Photo, Snap, Shot (13 page)

On my way back
from dropping Anya at school on Wednesday morning, I called Detweiler. Hearing Connie talk about Elliott and the full court press to blame him for the murder lit a fire under me. I wanted to make progress on this situation. I wanted the suspicions to end and for the police to put a REAL suspect in custody. I also needed a better sense of where the investigation really stood.

He and I arrived simultaneously at the original Kaldi’s Coffee on DeMun, nestled in a cul-de-sac in a lovely, tree-lined area. I had to talk quickly in order to be on time opening the store. I wore a pair of Ralph Lauren jeans and a V-neck sweater with turquoise detailing. His gorgeous green eyes swept up and down with appreciation, causing the back of my neck to warm.

Neither of us said anything about our feelings. Well, maybe I was the only one with feelings. Maybe he was the “victim” of my stray hormones.

A part of me longed to say, “Did you ever really care about me? Or are you a hound dog?” But I didn’t. What was the use?

Instead, we leaned against my car, and both of us produced lists of names. He quickly marked off the male teachers.

“Got them covered. Pinning them down, checking them out.”

“How can I help?”

“Keep talking to the moms. Someone somewhere’s got to know something. There’s got to be a motive out there. Maybe twisted and nonsensical to us, but not to the killer.”

“Has the task force closed its investigation of Corey?”

He drummed his fingers on the door panel. I could tell he was debating what to say. He dragged his hand over his jaw as though trying to rub his face clean, but not succeeding. I noticed the bags beneath his eyes, and how gaunt he seemed.

“Not yet. But we’re not learning anything to help him either. That jerk of a lawyer he has, Jim Hagg, is giving us fits.”

“Jim Hagg?” I nearly choked on my coffee. Hagg was the high-priced spread, the go-to guy used by all the big money folks caught cheating on their taxes, driving while intoxicated, or looking at kiddy porn. If you did it, and everyone knew you did, Hagg was your man.

Detweiler nodded. “I know. I mean, I’m glad, don’t get me wrong, but where’s the money coming from?”

“Did you try asking Corey?”

“Not yet. Hagg’s good. I’ll give him that. He’s got Corey’s mouth closed tighter than bark sticks to a tree. Meantime, we’ve got diddly. Whatever Corey knows, he’s keeping to himself. Like they say at the Ed Jones Dome, we’re losing momentum.”

“But I thought you two were friends.”

“We are.” Detweiler’s shoulders drooped. “But I’m a cop. And he’s the accused. You’d think I’d be used to this … no matter how good friends you are, when people are in trouble …” He sighed. “I became a policeman because I wanted to help people. But I’ve learned that most people don’t think of cops as helpful.”

I could think of nothing to say. I understood entirely how “most people” felt.

The silence between us was uncomfortable. Detweiler ducked his head down and studied the papers before us. “Doesn’t matter. He and I don’t need to discuss it. Corey didn’t kill Sissy Gilchrist.” I noticed he didn’t use her courtesy title the way he did everyone else he ever mentioned in the course of an investigation. I assumed this reflected both how well he’d known her—through Corey—as well as his lack of respect for the woman.

“And what did you think about her? Did you spend time with her and him? Did you like her?”

“I … we … as couples we spent time together.” His face reddened, and I averted my eyes thinking of Detweiler’s wife, Brenda.

“I thought Sissy was trouble,” said Detweiler as he slapped the quarter panel of his car in frustration. “I thought she was having fun with him. Payback to her controlling mom and henpecked dad, for goodness knows what. I told him he was crazy. He laughed. Didn’t even get angry. Said he knew I meant well, but that I was wrong. He said I’d see how much they meant to each other. Right. I’m seeing. I’m seeing him taking a bum rap. I told him he should stay away from her. Now look what’s happened.”

“Were you worried about how people would react? Or worried about her flirting?”

“Both.” He spit the word out.

I understood. A black man with a white woman might not turn heads in New York City or London or Scott Air Force Base, but here in the more conservative St. Louis suburbs, it would cause a bad case of whiplash. And a mixed marriage? Oh, baby. You had to be joking. Take Sissy’s loose behavior, add her flair for making people angry, and stir it with the deep-seated revulsion some portions of society felt toward miscegenation, and you were talking risky business. Deadly risky.

The thought of the two of them carrying on this torrid romance in the hallowed halls of CALA made me shiver. Maybe they were right for each other. What was it Marvin Gaye called it? Sexual healing? Maybe they’d found that in each other. I wasn’t a total cynic. Deep in my heart, I hoped the right person could really make your dreams come true. Whatever clicked between them, their diverse racial backgrounds must have added yet another dimension of drama to the relationship.

And from what I’d heard, Sissy seemed addicted to drama.

“You don’t have any evidence on Corey, do you?”

“I can’t tell you that. But Kiki, you don’t understand. Law enforcement professionals hate to be wrong. You learn to trust your gut in this business, or you don’t last long. We believe where there’s smoke there’s fire. The members of the Major Case Squad aren’t going to give up on Corey as the killer that easily. In fact, hiring Jim Hagg was a bad move. Mr. Hagg’s reputation has been built on defending the guilty, on getting off rich folks who deserve to be put behind bars. Once Mr. Hagg walked into the station, the entire force became even more determined to find evidence to convict Corey. They took it as a challenge.”

“Oh, no.” I poked around in my cup with the wooden coffee stirrer. What I needed to say next had to be said gently. “Are you sure Corey didn’t do this?”

“I had my moments, but …” he paused, “Corey was cool with her past. And we’ve already found three people who’ve said she changed her ways after she hooked up with him.”

That jibed with Maggie’s comments. “Any progress with the murder weapon?”

“No. We’re still trying to talk to the folks attending the sports booster meeting.” He slammed one hand into the other. “This case is like dealing with another culture. A foreign country where I don’t speak the language.”

It was the language of privilege, and my daughter was becoming fluent in it.

I shook my head in agreement as I thought back to what I’d learned about the Veiled Prophet. If you would have told me a week ago that an entire city bought into a mythical figurehead—who arrived by barge on the river no less—I would have laughed. But now, I knew differently.

“But here’s a way you can help. A call came in this morning from a woman who swore up and down that she knows who the killer is.”

“That’s good news, right?”

“The rest of the squad blew her off. What if she’s on the level? See, the other guys thought she was a nut-case without a clue. A rich housewife bent on seeking attention. No one even thought it worth following up on. They heard ‘mom’ and her Zip Code and decided she wasn’t worth listening to.”

Again, I nodded. Harry Potter might need a cloak of invisibility, but for one-half the world—the female half—we didn’t need a cape. We moms were already invisible. I flashed back to a dinner party I’d attended with George. The minute my companions to the left and right found out I was a SAHM (Stay-At-Home Mom), they cleared their throats and talked over my head to each other. In the space of four little words, I became a non-entity. I spent the entire meal developing a close and personal relationship with my braised scallops, risotto, and sautéed baby vegetables.

No wonder I’d become overweight. At least food didn’t diss me.

And that Zip Code thing? The private school culture would be unfamiliar territory for the majority of police. Made sense. After all, I was a product of a poor, middle-class family, and I was resigned to circling the outskirts of CALA culture, even though I looked like I should be teaching Sunday school at the Episcopal Church. (Which I might have done, had my life not followed another path.)

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Elliott McMahan’s position. He would be busy juggling two priorities, keeping the police at arm’s length and finding the murderer. It was a no-win situation.

“Vicky Ventner’s our caller’s name. Do you know her?”

“Oh, I know her all right.” I smirked. “I’ll just bet she sounded confident.”

“You think she knows something?”

I couldn’t help it. My evil twin was trying to take over my body. I resisted, resisted, and then gave up. “Vicky Ventner knows everything, absolutely everything.”

I opened the store,
found Diva Craft Lounge Radio on the Internet, and put in a solid hour of work while listening to the hosts Danielle and Rayme. By creating a repeated visual theme for the confidential album, I could work on the pages and keep the photos locked in the briefcase. To help me know exactly what I had to work with, I’d created a series of thumbnail sketches, numbered each photo, and keyed those numbers to my thumbnails. The store was mostly empty. Bama finished an inventory of our punches. She didn’t ask me what I was doing until half past nine.

“That a special project?”

“Yes.”

“You owe me time,” she said. Her voice was pitched high and her eyes were sharp and angry. Oh, crud, I realized with a start. She was ticked off that Dodie had given this project to me instead of her.

“I know I owe you time on the clock. Unfortunately, Dodie scheduled me to work on CALA’s alumni publication. I have to go over to the school right now.”

Bama made an indecipherable noise, rather like a growl. “At least take these.” She gave me more flyers about upcoming workshops. “Why you? How come you get to leave the store?”

I explained how as part of our “outreach” program, Dodie had volunteered my services to CALA’s alumni publication. “Put those three journalism courses you took in college to use,” she’d said. Frankly, in my heart of hearts, I suspected an ulterior motive. Dodie determined that I should become part of my daughter’s school community. “You’re an outsider because you don’t put forth the effort,” my boss scolded me. “If you don’t know them, don’t pal around with them, you miss out. So will Anya.”

I suspected Dodie and Sheila had discussed my multitudinous and manifold deficiencies, and this “lack of involvement” ranked high on their list. I faced Bama. “I’m doing what our boss told me to do.”

Bama pouted. “Whatever.”

“Hey, it’s extra work for me.”

Bama’s frown deepened. “Extra pay, too.”

Over summer vacation, I’d been assigned articles to run throughout the year, including profiles on CALA’s prestigious alumni. After dragging my eraser butt for a week on my most recent task, I knew the research couldn’t wait any longer if I was to meet my deadline.

I took the dogs around the block, penned them up, and drove into the parking area in front of the Bread Co. on Ballas. It’s one of the few eating spots my daughter and I agree on. Anya hates the lunches the school serves. “Too starchy. I’ll get fat,” she says. Last year the middle-school nurse called and put a scare into me when my daughter quit eating and lost weight. Since then I actively looked for ways to put healthy food in front of her on the sly. I was already stopping at Bread Co. to order lunch for Maggie and me, so I decided to splurge on extra bagels for the rest of the week. Anya would never ask for them, but the smell of the dough toasting in the morning would be irresistible.

Although only 9:45 a.m., Bread Co. was crowded as usual. I ordered the baker’s dozen bagels and cream cheese special to take home for later, as well as a Bistro Salad for myself and an iced Green Tea (a splurge), plus a turkey sandwich on sourdough with a bag of Kettle Chips and a Coke for Maggie.

___

Mr. Beacon monitored the parking lot. As I walked past, he gave me a friendly wave and a tip of his cap. The alumni office at CALA was located in Wellingham Hall just off the main corridor to all the admissions offices. As my heels clicked along the marble, I paid new attention to the glossy black and white photos of illustrious alums, which gave way to color shots of more recent vintage.

Mrs. Glazer, head of alumni services, gave me a nod and went back to her paperwork when I walked in. I’d shown up often enough to be unremarkable. During the first week, she’d stood over me. But lately, Mrs. Glazer pretty much left me alone to do my thing. I guess she figured her lecture on the confidential nature of the materials in the files had soaked in. Now she barely noticed me when I came in, and she seemed to have decided I could be trusted with whatever secrets were hidden on old sheets of paper.

She shouldn’t have.

The file cabinets in a smaller, second office off of her work area held the records for each school year. I settled myself into a well-worn arm chair and pulled out my notes. In no time, I collected the rest of the information I needed for my article. Sitting around me in neat manila file folders was a cornucopia of information on the elite of St. Louis.

I ached to know more about the women I’d dubbed the Four Alumnae: Jennifer Moore, Patricia Bigler, Ella Latreau Walden, and Mahreeya Nichols. Really, it was none of my business. Actually, it was the whole reason I majored in journalism in college—being able to poke around where it wasn’t my business. And wasn’t nosing around how I came up with those wonderful alumni articles? You betcha.

This looked like a grand time to snoop. I started with the CALA yearbooks.

Bingo. Young and hopeful faces, bearing a vague resemblance to the women I knew, stared out from the pages. I would never have recognized Patricia Bigler without the cutline below the photo. The list of names included Jennifer’s, but not Mahreeya’s. I studied the photos more carefully. Where was she? I thought back to Ella’s crack about Mahreeya’s looks being surgically enhanced. A class photo showed Ella, Jennifer, Patricia, and a handful of other girls. Mahreeya had to be in there somewhere, hidden behind her original features and figure. The cutline only referenced the activity, May Day preparations, not the participants.

I flipped the pages back and forth reluctantly, trying to decide what to do next. I had little more than an hour until lunch with Maggie. The book I held covered the girls’ freshman year. I tried to remember my high school yearbook. As the girls drew nearer to graduation, the yearbook would logically devote more pages, more images, to their class. The next annual did just that. Ella, Jennifer, and Patricia appeared on every other page. Toward the back was a group picture of the graduating class and a carefully annotated cutline. The students’ names were printed as they’d appear on their diplomas: Ella Martha Latreau, Jennifer Anne Hallback, Patricia Esther Krupp, and so on.

I still couldn’t puzzle out which girl was Mahreeya.

The body of the yearbook was broken down into individual photos arranged alphabetically by graduating class interrupted by student life photos featuring activities. Where was Mahreeya? I studied the photos of the girls participating in various clubs. Then I flipped to the list of graduating seniors’ names.

Of course! All of the girls’ names were spelled conventionally and most of the students went by their given names, not their middle names. Mahreeya’s given name was Deborah, and her middle name was Maria. There she was, with a face that could stop a Mack Truck, Deborah Maria LaFevre. An unexpected wave of pity swept over me. What a plain, unattractive child Mahreeya had been. The poor girl had a nose like Cyrano de Bergerac, a chest as flat as Kansas, and saddlebag hips that stuck out like panniers. The harsh light of the photographer’s flash highlighted a complexion marred by large abscesses from acne.

Obviously, as her outside self changed, Deborah Maria decided that her name needed to change, too. Hence, the phonetic spelling “Mahreeya.” It was a sad, but understandable way of saying, “I am someone special!”

No wonder Mahreeya felt insecure. Any one of her physical challenges would have sent a teenage girl’s self-esteem plummeting. I hadn’t noticed her in the other photos because she was deep in the background, as though willing herself to disappear. I moved to another page and saw a stunning photo of Ella, smiling directly at the photographer, in all the glory and sensuality of budding womanhood. What a contrast the two girls made.

For kicks and grins, I made chicken scratches in my notebook to mark the number of times each girl appeared in photos. Although this meant using a highly unscientific methodology, if CALA was anything like the high school I had attended, the final tally would be an indicator of popularity among classmates.

When I counted my marks, I was surprised to discover that Ella appeared not most but least of the quartet. And yet, she’d been Queen of Love and Beauty. Apparently I’d been told the truth. The coronation was not a popularity contest.

I put the yearbooks back on the appropriate shelf and stood in the center of the room, beating a rhythm with my pencil against my teeth. Snooping around is a process of casting your net wide, then looking over your catch, sorting through the fishies, and casting your net again. Hoping eventually you’ll pull up a big tuna. I decided to look up all the girls’ parents and any information on the four alumnae. The files were cross-referenced and indexed. I jotted down relevant file names and made more notes on my notepaper.

A silhouette passed by the frosted window of the office where I worked. Low voices conferred. I hurriedly shoved the files I’d pulled under a notepad and started working on notes for my article. When the voices left, I went back to poking around.

I crossed off each file as I pulled it. The folders were crammed with photos and articles. Pay dirt. Obviously, the girls’ parents had played integral parts in the life of the school community. A photo showing the four girls hunched over a school project was in one of the first files I opened. From the same file came another photo showing Patricia and Maria/Mahreeya, and a young man labeled as Patricia’s brother, Donald. Two of the women changed so much over the years that I wouldn’t have recognized them without the cutlines. Maria/Mahreeya was pudgy, and her hawkish nose had dominated her face before she’d had it trimmed to scale. Patricia was rail thin, not nearly as tall as she was now, and so frail a stiff wind could have blown her to Kansas City. Only Ella and Jennifer looked much as they did today.

In journalism school, we were taught never to write on the back of a photo because the pressure of the pen would mar the image. Instead, we glued an identifying sheet to the back piece of the photo. On the attached paper was a cutline that listed who was in the photo, the name and date of the event. The school photographers had done exactly that, listing each person with his or her entire given name. Probably, given the amount of intermarriage expected among St. Louis’ Old Families, this method facilitated tracing complicated family interrelationships. I studied the names, and the thought came to me: I might as well have been perusing the records of a dog breeder.

The clock told me I was going to have to hurry to grab lunch and get it to Maggie.

___

Maggie was pacing laps around a picnic table when I arrived. Her brown pants held a sharp crease, and her soft green and tan turtle-necked sweater was tucked in and held tight with a polished brown belt. Maggie wasn’t one for fashion, but she did put a priority on neatness. Her face, I noticed, looked tired and pale.

“Hey, what’s up?” I handed over the Bread Co. shopping bag. Maggie unwrapped her sandwich and bit into it eagerly. We ate with the abandon of our two teenagers instead of their more dignified mothers.

“I needed this. The food and the break. I’m still upset about what happened yesterday.” With that prelude, Maggie explained that a new family had visited the kindergarten the day before. True to CALA’s commitment to diversity, the head of the lower school had persuaded an African-American doctor and his wife to consider enrolling their son. Dr. and Mrs. Percy showed up with their little guy in tow right before snack time.

“The class was divided. Half of the children were up in the library choosing books. The other half was finishing a matching project to develop fine motor skills. Very age appropriate. Jared Percy sat down at the worktable next to the children working on the matching project. Cute kid. Big brown eyes, and a thoughtful expression. He was totally into his activity when the library group came back.”

Maggie stopped. She closed her eyes and took a long sip of her Coke. “Sissy’s son Christopher was one of the kids returning. All of a sudden, he stops in his tracks. He drops his library book and stares at the Percys. He begins to scream. I mean, this was a yell of pure terror.

“He’s pointing at the black family. He’s incoherent, blubbering. I mean, he had a major meltdown. He started to run out of the room, but I grabbed him. He started kicking me and screaming.”

She pulled on her collar and for the first time, I noticed a series of claw marks on her neck and jawline.

“What did you do?”

“I remembered seeing Patricia Bigler in the halls earlier. I got my assistant to track her down.”

I repeated what Connie McMahan had said about Patricia being Christopher’s favorite person, and Maggie’s pale face nodded. My friend reached up and massaged her temples. “I thought we’d have to call a pediatrician and have him sedated. That little boy was literally foaming at the mouth by the time Patricia arrived. She picked him up, and he grabbed onto her, screaming about his mother being killed by … Well, he used the ‘n’ word.”