After the front door of Evergreen Real Estate rattled closed, and the tapping of rubber soles on the concrete walkway receded into silence, Gage stood for a long time in the softly lit interior staring after the man who called himself Thomas Ridley. His palm, holding the Beretta, felt slick with sweat, his fingers throbbing from holding the grip so tightly. His face felt warm, the humiliation thick, a kind of disgrace he'd never experienced before. No one had ever played him quite like that—the sharpest knife cutting deeply in the place he was most vulnerable, the Gray Man seeking it out like some kind of bloodhound for weakness.
Gage still hadn't felt fear. But to be rendered so . . . impotent, so weak and ineffective, was nearly the same kind of outcome. What fear did to other people, the shame of his inaction did to him. He may have walked with a cane for many years, but he hadn't felt this weak in a long time.
Angry with himself, amped up on adrenaline, he searched the office for half an hour but found nothing. The computer was password-protected, so there was nothing he could do there without some help, and there was nothing in the paper files related to New Shore, Inc. Unless he was missing something, it all appeared quite mundane. There was one file dated two days earlier, so Barnhart hadn't been missing long. Had he taken off because he'd known Ridley was coming for him?
Feeling momentarily adrift, Gage took his seat behind the desk. He looked at the phone number written on the yellow legal pad, hesitated, then tore off the top sheet, folded it in half, and stuffed it inside his jacket. That was the moment when he also knew he wouldn't be calling the police unless it was absolutely necessary. He didn't think he'd call Ridley's number either, but unlike a few minutes ago, he now had some doubt. As much as he despised himself for even allowing for the possibility, he wanted the option.
A gold-colored desktop clock with black trim showed the time to be half past two. How could he play this?
There was no way he was backing down. He didn't think it would work anyway. If he backed off the case now, someone might show up a week or a month down the road in the middle of the night to put a plastic bag over his head. No, he was in this to the end, but he would have to take steps to protect those around him. He had until tomorrow morning to make it happen. He also had until tomorrow morning to see if he could gain the upper hand, to find some kind of leverage he could use. He had a number he could call. He wanted to be able to say something that would at least buy himself more time.
But what?
Asking himself this, he happened to be staring at the blank yellow legal pad. Impulsively, he picked up the ballpoint pen and began to write everything that had come up in the past few days, even if they didn't seem connected:
Harriet Abel wanted to hire me. Why?
Eve Cortez upset
Harriet Abel dead on beach Friday night
Winnie Rallins, money, men?
Percy Quinn's wife falls, in coma in hospital
Daughter Ava Quinn, librarian, problems with dad
Someone sent a letter to principal, threatening to blow up HS
Rita Rodriguez, teacher at HS, concerned
Troubled teen Brianna Hobart missing
Alice Zeitel, new car, daughter not in school
Lettie Carmine dead
New Shore Rentals, Inc
Martin A. Barnhart missing
The Gray Man
Zoe's problems
???
With the faint whistle of the air through the ceiling vents, the only thing breaking the stillness, Gage studied his list. He knew some of these things didn't have anything to do with Harriet Abel's death, but it gave him a sense of context. Where should he go from here? Instead of asking himself who was the most likely killer, perhaps he should ask himself where he could get some leverage over whoever was behind this. It wasn't a crime of passion, or at least not completely. He still thought the time, place, and method of death indicated an impulsive action, but if someone like the Gray Man was involved, there was something much bigger going on. That meant money. It always meant money.
When in doubt, the best thing for any private investigator to do was to follow the money. When not in doubt, the best thing for any private investigator to do was follow the money. Where was the money? Winnie Hobart had some money. Brianna Hobart didn't have any money, nor did her Aunt Lettie. Alice Zeitel, the recently retired school secretary, had a new car. New Shore Rentals, Inc., owned a lot of property near Harriet Abel's house. That took money. What connected all of them?
The first thing that came to Gage's mind was the high school. He wrote the word school to the right of the list and drew lines to everything that connected. Harriet Abel was a teacher there, as was Rita Rodriguez. Eve volunteered. Brianna Hobart went there. Alice Zeitel worked there until she retired recently. But there was nothing about the school itself that indicated money—not unless it was a lack of money, and he couldn't see anyone killing a teacher for the benefit of a school. That made no sense.
But New Shore, Inc., was different. That just a few companies owned so many of the houses around Harriet Abel's house was unusual. Martin E. Barnhart's disappearing act, and Ridley's interest in him, was even more unusual. If Ridley chose to intercede at Barnhart's office, it was because he, or his employer, must have known that Gage was about to discover something much bigger than Harriet Abel's death.
What?
Gage drew a circle around New Shore, Inc. The high school and New Shore, Inc. What was the connection? They were both in the same town. Otherwise, the properties New Shore owned near Abel's house were literally miles apart. Abel's house was a beauty with an ocean view, of course, making it prime real estate, but many of the other houses were run-down, ramshackle things, nothing special about them except their easy beach access—though it wasn't all that easy, being up on a big bluff. And access to the casino, of course. But even the casino wasn't all that close since there were no stairs, and a long walk or drive down the hill and around the corner would have been . . .
The casino.
Gage's felt an electric tingle up his spine. The connection was so obvious he felt like a fool for not seeing it before. It had almost been too obvious, since the casino had been so present from the beginning that he'd barely taken note of it. The casino was such a fixture in the town that after a while most people took it for granted. It was always there, in the background, a steady presence, some annoyed by it, most indifferent.
Without even realizing, he started sketching the casino in the bottom corner, adding the ocean, the beach, the place Harriet's body was found, the parking lot to the left, the bluff, and then Harriet Abel's place up on the bluff. He added other houses around hers and wrote "New Shore and other rentals." Even before he'd finished drawing, he saw the connection: land. What was the one thing that the casino lacked? Hotel space. A conference center. What better place to build that hotel and conference center than along that bluff? It wouldn't be on sovereign Native American land, but that was part of its advantage. The hotel could benefit without being attached to the tribe.
Harriet Abel was the last holdout.
That's what it had to be.
It connected some of the pieces. Maybe Barnhart had been working for the people behind this scheme, helping them purchase properties without drawing attention to themselves. Feelings about the casino in Barnacle Bluffs were quite mixed. Even now, after so many years of being established, and with so many jobs attached to it, the casino might not survive if it was put up for a vote. It was no wonder they'd kept their plans quiet. Even though the hotel wouldn't technically be part of the casino, it would still add to the already congested roads with the kinds of visitors who, experience had taught the locals, barely spent a dime outside the blackjack tables, the bingo room, and the slot machines.
The people behind this plan had played the long game but had finally run out of patience. They'd taken out Harriet Abel. Winne Rallins might have been in on it. Gage would have to see if she was listed in Abel's will. There were still some pieces that didn't quite fit, like Lettie Carmine and Brianna Hobart, but maybe they weren't connected at all. Still, it troubled him how Harriet Abel was killed. It was way too messy.
Unless it was supposed to look messy. They didn't want her death to look like an organized hit. They wanted it to seem random, the work of an amateur.
Winnie Rallins was still his best bet for getting some answers.
He needed to see her. Now.
Yet ten minutes later, when Gage arrived at Harriet Abel's house, the white Tercel still wasn't there.
The sky stretched overhead like the dull side of aluminum foil. He parked in the driveway, leaving the Volkswagen's engine running, tapping his fingers on the wheel. The breeze whistled against the window, the pampas grass along the side of the house bent horizontal. Except for a light in the kitchen, the house was dark.
All the same, she could be inside. He got out of his van, the cold wind stinging his face, and knocked on the door. No answer. He tried twice more. Nothing. He looked up and down the street, saw no nosy neighbors, and circled around to the back of the house. A daylight basement opened onto a concrete patio underneath a deck. There was no grass. A short strip of lava rock beyond the patio stopped at a weathered wooden fence, where he knew the hill dropped steeply after it. The wind, stronger in the back where the house did not block it, rippled his jacket and blew back his hair.
The ocean, rough and white-capped, extended to the horizon. The crashing of the waves against the beach below, steady and unchanging, sounded like radio static. The blocky yellow casino, topped by the golden eagle, loomed so close he felt like he could reach out and touch it. Someone else, surveying this land, thinking about how it could be used, must have thought the same thing . . . years ago.
That was the thing. He'd have to check again to be sure, but he was relatively certain that New Shore, Inc., had owned many of the properties on the bluff for over ten years. Who had been around long enough to play such a long game? It may have been people connected with the casino itself, but maybe not, maybe it was just an opportunist who saw how the land could be used when the time was right.
A clay pot near the house was filled with cigarette butts. He rifled through them to see if any were fresh. Nope. A large, relatively flat piece of driftwood was leaning against the house next to the sliding glass doors—not like a decoration, but as if it had been put there recently. Why? It was almost big enough to use as a surfboard. He tried the glass slider, found it locked. Curtains hid the room from view, but through the gap he made out a brown and red area rug and what looked like the edge of a rocking chair. A smaller window with fogged glass, probably a bathroom, was also locked, but he hit the jackpot when he reached the next window.
It was cracked open, a slider that moved horizontally behind a black mesh screen. The curtains were open, but a white sheen hid the interior mostly from view. He thought he made out a bed, a dresser, a painting on the wall. The window was open enough that it may not have been latched. He took out his keys and popped out the screen, then tried sliding the window. It moved.
After that, it was relatively easy getting inside the house, the only difficulty when he came down hard on his bad knee. He knew he was fully exposed to anyone in the casino parking lot who happened to be looking up at that moment, but it was a risk he was willing to take.
He found himself in a bedroom—an unmade bed, dressers with half the drawers not fully closed and clothes spilling out of them, two old U-Haul boxes to the right of the window. One of the boxes was tipped on its side, and an assortment of things had spilled out onto the carpet—a make-up kit, a Lord of the Rings paperback, pens, a stuffed tiger with an ear missing, lots of random crap. The ocean scenes on the walls and the sparse decorations—a few seashells on the countertops, a set of Horatio Alger books between Octopus-shaped bookends—made him think it was a guest room, but it was obviously one that had been used recently. It smelled of stale sweat and take-out food. McDonalds bags spilled out of the wicker waste basket.
Who was staying here? A name popped into his head right away, and he didn't have to search hard to get confirmation he was right. He looked in the first box and there, at the top, was a white spiral notebook heavily decorated with blue and black pens, a mix of random shapes and familiar ones: skulls, diamonds, people's faces, spirals, wolves, and lots of other things, all centered around two highly stylized capital letters: BH.
Brianna Hobart.
Gage had assumed she'd been staying with friends, but this made even more sense. Maybe Harriet Abel had offered her a place to crash. It was possible she'd been in the house when Winnie was throwing herself at Gage on Saturday, that she'd even stayed here last night too. Did Winnie know? If Winnie had been spending more time in hotel rooms than in her mother's house, she may not have even known Brianna was there. From the state of disarray, he sensed that these were not just the usual signs of a messy teenager. No, Brianna had left in a hurry.
When? Friday night, maybe, when she'd looked out this window and seen all the police activity in the parking lot? Or earlier? He found no backpack, duffle, or suitcase, either in the closet or under the bed. No bags big enough to store her things. She hadn't been wearing a backpack or carrying any kind of bag when he'd seen her at the church on Saturday, which implied she'd found another place to crash. Where?
He found nothing in the room to help him. No address book. No journal. No friends' names or numbers written on the school notebook or any of the other papers he found. He searched the rest of the house. Winnie wasn't there, though the water in the sink and the shower off her bedroom, plus the slightly damp pink robe, indicated she'd been there this morning. Unlike Brianna's room, nothing in Winnie's room made him think she'd left in a hurry. The suitcase full of cash was still there. If she had reason to flee, she wouldn't do it without her money.
Unless she hadn't fled.
Unless she'd been taken.
He spent a little more time wandering around, trying to get a sense of the people who'd occupied the space recently: one woman dead on the beach, another on the run, another with a suitcase full of cash under her bed. He found Harriet Abel's master bedroom, a big room with two corner windows that both looked out on the ocean. The room had its own fireplace. Silver-framed pictures decorated the white marble mantle, some of Winnie at various ages, quite a few of her husband, a handful of all three of them when Winnie was very young. The oldest Winnie appeared in any of them was perhaps twenty. None of them pictured Winnie recently, either by herself or with a husband.
Everything in the room spoke of taste and attention to detail, the four-post bed in ornate, intricately carved walnut, the matching claw foot dressers, the white lace curtains over the bed and the similar ones over the windows. Standing at the windows, pulling the lace curtains aside, Gage could actually see the spot on the beach where Harriet had died. Did that mean something? Did she look out this window and see someone on the beach she knew?
He assumed the police had already thoroughly searched the room, but Gage did so anyway. He found a treasure trunk full of heartwarming letters from students and the adults who were once her students, and lots of other personal effects, but no clues as to why she'd been killed. Feeling the pressure of time bearing down on him, he made another quick pass of the house. He was about to give up when he passed the yellow kitchen phone, a landline mounted on the wall, and saw a white pad in the wooden organizer mounted on the wall next to it, partly sticking out of a slat. He'd passed the pad several times and thought nothing of it because the paper was blank.
But was it really? He took out the pad and looked at the paper, a Salvation Army pad that was half used. He could just make out faint lines on the top sheet. He found a pencil in a nearby drawer and pulled the old detective trick, lightly shading in the top sheet around the lines. It almost never worked as well as in the movies, but he was able to make out parts of words:
Mo 's T in s BB S M d y M
Mo's was a popular seafood restaurant just south in Newport, but he didn't think that's what it was. The gap between the "o" and the apostrophe led him to believe the word was Mom's. After that, it took him only a moment to piece together the rest of the words. Mom's what? Mom's things. Where would her Mom's things be? Well, in the house, of course, but there were also her work-related things. BB must have referred to Barnacle Bluffs and the S was the last part of HS, for high school. Monday. What was the last M? If it was a time, it was probably PM.
She'd gone to the high school to pick up her mother's things.
Today.
In the afternoon.
She might be there right now. There was more on the page, though, farther down. He shaded it in. He couldn't make out all of it, but it was obviously an address and a phone number. He didn't know the school's address by heart, but that seemed about right. So Winnie had written down the address, which made sense since she'd gone to high school in Eugene, not Barnacle Bluffs, and may not have been familiar with where it was in town. The phone number was in case she got lost.
Gage folded the page in half and started to slip it into the inside pocket of his leather jacket when something bothered him. He took out the paper and looked at it again. Something didn't seem quite right. It was farther down on the page, far beneath the address as if Winnie had written it later. That wasn't all. There was something else. He could only make out half the numbers, but it still seemed familiar to him. At first, he assumed it was because he'd probably called the number himself when Zoe went there, but he didn't think so. The sense of familiarity was more fresh. What was it?
Then he remembered.
He took out the other paper in his jacket with a number on it, the one that the Gray Man had given to him just hours ago.
The numbers on Winnie's paper, the ones he could see, all matched.
Standing there alone in the big house, kept company only by the hum of the refrigerator, Gage let this revelation fully soak in. What did it mean? It meant she was in contact with the same people who were trying to stop Gage from meddling in their affairs. The contact, though, had been recent. She'd written the number beneath the note about her mother's things, which probably came this morning. Or had it? If the call from the school had come this morning, would she have written Monday on the paper? Probably not. It would not have come on Friday, because the murder happened after the school was closed, and nobody would have called the first night anyway.
The school was closed on the weekend. Who would have called Saturday or Sunday?
A fellow teacher? The principal maybe?
Gage put both sheets of paper in his jacket and headed out to his van.
The high school, located close enough to Gage's house that Zoe used to walk there, looked like testament to fifties architecture: a monolithic tan brick building that conjured images of prisons rather than places of learning. A few blocks east of Highway 101, nestled among white oaks and one of the few neighborhoods in Barnacle Bluffs that felt like a typical suburban neighborhood, it was a big, imposing structure, made all the bigger by the series of modular buildings that filled half the parking lot behind it. Despite years of population growth, each bond measure to build a new high school or do extensive remodeling to this one had failed, meaning the school had to find creative ways to pack as many students onto the property as possible.
Even when Zoe went there, the school had been bursting at the seams, with nearly a thousand students. He'd heard it had only grown since.
When Gage parked his van in one of the visitor spots, though, it was nearly four o'clock, well past the final bell, and the place was deserted. Two teenage girls sat on a concrete bench near the flagpole, close enough they may have been together, but both were fixated on their phones. A football player lugging his gear clambered into a rusty Dodge truck a few spots down. Only a few other cars occupied the spots along the front. He couldn't hear the ocean, and the air smelled of freshly cut grass.
He was going to leave his cane, but his knee, from all the ambling about, told him otherwise. It was just as well. He might need to use it to fend himself off from some young hooligan. He wondered if just calling them a hooligan might scare them off. Only a badass private investigator could be comfortable using the word hooligan.
When he reached the rust-colored metal doors, Rita Rodriguez was coming outside, the cute teacher who'd stopped by his house on Saturday and made him a sandwich. She was chatting animatedly with a silver-haired man who carried a cardboard box and she didn't see Gage at first. Gage thought, at that moment, when her face was alive and she was completely unaware of his gaze, that she was one of the most beautiful people he had ever seen. When she saw him, she stopped abruptly. She had three bags slung over her shoulder, each bigger than the last, and the biggest of the three, a bright floral canvas sack that could have held a small child but instead was stuffed with black binders, slipped off and might have taken her down like an anvil around her neck had Gage not grabbed it.
"Oh, wow, hi," she said. She wore a red denim jacket over a black and yellow blouse, a combination most people probably couldn't have pulled off but looked amazing on her. "What—what are you doing here? Oh gosh, that came out wrong. I mean it's good to see you, Garrison!"
"Good to see you, too," Gage said, helping her get the strap of the larger bag over her shoulder. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you're looting the place."
"Ha! No, just the night's work. A teacher's job is never done!"
She spoke like someone who'd just come out of a rock concert, loudly and with excessive enthusiasm. The man, who'd hung back as Rita spoke, started away.
"See you tomorrow, Rita," he said, nodding to Garrison.
"Oh!" Rita said. "Yes, see you tomorrow, Tom! Have—have a good night." She looked at Gage. "That's Tom. He's a teacher here."
"I see."
"We're, um, friends."
He nodded. She'd said it like it was an explanation, as if the situation required one. Gage wished she wasn't so nervous. He tried to think of some way to put her at ease. "I was thinking it was time I finally got my high school diploma. You think they'll accept me as a student?"
It took her a second to realize he was joking, but then she laughed—again, too loudly, but it was nothing if not genuine.
"Good one!"
"Thanks, I'll be here all week."
"What? Oh, right. I didn't know you had a cane. Ah! There I go again. That sure sounded rude."
"No, it's fine. It's more decorative, really. I just like the style—man with cane. There's something dignified about it. Kind of going for the Winston Churchill look, I think." He decided to shut up. Now he was the one covering his own embarrassment by talking too much.
"Hmm. I'm thinking more Harrison Ford after his airplane crash sort of look. You're way better looking than Winston Churchill." Now there was no doubt: she really was blushing. She hurried along. "So why are you here, really? Is it about the . . . you know."
"Yes," I said. "Is the principal in?"
"Frank? Yeah, I saw the light on in his office when I walked by. Why, you think he might know something?"
"Possibly. Can I ask you something? Did you know that Brianna Hobart was staying with Harriet?"
"What? No! That's—wow, no I assumed she was still with her aunt." Her face darkened. "I heard about what happened. That's terrible. So many terrible things lately. You don't think—that Brianna might have something to do with—"
"I don't know. That's why I really need to find her. Have you seen Winnie Rallins stop by? I have reason to think she came here to get Harriet's things."
"Who?"
"Harriet's daughter. I guess you've never met her?"
"No." Rita sighed. "I didn't even know she had a daughter. Geez, I didn't know Harriet at all, did I? I mean, I knew that, but it's still something when there's so much more to her life that I'm finding out."
"Don't feel bad. I hear that from everyone."
"Still. It's just a sucky thing. I wish I'd known her better."
"Me too," Gage said, and that surprised him. It wasn't like he'd had any kind of relationship with Harriet Abel before, not even when Zoe went to school there. But there was something about her, about her desire to be a force for good while fiercely guarding her privacy, that Gage recognized all too well in himself. "Well, I better get inside."
"Sure! The doors are unlocked now. They're always unlocked after the final bell." She hesitated, the two of them looking in each other's eyes. "Say . . . um, we should, we should . . . dinner. I mean, we should do dinner sometime."
"Oh," Gage said.
"I mean, only if you want to! I'd love to learn more about . . . your cane. I'm really into canes. It's kind of a hobby of mine. You know, the different kinds. How long they are. The, um, firmness. Oh God. I need to stop talking."
"That's an interesting hobby," he said, smiling. "I'm afraid I'm not much of an expert on canes, but I'd be glad to tell you what I know."
"Okay. I think I better go before I embarrass myself further."
"But you're so cute when you're embarrassing yourself."
"Well, I'm . . . Um, okay . . . I guess we can . . . I really don't know what to say."
"I can tell."
"I'm going to go."
"All right."
"Dinner?" she said, smiling.
"Absolutely."
She left. He watched her, to see if she'd glance over her shoulder, and she did. She even flashed him a smile. It surprised him, how happy it made him that she looked back and smiled at him. What, exactly, was he doing here? He didn't know what to make of his feelings. He was going out to dinner in a few hours with Ava Quinn—problematic in itself, though he couldn't deny the attraction was fairly intense— and here he was flirting with Rita Rodriguez. His attraction toward her was different but just as powerful. It wasn't like going on one date with Ava meant he couldn't see other women, but Gage had never been a play-the-field sort of guy. When it came to romance, he didn't know what kind of guy he was, really, since he seldom did it intentionally and was almost never self-reflective about it, but he certainly was no Don Juan. It made him uneasy, like he was already violating Ava's trust, and for some reason he kept thinking about what Janet would think if she were still alive.
Well, if she were still alive, it would be a nonissue, wouldn't it? His love for her had been so total that it never even allowed the possibility of a wandering eye.
He back-burnered those worries and headed for the school office, to the right past the front door. Through the glass door and windows, he saw nobody at the counter. Some kids on the second floor balcony were hanging a hand-painted Go Bobcats! banner from the railing but otherwise the lobby was empty. He heard the squeak of shoes on the tile floor somewhere down the hall, distant boys' laughter. The stale air, so recently full of so many bodies, still clung to a bombardment of odors—pizza, sweat, and a varied mix of perfumes and colognes.
The office door chimed when he opened it. Inside, the three desks in the main area were all empty, but there was an office down a short hall, light rimming the closed blinds. He heard someone talking. A printer along the back wall churned out paper; it smelled like toner and warm paper. Academic success posters covered the walls with inspirational messages. The cluttered desks gave the impression of a hectic place.
"Be out in just a second," a man called from the back room.
He had a deep voice, gruff, and with the name Frank the voice conjured up an image of a big burly guy. Yet when the man emerged a moment later, the actual person who stepped out of the back office was neither big nor burly. If he was a woman, some would have called him petite; since he was a man, most people would just call him small: a slender, elf-sized man in a bold dark suit and power red tie, as if he was trying to project an air of authority to make up for his small physical stature. Most of the high school kids were probably taller than he was. His nearly translucent blonde hair was so thin and short that at first Gage thought he was bald, but his hair color matched his skin and made it hard to see. Even his glasses, both the lenses and the silver frames, were so insubstantial Gage missed them at first glance. He was not bad looking in his own way, though, with a timeless quality to his features that made it hard to peg his age. Late forties? Early fifties?
"Sorry," the man said, and it was disconcerting how little his deep voice matched his body, "Nan had to take her son to a dentist appointment, and the other gals here in the office all finish at four, so it's just me holding the . . . fort. Hey, I know you. You're that detective, aren't you?"
He hadn't really looked at Gage until he was halfway to the counter, and there was a moment, when he trailed off in the middle of a sentence and before he said the rest, that his eyes appeared to flare up in anger, an icy coolness, before he appeared to catch himself. It took Gage off guard.
"I suppose I am," Gage said, extending his hand across the counter. "Garrison Gage."
After a moment's hesitation, the man shook his hand. His handshake was like his voice, strong and bold, not at all matching his physical stature. "Frank Gefferick," he said.
"You're the principal, correct?"
"I am. Can I ask just what you're doing here?" He'd tried to make the question sound polite, but there was a steely undercurrent to it. He must have realized it, too, because he shook his head. "I'm sorry, that sounded very hostile. It's just . . . I heard that Harriet was reaching out to you to do some kind of work, and, well, look what happened."
"Excuse me?"
"You have a certain reputation. And Harriet was very beloved around here. Well, everywhere really. She was one in a million, and I don't know how I'll ever replace her. That's who I was on the phone with back there —a woman I'm trying to sub in for the rest of the year. She's nice enough, but she doesn't hold a candle to Harriet. It's hard not to feel some anger about her death."
"What does my reputation have to do with her death?"
Frank shrugged. "That you . . . Well, that you draw violence to you. People spend too much time around you and they're liable to . . . Well, you know."
"Enlighten me."
"End up dead. Sorry, I hate to be so blunt."
"Ah," Gage said.
"Again, I'm sorry."
"Well, I'll somehow summon the strength to carry on. Can you tell me if you've seen her daughter recently? Winnie Rallins?"
Frank, who put his effeminate hands on the counter, looked at him for a long moment. "I'm sorry, are you working for Winnie now?"
"I'm not working for anyone. I'm just trying to figure out what happened to Harriet. Have you seen Winnie or not?"
"I saw her this morning."
Gage felt relieved. At least she hadn't disappeared completely—at least not before she'd been seen at the high school. "Was she here to get her mother's things?"
"Yes. I didn't actually get to talk to her. I was dealing with a student issue and Nan gave her the boxes. I did wave to her through my window. Why, is she in trouble?"
"It's just urgent that I speak to her. Do you have time to talk? I'd like to ask you a couple more questions."
"Well . . . I suppose. I have a band performance to go to, and some disciplinary reports to review, but I've got a few minutes. Honestly, I'm not sure if I know anything that will help, but I'll do whatever I can."
He opened the swinging half door at the end of the counter and directed Gage to his office. Walking by Frank, Gage caught a whiff of the man's minty aftershave. The cherry wood desk dominated most of the office, hardly leaving room for Gage to squeeze into one of the two black plastic office chairs. They weren't the sort of the chairs people bought if they wanted you to stick around for a leisurely chat. The room was cramped but somehow still sterile, a handful of pictures on the matching credenza, a few generic inspirational posters on the wall. A tiny treasure chest full of pens, pencils, a ruler, a pair of scissors, and an envelope opener sat on the corner of the otherwise empty desk.
Frank settled into the chair, resting his hands on his crossed legs. The late sun from the window that looked out on the parking lot glinted on the edges of the picture frames, the kind of light that would have revealed even the tiniest amount of dust, but Gage didn't even see a speck of it. A big digital clock, the kind that conjured up images of television studios and brokerage houses, was mounted on the wall next to an intercom speaker.
The pictures were mostly of Frank standing with various students, the softball team, volleyball players, band kids, trophies and certificates in hand, everybody all smiles. A couple were of an older woman, stout and silver-haired, one of her and Frank in matching orange OSU sweaters in a stadium, another of just her on a deck looking out at the ocean. She looked younger in the OSU picture, perhaps by ten years.
"So what do you want to know?" Frank asked.
"Well, let's start with anything you think that might be helpful, of course."
"Like I said, I can't really think of anything. Harriet was . . . a private woman, but she was very dedicated to her job. I'm sure that doesn't come as news to you. I felt a kinship to her. I'm a private man myself and also very dedicated to what I do. Why anyone would want to . . ." He shook his head.
"What can you tell me about Brianna Hobart?"
Frank cocked his head to the side. "Brianna? Now that's not a direction I expected you to go. A very troubled student. What does she have to do with Harriet's death?"
"You heard about what happened to her aunt?"
"I did. That's dreadful. I didn't think it was connected, though. Is it?"
"It's hard to say."
"Well . . . My sympathies go out to her. I may have had to suspend her earlier this year, but it wasn't something I wanted to do, I assure you. After she got involved with theater, she really did seem to turn things around. It was a shame."
"I heard you and Harriet may have argued about her."
"Oh . . . Well, she did plead with me to be lenient with Brianna, but there really wasn't anything I could do. Who told you we argued?"
"It's not important. Harriet was upset, though?"
"Very. There was nobody more passionate about her students, so it's really no surprise. But it was never fun being on the receiving end of her anger."
"Did she get angry with you often?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, how was your relationship with Harriet?"
"Hmm. I'm not sure I like where this is going. I hope you don't think I had anything to do with her death."
"Just asking questions, sir. It's what I do. I ask questions and see where things lead."
"I understand. Sorry. This just has me rattled."
Gage decided to take a chance. "Did you know Brianna was staying with Harriet?"
"What? No! For how long?"
"I don't know. But it looks like she left in a hurry."
He seemed genuinely surprised, shaking his head in wonder. "That was Harriet for you. Nobody seemed to really know her, but she was always doing something amazing. Such a shame." He sighed, then said it again more softly. "Such a shame."
"It's just very important I find Brianna. Would you know anywhere else I might look? Some of her friends, maybe?"
"No. I'm afraid since she was expelled I wouldn't have the first clue where she would be." He glanced at a clock on the wall. It was nearing five o'clock. "I'm sorry. I'd like to keep talking here, but I do have to get going. I wish there was more I knew that could help, but I really am in the dark here."
"Just one more thing. Could you tell me about the bomb threat?"
"The bomb . . . Oh, that. What does that have to do with anything?"
"I heard you got a letter."
"I did."
"What was written on it, if I might ask?"
"It was . . . just a sentence. It said, 'Shut down the school or I blow it up.' Not much to go on, but it certainly got my heart racing."
"Can I see it?"
"Well . . . I gave the original to the police. Nan made a photocopy, though. We thought it was a good idea to keep it around."
He rolled the chair away from the desk, opened the drawer to a filing cabinet in the corner, and pulled out a manila envelope. He slid it across the desk to Gage. Inside, Gage found a single white sheet of printer paper with the sentence Frank mentioned written in blocky all capital letters with a blue ballpoint pen. It was a messy scrawl, as if it had been written in a hurry.
"Did it come in the mail?"
"No. There was no stamp on the envelope."
"Can I see it? The envelope, I mean?"
"Oh, I'm afraid I gave it to the police, too. It was blank, though."
"Blank? Not even your name?"
"No, just blank. It was sitting on my desk when I came in. The police thought it might have fingerprints on it, but all they found were mine."
Gage returned the sheet to the folder and slid it back across the desk. "So either someone left it there the night before, after you left, or they did it before you came in. Did they talk to the building janitor?"
"Yes," Frank said. "Bud cleans the building about eight o'clock, and he said he was pretty sure there was nothing on my desk when he cleaned my office. But I know from experience how easy it is to get in while he's here. Someone could have slipped in and put it on my desk after he made his pass in here. Bud's supposed to lock the front door, but I've showed up late a few times to do some work and found it unlocked. Nice guy, though. Nobody's blaming him. And the police . . . Well, they could only dig into this one so much. In this day and age, they want to take all precautions, but it did seem like a prank."
Gage looked at the tiny treasure chest on the corner of the desk, counted at least three blue ballpoint pens. "The envelope and the paper . . . Do you think they might have been taken from this room?"
Frank nodded. "You're good, aren't you? The detective, Brizz something—"
"Brisbane."
"Right. He asked the same thing."
"Well, every now and then he has a good idea."
"What's that?"
"Nothing. What'd you find?"
"That it's possible, but they couldn't say for sure. That's why it seems like an impulsive prank. Someone stepped into my office, wrote the note, and stuck it on my desk. No cameras in here, so no way to know who. I'm sorry, I really have to get going. I wish there was more I could do to help."
"One last question," Gage said. "Before Harriet Abel was killed, she'd arranged to meet me to hire me. Do you have any idea what she might have wanted me to do?"
"No. I'd wondered how you'd gotten roped into this. No idea, huh?"
"None. How about the name New Shore Rentals, Inc? Does that mean anything to you?"
"No, sorry. And I thought you said just one last question?"
"I did. I guess I meant one more until the next one."
"Sorry?"
"A joke."
Frank nodded, then forced a laugh. "I see. Sorry, I missed it."
"It's okay," Gage said. "It's a common problem I have."