrick and the “other woman.” Had Lacy cried? Yelled? Deena knew that Lacy would eventually survive this horrible time in her life, but she hoped it wouldn’t leave any lasting scars. Adolescence was hard enough in normal times.

  Inversion time again. Deena thought about Paul Metz and his anger earlier in the day. It reminded her that she wanted to take a closer look at the pictures to see if she’d missed something. Maybe he was standing on the sidelines next to Lynette and the cheerleaders. Since she’d given her copy of the print to Evans, she’d have to pull it up on the monitor to take a look. She waited until time to shake the canister again and then pulled off the goggles and gloves and stepped into the blackness of the metal revolving
door that connected the darkroom to the classroom. Her students loved that door. They likened it to being beamed up in a spaceship.

  The flash drive was in her purse, locked in the bottom drawer of her desk. By the time she got it out and clicked through to the pictures, it was time to mind the film again. The timer indicated just four-and-a-half more minutes until she would need to rinse and add the fixer.

  She dashed back to her computer and enlarged the area of the photo where the cheerleaders were standing. She saw Lacy, the other seven girls, the mascot, a trainer, and a security guard. No Metz. And more curiously, no Lynette. Wouldn’t the sponsor be on the field with the girls?

  She rushed back into the darkroom, having gone past the time she was supposed to rock the canister back and forth. It shouldn’t be a problem, but she wanted to be sure to finish it up correctly. She put the gloves and goggles back on.

  It was finally time to rinse the film with water and add the fixer. Ten minutes more with sixty-second intervals between inversions. She reset the timer.

  You know what they say about an idle mind. Deena’s imagination began to run wild. What if Natalie Baldwin had threatened to expose her affair with Justin to school authorities and he decided to kill her? And maybe, he got Lynette to help. Maybe Lynette was supposed to distract the husband while Justin pushed the wife over the railing. Or maybe it was vice versa. Or maybe Lynette had just gone to the ladies’ room since the game was almost over.

  Deena shook her head. She’d know soon enough. She picked up the canister, holding it carefully over the sink. Maybe that would make the time tick by faster.

  One thought she couldn’t shake away was Metz’s insistence on getting his hands on that flash drive and Mr. Haskett’s apparent ignorance about the situation. Someone dying at a school event was a huge deal—accident or not. She had seen enough crime dramas to know that if the husband didn’t commit the crime, it was most likely the secret lover.

  Without a doubt, Metz had a motive to silence Natalie Baldwin.

  “Mrs. Sharpe?” a deep, muffled voice called from outside the darkroom.

  It was probably Detective Evans, anxious to know what was on the pictures. She stepped into the round door and pushed it in a circle. When it opened, she froze. It wasn’t Joe Evans.

  • 10 •

  She couldn’t have been more scared if she had woken up in the middle of a Stephen King movie. Every muscle in her body told her to run. The problem was, Justin Metz stood between her and the only exit to the classroom.

  She willed her feet to move one direction or the other—either back into the revolving door or charging toward the hallway. But it was no use. The linoleum floor had turned to quick-sand and she was stuck.

  Metz took a step closer.

  “Stay back!” She held up her gloved hand and realized she was still holding the film tank. “This canister is filled with highly toxic chemicals. It will burn your face off, then nobody will have you. Not Lynette. Not anybody!”

  Metz’s face twisted like a monster’s. His brow furrowed and his eyes became two narrow slits. “For heaven’s sake, Mrs. Sharpe, what’s wrong with you? Are you high? Have you been huffing those chemicals or something?”

  Her body shook from head to toe. Humidity from her sweaty brow clouded her safety goggles. “What? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, are you all right?” He took another step toward her.

  Clearly, he wasn’t getting the message. Her bluff about the chemicals wasn’t working, even though she looked ready for a guest spot on Bill Nye the Science Guy. She thought about removing the lid of the canister and pretending like she was going to throw it at him. If she did, she might ruin the only evidence the police would have to identify her killer. She looked around for something else she could use as a weapon. Her cell phone was in her purse. She lunged for the desk and grabbed a pair of scissors. They were student safety scissors, but they would have to do. “Stay back!”

  Metz held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “No problem. Calm down now. I just came by to apologize.”

  “Apologize? For what? For killing me? For killing Natalie Baldwin?”

  “What? No! I didn’t kill anybody and I’m not here to hurt you. I wanted to apologize for the way I treated you yesterday and this morning. Obviously, you know what I was trying to hide.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “My relationship with Lynette.”

  “Oh,” she said and relaxed.

  “Obviously, you also know about my…um…indiscretion with Mrs. Baldwin. I guess it’s just a matter of time until Haskett hears about it, too. The truth is that I didn’t do anything with her, but she threatened to say I did if I didn’t change her daughter’s schedule. It’s tough being a man in this business sometimes.” He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “How do I know you are telling the truth?” she asked, still brandishing the scissors.

  “You can call Lynette and ask her. She knows all about it. Even Ms. Marshall knows. Heck, I’ve decided to go ahead and tell Haskett about what happened with Natalie Baldwin tomorrow before he hears it from somebody else.”

  Deena remembered the film and gave it a shake. She tossed the scissors back on the desk. “So why were you so anxious to get your hands on those pictures?”

  “At the end of the football game, right before Mrs. Baldwin fell, Lynette and I were together under the bleachers.”

  Deena scrunched up her face. “Really? Doing what?”

  “We weren’t making out or anything. We just exchanged a quick kiss. I was afraid it might have been caught on camera. It was just after that when we saw someone hit the pavement. That’s also when I realized Carl Greene was taking pictures.”

  Deena remembered the shot of Metz keeping onlookers away from the body. He had gotten there fast. It’s doubtful he would have been one of the first on the scene if he had been the killer. She looked him straight in the eyes. “I guess you saw that you weren’t in any of the photos.”

  “Right.”

  “So why are you telling me all this?”

  “Guilty conscience, I suppose. I know some of the older—I mean, veteran teachers think I’m a joke because I’ve moved up the ranks so fast, but I’m really trying to do a good job. I care about kids and teachers.”

  “Hmm. Your track record doesn’t speak too well for you, especially dating a teacher on the same campus.”

  He lowered his eyes. “You can’t always help who you fall in love with.”

  Deena’s heart did that squeezy thing it did when she put herself in someone else’s shoes and felt bad for them. “That’s true. So what are you going to do about it?”

  “If Haskett finds out about us, they’ll probably move me to the middle school. The middle school, Mrs. Sharpe. Do you know how crazy those kids are? I’d rather drive a school bus than be transferred there. Anyway, Lynette said she would be willing to work at another district after the end of the school year. So right now, our plan is to lay low.”

  Deena glanced at the clock. “Well, I accept your apology. Right now, though, I have to finish developing this film.”

  “Okay,” he said, turning to leave. “Don’t stay too late. And be careful with those nasty chemicals.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “They’re not really that dangerous. It’s not like they could kill you or anything.”

  • 11 •

  It was the moment of truth. Time to take the film out of the canister and look at it. She rinsed off the fixing agents and removed the reel. The film was wound evenly, which meant none of it would be underdeveloped. As she unwound the roll, the images appeared. Success!

  The strip of film would need to dry before she could really look at what it contained. She carried it over to the drying rack to hang it up. Right now, dust was her biggest enemy. She turned on the heat lamp and shut the door slowly so as not to stir the air any more than necessary.

  She quickly cleaned an
d put away the film chemicals and equipment. Under one of the enlarging stations, she found the three developing trays she needed. She filled one with paper developer, one with a stop solution, and one with fixer. As soon as the film was dry, she would make a contact sheet of the negatives.

  Waiting for film to dry was like waiting for a cake to bake. The more you opened the oven to check on it, the longer it took. Not that she did much baking. In fact, she wasn’t much of a cook at all. Luckily, Gary loved to grill and there were several decent restaurants in the small Texas town of Maycroft.

  She checked her cell phone. No messages from Gary. He was used to her coming home late. She texted him anyway so he wouldn’t be worried.

  As excited as she was to see what secrets the film might uncover, she couldn’t help but think about Lacy. What would happen if her father turned out to be guilty of the unthinkable? She decided to give the picture on her computer one more look. Besides, she needed to kill time.

  The monitor had gone dark so she shook her mouse. There it was. The image that had started it all. She scanned the faces in the crowd. Maybe they had missed something before. Could there have been another witness? Surely that person would have come forward if they had actually witnessed a murder.

  She recognized a number of students. Some of the younger teachers were also among the spectators. Like them, she used to attend many school events to show support for her students. But now, after thirty-something years in the classroom, she was lucky just to drag herself to work every day, much less make it to all the extracurricular activities.

  Something caught her eye. Who was that man sitting by himself? He looked familiar. Then she recognized him as a guy who used to work with Gary. What was his name?

  She enlarged the picture on the monitor to get a better look at him. Then it hit her. She knew exactly who it was. Not only that, but she had a feeling she knew why he was sitting alone in the stands.

  She grabbed her scissors and raced back into the darkroom, stumbling through the revolving door. She had waited long enough. If the film was still wet, she would use the blow dryer on it. Unconventional, but effective. Evans had said to look at the last four shots on the roll. The film felt dry enough to handle, so she carefully cut off the last four frames. She slipped the strip into a plastic sleeve and turned on the safety light.