An Indecent Death (6 page)

Lori Singh and Lynnette Cranston sat in the latter’s kitchen, discreetly sizing each other up. Lori saw a pleasant-looking woman with a ready smile, but someone who looked a little rough around the edges. She noticed little things like untidy hair and a baggy sweatshirt, and an absence of make-up. Lynnette wore jeans and pink socks inside fluffy slippers. She was a fairly short woman, maybe five feet five, and she would look a lot better if she lost ten or fifteen pounds. Lynnette’s brown hair was swept back into a ponytail, held together with a pink scrunchie. Just now she was moving around the kitchen making tea for the two of them.

“How long did you know Sarah, Ms Cranston?”

“Please, call me Lynn, everyone does. Um, are you allowed to do that?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Well, we’ve worked together for three years now. We’re both – we
were
both –teaching seventh grade. Sorry, I can’t get used to it.” She sniffed a bit into a tissue. “We did a lot of planning cooperatively, and some team-teaching too. We’d combine the two classes sometimes and do a lesson together. We were doing more and more of that, actually. The School District encourages it.” Lynnette poured the tea into two mugs labeled, ‘Thanks for being a great teacher.’ “I get a lot of mugs,” she said apologetically, seeing the detective eyeing them.

“I bet you do,” said Lori. “Did you know her before you taught seventh grade together?”

“Not well, no. I was teaching second grade and decided to move up. She was at Elmdale then but I didn’t know her well, just to say ‘hi’ to. There are a lot of people in the building – it’s hard to know everybody. Some people, I barely know their names. It’s a shame but we’re all so busy all the time. You tend to just spend your time with a small circle of people.”

“So, tell me about Sarah,” Lori said. She was sipping her tea and nibbling on a biscuit.

“Well, she was
fun
, and she was a good teacher. Her kids loved her. They’re going to miss her. Some of them are having a really hard time.” The news of Sarah Noonan’s death had been all over the media the night before.

“So, you’ve known her pretty well for three years. You exercised together, I understand. Did you do a lot of personal things with her?”

“I wouldn’t say a lot, no. We went out drinking occasionally, to a club or pub-crawling. We’d done that five or six times maybe, over the past year or so. And we worked out together quite often at The Fit Life. We had a regular Saturday morning workout session. The rest of the week we might or might not hook up, but Saturday morning, we were always there together. That’s how I knew there was something wrong, when she didn’t show up.”

“You last saw her when?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. It was Friday afternoon. I left school a little early, about 3:45 or so, to go get some groceries, and honestly, because I just wanted to get out of there. It was a long week. Sarah was just leaving too, so we walked out to the parking lot together. I said I’d see her in the morning.” Lynnette was sniffling now.

“Was she by herself then? Except for you, I mean. Nobody waiting by her car?” Lori pushed the tissue box over closer to her.

“Yes, it was just her. And I saw her drive away. The school was pretty quiet by then. On a Friday afternoon it doesn’t take long to clear the place out. By four o’clock, you could probably shoot a cannon down the hallway and not hit anyone.”

“Did Terry Noonan show up that day?” Lori asked.

“You know about him? Oh, of course you would. No, he didn’t come by Friday and I would’ve known it if he did. Sarah for sure would’ve told me.”

Lori had finished her tea and Lynnette poured her some more. Lori said, “She would have told you? Why?”

“Because he’s been pestering her and she was getting more and more worried about it. He wanted them to get back together and she wasn’t going to. No way, not ever. But he wouldn’t accept it.”

“What do you mean, pestering her?” asked Lori. “Was he threatening her?”

Lynnette shook her head. “No, he didn’t threaten her, it wasn’t like that. But he was calling her regularly, maybe once or twice a week. He wanted them to meet, you know, to have a drink or have dinner. He was angling for a reconciliation but she didn’t want anything to do with it. He came into her classroom a couple of times, too, after school that was. He did it once last week, I remember. He was getting to be really annoying. She told me there was no way she would ever get back together with him, not after what he did to her.”

“And what was that?”

Lynnette hesitated and looked troubled, so Lori said encouragingly, “If you want to help catch her killer, Lynn, then you have to tell us everything you know. Whether or not it’s Terry Noonan who did it.”

“I know, and I guess it’s what she’d want. Still…” She appeared to make up her mind. “Well, Terry could be a nice guy but he drank too much sometimes. Well, many times actually. And when he was drinking he became a different person. He was rough with her. Sometimes he hit her or shoved her against a wall or grabbed her arm. You understand, I never saw him do any of these things, it was just her telling me about it after. But I saw the bruises on her arms, and once, a mark on her face. So I knew that what she said was true.”

Lori excused herself to use Lynnette’s bathroom. The medicine cupboard was full of the usual things, including aspirin, beauty creams, tampons and the like. Lori was interested to note a prescription bottle for an anti-depressant drug and a couple of bottles with unidentified pills in them. She flushed the toilet, washed and dried her hands and returned to the kitchen where Lynnette was tidying up.

Lori sat down again. “Do you think Terry Noonan is capable of murder, Lynn?”

Lynnette looked troubled again and admitted, “I’ve been going over and over in my mind about that. I like Terry, you see. I do not excuse what he did to her but the Terry Noonan I know is a pretty good guy. I’ve never seen him abusing Sarah, I’ve just heard her tell me about it. And I believe her, it’s not that I don’t – didn’t, I mean –, but when you don’t see it with your own eyes, and what you
do
see is a normal looking guy… He can be charming, you know? To answer your question, I guess I just don’t know.”

“Fair enough,” said Lori. “What about her relationships with other staff at school? Was she close with anyone, other than you?”

“Close? No, I wouldn’t say that. She wasn’t friendly with the other girls. A bunch of us might see each other now and then at the pub but it was just chance, nothing arranged. To tell the truth, most of the women teachers didn’t like her much.”

Lori was surprised. “They didn’t? Why not?”

Lynnette frowned. “Well, the way she dressed, for one thing. I mean, she was a sexy woman. She has – had – a great body and she wasn’t afraid to show it off. I don’t mean she was immodest, you couldn’t get away with that here at school, but she knew how to dress to maximum advantage, shall we say? Most of the women at Elmdale wear pants but she liked skirts and dresses and she often wouldn’t wear underwear.” As the detective’s eyebrows raised, Lynnette hastened to add, “She told me that, you see. She was amused by people’s attitudes. She especially liked to see how the men would react.”

“I can see how that might not go over too well with the other women,” said Lori drily.

“Several of them didn’t care for it at all. They practically called her a slut. Well, one of them did use that word one day when she was talking to me.”

Lori said, “I’ll need her name.”

“It was Muriel Atkinson. She’s a special ed teacher. But it wasn’t just her, there was a whole group of them. You have to understand, a school always has cliques. Elmdale has a group of older teachers, all women; they sit every day at the same table in the staff room, before school starts, at lunch and breaks, and they bitch and complain about everything. I try to avoid that group because they’re always so negative but I still try to get along with them. Sarah was different, though. She couldn’t stand them and basically ignored them. And they didn’t like her at all. She gave them a lot to gossip about.”

“So these women didn’t approve of Sarah or the way she dressed? How about the other younger female teachers? How did they feel about her?”

“Like I said, there were no close friendships there. Maybe they didn’t talk about her as much as the Bitchin’ Crew did, but there was no real liking for Sarah.”

“The Bitchin’ Crew?”

Lynnette said, “Oh, sorry. That was Sarah’s name for the women who sit at that same staff room table every day. Muriel Atkinson, Anne Jamieson, Ellen Marks – they’re always there. Then there are some others who join them now and then.”

Lori said, “I see.” She thought for a minute. “So the other women didn’t like her much. With the younger staff members, was it jealousy, do you think? She was a good-looking woman, after all.”

“Yes, partly, I would say. Sarah got along well with the men, to put it mildly, and I’m sure a lot of the women didn’t appreciate it. And the Bitchin’ Crew had a field day with that. You could see them whispering in the halls and you just knew it was the latest gossip or rumour.”

Lori asked, “Lynn, was she involved with anyone? Any of the teachers?”

“With one of our staff? Well, there were stories… I can’t say for sure, though. She didn’t tell me anything like that.”

“What stories?” asked Lori.

Lynnette frowned. “There’s always gossip at a school, you know. I told you that already. Sometimes it’s all that keeps us from going insane with all the ridiculous stuff that’s happening in education these days. So, people standing around talking about other staff members, that’s pretty common.”

“And?” Lori was leaning forward.

“I don’t like to repeat all this junk. There were several men at Elmdale who were interested in Sarah. I mean, she liked teasing, and you would often see her up close and personal with one of the guys. I don’t blame them, well most of them…” Her voice trailed away. “There were stories that she had been caught in the storage room with one of them, or in the change room with another. I thought most of it was just silly tales, but now that this has happened, I’m not so sure.”

“Lynn, do you think Sarah was acting like this when she was still with her husband? Or was it only since she separated from him?”

“Good question,” said Lynnette thoughtfully. “I can’t say for sure, of course, but I think it’s only been in the last year or so. Her clothing now, she’s always dressed a bit provocatively, but she seemed to have taken that to a different level since the separation.”

“And do you think her husband knew about her behaviour with the men here at school?” asked Lori. “Because if he did, then that would surely have made him angry, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know that,” said Lynnette. “But I don’t think he knew. I think she would have mentioned it if he did.”

“Hmm. I’ll need the names of these men, Lynn.” Lori had her notebook out and her pen poised, ready to write.

“I know.” Lynnette sighed. “Don Musjari. He’s a fifth-grade teacher. Kevin Callaghan. He teaches third grade. The vice-principal, Mr. Deans. Bill Deans. They all liked her, I know that. How much they liked her, I’m not sure.”

“Three of them! She seems to have been a busy girl. And she never told you about any of these men?” Lori was surprised by all the men who seemed to have been circling around Sarah Noonan, like planets orbiting a sun.

“No, she didn’t. And I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking her. So I don’t know how much is fact and how much is rumour.”

“Did she have a steady boyfriend? Did she talk about anyone from outside of school that she was seeing?”

“No.”

Lori thought of a course she had taken at Police College. The title was Behavioural Psychology, and the instructor concentrated on what motivated criminals. There had also been a section on victims and their behaviour. Lori remembered a lively debate on how much responsibility rape victims had for what happened to them. It was one of the rare occasions when she allowed herself to come out of her self-imposed shell. She passionately attacked a couple of male recruits for suggesting that some women asked to be raped because of the clothes they wore. She was thinking about that now as she pondered Sarah Noonan’s school life as described by Lynnette Cranston.

“Lynn, why do you think Sarah dressed and acted as she did?”

Lynnette looked troubled. “I don’t know. I just…don’t.”

“And why did
you
like her when nobody else seemed to?”

“I don’t know… I guess I felt sorry for her, partly. But she was fun, too. You should have heard some of the things she said about the Bitchin’ Crew, especially if she’d had something to drink.”

“Could it be that she was hurting from the break-up with her husband? That had to be difficult. Maybe the flirting and casual sex were her way of getting over it?”

Lynnette nodded slowly. “Could be, yes. I’ve thought along those lines myself, for sure.”

“You were a good friend to her.”

“Maybe. I hope so. We talked a lot, anyway.”

“Anyone else who was interested in Sarah at the school, Lynn?” Lori asked.

Lynnette thought for a few seconds. “Well, there’s Mr. Pepin.”

“Who’s he again?” Lori was trying to visualize the staff list but she couldn’t remember any Pepin.