by Sara Rosett
Since I’d promised Jane that I would pick up Klea’s belongings, I wanted to do it first thing so that I didn’t forget it. I hurried in the main doors along with the last of the late-arriving kids, surprised to see a square of plywood covering a section of one of the main doors.
I crossed the lobby and walked to the office. Even though Mrs. Kirk was busy outside, I was sure that Marie would know where to find Klea’s things. I was surprised to see that the door to the office was closed. It was never closed.
I turned the handle and stepped inside, then stopped dead in my tracks. The office looked like a tornado had hit it.
Chapter Twenty-one
“And I thought my day had started badly,” I said, shaking my head over the destruction.
Shattered glass, bits of plastic, and paper covered the floor of the office. The desks had been flipped on their sides and chairs upended. The wooden bench was overturned, and a spray-paint scrawl of curses covered the rich dark wood. In the middle of it all stood Marie, her hands limp by her sides, and expression of disbelief on her face. She saw me and started. “Did I not lock that door?” She crunched toward me and pushed the door closed. “I thought I’d locked it,” she said distractedly. She flipped the lock into place. “We can’t have the students in here—all this glass and . . . and mess.” She picked up an inbox tray from the floor and set it on the counter. It clattered against fragments of plastic and metal scattered over the counter.
“This is awful,” I said as the full amount of destruction sank in. The glass window in the wall next to Mrs. Kirk’s office had been shattered. The computer monitors were gaping holes and a couple of computer towers looked as if someone had taken a mallet to them.
“Yes. Shocking, isn’t it?” Marie said. “I feel like I’m in a daze.” She reached down and picked up something else, one of the wooden cubes with numbers carved into the sides that was part of her desk calendar. “I’ll probably never find the other one,” she said. “If it wasn’t against school policy, I think I might bring my pistol to school,” she said.
I must have looked surprised because she said, “It’s been one thing on top of the other, you know? Klea and Peg, and now this. I’m beginning to wonder if it will stop.”
“I can understand that,” I said. “I was just surprised that you own a gun. You don’t seem to be the type, you know.”
“I bought it after Heath died. I didn’t like being alone in the house at night. It was silly, I know. I mean, I live in a great neighborhood, just a few blocks from here, in fact. But it was difficult after Heath passed away, especially at night, so I got a gun and went to classes to learn how to use it and everything.” She looked less skittish and more like her normal, cheerful self, but then the door handle rattled, and she jumped as a knock sounded.
Marie unlocked the door, opened it a crack, then stepped back so that Vaughn could maneuver through the door with a broom and a rolling trash can. He wore a pair of thick work gloves and also carried a dustpan. It was going to take more than a trash can to clear up this mess, but they had to start somewhere, I supposed.
Marie locked the door behind him, and Vaughn set to work as he cleared a trail from the door to the counter.
“Marie,” I said. “I hate to be a bother right now, but I only ran in to pick up Klea’s things. Her sister was going to come in and get them today, but she had to leave town early and asked me to do it. Do you know if they were in here?” I asked, scanning the scattered pieces of office equipment and reams of paper that covered the floor. I was already dreading calling Jane and telling her that it might be a while—maybe never—before Klea’s things were found.
My question seemed to give Marie a purpose and help her focus. She put a finger to her lips and turned in a circle. “Yes, Mrs. Kirk mentioned that the sister would be coming by to pick up Klea’s things. Now, where were they? Mrs. Kirk had them in her office for a few days, but—ah!—you’re in luck, or I guess her sister is in luck.” Marie focused on a cardboard box on the back counter near the coffeepot. “Mrs. Kirk moved it out here yesterday.” Marie crunched across the floor and retrieved a cardboard box. “Somehow this escaped the destruction,” she said. The flaps of the box were open, and as she handed it to me I could see it only held a few items—two coffee mugs, some paperback books, a calendar made of wooden cubes, and a sweater. That weird half-formed thought . . . or perhaps impression was a better word . . . threaded through my mind, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.
I realized Marie was speaking, and I blinked, refocusing on her. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
Marie waved her hand around the room. “Whoever did this probably didn’t think this”—she tapped the box—“was worth destroying . . . unlike the computers.”
“It’s so sad that someone would do this,” I said, looking around the office. “It happened during the weekend?”
“It must have been either late Saturday night or sometime during Sunday. The crew cleaning up the water damage was here all day Saturday.”
Vaughn dumped a pile of debris into the trash can. “Everything was fine when they left. I made sure before I locked up.”
“And they got in the main doors?” I asked, thinking of the square of plywood that I’d noticed on my way in. Had it been broken on Sunday night when I’d driven by the school? I didn’t remember it, but would I have noticed it with all the lights off inside the school and the windows dark?
Vaughn nodded. “Yep. I got that cleaned up. First thing I did today. Couldn’t have the kids walking through broken glass this morning.”
“And it didn’t set off an alarm, or anything?”
Vaughn snorted. “No alarms in a building this old. Only the district’s newer buildings have alarms.” He leaned on his broom. “But with all this computer equipment, they should have alarms in all the buildings. All the schools have computers now.” He straightened and poked at the remains of a shattered computer monitor with the bristles of the broom. “Someone could have had a nice haul of computers—if they’d wanted to steal things instead of destroying them.”
“And nothing else was vandalized?” I asked.
“No,” Marie said. “Only the office.” She ran her hand over her upper arms as if she were cold. “It seems whoever did this hates the school . . . or someone who works here.”
I set the box by the door and picked up one of the gnome figurines that usually decorated Marie’s desk. The tip of the figurine’s red hat had broken off. “I can help you for a bit,” I said as I put the gnome on the counter.
“You don’t have to do that,” Marie said, and there was something guarded in her tone. It appeared the wariness and distrust that had been almost palpable before Peg’s death was back.
Vaughn waved me off, too. “No, you don’t have any gloves or the right kind of shoes,” he said, pointing at my ballet flats. Marie unlocked the door for me, and I picked up the box, but before I could step out the door, Mrs. Kirk appeared and pushed inside. She looked surprised to see me in the office, but her gaze rested on me for only a second, then swept around the room.
She put a hand to her temple and rubbed. “It’s utter destruction,” she said in a frazzled tone of voice. “What else can go wrong? This is absolutely the worst end of a school year we’ve ever had.”
I had never seen her look so upset. Every time I saw her, she was calm and in control. She was a steadying influence on the students. Her high expectations made the unruliest kids curb their behavior while her firm belief that her students were bright and smart and could do anything inspired and encouraged them.
The tardy bell rang, and it seemed to snap Mrs. Kirk out of her gloomy state. She drew in a deep breath and made her way carefully through the wreckage to her office. “At least the PA system wasn’t destroyed. I’ll make the usual morning announcements. Perhaps we can be back to normal—or some sort of version of it—by lunch.”
Mrs. Kirk’s voice came through the speakers. I detected a slight quaver in her first words, bu
t after a few sentences, she was soon back to her normal tone. I paused by the door, reciting the pledge along with Marie and Vaughn; then, as Mrs. Kirk announced that the office would be closed until further notice, I picked up the box and slipped out. Marie clicked the lock into place as soon as I was in the lobby.
I hefted the box in my arms and headed for the doors, my attention drawn to the square of plywood over one of the panes. Detective Waraday stood outside the door, examining it. I picked another one of the doors farther down from him and used my shoulder to push it open; then I angled the box through. Detective Waraday came over and held the door open for me.
“Are you here about the office?” I asked, wondering why Vaughn was cleaning up if the police had been called.
“Anything that happens here, dispatch figures I’ll want to know about it,” he said with a faint smile.
“Then you don’t think it’s related to the other things that have happened?”
“Mrs. Burris and Ms. Watson’s deaths? No. This is probably end-of-year hijinks.”
“Hmm,” I said, thinking that he might change his mind when he saw the viciousness of the destruction. “Well, I should tell you that I drove by here on Sunday night, and I thought I saw a light in one of the window.”
“The light was on in the office?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’m not even sure it was inside the school. It was just a flash of light. At the time, I thought it was the reflection from another car’s headlights, but I suppose it could have been a flashlight.”
“Did you notice the broken pane in the door?” he asked.
“No. I wasn’t looking closely. I saw the flash of light as I drove by and then went on. I only mentioned it because of what happened. That’s quite a mess in there.”
Detective Waraday nodded, but he looked distracted, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. He put his hands in the pockets of his khakis and surveyed the parking lot. No one else was in sight. “I want you to know the autopsy of Ms. Watson is in.”
“You have the results already? That was fast,” I said, surprised.
“I called in a favor,” he said. “The autopsy showed Ms. Watson ingested a lethal amount of painkillers. There was no sign of any medical complication either.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’d thought that the results might be different. There were so many little details that seemed a bit . . . off.” It wasn’t that I was hoping she hadn’t killed herself—if that was the case, it would only make things much more complicated and also mean that the killer was still out there—but I didn’t like the rather strange details surrounding her death, like the almost hostile typed note and, in particular, the fact that she’d scheduled an organizing appointment shortly before her death.
Detective Waraday nodded. “I know the appointment she made with you troubled you. That’s why I wanted a quick word with you. Our computer forensics team tracked the IP address of the computer that was used to fill out your online appointment form. It was Ms. Watson’s computer, here at the school.”
“Really?” I said. I hadn’t expected that. I shifted the box from one arm to another because one of the flaps kept popping up and cutting into my arm.
Detective Waraday continued, “And as far as we can tell, she had no other long-term issues with prescription painkiller addiction. The amount of medicine missing from the prescription bottle correlates with what was prescribed for her after her dental surgery. It looks as if she took two pain pills shortly after her surgery, which would be completely normal, then put the pill bottle away and didn’t take any more until Thursday. And her bank account also shows multiple cash deposits at regular intervals, indicating that Ms. McCormick didn’t lie about the blackmail. She was right about that. Ms. Watson had a nice little side income from her activities.” He reached for the door handle. “Sometimes things don’t fit together in a neat pattern. I know you’re all about making things neat and tidy, but people don’t behave like you expect them to, especially when someone is suicidal.”
“So the investigations into Peg’s death and Klea’s murder are closed?” The flap released again and dug into my arm.
“Yes, they are officially closed.”
I forgot about the pressure of the box flap. There was something, some slight reservation in his tone, that made me frown at him. “Are you satisfied? Personally, I mean?”
He pulled open the door. “I don’t think I’m ever one hundred percent satisfied that I have all the answers, no matter what the case, Mrs. Avery.” He went inside, and I stood there a moment, thinking about what he’d said. Then I set the box down on the ground and tucked the flaps under each other.
A mom approached at a quick pace. A little girl, a toddler with her fine blond hair in dog ears, ambled along behind her mom. The mom wrenched open the door with the plywood panel and held it for her daughter, but she didn’t follow her mom inside. The toddler, squatting with perfect form, was trying to pick up something shiny from behind the metal doorstop that was set in the concrete.
“No! Dirty!” the mom said, and backtracked. As she took the toddler’s hand and moved her toward the door, the mom used her foot to sweep away the thing that had fascinated the little girl. The mom and I exchanged a look. “Why is it that whatever is on the ground is always irresistible?” she asked.
I picked up the box. “Yep, I remember those days,” I said as the mom went into the door, coaxing the toddler along with her.
I transferred the box onto my hip and went over to the bed of shrubs next to the main doors. A thin shard of glass glittered in the dirt.
* * *
An uneasy atmosphere settled over the school. I wasn’t in the building as often as I had been during the previous week, but the few trips I had made inside, I noticed the tension among the staff. The teachers snapped, and even Vaughn, who had always seemed easygoing, was jumpy. I ran by the school to drop off Nathan’s forgotten lunch box one afternoon and turned the corner into a hallway and bumped into Vaughn, who was moving backward as he mopped the floor. “Watch where you’re going,” he said sharply, then immediately apologized.
Despite the uneasiness that the adults clearly felt, within a day, the office had been returned to a semblance of order. Computers and phones had been transferred from other parts of the school. The wooden bench was now upright, the graffiti on the back turned to the wall. Mrs. Kirk had said that she had a furniture restorer scheduled to pick up the piece as soon as the school year was over. They would strip it and re-stain it. The glass panel beside Mrs. Kirk’s door was back in place, and Marie had even been able to find both wooden blocks from her calendar. I’d seen a large truck with the company name SECURE DOCUMENT DISPOSAL on it parked at the school during the week, and supposed that they had been hired to remove and destroy the sodden files from the records room.
Abby, who was usually so buoyant and positive, noticed it as well. She called me on Tuesday night to see if I could give Charlie a ride to school on Wednesday morning, as she had drop-off duty. I said of course, and then she said, “It’s so weird at the school right now. I’m always glad when the school year is over, but this is so different. Everyone is tense and suspicious. I don’t like it.”
I didn’t like it either, but there were only a few days left in the school year. I’d again considered keeping the kids home during the remainder of the week, but when I floated the idea, they’d both been adamant. They wanted to go. There was no way they were missing their year-end activities, which were mostly the fun things that they didn’t get to do all year, including picking up their memory books and participating in the end-of-year assembly, when awards were handed out.
Friday, the last day of the school year, the kids literally bounced out of the van when I dropped them off. I negotiated the congestion around the school and had to park on the grassy overflow area. I would be bouncing between Klea’s house and the school today. I had two charity donation pickups to supervise at Klea’s house, one at nine-thirty and another at two. In between those
two appointments, I had two end-of-year parties to attend.
Instead of driving the short distance back and forth between Klea’s house and the school, I’d decided it would be smarter to park in the school lot and walk the short distance. With all that had been going on lately, my walks with the Stroller Brigade, my neighborhood walking group, had been sadly ignored. Getting in some extra footsteps during my day was exactly what I needed.
I left the school parking lot and walked down the grassy verge next to the chain-link fence, then crossed the street and unlocked the front door to Klea’s house with the keys Jane had given me. The house was again stuffy and dark with all the blinds drawn. I snapped on lights as I made a rapid survey of the house, making sure that everything was ready for the charity pickups. Once I was sure everything was fine, I went to the porch to wait. I didn’t turn on the air conditioner, figuring it wasn’t worth it for the short time I would be at the house. And the people loading boxes and furniture would probably prop the doors open anyway.
But I wished I had turned it on because the charity picking up the boxes arrived forty-five minutes late. The two men used dollies to ferry stacks of boxes from the house to the truck. It took them about twenty minutes to clear all the boxes, and when they left, the house seemed much emptier. One of the guys had attempted to take the box of personal items from the school, but I’d rescued it before it disappeared onto the truck. While there wasn’t anything inherently valuable in the box, Jane wanted to go through it. After I’d picked up the box of Klea’s belongings from the school, I’d brought it to Klea’s house and left it on the kitchen counter with a note that it wasn’t part of the charity donation, but the guy must not have seen the note.
