Fenway’s mind raced. The coaches’ office wasn’t sacred ground—people were in and out of here all the time. Maybe there was a perfectly good explanation for the hidden banner and the missing rods.
She closed her eyes and saw the rug in her Russian Lit professor’s office again—
She smacked her hand on the top of the hutch.
How could she not connect the dots? They were right in front of her.
Sunday hadn’t been the one who’d arranged one-on-one player meetings with Levinson, who’d covered for the team, who’d smoothed things over with Maggie, week after week, month after month.
It was Coach Portello.
He’d been the one enabling Coach Levinson. Ever since Shellmont University.
The door opened, and Coach Portello walked in, looking shell-shocked, then almost jumped when he saw Fenway.
His voice was gruff. “What are you doing in here?”
Fenway cleared her throat and stepped away from the hutch, toward Coach Levinson’s desk. “I wanted to speak with Coach Sunday, but it was too crowded in the hallway, so I came in here.”
Portello narrowed his eyes. “Why are you behind my desk?”
“I—” Fenway’s eyes darted around the room. Was there anything she could use for a weapon? Was there anything he could use for a weapon? “The last time I was in here, I saw the banner. I thought I’d get a similar one made for the coroner’s office. I saw it behind the hutch and wanted to take a look.” Fenway wasn’t sure if she was a good liar, so something close to the truth would be the most believable, right? “Well, if you’re done talking to Coach Sunday—”
“Oh, I’m done, all right.” Portello strode to the closet, opened it, and pulled a cardboard box out.
Fenway blinked. During her interview with Lorraine Sunday, Annabel Shedd had put her gym bag in that closet—with her Desert Treasure sweatshirt. If Portello had access to that closet—
Still a lot of ifs. Lots of people could get into this room. Lots of people could have gone into the closet.
Portello was still talking. “Lorraine wants to take the Neons in a different direction, she says. So I have until the end of the day to pack my shit and get out of here.”
Fenway looked down at Portello’s shoes.
A large stylized eagle, the letter B embroidered on the side.
The shoe print from the hiking trail. The Bronson Eagle GTX4s.
Fenway swallowed hard.
“It’s like last year’s championship run meant nothing,” Portello continued.
“That sucks. I’m sorry.”
He smiled ruefully. “The good news is, the Neons are buying out my contract. The big fat check I’m getting eases the pain a little.”
“Silver lining, then.” Fenway felt herself break out into a sweat—and immediately tried to slow down her breathing. She needed to keep him in the room until Dez arrived.
He scoffed. “Certainly not how I thought this would—well, never mind.” He slammed the empty cardboard box down on his desk and started putting the pictures and knickknacks into the box.
Never mind, he’d said. His guard was down.
“You didn’t tell me that Maggie called you the morning of her death,” Fenway said. It was a guess—they wouldn’t get the report for hours, if not days—but she thought she’d take the chance.
Portello looked up, his mouth agape. “I didn’t—” Then he shut his mouth. “Oh, of course. Cell phone records.”
“They do tell us a lot of information.” Fenway couldn’t keep the smile off her face; her bluff had worked.
Portello sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t tell you earlier because of how it looked, all right? She calls me, wants her job back, wants me to talk to Christchurch. I said no.”
“She must have been heartbroken.” Fenway’s shoulders were tight. At any moment, he might realize she had figured it out. Were the shoes enough proof? The cell phone records?
Maybe not.
A confession would be nice.
“Besides, it’s not like you ever asked me directly if I’d spoken to her that morning.”
“True.” Fenway forced a smile onto her face. He was still making excuses about not telling the police about the phone call. It didn’t fit, of course—with Maggie’s email, he would have thought it was suicide, not murder, and therefore there’d be no reason to hide the phone call. But Fenway didn’t push it. She needed a weapon, she needed handcuffs—she needed Dez.
Portello hesitated, then walked to the other side of his desk, pulled open a file drawer, and took files out, placing them on the desk. “Poor kid—but, you know, we can’t employ killers on this team. Real shame. Maybe she didn’t think any other team would take a chance on her, either.”
“But we never arrested her, Rocky.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.
“I think I speak for everyone on the team when I say we were expecting an arrest.”
Fenway looked down. “Was it you who got her kicked off the team?”
“Me? Hell, no.”
Quite a visceral reaction from the coach. Fenway cocked her head. “Why not?”
“Because—” Portello hesitated, and his eyes went to the ceiling briefly before settling back to the desk. “Without Maggie, we might get to the playoffs, but there’s no way we’d win it all. Maybe it was a distraction, but it was distraction I was willing to live with.”
Fenway tried to make eye contact with Portello, but he kept his head down. It was all a lie. He wanted her on the team because once her contract ended, so would the gag order. She’d be free to tell the police—or the media—that Rocky Portello had arranged her private meetings with Levinson. That Portello kept people away from Levinson’s hotel room when he had female guests. That Levinson had threatened players with the Seven Summits, with a demotion in playing time, maybe even with getting blackballed in the league. Fenway would bet it had happened to others.
But if Portello had arranged for Levinson to meet with Maggie when she was a seventeen-year-old at Shellmont? That would be more than a fireable offense. That would mean jail time. The sex offenders’ registry.
Portello couldn’t risk that.
“If you felt so strongly about Maggie staying on the team, why tell her you wouldn’t talk to Christchurch when she called you on Saturday morning?”
Portello stroked his mustache. “We—we’d already had the conversation with Sandra. She was livid about the theft of her bracelet. She couldn’t let it go.”
Of course. The stolen diamond tennis bracelet; that part of Portello’s plan had backfired. Portello had stolen the jewelry, written the card—the stationery purchase from Marks-the-Spot. He’d put the bracelet in the card, signed it with Lorraine Sunday’s name, and shoved it under Maggie’s hotel room door—but never expected the card to get stuck.
So instead of Sunday getting blamed for the theft and fired, Maggie was let go.
And Coach Sunday had been promoted instead.
Fenway tried to clear her mind; she couldn’t risk antagonizing Portello. He wasn’t handcuffed to the table in the interview room at the sheriff’s office. He was standing behind his own desk—and Fenway didn’t have backup.
Portello knitted his brow and blinked at Fenway.
Shit. Did he just put two and two together? Could he tell she figured it out?
“You think someone framed Maggie,” he said slowly.
“We’re keeping all lines of inquiry open.” She reached down into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. No message from Dez.
Portello nodded. “That makes sense.” He stroked his chin. “You’ve been talking with Annabel Shedd a lot. You know, Annabel’s always hated Levinson, ever since I got here. Maybe she’d had enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if she killed him, framed Maggie, and then murdered her, too.”
This was good. The longer he kept talking, the more likely it was that Dez would get there in time. “So, Rocky,” she said, “what are your plans after this?”
He scoffed. “I got fired five minutes ago, and you want to know what my plans are?” He turned to the hutch, then got on his hands and knees. “I’ll tell you something,” he said from the floor, facing the wall. “If I had any sense, I’d take a nice, long vacation. Somewhere warm.” He reached under the hutch and grunted. “You don’t think it’s Annabel either, do you?”
“I’m afraid I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”
Rocky stood.
And he held a metal-tipped banner rod in his right hand.
Levinson had ordered two banner rods.
Fenway stared at it for a moment, then looked into Portello’s eyes.
He knew.
“The tennis bracelet,” he murmured. “I should have been more careful. But I figured the housekeeping staff would turn in the card, too.” He shook his head. “Can’t get good help these days, I guess.”
Fenway took a tiny step back.
Portello turned the rod over in his hands. The metal rod looked heavy, but he lifted it easily. “Your phone. Put it on the desk.”
Fenway looked down—she still had her phone in her hand. She reached out to lay it on the top of the desk—
BAM!
Fenway barely pulled her hand away in time—Portello brought the rod down on top of the phone.
The phone shattered, a hundred bits of electronics and plastic flying across the office. Fenway felt a small piece hit her elbow, hard enough to leave a mark.
“You’ve got to understand,” he said, resting the rod up on his shoulder like a baseball bat, “that I was expected to run interference. Required, even. Levinson knew what he was doing. He knew the staff had to put up with it. He won divisions. He won championships. Shellmont got a fifty percent bump in alumni donations after he took us all the way. You think the athletic director wanted to stop that?”
Fenway stared at the banner rod in his hand, and the realization dawned on her. “You didn’t buy the door stops so you could kill Levinson. You bought them so Levinson could go down to the players’ floor without being seen in the elevator.”
“Close.” Portello gave Fenway a sad, uneven smile. “It was much easier for Levinson just to get a player to come up to his room for a one-on-one strategy session.”
“Levinson was doing this with more than just Maggie, then,” Fenway said.
He shrugged. “Maggie was his favorite. Has been for years.”
Fenway pursed her lips. “She was only seventeen at Shellmont. You were running interference so that your boss could have sex with a seventeen-year-old he was coaching?”
Portello shook his head. “You don’t understand what the culture is like.”
“I guess I don’t,” Fenway said. “I also don’t understand why Maggie called you on Saturday morning.”
He chuckled. “She begged me to take her back on the team, you know. I told her she’d have to prove to me how much she wanted it—she even said she’d run the Seven Summits.”
“So you agreed to meet her at Cypress Point Beach.” It snapped together in Fenway’s mind. “You had her carry the banner rod. Did you bring buckets of rocks, too?”
His smile broadened. “Maggie thought she was doing penance, running up the trail to the ridge of the ravine, balancing those weights on the banner rod.”
Little did she know she was carrying her own murder weapon. Fenway cleared her throat. “So what’s next? You’re going to smash my skull in just like you did to Maggie? You think you’re going to kill me and get away with it?”
“Everyone saw you ask Lorraine—not me—to meet with you. I’ll make sure to put your dead body on her desk. She’ll be the prime suspect. By then, I’ll have cashed my check and be long gone.”
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Fenway said. “The D.A. will take the circumstances into account. You hitting Levinson over the head? Heat of the moment. You were mad that Levinson kept coercing Maggie even after he was warned. You’d sacrificed everything for him, and he screwed you over.”
“For a child,” Portello said bitterly. “Maggie was a child.”
“The D.A. can work with that, Rocky. We can recommend—”
Portello swung at Fenway.
With the desk between the two of them, she jumped back—and the rod missed her by less than an inch. She bumped against the worktable and scrambled on top of it.
Portello jumped over the desk, rod in hand. Unlike many coaches who got soft in the middle when their playing days were behind them, Portello was trim and in shape.
He swung at Fenway again.
She pushed herself back on the tabletop, and the rod glanced off her left shoulder.
A sharp pain shot down Fenway’s arm.
She rolled off the table onto her feet.
Portello was still slightly off-balance, and Fenway aimed a kick right between his legs. He turned at the last second, and she connected with his thigh instead, still hard enough to make him drop to a knee.
The door flung open.
Annabel Shedd stood in the open doorway, holding a soccer ball, brows knitted as she tried to figure out what was happening.
“He killed Maggie!” Fenway shouted.
Annabel’s face turned from confusion to rage.
She threw the ball at him with all her might, and he used the rod to knock it away easily—
But Annabel had launched herself at him.
Portello tried to sidestep her, but she knocked the rod out of his hand and they both hit the floor behind the worktable. Portello jumped to his feet and ran out the door.
Fenway took off at a sprint after him.
He tried to slam the door in Fenway’s face, but she ran full speed, her left shoulder out, and braced for impact. She hit the door before it closed—pain shooting down her arm again—and the door flew open and bounced against the back wall.
Fenway looked down the hallway to her right—nothing. She looked to her left and saw Portello’s foot, in the Bronson GTX4, disappear around the corner.
She took off running, the sound of the side door crashing open again behind her.
She didn’t look back as she turned the corner. A door at the back of the hallway led outside and was slowly closing on its pneumatic hinges. Fenway pushed hard and sprinted, catching the door just before it closed.
She found herself behind the building on the other side of the quad and slowed to a stop. Where was Portello? She spun around—
—and Annabel Shedd, running faster than on her breakaway on her World Cup-winning goal, flew past her.
“You killed Maggie!” Shedd screamed, racing down the concrete path.
Fenway saw Portello, running hard, fifty feet ahead of Shedd, then making a hard right onto the field, past a hedge. She took a deep breath and began running.
There was no way Fenway could keep up with Portello.
She turned the corner around the hedge.
And saw that Portello was much slower than Annabel Shedd.
Shedd took a flying leap at Portello’s feet, and the assistant coach tripped, falling to the earth. Shedd pounced on top of him and punched him in the jaw with all her weight behind it.
“You killed her!” Annabel repeated, her voice breaking.
“She would have ruined everything,” Portello sobbed, blood running from his lip.
“She was just a kid!” Annabel screamed, rearing back to punch Portello again, but Fenway caught her arm before she threw another punch. “Let go of me! He murdered Maggie and he’s—”
“Roger Portello,” Fenway said firmly, above Annabel’s voice, rolling Portello onto his stomach, “you are under arrest for the murders of Paul Levinson and Maggie Erskine. You have the right to remain silent—”
“Let go of me!” Annabel screeched.
“It’s too bad Portello slipped and hit his face on a rock,” Fenway shouted at Annabel. “I’m glad I won’t have to arrest a superstar soccer player for assault.”
Annabel glared at Fenway.
“I won’t have to arrest a superstar soccer player for assault, will I?”
Annabel’s breath hitched, but she sat back on her heels and shut her mouth.
Fenway pulled Portello’s hands behind his back as she finished reading him his rights. Footsteps—Dez was there, shoving her handcuffs into Fenway’s hand.
Fenway, sweating heavily in the misty air, stood and caught her breath. She looked up. All the Neons players—plus Lorraine Sunday and Sandra Christchurch—stood about ten yards back from the scene. McVie stood behind them with folded arms and a smile touching the corners of his mouth.