THE THREE POLICE cars took turns backing up and pulling away as if they had jammed many a school driveway and were demonstrating their efficiency. They left behind an ominous quiet.
Standing on the sidewalk with Rip and Joanne and the few others who had witnessed Randy Webb's arrest, I felt stunned stiff and frightened.
"Is he charged with murder?" I asked just to be sure.
"Oh yeah,” Rip confirmed. “What else?"
I shook my head. "Sudden," I said, voicing the worst part of my fear. "Too sudden."
Newkirk must have uncovered new evidence—damning evidence—of Randy's guilt. But what? And how convincing could it be? I'd discovered the body. I knew how little there was to go on. Even if they found Randy's hair on the floor or traces of his clothing stuck to the shovel, how did that help? He regularly worked in that room. In fact, he probably bought the shovel and put the bow on himself. When the fundraising for the gym was completed and the construction about to begin, he would probably get the honor of handing it to the Chairman of the Board.
Behind us, more staff members had infiltrated the lobby, chattering like children. To comfort us both, I wanted to grab Rip's hand, but I made do with a longing look. My husband stared unblinking down the driveway. A multitude of students and faculty members would have seen the police remove Randy, and those who hadn't witnessed the arrest would know about it within seconds. Soon Rip would be contending with panic and rampant rumors and who knew what else. I touched his arm. "See you at home," I said.
He looked down, but not at me, nodded and finally gave me an unnerving glance. Then he strode back into the school. The slow-closing door effectively shut me out.
I ordered my legs to walk to our house, ordered my hands to work the key.
Inside I drank decaf and ate something, I'm not sure what, and listened to gibberish on the TV until about ten-thirty when the phone rang.
"Got anything for sandwiches?" Rip asked without preamble. I sighed with relief, ignoring the bad, concentrating on the good. He was turning to me.
"Sure," I answered.
"Valley Forge Park about twelve?" he suggested.
"I'll pick you up," I said, knowing the tension must be unbearable if he wanted to flee so badly.
At exactly twelve I pulled my car up to the front door of the school. Then, reluctant to let anyone in on Rip's temporary escape, I walked across the grass and tapped on his office window. Two mid-sized girls gawked at me like goldfish, pointed at the window, and hastily finished whatever they were saying.
Rip stood, retrieved his coat from his closet, and ushered the students into the lobby. Through the door, I could see the two girls, heads bowed, their friendship galvanized by the brave act of actually speaking to the Headmaster together.
With a heavy sigh, Rip climbed into the car beside me. I put the Nissan into gear and fed it gas. Rip and I said nothing for a mile, but I could sense my husband's tension by his breathing, the twitching inside his clothes, the way he held himself.
We left stoplights behind. Rip held my right hand when I wasn't shifting. Large homes close together gave way to larger homes farther apart, their yards sculpted with perfectly proportioned shrubs and trees. Most of the fallen leaves had been relegated to back yard mulch piles. Overhead the sky was muted blue, softened with thin winter cumulus clouds. Tree trunks were dark with dampness, bricks deep red, white siding a gentle pearl gray. Rip watched the scenery as his thoughts slid by, and soon his breathing slowed, his back curved into the bucket seat, his head tilted, and I relaxed.
I found one of the back ways into the vast national park I'd recently learned, then wound around past bunkers made of dirt, past small clusters of short, squat log cabins caulked with mud and straw, up to an empty, U-shaped parking area with a huge bronze statue of a guy on a horse overlooking a distant sloping field ending with woods. To our right a portion of park was reserved for flying remote-control airplanes, but none of the hand-built toys were up today. No buzz, scarcely any sound at all but a bit of breeze against the car windows and the ffff of the Nissan's heater. I parked facing the long view and kept the engine running.
"It's Pearl Harbor Day," Rip remarked. December 7. So it was. I gave the reference a nervous laugh. Gallows humor.
After a silence, Rip said, "Newkirk came back again."
"Oh? I don't suppose he told you why he arrested Randy."
Rip turned toward me. "Actually, he did. He said Elaine Wrigley saw Randy rushing out the back."
I inhaled an especially deep breath before I asked, "Fifth grade? Ten years old going on forty?"
"That's the one. She finally told her mother what she saw, and her mother called the police. But—this is the best part—the kid was positive Randy was wiping blood off his hands."
I shivered. Elaine Wrigley made me shiver even when she wasn't accusing adults of murder. "This is bad," I said aloud.
"No shit," Rip agreed.
"What else did Newkirk say?"
"He said Randy's prints were on the shovel—big surprise—but put all that together with public pressure and Newkirk felt he had no choice."
"You think Randy's guilty?"
Rip shook his head slowly. "I really don't know. But I can tell you one thing. Something weird is going on with him."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because the reason Newkirk came back was to pump me about something Randy said. The only thing he said without his lawyer. He told Newkirk that Richard found a new donor to replace D'Avanzo, mainly so the school didn't have to use Longmeier Construction. Randy wants Newkirk to check out Eddie Longmeier."
I stared at the winter-green grass interwoven with thatch. On one of the farms we passed, horses had been grazing.
"What did you say?"
"That it was news to me. Then Newkirk, the sonovabitch tells me, 'That's what D'Avanzo claimed, too.'"
"He spoke to Michael D'Avanzo?" I was truly shocked. Donors of D'Avanzo's generosity were few and far between. They were also highly mercurial. Being questioned by the police regarding a murder investigation was more than enough to turn Randy's story into reality. Just the possibility of Newkirk costing the school more than a million dollars spiked my temperature.
"What I can't figure out," Rip continued, "is why Randy pointed a finger at Eddie Longmeier. What possible connection could there be between him and Richard?"
"His wife," I blurted.
Rip shifted to face me square on. "Where the hell did that come from?" he asked.
"When we first got here, I used to practice remembering the names of people out in the parking lot."
"So?"
"So one morning I was looking out the kitchen window and I saw Randy and Richard talking to an absolutely gorgeous woman. Long black hair, a short skirt, orange T-shirt, and no bra. I found out later she was Tina Longmeier, and she'd been delivering some blueprints to Randy. Anyway, she was flirting with both men like, well, let's just say she was very suggestive. And the men! The gleams in their eyes could have lighted New York."
"So?"
"So what if it wasn't just play? What if Tina delivered?"
"I'm not sure I'm following you."
I huffed with exasperation. "What if Randy wanted the police to pick up on Richard and Tina without implicating himself? He'd suggest they check out Eddie Longmeier, right?"
"I don't know, Gin. Where are you going with this?"
I played my trump. "I saw Randy and Tina pulling away from a clinch. In the copier room."
"What were you...what...Are you sure that's what you saw?"
I thought it through again and realized, again, that my conclusion was more intuition-based than fact-based. "I saw a couple of people moving away from each other and blushing. I had the impression they'd been...close."
Rip shook his head. "Doesn't mean a damn thing."
I shrugged. "It could. Especially now that Randy is accusing Eddie Longmeier of having a motive to kill Richard. What if Randy tried to cash in on Tina's offer and failed, but Richard succeeded?"
"What kind of sandwiches you got?" Rip asked.
Pierced, I said, "Liverwurst." Privately, I was glad to see him wince.
We ate in silence, Rip's the brooding kind, mine the slow burn. When it was time to mollify each other, I asked, "What about Randy's work?"
"Oh, shit," Rip exclaimed. "He was doing a mailing, going after tax-deductible donations before the end of the year. Damn. Now they'll be late."
"Anything I can do?" another of my blind offers. I really ought to curb that habit.
"Yeah," Rip replied, his own eyes sparkling for the first time in ages. "You can do the mailing."
Yippee, I thought. Stuffing envelopes.
"You need to hand-write messages on about a thousand solicitations. Thanks, babe. You're a lifesaver."
"No problem," I mumbled through a mouthful of liverwurst.
Rip finished eating first and resumed brooding wherever he'd left off.
"Penny for your thoughts," I pressed.
He gazed through the windshield far into the distance. "Just wondering," he said.
"About?"
"Richard Wharton and another donor. Whether what Randy said could possibly be true."
"How could it be true? D'Avanzo denied it." Although...D'Avanzo might lie to deflect suspicion from his son-in-law regardless of whatever unpleasant politics were involved, even if it cost him a huge donation he no longer wished to give.
"I don't know, babe. I just have this prickly feeling that Wharton was scheming behind my back again."
Valley Forge was the most famous encampment in the world, where George Washington's ragged troops were drilled into a cohesive unit capable of defeating the British. I looked into my husband's green eyes, eyes no longer idealistic, no longer naive, eyes committed for the duration regardless of the possibility of defeat. I looked back at those eyes and felt my resolve tighten into a fist. I knew several things I could discreetly do to help, provided I did them in a hurry.
Only one of them involved stuffing envelopes.