Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 06 - Whiskey and Soda (28 page)

Coming through the broken-out window, I shouted, “Pauline, it’s me—Whiskey Mattimoe! I’m in your house. Pauline! I’m going to find you and help you!”

Well, I hoped I could help her. Stepping over the shattered glass, I scanned the living room, where I had landed. Everything seemed normal, minus my messy handiwork. Still calling for Pauline, I unlocked and opened the front door. She wasn’t in the front of the house, so I dashed to the kitchen at the back. No sign of trouble there, and no sign of Pauline.

I thought of Mark’s upstairs office, where I had seen Loralee. The room drew me like a hypnotist, and yet, as long as I was this close to the basement, I knew I should check it first. I crossed the kitchen and flipped the light switch at the top of the basement stairs.

Pauline lay at the bottom, her head turned sideways, mouth open, eyes closed. Her right arm was folded under her; the left arm was visible, a cell phone clutched in her hand. Blood encircled her head, staining her silvery-brown hair maroon. If I’d had to guess, I would have said she was dead.

I think I screamed. I couldn’t be sure because sirens wailed in my ears. What I did know was that Pauline Vreelander was beyond any help I could give. My best response would be to stay out of everyone’s way and answer whatever questions I could.

I had three huge questions myself. Had Loralee Lowe found and left Pauline like this? Or had she caused this? Or, if Loralee hadn’t entered the house, how the hell had this happened?

I stood clear as the EMTs entered carrying their equipment. One paramedic asked me for basic information—my name, Pauline’s name, her age, her health, what I knew about the situation. I shared what I could, withholding only my comments about Loralee. Those I wanted to share with the cops, still en route. Standing in the kitchen answering the EMT’s questions, I suddenly smelled Pauline’s blood, or thought I did, and my good ol’ gag reflex kicked in. Either my reputation as a wuss had preceded me, or the paramedic just knew my type. He ordered me to sit down in the living room and breathe deeply.

“When you feel stronger, go sit outside. The fresh air will fix you right up.”

I was sitting in a wingback chair, my head down as far as it would go, when Jenx walked in.

“Head between your knees, Mattimoe,” she said by way of greeting.

I peered up at her. “Baby in the way.”

“Oh, yeah. Puke yet?”

“Nope. And I’m not going to. Pauline’s at the bottom of the basement stairs.”

“Is she conscious?”

I shook my head. “There’s a lot of blood. She looks bad. Hey, I thought you were sending Brady.”

“I traded him my desk duties for this call. I wanna deal with the State Boys.”

Two of them were striding toward us. Quickly she told them what I had told her. They nodded and moved on to Pauline. I grabbed Jenx’s wrist before she could follow.

“Loralee Lowe was here. Her silver PT Cruiser was pulling away when I arrived.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure. Who else do we know that drives a silver PT cruiser? But I don’t know if she was in the house.”

“We’ll figure it out. Nice job smashing the window.”

I just hoped I hadn’t been too late. Checking my watch, I did the math. Pauline had managed to phone me back twelve minutes ago. Maybe she could still be saved.

When Jenx joined the State Boys, I took a few more steadying breaths and stepped outdoors, where I leaned against a porch post. The mild December weather was as confusing as this case. If Anouk were right, one of “Yale’s” lovers or ex-lovers had murdered the headmaster. Had the same person pushed his widow down a flight of stairs?

I recalled Pauline theorizing that the killer needed to please or protect George. Anouk had observed that Loralee was athletic, but she couldn’t vouch for her archery skills. Bottom line: Loralee had been here, alone, with Pauline. She could have been in position on the Rail Trail the night Vreelander died. The question was whether she had the motive, mindset, and ability to kill two people.

My cell phone announced a call from Chester. I swallowed hard, willing myself to sound more calm and cheerful than I felt. My sensitive little neighbor wouldn’t find out about our town’s latest violence from me.

“Hey, Volunteer Deputy,” I said brightly. “Whassup?”

“Nobody’s answering at the station, and I promised Jenx and Brady I’d phone in my decryption results ASAP.”

“Well, I happen to know that this is Brady’s morning off,” I said, still forcing a smile into my voice. “And Jenx is probably busy.”

At that moment the EMTs approached from inside the house, rolling Pauline Vreelander on a gurney across the hardwood floor. One paramedic jogged alongside, holding tubes and bottles in place. I couldn’t help but notice that Pauline looked more dead than alive.

“What’s that noise?” Chester said.

“Noise?”

I scurried out of the paramedics’ way.

“Yeah. It sounded like thunder, but it’s not going to rain.”

Realizing that sirens were about to scream, I decided that my best strategy was to get Chester off the line.

“Hey, buddy, gotta run. I’m kind of in the middle of something. Can I have Jenx call you?”

“Is she there?” His tone registered surprise rather than suspicion. Such a trusting child.

“Of course not, but I’ll call her and have her call you. Bye now.”

I clicked off just as the ambulance unleashed its siren. Covering my ears, I asked my higher power to forgive my sins, especially lying to Chester.

I jumped when Jenx tapped me on the shoulder.

“She’s probably going to make it,” the chief shouted.

“Thank god. What happened?”

“Hard to say. We think her phone was in her pocket. When you called, she managed to fish it out and hit redial.”

“How bad is she hurt?”

Jenx wiped her brow. “Won’t know ’til they do X-rays and a C-scan. Looks like a skull fracture. EMTs think she might have a broken hip, broken arm, broken collarbone, and some broken ribs. There could be internal bleeding.”

“Where did all the blood come from?”

“Head wounds bleed a lot,” Jenx said. “She banged up her face. Her nose is probably busted.”

I shuddered.

Jenx went on, “Your timing was perfect. You probably saved her life.”

“If my timing was perfect, I would have gotten here before it happened.”

The chief sighed. “I know the feeling, but we do what we can.”

I told her about Chester’s call and the fact that I hadn’t told him anything. She glanced at the State Boys conferring on the front porch.

“I’ll call Chester. You need to tell those guys what you suspect about Lowe. If they think there’s a link, they’ll bring in their crime scene investigators.”

When I hesitated, she said. “I know. We want to be the ones to solve this, but the State Boys got the big guns. It’s the right thing to do.”

The men in blue and gray did look impeccable in their pale neckties and crisp caps. Maybe they deserved to solve this case. Somebody needed to solve it soon so that Magnet Springs could celebrate Christmas with open hearts and no fear.

Troopers Carter and Pawlicki were pleasant and professional when I approached. Jenx had briefed them on my experiences over the past few days. They seemed genuinely interested in what I had seen as well as any insights I could share. Although they listened much more than they talked, I was left with the impression that they planned to interview both Loralee and Anouk—Loralee, regarding her whereabouts today and at the time of the headmaster’s death; Anouk, regarding the gold bangle bracelet she had found and anything else she observed the evening Mark Vreelander died.

When the troopers dismissed me, I was ready to leave. Until I remembered I still had the marriage-porn flash drive in my pocket. In light of the day’s tragic events, it seemed silly to worry about replacing it, but I was mightily aware of my karma. I owed Pauline two flash drives. This was my opportunity to drop the first one back where it belonged. I would return the encrypted one later.

The EMTs had left, Jenx was on the phone with Chester, and the two troopers were deep in discussion. I slipped back inside and hurried up the staircase to the second floor. The door to Mark Vreelander’s office was closed. What if it were locked? I was fully prepared to shunt the flash drive under the door, if necessary. As I reached for the knob, a small voice in my head—probably Chester’s—reminded me that my fingers leave prints, so for once they didn’t. I slipped my right hand under my sweater before trying the knob. It turned, and I entered.

What lay before me bore little resemblance to the messy home office I had seen two days earlier. The space had been ransacked. Drawers were removed, and their contents dumped on the floor. Furniture was pulled away from the walls; many pieces were inverted, as if an intruder had demanded a view of the underside. The couch had lost its cushions, and the lamps were now missing their shades. A person or persons had turned Mark’s office inside-out in search of something specific. A flash drive? Surely not the one I held. Using my sweater-covered hand, I wiped it as free of prints as I could and dropped it into a desk drawer that now lay on its side. I could only hope that Pauline Vreelander would recover sufficiently to take comfort in discovering the location of that pictorial romp.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I whirled to face Jenx. “The right thing.”

Jenx surveyed the room. “Whoa. You said this room was a mess. You didn’t say it was a disaster.”

“It didn’t look like this,” I said. “Someone came after I left.”

“Is that the window where you saw Lowe?” Jenx said.

I nodded. She peered out and turned back to me.

“The bad news is Carter and Pawlicki are securing the house, so we gotta go. The good news is I talked to Chester. Study hall was a success.”

“He decrypted the flash drive?”

“Shhhh. Let’s take it outside.”

We passed the troopers on their way upstairs.

“Looks like somebody ransacked that office,” Jenx remarked. “Have fun, boys.”

Outside, Jenx paused to sniff the air.

“Spring is comin’ to an end,” she declared. “Get ready for a change in the weather.”

“Not until next week,” I said. “I checked the Weather Channel.”

I glanced at Jenx’s face. She was wearing an expression that said I shouldn’t doubt her grasp of certain forces.

“What do you know that I don’t?” I whispered.

“Don’t get me started.”

“I mean, about the weather.”

“Daffodils don’t bloom at Christmas, Whiskey. Something’s gotta change soon.”

She motioned for me to join her in the patrol car.

“Let’s talk about Chester. I’m not sharing this with the MSP.”

Once we had settled inside, Jenx rolled up the windows and locked the doors. She took out her pocket notebook and squinted at her own cramped writing.

“Chester gave me a shitload of info. He said the decryption process was easy. The flash drive has what he called ‘on-the-fly-encryption.’ All you need is the right software. Chester figured out the encryption keys in half an hour.”

“Amazing,” I said.

Jenx shrugged. “Not according to Chester. He said we should expect nothing less from an MIT course graduate.”

She glanced back at her notes.

“Looks like Mark Vreelander stumbled into a mess of nasty truths about The Bentwood School. Chester thinks he had info that could have closed down the academy.”

“Why would Vreelander want to close the school?” I said. “It was his job to run it.”

“Nobody’s saying he wanted to close it,” Jenx said. “More likely, he wanted to save it, and that was his mistake.”

“What’s on the flash drive?” I said.

Jenx held up a hand like she was stopping traffic.

“I’ll get to that. We know Vreelander had already launched a campaign to improve the school, right?”

“Right,” I said impatiently. “Including getting the kids physically fit and assigning them homework.”

“Tip of the iceberg. According to Chester, there were much bigger problems.”

“Like what?” I was on the verge of grabbing the chief’s notebook to read it for myself.

“Well, to start with, somebody was fixing student transcripts and standardized test scores.”

“What do you mean, ‘fixing’?”

“Tampering with. Making them look a lot better than they were.”

“How can you mess with standardized test scores? Aren’t they recorded by the test provider?”

“Yup. But you can falsely report the results.”

“You mean the school was faking reports for the parents?”

“And lying about test results in their publicity. Student transcripts weren’t accurate, either. Chester says there are notes on the flash drive about teachers being pressured to inflate grades.”

“Which teachers?” I wondered aloud.

“Pretty much all of ’em,” Jenx said. “And that’s not the end of it. Chester says there’s stuff on the flash drive about faking faculty credentials.”

“What do you mean?”

“That alphabet soup after people’s names? Mostly bogus. They didn’t all earn those degrees. Chester thinks Vreelander figured it out fast.”

“He was the boss,” I said. “The buck stopped there.”

“Did it, Whiskey? Who did Vreelander answer to?”

I thought about it. “The PTO! Stevie McCoy says the parents practically run that school. It’s all about their money and their egos.”

Jenx checked her notes. “For fifteen thou a year, they’re buying a ‘tradition of excellence.’ They don’t wanna believe that’s not what they’re getting. They also hate change, even when they need it.”

“Right,” I said, putting puzzle pieces together. “Chester told me the Board brought in a new headmaster because they knew the curriculum was getting soft and parents weren’t happy with high school placement. But you’re saying the problems were way worse than that. The PTO pressured teachers to raise grades and test scores, and exaggerate their credentials.”

“Not just the PTO,” Jenx said. “The school president, our pal ‘Yale.’ Only he’s not a Yalie, after all. George Bentwood is the first generation of Magnet Springs Bentwoods not to graduate from Yale, or any university.”