The Witch of Agnesi (11 page)

CHAPTER 9

A
t the risk of repeatin’ myself, do you know something we don’t?” Keene fixed Bonnie with a malevolent stare.

Don’t pull this cowboy stuff on me, Keene. You
don’t know glaring until you’ve been given the devileye
by a fourteen-year old girl with a pierced eyebrow.

“Yeah, I think I do. I know Peyton Newlin, and I knew Stephanie Templeton. Peyton worshiped her.”

Franklin spread wide his hands and adopted his best be-reasonable-Missus P smile. “You said yourself Stephanie peeled back Newlin’s paint. Here’s the girl of his thirteen-year-old dreams toasting his muffins in public, in front of his mother, no less. It’s a short trip from adoration to angry humiliation.”

Armen chose that moment to return. He set Franklin’s mug in front him. “Nice turn of phrase, Valsecci.

Another bit of wisdom for the T-shirt consortium?”

Armen took the vacant seat. “Sorry, no scones.”

Even with a Styrofoam cup covering his mouth, Bonnie could see the amusement on Armen’s face.
For
an old fart Science teacher, you drive pretty close to the
edge, Callahan. I like that.

From the look on his face, Franklin didn’t share her admiration.

Keene gave Armen a disinterested glance and dismissed him with a curl of his lip. “If everybody has their hot cocoa, let’s get back to business.”

He reached over and shut off the recorder then shook his head like a bison getting ready to charge. “Templeton dies within hours of Peyton Newlin making like Houdini. A coincidence? I don’t buy it.”

“I didn’t think you bought it either, Missus P,” Franklin said.

Bonnie tugged at her ear. “I’m not saying there’s no connection. I just can’t picture Peyton beating Stephanie Templeton to death with a baseball bat. Adding to my incredulity is the nagging question of how Peyton got to Fulton Hill to do the deed.”

She stared from one face to the next, challenging anyone present to answer the “nagging question.” “Remember, at thirteen, Peyton doesn’t yet drive.”

“Then someone drove him,” Keene said, obviously not used to civilians questioning his theories. “What’s the big deal?”

Bonnie gave Keene her best bless your heart but you’re not the sharpest crayon in the box sigh. “Now you have two people in on this murder. Three, if you include the fact Stephanie must have voluntarily gone with this ever burgeoning group. By the way, who was this mystery driver?”

Franklin cleared his throat. “Back up, Missus P. Why should we assume Stephanie went with her murderers voluntarily?

“Murderers? All right, let’s keep the multiple killers option open. Answer me this. When you questioned the Templetons, did they hear anyone come into their house and drag away their daughter?”

Franklin reddened from his neck to his hairline. “Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Maybe the girl met with Peyton and—”

“Whomever.” Bonnie waved him on.

“And whomever. Then they kept her quiet with the threat of violence.”

“With a weapon?” Bonnie cringed at the sarcastic tone in her voice. She knew the effect it had on children and had been trying to wean herself off it for years, with limited success.
Put it together, Franklin. You’re too
intelligent to let me lead you down the dumbass path
.

To Bonnie’s relief, Keene picked up the inquiry. No matter if he plowed through a pile of stupid. He was probably used to it anyway.

“Yeah, with a weapon, a knife or a gun.”

Bonnie put an innocent expression on her face. She’d used this technique over the years to soften the blow of sarcasm. “Let me get this straight. Peyton Newlin first wakes up Stephanie, by say, tossing peb bles at her bedroom window, like that Nazi boy in
The
Sound of Music
?”

“I loved that movie,” Armen whispered from the other side of Keene.

“So did I,” Bonnie said.

Keene’s nostrils flared. “I don’t know about no pebbles, but Peyton got her up somehow.”

Bonnie thought better of continuing any more movie talk. She held up her index finger. “Hold that thought.”

Her foot was complaining something awful, so she used the opportunity to get more comfortable and to also turn to Franklin. “I’ll bet Stephanie wasn’t in a nightgown when you found her on Fulton Hill. I’ll wager she even had shoes on.”

Her statement was rewarded with a raised eyebrow from Franklin. “No bet. She was fully dressed. I’m not even going to ask where that wild guess came from.”

Wild guess, my sagging derriere.

“So now, instead of just opening her window and speaking with Peyton, Stephanie gets fully dressed, and without informing her parents, goes outside. We on the same page here?”

Keene looked as if he still wanted to pursue the crumbling line of logic, but to Bonnie’s gratification Franklin nodded.

“Okay, I see what you’re saying. Why get fully dressed just to talk?” He nodded agreement. “Templeton knew she wasn’t coming back for a while. Maybe even knew she was leaving home.”

“Makes sense to me, youngster. Especially if she was wearing shoes. You don’t need shoes to maintain your modesty.”

Keene shook his head, again the lumbering bison. “You do if you don’t want to scrape your tender toes on rocks and dirt.”

Bonnie traded glances with Franklin and saw he already knew the answer to Keene’s proposition. “I’ve got the advantage over you,” she said. “I knew Stephanie. Like most of these country girls, she’d go barefoot at the drop of a hat. Feet tough as leather.”

Keene squinted at her. “Okay, I’ll have to take your word for that one, but I still don’t understand how you knew she was fully clothed in the first place.”

Bonnie hated lazy thinking in children. She really found the trait unattractive in people who supposedly used deduction for a living. “Because I knew there wasn’t a knife or a gun. She wasn’t forced to go with anyone.”

From the corner of her eye, Bonnie saw Franklin’s expression change as he picked up the answer.
Tell
him, my beamish boy.

“Because she was killed with a baseball bat. If the killers had a knife or gun, why not use the weapon at hand?”

Keene still appeared unconvinced. “All right, Templeton goes with Peyton of her own free will. Then he and his driver kill her.”

“I don’t think so.”

Keene’s nostrils flared even wider than before. The man looked as if he might exhale flames. “Damn it, why not?”

The fact that even Armen peered at her doubtfully gave her pause.
You better have your ducks in a row,
Pinkwater, or this bozo Keene will discount everything
you say after this.
She eyed Franklin uneasily.
And so
will the youngster.

“Because I don’t believe Stephanie Templeton was awakened by her killer. She was waiting for him.”

She hastily added, “Or her.”

Keene’s eyes became slits. “There’s no way to know that.”

Bonnie hated the idea of taking these men by the hands and showing them every thought in her head. If this were a classroom math problem, she’d have her students work their way from what they knew to where they had to go. Fortunately, very few math problems involved murder.

Oh, what the hell.

“Let’s go back to what we know. Franklin, you went out and talked to the Templetons after Stephanie’s death?”

Franklin eyed her cautiously. “Yes.”

She recognized the please don’t call on me look from when he used it in Algebra One. “Did you meet Zeebo?”

“What kinda name is Zeebo?” Keene’s voice, which had been running almost in neutral, slipped back into heavy East Coast.

Any second Bonnie expected him to exclaim, “F’gedd about it.”

As she hoped, the answer came to Franklin. “The dog! The little yipping fur ball.”

She nodded, feeling a disjointed sense of pride this former student could still use his brain with a little prodding. “Zeebo is a cockapoo, a noble, albeit miniscule creation of crossbreeding. From your description, I have to assume Zeebo gave you a sampling of his voice.”

“If you mean he’s a yipper, you’d be right as rain.”

To his credit, Keene kept his mouth shut although Bonnie could tell he was growing impatient with all this talk of dogs and their barks. From the expression on Armen’s kisser he already saw where she was headed.
You
got a good head on your shoulders, Mister Callahan.

She leaned closer to Franklin, as much to exclude Keene as anything else. “Would it be probable, how’d you put it, ‘the little yipping fur ball’ never barked Thursday night? Remember now, the entire household is supposedly asleep, and Peyton with his mystery driver comes to the Templeton house in the middle of the night.”

Franklin sighed. “Possible, but not probable.”

She addressed her next question to Keene. “What is more likely?”
Even lummoxes need an opportunity
to be smart.

“Templeton pretends to go to bed and waits, all her clothes on, for whoever was coming. She keeps the pooch quiet. Parents don’t get disturbed.” Like a teenager with a right answer, Keene looked proud of himself.

Saints be praised. Ladies and gentlemen, proof
positive it’s never too late for an education.

Keene waggled a finger at her. “That still doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been Peyton Newlin with a driver.”

Oh damn, I had such high hopes for you.

“Do you believe Stephanie’s death had something to do with Peyton’s disappearance?”

“You bet.” He reaffirmed this assertion with a decisive nod of the head.

“So do I. Then would you agree the probability is high that whoever Stephanie was waiting on must have set up to meet in the minutes or hours after our absent genius’s evaporation?”

Keene chewed his lip, and already Bonnie knew she might be moving too fast for him.

Bonnie laid a hand on his arm. “Give me this one, and you can dope it out later.” She shot Armen a surreptitious wink.

Keene grunted.

Time for the throat shot.
“Stephanie spoke to a number of people, myself included, after Peyton’s disappearance, but she couldn’t have spoken with Peyton. He was already gone.”

“What about a cell phone?” Keene spit out the words like he’d caught Bonnie in a lie. “The Templeton girl could have called Peyton because she was worried about him.”

Bonnie extended a palm toward Franklin.

Her former student took the cue. “No cell phone. Ralph Newlin told me himself Peyton was too young to own one.”

Bonnie picked up her crutches and stood. “As much fun as this has been, I’m getting hungry and grumpy.

Would anyone here like to buy me a late lunch?”

Armen raised his hand. “Pick me, teacher.”

“Sold to the man with the sexy goatee.”

Keene stood and barred her way. “Hold on. I’ve got a few more questions.”

She considered
accidentally
jamming the tip of her crutch down on Keene’s instep. “Make it quick, constable. You have no idea how hungry I am.”

“We’ll need a list of all the people Stephanie Templeton talked to that night after Peyton walked away.”

Bonnie played back Thursday evening frame-by-frame. She knew whenever she did this, her lips moved and made her appear loopy, but it couldn’t be helped. That was just the way the machinery worked. “Ali Griffith, Edmund Sheridan, and Missus Templeton. Those are all I know for sure. To whom she spoke at Knowledge Bowl is anybody’s guess, but the principal at the Evangelical Academy can give you a list of the other schools. I have no way of knowing who Stephanie might have contacted once she arrived home, but you guys could get that information from the phone company.”

Franklin wrote on a yellow legal pad. He nodded to Keene. “This gives us plenty to do, and I still have to talk with the Griffiths. We can call Missus P on her cell if we need her. She appears to be wasting away.”

Keene gave her just enough room to get by.

Bonnie fit the crutches to her hands. “Am I to assume that you two will be working together?”

A half-smile lifted one corner of Keene’s mouth.

“For the time being. Is that a problem?”

Bonnie squeezed past him to stand next to Armen. “Not at all, sergeant.”

She pulled a tissue from a box on Franklin’s desk and handed it to Keene. “We don’t know one another very well so this is a little awkward.”

“Just spit it out, Pinkwater.”

She leaned to Keene, bringing her lips within an inch of his ear. “Funny you should put it that way. You have something stuck between your teeth.”

“Very impressive. I never knew the police consulted you on cases.”

Bonnie thought she heard the subtle hint of disapproval, and hoped she was wrong. It was so hard to tell with a man and his ego, which poked into everything like a spare Adam’s apple.

“This is only the second time. The first time, in fact, had a lot to do with your coming to East Plains.” She tried to act casual by swiping a glop of hummus from the edge of her sandwich and depositing it in her mouth.