Stalking Death (25 page)

Half an hour later, the phone rang again. This time it had to be Andre. No one else would call this late. I rolled over and said "hello?" There was a long silence and a click. Well, he'd told me he was in cell hell, hadn't he. He'd try to find a place with a better signal and call again.

It was twenty minutes before the next call. Another silence and then click. And twenty minutes later, the same thing again.

It's a dastardly combination, being three-quarters asleep and a slow learner. I answered three more calls before I figured out this wasn't Andre. This was someone giving me a taste of what Shondra Jones had been living with.

I tried Andre's number once more, without success. I wanted to stay available, in case he did call. It was so difficult to reach him and I needed to hear his voice. For the next two hours, as regular as clockworks, the phone rang every twenty minutes. I always answered and there was never anyone there. Finally, I gave up, took the room phone off the hook, turned off my cell, and pulled the pillow over my head.

It took me a long while to fall asleep—my mind was full of Shondra, and St. Matts and the whole messy situation—but when I did, I slept like a rock. I didn't move again until my alarm, bleating like a sick sheep, dragged me back to reality. I woke with a blinding headache, a throbbing hand, a growling stomach, and the disposition of Ebenezer Scrooge. A message on my phone said I'd missed a call from Andre. Let me find the nasty little bastards who had kept me up all night and I'd pluck their little heads right off their shoulders.

Chapter 19

Mrs. Mitchell's lavish breakfast should have ensured that The Swan was always full, but the breakfast room was empty except for me and Bobby. Maybe the rest of the guests got to sleep in. Bobby was chipper and smiling—the man has the nicest disposition of anyone I know—even though he was clutching a sheaf of papers daunting in its thickness. He took a look at my face and announced, "Not a word of business until you've eaten." Not just a nice man, but smart.

I heaped up my plate with waffles and topped them with strawberries and whipped cream, added a small mountain of crisp bacon, a cup or so of fluffy scrambled eggs, and got a bowl of thick oatmeal swimming in cream and brown sugar. An army marches on its stomach, after all, and I knew today would be a series of battles. It wasn't just a jaundiced view from too little sleep and a wounded head, it was reality. Dunham would still be thick, Chambers devious, and Argenti demanding. And that was before we got to Bushnell, who defied description, and the other assorted dysfunctional players.

My mouth was full of waffles when the phone rang. Andre, at last. I excused myself and carried the phone out into the hall. "I miss you," I said.

"I called. You didn't answer."

"I know. Someone called me every twenty minutes all night. I'd answer, hoping it was you, and there'd be no one there. Finally, I turned off the phone so I could get some sleep."

"Sounds like your situation is as crazy as mine."

"I'm so fed up with mine I could scream. I suppose I wouldn't have a job if these people were functional, but honestly! They're like hens in a thunderstorm. Piling up in corners and clucking madly."

"Hey," he said, "that's pretty good."

"I thought it was cranky."

"When my bride doesn't get enough sleep, she does get a bit cranky."

"And when the bad guys thwart my groom? Tell me about your night."

"It was lonely," he said. "You weren't there."

Go ahead, try to break my heart, Lemieux. You weren't there either. "And your case?"

"Big house on the water in Scarborough... leased by a couple drug dealers.... night before last, well, early morning, actually, the neighbors heard gunshots... sounds of fighting. They called the Scarborough police. Local guys went and knocked, no one answered. They waited for first light, looked in the windows, saw knocked over furniture. Waited for a judge to give them a warrant, went in and found blood everywhere so they called us."

And so it went. The public thinks it's easy. You hear trouble, you call the cops, cops break down the door and get the bad guys. In real life, the cops can get there and if there's no sign of trouble and no one to answer the door or give permission to search, they may have to cool their heels for hours. "And what did you find inside?"

"Enough blood to tell us someone had been killed there, knife marks, bullet holes and no bodies, alive or dead."

"Sounds like almost as big a mystery as I've got. At least you get to be in charge. I've got this jerk of a state cop with a poker up his ass named Bushnell breathing down my neck and calling me a liar every time I open my mouth."

"Gary Bushnell?" he said. "Hey, he's a great guy."

I loved my own personal cop more than life itself. Goodness knew I'd gone to great, some might say foolish, lengths to prove it. But sometimes the brotherhood—and for the most part it still was a brotherhood—got me down. He knew Bushnell. Dammit! Would his opinion of the great Gary Bushnell change if he knew the man had grabbed his wife and shaken her until he'd made her sick? I decided not to ask. Andre didn't need more things to worry about. I could tell from his voice he was exhausted.

Husband. Wife. Such new, unfamiliar words. How long would it take for them to become old hat? Andre the old hat. Old white hat? But the old hat was talking again. "What? You didn't like him? Hey, did he give you a hard time?" His voice dropped to a growl. "You want me to talk to him?"

Just what I needed—my hero with a badge and a gun, calling up and telling Bushnell to leave his wife alone. All credibility gone, little woman status confirmed. "No. Sweetie pie, honeydew, darling, I do not want you to talk to him. I think he's a jerk. In fact, he went out of his way to prove he was. But I'm a big girl and I can take care of myself, thank you very much."

"Uh oh," he said. "Sounds like I trod on some very tender feet."

It was a tender head, actually, but I wasn't mentioning that. If our positions were reversed, he wouldn't tell me, either. "You had any breakfast?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah." He brightened right up. "Biggest damned lumberjack breakfast you ever saw." My honey really loves to eat. "Whoops," he said. "Gotta run. There's a local cop over there waving at me kinda frantically. Maybe they've found some body parts or something. I'll call tonight, so leave the phone on, okay?" He was gone without even a hearty Hi Ho, Silver, away.

I headed back to my waffles, purposeful and hungry. But no more purposeful than the two girls who'd just come through the door, sighted on me, and headed in my direction. Their wide, squared shoulders and easy gait said athletes. Their eyes said seeking. Their worried faces said Shondra. And my waffles were getting cold. I headed back into the breakfast room. They'd have to follow if they wanted to talk.

Bobby smiled at me, frowned slightly at them, and rattled his papers softly, reminding me we didn't have time for diversions. "Sorry," I said. I dropped into my seat, grabbed my fork, and shoved a bite of waffle into my mouth.

The girls weren't shy. They took the other two seats at the table and waited for my attention. Whatever the current debate on girls and self-esteem may be, and like so many other aspects of popular psychology, it has a 'flavor of the month' quality, Title IX and the resulting access to competitive athletics has done wonders for young women in the assertiveness department. Even when I wasn't keen to be aggressed on, like now, I had to applaud the improvement. I'd been a teenage female athlete back when being strong and tall and competitive hadn't been so well received.

The girls exchanged glances and the bigger one took the lead. "You're the consultant working with Mr. Chambers on this... uh... on Alasdair's... uh... murder, aren't you." She stuck out a hand. "I'm Lindsay Davis. This is Jennifer Reilly. We're on the team with Shondra and we're here to..." She faltered and looked at her companion. "Help me out here, Jen."

Lindsay had copper-colored hair, cut sensibly short, freckles dusting lily skin, and smart gray eyes. Jen Reilly was dark, with hair at least as curly as mine, bright brown eyes, and unnaturally straight, unnaturally white teeth. Now she showed all those teeth in a nervous smile. "We think... someone needs to know... uh... something strange is going on here."

She searched for a way to explain. "I know what we've been told that Shondra targeted Alasdair because of his views... and that there was no stalking going on, it was all just a misunderstanding on her part. But it's, well, kind of a scary thing to call Mr. Chambers a liar, but I... we... that's just seriously not true."

The clock was running and Bobby and I had to talk before we met with the St. Matthews people again but I needed to hear this. I might not get a second chance. I introduced myself and Bobby and apologized for eating while we talked. I'd learned from my cop to eat when I got the chance.

"So you believe Shondra was being stalked and Alasdair was doing it?" They nodded.

"Well, sure," Lindsay said. "Once he'd asked her out and she'd shot him down. That's Alasdair... that was, I mean. If he couldn't have what he wanted, he had to destroy it. They called it high spirits... or youthful pranks... but the truth was... he was just plain crazy. Not funny crazy, either. Bad crazy. Mean and scary crazy."

"Alasdair was dangerous and vicious," Jen said. "Kids were afraid of him... of what he'd do, because they knew the Administration wouldn't do anything to him. Things other kids got in trouble for, Alasdair just skated." She shrugged. "His family was just too big a deal around here. Headmaster Chambers... he... well, it was kind of pathetic, if you know what I mean... he'd like practically kiss Alasdair's feet."

"His ass," Lindsay corrected.

"Whatever... but we didn't come here about that. Not exactly, I mean. We're... well... I guess there's two things, really." Jen stopped and looked at Lindsay.

"I know it was hard for you to come," I said. "It must be important, or you wouldn't have bothered."

"It's going to sound crazy," Lindsay said. "That's why she... why we... haven't said anything to anyone... like our advisors or anything. Not even to Coach Adams, and she's pretty cool. Only... it's hard to know who you can trust around here, you know?"

She gave me a close, nervous scrutiny. "I mean, I'm here and everything, but I don't even know if I can trust you."

There was so much wrong with a campus where the students felt unsafe talking about what scared them and unsure who was a trustworthy adult. "What made you think you could?"

"Shondra," Jen said. "That is, she didn't trust you exactly, but she said you were kind of cool, and that you, like... well, that maybe you believed her?" She shrugged. "That's more than anyone else did, isn't it?"

"You believed her."

"Well, yeah," Jen said, "but I knew Alasdair, didn't I, like what he does and stuff." I raised an eyebrow. "Well, not that anyone would care or anything... I mean, like who'd listen to me, right? But I had my own run in with him, didn't I, Lindsay?"

Lindsay nodded. Bobby gave up and set his stack of papers back down on the table. This wasn't going to be a quickie. They had a story to tell but getting it would take time. Since we were in for the long haul, I offered the girls breakfast. They were hungry teenage athletes. They didn't say no. Bobby got up to get us both more coffee.

Over her waffles, Jen elaborated. "Back when I was a freshman... I'm a junior now, like Shondra. Lindsay's a senior... Alasdair asked me out. Well, he was cute, even then, and he had that swagger... that confidence that most freshman boys lack... so I said sure, and we went out a few times. He was weird, but we were all new at this. And anyway, I hadn't dated before, so what did I know?"

She set down her fork and clasped her hands tightly together. "So this one night we're up in his room and he says that he thinks we ought to have sex... just like that... and I was like, no way was I ready for that. So that's what I told him. I thought, well, he might be kinda put out, but he'd understand, only he, like, took it really badly... yelling at me. Said I'd led him on. He started throwing things."

One thumb stroked the other in a steady, nervous rhythm. "I started crying and he got all apologetic and I thought we were okay. But the next time we were together, he tried again. It got to be like a wrestling match and I was thinking I'd better just break up with him."

She stared down at the busy thumbs. "And then he... one night, he said he had some vodka and did I want to try it, and I... well... I guess I was just dumb in those days, or too naïve or something... because I said sure, and we drank some, and I got all dizzy and woozy, and then Alasdair tried to..." She shot an embarrassed look at Bobby and wouldn't go on.