Chapter 24

I gripped the balcony’s railing. The feet moving behind me stopped. My hearing shot into high gear. Once again the person moved.

“Inspecting the stage for graduation?” a voice asked from the black void to my rear.

I didn’t turn. Forced my voice strong. “I was just wondering how Kat is going to look out there.”

“I’m sure she’ll look pretty, as always.”

Breathing came closer. To my left and behind me. The darkness seemed to close in. Tapping sounded. The slightest tap-tap of something hard against flesh.

My eyes swiveled down and toward the left. Fringes of lagoon blue swept down. They rose. Swept down again. The spirit stick was tapping against an open palm.

“You probably owned a pistol,” I said without looking, “but it would be long gone by now.” If I faced the person, I might force a physical confrontation. I didn’t want that. What did I want? I asked myself again.

I wanted answers. To keep Kat safe.

No reply came from behind me. “Maybe a thirty-eight,” I suggested. “That you probably tossed in the bottom of a river.”

“You must have one yourself.”

“No, a gun would make my purse too heavy.” My fingernails pinched my right palm. So stupid, standing with that weapon tapping behind me, admitting I was unarmed.

But my purse held my phone. And my purse might become a weapon. Sometimes it held bulk.

I shifted my shoulder. Damn, I’d cleaned out my purse to make it lighter. Forget the phone, too, Cealie. Not much good against a long heavy spirit stick. Unless I could get a quick call off.

“My gun is in a full cereal box. Stuffed in there after I shot at you.” I swallowed. More explanation came. “I was driving to the grocery store the day I spotted you walking to that corner. I tried to hit you with my car. Then later you were such a nice target, lying on your patio. I guess I’m not a very good shot.”

My mouth zapped dry. I forced words out. “Cereal box, that’s clever.”

“I thought so. I taped the box shut and then shoved it in the middle of a large bag filled with trash. That’s gone too.”

“And I imagine you’d seen Jayne Ackers and thought she was Marisa Hernandez and instinctively pulled out your gun.”

“They were both tall and slender. Blond hair down to their shoulders.” A pause. “So many young women today seem tall and blond.”

But not you and me. “And after you’d killed once, it got easier.”

A loud sigh sounded. “You have no idea of the exhilaration.”

“Sure, getting a good adrenaline rush would cause anyone to murder.”

My opponent seemed to ponder. “You’re pretty smart. For an older woman.”

I flung around. “You have gray roots yourself.”

Her free hand touched the base of her hair. She smiled, her humorless smile looking especially wicked with her lips shut.

“And that spirit stick you’re holding probably has that man’s blood stains on it,” I said. “That young man, your lover.”

“I didn’t want you around this school anymore,” she said, taking purposeful steps down the stairs toward me, “after I realized I would go after Katherine.”

My breaths stopped. I hated this woman. Fury gave me strength. Hatred was replacing my fear. “Why would you go after Kat?”

A half-grin smeared the woman’s lips. “I was after Marisa Hernandez.”

“I figured that.” I wasn’t totally sure why. “Grant Labruzzo always kept her room clean,” I said to prompt a reason.

Her gaze swept out toward the dark cavern below. “Grant became obsessed with Marisa. He started to watch her, and he watched Kat too, since she’s Marisa’s good friend. He was furious when Marisa asked him to hang her students’ things from her ceiling.” The woman looked at me. “As though he were just some lowly janitor.”

“But he thought of himself as someone Marisa admired,” I determined. “A man she might love.”

My opposition’s throat tightened with her swallow. She was about half a foot taller than I was, so I could easily view her neck. Absently, she tapped the stick. “But I’d also become obsessed. I made another mistake. I thought Sue Peekers was Marisa.”

“The teacher you locked in the custodians’ room.”

“A stupid blunder.”

Peekers and Hernandez, both blond, both wearing denim that day. I’d seen Peekers from the rear that morning and also mistaken her for Marisa Hernandez. “You saw her in the custodians’ room and saw that the boxes of cleansers had been left near the door.” A smile responded to my musing, and I said, “No one else was in the hall, so you poured the chemicals under the door, then hurried back to your office.”

Hannah Hendrick’s eyes flittered toward mine. “Cealie, you’re even cleverer than I figured. You might have even guessed that I locked you in that classroom, changed my mind, and unlocked it before anyone came near.”

“You kept Grant Labruzzo here even though he didn’t do his job well. And when he spurned you, you killed him.”

The principal studied me as though she were assessing me as a job applicant. “Before Grant, I hadn’t had a man in so long.” Hannah gave me a friendly smile. “You’re an older woman. Surely you understand.”

I held back my heated response. “The police are certainly figuring out some of these things,” I said, trying to sound more assured than I felt. Of course no one would be bothered by the principal’s vehicle being here at school after hours. If anyone even noticed her hidden truck.

“Nobody saw me do anything. And the kids here get into trouble all the time. I call the police regularly,” Hannah said, grinning. “Sledge pulled the fire alarm that day you were here. I knew you’d driven that ugly mail truck, and nobody was in the parking lot right after everyone went inside, so I wrote that warning on your door. One way to get at Kat was to scare you.”

Anger swelled up in my throat. Since it wouldn’t help Kat now, I forced it down. “What happened between Sledge and Grant Labruzzo? Sledge’s buddy suggested that Sledge had done something.”

Hannah’s smile faded. “They got in a fight after school one day. Sledge thought he’d won.”

“Is that it?”

Hannah turned up the palm of her empty hand. “That’s it.” She seemed relaxed about answering my questions.

Before her mood changed, I hurriedly asked more. “Did you mess up my Lexus?”

“I don’t know anything about that. I’m sure you can thank some of our delinquents. We have a few.”

“Abby seems to believe Grant was interested in Anne Little.”

Hannah smirked. Her shoulders drew up higher. “Lots of women worried about who Grant was interested in. He was a handsome man. He spent lots of time in the office. But not to see Anne. Or Cynthia Petre.”

My heart hammered while I considered the most important question. “Why did you blow up Kat’s car?”

Hannah moved so close I felt the stick’s blue fringes sweeping my arm. The full-figured woman stared out at the stage. “Kat had become like Marisa’s daughter.” Hannah quieted, apparently going off in her thoughts.

I pushed to learn more. “They’d often talk…”

Hannah nodded. We might have been two friends, sharing our experiences.

Clacking sounded. Her stick was striking the rail, working harder. “And what’s the worst way to harm parents?” Hannah asked.

I knew the answer. “Hurt their children.”

She peered at me. “So I went after Kat, at first thinking I’d just scare her. If her grades dropped, if she didn’t come to school for exams and got all F’s for them…” Smiling as if she had told me the best story, Hannah said, “Then she’d lose everything she had worked so hard for all those years. Kat wouldn’t become an honor graduate.” Hannah’s shoulders jerked while she seeped more into the tale. “And then—then I thought, suppose I didn’t only scare Kat away from exams?”

Hannah grew so excited her eyes sparkled. She said, “If I scared Kat enough, then she might even not even come to graduate. That would get Marisa for sure.”

And me, too.

Hannah’s empty hand clapped against her hand that held the rod. “But even better, I could kill Kat.”

My heart stopped.

“Yes, I could kill her. And then Marisa would be devastated.”

My throat only managed to squeeze out a small sound.

Enthusiastically, Hannah continued. “I learned to make a bomb. I’m a speed reader, you know, and have an extraordinarily high IQ.” I couldn’t speak, and she went on. “I set the timer and placed the device under Kat’s car while everybody was inside, listening to Anne make announcements. But I rushed so much that I set the timing device too early. I had planned for it to blow up right after school, when Kat reached her car. She is so punctual.”

My granddaughter’s principal smiled at me. “Now I’ll have to wait until summer to find a way to kill Marisa. Too much security around here now. But summer’s just around the corner. And, of course, I’ll be absolutely certain it’s Marisa this time.” Hannah grinned at me as if waiting for applause.

My grim face must have sobered her. Hannah said, “How did you know?”

My gaze dropped to her skirt. Her suit was tan. “Where your blood stain was the first day I came here. You hadn’t started your period. You’re probably too old to still be having them.”

Hannah snickered. “Not quite. I still have a few.” She looked smug. “So that’s it?”

“I knew you might still be having periods. But the place where that dark red spot was. I remembered for myself. Sometimes I bled through, but no stain ever came to the location of yours, that close to your hip.”

Hannah’s hand went to where the stain had been on her cerise suit skirt.

“You should have packed your skirt in that cereal box, too,” I said, “because it’ll incriminate you. Just like the stains that are certainly somewhere on that stick you’re holding. Those are Grant Labruzzo’s blood stains.”

“I cleaned them off.” She shook the spirit stick and made the fringes sway. “Pretty, isn’t it? Colors of the Fighting Cougars.”

“You knocked him down with that stick. And probably went downstairs, checked to make sure he was dead, and unknowingly brushed your skirt against him.” I considered and said, “You wore the same outfit for his funeral. Nostalgia maybe?”

Hannah grinned. She pointed with the stick. “Grant hit those chairs right down there.” She bent her head, the bob of her chestnut-colored hair rising from her neckline. “You must have some killer instinct yourself,” she said, not looking at me. Her next words were more sinister. “Or you’re stupid.” She drew back and peered at me.

“Sometimes both,” I admitted.

Hannah’s stick rose and lowered, its fringes falling over the rail. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. She beat the rail faster, harder, her nose starting to flare.

I needed to keep her in conversation. Needed to think. Plan a defense. “You probably made out with Grant Labruzzo here at school,” I said.

“Oh, lots of places. On my desk. In classrooms.”

I grimaced. Hannah’s bare butt had been everywhere. No wonder that young man hadn’t been interested in emptying trashcans.

She continued. “The gym’s center circle. On tables in the teachers’ lounge.”

I pictured Deidre munching on food at one of those tables, and an utterance of disgust left my throat. I pointed to the stage. “And down there?”

“That was to be the next place. See that wooden circle in the middle? It would have been lovely.” Her heavier breathing filled the air surrounding us.

I kept my tone low. Tried to make it friendly. “You might have thought of yourselves as performers. Putting on your love scene for a filled house. You. Him. The spotlight.”

She faced me. “Cealie, I knew you were a romantic, too.”

I couldn’t punch her. The spirit stick was blocking her face. I reeled in my emotions and spoke calmly. “Grant only did a good job of cleaning the office. And Marisa’s room. You had him meet you here before your planned center-stage performance. And carrying that stick, you confronted him.”

Hannah’s face turned stormy. “He admitted he loved her.”

“Did she love him?” Marisa was about to lose my respect if she did.

“She didn’t know he existed. Except as a person, a man who kept her room clean.”

“And you knocked him down.”

“I caught him off guard, striking him with the stick. He tripped over his dust mop, so when his body tilted, I shoved.” Hannah’s mouth remained open, her vision seemingly far off. “Grant’s head hit the third chair, seventh row up.”

She breathed hard. And smiled at me. “You can see where his leg caught on the chair. That one.”

I pretended to glance down to where she pointed.

“His head cracked on the concrete. Must’ve been at the same place where I hit him.” Hannah smiled pleasantly. “They didn’t suspect anything but the fall. His back was cracked too, you know.”

My jaw clenched as I faced this person who’d once looked attractive. Now she personified evil. Considering the depravity that had built inside her made my brain numb. I became aware of the slightest sound and hoped it wasn’t urine dribbling to the floor. Hannah couldn’t witness all my fear. She had no idea of my inner trembling from just being up on this balcony.

I glanced at her shoes. Straps around the ankles, three-inch heels. My pumps had low heels. I could slip out of them. And if I could get past her, I could probably run much faster down those rear stairs. I slipped my hand into my purse and tried to open my phone and press a number in Memory but couldn’t.

Dip dip dip, the noise sounded. I watched fringes rise and fall.

Hannah knocked the stick against a chair behind us. “And now you know,” she said. “What a shame. You could have kept teaching for us, Cealie. You seem a bright person.”

Bright enough not to stand here and let you bludgeon me to death. Hannah could toss me down like she did her lover.

She slammed the heavy metal against a chair. Then using both hands, she swung the spirit stick up above my head.

If the person attacking me were a man, I’d know what was open to aim for.

Still I tried. My knee went up to Hannah’s groin. She twisted her hips. Groaned when I only kneed her thigh.

Raising both arms higher, she had the Cougar spirit stick coming down toward my head.

I reached out for what she’d exposed. With her arms up, Hannah’s breasts became huge targets. I grabbed her nipples and pinched.

“Ugggh!” she howled, her arms flinging down as she tried to protect body parts. But she didn’t release the stick. Its weight slammed against my shoulder. Pain shot through my arm, but I held on, squeezing tighter. Hannah screamed, and her throat made sadistic yowls. She writhed, her free hand shoving my arm. She hit against my back with the stick.

I felt welts rising. She cursed, squirmed, and thrust out her hips, trying to disengage me. I concentrated on pinching boobs. “I was right,” I said, fabricating a statement to taunt her. “They’re fake.”

Our faces were close to each other, and her huffing breaths felt hot. A grimace contorted her features. “You won’t get away!” she shrieked, striking me across the back, the end of her stick nipping my hip. My only consolation was that her blows would’ve been even harder if she wasn’t using one hand to try to pry my fingers loose. Hannah shoved my right hand away. “Ah,” she sighed.

I reached out and caught her boob again.

Hannah yowled, hunching her shoulders and coiling her torso. My knees hit the cement floor. She stood above me, and I covered my head with both hands. She struck my hands and part of my head. Dark spots sprinkled through my eyes. She could easily knock me out and then shove me over that rail. Crack my spine and neck. Pain shot from every spot on my body where she whacked. Thickening spots danced across my vision. Soon I’d black out.

I thought of not getting to see the babies Kat would have. And my family’s misery from having me die, especially since I’d so stupidly hastened my demise.

Hannah grasped her weapon with both hands. She raised the stick straight up above my head and cried, “You’re dead, bitch!”

With every remaining fiber of my strength, I stretched up and pinched tits. I squeezed so hard I could feel my fingertips against each other through Hannah’s skin. I pulled and twisted. She sounded like a wounded wild creature. Hannah toppled, coming toward the floor with me, slamming the stick down.

“No!” a male cried.

The voice of God? I was lying on my side, seeing the bottoms of chairs. Could I already be dead?

The stick’s fringes touched my shoulder. Aches let me know I still lived. Through widening dark circles, I saw Gil. He knocked the spirit stick away. It clattered against chairs. “Don’t lose that stick!” I cried. “It’s got blood stains.”

“So will this poor lady if you don’t let go of her. We were down in the hall and could hear her yelling.” Gil made his gentle chuckle. Obviously, he hadn’t seen her hit me. He placed his fingers inside mine to pry them apart, and my numb fingers came off Hannah’s bosom. She folded over, her fingers fluttering above her breasts. She didn’t touch them but scrunched over, whimpering like a small puppy.

My shoulders and scalp ached. Pounding came, probably from inside my head. Gil glanced toward the stairwell. “Police,” he explained. “I called them and said another murder was probably about to be committed here.”

“I could’ve beaten her without your help,” I said.

He kissed my forehead. I winced and tried to smile. “You came up on a balcony,” Gil said. “It wasn’t so bad, was it?”

I didn’t even try for a grin.

Hannah cocked her head toward the sound of feet running up the stairwell. She hunched like a wicked witch, glaring at me, still protecting her chest.

“How’d you know this would happen?” I asked Gil.

“Cealie, I know you.” His eyes wore that sparkle I adored. Lines of kindness creased their outer edges.

God, I liked him. I rolled to my back, a cool floor beneath me, Gil’s face above. If he and I weren’t in this place—with this woman squirming with her nipples, and policemen scuttling toward us—and if my head wasn’t doing all this throbbing… No, I’d been sniffing his after-shave. I did enjoy its woody fragrance.

I put my hands out, and Gil helped me to my feet.

Dizziness struck, making my knees wobble. Gil wrapped an arm around me. “I knew that with your persistence, you’d find something. And someone. And that person would probably need protecting.” He peered at me with a slight smile until I stood steadier. Footsteps reached the landing. Changes in their sound let me know people in uniform were about to run in through the doorway.

“Bitch!” Hannah called to me. She’d hunched herself down to half my height. I wasn’t about to lower myself to trading names with a murderer. But mainly I couldn’t think of a better name to call her.

Male voices exchanged shouts, while my world busied itself with painting spots into a solid circle. My mind picked out a few of Gil’s words: “Better read her her rights…a stick back there…”

“Oh,” I said, resuming some mind control, “and look in her closet. A nice suit has blood on it. Not hers.” People in uniforms held Hannah between them. “And by the way,” I said, leaning closer to her face, “cerise really isn’t your color.”

Hannah spat. I drew back, barely missing her spittle. I couldn’t stop myself. “Whore!”

She whipped toward me, but handcuffs stopped her from striking out. Hannah was only able to nudge her arms closer to her chest. Continued protection.

“Ouch,” Gil said, glancing at her departing figure.

I grinned. Things started swimming beneath my breastbone while Gil stood back, allowing me to walk out in front of him. The swirls in my chest swept up, reaching inside my head. My knees gave way, and I sank.

Gil caught me as I fell. “Too much excitement,” he said, laying me straight on the floor. He sat on a step beside me, and I heard someone phoning for an ambulance.

“I think,” I told Gil, “she might’ve hit me.”

Worry lines creased his face. “I didn’t see that happen. Oh, Cealie—”

“It’s not bad. I think here,” I said, indicating the rear of my head. Numbness had spread, but I pointed down. “Maybe bruised there.”

“Do you want me to check?” Gil touched my back much lower than where I’d felt pain.

My grin was weak. “Maybe some other time,” I said. After that, I knew nothing.