I couldn’t help myself. “Was she?”
An embarrassed laugh from Ray. “Yeah. It was her father.”
By this time the rest of the class had appeared, motioning us to the back booth. The twins assured me that they’d call in right away and volunteer for security duty in Foxboro. “When we locate him, we’ll find an excuse to talk to him, check his seat number, you know, hassle him a little. At least we’ll get his name.”
“Thanks so much,” I said. “I really appreciate your help. Pete will too.”
“Our pleasure.” Roger waved away my thanks. “We get paid and get to see the game too.”
I joined the group who were already seated at the back of the diner, leaving the twins at the counter. “Good morning all.” The booth had a coatrack attached, and I added my slicker to the damp mass of outerwear already there. “Sorry the weather didn’t cooperate for our early photo shoot. Tomorrow will be better.”
“A lot of stuff got canceled because of the rain,” Hilda said. “We were listening to the radio on the way over here. They said that the groundbreaking ceremony for the new mall was being postponed.”
“Don’t blame them. The ground will be pure mud.” Therese motioned for the waitress.
Shannon gave a pretend moan. “They’ll never get it built at this rate. I can hardly wait for the grand opening.”
“I was hoping it would be open before I have to go back to Alaska,” Dorothy said. “I don’t get to go mall shopping very often up there.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, hon, but it’ll take a year or two at least to build the thing. When do you have to go home?” There was real concern in Hilda’s voice. “Are you going to be able to finish the semester?”
“I think so.” Dorothy smiled. “At least I hope so. I like this class—and all of you. It just depends on . . . circumstances.”
“Do you have to get back to your fishing business?” Shannon asked.
“Or the cute guy you fish with?” Hilda added.
“I didn’t say he was cute.”
“Is he?”
Dorothy blushed. “Well, yeah, he is. I’ve missed most of the halibut and salmon season already, but he’s doing okay without me. And we can fish other groundfish most of the year. The way things are going, it looks like I’ll be sticking around here for a while.” She aimed a meaningful glance in my direction.
I could understand her frustration. We weren’t getting any closer to finding Emily’s killer—if, indeed she’d been murdered—and it looked more and more as though she had. Besides that, we needed to worry about our own safety. Or, according to the note with James Dowgin’s fingerprints on it, at least I did.
I was making a real effort to stick to my lesson plan. After all, my students had paid a not insignificant sum to take the TV Production course, and had every right to expect to learn skills which might lead to a career in the TV industry. Since they’d become somewhat involved in Dorothy’s problem—and, by extension, mine—I needed a way to keep the Dia de los Muertos project front and center and at the same time to use the techniques we studied along with our individual talents to help figure out what had happened to Emily. Without actually meddling, of course.
As soon as we all got to the classroom I proposed a problem for the class to solve. “Let’s assume that we’re investigative reporters and we’ve be asked to check out a ‘person of interest.’” I propped a small white board against the bottom of the screen and picked up a black marker. “We don’t know his name or anything about him. But we do have a recent photo. Very recent. It was taken yesterday.”
I asked Therese to put the photo of the man in the Steelers shirt on the big screen. “Okay. There he is. What can we learn about him from this picture? Anybody?”
“He’s a Steelers fan,” Roger said.
“That’s right,” Ray agreed. I wrote “Steelers fan” on the board.
“Not necessarily,” Dorothy said. “He could have bought that shirt at a yard sale.”
“Good one, Dorothy.” I hadn’t thought of that possibility. I wrote. “Secondhand shirt?”
“It looks like he’s at an exhibit of some kind,” Shannon moved closer to the screen. “What’s that thing behind him? Is it a cage?”
“Looks like there’s bugs in it,” Hilda pointed. “See? Bees. Definitely bees. You can see the wings. But there’s something else behind the cage. It looks like a big ice cream cone.”
She was right. I remembered the ice cream stand. The sign was just outside the bee exhibit.
“I think he’s at a carnival or a farmer’s market. Something like that,” Shannon said. “It’s not just about the bees.”
“You’ve almost got it, girl!” Ray punched a fist in the air and his twin said, “Almost!”
“You guys know where it is?”
“We can’t tell you.”
“A fair,” Hilda interrupted before I could explain that the twins had a little lead on the topic. “The county fair. It’s over in Boxford or Ipswich or someplace like that.”
“Topsfield,” I said and wrote Topsfield Fair on my board. “But what does that tell us about the man?”
“He’s nearby. Topsfield isn’t far from here.” Therese had been quiet until then. “He’s not interested in the bees. He’s not looking at them. He’s looking right at the camera. Or whoever is holding the camera.”
That would be me.
CHAPTER 26
I had no ready response to Therese’s observation. I stared at the picture of the man on the giant screen, my marker poised. He wasn’t a particularly sinister looking person—quite ordinary really. The state-of-the-art TV screen a generous government grant had provided for the Tabby showed him in much finer detail than the smart phone had revealed. I scribbled “Subject looking at photographer” on the board and tried not to think about what that might mean.
“Any more information we can gather from the photo?” I asked, looking around the room at six faces, all intent on the screen.
“He’s wearing a nice watch,” Hilda said. “Not a Rolex, but nice. An Omega, maybe. Like James Bond wears.”
“Good observation, Hilda,” I said, writing “expensive watch.” Anything else?”
“Is that a tattoo on his other arm?” Dorothy pointed. “Or part of one?”
“Can you zoom in on it, Therese?” Dorothy was right. The lower half of a skull was visible beneath the left sleeve of the yellow T-shirt. There were some letters under it.
The left arm grew bigger on the screen, and the skull more distinct. It wore a helmet.
“The man’s a vet,” Roger said. “Army. Can you make out the words, Ray?”
“Forty-fourth something. Begins with an E.”
“Engineer, probably. Afghanistan I’m thinking. I don’t know how we’d check it out though.”
“Pete probably can,” I said, writing faster. “Army vet. Afghanistan?”
“Hey, we’re pretty good, aren’t we?” Shannon sounded both surprised and pleased. “And all this is just from looking at a picture.”
“I know,” Hilda said. “This is fun. Let’s put that note up on the big screen. Maybe we can find something in that too.”
“We can do that,” I agreed. “First, any more on this photo?”
Roger and Ray looked at one another. “Shall we tell them now, Ms. Barrett?” Ray asked. “Why we’re looking for this subject and how we’re going to find him tonight?”
“Lee,” I said.
“Right. Shall we?”
“Go ahead.”
In their usual tag team fashion, the men explained why we were interested in this particular fairgoer and detailed their scheme for finding him at the Patriots-Steelers game.
“Oh this isn’t good,” Dorothy faced me. “He was following you? What if he’s after you all because of me!”
I tried to calm her. “We don’t know that he was following me at all. Chances are it’s nothing. I thought it would be a good exercise in observation for the class—and
it was. Now let’s take a look at that letter.”
I retrieved my copy from the desk and asked Therese to scan it onto the screen. The wrinkles and folds were obvious and once again I regretted my carelessness with the evidence. Unlike the Steelers shirt man, we knew that this letter involved me.
Like the photo of the man, the big high-definition screen gave a new perspective to the paper and the words on it. “Remember,” I said, “there are fingerprints on the envelope and the police have already identified that person and are searching for him. He was a coworker of Dorothy’s sister named James Dowgin. We don’t know whether or not he was actually the author of the letter. What can we learn from this?” I drew a line with marker under what I’d written on the white board so far, then pointed to the screen. “Who wants to start?”
Hilda began. “Well, in the first place they knew this school was involved. That’s why it was delivered to Mr. Pennington.”
Shannon waved her hand. “Whoever it is knows about the cemetery even though we haven’t done any publicity yet.”
“That’s right,” Therese said, “and they know we’re snooping around in somebody else’s business.”
I wrote “Pennington” and “Cemetery” and paused while I searched for a more polite word for snooping.
Hilda came up with it. “We’re investigating somebody else’s business sounds better,” she said. “But hey! What if it’s one of us? We all know those things. What about that?”
“That’s just crazy,” Dorothy said. “Plenty of people know what we’re doing in the cemetery. Kelsey knows, and Dakota and whoever Lee talked to at city hall and the people who’ve seen the layout of the brochure . . . plenty of people. It can’t be one of us.”
“Of course it can’t.” I pointed to the screen, “Now, back to the letter. Anybody see anything out of the ordinary?”
“What’s that brown smudge there in the corner,” Ray asked. “See it?”
“I’m afraid that was my fault,” I said. “There was half an Almond Joy in my purse when I put the note in. Sorry.”
Roger frowned in my direction. “It’s real important to preserve evidence carefully. Keep it from getting contaminated.”
“Like with chocolate,” Ray said. “Contaminated.”
I sighed. “Right. What about the typeface? Anything there?”
“Times New Roman,” Shannon said. “Nothing unusual about it.”
“He knows about the teacher. That’s you, Lee.” Dorothy said. “And he knows it’s about other people’s business. That’s me. And if the one who wrote it is the Dowgin guy, I’m scared.”
She was right of course. Maybe I shouldn’t have involved the rest of the class after all.
Too late to worry about that. They’re all involved already.
“You know, this is so interesting,” Hilda said. “I feel like we’re really learning a lot about investigative reporting.”
“I know,” Shannon said. “Best class I ever took. I mean, it’s real life investigating. Maybe we’ll catch a real bad guy!”
I put down my marker and raised both hands. “We’re just investigating, Shannon. Fact finding. Searching for the truth. It’s not our intent to actually catch anybody. That’s a job for the professionals.”
“Like us. Me and Ray,” Roger declared. “We’re still pros.” He gestured toward the screen. “You’re not going to get anything more from that letter though. Contaminated.”
It seemed like a good time to change the subject.
“Good job, everyone. That was an excellent exercise in basic investigation.” I popped one of my favorite teaching tools into the system. “We’ll watch a good DVD on interviewing. Barbara Walters is the narrator. It’s from her book How to Talk to Practically Anybody about Practically Anything.”
Barbara deftly took over my job for the better part of an hour. I texted Pete and told him what the big screen had revealed about the mystery man’s tattoo and the James Bond watch. I hesitated about mentioning the twin’s self-appointed search at Foxboro and decided against it. After all, I reasoned, it was their idea, sort of a voluntary homework assignment. Anyway, probably nothing would come of it. I pulled the Happy Shores notebook from my purse and copied the words from the whiteboard into it. Then spent a few minutes staring at the words.
What does it all mean?
By the time the credits rolled at the end of the video, it was lunch time. The rain had lessened, and most of the group headed off in different directions for lunch or shopping or both. Dorothy stayed behind, quietly watching me as I returned the letter and photo to my desk and the notebook to my purse.
“Yes, Dorothy?” I wished she wouldn’t look at me that way, with her frightened eyes.
“Will you come down to the diner with me?”
“Of course I will. But don’t worry so. The police will have that Dowgin fellow in custody by the end of the day. You’ll see. And if he knows anything about what happened to your sister, Pete will find out.”
“But why would he . . . or anybody want to hurt Emily?”
Again, I hesitated. Pete didn’t want me to get too involved with Dorothy. But would it do any harm to share Aunt Ibby’s theory about the dirt in the wild woods with her? Maybe it would even help her to recall something helpful to the police. So I told her, briefly, what my aunt had suggested about the soil being contaminated somehow.
A little smile flickered across her face. “Contaminated. Like the letter in your purse. Only not with chocolate I’ll bet.”
“I have an idea,” I said. “Let’s go over to my place for lunch. I can throw something together. It’s not far and you can meet my aunt. And our cat, O’Ryan.”
She agreed and before long we were driving through a light rain toward Winter Street. I tried to keep the conversation light too. “We still have to make plans for that sugar skull cookie baking project,” I said. “The picture in the magazine looked so cute.”
“The calavera,” she said.
“Exactly.” I pulled up and parked in front of the house. “Here we are.”
Dorothy climbed out and, shading her eyes with one hand, looked up. “Wow. You have a big house.”
“Not all mine,” I reminded her. “But I have a few rooms on the third floor to call my own.”
“Big house,” she said again. “Pretty too. Hey, didn’t you say you had a yellow cat?”
“We do. Big yellow cat. Name’s O’Ryan.”
“Is the white cat yours too?” She pointed toward the bay window in Aunt Ibby’s front living room. There she was. The white cat. On the inside this time, looking out.
CHAPTER 27
Aunt Ibby rushed out into the front hall as soon as she heard the door open. Naturally, O’Ryan was already there, waiting to greet us.
“Maralee! Is everything all right at school? You’re home so early!”
“Everything’s fine. I should have called and warned you that we were coming, but it was kind of a last minute decision. This is Dorothy Alden. We’re just going to grab a bite of lunch, and I wanted her to meet you and O’Ryan.”
“So very happy to finally meet you.” My aunt took Dorothy’s hand in both of hers. “I’m sure you know that I’ve heard a great deal about you, and I’m so terribly sorry for your loss. I understand what it’s like to lose a sister.”
“Thank you. You’ve lost a sister too?”
Aunt Ibby nodded. “Maralee’s mother. Her daddy too. A dreadful plane crash. The pain of that kind of loss never goes away.” She hadn’t let go of Dorothy’s hand, and drew her into the living room. I followed. “You girls come on out to the kitchen and have lunch with O’Ryan and me.” The white cat on the window seat cushion stood up and stretched, hopped down to the floor and trotted along behind us. “Oh, that one is a friend of O’Ryan’s. She’s just visiting.”
“There’s a white cat like that one that visits where I live too,” Dorothy said. “It peeks in the window sometimes but I haven’t been able to coax it inside. I don’t think
it could be the same one.”
Ben Franklin’s line about all cats being gray popped into my head again and I realized that I’d begun to call the white cat “Frankie” in my mind, although I’d never said it aloud.
Dorothy’s statement puzzled me. “But you’re on the top floor. How would a cat get up that high unless it came from one of the other apartments?”
“I wondered about that too,” she said. “There’s a tree near the far end of the house. I saw the cat climb the tree, run along a limb and jump onto that long balcony that wraps around the fourth floor. It just hopped from one section of balcony to the next,” She squinted at Frankie. “And apparently peeked into everybody’s windows.”
Frankie licked a paw, passed it daintily across her face, and looked the other way.
As usual, Aunt Ibby provided a delicious lunch on incredibly short notice, and as the three of us sat at the round table enjoying chicken salad sandwiches, fresh peaches, avocado slices and hot tea, my aunt explained once again her idea that Emily might have discovered something amiss at the Wildwood mall site, something that someone didn’t want revealed.
“Trudy and Happy Shores?” Dorothy sounded incredulous. “I don’t think so. Emily really liked them and I know they liked her. Trudy Shores told me so.”
“It wouldn’t have to be the Shoreses, dear. No indeed. A project of that magnitude involves many people. For instance, we don’t know yet what that Dowgin man’s involvement is. Is it possible that Emily might have learned something that he didn’t want anyone to know about? Hmmm?”
“But Emily liked him too, and he seemed to like her. Maybe she was just too trusting of everybody.”
“Some people are, and that’s not always a bad thing. Usually they’re trusted by others too.”
Dorothy’s expression brightened. “That’s true. I think everybody trusted Emily.”
“I wonder if James Dowgin trusted her with something that someone else didn’t want her to know about,” I said—almost to myself. “What about that?”
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