by Kathi Daley
“Were any of the emails Chelsea received sent from staff computers?” I asked.
“No. Chelsea’s received ten emails over the course of the past two weeks. Seven of them were sent from the computer lab, two from the reference computer in the library, and one from the attendance office. Every student on campus has access to the computers in the library as well as the computer lab, and student aides have access to the computers in the attendance office, I’m thinking the stalker is a student aide.”
“And how many student aides are there?” Trevor asked.
“Twelve, two for each period. The one email sent from the attendance office went out last week on Wednesday during the break between second and third period. I checked, and the two aides that day during second period were Miranda Portman and Art Dupree, and the two during third period were Sherry Vega and Donny Crier.”
“It sounds like we need to have a chat with the four of them,” Trevor stated.
“I’ll need to fill Chelsea in. I promised I’d let her know if I needed to speak to anyone else about her situation.” I turned and looked at Mac. “Is it possible that one of the other student aides could have popped in and sent the email even if it wasn’t their time to work?”
“Sure. The staff trusts the aides and they’re used to seeing them around. I doubt they would question it if one from a different period popped in for a minute. It makes sense to start with the four who were actually supposed to be there, however.”
“I think I saw Chelsea pop into the locker room. I’ll go fill her in and if she agrees we’ll track down the four aides.”
When I arrived in the locker room Chelsea was standing at the mirror touching up her makeup. Given the amount of time she invested in making herself look perfect, I wondered how she ever managed to get anything else done.
“So, did you find my stalker?” Chelsea asked without even pausing to look in my direction.
“Not yet, but we’re narrowing things down. We know the emails you were sent all came from different student accounts. That means your stalker has access to the student passwords.”
Chelsea paused and looked at me. “You aren’t saying my stalker is that creepy Mr. Pruitt from the computer lab, are you?”
“No, we don’t think it’s him, although at this point we aren’t ruling anyone out. The computers that were used to send the emails came from either the computer lab, the library, or the attendance office. Our theory is that one of the student aides managed to get their hands on the passwords. The next step is to talk to them to see what we can find out.”
Chelsea frowned. “Talk to them? Does that mean you’ll have to tell them I have a stalker?”
“We thought we’d just say we’re looking in to unauthorized emails sent from the attendance office. There may come a time when we’ll be forced to be more specific. And the more people we speak to, the greater the odds that a staff member will find out. I really think, given the complexity of the situation, you should talk to your parents.”
“I can’t. My dad can be really overprotective. If he knew what was going on he’d probably lock me in my room, which would severely curtail my ability to live my life. I have cheerleading practice all week, a game on Friday, and the Hayride on Saturday. I’m not going to miss out on everything because some creep is getting his jollies following me around. Find out who’s doing this, but keep my name out of it.”
“We will for now, but I’m not promising anything. Did you get any new photos over the weekend?”
Chelsea nodded. She took out her phone and pulled up her texts then handed it to me. There were two new photos. One was of her standing near the bleachers during the game on Friday. She had a bottle of water in her hand and there was a pile of athletic bags nearby, so I assumed she’d stashed her belongings, along with those of the other cheerleaders, near the base of the bleachers. The other photo showed her climbing out of her car in front of her house. She had on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, so I assumed she’d just run an errand.
“Do you remember where you were coming from when this photo was taken?” I asked.
“The pharmacy. My mom’s allergies were acting up and her doctor called in a prescription. That photo was taken Saturday morning at around eight-thirty.”
I didn’t like the idea that someone was following Chelsea around at eight-thirty in the morning on a weekend. “Are you usually up and about that early in the morning?” I asked.
“On a Saturday? Never. But my mom really felt bad and my dad had gone golfing, so I got up and ran the errand. Most of the time I sleep until noon on Saturday unless we have a game.”
“So far, all the emails you’ve received have been sent on weekdays and all the texts on weekends. That makes sense because the emails have been sent from school. We haven’t had any luck tracing the burner cell the texts have been sent from, but I suggest you block the number and then see what happens. I’m curious if the stalker will begin sending the texts from a different phone number, or if he or she will stop texting altogether.”
Chelsea shrugged. “Okay. That’s fine by me.”
I punched in the information to block the number on Chelsea’s phone.
“So what now?” she asked.
“We’re going to speak to the student aides. If you get any additional texts or emails let me know right away. I’m hoping the stalker will make a mistake that will allow Mac to hone in on them.”
Chelsea sighed. “Okay. I’ll let you know if I get any more photos, but find this guy. I hate being watched and I want my life back.”
Mac and Trevor were chatting with a couple of friends when I returned to the lunchroom. I made a comment about needing to follow up on a project and they said their good-byes and followed me out into the common area, which provided outdoor tables that overlooked the sea. During the spring it was packed with students, but now there was a chill in the air, so we were the only ones outside.
“I spoke to Chelsea. She’s adamant about wanting us to keep her name out of it, but I figured we could just speak to the student aides about unauthorized emails being sent from the attendance office and maybe their reactions will give us some insight as to whether they know anything. There are four names on our list. Miranda’s in my class next period, so I’ll try to pull her aside.”
“Sorry.” Mac tilted her head. “I need to leave for my internship in about five minutes, but if you don’t get to everyone today I can help tomorrow, and I might be able to work on the cell phone some more if I get a break.”
“I blocked the number from Chelsea’s phone. I’m interested to see how the stalker reacts. Of course, the texts all came in on the weekends, so chances are Chelsea will only receive emails today anyway. It does seem the student-aide angle is our best bet, so I think that’s what we should focus our energy on.”
“I have math next period, then football,” Trevor said. “I probably won’t see any of the four student aides, but if I do run into them I’ll see what they know.”
“I’m going to head over to the police station after school,” I told them. “Do you want to come by later this afternoon? Maybe we can regroup and figure out where we stand on both of our mysteries.”
They agreed, and I headed to my fifth-period class. I hoped Miranda would show up early so I could catch her for a minute before class started.
“Miranda,” I called out as I hurried down the hallway before she had a chance to go into the room.
Miranda stopped, turned, and waited for me. “Hey, Alyson. What’s up?”
“I need to ask you about an article I’m writing for the school newspaper,” I improvised as I looked carefully at her face, hoping I could read her reaction to my next words. “It seems there’s been a number of unauthorized emails being sent from the attendance office.” Okay, I was exaggerating; there’d only been one, but I wanted to make it sound like the problem was more widespread. “I know you work in the office and I wondered if you’d seen or heard anything that might help me track down the so
urce.”
Miranda looked surprised but not alarmed. “No. I hadn’t heard a thing. All the aides know that sending emails from the computers in the office is against the rules. In fact, the only time we’re allowed to use the computers at all is to look up student attendance and class information if we need to pass on a message.”
“You work in the office during second period?”
Miranda nodded. “That’s right. Art Dupree and I both cover second period.”
“Have you ever seen Art using the computers when he might not have been authorized to do so?”
Miranda laughed. “Art? Surely you don’t think Art is the student aide you’re looking for?”
“Not specifically. I’m just asking around about all the aides at this point.”
The first bell rang, so I had maybe a minute more before Miranda headed inside.
“Art would never break the rules. I mean never. He’s one of those people who’s overly fixated on the rules. The other day I used a paper clip to attach a parent’s note to an attendance report and he almost went crazy. Sure, we’re supposed to staple parents’ notes to attendance reports so they aren’t separated, but I couldn’t find the stapler and there was a jar of paper clips sitting on one of the desks, so I was making do.”
I narrowed my gaze. “You said Art went crazy. What do you mean by that?”
“Okay, maybe crazy is too strong a word, but he grabbed the things I’d paper clipped together off the top of the pile and spent the next several minutes lecturing me about the rules and the reason we need to follow them while he searched the office for a stapler. The guy is very rigid. I’m pretty sure he has some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. I wish they’d assign me to another period so I could work with someone else, but the only one left when I applied to be an aide was third, with Art. I think the only reason the spot was even open was because no one wants to work with him.”
Miranda turned to walk to our classroom and I fell into step beside her. “Why don’t you just drop the aide gig and take another class?”
“My grade point average is in the toilet. I need an easy A, and being an aide is an easy A as long as you show up and do a passable job.”
I guess that explained why there was usually a waiting list of students wanting to be aides. “Okay, well, thanks for the insight. I may try to speak to Art, but it sounds like he most likely isn’t the student I’m looking for. Do you have any idea who might not have a problem with sending unauthorized emails?”
“You might want to talk to Donny Crier. He’s in the office during third period. I don’t know if you know him, but he seems to be one of those people who think the rules don’t apply to him. I don’t even know why they let him be an aide, except that his mom is on the school board, so she probably called in a favor. Donny is in my English class and he already has so many missing assignments, there’s no way he’s going to pass. I’m sure he wanted to be a student aid to get his overall GPA up to something that might justify letting him graduate.”
I took my seat just as the teacher asked everyone to settle down. I hadn’t had the sense that Miranda had lied to me, and she really didn’t seem to know about any unauthorized emails, so I doubted she was the person we were looking for. Besides, I couldn’t think of a single reason Miranda would be stalking Chelsea. Uptight Art and Slacker Donny, however, were another thing altogether. The more I thought about it, the more I could see either of them being the stalker.
Chapter 10
As planned, I headed over to the police station after school. I hoped Woody would not only be in but that he would be alone and willing to talk to me. If we were going to make any progress in helping the ghosts of the skeletons move on, we needed to figure out who they were and when and how they died, and I suspected their time of death would correlate to the date Chan had provided. Though for all I knew, the date could be related to something else entirely.
“Ms. Prescott,” Woody greeted me.
“Alyson.”
“Of course. What can I do for you, Alyson?”
I walked up to the counter Woody was standing behind and leaned against it. “I’m here to find out if you have any news. The others and I have been curious about who the skeletons belong to and their cause of death.”
“I’m not sure I should be discussing this with a civilian, but you did help me when it came to the matter of the child fingerprints and my sense is I can trust you not to speak of the matter out of turn.”
I pretended to turn a key over my lips. “Except for sharing what I know with Mac and Trevor, my lips are sealed.”
“As you know, the remains we have to work with aren’t much. The cause of death doesn’t appear to be anything that would readily show up on the bones, such as a gunshot wound or blunt force trauma. Without the organs, it’s going to be hard to determine exactly what happened. If it turns out that the cause of death was something like asphyxiation or poisoning it could be almost impossible to determine. We’re still working on it, though, and we may still catch a break.”
“And the identities of the victims?”
“Still unknown at this time. We ran missing persons reports using the approximate age of each and the approximate year they died. So far, we’ve come up with absolutely nothing. Again, we’re still working on it, but I think if we’re going to make an identification, we’ll need additional information that we don’t have right now. I’m in the process of pulling together everything I can find about Mr. Weston, but so far, he really does seem to be nothing more than a nice old man who lived alone and mostly kept to himself. By all accounts he lived a quiet life and, at least during the thirty years he lived in that house, he had few if any friends.”
“Except for the boys who had a hangout on the second story of his house,” I said.
“Yes. Except for them. I’ll admit his willingness to let the boys come and go as they chose doesn’t fit what I’ve been able to dig up about him.”
“Did he ever marry or have children?”
“He married a woman named Velina Horn in 1963. They had one child, a son, who died in 1983 when he was only nine. Velina fell into a depression and committed suicide six months later. Mr. Weston appears to have lived alone from that point on.”
“How sad. I know he bought the house in 1985. Do you know where he lived before that?”
“In a small farming community in Kansas. Interestingly, he was a doctor and retired just prior to moving to Cutter’s Cove.”
“And he never practiced here?”
“No. And he didn’t refer to himself as a doctor at all. As far as I can tell, he went by Mr. Weston from the moment he moved here. He lived alone in the house, rarely venturing out.”
“It seems he lived a tragic life, but that doesn’t explain how two bodies ended up entombed in a room in his house.” I paused, considering the situation. “There has to be something else we haven’t stumbled upon. Not only did Mr. Weston literally have skeletons in his closet, but it seems odd that an educated man who’d dedicated his life to helping others would isolate himself the way he did in his later years. I understand he suffered a huge loss with the death of a son and a wife in such a short period of time, but wouldn’t he have wanted to get out and rejoin the living after a period of grieving?”
“I agree. There’s definitely something that isn’t adding up.”
I tapped my fingers on the counter as I thought. “And why buy such a huge house? Caleb told me it’s over five thousand square feet. Why would a man who was alone in the world buy a large home unless he had plans to entertain or even eventually remarry? Have you spoken to his neighbors?”
“Not yet, but I plan to. The house is at the end of the road, bordered by the forest, but there are a couple of farms along the same road. If nothing else someone might have seen something.”
“Let’s go now.”
“Let’s?” Woody asked.
******
The farm closest to the Weston property was owned by an older cou
ple, Melvin and Maude Moody. The land had once been used to grow strawberries, but the Moodys were no longer able to maintain the crop; other than a small garden they kept for personal use, the land had been allowed to return to a natural state. The small home we found at the end of the drive was weathered, but the yard was neatly tended, as was the bright red barn that stood off to one side. Large hens roamed, while several pigs, a couple of goats, and a handful of dairy cows were housed in pens beyond the barn.
“I love it. The whole place is so quaint.”
Woody stopped the car and turned off the engine. “Remember, I’ll do the talking.”
“I won’t forget,” I assured him. “You’re the cop, so you’re in charge.”
As we got out of the car, a pair of border collies came from the back of the lot to greet us with warning barks but wagging tails.
“Sampson and Delilah, whatever are you going on about?” I heard a woman call from inside the house.
I waved at the gray-haired woman, who stepped out onto the covered front porch with a friendly smile on her face.
“Can I help you?” she asked Woody as he walked toward her.
“I’m Officer Baker and this is Alyson Prescott. We’d like to speak to you about Eliston Weston.”
“He’s dead.”
“Yes, ma’am, we know that. But there have been some developments at his house, so we’re speaking to his neighbors.”
She opened the screen door. “Well, come on in, then. I just made some fresh-squeezed lemonade. Have a seat in the kitchen and I’ll call my husband to join us.”
Woody and I sat down at the small dining table in the sunny yellow kitchen. There were bright green plants around the room and blue and white canisters decorated the kitchen counter. The scent of pumpkin and cinnamon lingered in the air, and I was willing to bet the loaf shapes under white kitchen towels were pumpkin bread.
Mrs. Moody returned to the room with a gentleman about her age and poured four glasses of lemonade before joining us at the table.
