Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

On my way to the elementary school, I received a call from Whitlock. After the conversation I’d had with Foley, he decided to do another sweep of Claire’s house. This time, they found a partial print, and it wasn’t a match for Claire or Owen. And while I imagined Foley was still upset with me, he was a logical, reasonable man—reasonable enough to know I wouldn’t take a case unless it had merit.

I arrived at the elementary school around the same time as my first visit, but today, the break room was a much quieter place. I found Ann sitting alone at a table, looking at a school yearbook while she picked at a chicken salad.

I joined her at the table and said, “Where is everyone?”

“Oh, they’re around. It’s the last day of the book fair. The teachers collect donations during the week and use them to buy books for their classrooms. I expect you’ll find most of them in the library.”

Pointing at the yearbook, I said, “They didn’t do yearbooks in elementary school when I was a kid.”

“We’ve been doing it for several years now. Teresa put it together last year, and this year, I am. It’s the reason I’m looking through it. I’m trying to get some ideas about what to do.”

“I was on the yearbook staff in high school—one of the photographers. I loved it, but I’ve never had much of an eye for taking good pictures.”

She stabbed a forkful of salad and looked over at me. “How’s your investigation going?”

“There’s something I didn’t mention when I was here yesterday. Owen thought Claire was seeing another man.”

Ann raised a brow. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have any reason to believe it’s true?”

“The day she died, Claire purchased a bottle of men’s cologne, but Owen doesn’t wear cologne.”

“Maybe she thought she could convince him to start.”

“Owen doesn’t strike me as a guy who could be persuaded to do something he doesn’t want to do,” I said.

“Given what she was going through, I don’t see how she would have had an interest in starting something up with someone.”

Unless she’d found someone to lean on for support.

“If Claire was seeing another man, I believe it was someone she worked with, here at the school.”

Eyes wide, Ann said, “At the school? I can’t imagine it.”

“Why not?”

“For starters, Claire was the best of us. She didn’t seem like the kind of person who would ever cheat on her husband, even if they were having problems.”

“Maybe she wasn’t cheating, or maybe she wasn’t cheating yet .”

“What are you suggesting?”

“She could have been talking to another man, maybe for support, someone she leaned on. It may have been romantic, or it may not have been.”

Ann took another stab at her salad, chewing for a time, thinking. “I guess I could get my head around Claire talking to someone, but not cheating. I have to say though, I love working here. Everyone is nice and supportive. When Claire’s mother died, everyone checked in on Claire, and I think it helped. Right before she died, she seemed happier, like she was coming out of the fog she’d been in.”

“Was there anyone you saw her talking to more than others?”

“Any men, you mean?”

“Yes.”

She took a moment to consider the question and then said, “I can’t think of one single person who stands out from the rest, to be honest. Most of the staff who work here checked in on her here and there. I never thought she was talking to someone too much, or that anything shady was going on.”

I rephrased the question. “Did you ever see Claire talking to one man more than the other men, even if it wasn’t a lot of talking?” I asked.

This time she paused, leaning back to give the question more thought.

“Hmm, now that I’m thinking about it, I guess that would be Bruce … mmm, she was also good friends with Colin. You might want to talk to Colin first. He’d be able to answer your questions a lot better than I can.”

“I suppose I’ll need to speak to everyone.”

“Yeah, sorry. I don’t always notice things other people do. I tend to have my head in the clouds.”

“I’m the opposite. I notice everything. Every little detail.”

“I wish I was like that. I have the attention span of a squirrel.”

She shook her head, and we both laughed.

“If I’m being honest, I like noticing details, and it’s a huge benefit in my job,” I said. “Sometimes I drive myself crazy, though. When I enter a room, I start dissecting it all, taking it all in at once. It can be overwhelming, but it’s also amazing, noticing fine details most people miss.”

“I can’t imagine.” She took one more stab at her salad and then pushed the plate to the side. “I still feel bad about the disagreement I had with Claire.”

“You said before that the two of you had a heated exchange, but you weren’t yelling. I guess the reason I’m mentioning it is because one of Claire’s neighbors thought she heard Claire and Owen arguing. I talked to Owen, and he said he’d never raised his voice to Claire.”

“I’ve met Owen, and I saw him with Claire a handful of times. I believe him. He doted on her, and his tone and demeanor was always, I don’t know … different when they were together.”

“How so?”

“Softer, I guess? He treated her like a fragile bird he just wanted to protect. I may not notice everything, but I did notice that much. I remember thinking how nice it would be to have a man treat me the way he treated her.”

“I take it you’re single?”

She nodded. “Not by choice. I just haven’t found the right one yet.” She bent toward me, her voice lowering to a whisper. “I’ve been talking to Bruce a lot. He’s single, and I’ve been hoping he’ll ask me?—”

Before she had the chance to finish her sentence, Bruce and Teresa walked in. They were looking at each other, laughing. Teresa gave Bruce a soft nudge to the shoulder, and he smiled. It seemed Ann wasn’t the only one vying for his attention.

Ann glanced at the two of them and then at me.

“I need to go,” she said.

“Oh, come on, stay,” Bruce said. “We just got here.”

“I … I have some things to do,” Ann said.

She stood, reaching for her empty salad plate, the yearbook tumbling off the table and onto the floor in the process. I picked it up, and as I went to hand it back to her, my eyes were drawn to a page of staff photos. As I scanned the page, I picked up on a piece of information I didn’t know.

And there was something else.

In one of the photos, the person who’d caught my eye was standing in front of a poster, one I’d seen in a classroom on my last visit. I thought about the words on the poster and of the dream I’d had.

And all at once, it all made sense.

What is right to be done cannot be done too soon .

I believed I knew who killed Claire.

Now I needed to prove it.