“Ok, let me print out these emails, and then we can get out of here and show them to Detective Andrews,” Leanne said. The printer whirred to life a moment later, but when I turned to grab them, I gasped.
Standing there in the doorway, his expression one of clouded fury, was Gary Vanderchuk.
Chapter 25
“You,” I gasped, causing Leanne to turn around as well. “What are you doing here?”
“Do you know how much vandalism has happened to this school because of that skylight? I wanted it sealed up permanently, but the school board refused to pay for that. So when the lock was installed, I also secretly added an alarm. Anytime anyone opened it up I’d get a notification to my phone. So imagine my surprise when I get one such notification tonight.
I sighed. So much for our secret entrance into the school.
“I thought only the other doors were alarmed,” Leanne said.
“That’s what I wanted everyone to think,” Gary replied. “But no, the skylight was as well. It’s on a different system, though, because again, the school board wouldn’t pay for it. So only I get notified. But in this case, I think that’s a good thing. I don’t want the cops called in on this.”
“Why, because we just found proof that you’re the one who tried to kill Karen? And you tried to kill us, too, didn’t you? You’re the one who broke into the coffee shop and sabotaged all of the wires.”
“Yes, that was me,” Gary said with a humorless smile. “I’m disappointed that my strategy failed, but I knew I would get away with it. Everyone trusts a high school principal. Meanwhile, Karen’s husband was addicted to gambling, and placing bets with Andrew Lloyd, the idiot. He thinks everyone in town is going to keep his secret. Frankly, it’s a miracle that he hasn’t been turned in by anyone yet. He was the least subtle bookie I have ever met in my life.”
“Well, you’re not going to get away with it now,” Leanne said smugly. “We found the email you sent to Karen and her reply confirming the appointment to meet with you here on the island one hour before she was stabbed.”
“Yes, but no one else is going to see it,” Gary replied, pulling a gun out from the back of his pants and pointing it at Leanne.
“Oh come on,” Leanne said, her voice slightly higher despite the fact that she was trying to act strong. “If you shoot us here, it’s going to leave a ton of blood, and no one is going to have any trouble figuring out who killed us.”
“That’s a good point,” Gary said. “Come on, we’re going to the supply closet. There’s a tarp in there. I’ll be able to throw it into the ocean with some rocks and they’ll never find your bodies.”
Great. This definitely wasn’t ideal.
“So you did stab her,” Leanne said as Gary motioned for us to move. We both headed to the door. The wand in my pocket felt like an enormous weight. Did I know any spells that I could use against him? Could I even get any spells to work before he noticed and shot me?
Blood pounded through my head. I was panicking. Gary had a gun trained on us and obviously intended to use it. But Leanne was insisting on keeping him talking.
“I did,” Gary admitted. “She was going to go to the superintendent. The superintendent here is a loonie leftie hippie type who would have eaten up everything Karen told her. She’s hated my guts for years, and I know she’s looking for any excuse to have me fired. This is exactly the sort of thing she would have used as ammunition against me. I couldn’t let Karen go to her.”
“Did you intend to stab her the whole time?” Leanne asked.
“No. I just wanted to talk to her. I wanted to give her one last chance to change her mind, to tell me that she wasn’t going to go to the superintendent after all, and that I was right. And I was right. After all, the kids who are behind by the time they get to second grade are going to be losers their whole lives. Who cares if they get pushed through a bit, especially if it makes them feel better? They’re going to end up being losers anyway, so why bother spending extra time and effort on them when Karen could have concentrated on the kids actually worth teaching.”
“Wow, you definitely deserved to be fired,” I said, my mouth saying the words before my brain had the time to process what a bad idea it was to say them to a guy with a gun in his hand leading us to our deaths.
“You shut your mouth!” Gary practically screamed at me, waving the gun in my face. “You have no idea what it’s like dealing with these little jerks every second of every day, while their parents basically just want someone to babysit their kids. Plus, the teachers are just as bad as the students. Don’t you dare question me!”
I wisely shut my mouth, fear threatening to overtake me as we walked down the hall. It was kind of eerie, seeing pictures on the walls drawn by obviously-happy young children, full of sunshine and hope while I was being led to my death.
I had to do something. I was the one with magical powers, and if there was any time when it was appropriate to use them, it had to be now. After all, I couldn’t get in trouble for using magic to save my life, could I? Or Leanne’s. Either way, it was a risk I was willing to take.
We had to get out of this.
Eventually, Gary stopped in front of a supply closet. He pulled out a large ring of keys and started looking for the right one, and I knew this was the one chance I was going to have to save my life.
I pulled out the wand and cast one of the first spells I had ever learned, which I muttered under my breath as quietly as I could while I focused as strongly as possible on the gun. “Saturn, father of Jupiter, take this gun and make it smaller.”
The gun in Gary’s hand began to shrink, and I continued to focus all of my energy towards it, wanting to make it microscopic. Leanne, having noticed what I’d done, rammed into Gary from behind. He shouted, dropping the gun, and I continued to shrink it until it was the size of a quarter.
“What the-?” Gary shouted as he turned, looking for his gun in vain. When he didn’t see it, he took a swing at Leanne, but she was too quick. She darted out of the way and kicked him square between the legs, causing Gary to grab at his groin as he groaned in pain. He recovered quickly though, and made a move to attack Leanne, but I screamed and ran at him wildly, with absolutely no idea what I was doing, throwing him off balance just enough that his punch missed my cousin.
Leanne recovered quickly as Gary shoved me away from him and I fell, a squeaking sound reaching my ears as I slid across the floor. She rushed at Gary again, and he punched her square in the face. Blood began streaming from Leanne’s nose as I got up to my feet. I rushed towards Gary and kicked him as hard as I could in the knee.
He immediately yelped in pain and grabbed at the joint, the fight forgotten as he collapsed to the ground, howling.
“What have you done? You stupid bitch! You broke my knee!”
“You tried to kill two people, the least you deserve is a little bit of pain,” Leanne said, panting, wiping a stray piece of hair from her face.
“What is wrong with you two? How did two small women manage to defeat me?”
Gary continued his rant while Leanne called the authorities, wincing as she kept her nose pinched shut to stop the bleeding. She hung up the phone a minute later and looked at me.
“Detective Andrews should be here in a minute,” she said.
“What do I do about the gun?” I asked in a hushed whisper. “Do we pretend it was never here, or do I make it normal-sized again?”
“If you can return it to a regular size I would do that,” Leanne said. “There will be fewer questions that way, and Gary will just think he lost sight of it in the heat of the moment.”
I nodded and walked away from the two of them, out of Gary’s earshot, and reversed the spell. Gary was now clutching at his knee and crying, his eyes not leaving his leg, so there was no risk he was about to see what would happen. The gun quickly returned to its normal size, and Leanne shot me a thumbs-up sign as she kicked it down the hall, further from the man who was going to kill us with it.
/> Leanne went to the end of the hall, where a large set of double doors led outside and unlocked them, and about two minutes later Detective Andrews came rushing through them.
“Are you alright?” he asked me immediately, and I nodded.
“I’m fine, yeah.”
Then he looked at Leanne, who had blood on the front of her shirt and on her face from when Gary had punched her. “And you? Do you need an ambulance?”
“No,” she replied. “But I’m pretty sure this whiny idiot does.”
Gary scowled at her while Detective Andrews made the call. When he hung up, he looked at Gary, pulled out a set of handcuffs, and began reading him his rights.
“Gary Vanderchuk, you’re under arrest for the attempted murders of Karen Johnson, Eliza Emory and Leanne Stevens. You have the right to remain silent…”
My thoughts trailed off as Detective Andrews finished reading Gary his rights. I couldn’t help but realize that he had asked about me – the person who looked relatively unscathed – before Leanne, who had blood all over her face and clothes.
Maybe Leanne was right about him having feelings for me.
I pushed those thoughts from my head as Detective Andrews turned back towards us as Gary continued complaining in the background.
“I want these two arrested! They attacked me! I was just defending the school, they broke in! They’re vandals!”
“So, do you two want to tell me exactly what happened here?”
“It depends, are you going to arrest us?” Leanne asked, and Detective Andrews gave her a sly look.
“Do you deserve to be arrested?”
“No. In all honesty, we didn’t expect Gary to be here at all, and had no intention of confronting him. If you check your email, you’ll find a string of emails between Gary and Karen that I forwarded to you from his office. We intended to leave and then have you arrest him for the murder. But it turns out he had a private alarm set up in the skylight, and he confronted us with a gun. He was taking us to the janitor’s closet to get a tarp so he wouldn’t make a mess when he killed us.”
Detective Andrews sighed. “And I’m sure you just accidentally fell into the skylight, and then decided that while you were here you might as well rifle through the principal’s emails.”
“That’s exactly how it happened. It was totally an accident,” I replied.
“Alright, well, I guess that’s how I’ll have to frame it to the District Attorney,” Detective Andrews said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I see some ambulance lights outside, and I need to have a conversation with them about the transport and holding of my prisoner.”
Chapter 26
The next couple of hours went by as a blur. Gary was taken away by ambulance and transported by ferry to Seattle, since Detective Andrews didn’t want Karen to be stressed out by having the man who tried to kill her treated at the same hospital as her. Afterwards, Detective Andrews took us both down to the police station to take our statements. I sat in the waiting area while he spoke to Leanne first, texting Kaillie to let her know we were ok. She had sent about a half dozen texts asking where we were when we didn’t come home from yoga class.
When Leanne came out, she winked at me. “Go get ‘im, tiger.”
“Oh, shut up,” I muttered as I made my way into the office and sat down on the chair across from Detective Andrews.
He looked up at me, concern written all over his face. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“I am,” I replied. “At least, physically. I’m not totally sure the mental reality has really sunk in yet.”
“If you need to see someone, I have some references for a good therapist on the island,” Detective Andrews replied. “There’s no shame in asking for help if you need it. Mental health is just as important as physical health, and while you might physically be fine, what you’ve been through was traumatic.”
“You sound like someone who knows a lot about this sort of thing, for being a small-island cop.”
Detective Andrews smiled, but it was a sad smile. “I did two tours in Iraq after I graduated from high school. I’ve seen what can happen to people who don’t think they need help.”
“Ah,” I replied. “That explains it. Thank you for the offer. I promise, I will let you know if I need that reference.”
“Good,” he said. “You’re extremely lucky, you know. I can’t believe you broke into the school.”
“To be fair, we didn’t think there was any chance we would get caught.”
“But you did get caught, and you were almost killed. Luckily, the two of you were able to overpower him, but it was incredibly risky. He had a gun.”
I couldn’t correct Detective Andrews and tell him that the gun was already shrinking when Leanne had attacked Gary, and it probably wouldn’t have done all that much damage.
“It was fight back, or die,” I replied, and he nodded.
“Yes. I’m glad the two of you made that decision, and I’m extremely glad you’re both ok. Now, why don’t you walk me through exactly what happened.”
I spent a good fifteen minutes telling Detective Andrews everything – from having seen the car, realizing it wasn’t his, to dropping through the skylight and making it into the office.
“One thing I don’t understand is how the two of you managed to get through the hole without hurting yourselves. That’s a big drop.”
“Oh, I do yoga now, I’m basically an athlete,” I replied, earning myself a laugh from Detective Andrews. “Hey! It’s not that far outside the realm of possibilities. But seriously, we just dangled down from the ledge and absorbed the landing. We probably got a little bit lucky.”
“I’ll say. Well, I’m glad you’re alright.” I was just relieved that he accepted that explanation and I wasn’t going to have to come up with an even bigger lie. After all, I couldn’t exactly tell him I had magically conjured up a mattress that we jumped down onto. “I think given the extenuating circumstances the two of you aren’t going to get into any trouble for breaking into the school. But I will warn you again – please stay out of any future crimes. This is the second time since you’ve moved here that you almost died. I’d really appreciate it if it didn’t happen again.”
“Don’t worry,” I said with a small smile. “I don’t want it to happen again, either, Detective.”
“Good,” he said, and I stood up to go. “One second,” he said, and I stopped, turning to look at him. Detective Andrews bit his lip, like he was trying to decide on something, and then finally said it. “Listen, Eliza. Would you like to go out with me? For dinner? If you say yes, you might want to start calling me Ross, instead of Detective.”
“Yes,” I replied, the word having left my mouth before I’d had a second to fully consider it. “That sounds great.”
That sounds great? What was wrong with me? It wasn’t that I didn’t like Detective – erm, Ross – it was that I wasn’t really looking for a relationship right now. Or ever, really. And yet, one flash of that smile that made dimples appear in his cheeks and I’d collapsed like a house of cards in the wind.
On the bright side, it wasn’t like Ross was a bad guy. Actually, I did like him, when he wasn’t warning me to stay out of investigations I had no business sticking my nose into. And I supposed I couldn’t really blame him for that.
“Awesome,” he said. “I’m working tomorrow night, but how about the night after that?”
“Sure,” I said with a smile. Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I was ok with it. Who knew? Maybe it would be fun. It had been a long time since I had been on a date, but I probably wouldn’t embarrass myself too badly.
“Great. I’ll see you then.”
“Yeah, sure thing,” I replied, getting up from the chair and making my way back out into the lobby, where Leanne was waiting for me.
“What’s up with you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Your face is so red it’s like someone went to town with fire eng
ine paint on your face.”
“Oh no,” I replied, my hands rushing to my cheeks. They were definitely warm.
Leanne grinned. “So what happened?”
“He, uh, kind of asked me out,” I replied, and felt my face go an even deeper shade of red.
“I knew it!” Leanne barked out with a celebratory fist-pump. “So when’s the date? You did say yes, didn’t you? You better have said yes.”
“I said yes,” I admitted. “It’s the day after tomorrow. You’re going to have to help me figure out what to wear. I haven’t been on a date in so long, I’m kind of nervous.”
“Oh don’t you worry about that. I’ve got you,” Leanne said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and leading me out of the police station.
Over the next day or so, the rumor mill began swirling, and we found out quite a bit at the coffee shop about what was going on in town.
Gary Vanderchuck admitted to everything in exchange for a plea deal that would have him spend the next fifteen years in jail. He had been at the conference, rushed back to meet with Karen, and stabbed her in his car. He then drove back to Seattle via the ferry and took the car to a shady place that didn’t ask too many questions about replacing the upholstery before making his way back to the hotel bar, so that enough people noted his presence that he still had a decent alibi.
Andrew Lloyd went to the police station first thing the next morning and also admitted to everything he had done. Apparently, the guilt really was too much for him and he wanted to own up to everything. It also turned out he had donated all of his ill-gotten money to various charities on the island and in other parts of Washington State. The rumor was a plea deal was going to be made with him given his honesty, and he would be treated leniently.
Karen, for her part, was making a miraculous recovery now that she was back home. We even heard she was scheduled to be discharged in just a couple of days. I was thrilled for her, and for her family. I didn’t know if she was still going to go ahead with the divorce, but for now, she was home, and she was safe.
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