The Witch of Agnesi (20 page)

Bonnie shook out her napkin. “Did you all order?”

She offered a convivial smile and noticed the tight faces on her companions, particularly Rhiannon and Ali. Red blotches mottled the girl’s cheeks.

Wonderful. Someone’s pissed, and I think I know
at whom.

For a long moment no one spoke. Ali and Rhiannon exchanged glances, both apparently uncomfortable.

“That girl thinks I murdered her brother?” Al-though Ali asked it as a question, the words carried the finality of a statement.

Bonnie held Ali’s gaze with hers. She saw no point in lying to the girl. “I believe so.”

Lips pursed, Ali nodded a resigned nod. “She thinks I’m this Wicked Little Witch?”

Bonnie matched her nod, waiting for the inevitable question. Still, neither she nor the girl relinquished eye contact.

“How about you? Is that what you think?” Al-though barely above a whisper, Ali’s voice was hard, just shy of accusatory.

Bonnie had to admire the girl’s forthrightness.

Let’s get right to it.
“I don’t buy it, but I couldn’t tell you why. Truth be told, my dear, if I didn’t know you, I’d think you were as guilty as sin.”

Ali held Bonnie’s gaze for a moment longer then looked down at her lap. “Thanks for being honest. I know me, too, and I think I look guilty.” She blinked furiously, her lower lip trembling.

Rhiannon put an arm around her daughter. “Ev-erything’s going to be fine, baby.”

Ali shook her head. “No, it’s not, Mother. Three of my friends have been killed, including my best friend. This is East Plains, remember? By tomorrow morning everyone will be talking about how I did it.”

A great tear spilled out of her eye and rolled down her cheek. “My friends are dead and all I can think about is how it makes me look.”

Bonnie wanted to tell her to stop beating herself up, but didn’t trust herself not to sound like a teacher on a scold.

“Not everyone thinks you did it.” Jesse’s voice seemed to emerge disembodied from the ether. All heads turned in his direction.

“The people in my trailer park have got me pegged for Edmund.”

Momentarily, Ali regarded Jesse like an unwelcome intruder, and then her stony face softened. “At least you won’t have them thinking you’re already evil be-cause you’re a witch.”

“Nope.” Jesse rubbed a paw across his bald dome. “They just think I’m a skinhead hood.”

A well-aren’t-you? look made a brief appearance on Ali’s face, and then fled leaving behind a mix of curios-ity and sympathy.

“You kind of do look the part.” Ali offered a not unkind half-smile.

Jesse reddened, clearly pleased at any show of af-fection from Ali. “You ain’t exactly hiding who you are either.”

Bonnie wondered if these two children might be good for one another.
Get a grip, Pinkwater. This
isn’t the Dating Game. Either one of them could be a
cold-blooded killer.

Ali regarded Jesse for a long moment. “Why should I?”

The boy held up both his hands and pulled back. “No one’s saying you should.”

She gave him one more glance before turning back to Bonnie. “Mother told you about me going out to the balefire pyre Thursday night.”

And now we get to it.
“Yes, she did.”

“So you’re thinking, maybe the little witch drove over to Edmund’s. Maybe she snatched him up and throttled him with her broom.”

Bonnie and Armen exchanged glances
. Did Frank-lin
inform Ali how Edmund died?
Bonnie didn’t think so. “Young lady, you’re either innocent or trickier than you look.”

Rhiannon gave Bonnie a quizzical look. “That’s a left-handed compliment, Pinkwater. Sounds as if Ali has to be either stupid or guilty.”

Bonnie was saved from having to respond by the sudden appearance of a thin-as-a-rail waitress. Like all the employees at Geraldine’s, the young woman had the raw-boned look of someone training for a marathon. For the next few minutes, while everyone ordered, Bonnie gathered her thoughts.

As soon as the waitress left, Bonnie said, “I think it’s time we all laid our cards on the table, so to speak.”

She turned to Jesse. “You implied Edmund was the one who put you wise to Peyton’s insults Thursday morning.”

Jesse reddened. “That’s right.”

Ali was shaking her head. She looked suspiciously at Jesse. “This is about the fight? I can’t believe Ed-mund would do that. He and Peyton were friends.”

From the expression on Jesse’s face, Ali may as well have driven her fork into his sternum. The boy knotted his napkin in a meaty fist.

“I’m not lying,” he whispered hoarsely.

Ali inhaled deeply then let it loose. Her features softened as she regarded Jesse. “You’re not, are you?”

She inched a hand toward Jesse’s but stopped just short. “Why would Edmund do such a thing?”

“Why, indeed?” Bonnie laced her fingers beneath her chin. “I think, at the very least, we can all agree there was more to Edmund than we knew.”

Ali nodded. “He stole my necklace.”

Jolted by Ali’s statement, Bonnie’s mind raced to retrieve a recent memory. “Do you recall the exchange you had with Edmund at the Academy, when you called him Samurai?”

Pursing her lips, Ali was silent for a moment then her eyes went wide. “He teased me about something.”

“He said you were hiding your true feelings, that you really loved him.”

Rhiannon looked up sharply.

“Relax, Mother.” Ali returned her attention to Bonnie. “Edmund was always saying things like that. I remember. I came back with, ‘In your dreams, Samurai’.”

“Did you call him that often?”

“Samurai? Sure, all the time. He’d call me witch girl.”

The same thing Molly called you.
“This is impor- tant. Do you know if anyone else called him by that nickname?”

Ali shrugged. “Not that I know of. Why is that important?”

“Because that’s the pet name Wicked Little Witch used in the e-mail.”

Ali’s hand came to her lips. “I didn’t write Edmund any e-mail on Thursday evening.”

Bonnie wished she could reach across the wide table and grasp the girl’s hands in hers. “But someone did. Someone who either called him by that name, or knew that you did.”

“They’re trying to make my baby look guilty.” Rhi-annon almost growled out the words.

Bonnie ignored Rhiannon. “Did you know Ed-mund had Samurai printed across the bottom of his sneakers?” she asked Ali.

“His new white Sketchers? It wasn’t there Thurs-day night.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Ali jabbed a fingertip down at the table. “I saw the bottoms of both his shoes when we were sitting on the van’s bumper. Edmund is . . . was always . . . cross-ing and uncrossing his legs. Besides, he wouldn’t write Samurai on his shoes. That’s a Junior High thing to do.” She wrinkled her nose.

Bonnie considered the statement. “Then there are only three possibilities.” She held up her index finger. “One, you’re mistaken about what you saw.”

“I’m not.”

Bonnie waved away the denial and lifted a second finger. “Two, Edmund wrote the word on his shoe in the interim between Thursday night and Saturday.” Although she didn’t say it, “the night of his murder” hung heavy in the air.

“Keep in mind that Edmund has been acting out of character lately, even his mother thinks so. There’s that whole business of breaking into your house and stealing your necklace. Would you a week ago have suspected him of doing such a thing?”

Ali shook her head.

“Neither would I, but all the evidence points to his doing precisely just that.” Bonnie ticked off a third fin-ger. “Then there’s only one possibility remaining.”

“Someone else wrote the word on the shoe,” Rhian-non offered.

Bonnie slowly nodded. “If they did, and Ali is cor-rect about what she saw, then they wrote it between Thursday and Saturday. And since Samurai shows up in the e-mail it seems likely the person who wrote the e-mail also wrote on the shoe.”

“The Wicked Little Witch,” Ali said.

“A very Wicked Witch, I would imagine.”

CHAPTER 17

W
ITH A GRUNT, BONNIE SHOVED OPEN HER front door. “I’m going to nail my feet to the carpet and not budge from this house until morning.”

Staring up like an ebony Egyptian god, Euclid sat motionless as Bonnie, Armen, and Jesse filed past him. The cat growled and sniffed suspiciously at Jesse.

Jesse reached out a hand, and Euclid pulled away. “I don’t think your kitty likes me.”

Bonnie frowned at the small Burmese. “Most days, I’m not sure if he likes me.”

Arching his back, the cat permitted her to stroke him once before he sauntered off. For the second time that day he presented all assembled with a view of a raised tail and a puckered rear end.

“I’ve got to get a cat that doesn’t do that.” Bonnie pointed with her chin toward the back of the house. “Come with me, youngster.”

Leading him right, away from the kitchen and to-ward the back hall, Bonnie could hear the trio of dogs whining to be let in.

“In a minute, ladies,” she shouted.

Instead of turning left to the laundry room/dog kennel, she turned right again, advancing on the two guest bedrooms adjacent to her garage. The first, where Armen had slept, looked as neat as if maid service had straightened the room.
I think I’m in love. Callahan,
your mother should be alive and give lessons on how
to train a son.

Using her crutch, Bonnie pushed open the second door. A compact little room with a twin bed and a student desk came into view. Posters of Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippin adorned two of the walls.

“I’m assuming since you’ve been on your own for the past month, you can make a bed.”

“I can make a bed.”

“Good. Because, between the two of us, you’re in better shape for housework.” She nodded for him to slide open the closet door. “Grab a set of sheets and do the manly thing. There’s also a comforter at the back of the closet.”

She stepped out of the way. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

As he reached up to retrieve the sheets, he whis-pered, almost too faint to be heard, “Thank you, Missus Pinkwater.”

Something in the way he spoke told Bonnie he’d had precious little to be thankful for in the past few months.

“You’re welcome, Jesse.”

She studied the bald head and wide shoulders of the teenage enigma, thinking just how much their relation-ship had changed since Thursday morning.

Hell, four days ago, I was sure he meant to punch
my lights out.

When he turned around, he caught her staring. Their eyes locked for a long moment. “I’m not com-plaining or anything, but how long you think I’ll be staying here?”

She shrugged, trying to make light of the question. “A couple of days, until things settle down.”

Truth be told, it could be a lot longer. If the killer struck again, and suspicion fell on Jesse, it might be a considerable time before he would be safe going back to his trailer.

Jesse nodded, and Bonnie saw understanding writ-ten in his rugged face.

He dropped the sheets on the small bed. “Then I have another favor to ask you.”

“Fire away.”

He drew a deep breath and released a sigh that went on for a week and a half. “It’s my mom.”

Of course, you’ve got a funeral to plan.
“Do you want some help with the arrangements?” She cringed, thinking of Ben’s funeral just eighteen months previ-ous. That day seemed a lifetime ago.

Jesse shook his head. “I got most of it worked out, the service and all. Mama wanted to be cremated. The funeral home was going to pick up . . .” He swallowed, wiping a beefy hand across one eye. “. . . her body today. Except now, with my truck impounded, I got no wheels to get to the funeral.”

Bonnie leaned heavily on her crutches. She remem-bered her own mother’s death. There’d been a ton of decisions to make, and she had Ben to help her make them. This boy was alone in the world.

“Would it be all right if I went to the funeral with you?”

Jesse’s blinked back tears. “You don’t really need to go. You could just drop me off.”

“Don’t be silly, Jesse. I would be honored to attend your mother’s funeral. I wish fate had permitted me to know her. I’m sure she was a great lady.”

Jesse sniffed, a shy smile brightening his face. “You should have seen her before she got sick, before my dad died. The two of them were terrific together, always laughing, getting me to laugh.”

But I never knew them, or you then. The Jesse
Poole I came to know was the bald-headed Nean-derthal
who whupped up on thirteen-year olds.
She dispelled the errant thought, allocating it to that sector of her brain she’d lately come to call the I-don’t-know-shit- about-Jesse-Poole-region.

“You’ve had a rough time of it this last year.”

Jesse shrugged an I’m-no-different-from-anybody-else shrug. “Mom was already real sick when Dad died, and me, I didn’t help things. I went a little nuts, drug-ging, and getting in stupid trouble, fights at school, you name it.”

He rubbed his bald pate, like his scalp was a sort of an exclamation point on the choices he had made. “Changed the way I look about then.”

She sat down heavily on the bed and indicated for him to do the same. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I was wondering what makes a guy with hair shave his head.”

Jesse sat down heavily atop of the pile of sheets then hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He turned and offered her a shy smile. “You don’t like it?”

“I didn’t say that, but I’m thinking your mother must not have liked it much.”

“Not much.” He licked his fingertips like he was planning to deal out a hand of cards. “We made a bar-gain. I got to keep the shaved head, but I had to quit the other stuff.”

“And did you?”

Jesse nodded slowly. The folds of his face bunched into the palm of his hand. “Gave up drugging, drink-ing. Hadn’t been in a fight since Christmas.”

“Yet, you always seemed so angry in the halls, like you were getting ready for a fight, getting ready to punch someone.”

Jesse broke eye contact with her, staring down at the floor. “I was mostly pissed off at the kind of folks you hung out with . . . that Newlin and that Stephanie Templeton chick.” He reddened, obviously aware he was speaking ill of the dead.

He sat up, his face hard as if he needed to say more or explode. “You know what made me mad the most?”

She shook her head and kept silent, knowing she wasn’t really being asked for an answer.

“They’d walk right by me like they didn’t see me at all, like I wasn’t really there.”

“Peyton and Stephanie?” She asked the question and held her breath, dreading what he might say next.

“Not just them,” he whispered.

I was guilty as any of them.
A long quiet moment passed, Bonnie remembering last Thursday evening. She’d reveled in the company of her Knowledge Bowl team, enjoying their wit and their intelligence. Had she subconsciously, or maybe not so subconsciously, discounted children like Jesse as not worth her time, not worth knowing?

“I’m sorry, Jesse.”

His eyes wide, Jesse waved away the apology. “No, no, you don’t understand. You got nothin’ to be sorry about. You came and got me at the cop shop. Look at me here in your house, sittin’ on your bed.”

He bounced ever so slightly, as if acknowledging it was now his bed if only for a little while. “It’s like I was angry all that time, so we never got to know one another. Maybe I didn’t need to be mad at Stephanie either.”

“And Peyton?”

“Peyton Newlin was a little piss ant.” He reddened again. “Every beating I gave that creep, he deserved.”

She locked eyes with Jesse. “Maybe not the last one. There’s a good chance Peyton never said the things Edmund accused him of.”

Jesse waved his hands beside his head, the same gesture he’d used Thursday morning, as if clearing the air of a swarm of bees. “Isn’t that just a screwy bunch of crap? Why would Edmund do that?”

“I keep asking myself the same thing. Supposedly, they were best friends.” She let her voice trail off, a far away thought trying to leapfrog into her consciousness
.
God damn it, they were best friends. I’m not wrong
about that. I may not be able to read Armen, but I
damn well knew my students.
Another more distant, more nebulous memory tried to elbow its way to the forefront. It seemed nestled in that library that Ed-mund had called his bedroom.

Jesse’s insistent voice sent both thoughts packing. “Missus Pinkwater?”

She realized he’d been talking to her for the better part of a minute. “Sorry, I went visiting another time zone. What were you saying?”

“You can’t drive.” He pointed to her walking boot. “You think Mister Callahan will want to go to Mom’s funeral?”

“We’ll have to ask him. What about Ali Griffith?”

Jesse shook his head. “She’s already got too many funerals to go to. Besides, she didn’t even know my mom.”

You’re right about that crop of funerals. My God,
Stephanie, Peyton, and now Edmund. My beauti-ful,
beautiful children.
She shook off the melancholia which threatened to drag her down.

“But now Ali knows you. Jesse, we don’t go to fu-nerals for the sake of the deceased. We go to comfort the living.”

Again he shook his bald head, even more insistently this time. “Please, Missus Pinkwater, I just want to say goodbye to my mama. I don’t care how many people come.”

“Just for my own curiosity, how many do you ex-pect?”

He shrugged, looked embarrassed and raised three fingers. “If Mister Callahan comes.” His face and eyes went hard. “Like I said, I don’t care.”

Me thinks you protest too much.
She remembered the antagonism of the crowd at the East Plains trailer park, and the way painter-man and the others had al-ready made up their minds about Jesse’s guilt.
Surely,
some of those people had been friends of the Pooles.
Anger and frustration welled in her. Collateral damage from these murders was beginning to spread.

As if he read her mind, Jesse said, “Rough times, huh?”

“You can say that again.”

A smile crept onto Jesse’s face. “Rough times, huh?”

Bonnie stared at him then mirrored his smile with one of her own
. Who knew you had a sense of humor,
you bald-headed joker.
“You just keep surprising me, Jesse Poole.”

“That’s not too hard. Up until a day ago, you didn’t know me from Davy Crockett.”

On impulse, she extended a hand in his direction. “Bonnie Pinkwater.”

He regarded the hand then engulfed it in his larger one. “Jesse Poole, nice to know ya.”

“Same here.”

TRADITIONALLY, MONDAY MORNINGS HAD NEVER been easy for Bonnie. If she did a statistical analysis, she’d more than likely find she’d been late for class on Monday more than any other day. However, this par-ticular Monday she’d had good reason to get to school early. She had to present Jesse Poole to Principal Lloyd Whittaker for summary justice. She came out on the side of the boy, testifying she thought righteousness would be better served if leniency were the order of the day. And that was how she’d left it. There’d be no tell-ing what Lloyd would do, but she could hope her long time friend might listen to his better, his kinder angels.

She whistled as she hurried down the long hallway to her class with ten minutes to spare.

Freddy Davenport poked his head out of his office. “Bon, do you have a minute?”

As per usual, the room was in disarray with candy wrappers filling the trash cans and spilling out onto the floor. Also typical, the man had the stick of a lollipop protruding from his mouth. Freddy plopped down at his lunch table/desk, a number of manila folders strewn across it surface.

Freddy licked his thick lips. “I have a quandary.”

He collected the top three folders and swung around in his desk chair to face her. His eyes looked haunted.

Stephanie Templeton’s name was printed on the top folder. It was no great leap of logic for Bonnie to de-duce the names on the other two.

Freddy’s hands shook as he clutched the three folders. He offered a rueful half-smile. “I haven’t in-formed J. T. Sullivan of the circumstances complicating the outcome of his scholarship. Truth is, Bon, I don’t know how all this will play out. A part of me wants to throw up my hands and hope somebody else will sort it all out.”

She could see his problem. Not only were three of the remaining candidates for the scholarship dead, the sole finalist still drawing breath had a good chance of being arrested for their murders.

“What are you going to do?”

Without even seeming to notice he was doing it, he handed her the three folders then scooped up the rest. “I’m going back over the original thirteen, now ten of course. Before I call J. T., I want to tell him we at least have candidates for his
largesse
.”

Bonnie gave Freddy a cursory nod. Her attention was drawn to the folders that lay in her hands. She gave a quick peek at Stephanie’s then Edmund’s. For reasons she couldn’t have explained, she ruffled through Peyton Newlin’s pages with more scrutiny, as if she expected answers to the recent tragedies to reveal themselves in the official documents and printed records. Bonnie also half expected Freddy to snatch the folders away claim-ing confidentiality was being compromised. When he didn’t, she surmised confidentiality might be a moot point at this juncture of events.