5 Murder at the High School Reunion

by Steve Demaree

  Column B was much shorter than Column A, because we didn’t know as many possible motives. Rose Ellen Calvert and Jim Bob Gibbons were richer with Jimmy Conkwright out the way than with him living. Also, not only did Conkwright cause Duck Spencer to be expelled from school, but it was Spencer’s wife that Conkwright was carrying on with the night of the reunion. Was it possible that the fact that Conkwright had hit on Korlein’s or Justice’s wife at the reunion was enough of a reason to end Conkwright’s life? I didn’t think so.

  It took a few minutes for me to remember the clues I would list in Column C; “North To Alaska,” “Jennifer Garner,” “9 30 55,” “Wyatt Earp,” and “After The Dash.” The first one had to do with finding the bodies in the freezer at the school. I had no idea what the last one meant. The second one meant somebody was not who he or she said he was, and the other two had to do with Miriam Van Meter. At least that’s what Lou and I thought.

  We were getting nowhere, and we weren’t even getting there fast, or were we? At any rate, I looked at my watch and we agreed to take a break for lunch. After all, there wasn’t much we could do. We hoped that we’d get a break when Sam called.

  Sam called just as we were finishing lunch. I swallowed my last bite, and picked up the phone.

  “This had better be Sam.”

  “And this had better be Cy. Otherwise I’m calling downtown and report a burglary in progress. It must be nice to get to stay home all day and do nothing.”

  “You ought to know. So, did you learn something about Miriam Van Meter?”

  “It all depends upon what you mean by learn something. Did I find out anything that might help you? I don’t know. What I do know is that I called the school, found out she transferred to County High from a small town in Tennessee. At least that’s what County High said. When I called that small town in Tennessee, I found out there’s no school there by the name County gave me. When I checked with the schools there, I found out that the county high school had never had a student by that name. So, I checked with the county clerk. They have no record of any family named Van Meter living in the town, at least not in the last fifty years.”

  “Thanks, Sam,” I said dejectedly, and then hung up.

  I shared Sam’s findings with Lou.

  “Do you think all this about a girl being killed in a car wreck was someone’s idea to throw us off?”

  “No, because I vaguely remember this happening and so do some other people. Could it be that the girl didn’t want us to know what town she came from?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Is it possible that she could have grown up right here in Hilldale?”

  “I don’t see how. If so, wouldn’t you think someone would’ve known her. If she didn’t go to school, neighbors would’ve reported her. If she did go to school here, there would be a record. Let’s check the middle schools here, see if they have a record of Miriam Van Meter. There are only three of them, two that move on up to Hilldale High, and one that sends their students on to County. It shouldn’t be that tough to find out.”

  It shouldn’t be that tough, yet everything about this case was that tough. Everyone seemed to be lying to me. A mysterious girl was thrust upon us. Maybe she did die in a car wreck with Jimmy Conkwright behind the wheel. That doesn’t mean that her death had anything to do with Conkwright’s and Betty Gail Spencer’s death. I tried to think of who first told us about that wreck. Could it be that someone who had no connection to Miriam Van Meter dropped her name in order to send us on a wild goose chase? I was beginning to think that. Whatever their reason, whoever opened that can of worms had gotten me to where I wanted to find out who this girl was and where she came from. What if we checked back with the two mortuaries and neither of them knew a thing about Miriam Van Meter? I needed to know where to turn. Could it be that the next clue would give us what we needed to solve the murders?

  I could see that Lou was as frustrated as I was. At times like that, it was always a good idea to step away, regain our bearings.

  “Lou, I think we need a break. I know it’s still early, but what do you think about shutting things down for the day. I can take you home and both of us can kick back and start reading a new book.”

  “Sound good to me. What book do you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s look and see which ones we have left.”

  Lou and I looked over our possibilities. We opened dust jackets and read.

  “What do you think of this one?”

  “I was leaning in that direction, Cy.”

  I reached down and plucked Loves Music, Loves To Dance by Mary Higgins Clark from my stash. I laid it on the table next to my recliner, put my shoes on, grabbed my keys, and headed out the door to take Lou home. There was no way that Lou or I could finish the book that night, but there was something that appealed to me about a murderer finding his victims by running personal ads in a newspaper. And unlike our case, I knew exactly how long that case would last.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I woke up the next morning and couldn’t believe it was Tuesday already. Where had Monday gone? And then I remembered, Monday had been a dead end. I wanted to get a head start on Tuesday, so I Wiied the first thing, then gave Lou a call. I wanted to know the clue of the day.

  “Don’t tell me you’re ready already, Cy.”

  “No, Lou, I just wanted to see if God had given you our message for today.”

  “It won’t do you any good.”

  “It won’t do me any good. Is God trying to tell us to forget about this case?”

  “No, I mean it won’t do me any good to tell you. Today’s clue is “The same as before.”

  “The same what?”

  “I assume it means that He’s already given us everything we need to know to solve this case. Maybe we need to focus on the clue’s we’ve already been given.”

  “We did yesterday and what did that give us.”

  “Cy, sometimes we can look at something many times before we figure out what it means. Just look over the clues again, and I’ll do the same until you get here.”

  “You mean you’re already ready for me? I haven’t eaten breakfast, read my devotionals or showered yet.”

  “I’ve done all of those things except eat. I’m about to fix my breakfast, but I can fix food eat it and think of clues at the same time.”

  I decided to spend my time with God first. I needed to concentrate on Him during that time, but after that, I too could cook, eat, and shower while I mulled over our clues.

  +++

  I picked up Lou and we headed back to the cemetery. Maybe their computers don’t have records as far back as when the Van Meter girl died. Maybe those early records were buried in a grave somewhere. I was willing to dig to find what we needed, but not that kind of digging.

  On the way to the cemetery I continued to mull over the clues.

  “Lou, have you ever heard anyone say that the difference between one person and another is what they do with their dash, which means the time they are alive. Well, maybe our clue “after the dash” means that we should concentrate on Miriam Van Meter’s death, or what happened after her death.”

  “It kind of looks like we’re doing that, Cy.”

  “Yeah, but there’s something else. You know how she appeared out of nowhere. Maybe she’s the one who has the alias. Maybe Van Meter isn’t really her name. I think when we check back today we need to check on any teenage girl who was buried here during the month of May twenty years ago.”

  “I thought we were already going to do that, too.”

  “Oh.”

  We arrived at the cemetery and encountered the same woman in the office.

  “Checking on someone else, Lieutenant?”

  “No, the same person. But there’s a possibility she might have been buried under a different name. Can you check and see if any teenage girl was buried here during the month of May twenty years ago.”

  “I can, but it might take thirty minutes or s
o. Do you want to wait or come back later?”

  “We might as well wait. No need in wasting gas.”

  Lou and I sat down. I tried to be as patient as I could. Patience has never been my strong suit. Still, I refrained from jumping up every five minutes to see if she found anything. However, I did frown a time or two when the phone rang and she had to stop searching for what I wanted and answer the blasted phone. Finally, around thirty minutes later, she got up from the computer and peered over the counter at us.

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but as I said before, her family could have taken her back where they came from. A lot of families do. Is there any way you might be mistaken as to the date of the death? Could it have been another month or another year?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll double check. I might be able to come up with an exact date.”

  +++

  “Evidently she was buried somewhere else, Cy.”

  “Either that or somebody has their dates wrong. After we check back with the two funeral homes we can run by the newspaper office and check old newspapers, see if they have a record of the wreck.”

  “Library, Cy. Remember, when looked for that before, we found copies of old newspapers at the library, not the newspaper office.”

  “Oh, yeah, now I remember.”

  +++

  Lightning entered the mortuary parking lot and headed for the same spot she rested in the day before. Lou and I got out to see if someone at the funeral home had found the information we needed.

  “Oh, hi, Lieutenant, I guess you didn’t get my message. I just called and left one for you. We don’t have a record of a Miriam Van Meter.”

  “I think they might have brought her in under another name. At any rate, whatever the name, she’s not buried here in Hilldale. Could you check back through your records for May twenty years ago and give me the information for anyone who might have been sent to you, and you shipped her body out of town. It could be somewhere else in the state, or to another state. And to make it easier for you, we’re looking for a teenage female.”

  “I’m glad you came in before we put the records back. Still, we can’t get to it right now, but we’ll get to it as soon as we can. However, it might not be until tomorrow.”

  We left McPeak’s and dashed over to Herrington & Sons. We received a similar answer there, although they expected to have something for me by the end of the day.

  +++

  Going through a month’s worth of newspapers might take us a while, although I expected to find what I wanted on the front page. While it was just a little after 11:00, Lou and I took a break for lunch and let our lunch settle while we tried to come up with another plan of attack before we left for the library, in case this one failed.

  +++

  We opened the front door of the library and the first person we saw was Rose Ellen Calvert. Although I knew she worked there, it didn’t register that the place we had to go was the place where she worked, because she wasn’t the reason we were there. However, I could tell by the look she gave me and the fact that she hurried over to us, that she didn’t know our reason for being there.

  “Please, Lieutenant, not here.”

  “Where then, Miss Calvert?”

  “Well, if you must, please wait until I get off and come by my place.”

  “You keep old newspapers at your house?”

  “Pardon?”

  “We’re here to look through old newspapers, Miss Calvert. Is there some reason we need to talk to you some more?”

  “Of course not, Lieutenant. It’s just that you keep bothering me. I thought you came up with some other reason to badger me.”

  “I’m not badgering you, Miss Calvert. I’m merely following the information I receive and talking to whoever I need to talk to.”

  “Old newspapers, you say. What year did you need?”

  “I need to see the papers for the month of May twenty years ago.”

  “But…that was my senior year, just before we graduated. And that was the month Jimmy Conkwright killed that girl.”

  “Exactly. Now where did you say I could find those files?”

  She had no desire to spend any more time with us, but she was trapped.

  Follow me,” she said, and took off to the other side of the library. She walked through an archway and led us to a series of filing cabinets.

  “It should be in here somewhere. Oh, yes, here it is.”

  I was expecting her to tell me that someone else was looking at the month we wanted, but she located what we needed, led us to an unoccupied machine, threaded the machine, and showed us how to find what we needed.

  While everything else was taking a lot longer than we’d hoped, ten minutes later we had located the article telling about the young woman’s death. I read the article and then continued perusing the month’s newspapers. I found one subsequent article. The first one merely reported that the wreck had happened, and that there was one fatality. The second article said the victim’s body had been released to a local mortuary, but any details of the victim or the driver would not be released until notification to the next of kin.

  It had to be the same girl. The article mentioned the victim was a teenage girl, and that the car was a red Corvette. I wrote down the date in case I needed it.

  +++

  “Why was everything so secretive, Cy?”

  “I suspect because the driver was Jimmy Conkwright. My guess is that the newspaper didn’t breathe without checking with Big Russ to see if it was okay. I just wish the article had told us a little more. We already knew, or thought we knew, when it happened. This just confirmed that she did die in a wreck, and that wreck happened in May twenty years ago.”

  “So, what do we do next?”

  “The only chance we have of finding out any more about her will be if one of the funeral homes turns up anything. The article did say that her body was released to one of the local funeral homes. Is it possible there was another funeral home at one time?”

  “Not twenty years ago. Remember, we both lived here then. Although, there is one possibility, Cy.”

  “What’s that, Lou?”

  “Funeral homes are still pretty much segregated here.”

  “As many people as we’ve talked to, I don’t think all of them would have told us about her and none of them mentioned that the girl was black. Besides, there aren’t a lot of black families in Hilldale. At least there weren’t back then. Let’s wait and see what we find out this afternoon and in the morning, and if we don’t turn up anything we’ll check with Bledsoe.”

  +++

  I dropped Lou off and headed for home. Around 4:30 I received a call from downtown. Herrington & Sons had called. There were no teenage girls brought in at any time during the month of May. My hope rested with McPeak, which meant I would learn nothing until the next morning. It was looking more and more like I would solve Mary Higgins Clark’s classified ad murder before I’d solve my own. Maybe I should quit working and start writing murder mysteries. It wouldn’t be nearly as stressful on me.

  +++

  I needed to get my mind off the case. I called Jennifer to see if time was still flying by because she spent all of it thinking about me. We talked for thirty minutes, and then I hung up and continued to think about her. My thoughts were only of her until I heard my stomach begin to grumble. It was time for me to go fix my meager portion. At least all wasn’t lost. But I had found out that another two pounds had been lost.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I woke up, stirred, and lay there until I could remember what day of the week it was and what I had scheduled for that day. It was Wednesday. It had been over a week since we found the bodies. Halfway through the second week. After that long I’m always ready to put an end to things. I took stock of what I’d learned so far. It seemed like I didn’t know much more than when I started. I didn’t want to have to go through a third week of an unsolved case. I sat up in bed and tried to think. What were our plans for the day? Ac
tually, they weren’t much. I’d told Lou that we’d be lazy. I’d wait around the house for a while to see if anyone called from McPeak’s. If they didn’t come through for me I thought about putting everyone in stocks until someone confessed. I wondered where I could find stocks, and how much they would cost. Colonial Williamsburg immediately came to mind. Maybe I could find them in Boston, too. But I couldn’t think of anywhere else. See, Wal-Mart and Lowe’s don’t have everything.

  It wasn’t doing me any good to lie there, so I extracted myself from the bed. I had to admit doing so had become easier after I started exercising everyday. I could begin to tell a little bit of difference after two weeks. So far, I hadn’t seen anyone from the department, so I had no idea if anyone could tell I’d lost weight.

  I picked up my Bible and my devotional books and headed for my recliner. I didn’t spend as much time with God as Lou did each morning, because he took part in an in-depth Bible study, but I was faithful enough that I took time for God every morning, no matter how busy we were. I read, reflected, and prayed. I asked God for the wisdom, the strength, the courage, and the desire to do what He wanted me to do each day. I couldn’t do it without His help, but maybe with God’s direction we could solve these murders.

  While I wanted to solve the murders, I kept realizing that at least the world didn’t lose two pillars in the community. They say that everyone has some good in them. I had yet to find the good in either of the departed. Plus, if anyone missed either of them, I had yet to find that person. Still, murder isn’t right, even when it’s nothing more than shutting a door on someone’s life, so I had to see this through.