Stiff Penalty (A Mattie Winston Mystery)

by Annelise Ryan

  “What are you dying from this week, Mom?”

  “I’m pretty sure I have a brain tumor.”

  This declaration didn’t concern me at all. My mother has had several suspected brain tumors over the years, along with a host of other imagined ailments, all of which turned out to be nothing.

  “I’m dizzy when I get up too fast, and I have this full, pressure feeling in my head. What else could it be?” my mother went on.

  “It could be the cold you’ve had for the past few days. Have you taken a decongestant like I told you?”

  “I’ve heard that decongestants can make your blood pressure rise, and if I have a brain tumor, that’s the last thing I need. The pressure inside my head needs to remain as low as possible.”

  Technically, she was right about the blood pressure thing. My mother isn’t your garden-variety hypochondriac; she’s a well-studied one. Despite no formal medical training, she has a library most medical schools would envy, and she has read every book. Her knowledge proved useful when I was in nursing school. She would grill me on a wide assortment of disorders, diseases, and maladies, and she was as knowledgeable and well-informed as any teacher or tutor could have been. But since I was pretty sure she didn’t really have a brain tumor, and I had neither the time nor the patience for her usual theatrics, I ignored this last comment and got straight to the reason for my call.

  “Mom, was my father’s name Cedric Novak?”

  There was a lengthy silence on the other end, which gave me my answer.

  “And did you know he was a criminal when you married him?”

  “What has happened?” she said finally. “Has he contacted you?”

  “If by contacted you mean has he tried to kill me, then yes.”

  “What? Don’t be ridiculous. Your father wouldn’t try to kill you. He loved you, Mattie. He may not have been a perfect man, and he may not have been as devoted to me as he should have been, but one thing about him that no one could deny was that he loved you.”

  This made my heart seize in my chest. My eyes burned as I fought back tears, and it took me a few seconds to find my voice. “Have you heard anything from him over the years?” I asked. “Has he ever been in Florida?”

  Again my question was met with silence, and after listening to it for several pounding heartbeats, I went off on a rant, propelled by my anger, hurt, and confusion. “He has been in Florida, hasn’t he? And you’ve been in contact with him, haven’t you? Why didn’t you tell me? Do you know that the man who tried to kill me was from Florida? And do you know that I was getting strange hang-up calls for weeks before he tried to kill me? The cops traced those calls to a burner cell that the man who shot me had, one that was bought in Florida. Then I got another call yesterday, and that one also came from a burner phone that was bought in Florida. And I’m pretty sure dead men don’t make phone calls. So put it all together, Mom. A man who looked like my father was peering in my cottage windows a couple of months ago, and someone tried to kill me a few days ago. I’m still getting weird phone calls, and all of this leads back to Florida.”

  “I can’t explain what’s happened to you, Mattie, but I know your father would never hurt you.”

  “How do you know that, Mom? What are you keeping from me?”

  “I’m not keeping anything from you. I just know that your father wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “What about other people? Has he hurt other people? Do you know that he’s suspected of killing a cop?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “From the cops, Mom, where else?”

  “Well, they’re wrong. He wouldn’t do that. Your father was not a killer. He may not have been an angel, but he was no killer.”

  “Did you know he was a criminal when you married him?”

  “He wasn’t, at least not at the time. I knew he had done some things in the past, but he had turned his life around and wanted to start fresh.”

  “Then why did he leave?”

  My mother sighed, and the next words she spoke came out in what Desi and I used to call her mother-knows-best tone of voice, the one that made it clear she would brook no questions or back talk. “Some things are better left alone, Mattie. That insatiable curiosity of yours always got you into trouble when you were younger, and it’s still doing it today. You need to leave this alone and move on. You’re starting your own family now, however misguided that may be. Let it be enough for you.”

  I knew she wasn’t going to tell me anything more, so I hung up on her. I splashed some water on my face, hoping to cool myself down, and when I felt I had my emotions under control, I left the bathroom.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was wearing a T-shirt Hurley had packed in the spare bag he kept in his trunk with Richmond’s old vest over it. Over that was the top I was wearing that day, which fortunately was one of the looser-fitting new maternity tops I had just bought. As we headed out to the parking lot, the vest was already chafing me under my arms and around my hips.

  Once again Charlie opted to take her own car, and I rode with Hurley, who watched with amusement as I struggled to grab hold of my shoulder belt and fasten it.

  “That missing laptop was a good catch,” he said as we pulled out of the lot.

  “I guess,” I said, finally snapping my belt into place.

  Hurley shot me a look, his brow drawn into a V of worry. “Uh oh, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “You’re lying. I can tell when something is bugging you, and right now something is bugging you. So spill it.”

  There was no way I was going to tell him what was actually bugging me at that moment, so I told a half-truth instead. “It’s this stupid vest. It’s hot, itchy, and restrictive.”

  “A little discomfort is better than being dead.”

  “What if someone aims for my head? What good is the vest going to do me then?”

  “None,” Hurley admitted. “But unless someone is a sharpshooter with sniper experience, the odds of them hitting you in the head are much smaller than the odds of you getting hit in the chest or gut. They’re going to aim for the largest target.”

  “Even if they know I’m wearing a vest?”

  “They won’t know if you keep it hidden.”

  “Yeah, like no one can tell there’s something strange under here,” I snapped, pulling at my top. Plus it’s May, Hurley. The weather is getting warmer every day. How much longer do you expect me to wear this thing? I feel like I’m in a sweatbox.” I stared down at the square shape of my top below my bust. “Hell, I look like a sweatbox.”

  “You look fine. Now tell me what’s really bothering you.”

  Damn the man! I quickly dug up a second half-truth. “It’s this case. Something about it doesn’t feel right.”

  “You don’t think Jacob did it?”

  “I don’t know if it’s that I actually believe he didn’t do it, or if I need to believe he didn’t do it. The idea of a kid killing one of his parents is kind of scary, especially now.”

  “Yeah, I suppose it is,” Hurley said. “But just because Jacob Ames might be messed up, it doesn’t mean our kid will be. If you raise them right and instill the correct values into them, they turn out okay.”

  “I don’t know if I believe that, Hurley. I think some people are just born bad, and no amount of nurturing is going to make a difference. Derrick Ames seemed to be a loving and caring father, by all accounts, and Wendy, despite keeping her sexual identity issues a secret, seems to be a decent mother. Granted, if Jacob did this, it would seem to be a heat-of-the-moment kind of thing as opposed to some kind of personality flaw. But I can’t help thinking that if it could happen to Derrick Ames, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to me.”

  “You actually think that our kid might grow up and kill you someday?”

  The skepticism in Hurley’s voice made the idea sound utterly ridiculous, and under normal circumstances, it might have been. But now I knew things I hadn’t known before. No
w I had to face the fact that my child was going to be the product of a genetic roll of the dice that included my law-breaking, murderous father. It was knowledge I intended to keep to myself.

  “I know I’m being ridiculous,” I said, trying to laugh it off. “I think it’s the hormones. This pregnancy stuff does weird things to your mind and your body.”

  “Speaking of your body, I’m excited about this ultrasound thing tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, about that . . . I really don’t want to know the sex until it’s born, so please don’t ask, and if they offer to tell you, please decline. If you know, you’ll give it away somehow.”

  “You don’t think I can keep a secret?”

  “I’m sure you can. But down the road something you’ll say, or something you’ll do will give it away. I just know it. So can we please agree to wait on it?”

  Hurley shrugged with indifference. “Sure. I don’t need an ultrasound to tell me anyway. I already know.”

  “Your second sight?” I said with no small amount of sarcasm.

  “Go ahead and mock,” Hurley said. “You’ll see, and soon you’ll believe.”

  When we arrived at Derrick’s house, Richmond and Hurley bordered me on both sides as we headed inside. Wendy didn’t object to our search this time, and the look on her face—frightened, bewildered, shocked—showed how much the previous day’s events had devastated her.

  We split into pairs: Richmond and I together, and Charlie and Hurley together. I wasn’t happy about the arrangement and did what little damage control I could by declaring the upstairs as our area. At least this way I could keep Charlie and Hurley from being in a bedroom together.

  Our search took a little less than an hour, and while we didn’t find a laptop, we did find a thumb drive stashed in Derrick’s sock drawer. We bagged it, tagged it, and then headed for the Fitzpatrick house.

  Once again Mrs. Fitzpatrick was polite and more than accommodating, though she did bite back a smile when she looked at my boxy torso. “I haven’t seen any new laptops here in the house,” she told us. “You’re welcome to look in Sean’s room, or anywhere else you like. And you can talk to Sean, too, if you want. He’s here because he was suspended from school for a week.”

  “What for?” I asked, eager to learn the warning signs of a budding juvenile delinquent.

  “Smoking pot in one of the boy’s bathrooms,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said with a weary sigh. “He refuses to tell anyone where he got the pot from and took the suspension instead.” She shook her head and flashed us a weary smile. “He’s no angel, but he’s also no rat. He’s always been that way, even when he was little. When one of the other kids did something, Sean would never tell on them. It’s his code, I guess. And I suppose some ethic is better than none.”

  If Mrs. Fitzpatrick was right, Sean’s code meant that even if he knew something about Jacob and the missing laptop, he wasn’t likely to tell us. At first, the boy wouldn’t even talk to or acknowledge us, but his mother elicited his reluctant cooperation by threatening to send him away to some camp for troubled kids. His attitude was surly initially, but that vanished when he laid eyes on Charlie for the first time. After that he was tripping all over himself to be helpful, friendly, and cooperative.

  Unfortunately, our search turned up nothing, and Sean swore that he never saw Jacob with an extra laptop here, at school, or anywhere else where the two boys might have hooked up. Richmond questioned Sean for a good ten minutes, and despite the kid’s starry-eyed efforts to impress Charlie, hints of his underlying, innate bad-assitude kept seeping out in his facial expressions, his body language, and some of the things he said. By the time we left, I don’t think any of us felt we could believe or trust a single thing Sean had told us.

  Our time at the Fitzpatrick house depressed me and made me determined to avoid a similar fate. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life exhausted, frustrated, and existing rather than living, struggling to maintain a household filled with bratty children and a TV-addicted husband who lived in a Barcalounger, whiling away the hours of my life in an endless cycle of cooking, cleaning, harping, and crying.

  Having reached a dead end with these legs of the investigation, we moved on to the school, which was located on several acres of land on the west end of town about six blocks back from Main Street. It was a sprawling, stone, two-story building with a football field, tennis courts, and a baseball diamond on the grounds.

  We headed inside and found our way to the main office. A receptionist greeted us, and as soon as Richmond flashed his badge and told her why we were there, she called back to the principal and relayed the information. When she was done, she hung up the phone and said, “Mrs. Knowles will be with you momentarily.”

  We stepped back to allow a student who had come in behind us to carry out his business. He approached the desk, handed the receptionist a piece of paper, and said, “This is my mom’s excuse for missing school Friday.”

  “It wasn’t your mom who missed school,” the receptionist said.

  The kid stared at her in confusion. “Was my mom supposed to be here for something?”

  “Never mind,” the receptionist said with a little laugh, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

  The kid shrugged, mumbled something I couldn’t make out, and then shuffled off to his class, the hems of his worn blue jeans dragging on the ground, his longish hair hanging in his pockmarked face.

  The receptionist read the note, smiled, and lay it atop a pile of other papers in a two-tiered file tray.

  I glanced over and read the note, which said:

  Please excuse John from school on Friday. His girlfriend was having there baby.

  So much for getting an education.

  Mrs. Knowles came out of her office and walked over to greet us. She had a friendly face with a warm smile, and her gray hair and matronly build gave her a grandmotherly aura. I couldn’t help but compare her to my own high school principal, Mr. Dean, a tall, skinny, bespectacled man in his fifties, who we determined developed his theories on student behavior from the Gestapo. We called him lean, mean Mr. Dean behind his back.

  “I’m Jeanette Knowles, the principal here. How can I help you folks today?”

  Richmond produced his badge, made the introductions, and then said, “I assume you’ve heard about Mr. Ames?”

  “Yes, yes, a terrible thing. Is it true that you arrested Jacob?”

  “Jacob has been detained, but we’re still investigating the case,” Richmond said, giving me a tired look. “Have you ever seen Mr. Ames carrying a laptop around?”

  “Sure,” Jeanette said. “Most of our teachers have laptops or tablets. Why?”

  “We’re trying to locate Mr. Ames’s laptop. Is it here at the school by any chance?” Richmond’s voice sounded hopeful.

  Jeanette dashed his hopes when she frowned and said, “I’m certain he wouldn’t have left it here. Something like that would be a little too much temptation for some of our students, I’m afraid.”

  Richmond wasn’t going down without a fight. “If he was going to leave something like that here, where would it be? Did he have a desk? A locker? An office? What about the teacher’s lounge?”

  “None of our teachers have private offices. Mr. Ames did have a desk—all of our teachers do, but the locks are rather flimsy, so most of them don’t keep anything of value in them, and we emptied Derrick’s desk yesterday. There was no laptop. We do have some lockers in the teacher’s lounge for our staff to store their personal belongings.”

  “I assume that Derrick Ames had one?”

  “He did, but it’s empty.”

  “I’d like to see it. I would also like to have a look inside the lockers of Jacob Ames and Sean Fitzpatrick.”

  “Sean? Why him?”

  “We think Jacob may have taken Derrick’s laptop from his father’s house, and since he and the Fitzpatrick boy are friends, we think he may have given it to him to keep.”

  “Do you have a warrant?”


  “I do not,” Richmond said.

  “Then I’m not comfortable letting you search our students’ lockers. Some of our parents might get upset over such an invasion of their child’s privacy.”

  “There is no expectation of privacy in a student’s locker,” Richmond said. “The school owns the lockers, and it’s up to you to decide to let us search or not. I think it would be in your best interest to let us search the lockers of these two boys, but if you disagree, I’ll be happy to get a search warrant that will include every locker in this school.”

  Jeanette sighed and said, “We just searched Sean’s locker last Friday because he was caught smoking pot in the boy’s room. There was no laptop in there, and we suspended him for the week, so he hasn’t been back since then.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to look for myself,” Richmond said with a forced, plastic smile.

  Jeanette sighed again, louder and more exaggerated this time. I think she sensed Richmond wasn’t going to back down. “Fine,” she said, heading for the office door. “Follow me.”

  Chapter 32

  Our search of the teacher’s lounge produced nothing more than stares, whispered speculations, and some strategic ducking whenever the camera was around. Derrick’s locker was empty, just as Jeanette Knowles had said, and nothing turned up in Jacob’s or Sean’s lockers, either. So far our trip to the school was a bust, and Jeannette had a smug, I-told-you-so look on her face. She led us back to the main office, where she stopped inside the door—effectively barring our reentry—and asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you, detective?”

  “Did Mr. Ames have any problems with any of the other staff?”

  “No, Derrick got on well with everyone.”

  “What about the students? Any issues there?”

  “Again, no. Like I said, he was well liked by everyone.”

  “Was there anyone on the staff he was particularly close to?”

  Jeanette thought a moment and said, “He and Sam Littleton seemed to get on quite well. They typically lunched together and talked a lot. They’re both divorced with kids, so they have a lot in common. And then, of course, there’s Mandy Terwilliger, who is a volunteer rather than a member of our staff. From what I hear, she and Derrick were very close.” Her voice was rich with prurient suggestion.