The day Gus and Jazz found Bernadette’s body, the girls who had rides or permission from their parents were dismissed early. The rest of them stayed in the gym where Eileen had delivered the news of Bernadette’s death and led the girls in prayer. While Eileen went back to her office and gave a flawless statement to the media, Tracy Durn, the phys ed teacher, organized a volleyball game for the girls who felt like playing. Carly Tanner, the school librarian, gathered up any of the girls who preferred peace and quiet and spirited them to the library. Jazz’s friend Sarah Carrington took charge of the rest of them and gave them free rein in the art room. By the time the school day officially ended and everyone was gone and Eileen was in her office behind closed doors with St. Catherine’s board members, Jazz felt stretched tight, antsy, exhausted.
Eager for a distraction, she went out into the first-floor hallway. The school was deathly quiet, as if the building itself was holding its breath, waiting to see what shock waves would result from the day’s horrible discovery. And yet …
Jazz glanced down the hallway and couldn’t help but smile. Leave it to Sarah—bubbly, artistic Sarah—to know exactly what the girls needed to see when they came back to school on Monday. Before she left for the day, she hung the pictures the girls had painted in the hours after they learned of Bernadette’s death. The hallway outside Jazz’s office was a rainbow of paintings.
Flowers, sunshine, clear summer skies. If nothing else, the girls’ drawings proved the young were resilient.
Comforted by the thought, Jazz strolled down the first-floor hallway, examining picture after picture, feeling better at the sight of the bright colors and the sweet sentiments scrawled alongside the drawings.
Good-bye, Ms. Quinn.
God bless you.
Rest in Peace.
It was the drawing closest to the doorway of Bernadette’s former classroom that stopped Jazz cold.
This painting wasn’t hung with the rest of the pictures. It was taped below the neat row of drawings Sarah had hung at eye level.
An afterthought.
The sheet of drawing paper was a study in monochrome, black and gray. Except for the lower right corner—the spot where the other girls had signed their names—where there was one fat drop of red.
Jazz had no intention of insulting the artist, whoever she was. But she clearly remembered the looks on the faces of the girls as they’d filed out of school a few hours earlier. Dazed. Shocked. Afraid. Teetering between two worlds as the young always did, trying so hard to act like adults at the same time all they wanted to do was melt down in tears. There was no way Jazz was going to let them feel any worse. Carefully, she untaped the picture from the wall and took it into her office. She’d just tucked the grim painting into the top drawer of her desk when Marilyn Massey walked in.
Though Eileen wouldn’t in a million years use the word, Marilyn was what some of the staff called one of the principal’s projects. Eileen had met Marilyn—middle-aged, down on her luck, and a recovering addict—at a local food pantry and after talking to her for thirty minutes hired her on the spot to clean at St. Catherine’s. That was fifteen years earlier, just as the school was about to open, and Marilyn was the first to admit those thirty minutes changed her life. She’d been clean and sober since; she’d gotten her GED. Marilyn was meticulous and so hardworking a few of the teachers hired her to clean their homes on weekends.
She had a bucket in one hand, and in spite of the fact that it was empty, Marilyn’s shoulders were stooped as if she carried the weight of the world.
“Tough day.” It was an understatement, but Jazz didn’t know how else to ease into the conversation. “I thought Eileen told everyone on staff they could go home early if they wanted to.”
Marilyn’s shrug spoke volumes. “Going to be plenty to do next week. Figured I might as well get a jump on it,” she said. She set down the bucket and swiped one hand through her bleached shoulder-length hair. “Funeral is Tuesday. Up in the chapel. But I guess you know that.”
Jazz did and told her, “Bernadette’s parents are long dead, but the cops contacted one of her cousins and Eileen talked to him. He said that’s what Bernadette would have wanted, a funeral here. He said she always talked about how much she loved the chapel.” It brought up an interesting thought. “I didn’t realize Bernadette had any relatives; did you?”
Marilyn pulled a rag and a can of Pledge out of the wide pocket on the front of her apron. She excused herself around Jazz so she could clean Jazz’s chair and her desk. “I never talked to her much. She was…” Jazz didn’t want to put words in Marilyn’s mouth, so she kept quiet. “It wasn’t like she was unfriendly. That’s what I told that cop. Those cops who were here today, they talked to everyone, you know. And the one who talked to me, I told him it wasn’t like that Ms. Quinn was unfriendly. It was more like her head was always off somewhere…”—Marilyn made a waving motion with one hand and the rag in it—“and none of us was in the same place.”
“So she never mentioned a cousin?”
“Not to me.” Marilyn moved away from the desk and brought out a bottle of Windex and a paper towel to wipe down the leaded-glass doors on the bookcases on the other side of the room. “She tried to save me once, you know.”
“You mean like you stepped in front of a moving car and she jumped into the street and dragged you to safety? Or like she tried to save your soul?”
Marilyn made a face. “My soul, of course. That Ms. Quinn, that was all she cared about. Souls and salvation. I’m not saying that’s not important, but these girls, they’ll find out soon enough that real life is all about redemption and forgiveness. They’re still kids; they don’t need it pushed down their throats every day. I didn’t need it pushed down my throat.”
No, Jazz was pretty sure she didn’t. She offered Marilyn a smile. “Your soul didn’t need saving.”
Marilyn grunted a laugh. “Didn’t think so. Still don’t. But that Ms. Quinn, she was plenty religious.” She shook her head as if even after all this time, it didn’t make much sense. Marilyn turned and propped one hand on her hip. “There were times I had to kick her out of the chapel. You know, when I was closing up the building for the night.”
Jazz didn’t know. “You should have said something,” she told Marilyn.
It was inconsequential, and Marilyn’s one-sided grimace told Jazz as much. “It’s not that she ever argued with me about it or anything. Or like she ever refused to leave. If she did, I would have told Eileen. Or you. You know, the big guns.”
Jazz laughed. She’d never considered herself a big gun.
Marilyn shook her head. “More evenings than not when I got up to the chapel to give it a quick once-over, that Ms. Quinn, she’d be up there on her knees, praying like there was no tomorrow, mumbling to herself. Or talking to God.”
Remembering what Eileen had said earlier—the truth but not the whole truth—Jazz weighed her words. “Bernadette obviously hung around after the rest of us left. I guess that was her quiet time.”
Marilyn nodded. “I always cleaned the chapel last so she knew she’d have it to herself until I got up there. How she could be up there all by herself…” She shivered.
“You don’t like the chapel?”
Maybe because she was embarrassed, or maybe because she needed to dispel the shudder that crawled along her shoulders, Marilyn got back to work. She crossed the room and cleaned up the table where the refreshments had been set up for their Assembly Day speakers, stacking plates and cups, gathering up the last of the napkins.
“It sure is pretty up there.” Marilyn brought the vases of flowers over to Jazz’s desk and set them down. “But the way the sound plays tricks on you…” She shook her slim shoulders.
“It’s just because of the whispering walls,” Jazz said, even though she was sure Marilyn knew the story. The curved walls of the chapel played tricks with sound, causing unsettling echoes and even enabling a whisper from one side of the chapel to be heard on the other. A cutting-edge sound system had pretty much taken care of the problem when the girls were in the chapel for Mass. But yeah, Jazz imagined that when the sound system was off, when the school was empty, when Marilyn was up there alone and each of her footsteps was amplified and banged back at her, it could get unnerving. It was the main reason staff and teachers never talked about the acoustical acrobatics up in the chapel with students. Early on, Eileen had decided it would only cause problems if the girls thought of the chapel as a fun house attraction.
By way of telling Jazz she knew it and she knew it was silly to let it bother her, Marilyn lifted a shoulder. She finished with the coffee machine and Jazz asked, “What about the fourth floor?”
Marilyn froze. “They found her up there.”
“I found her up there,” Jazz said, though she was sure Marilyn had heard the story. St. Catherine’s was a small community and word traveled fast, especially when the word was all about a dead teacher and the handler and dog that had found her. “Have you ever been up on the fourth floor?” she asked Marilyn.
Her top lip curled. “Early on. Before the school ever opened. Me and Eileen was up there to see what needed to be done. I cleaned it. I cleaned it real good. But then Eileen and the board members, they decided it would cost too much to make the space usable. You know, on account of that narrow stairway and the fact that the heating and cooling ducts don’t run up there.”
“And you haven’t been up there since?”
Marilyn thought about it. “Once,” she said. “I don’t know, maybe two, three years ago. Diedre McColm, her classroom is right under that space and she said something about how there must have been a dead animal up there because…” Marilyn’s mouth fell open. “I sent Eddie up there and he found a dead squirrel and we figured that was that. And I sprayed some air freshener and we went back downstairs and we locked up and…” She gulped. “It was more than just a dead squirrel, wasn’t it?”
“Did you tell the cops?”
“Do you think it’s important?”
Jazz had to admit she didn’t know. “They need all the information they can get. I have no doubt Detective Lindsey will be back. I’ll mention it to him. He might want to talk to you again.”
This time when Marilyn shivered, it had nothing to do with the weird sound effects in the chapel. “I don’t like talking to cops.”
“I can be there with you if you want. Or Eileen.”
Satisfied with the plan, Marilyn moved across the room to wipe down the sills of the windows that looked out over Lincoln Park across the street.
“The way I figure it,” Marilyn said, “I can do most of the cleaning up in the chapel on Monday when it’s light out and the school is buzzing. It never bothers me then. Not when I know there are other people around and—”
As if they’d been snipped with scissors, Marilyn’s words cut off. Her mouth fell open.
“What?” Instinctively, Jazz hurried to her side. “What is it?”
“It’s…” Marilyn leaned forward for a better look out the window. “It’s that man.”
Jazz looked where Marilyn was looking. In the hours since word went out about the discovery of the skeleton in the school, local news crews had set up across the street. There were three vans parked there, each with a satellite dish on its roof, and since there was nothing going on at the moment and there wouldn’t be until the journalists saw the board members or Eileen leave the school, the crews were socializing, sipping coffee, smoking. To their right, a couple of young girls from the neighborhood jumped rope. To the left of the TV vans, a man stood alone on the sidewalk.
“Him?” Jazz asked, and when Marilyn nodded Jazz did a quick assessment. The guy was in his thirties. He had shaggy, dark hair, a wisp of a beard. He was short and squat, and he was wearing brown pants and a navy-blue windbreaker. “Who is he?”
“That’s the man…” Marilyn didn’t need to point, but she did anyway. “He was here. In the school.”
He wasn’t a parent; Jazz was sure of that. He wasn’t a vendor, because all of them worked through her. He wasn’t someone who’d come to do maintenance or grounds work, either. “For what?”
Marilyn inched closer to the window just as the man turned and paced down the sidewalk, then spun around and walked back in the direction of the school. “Back when Ms. Quinn was here. Yeah, it’s him, all right. See the way he walks? He sort of rolls from side to side. Like maybe he’s used to being on a boat. He doesn’t look like a sailor, though, does he? I remember him, all right. I remember that walk.”
“Why was he coming around here when Bernadette was here?” Jazz wanted to know.
Marilyn slid her a look. “To see her, of course.”
“Bernadette?”
Marilyn bobbed her head. “A time or two. At least as far as I know. I saw him with her. Always late. Always after school was done for the day and there wasn’t anyone around. Like I said, she used to go up to the chapel and sit there for hours. And sometimes, I think he went up there with her.”
It was absolutely against the rules. Bernadette should have known that. Without a pass, visitors weren’t allowed in the school. That fact may or may not have been important. For now, Jazz wanted to know, “Were they friends?”
Marilyn had to think about it. “Well, once I saw them sitting in the chapel talking. Just talking. But one time when I was cleaning on the second floor, I saw them going up to the third. They were holding hands.”
“Then friends for sure. Or maybe more?”
Marilyn’s lips puckered. “Not the last time I saw them together. That’s for sure. I just finished up for the night and I was heading home. It was cold; I had my winter coat on.” As if she was wearing it then, she bunched one hand against her chest, holding an imaginary coat closed against the icy chill. “They were out in the parking lot. Over by Ms. Quinn’s car.”
“Doing what?” Jazz wanted to know.
Color shot through Marilyn’s cheeks. “It wasn’t like I was putting my nose where it didn’t belong or anything. But it was strange. That’s what I thought at the time. Ms. Quinn, I’d just seen her up in the chapel and told her it was time to get a move on. And he wasn’t up there with her then. He must have been waiting outside for her. And I thought it was strange on account of how it was so cold. You’d think when it’s like that outside, you could find a better place to talk.”
“About?”
She tried to come up with the words and failed, shrugged. “It was a while ago. And I couldn’t hear real good. I remember that whatever it was, his voice was really mellow. Like he was trying to be sweet. You know how men can be.” She gave Jazz the sort of conspiratorial look that said there wasn’t a woman in the world who didn’t know what she was talking about. “Like he wanted something from her.”
“And Bernadette?”
“Stood just like that.” Marilyn pulled back her shoulders and clutched her hands together at her waist, her head high, her chin up. “You know, like she was a statue or something. Or like she was trying to show him that no matter what he said, she wasn’t listening.”
Jazz took a moment to study the man in the park. He looked harmless enough, a plain guy in unremarkable clothes. A little overweight. He looked left and right up and down the street. He glanced at the school. He stepped forward, then back. Like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do next.
“Were they yelling?” Jazz wanted to know. “Arguing?”
Marilyn thought about it. “No. If they started to tussle, well, I would have done something. I mean, it’s not like I could have fought him or anything.” Marilyn glanced down at her own scrawny body and chuckled. “But I’ve stood up to some guys. I know I don’t look up to it, but it’s true. I would have made a scene. I would have called the cops. I would have done something if I thought she was in some sort of danger. But there was nothing physical. None of that. It was just sort of awkward. Pathetic. Then whatever he said, well, Ms. Quinn, she started to cry and she turned away from him and he…” She cocked her head, picturing the scene. “It was like he was a balloon and somebody poked him with a pin. That’s how it looked to me. That’s what I thought. Like I was watching all the air leak out of him. It wasn’t until he backed away from her that whatever she said must have registered. Because that’s when he talked louder, like the words were all bunched up inside him, straining at his heart, and he couldn’t control how they came out.”
“What did he say?”
Trying to remember, Marilyn squeezed her eyes shut. “How she’d be sorry. How she’d regret it.” She lifted her hands, then let them flop back to her sides. “That was it. He turned around and walked away. And that Ms. Quinn, she stood there crying and shaking, and then she got in her car, and she drove away.”
“Do you have any idea who he is?” Jazz asked.
Marilyn shook her head.
“How about when this all happened? I don’t suppose you remember that?”
“Well, I do. See, that’s the thing. I never thought anything of it. Because when we got back from vacation, everyone said Ms. Quinn quit and we wouldn’t see her again, except none of us knew…” She looked up at the ceiling. Up to the fourth floor where Bernadette had lain wrapped in plastic sheeting for three years.
Jazz imagined Marilyn was thinking just what she was thinking. About the skeleton. About the cross around its neck.
She cleared her throat and Marilyn flinched. “When was it, Marilyn?”
“I was just heading home and I was so relieved because we were going to be on vacation soon.”
Jazz sucked in a breath. “Not the day before Christmas break started?” The last time anyone saw Bernadette alive.
“No.” Marilyn sucked on her bottom lip. “A couple days before, maybe. I remember I saw Ms. Quinn the next day in the hallway and I thought about saying something to her, about asking how she was. But you know how she could be, she walked right by me like I was invisible, and I thought if that’s the way she wanted to be, I wasn’t even going to ask.” She slid Jazz a look. “She was alive and well. I can tell you that.”
“That doesn’t mean this guy, whoever he is, that doesn’t mean he didn’t come back another day.” Jazz spun away from the windows and went to the desk where she’d left her phone.
“You going to call that detective guy?” Marilyn wanted to know.
She was, but not the detective guy Marilyn thought she was going to call. “I know someone…” When she got Nick’s voicemail, Jazz made a face at the phone and disconnected the call. “I’ll try him again in a few minutes,” she assured Marilyn. “I’m going to have him drive by and talk to this guy. Until then, we’ll keep an eye on him and—”
Jazz went back to the windows and her voice sagged along with her spirits.
Whoever he was, however he knew Bernadette, whatever they’d been fighting about in the days before Bernadette disappeared, he was gone.