Myrtle said in a calm voice, “I can see that there actually isn’t a phone in the classroom Miles, so if you wouldn’t mind finding one?”
Miles, looking a little gray, disengaged himself from Louvenia and hurried off to find one.
Myrtle carefully entered the room to take the chance to find any clues she could by the time that Red arrived and shooed her away from the crime scene.
“Do you think you should go in there?” clucked Louvenia. “I mean, if we do, won’t we leave evidence in there? Our DNA or something?”
“Pooh, Louvenia. We’ve left our DNA all over the place in here already—we were eating and drinking and cooking and carrying on all day long. That’s why it was such a great place for the murderer to kill Chester.” Myrtle walked as close to Chester as she dared to go. She did know that she wasn’t supposed to mess with a body.
She could see that there appeared to be no fight whatsoever. There weren’t signs of any bruises or cuts on Chester or any other sign of violence that she could see. And Chester, with his burly, outdoorsy build, could certainly have put up a fight if he were expecting one. It would appear that, despite his understanding that people in the classroom weren’t fans of his, he hadn’t been expecting the blow that killed him.
Louvenia was still making lots of nervous sounds, but was now walking into the room, herself, and heading rather swiftly to her desk in the corner. She was rustling through papers and chattering as she went: “To think we were all just in here! And someone came in off the street and killed this poor man!”
Myrtle scoffed. “That’s extremely unlikely, isn’t it? It’s a lot more likely that someone here in this class did it. It’s not as if the classroom was robbed.”
Everything in the classroom appeared to be exactly where it was before. All except for the meat thermometer, that is.
Louvenia stopped rustling through her papers and walked away from her desk, holding a few. “I can’t imagine that anyone in the class would have killed him.”
“Can’t you? Chester himself was telling me that he knew everyone in the class,” said Myrtle.
Louvenia squeaked. “But that’s only because Bradley is such a small town! Everyone knows everyone else. Besides, he was in construction and you couldn’t get away from his television commercials or his face on the billboard.” She said this last in a voice that expressed how distasteful she found his ads.
“There’s nothing wrong with trying to brand yourself or your business. That’s being smart. And it wasn’t just that this is a small town, either. Chester told me that he had a real history with the other classmates and that he felt they were out to get him. Even you,” said Myrtle, turning away from Chester to face Louvenia.
“Me? But how would I know Chester? I don’t work in construction.” Louvenia’s eyes were huge.
“Don’t you?” Myrtle’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve known you for a while, Louvenia, and while I mostly think of you in terms of winning the peach cobbler contest at the fair, I also seem to remember that you were someone’s secretary.”
“Office administrator,” corrected Louvenia, stoutly before she blushed. “And what of it?”
“Did you work for Chester?” asked Myrtle.
Louvenia hesitated and Myrtle said in a stern voice, “That’s not something you should lie about, you know. It can be easily checked.”
“I don’t work for him now, as a matter of fact. I only used to. And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long day of teaching and this has been very upsetting. I’m going to leave and put my feet up.” Louvenia started to move past Myrtle.
Myrtle lifted up her cane and blocked her way.
“You certainly are not leaving. You’re at a crime scene,” said Myrtle.
Louvenia gasped and Myrtle said, “Did you think that Chester stabbed himself with the meat thermometer? Hardly. You’re not only at a crime scene, you discovered the body. What’s more, it’s your classroom. Even worse, you came into the room and are trying to leave with something that could be evidence.”
“What? No!” Louvenia flushed even more and pushed back at Myrtle’s cane. In the process, the flustered Louvenia dropped her papers.
She was just bending down to try to pick them up when Myrtle put her cane on top of the stack. “Nothing needs to leave this room.”
“But these are mine!” Louvenia stooped to pull at the papers.
Louvenia spun around as Miles’s tired voice came from behind him. “Red is on the way.” And then, “What’s going on?”
Myrtle said with a sniff, “Louvenia here is trying to remove potential evidence from a crime scene.”
“I’m not! I wouldn’t ever!” Louvenia spluttered.
Miles walked over, carefully averting his eyes from Chester’s body. He stooped and picked up the papers from under Myrtle’s cane, handing them to her.
Myrtle took them, smugly. “Thanks. And sorry, Louvenia, but rules are rules.” She peered at them. “What’s this? It certainly looks like a picture of some of the books at Chester’s construction company. So, you did work there.”
“I told you that I used to work there. And what if I did?” demanded Louvenia. “He’s had plenty of people working for him—it’s a big company and he has branches in other towns, too. Even the janitor here has worked for him in the past.”
“Yes, but the difference between the janitor and you is that you have what appears to be incriminating evidence in your possession.” Myrtle waved the papers in the air.
Miles carefully took the papers away from Myrtle. “I want to take a look at these, but I want to do it out of this classroom. What will Red say if we’re all standing around in here while a dead body is just feet away?” He shivered and led the way out of the room.
They followed him out, Louvenia with her tiny, mincing steps and Myrtle moving slowly out, casting looks behind her at the classroom.
Miles pushed his glasses up his nose and studied the papers. He raised his eyebrows and looked up at Louvenia. “It appears there are some discrepancies in the books. And I’m assuming that those discrepancies correspond to this paper that lists, dates, and highlights successful bids for construction projects for Chester’s company.”
Louvenia gave a little shriek and then a somewhat hysterical laugh. “As a bookkeeper, I could hardly ignore such a thing, could I? I felt the need to point out the problem.”
“Can you lay out exactly what the problem is, for those of us who aren’t holding the papers?” asked Myrtle impatiently.
Miles answered for her. “The fact that Chester appeared to be paying out significant amounts of cash at the same time that his construction company won bids for projects. Pay to play, I suppose.”
“A dirty way of doing business!” said Louvenia with dignity.
“And you felt compelled to enter into the equally dirty business of blackmailing,” noted Myrtle.
Louvenia snapped her thin lips shut to think about this for a second or two. Then she responded, “I was merely trying to get Chester to follow the straight and narrow path. To see the error of his ways.”
Miles said, “Isn’t that what the police are for? Shouldn’t you have gone to the police with this information, then?”
Myrtle gave Miles an approving smile. He was doing well, for a sidekick.
Louvenia bit her lip and gave them a piteous look, eyes welling with tears, hands outstretched. “You’ve got to understand. He didn’t want me to go to the police.”
“I’m sure he didn’t,” muttered Miles.
“We came up with ... an arrangement. It was an arrangement that benefitted us both. I received some much-needed money. He received my assurances that I wouldn’t be going to the authorities about this issue,” said Louvenia.
“What on earth were you going to do with the money? I seem to remember you live in the same house you grew up in. You couldn’t have many expenses.” Myrtle glanced at Louvenia’s clothing. She was hardly buying designer duds.
Louvenia said eagerly, “I want to open a restaurant. I’m a wonderful cook—everyone says so. That way I could cook to my heart’s content, plan out the décor, and really enjoy what I’d be doing. Chester even said that he’d build me a place. I was thinking about creating something really intimate—candlelight, comfy chairs, white table cloths on the tables—that sort of thing.”
Myrtle and Miles exchanged glances. Louvenia seemed to be living in Fantasyland about the restaurant and didn’t seem to realize the fact that her actions weren’t exactly legal. Blackmail was a serious crime. She wondered what Red would say. He must be getting very close by now, even as far out as the school was.
Red was sure to put a stop to her investigating, so Myrtle quickly said, “What I don’t understand is the timing of all this. Chester said that he didn’t know that you were going to be here today. He didn’t realize you taught the class and that he wouldn’t have taken the class at all if he’d known you were going to be here.”
Louvenia’s mouth twisted. “That wasn’t very nice of him to say. Especially since we were going to be building a restaurant together.”
Miles rolled his eyes at Myrtle. Louvenia did seem to be a bit out of touch with reality.
“Anyway, clearly you brought your evidence against him to class today. But haven’t you been blackmailing him for a while? Otherwise, why would Chester have had that negative reaction to seeing you here?” asked Myrtle.
Louvenia flinched at the word blackmail as if it hadn’t really occurred to her exactly what she’d been doing. “It was more like persuasion than ... you know. And our arrangement had been going on for the last month or so. Everything was just fine. I’d started looking for a location for my restaurant. I was so excited about this cooking class so that I could tell everyone that I was going to be opening a restaurant and to look out for it.”
Miles said, “I’m guessing that Chester suddenly decided that he didn’t want to pay up anymore.”
“He certainly didn’t look like the kind of man who would allow himself to be pushed around,” murmured Myrtle, glancing back into the room at his burly physique, beard, and suspenders.
Louvenia said, “He decided to stop paying me, yes, even though we had an agreement! He said that he just didn’t care anymore. ‘Go ahead and leak it’ he said, with a shrug and a laugh. He told me that he couldn’t live his life that way. But then he was forcing me to live my life a way that I didn’t want to. He was forcing me to give up on my dream.”
“You knew he was signed up for this class, though,” said Myrtle, giving Louvenia a look through narrowed eyes. “You decided to bring the evidence you had against him with you today.”
Louvenia gave a shrill laugh. “Why not? What did I have to lose? I wanted to remind him of everything that I knew.”
Miles cleared his throat. “Although he already knew the evidence you had.”
“And he’d already made up his mind,” said Myrtle. “He didn’t want to pay you. Your dreams went up in smoke and you saw red and killed him.”
Louvenia’s eyes opened wide. “No, no no! Why would I do that? He was going to build my restaurant. He was going to keep paying me, I know it! Why would I kill my money cow? No!”
“Then who did kill him? Any ideas? Because it had to have been someone in this classroom,” said Myrtle sternly.
This time Louvenia didn’t automatically defend her students. She paused for a second to think. Myrtle shifted uncomfortably and Miles raised his eyebrows at her as the sound of a siren approached.
“I know that Felix Todd was at the construction company sometimes.” Louvenia reached into the classroom and pulled the closest chair out into the hall and sat down heavily in it.
“Would you like a chair?” Miles asked courteously of Myrtle.
She shook her head impatiently, still trying to focus on Louvenia’s thought process. Myrtle considered Felix’s entrance into the classroom today. He was all confidence, all smiles. His prematurely white hair was perfectly combed. It was hard to picture him successfully hiding a murder plot. “You mean because he’s political, I suppose?”
Louvenia nodded. “If it was someone in the class, why not him? He’d call Chester sometimes and I’d be taking messages. It did seem as if something crooked was going on between the two of them. It makes the most sense, as far as I can tell. I’m just saying that it might be something for your son to check out.”
A son who was approaching quickly. She could hear the door open downstairs and footsteps entering. And then: “Mama? Where are you?” came the exasperated voice.
Louvenia looked relieved. “He’s here!”
“We’re upstairs and to the right,” called Myrtle.
The footsteps gathered speed, jogging up the stairs. A minute later, Red was there. They pointed into the classroom. He slipped some booties on his feet and carefully entered, approaching Chester.
“All right. Now y’all need to get farther away than you are now. Is there another unlocked classroom in this building where you can sit for a while?” asked Red, still studying Chester and now crouched next to him.
Louvenia considered this. “All the classrooms are supposed to be locked when no one is here. And I don’t have a key to the faculty lounge since I’m just a part-time instructor here. But I can find the custodian, Amos. I’ve seen him around on and off today. He can open a classroom for us.”
Louvenia went scurrying off to find the custodian. Red said, “I’ve called the state police. I’m just confirming Chester is deceased, securing the scene, and making a few notes.” He looked up grimly at his mother. “I knew you were going to be taking a class today, but I hardly expected a body to crop up. What’s this all about?”
Myrtle tried to keep a smug smile from tugging at the corners of her lips. She always liked it when Red was the one to ask her the questions. “I might have an inkling of what’s going on. Chester and I were class partners today, you see.”
Red turned back around to study Chester. “I’d assume he was poisoned then, except for this meat thermometer sticking out of his neck.”
“Ha, ha, ha.” Myrtle put her hands on her hips.
Miles cleared his throat. “The entire class contributed to the food we prepared today. I think that was a ‘beginner level’ thing.”
“Which doesn’t even matter, since he clearly wasn’t poisoned, by me or by anyone else,” said Myrtle with irritation. “And stop pretending that you know anything about this. You were too busy sanitizing your workspace to do any detecting.”
Miles said coldly, “There wasn’t any detecting to do at the time.” He said to Red in a whisper, “But there was a bit of detecting afterwards. And you should spend some time talking to Louvenia.” He gestured down the hall.
Myrtle gave him a furious look. It was very annoying for sidekicks to give information to the local police.
“Thanks for the information, Miles,” said Red. “How about one more tidbit? Time of death?”
Myrtle said, “It must be a very narrow window. The class was over at two o’clock. Miles and I left pretty quickly, but then we were held up.” She gasped and looked over at Miles.
Miles nodded. “I totally forgot.”
“Can one of y’all fill me in?” asked Red.
Myrtle said, “Well, Wanda showed up.”
“Wanda? What was she doing out here? Surely she’s not enrolled in school.” Red’s face was incredulous.
“No, no, nothing like that. Wanda was here to deliver a cryptic message. At any rate, when Miles and I were leaving, we were shocked to see that Wanda was still here. I mean, we’d last seen her early this morning. She had car trouble and Miles was unable to fix the vehicle.” Myrtle waved her hand in an airy gesture at Miles.
Miles said stiffly, “It wasn’t ‘car trouble.’ The car was out of gas. At any rate, I was going back into the building to call you, Red. I wanted to see if you could get a gas can filled so that we could help Wanda leave.”
Red groaned. “So, I’ve also got a psychic stranded motorist here to help.”
“Well, at this point, I think Miles can just go find a gas station, purchase a gas can, fill it up, and deposit it in Wanda’s tank. We simply thought you might be patrolling in the area and could quickly help us out. But having a body here changes everything.” Myrtle paused. “Wanda told us about the body, you know.”
Red’s eyes narrowed. “Wanda was in here?”
“No, she was either out of the classroom or with us the whole time. But she has powers and that’s how she knew about Chester. Anyway, that was another reason we figured we were going to have to call you,” said Myrtle.
Red sighed. “I think I’ll just keep Wanda’s knowledge of Chester’s death to myself for now. I don’t think the state police will have the same take on it that you do, Mama.”
Myrtle sniffed. “Maybe they need to open their minds a little.”
An out-of-breath Louvenia appeared. “Amos is opening up a classroom for us a few doors down.” She fluttered her eyelashes at Miles and he stiffened.
“Excellent. The state police should be here shortly. I’d appreciate y’all staying in the classroom until we have a chance to get statements.”
“What about Wanda?” demanded Myrtle.
“All right. Mama, you can go down and tell Wanda what’s going on. Let her know it might be another hour until you can get her car filled up.” Red shook his head. “What a day.”