Address to Die For (17 page)

Elaine chimed in. “I know she could be abrasive. She was dedicated to her career, but she'd never wanted to be a teacher. That was her domineering father's idea. She'd dreamed of being an accountant and had a way of thinking in columns and boxes. She tended to take it personally when something or someone didn't fit in the proper box. But she was also adept at finding funds to maintain services for the kids despite the state budget cuts.”

“She did the same thing with the PTA budget,” Flora said. “That was Dennis's area, of course, not mine, but he frequently fussed over finding time to meet with Miss Harrier. She requested way more meetings than Dennis felt were necessary and questioned every line item and purchase. She was only trying to help the PTA, but it annoyed Dennis, and he kept reminding her that he was a volunteer, not her employee.”

Stephen looked up from his notes. “Does anyone know where Dennis is? He told me he'd be here at nine.” We each looked at someone else and shook our heads.

“I didn't see him at school this morning,” I said. “He's one of the few people I know, so if he'd been there, I would have noticed.”

“I saw him yesterday in the grocery store,” Pauline said. “He said he's going into business with his brother Umberto, and it's been taking up a lot of his time. I think it's putting pressure on him too. He looked really washed out and tired, poor man.”

Flora looked pale and shivered. I wondered if she had a touch of the flu.

April snorted. Apparently she had little sympathy for Dennis.

Stephen went on. “Maggie and her son Brian had some problems with Miss Harrier at the start of school, and I know that the kids called her Horrible Harrier, but does anyone know of anyone who was obsessively angry with Susan—Susan Harrier?”

Tess frowned. “She hit Mozart with a newspaper one day because he got too close to the office. On a Saturday. I was furious, but I wouldn't have killed her over it.”

“Mozart is a decorated veteran,” Stephen said, sitting up straight and bristling. “She should have been ashamed of herself.”

“Veteran?” Flora said.

“Mozart is one of Stephen's retired Marine dogs,” Tess said. “I navigated miles of red tape before I qualified to adopt him.”

“Okay, so she rubbed parents, students, and dog people the wrong way,” Stephen said. “Anyone else?” The room was quiet with only the sound of cookies crunching. “What about employees? Or members of the community? April, were there odd phone calls or threatening letters? Did you know she was taking tranquilizers? Or why? Or if she had any other health problems?”

April thought for a minute. “Sometimes I think they should put tranquilizers in the water supply around here,” she said. “But, no, I didn't know Miss Harrier was taking Valium.”

She broke off a small piece of the leg of a gingerbread man and chewed slowly.

“Any other ideas?” said Stephen.

“I could have recommended several soothing herbs and meditation tapes,” Flora said. “Valium is truly unnecessary.”

Stephen avoided looking at Flora, but glanced at the rest of us in turn. We all shook our heads. Disliking Harrier, or at least being frustrated by her top-down management style, was something everyone seemed to take as a given. Despising her enough to kill her was something else.

I tried to imagine what might have driven her to suicide, but I couldn't think of a thing. I barely knew the woman, yet from what I'd seen, she was self-centered and focused, but not depressed.

“What about the bottle of tranquilizers?” I said. “The one that's still missing? If she'd committed suicide, wouldn't the bottle still be in her office, just sitting there for the police to find? I would think the fact that it's missing would point strongly toward murder.”

“Possibly,” agreed Stephen. “But suicide is an individualized business.” He tapped his ring against his coffee mug. “Let's say Miss Harrier decided to end her life, but wanted to hide the fact that she'd committed suicide. She could have transferred the pills to another container. Or, the person Elaine saw running from the scene could have taken the bottle for any number of reasons.”

“Why?” said Flora. “What would be the advantage of taking the bottle? It was a plain orange plastic pill bottle, I assume?” Flora chewed her lip and pulled at a lock of her hair.

“That's the type of bottle the police are looking for,” said Stephen. “As for a motive for taking it? Someone might have wanted to confuse the investigation.”

Elaine leaned forward. “Someone who cared about her might have found her body and taken the bottle to protect her from scrutiny and public debate,” she said. “They could have thought that taking the bottle would make it look less like a suicide.”

“It would be handy to find it in the pocket of the murderer,” I said. “After that, they could cut to a commercial, because stuff like that only happens on one of those crime dramas where they wrap everything up before the credits.”

I looked at my watch. This process might be important, but it wasn't getting us anywhere. No closer to finding out who killed Harrier, why she might have killed herself, or what else was wrong in Orchard View. I wanted those answers. I wanted to know what had happened to the foundation money and who was willing to put my family at risk to damage my home and the school. I was growing frustrated, but short of jumping up, waving my arms, and shouting “Round up the usual suspects,” I didn't know what to do. If I'd known the names of any usual suspects, I might have been tempted. Instead, I took a sip of my coffee, grabbed another cookie, and tried to pay attention.

“What about secrets?” Stephen said. “Could someone have a secret she'd threatened to expose? Could she have had a secret she was desperate to keep hidden?”

Secrets. I leaned forward and looked surreptitiously around the room. Now we might be getting somewhere. Who knew what other secrets were hidden behind the tidy front yards and doors of this town?

“She had access to a lot of confidential information,” April said. “She knew who qualified for free lunches and field-trip assistance, whose parents were out of a job, whose supposedly divorced husband was really in prison, which couples were separating or divorcing . . .”

April paused and looked around the room. “Stress is a huge problem for kids and families, and mental-health issues push privacy buttons. We've had kids who were cutting themselves with razor blades, parents who were in rehab programs, kids with eating disorders, and a couple of students who were considering gender-reassignment surgery. Those kinds of things rock families at their foundations. You never know how far a parent will go to protect their child, do you?”

Stephen fiddled with his ring. Flora smoothed her skirt. Elaine shifted in her rocking chair, and April brushed crumbs from her sweater. Pauline Windsor checked her phone. I wondered if we were all thinking about the pressures on our own families.

“What about the vandalism at my house?” I said. “Could that be connected? Jason said it was likely the kid is violent and his behavior is escalating. Could someone that angry be capable of killing a person? Are there children you know of who have those kinds of issues?”

Pauline made a
tsk
ing noise. “Vandalism
again
? We've got a plan to keep an eye on it at school, isn't that enough? You can't really expect us to solve your problem at home too.”

As usual, Pauline's words left me speechless. Tess sucked air in through her teeth, but Stephen quieted her with a look.

“That brings up a good point,” Stephen said. “Where were the dog walkers who were supposed to be keeping an eye on the school? Pauline, do you have a list of who was scheduled for Sunday?”

Pauline sat up straight, tapped her phone, and scrolled. “We had trouble finding people for Sunday,” she said. “Both the Giants and the Forty-niners were playing. It was Big Game weekend for Stanford and UC Berkeley. It was the final day of the Mountain View Art and Wine Festival, and move-in day for new students at a lot of the colleges.” Pauline frowned at each of us like a disappointed schoolmarm.

“There were no volunteers last night,” she said.

“But Pauline . . .” Elaine began.

Stephen shushed her. “Pauline, let us know if there are any other holes in the schedule, and I'll make sure we've got coverage. In the meantime, now we know there aren't any volunteers who might have been on site and be able to provide information about what they saw Sunday night. That's a big help.”

I tuned Stephen out and looked around the room. Pauline knew there had been no volunteers on Sunday. Could she have taken advantage of that information and confronted Miss Harrier when no one could overhear? I knew how volatile Pauline could be over something as simple as a parking spot. Could something else have bothered her enough to drive her to murder? I didn't know.

I really didn't know much about any of these people, and it was making me increasingly frustrated. In Stockton, which was a much larger community, I knew people in a wide variety of fields and it would have been easy for me to tap into expertise and experience that would have allowed me to figure this whole situation out much more easily.

I was aware of Tess's secret alter ego, yet that seemed like an open secret. And Stephen had revealed his past to me, a virtual stranger. But what about the others?

The group broke up soon after that. We'd made no progress, or none that I could see. I looked at my watch. Ten o'clock. I had time to ask a few more questions and get to know these people better.

I moved into the kitchen with Tess and Stephen after saying goodbye to Flora, who had to meet an administrator at her mother's assisted-living facility. Pauline said she wanted to round up more volunteers to patrol the school. Stephen asked her to share the list with the police. April returned to work.

As we'd done after the first meeting, Elaine, Tess, Stephen, and I washed, dried, and put away the dishes.

“You know,” said Tess. “I didn't want to mention it while Flora was here, but she has a secret she didn't offer up. Her herbalism business? There's a recurring rumor that says she grows marijuana and isn't particular about who she sells to.”

Stephen made a growling noise. “Does she sell to kids?”

“Flora? I don't think so . . . no, she wouldn't do that,” Tess said. “Remember, I don't know if the rumor is even true.”

“As long as it doesn't involve kids or big business or other drugs, the police aren't that interested,” said Stephen. “They have bigger problems to tackle.”

Elaine handed Stephen a saucer to dry. “What about April?” she said.

“What about April?” I asked. As far as I was concerned, April could do no wrong. She'd said my son was a good kid.

“She wanted Harrier's job,” Elaine said.

“What is her title now?” I asked. “Assistant principal?”

Elaine nodded. “April was the logical choice for principal. She'd been teacher-in-charge and was experienced. When the district offered her the second-banana slot, I told her not to take it. They were taking advantage. She could run a major company single-handedly. But she wouldn't listen. She'd helped interview all the candidates, so she'd met Susan Harrier and had Harrier's number from day one. She wanted to provide a buffer between her and the rest of the school.”

Okay, so that made sense. A buffer was exactly the role that April had played to help Brian and me work with Harrier. But financially? And career-wise? If April was qualified to be principal here, she could have found a better-paying job in another district. Was she waiting, hoping Harrier would move on? Had she grown impatient?

These people were friendly and open up to a point, but they all could be hiding something.

I looked at the coffee mug in my hand and wondered how long I'd been drying it. I handed it to Tess to put in the cupboard over the counter.

I picked up another mug from the drying rack. “Stephen,” I said, seizing the opportunity to ask a question that had been bugging me for a while. “How come you're always on the spot when things go wrong, day or night? Do you have a police scanner, or do you have an alter ego like Batman or Underdog? How do you have the time for that and your day job?” I looked pointedly at the ring on his left hand. “Does your wife mind your odd hours?”

Elaine stopped washing dishes and stared at me.

Tess turned and looked at him.

Stephen blushed.

My face burned and I stammered, “I'm sorry. I've put my foot in something.”

No one said a word, so I stumbled on. “I'm new and I don't know the rules. Do you tell me what I've stepped in or do we move on and pretend I didn't say anything?”

Tess and Elaine looked at Stephen, who shrugged. He took the mug from my hand, finished drying it, and handed it to Tess to put away.

“It's not really a secret,” he said. “I'm surprised you don't know. Jason and I were one of the first couples to be married when the Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in California. We've been together many years and I'm proud to be his husband. I think he feels the same way about me.”

Yikes. I'd called him my fairy godmother. I held my hands against my face to cool the burn. I wanted to sink into the floor.

Tess snorted. “I can't believe you didn't hear about it, even in Stockton. Jason and Stephen were the poster couple for the news outlets. A front-page picture of them went viral.
Cop marries Marine
, the headline read. The photo showed the two of them looking insanely happy, in love, and drop-dead gorgeous in their dress uniforms.”