Ben took a right on Civic Drive, just past the site of the ALHS groundbreaking ceremony, and continued following the drive, looping around until he was headed for the parking lot that surrounded the gym behind the high school. A circuitous route.
There were easier ways to get to this spot from Miller’s Mortuary—by cutting into the gravel drive next to Bagels by Willie, or even circling behind Sadie’s Ice Cream Shop. I wondered if his choosing the long route meant that Ben was not a local boy.
I stayed a reasonable distance behind him as Ben drove to the far north end of the back ALHS lot and parked. Fortunately the high school held summer classes, making the area moderately busy and allowing me to blend in with the other red cars. (More than once, even in non-surveillance situations, I renewed my grudge against my son for talking me out of a bronze Taurus, and into a bright red Saturn Ion.)
I parked under a tree, behind Ben’s car, so that if he backed up far enough in a straight line, he’d ram his rear bumper directly into my front end. When Ben exited his car, I slumped down in the seat and watched him through the space in the steering wheel between the rim and the horn. I hoped I didn’t activate it now by accident.
Ben looked around, but I was fairly sure he hadn’t seen me. He had no reason to expect that he was being followed. He threw his jacket onto the backseat of his car, hitched up his pants, and walked straight ahead.
Into Joshua Speed Woods.
I felt my face flush and my arms slacken. I watched Ben walk deliberately down the trail that led into the woods known as a picnic grounds during the summer weekends, a teen lovers’ hideaway at night all year, and most recently, the place where David Bridges’s bludgeoned body had been found.
A repulsive image came to me, of David’s lips, glued together. Wasn’t glue a staple in a maintenance department? I couldn’t remember if Rosie used the very tough carpenter’s glue on her project. Many of us did, depending on the materials we were trying to fasten together. I doubted that every single container of a particular brand of glue was different. The rookie forensics person could have made a mistake when he thought he matched the glue from Rosie’s room box to . . . I shut out the image.
Ben walked slowly, head down, kicking the gravel now and then. He seemed to be searching for something, scanning the ground on both sides of the trail. I imagined he might be looking for evidence he thought he left behind, or for a place to plant a miniature tool, to further implicate Rosie.
I shuddered at the thought that Ben had seen me and was now scoping out where to drag my body once he silenced me. I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps Ben Dobson was doing nothing more than exhibiting morbid curiosity about where David’s body had been found or that he had a flower in his pocket to lay at the site.
Not long after Ben left my range of view, a minivan pulled up next to me and I started, as frightened as if Ben had materialized next to me, though I knew he couldn’t have made it back to the parking area so quickly. My fear was so real, I might have testified (had I lived) that he held a trophy high in the air over my head.
A noisy family of five exited the van. Three high-energy children screaming and laughing brought me back to the present moment. They juggled books, stuffed animals, and pieces of clothing, the way I was juggling all the clues and fears of my last three days.
It had been about thirty minutes since Ben disappeared
into the woods. Very few people came into the lot during that time. At one point, I thought I saw Cheryl Mellace enter the lot in her black sports car. She passed close to me but seemed to deliberately turn away when she saw me. I wondered what her yearbook write-up said about her attitude.
Once in a while during my waiting time I treated myself to a few minutes of classical music on my radio. I didn’t know enough about car batteries to risk it full time. In spite of my rolling down all my windows to catch the slight breeze, I was beginning to wilt as the sun hit my side of the car. I switched to a “traffic and weather together” station and heard that today’s temperature wasn’t as high as Saturday’s. Maybe not in the weather studio. I knew it wasn’t smart to be sitting in a car on asphalt.
I hadn’t been in Joshua Speed Woods lately, but I remembered English department picnics there while I was teaching. I pictured the other end of the woods. There was no other trail out that I knew of, besides the trail into the woods, which I’d been watching. The wooded area dead-ended in marshland that filled a large area on the west side of Lincoln Point.
It was nearing one o’clock; I was supposed to pick up Maddie at the Rutledge Center, about five minutes away, at one thirty. I’d hoped to have time to see Rosie at the police station before collecting my granddaughter, but it seemed I’d frittered away the better part of an hour in a fruitless stakeout. On the other hand, maybe it was important to have discovered that Ben Dobson paid a visit to a crime scene in a neighborhood he was obviously unfamiliar with.
In other circumstances, I’d have called Rosie to watch Maddie while I did an errand connected to a police investigation. Rosie’s situation came into stark relief now that she was the errand.
By one fifteen, Ben still hadn’t emerged from the woods. Why hadn’t it crossed my mind before now that he might be a second victim? I hated to think that Joshua Speed Woods, named after a nineteenth-century gentleman who was Abraham Lincoln’s best friend, had turned into a killing field.
I talked myself out of making a call that would dispatch an emergency vehicle into the woods. It was more likely that Ben was in there destroying evidence that might incriminate him.
Or was he, like me, unable to leave the investigation of his boss’s murder to law enforcement?
I took out my phone to call Linda. I needed a status report on Rosie. Usually I’d worry about waking Linda up, since Monday was her day to sleep in when she’d been on call all weekend. I decided to risk Linda’s wrath if she’d gone back to bed after phoning to alert me about Rosie’s unwelcome trip to the station.
“Have you heard from Rosie?” I asked, tense about Linda’s sleepy voice.
“Aren’t you there yet?” she asked, annoyed.
“Not yet.”
“Poor Rosie.”
“Linda, I’m doing my best for Rosie. It’s not as if I went to the movies.” Or to lunch with a friend who makes dollhouses, I added silently.
“Oh, then you’re investigating?” she said, sounding like Maddie. “I’m worried. I could go down there myself, but really you’re better at that kind of thing.”
“I can go to the station now if you’ll pick up Maddie at the Rutledge Center. Her class is over at one thirty, but she’s usually late anyway.”
“I can do it. I actually got some sleep last night. The natives weren’t as restless as they usually are Sunday evenings.”
“They have preferred times of restlessness?”
I shouldn’t have asked. Linda loved an opportunity to vent about the families of her patients. About anything, now that I thought of it.
“All the dutiful sons and daughters visit on Sundays for a couple of hours and they get the residents all worked up. They bring their little kids who run around, and they give the patients candy and junk food, which is not good for them. Then, of course, the relatives go home and we’re left to calm everybody down. Sometimes I think it would be better if we didn’t allow visitors.”
“I don’t blame you for getting upset at inconsiderate visitors,” I said, hoping to move on soon. I was getting hotter by the second, looking around the inside of my car for something that might serve as a fan. I’d already shed my seersucker jacket, leaving me in a sleeveless white blouse. I stretched across the seat and pulled out a map of the San Francisco Bay Area from the glove compartment. I unfolded and refolded it to work as a fan. It would have to do.
“I’m not complaining. You know I love my work, but some of the relatives really tick me off.”
“I don’t blame you,” I repeated, whipping the map in front of my face. “So can you pick up Maddie? If you can do that, I’ll go to the station and see what’s up with Rosie.”
“Done,” she said.
I considered calling Maddie to tell her that Mrs. Reed would be taking her home with her for a short while. I knew Maddie would be put out and easily divine what was going on. I planned to get back in her good graces with a waiver of her vegetable requirement at dinner and an extra shake of Parmesan on her popcorn tonight.
If only I could take care of my abandonment of Henry as easily. After rejecting his offer to carpool and running off without explanation when he said he’d wait for me to join him at the reception, I wouldn’t blame him if he crossed me off his list of possible new friends. I hoped Maddie and Taylor wouldn’t have to break up (so to speak) also.
I decided not to call Skip, either. My “aunt magic” worked better impromptu and in person. I hoped he was tied up as the one interviewing Rosie, anyway.
Time to call an end to the stakeout. Besides my other discomforts, I was starving. I considered going to Sadie’s for a malt to go before heading to the police department. I adjusted myself in the seat and prepared to turn the key in the ignition. If I turned the key, it meant Skip’s; if I got out of the car, it meant Sadie’s, only a short walk away. Wasn’t there a child’s game with rules like that?
“Something I can do for you?”
I heard a deep voice and saw a sweaty arm on my window ledge.
I jumped and bumped my elbow on my horn, making a noise that caused me to jump again.
Ben Dobson leaned in on my window. His breath was foul, from a cigar I thought, and his face weathered. He wasn’t a big man, but he had a powerful presence.
I surveyed the parking lot. I saw no one entering or exiting a car nearby. My remote control had a panic button. I could push it now, but my experience with false alarms told me that no one paid attention to a blaring horn and flashing lights. I had no reason to think anyone would come to my rescue now. It might simply annoy Ben and provoke him to an unpleasant action.
“I . . . I was just leaving.”
“I hear you want to talk to me.” Ben couldn’t miss my surprise. “Word gets around. I still have buddies at the Scotus. And who else would be following me?”
Mike the electrician came to mind.
I looked around, thinking he might have brought Mike as backup or to help carry me into the woods.
I felt faint, from the heat, from hunger, and from what I sensed as danger.
Ben took advantage of my glaring discomfort and momentary paralysis to come around to the passenger side and get in my car, knocking on my hood on the way. It sounded like a “this is my lucky day” knock, which might have meant the opposite for me. He made himself comfortable, sitting partly on my jacket, facing me, his left hand on the back of the seat. I was grateful for the apparent absence of a weapon.
“I’m here. Talk to me,” he said, in an almost casual tone, showing me his palms. It was obvious that he knew how intimidating he was; he didn’t need threatening language.
Wasn’t this what I wanted, after all? A chance to talk to the employee who’d argued with David on the night of his murder. The trouble was, it might be my last interview.
Might as well get it started.
“You followed your boss into our reunion cocktail party the other night. What were you fighting over?”
“You’re really asking, did I kill him, right?”
I wasn’t that dumb. There was only one answer. “No, of course not. I was hoping to get a lead on who did.”
“You a cop?”
Ask your friend, Mike. He asked me the same question, I wanted to say. Instead I smiled as politely as anyone in a state of quiet hysteria could.
“Not exactly. But my nephew is a cop. He’s expecting me any minute.”
Ben laughed, before I got to “He’ll send out the fleet if I don’t show up.” A lame survival technique. “Yeah, right,” he said, possibly not even believing the first part of what might be my dying declaration. His laugh wasn’t as evil as I had imagined it would be. I settled down a bit, though my jaw was no less tight and my hands grasped the steering wheel as if I’d applied tacky glue to both.
“Look, Ben. Right now, one of my close friends is the only suspect in David Bridges’s murder. I’m grasping at straws, trying to figure out who really killed him. I thought you might be able to direct me to someone who had a motive. Maybe another one of his employees.”
“We weren’t that close.”
“What about his personal life? I know he’s divorced and estranged from his son.”
Ben shook his head. “Don’t waste your time on them. Debbie has moved on. She’s married to a Hollywood pool boy and could care less what Bridges does anymore. And him and Kevin—they’re not estranged.” He stumbled over the word, as if it were as unfamiliar to him as what a ticket cost to the annual fall miniatures show in San Jose. “Kevin took his mother’s maiden name, Malden, and lives in Carmel in some artists’ colony. Bridges could never get over that the kid didn’t want to play football like his old man, so he pretends the kid is estranged but they still kept in touch from a distance.” A little more trippingly that time.
“I thought you weren’t close.”
I immediately wanted to retract that flip remark, but Ben seemed to let it slide. “Look, I’m in your face for one reason. To let you know that you’d be better off going back to your dollhouses.”
I swallowed hard. How did he know my hobby? What else did he know about me and, especially, Maddie? The last thing I wanted was for the conversation, such as it was, to take a turn to the personal.
I cleared my throat. “I’m just curious, Ben. Didn’t I hear you tell David that you could”—I drew quotation marks in the hot, still air between us—“burn him.”
“I was blowing smoke. He didn’t give me a big enough raise and I was mad at him.”