One Way Ticket (A Smith and Hughes Mystery Book 1)

by Jay Forman

  I couldn’t think of anything else to ask Liloe. “Thanks.” I stood up. “You’ve been really helpful.” More like confusing, but that wasn’t her fault.

  She stood up beside me and I felt positively dwarfed by her height. “Kayla didn’t kill herself. I’m sure of it.” She checked her watch. “Shit! I have to go. Find me if you want to ask anything else.” She crossed the wide room in three steps, grabbed a water bottle from the table, and crossed back over and out the door. It had barely latched when it opened again. “I forgot something. Walk with me?”

  “Sure.”

  Liloe waited until we were out in the hallway before speaking. “I just remembered – I confiscated one of Kayla’s notebooks during our last class together. It was her last class. She was writing notes in it to another student in the class. It was her history notebook so I gave it to Ron, Kayla’s history teacher.”

  I had to walk double-time to keep up with her. “Don’t the students take their notes on computers now?” In a place like Berkshire every student was sure to have a laptop or notebook computer.

  “Berkshire’s big on penmanship. Thankfully, the kids are now allowed to use their computers to write essays and assignments. Trying to decipher everyone’s handwriting was a real bitch.”

  “Do you think he’d still have it?” It might actually give me a glimpse into what Kayla was thinking on the day she died.

  Liloe shook her head. “Probably not, but he might. Let’s go find out.”

  I had to break into a jog when she picked up her pace.

  She led me to a classroom on the second floor. The door was open and class was in session.

  “I still don’t get it,” a girl said. “Marx said the bourgeoisie would play a heroic role in the social revolution, right? But his thinking doesn’t make sense. Why would the people who own everything revolt to make the system fairer for the other guys?”

  Liloe knocked on the open door. A very handsome older gentleman stood at the front of the class and turned to look at us. “Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Bellmore, but could I speak to you for a minute?”

  The teacher nodded and then looked back at the class. “That was an excellent question, Jennifer. While I’m gone I’d like all of you to think about the role the bourgeoisie played in the revolution of 1917.” He came to join us in the hallway and started to close the door behind him, but opened it again and poked his head into the classroom for one last comment. “It’ll be on the exam.” The three of us all heard the communal teenage groan as he actually closed the door.

  “This is Lee. Jack Hughes’ friend.”

  “Nice to meet you.” There was no age in his bright blue eyes; they twinkled with youth and mischief. “How can I help?”

  “Do you still have Kayla’s notebook, the one I confiscated the day she was killed?”

  The day she was killed? Why hadn’t Liloe said died?

  Mr. Bellmore didn’t seem the least bit surprised by Liloe’s question. Was there anyone in the school who didn’t know why I was really there?

  “Didn’t the police take... oh, hang on, I might have it. I didn’t go through the contraband drawer when the police were here. Give me a minute.”

  He went back into the classroom and we watched him rifle through the contents of a lower drawer in his desk. He pulled out a pink binder, came back out into the hallway and almost handed it to me, but stopped. “Should I be giving this to you? Won’t the police want to see it?”

  “They’ll get their turn.” Liloe snatched the notebook out of his hand and gave it to me. “Lee got here first.”

  “That works for me. Just make sure to give it back. I’ll have it sent to her mother once you’re done with it. Hope it helps.” He went back into his classroom to continue the discussion about the Russian Revolution.

  “I really have to go. Find me if you need anything else.” Liloe’s heels clickety-clacked at a presto rate as she ran down the tiled hallway.

  “Thanks!” I called out as I started to walk, at a much slower pace, in the same direction.

  I flipped through the binder. Kayla had beautiful handwriting. Every new set of class notes had the date clearly labelled in the upper left hand corner of the page, underlined in red. I’d been taught to write the date exactly the same way in my notebooks. I closed the binder and then opened it from the back, flipping through some empty pages until I found her last notes. April 7, 2015. Kayla’s last day. In the upper right hand corner of the page was the note she’d been writing when the notebook had been confiscated.

  I WON’T!!!!! You’ll get your fucking $!

  Kayla wouldn’t what? Who was she writing to?

  I broke into a full speed gallop and ran after Liloe, catching up to her just as she was about to disappear into a classroom on the first floor.

  “Who sat beside Kayla in your class? Who was she writing to?”

  Liloe closed her eyes briefly and then popped them open. “Yemisi ... no, wait, that’s the wrong row.” She closed her eyes again, but her lips kept moving as she quietly listed off students’ names. “Martin Bowman, Jeff Kaufman, Caryl Wong, Jocelyn de Corneille.” Her eyes opened again. “Jocelyn! Jocelyn sat beside her.”

  I got my second cardio workout of the day when I ran up to my room, shoved Kayla’s notebook into my backpack, ran back downstairs and then across the quad and the parking lot. It was downright hot outside and the humidity in the air was thick enough to make me wonder if we’d get our first thunderstorm of the year. We hadn’t had a good crackle and boom since a spectacular thundersnow zapped the power transformer at the grocery store in Port Hamlin in late November. (That transformer had been hit by lightning so many times, both in summer and winter, that somebody should have moved the pole ... but nobody ever did.)

  I had to slow down and come to a full and complete stop when Old Pete waved me down just as I was about to turn left at the maintenance shed.

  “I heard you’d come back.” He cupped both hands over the edge of my open window and held onto the car for support. “So good to see you, lass.” His teeth were even browner than they’d been twenty years earlier, and when he smiled the wrinkles that spread across his face reminded me of the basket-weave of highways near the airport. “Never thought I’d see you here again, though.”

  “You and me both, Pete. Jack talked me into it. How are you?”

  “Alive. At my age I don’t like to tempt fate by asking for more. But life’s good. I don’t have to ask how you’re doing; I’ve been keeping tabs on you by reading your articles. And Young Pete gives me updates every time he sees Emma.” Young Pete was almost as much of a gossip as Old Pete was. “I won’t keep you, you looked like you were in a hurry to get somewhere. Just like old times.” He pushed himself off the car. “Come see me when you get back. I’d love to help you and Jack out any way I can. I feel so bad about my old truck hitting him. Twasn’t my fault, that I know without doubt, but I still feel bad. And young Ethan? Well, whoever did that to him deserves to be drawn and quartered!”

  My foot stayed firmly planted on the brake pedal. “Did what to him?” Mem C said that Ethan went kayaking, so how could anyone other than Ethan be responsible for that? (Anyone other than the person who put the stupid kayaking idea in his head, that is.)

  “You’re not working with Will? You and he go back a long way, I just assumed...,”

  “No, we’re working together,” sort of, “but I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about Ethan yet.”

  Old Pete’s crow’s feet stretched out again, but this time the lines were caused by his questioning squint. “Will asked me not to say anything; I don’t know if I should...,”

  “If anyone asks I’ll stick to the kayaking story, promise.” Even though it wasn’t the whole story, apparently.

  “This is just between me and you, mind.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, the thing is, I’ve never heard of anyone going kayaking without a kayak.”

  The first few keys of the piano solo a
t the beginning of the musical shore memorial that the kids had organized began to play in my head. Just before the first key had played I’d been wondering where Ethan’s kayak was. I’d only seen Will’s men find his paddle. And his body. “Where was Ethan’s kayak?”

  “Sitting right where it should be, on the rack along the side of the ramp slip in the boathouse.”

  “Mademoiselle said you noticed that Ethan’s paddle was missing and called Will...,”

  “True enough, but before I called them I looked around to see if somebody had just moved the paddle and that’s when I noticed that Ethan’s kayak was on the rack backwards. Rules are, everybody puts their kayak in bow out...,”

  “I remember.” I still stored mine that way. It made it easier to get it out when you were itching to get it into the water.

  “...and that’s the way all of ‘em were stored for the winter. There’s not a single one missing or out of place; only Ethan’s was ass-backwards.”

  “That’s weird.”

  Old Pete was just warming up; I could tell he had more to say. “I seen some pretty strange stuff in that boathouse. The kids’ shenanigans don’t surprise me no more, especially after the dust-up that happened last fall.”

  He’d thrown the bait and I bit. “What happened last fall?”

  “This isn’t for public consumption, eh? Dr. Campbell made it all go away, but given what that Wilkes girl did to herself, I’m guessing it never went completely away. The kids, the upper form, were having one of their parties in the boathouse, but they didn’t know I was in the workshop below them, getting the outboards ready for winter storage. No surprise they didn’t hear me what with the volume they had their music playing at. We were behind schedule, one of the bubblers needed an overhaul, so I’d spent the day on it and decided to get a start on the engines before calling it a night. It’s not like I had to get home to the missus, God rest her soul. And those blasted bubblers can be tricky and we need four of ‘em now, what with the new boathouse being so big and there being five docks and all. Why, the year before last, the ice break-up almost took out two of the docks, so it was important to make sure that all the bubblers were working good.”

  I had to get Old Pete back on track or else I’d be stuck listening to how each bolt or wire or whatever needed to be adjusted in order to ensure that there was open water around the boathouse for the duration of the winter. “What did the kids do?”

  “Well, I’ll tell ya. There I was, draining some oil, when I heard a couple of kids in the storage room. They didn’t have no reason to be in there! So I went to have a look.” Old Pete’s face started to redden. “Two boys were messing with the Wilkes girl. They were all three sheets to the wind and I’m pretty sure I smelled some of that wacky tobacky that they smoke sometimes. The Wilkes girl was in pretty rough shape. But what really riled me was that another boy was taking pictures with his mobile phone. Pictures that that poor girl surely wouldn’t want her mother or father to see. Now that’s just wasn’t right, so I put a stop to it.”

  Jeff hadn’t mentioned anything about Old Pete. Maybe he didn’t know the whole story? “What did you do?”

  “Told ‘em to get out! And they hightailed it out of there, let me tell you. It bothered me. Bothered me a lot. Normally I don’t go telling tales, but that sort of thing shouldn’t be happening at our school, so a day or two later I went up to the office and said my piece to Dr. Campbell. Guess I wasn’t the only one who knew about it, though, because Dr. Campbell said she already had it under control. But, like I said, I can’t help wonderin’ how much control she really had over it.”

  “Did you tell Will about it?”

  “Nah.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he didn’t ask. He only wanted to know about Ethan and the kayak.” Old Pete leaned in right through the window and whispered. “And another thing, there was a mark on Ethan’s face when they pulled him out of the water. Saw it for myself. I’m no doctor but it looked to me as if someone had smacked him.”

  If Old Pete was right I hoped Ethan had been smacked hard enough to knock him right out. At least then he wouldn’t have felt the life being frozen out of him. “Did Ethan go out in the channels every year?”

  “Oh sure, they all do at one time or another. Can’t say as how I blame ‘em. It would be some peaceful out there. But who am I telling this to? Talk about preaching to the choir.”

  I didn’t want to sing. I wanted to scream. I was overdosing on adrenalin fueled by all the new information I’d picked up that morning and floored the accelerator while Old Pete shuffled away from my car.

  But I had to come to another full stop when I pulled up to the Berkshire gates. Waiting for them to slowly open drove me nuts. I was tempted to call Jack, but wanted to wait until I could show him Kayla’s notebook and watch his reaction. I had so much to tell him.

  I was ready to fly through the gates once they opened all the way, but was barely able to lift my foot off the accelerator. My way was blocked by a throng of reporters and cameras. Their satellite television vans were lined up down the road.

  “Can you talk to us about the deaths at Berkshire?”

  “Do you have a child here?”

  “Are you worried that there’ll be more dead children?”

  “Did Kayla and Ethan have a suicide pact?”

  I could hear them shouting, even though I had all the windows closed. I cranked up the volume and let Littlefish’s “Out of Bounds” from The Gordian Knot album drown them out. I had to squint to see through all the flashing still cameras, and almost bumped into Constable Denise when she stepped into the road and tried to part the crowd enough to let me turn out.

  Once I’d turned onto the road I floored it, and didn’t care if my tires kicked up any gravel or who it might have hit. I took the turn onto the highway too fast and felt the tires slide a bit but was soon coasting along at barely thirty kilometres over the speed limit. I kept that speed steady ... right up until I saw the flashing red lights in my rear-view mirror.

  Shit! This ticket was going to cost me demerit points and my insurance company wouldn’t be happy about that.

  I leaned in closer to my side-view mirror after stopping on the gravel shoulder and looked back at the unmarked cruiser. Was I seeing right? Objects may be closer than they appear ... they may also be cops you never expected to appear. Will was calmly walking up to my car.

  “Since when do you do traffic stops?” I asked him once his face was in my open window.

  “I told you I’d find you.”

  “Yeah, but how did you know to find me here?”

  “I had Denise radio me after you pulled out of Berkshire. Jack’s appointment isn’t until ten-thirty, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “Good. We’ve got some time.” Will walked around the car and got into the front passenger seat. “Let’s talk about Ethan Horscroft.”

  Kayla’s pink notebook was poking out of my backpack at Will’s feet. I knew I should tell him about it ... but I didn’t want to. Would it really make a big difference if I waited until after I’d showed it to Jack? It would only be a couple of hours. And he hadn’t said he wanted to talk about Kayla. “Okay. What about him?”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Everyone says good things about him, even Jack.”

  “I meant, what have you heard about how he died?”

  “That he went kayaking between the ice channels, fell in and drowned.” Would Will tell me more?

  “And that’s it?”

  “Yes.” No, but I didn’t want to get Old Pete in trouble.

  “Good.”

  “Was his death really accidental?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because I watched your recovery team and only saw them recover his paddle. I didn’t see his kayak out on the lake anywhere.”

  “Have you mentioned that to anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Keep it to yourself.”
/>   “So? Was his death accidental?”

  “Maybe. Maybe Kayla’s was, too. Right now there are too many maybes. I don’t like it. And I don’t like you being in a place where you might get hurt if you ask the wrong person the wrong question.”

  “I’m not leaving Berkshire.” Now that was a sentence I never, ever, could have imagined myself saying. “Jocelyn’s just started to open up to me. I think she was somehow involved in the video of Kayla, or maybe even the blackmail.”

  “Have you got anything solid to back that up?”

  “No, not yet.” I forced myself to look anywhere other than at the pink notebook sticking out of the backpack at Will’s feet. He wasn’t being completely open about what he knew, so I was just being like him, following his lead. “I heard a rumour that Kayla had an abortion. Did she?”

  “There wasn’t any mention of an abortion in the coroner’s report.”

  “Why are we meeting at the side of the road?”

  “Because I don’t want anyone at Berkshire to know we’re talking.” He looked me right in the eye. “Please, promise me, you’ll be careful? Watch your back?”

  I could see how deadly serious he was. “I promise. I have learned about something that’ll interest you.” I told him what both Jeff and Old Pete had told me about the party in the boathouse, but I only mentioned Old Pete’s name.

  “What is wrong with those people? Christ, do they not want us to solve this? I can’t believe that nobody thought to tell us about this.”

  “You know Old Pete, the last thing he’d ever want to do is get someone in trouble or risk needlessly damaging the reputation of his beloved Berkshire. It’s been his personal domain since before you even moved here.”

  “I’ll definitely ask him about it now!”

  “I think Ethan might have been planning on telling you.”

  “Does anyone besides Old Pete know that you know about it now?”

  “Uh-uh.” I lied. Again. “I’m going to tell Jack, but that’s it.”

  “Keep it that way. I don’t like this set-up, Lee, but I have to admit you’re getting some useful information. I still don’t like you being in there, though.”