My nervous bravado expired before I got back to Bryn Derwyn, leaving me with a feeling of desperate urgency bordering on depression.
By the time I entered the school lobby, I was angry—angry that I felt so helpless, angry that even though Randy and Tina had not been lovers it didn't mean he hadn't killed Richard, angry that the more I learned the more I needed to know.
So what if classes were still in session. I needed information—right now.
"Where's Jacob?" I barked at Ruth.
"I'll beep him," she replied, scarcely raising an eyebrow at my abrupt demand.
"Be right back," I told her.
I burst into Joanne's office. She stood behind her desk speaking on the phone, so I used some extra volume. "Could Longmeier's Mercedes have been parked here last Friday afternoon?"
She had taken the phone away from her ear. Now she told the caller, "I'll get right back to you. Something's come up."
To me she said, "What's...?"
"Just answer me, please. Did you see the Longmeier's Mercedes in the parking lot last Friday afternoon?"
The older woman shifted on her feet, rested her fingers on the desk top, and pressed her lips together.
"I really can't say...I was working, you know, but if I had to guess I'd say no."
"What makes you think that?"
Her eyes flicked on and off me like a bird perched too close to the cat. "I had the feeling they were ordinary cars," she said. "Ones we always see. Not strangers. Lt. Newkirk asked me this..."
"I know, and I'm sorry to ask you again, but I'm very worried, and this is important." To my surprise, my eyes filled with tears, and my words hit some obstruction in my throat. Phase Three: utter frustration.
Joanne's lips pressed together like a stern grandmother's. Her eyes softened toward me then tightened in concentration.
Because I was blowing my nose on a tissue from the box on her desk, I almost didn't hear the next thing she said. "Mr. Longmeier's station wagon might have been there."
"What did you say?"
"I said Mr. Longmeier's station wagon could have been here and I wouldn't have given it a second glance. He's always around talking to Kevin. If it was here Friday..."
"Yes!"
Joanne jumped from the force of my exclamation. "Yes, it was here. I saw it myself. Oh, Hank, you're wonderful." I grabbed her shoulders and kissed her soundly on the cheek.
"You're sure Eddie was here?" her words challenged me, but her face glowed with reflected joy. "You're sure I didn't put the idea in your head?"
"Of course you put it in my head. I mean you reminded me. I saw it myself, and there was something odd about it, too." But that particular memory refused to surface without assistance. If I thought it might help, I would have begged the first hypnotist in the phone book to put me under.
"Thanks, Hank. Gotta go."
I waited expectantly at Ruth the Receptionist's lobby altar, too het up to speak.
"Jacob is in the gym," she informed me.
"Thanks, Ruth, I'll remember you at Christmas." I'd do better than that; I'd recommend her for a raise.
Eddie Longmeier's station wagon had been here. I could almost picture which parking slot it had been in, two or three from the far end facing the school, near my yard, almost directly in front of the hall which housed the business office, development office and Community Room. The question now was why hadn't anyone actually seen Eddie Longmeier?
Jacob was up a twelve-foot stepladder doing something to a basketball net. He seemed annoyed that his fingers were not functioning up to his expectations.
When I called him, he aimed his annoyance at me. "What! Oh, Gin. I thought you were one of the kids, you know, to tell me something else broke. What can I do for you?" He climbed down as he spoke.
"Important question." I paused to let that sink in. "What time did you chain-bolt the exit near our house last Friday?"
The maintenance supervisor's head jerked slightly when he realized I referred to the afternoon of the murder. He rubbed his chin whiskers thoughtfully and rocked on his heels.
"The police should have asked that, eh?"
I nodded. Although not knowing the school routine, they wouldn’t have known to ask.
"Lemme see. I drove the wrestling team to Friends Central and back." He shook his head, no doubt calculating how much the early weekend traffic had held him up on the Schulykill Expressway. "Late. Maybe twenty after four."
Probably after the murder and just before I discovered the body. "You see anyone in the hall? Anyone at all?"
The man shook his bald, dark-fringed head. "Nobody. Not even Randy or Kevin, which surprised me a little. But hey, it was Friday..." He watched to see if I reacted to that, but I didn't. To my mind, at least until proven otherwise, Randy had gotten a nosebleed and went home early. Kevin, according to his account, had slipped out of his office to deliver some new easy-readers to Patrice's locker, and maybe stopped to take care of some business in other parts of the school while he was at it.
"Did you see Eddie Longmeier around that afternoon?"
"Umm, no."
"His car?"
"No. Sorry."
I thanked the busy man and trudged back toward the lobby.
Why might Eddie Longmeier have been here? To see Kevin regarding plans for the new gym?
Kevin glanced up from the piles of papers on his desk like a bear peering out from the depths of his cave.
"Did Eddie Longmeier come to see you last Friday afternoon?"
"No. Why?"
To avoid a premature explanation, I fibbed and said Joanne thought she saw Longmeier's station wagon. "I just wondered who he could have been here to see."
Kevin shrugged. "Not me."
“You getting enough rest?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
"I wish," he lamented.
So he was sleeping poorly, too. I wondered if we had the same reason.
Back in the lobby I slumped into a stuffed chair, rested my head on the cushion, closed my eyes. Ruth was kind enough to ignore me.
Stressed out and exhausted, I once again ran through the afternoon of the murder–detail by detail, inch by inch. I had spoken to Joanne, greeted Emily, proceeded to the Community Room, unloaded some shelves. I had gone to the Faculty Room to borrow a Dustbuster.
The Dustbuster. There was something I wanted to remember about it, but whatever it was, it eluded me again.
I replayed myself in the Faculty Room, slow motion this time. I took the little gray vacuum out of its rack on the wall and did what I do to my own, which was wipe off the dog hairs adhered to the nozzle by static electricity. Except in this case, the nozzle had been covered with blue carpet fuzz and dust; and after I wiped it off, a row of scratches were visible along the top of the case. I remembered thinking that one of the teachers must have jammed it under a cabinet or low sofa or chair.
My eyes popped open. The lobby around me had filled with several students waiting for rides, or passing through on their way to Thursday afternoon's extracurricular activities.
Didi breezed in the front door. She came toward me ready with a hug, but stopped short when she saw my face.
"What's wrong?" she demanded.
"Wait," I said, keeping her at bay with my outstretched hand.
Didi stood perfectly still. I swear she even held her breath, she read me that well.
Friday afternoon fast forward. I went back to the Community Room. Kevin was gone. Randy asked me to return in an hour. I left the Dustbuster on the floor, went to hear the kids sing. Rip and Nora had their disagreement. Nora quit. Rip asked me to ask Didi to help.
Now I could glance at my best friend, acknowledge her presence. She stared back at me with her whole being. I shrugged out of my overcoat and handed it to her. Then I did the same with my blazer. It was going to be cold as hell outside, but that was what I wanted. I wanted everything the same—needed everything the same.
Didi accepted the coats in silence. I could feel her eyes on my back as I went out the door.
Just as I hoped, the outdoor chill propelled me into the past, to last week when I jogged through the cold Valley Forge winter to go home for Didi's phone number.
Without any curbing to protect the grass strip in front of the school's right front parking lot, cars often parked so far forward there was precious little sidewalk left between them and some low spreading dogwood trees. That was why, when school was in session, I usually walked home down the middle of the drive, crossing a few feet of grass to pick up the brick path to our house.
Today as I passed the rear bumpers of cars, I compared what I saw with my memory of Friday afternoon. Yes, a teacher's red van was in the same spot to my right. No, there was nothing in this slot to my left. In fact two spots had been empty, but two had been full before I came to Eddie Longmeier's muddy blue Subaru station wagon.
I crept up to the car in the station wagon's former spot on my toes, hugging myself from the cold, probably shivering, but scarcely aware. I was seeing the Suburu from behind, straining
to see it as clearly as I now envisioned the scratches on the Dustbuster, the scratches that had been absent from the ones Newkirk packed so carefully into his evidence box.
In my mind I saw a cover, a sort of gray window shade that matched the Suburu's interior, employed to keep prying eyes off the owner's cargo. That was the oddity, the cover. Eddie Longmeier used his station wagon for business. He carried paint and nails and trowels and rope and, yes, shovels and rakes and garden hoses back there. I had seen his car parked in roughly the same area dozens of times in the six months since we moved to the school, and on no other occasion had I seen his cargo covered.
While I stood staring into my memory, cars pulled into the front circle, children climbed inside, and the cars drove away. The teacher who owned the red van came out, shouted, "Hi, Gin," started the van, and also departed.
My shivering developed into huge shuddering spasms, and still I stared at the trunk of the navy blue BMW that was parked where I was now certain the station wagon had been.
Soon, a woman and her teenage son, who was whining about going to the orthodontist, approached the BMW. The boy ignored me, walked around, and got into the passenger's seat. The woman watched me askance until she stood by her door, finally concluding that she would have to speak.
"Excuse me, miss," she said. "But we have to go."
I lifted my head to look at her.
"We have to leave?" she both explained and asked.
I registered what she meant, even intended to get out of her way, but then it came and I was so surprised that I shouted, "Yes!" and slapped my hands on her trunk.
"Hey!" the woman yelled. "Stop that. And will you please get out of the way?"
"Yes, yes. That's it," I said, punching the air and scurrying back toward Didi and my coat.
Cavorting giddily, waving my arms in the air, I probably looked totally out of my mind; but who cared?
If I was right about why—I also knew who.