Murder by the Slice (16 page)

“Was Marie’s husband with her?” she asked.

“Tall guy, dark hair? Yeah, he was with her. I figured he must be her husband, the way he was trying to comfort her when she got upset.”

So Marie had found Russ, Phyllis thought. He had still been in the school somewhere when Marie was looking for him.

“Do you think there’s any connection between the missing money and Mrs. Dunston’s murder?” Sam asked.

Mike shook his head, sighed, and shrugged. “We just don’t know. There could be. Maybe she happened to go into the school office just as somebody was taking the cash box, and the thief forced her down the hall and killed her to keep her from implicating him. People have been murdered before for a lot less.”

Phyllis remembered something she had heard that afternoon and leaned forward in her chair. “Mike, Becca Dunston, Shannon’s daughter, told me that the last time she saw her mother, Shannon said she was going to check on some money.”

Mike looked intrigued and excited by that news. “That would possibly put Mrs. Dunston at the scene of the theft and tie her murder in with it. That’s good information to have, Mom.”

“But what about the knife?” Phyllis asked as she thought more about what might have happened. “If the person who stole the money is also the killer, why would he have taken the knife from the cafeteria earlier?”

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” Mike said. “We have to figure that when he took the knife, he intended to use it to kill Mrs. Dunston. That would make the theft and the murder two separate crimes and probably two separate criminals.”

“But you can’t assume that,” Sam pointed out.

“No, we sure can’t. At this point we can’t assume anything for certain.”

Sam shook his head. “I’m mighty glad it’s up to you folks to figure out this mess and not me. I’d never make a hand as a detective.”

“
Mess
is the right word. Not only do we have the murder and the missing cash to contend with, we haven’t made any progress on finding out who burglarized the school a week or so ago. We don’t know whether what happened today is connected to that or not. The sheriff seemed to think it might be, though, because the drawer in the secretary’s desk where the cash box was kept hadn’t been broken into. Somebody had to have unlocked it, just like somebody got into the school earlier without actually breaking in.”

“Maybe somebody picked the lock on the desk,” Sam suggested. “It can’t have been a very complicated one.”

“No, but it was locked when Mrs. Hickson went to open it and check on the cash box. That suggests a key was used to open it and then relock it.”

“Boy, this stuff just goes ‘round and ‘round, doesn’t it?”

Mike nodded glumly. Phyllis didn’t like to see him looking so defeated. The case seemed overwhelming now, but she was sure that as the law continued to sift through all the possibilities and talk to all the people who might have been involved, sooner or later answers to all the questions would emerge.

And once again she felt a pang of guilt about not telling him what she knew about Shannon Dunston and Russ Tyler. But she didn’t actually
know
anything, she reminded herself. She liked Marie Tyler, despite the young woman’s tendency toward rather colorful language, and she didn’t want to ruin Marie’s marriage if there was no real reason to do so. That’s what would happen if she told Mike that Shannon might have been having an affair with Russ. Even if Russ was cleared of the murder, the damage to his marriage would already be done.

So, even though she was uncomfortable about doing so, she would keep quiet about what she knew for now, until she had a chance to find out exactly what had been going on. Then if she could help Mike, she would.

If that made her a meddling old woman, then so be it.

Sometimes in life it took a little meddling to set things right.

Chapter 15

Mike was off duty on Sunday, the day after the carnival, so he tried to concentrate on his time with Sarah and Bobby and enjoy the chance to be with his family. He had learned early on that when you worked in law enforcement, you had to be able to leave the job behind as much as possible when you weren’t on duty. Otherwise it would consume you.

But he couldn’t avoid the stories about the murder in both the Weatherford and Fort Worth papers and on the newscasts from the Fort Worth/Dallas TV stations. When he noticed that there was no mention of the missing money in any of the news reports, he knew the sheriff was deliberately holding back that part of the story. That made sense. For one thing, they didn’t know for sure that the murder and the theft were connected, and for another, it was always wise to keep something in reserve in case it was needed to trip up a suspect or weed out false confessions.

Monday morning when he reported for his shift, the dispatcher told him that the sheriff wanted to see him. Mike walked down the hall to Haney’s office. The door was open, but he rapped lightly on it anyway.

“Come in, Mike,” Haney said from behind his desk. His swivel chair was turned so that he was facing a computer and monitor set up on a portable computer table next to the desk. He gestured toward the screen and said, “Take a look at this.”

Mike leaned over the desk, resting his hands on its top to balance himself as he studied the monitor. A pair of standard mug shots were displayed on the left-hand side of the screen, complete with the usual identifying numbers across the bottom of them. They showed a balding, sandy-haired man. Information about his arrest record was on the righthand side of the screen.

“Gary Oakley,” Mike read. “Why is that name familiar to me?”

“Because he works as a custodian at Loving Elementary,” Haney said.

Mike’s eyebrows rose. “What was he arrested for in the past?”

“Burglary,” the sheriff said. “He served three years in the penitentiary at Huntsville.”

Mike straightened and drew in a deep breath. “They hired a convicted felon to work around little kids?”

Haney leaned back in his chair and said, “That doesn’t surprise me. There are stories on the news all the time about convicted sex offenders getting hired to work in schools. They lie about it on their employment applications, and the school district doesn’t take the time and trouble to check them out thoroughly enough to catch the lie.” The sheriff shrugged. “It’s hard to blame the school districts too much. They get hit by funding and personnel cuts, just like we do, and things start to fall through the cracks.”

Mike thought about the fact that Bobby would be starting school in a few years and said, “Yeah, but when you’re talking about the safety of children, you’ve got to be more careful than that.”

Haney leaned his head toward the computer. “What else do you think about this?”

“Oakley has to be the leading suspect in the earlier burglary of the school and the theft of that cash box. He’d have keys to get into the building and maybe even into the secre tary’s desk. That would explain why there were no signs of forced entry either time.”

“What about the murder?”

“We don’t know all those things are connected, do we?” Mike said. “But yeah, I guess if he’s a suspect in the other cases, he’s got to be a suspect in the murder, too.” The wheels of Mike’s brain turned over rapidly as he put together a theory. “Say Oakley was taking the cash box out of the drawer when Mrs. Dunston walked into the office. She told her daughter, the last time the little girl saw her, that she was going to check on some money.”

“How do you know that?” Haney asked sharply.

“My mother talked to the little girl after Mrs. Dunston’s body was found.”

The sheriff grunted. “Your mother, eh?”

“It’s not what you think, Sheriff,” Mike said. “She was just talking to the little girl, trying to keep her calm. She wasn’t actually questioning her or anything like that.”

Although now that Mike thought about it, he recalled how his mother had started poking around during the investigation of those murders a few months back… . She had taken to detective work so well, in fact, that she had solved those crimes.

He put his mind back on the current case and said, “If Oakley took the cash box and was discovered by Mrs. Dunston, he could have forced her down the hall and killed her to keep her from telling anybody what she’d seen.”

There was a problem with that, however. Mike remembered what his mother had pointed out as they all sat on the porch of her house on Saturday evening. If Oakley had killed Mrs. Dunston on the spur of the moment to cover up his other crimes, why had he taken the knife from the cafeteria earlier in the day?

Mike was about to say something about that when Sheriff Haney ordered, “Go out to the school and pick him up. I want him brought in for questioning. Better take some backup, too. If he’s a killer, he might decide not to come along peacefully.”

“Maybe it would be better to pick him up somewhere away from the school,” Mike suggested, “or at least wait until after the kids have gone home for the day.”

Haney thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. “I know what you’re talking about,” he said. “You don’t want to put those kids at risk, and neither do I. But if Oakley’s our murderer, he’s liable to get nervous and decide to run. I think it would be better to get him in custody as soon as possible.”

Mike nodded. He knew he couldn’t push his questioning of the sheriff’s orders any further without running the risk of angering Haney, who was, after all, still his boss.

He thought Haney was wrong, though. If Gary Oakley was cool enough to wipe that knife almost clean and replace it in the cafeteria after using it to kill Shannon Dunston, it wasn’t likely he would panic now without even knowing that he was under suspicion. Instead, Oakley would be more likely to proceed with his usual activities and try to appear as normal as possible.

But orders were orders, and Mike would just have to be very careful about carrying them out. He left the sheriff’s office and found a couple of deputies, Fitzgerald and Harrison, to accompany him to Loving Elementary. On the way out of the building, he explained that they were going to be taking a suspect into custody and bringing him in for questioning.

Mike took his usual cruiser while the other two men followed in another car. A cold front had blown through the previous night, bringing in clouds and chillier temperatures.

Appropriate considering that today was Halloween, he thought.

Based on what they knew now, Mike had his doubts about Gary Oakley being the killer. It just didn’t add up. The fact that the murder weapon came from the cafeteria threw everything out of whack. Oakley had been at the school dur ing the carnival; there was no doubt about that. He had even been questioned briefly before being allowed to leave, like everyone else. And given his record, he certainly had to be considered the prime suspect in both the earlier burglary and the disappearance of the cash box. But that didn’t make him a killer.

Of course, there might be facts they didn’t know yet, Mike reminded himself. Oakley might break down and confess to everything as soon as they started interrogating him. That possibility was reason enough to bring him in and ask him a few questions.

Mike drove into the front parking lot of the school. Since it was midmorning, there were several empty spaces in the lot. He parked the cruiser in one of them. Fitzgerald and Harrison parked a few spaces away and got out of their car. The wind was blowing hard enough that all three deputies had to hold their hats on as they went into the school.

Gray-haired Katherine Felton, the secretary, looked at them in surprise as they entered the office. She said, “Oh, my goodness. There hasn’t been more trouble that I don’t know about yet, has there?”

Mike smiled reassuringly at her. “We just need to talk to Mrs. Hickson for a minute,” he said. “Is she in?”

“Oh, yes.” The secretary pushed a button on the intercom system and said, “Frances, there are deputy sheriffs out here to see you.”

A response came immediately from the speaker. “Send them in.”

Mrs. Felton turned in her chair to point as she said, “Right back there.” Mike didn’t bother telling her that he knew where the principal’s office was. He had just been there a couple of days earlier.

Frances Hickson was standing behind her desk with a worried look on her face as the three deputies came into her office. “What is it?” she asked. “Has something else happened?”

Harrison and Fitzgerald hung back, letting Mike take the lead. “Do you know if Gary Oakley is here at the school this morning, ma’am?” he asked.

“Gary?” Frances’s frown deepened. “I suppose he is. I haven’t heard anything about him not showing up for work today. We have two shifts of custodians, you know. A couple of them don’t get here until the middle of the afternoon, and then they clean during the evening, after everyone is gone. But Gary is part of the crew that comes in first thing in the morning with the rest of us.”

Mike nodded. “Do you have any idea where we could find him right now?”

Frances glanced at the clock on her desk and said, “He’s probably in the cafeteria helping to get set up for lunch. The kindergartners and first-graders will be eating soon.”

That was all the more reason to grab Gary Oakley now, while they had the chance to do so without putting any kids at risk. Mike nodded and said, “Thank you, ma’am,” as he started to turn away.

“Wait a minute,” the principal said. “What’s this all about? Why do you want to talk to Gary?”

Mike hesitated. He didn’t want to tell Mrs. Hickson that Oakley was the leading suspect in three separate crimes at the moment, including murder. He said, “We just need to ask him a few more questions.”

He wasn’t sure if Frances believed him or not. The woman was smart enough to know it wouldn’t take three burly young sheriff’s deputies to ask a few simple questions.

“I’ll come with you,” she said as she started out from behind her desk.

“That really isn’t necessary, ma’am,” Mike said quickly.

“This is my school, Deputy,” Frances said. “Everything that goes on here concerns me.”

“I’m afraid I have to insist that you stay here, Mrs. Hickson.”