A Peach of a Murder (18 page)

Someone put a hand on Phyllis's arm, and she looked around to see Mattie standing there. "Thank the Lord you're here, Phyllis:' Mattie said. 'This is awful, just awful. I'm afraid that woman's dead."

As it turned out, the woman was still alive, which Phyllis realized as she and Mattie watched the EMTs work over her for the next few minutes. Mattie was quite upset anyway. Phyllis asked, "Do you know her?" She .didn't have to explain that she meant the woman who had been struck.

"I've seen her around the school," Mattie said. "She's one of the teachers. I think her name's Janie, or something like that."

Calvin and Ted got the woman onto a stretcher and lifted ' her into the back of the ambulance.

Bandages swathed her head, but they didn't completely cover up the bright blond hair now stained with crimson. They had immobilized her head with a brace, too, as if she had a neck injury of some sort.

A couple of police cars, their lights flashing, sped into the parking lot and came to a stop with a squeal of tires. Phyllis didn't know the officers who climbed hurriedly out of the vehicles. They came over to the ambulance, talked briefly to Calvin and Ted, and then one of the officers turned to the people gathered in the parking lot and said in a loud voice, "If y'all would just stay right here for a few minutes until we've had a chance to talk to you, we'd appreciate it."

No one seemed to be in a hurry to leave. The crowd waited patiently, as Ted climbed into the ambulance with the injured woman and Calvin closed the rear doors and got be hind the wheel. The siren's wail rose again as the ambulance pulled away and started off toward the hospital.

One of the policemen studied the car with the dented hood and the damaged windshield as the other three spread out and began questioning the crowd. Phyllis overheard enough while she and Mattie were waiting their turn to know that the police were trying to determine if anyone had actually witnessed the accident. From the responses she heard, it appeared that no one had.

She leaned close to Mattie and asked in a low voice, "Did you see what happened?"

Mattie shook her head. "No. We got done a little early, so I came out to wait for you and get a little sun, since it's not too hot yet. I don't know ... I didn't see anybody around.... I got to thinking about the old days, you know how I am sometimes. My mind sort of drifts. Then I heard some yellin' and saw people runnin' through the parking lot. So I walked over and I saw that woman..." A shiver went through her. "I thought for sure she was dead. Somebody must've hit her with a car."

That much was obvious. Phyllis waited with Mattie until one of the officers came over to them. He got their names first, then asked if either of them had seen what happened. Mattie went through her story again, her voice halting. She was obviously shaken. The officer looked at Phyllis and asked,

"What about you, ma'am?"

"I got here after the ambulance did," Phyllis explained. "I was picking up Mrs. Harris after this morning's tutoring session. The accident had already happened by the time I came up."

The policeman nodded. He seemed sympathetic and friendly enough, so Phyllis ventured a question of her own. "Do you know if that poor woman is going to be all right?"

"I wouldn't have any idea, ma'am. Looked like she was hurt pretty bad, though."

"That's the car that hit her, the one over there with the broken windshield?"

"Yes, ma'am, it appears to be. You know who it belongs to?"

"No, not at all." She had noticed a couple of bumper stickers on the car with odd names on them, which she supposed were the names of currently popular rock bands, but she had never heard of them. "Probably one of the students." "Well, we'll find out," the officer said.

Phyllis wondered if this qualified as a hit-and-run. Whoever had hit the woman hadn't driven off, because the car was still here, but the driver had definitely left the scene of the accident.

Or was it an accident? That sudden thought made Phyllis's breath catch in her throat. After everything else that had happened this summer, she knew she shouldn't jump to any conclusions.

Still, this incident had all the earmarks of a tragic accident. It wasn't unusual for people to be struck by cars in parking lots.

The policeman who had questioned them was about to move on to someone else. Phyllis asked him, "Is it all right for us to leave?"

"Yes, ma'am. We'll be in touch if we have any more questions." He glanced at his notebook, where he had written down their names, and paused. "Say, are you related to Mike Newsom?"

"He's my son," Phyllis said.

"He's a good guy. I played softball against him in the church league. He still a deputy?"

"'that's right."

"Tell him Roland says hello, if you would." Phyllis smiled. "Of course."

She put a hand on Mattie's arm and was about to steer her toward the Lincoln, when she heard a young female voice cry out; "Oh, my God! My car!"

Phyllis turned to see a teenage girl with curly, bright red hair hurrying through the parking lot from the direction of the school. The high school principal and a couple of vice principals trailed after her. She ran up to the car, stared in horror at the dent and the damaged windshield, and said, "What happened to it?"

One of the police officers moved in smoothly and said, "This is your car, miss?"

"Of course it is. Who did this? Did you catch him?" The officer didn't answer her questions.

Instead, he asked, "Are you saying you didn't know that your car had been in an accident?"

"Of course I didn't know! How would I know? I've been in the band hall all morning! I didn't know anything about it until Mr. Hayes came to get me!"

The officer looked over at the principal, who nodded. "I checked with the band director," he said.

"Miss Collins was practicing with the band when this happened."

The redhead's eyes got big. "Wait a minute," she said. "You didn't think I ran over somebody, did you?"

"It's your car," the police officer pointed out.

"Yes, but somebody must've tried to steal it! I wouldn't run over anybody:" Her voice was shaky as she went on, "There's already a rumor going around. Was it Ms. Garrett, like I heard? Is she dead?"

Again the officer didn't answer. "Was your car locked?" The girl shook her head. "No, I don't ever bother locking it. I don't keep anything in there that would be worth stealing."

"You took the keys out when you parked it?"

"Of course I did. They're right here." She slid a hand into one of the pockets of her tight jeans. "Oh, crap. I would have sworn " She checked her other pockets and then looked up with a sick expression on her face. "I was running late this morning. I must've been in such a hurry when I got here that I went off and left 'em in the car."

"You left it unlocked, with the keys in it?"

Tears began to roll down the girl's cheeks. "I didn't mean to," she said miserably. "I was just in a hurry ... I was running late. . . :'

Phyllis felt sorry for her. She knew the girl hadn't meant any harm. But obviously her carelessness had contributed to the circumstances surrounding the accident.

The principal led the girl away. One of the policemen went with them. Phyllis touched Mattie's arm and said, "Let's go."

"Where? Oh. Home." Mattie shook her head. "Sorry, Phyllis. I'm not quite myself. Reckon all this uproar's gotten to me a little bit:"

"I don't blame you. It seems like there's always something bad going on."

Once they were back in the car, Phyllis said, "The girl said that teacher was Ms. Garrett. I think I remember her now. She teaches biology or chemistry."

"Biology," Mattie said. "I remember her now, too. Never had anything to do with her, though. I think this was her first year to teach here."

"I hope she pulls through:' Phyllis shook her head. "It looked awfully bad, though."

By the time they got back to the house, Mattie had calmed down quite a bit. Both she and Phyllis still looked upset enough, however, so that when they got out of the car Sam knew right away something was wrong. He was at the workbench, cutting boards for more bookshelves, but after glancing at them, he stopped the saw, took his goggles off, and turned toward them.

"What happened?" he asked.

"There was an accident at the high school," Phyllis said. When Sam looked immediately at her car, she went on, "It didn't involve us. We just saw the results of it. A woman, one of the teachers, was badly hurt." "Someone you worked with?"

Phyllis shook her head. "No, this was someone young, who started teaching after all of us retired. I knew vaguely who she was, but that's all: '

"Whether you knew her or not, that's still bad. What happened to her?"

"She was hit by a car in the parking lot," Phyllis said. "Run down like a dog," Mattie said.

Sam asked, "You saw it happen, Mattie?"

Mattie suddenly looked confused. "Saw what happen?" Phyllis knew that look. Mattie's mind had slipped a cog again. She took the older woman's arm and told Sam, "No, she came out afterward, and then I got there a few minutes later. Neither of us actually saw the accident."

"Blood," Mattie murmured. "Blood on the ground." Phyllis felt worry shoot through her. Mattie hadn't been in good shape to start with. The shock of seeing Ms. Garrett lying there covered with blood might have been too much for her.

"Why don't you go upstairs and lie down?" she suggested. "I'll have lunch ready in a little while."

Mattie nodded slowly. "That's a good idea. I don't feel well."

Phyllis helped her upstairs. Mattie sat down on her bed, took her shoes off, and lay down on her side. She looked so frail and helpless that Phyllis's heart went out to her. Mattie had lived a long, long life, always trying to do good for others, and it was such a shame that she had to endure the hardship of having her mind gradually slip away from her here at the end of it.

Sam was in the kitchen washing his hands when Phyllis got back downstairs. "Mattie looked pretty shaken up;' he said as he turned off the water and reached for a towel.

"It was bad," Phyllis admitted. "Seeing that poor woman lying there like that. . . . It got to me, too.

It looked like the car hit her so hard she was thrown up over the hood and hit the windshield with her head. I'm not sure how she survived."

"People are pretty tough. Maybe she'll be able to hang on" "With such a bad head injury, though, even if she lives she'll probably never fully recover."

Sam shook his head solemnly. "Folks never really know what's going to happen from one day to the next. Just goes to show you it's a wise thing to take what joy from life that you can, because you don't know how long you've got left."

"I'd just as soon not think about it ... but I know you're right."

Lunch was subdued. Mattie didn't want anything and Eve was. gone to Dallas for her doctor's appointment, so it was just Phyllis, Sam, and Carolyn around the table. Phyllis explained what had happened at the high school, and Carolyn said, "I know who you're talking about. Her name is Jani, J-A-N-I, with no e or y on the end. One of those young, really good-looking teachers the boys all ogle."

"She can't help being attractive," Phyllis pointed out. "No, but the way some of the female teachers dress these days ... Well, I'm not surprised that the boys get the wrong idea about them,, if you know what I mean."

Phyllis knew, all right. Even in junior high, she had seen how some of the boys had gotten crushes on young, pretty teachers. Of course, some of the girls became enamored of the male teachers, too.

It was an occupational hazard, and anyone who worked with young people had to learn how to handle problems like that.

Mike surprised her by showing up in the middle of the afternoon. Phyllis greeted him at the door with a smile and a hug and said, "This is unexpected. Nice, but unexpected."

"Roland Wallace called me a while ago," Mike said as he came into the living room holding his Stetson.

"A guy I know on the Weatherford force. We used to play ball against each other."

That jogged Phyllis's memory. "You mean the officer Mattie and I talked to at the high school this morning, after that awful accident."

"It was no accident," Mike said, his face and voice serious. "Whoever was behind the wheel of that car was doing their best to kill Jani Garrett."

Phyllis fixed glasses of lemonade for all of them, and they sat in the living room, listening to what Mike had to say. "The cops checked the tire tracks that car left, and whoever was driving it pulled out of the parking space pretty fast and then gunned it even more. From the looks of the scene, he aimed right at Ms. Garrett and ran her down deliberately." "Maybe it was :just some kid joyriding,"

Sam suggested. "Somebody walking- along who found the car unlocked, with the keys in it, and couldn't resist."

That made sense to Phyllis. She said, "And whoever took the car was driving fast because they wanted to get away. Jani Garrett could have stepped out from between some parked cars, and the driver woud never have seen her."

Phyllis realized that it sounded almost as if she were trying to make excuses for the driver of the stolen car. That wasn't the case at all ... but somehow she didn't want to think that Jani Garrett had been run down deliberately. That would make the "accident" really attempted murder, and there had been too much of that sort of thing in Weatherford lately. Almost as if the town had its own serial killer. . . .

That was ridiculous, she told herself as she firmly put that thought out of her mind. She hadn't been able to establish any sort of link between Newt Bishop and Donnie Boatwright, and she certainly didn't see any connection between them and Jani Garrett. The young woman probably hadn't even known either of the older men.

And the idea that there didn't have to be a link, that the violence could be completely random, was just too creepy to even think about.

Mike shook his head in response to the comments made by Phyllis and Sam. "The police checked to see where Ms. Garrett would have been coming from. She had left her classroom just a few minutes earlier. Given its location, the most likely scenario is that she was walking straight down that lane of the parking lot toward her car." He paused for a second. "They found her car on that row, farther out past where she was hit."

"That still doesn't mean it was deliberate," Phyllis said. "No, but the tire tracks sure seem to indicate that, from what I've been told. There are places where the driver swerved back and forth, like Ms. Garrett tried to jump out of the way but the driver kept her right in his sights."

"He might have been having trouble keeping the car under control," Sam said. "Young, inexperienced drivers sometimes do, and it's possible this kid doesn't even have a license yet. "

Mike nodded. "That's plausible, I guess. It's not my case, of course, since it happened in the Weatherford PD's jurisdiction, but from what Roland said, they're regarding it as attempted manslaughter. That could be upgraded to attempted homicide, once they find out who was behind the wheel. If the driver had a reason for wanting Jani Garrett dead, that makes it attempted murder."

"If she dies, that makes it murder," Phyllis said heavily. "Yeah," Mike agreed, "and the last I heard, she was in critical condition at the hospital. She'll be really lucky if she pulls through."

Carolyn hadn't said much so far, but now she said, "I hope she makes it. I hate to see a young person struck down like that, even one like her."

Mike looked curiously at her. "What makes you say

something like that, Miz Wilbarger? What do you mean, ,one like her'?"

Carolyn shrugged and shook her head. "I don't really know. Just an impression I got somewhere that some of the other teachers didn't like her very much:"

Mike sat forward in his chair and said, "Didn't like her enough to maybe run over her if the chance presented itself?"

Carolyn's eyes widened. "Mike, that's terrible! A teacher would never do something like that to another teacher." "Teachers are people, too," Mike pointed out. "Thanks," Phyllis said dryly.

He gave an exasperated sigh. "You know what I mean, Mom. Any motive for murder you'd find in other people, you'll find in teachers, too."

Sam chuckled. "At least he said other people and not normal people."

'Phyllis said, "Really, we don't mean to pick on you, Mike. It's just hard for us to believe that a teacher would actually try to murder somebody."

"Yeah, but every murderer must work with somebody who finds it hard to believe that he's a killer."

Phyllis supposed he was right about that, at least in most cases. Nobody liked to think that somebody they knew had taken another human life.

"Anyway," Mike went on as he stood up, "I just thought you'd like to know what's going on.

Roland said you were there, Mom, so I knew you'd be interested." He paused, then added, "And since you didn't know the victim and nobody knows yet who was responsible for what happened, I don't suppose there's any reason for you to start investigating this case."

Phyllis felt her face turn warm with anger. "I was just trying to help, Michael, and you know it."

"Sure," he said hastily and started backing toward the door as if he realized that he had aroused her wrath. "I'll talk to you later."

When Mike was gone and the door was closed, Sam chuckled again. "I'd say you spooked the boy, Phyllis:"

"I think for a minute there he forgot who he was talking to," she said stiffly.

"Of course, it's sort of his job to keep folks from pokin' their noses into police business."

"If I recall correctly, your nose did some poking, too, Sam."

"Yeah, it did." She saw him glance toward Carolyn. "I guess just not enough."

Not yet, at least, Phyllis thought.

The thing Carolyn had said about some of the other teachers not liking Jani Garrett nagged at Phyllis the rest of that day. When she got up the next morning, the newspaper story about the accident was on the front page, of course. At press time, the police had no suspects, and the injured woman was still in critical condition at the hospital.

Phyllis withstood the persistent prodding of her curiosity until the middle of the day, when she called Dolly Williamson. "Dolly, it's Phyllis Newsom," she said when the retired superintendent answered the phone.

Dolly's health didn't allow her to get around much anymore, so it had been quite a while since the two women had seen each other. "Phyllis, how are you?" she asked. "I talk to Mattie occasionally, but it seems like it's been ages since we spoke."

"It's been a long time," Phyllis agreed. "I'm doing fine. How about you?"

The question prompted a couple of minutes of complaints from Dolly, who had never been shy about sharing her problems. Finally, though, she said, "How is everything working out having Sam Fletcher living with you? He's a darling man."

"Well, he's not actually living with me,' Phyllis said, "just boarding here."

"Of course, of course."

`But he does seem to be very nice. We've enjoyed having him here."

"I'll bet Carolyn hasn't," Dolly said with a chuckle. "Carolyn had to go through a period of adjustment, let's say. And I'm not sure, it's completely over yet."

"Sam will win her over. He's very charming. I tried for years to get him to come teach down here in Weatherford, but he was stubborn about staying in Poolville. He always said he liked a small school better."

Phyllis tried to steer the conversation around to the reason she had called. "Dolly, have you heard about what happened yesterday at the high school?"

"You mean about Jani Garrett being run over by a car? Lord, yes! I heard about it yesterday afternoon and then saw the story in the paper this morning. A terrible thing, just terrible."

"Did you know her? I don't think she and I ever met:' Phyllis knew that Dolly wouldn't need any more urging than that. Dolly knew everybody connected with education in Parker County, and she still had a network of informants that would rival a European spy ring. And with an old, trusted friend like Phyllis, she would be very open in what she said.

"Of course I'd met Jani, but I wouldn't say that I knew her well. She was so much younger, of course, and today's teachers are just so different from when you and I were there, Phyllis. Last school year was her first in Weatherford, and she'd only taught two or three years before that."

"Where did she come from?"

"One of the suburban districts over around Dallas, I believe. I don't remember which one."

"So she's not from around here?"

"Oh, no, not at all. I think she grew up over there. She'd probably still be there if she hadn't been asked to leave." That caught Phyllis's interest, and despite feeling a little too much like a gossip, she asked, "What happened? Was there a problem where she taught?"

"Well, from what I understand," Dolly said, "some of her male students were a little too fond of her, if you know what I mean. And the real problem was that she returned the feeling."

"You mean she got romantically involved with some of her students?"

"I don't think there was any romance involved. Just good old-fashioned lust. Jani couldn't resist those big handsome football players. That was probably true when she was in school herself, and it didn't change when she got on the. other side of the teacher's desk."

That was Dolly for you

always plainspoken: "Evidently she started carrying on a little too openly with some of the boys, and even though there were never any charges brought against her, she was told that her contract wouldn't be renewed and was advised that she ought to seek employment in some other district, preferably a good long distance away." Dolly paused for a second, then mused, "You know, it might not have been so bad if she had confined her attentions to one student. Still completely improper, of course, but we both know such things happen. It was her habit of flitting from boy to boy like she was still a teenager herself that caused the problem. She left too many broken hearts in her wake. And no one's heart breaks quite as violently as that of a teenage boy."

Phyllis felt a chill go through her. As she had expected, Dolly had had a lot to say, and it gave Phyllis a lot to think about. She said, `°The police think whoever it was who ran over Jam Garrett did it on purpose. Could she have been involved with some boy here in Weatherford, like she was back where she came from?"

"And then had him get angry enough when she dropped him that he wanted to kill her?" Dolly speculated. "I suppose it could have happened that way, all right. What a terrible, tragic thing."

Phyllis had to agree with that. And everything Dolly had told her backed up the feeling Carolyn had about some.of the teachers not liking Jani Garrett. If Jani had been a little too friendly with some of her male students, and if she had been a bit too indiscreet about the relationships, the word would have gotten around and most, if not all, of the other teachers would have disapproved.

Everything pointed to a jilted young lover being the culprit in the hit-and-run.

But even if that theory was right, what business was it of hers, Phyllis asked herself. She hadn't known Jani, and chances were she didn't know the driver who had run down the young teacher.

This wasn't like the cases of Newt Bishop and Donnie Boatwright. She hadn't been there when it happened, and she had no stake in it herself. She could feel sorry about the tragic aspects of the incident, but that was as far as it went.

So why, as she thanked Dolly and hung up, did she feel something pulling at her, something that told her she knew more about the attempt on Jani Garrett's life than she thought she did? Had her brief taste of being a detective been so intriguing that she wanted more of it?

She tried to put the whole thing out of her head, but it was difficult. More than difficult, she was finally forced to admit. It was impossible.