The Witch of Agnesi (17 page)

A pearl of moisture gathered at the damaged cor-ner of her mouth, and she licked it away. “He went crazy, screaming that he’d never allow me to take his son. Then the hitting started.”

Bonnie expected tears, but Wendy’s face became hard, all shadow and dark lines. In that face was the promise that Ralph Newlin would never make her cry again.

“When he was finished with the punches and the slaps, he tried to rape me.” She cast an anxious glance toward Armen. “The bastard couldn’t get it up.”

She nodded, color rushing to her face. “He tore out of the house. I laid there, my blouse ripped open, until I heard the rumble of his Stingray fade.”

She shrugged an all-in-a-day’s-work shrug. “I drove myself to the hospital. I know I said I’d call, but right then I wasn’t in the mood for company.”

All through the long quiet before and the recita-tion after, Armen had divided his attention between the road and Wendy’s face. In that time, he’d driven past the school, past the turn onto Coyote, and now the double rows of poplars loomed dark, like a small mountain range against the starlit sky. He turned so he could see both Wendy and Bonnie and not drive Alice into a ditch. “Maybe we should stay with you . . . in case he shows up tonight.”

Good thinking, Callahan.
“I second that.”

Shaking her head, Wendy made a small earthquake of her red curls. “Absolutely not. I won’t hear of it. I’m going to take one of the bastard’s softball bats into my bedroom.”

She curled her hand around an imaginary haft. “If the son of a bitch shows up, I’ll make him wish he was never born.”

She shoved Armen hard enough that he had to cor-rect his steering. “I won’t be the victim again.”

How to put this delicately?
“You said yourself it’s been a hell of a day. I’m just wondering if you’re mak-ing a clear-headed decision here.”

“My mind is made up.” For the third time that night she leveled her good eye at Bonnie and glared. “And don’t be so stupid as to park in the shadows thinking I won’t see you.”

So much for that plan.
“You’re sure?”

Wendy sighed a bless-your-heart sigh. “Take my word for it. He won’t bother me tonight.”

Although she never could have explained it even to herself, Bonnie took the woman’s word.

THE DECISION TO SPEND THE NIGHT AT ARMEN’S TRAILER seemed to make itself. Neither of them wanted to take that long trek back to Black Forest. The kicker came when Armen reminded her the grey futon opened into a bed. At least she wouldn’t be exiling the poor man from his bed onto an uncomfortable couch.

As she lay under Armen’s downy quilt staring up at his white-on-white four-poster canopy, he entered the bedroom wearing heliotrope silk pajamas with a gold griffin on the breast pocket. She wore a silk royal-blue pajama set Armen had laboriously selected for her from his closet.

“Very continental, Mister Callahan. Hugh Hefner has nothing on you.”

He turned and struck a pose straight from
Gentle-man’s
Quarterly
. “Thank you for validating something I’ve felt for a very long time. You know, of course, what that would make you?”

Bonnie smiled and pulled the covers to her chin. “I’m nobody’s bunny, Callahan. And don’t you forget it.”

The chuckle he let loose carried no shred of repen-tance or self-consciousness. “Oh, I don’t know. You look pretty much the cottontail to me.”

Abruptly, he leaned over, and planted a warm, moist, lingering kiss on her lips. Before she could re-spond or even reciprocate, he made for the door. He waved over his shoulder. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the Cimex Lectularius bite.”

Sleep tight, my sagging fanny.
Bum foot or no bum foot, she wanted to go after the big tease and give back as good as she got.

Then the lights went out, and the door clicked shut.

“Sweet dreams yourself, Mighty Mouse,” she whis-pered.

She lay in the dark, her hands behind her head.

Where’s all this going? Wasn’t it just this morning I told
myself the last thing I wanted was a romantic relation-
ship with a colleague?
“Bonnie Pinkwater, you better sort this out before it goes too far,” she said out loud.

Just who do you think you’re fooling? Here you
lay between Armen’s sheets, your head on his oh-so-soft
down pillow, the taste of his kiss still on your lips.

The truth was—the sign for too far was already dwin-dling in the rearview mirror.

SHE WOKE FEELING LIKE SHE LAY IN THE HAND OF God, Armen’s down pillow curled about her ears. She wriggled the toes of her good foot, luxuriating in the soft warmth of the comforter. Giving in to a feeling that rose like a geyser from her abdomen, she squealed in delight.

“I heard that,” Armen called from the next room.

“You shouldn’t be listening.” She peeled back the covers and stretched like a Cheshire cat. Her eyes blurred, and the room went soft as a yawn overtook her face.

“What time is it?”

“Almost nine.”

I’m starving.

She grabbed her crutches and stumbled into the living room. “Is there any of that enchilada casserole left?”

When they’d arrived at the trailer the previous night, they each grabbed a spoon and burrowed into the cold dinner; no one had mentioned microwaves or the use of plates.

Even though he still wore his pajamas, Armen had been awake long enough to scrub the spoons and coffee cups from the night before. He wiped his damp hands on a dish towel and tossed it into the dish drainer.

“On the table.”

As if he’d anticipated her request, along with the casserole, knives, forks, plates and napkins were in evi-dence.

He regarded her admiringly. “I must say you look better in those pajamas than I ever have.”

She didn’t feel very pretty, standing there with her bedroom hair and a crutch tucked under each arm, but the pajamas did feel exquisite.
Maybe clothes do make the
woman.
“You are just shameless, Armen Callahan.”

Standing at the coffee maker, his back was to her. He turned around holding a cup in each hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then I’ll tell you. I’m a semi-invalid. My hair is a mess. God knows how many folds and creases are still in my face from sleeping the sleep of the dead. And you . . .” She swung up one of the crutches and pointed at him. “. . . wise smart about looking good in paja-mas.”
But please, don’t say you were only kidding.

“That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.” He peeled back the plastic wrap and ladled a glop of enchilada onto a plate. “Come eat.”

She gathered the crutches into one hand and was preparing to sit when something about the uncluttered space on the tabletop disturbed her. “I don’t suppose you have the paper delivered.”

Armen wiped at his mouth with a paper napkin. “As a matter of fact, I am a daily student of current events. I’ll go get it.” He tossed down his napkin and stood.

“Sit yourself back down. I’m already up.” Before he could protest, she snagged her crutches and made for the door. As she opened it, white-yellow sunlight stole her vision.

Armen called, “I like a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it.”

Once outside, she wasn’t as sure. At her home in Black Forest, she could have strode out her front door naked, but here with the nearest neighbor in spitting dis-tance, she felt exposed.
Suck it up, Pinkwater. You’re
covered from head to toe, and the damned paper can’t
be more than ten feet away.
Sure enough, off to her left, almost at the end of the faux-aquarium car-port lay a blue plastic bag—the morning and only edition of the Sunday Gazette. It would be the work of fifteen seconds to retrieve.

She had the paper in her hand and had taken a few steps back when a high-pitched voice rang out. “Mis-sus Pinkwater?”

The hair on the back of Bonnie’s neck rose straight up.

Shit, shit, shit.

Clutching the paper to her breast, as if it might con-ceal her, Bonnie turned around.

Lindsay Robinson, a girl in Bonnie’s third period Geometry class, looked as if she couldn’t decide what she wanted most to stare at. Her gaze shifted from Bonnie to Armen’s trailer to her own feet.

Just bluff your way out of this.
“How you doing, Lindsay? Soooooo, you live in this trailer park?”

Color rose into the girl’s cheeks. “Right here.” She pointed to the tan and brown double-wide. “Mister Callahan is our neighbor.”

As if on cue, Armen poked his head out of the door. “Did I hear my name being used in vain?”

Now the girl had two pairs of pajamas to try not to stare at.

Shit, shit, and double shit.

The three of them stood as if frozen in time. There was no telling how long the awkward scene might have continued, but Armen’s attention was drawn to the rut-ted dirt lane at the end of the car port. “What’s that?”

Then Bonnie saw it, too. Alternately, the path was bathed in first red then blue light. She hadn’t heard it before—probably embarrassment had made her deaf—but now she recognized crowd sounds. Grateful to escape before Lindsay asked something truly mortify-ing, she hobbled toward the end of the trailer.

A young blond boy on a BMX bike came up fast on the right.

“What’s going on?” Bonnie shouted.

In a spray of dust the bike spun to a halt. Half-facing her, with at least fifty-percent of his attention on the lights, he bellowed, “Cop cars . . . at the Poole place.”

CHAPTER 14

S
HAMELESSLY, BONNIE TOOK ADVANTAGE of her new status as a cripple to edge her way to the front of the crowd. Either unable or unwilling to elbow through at her side, Armen waved her on.

In the short time she and Armen spent changing out of their pajamas, the gawking mob had spilled across the rutted lane and onto properties opposite and adjacent Jesse Poole’s double-wide—one pair of enter-prising youngsters perched atop a trailer, little children astride their parent’s shoulders, people cross-legged on the roofs of pickup trucks.

Within a border of caution tape, a section of the powder blue trailer’s white lattice skirt had been re-moved. Down on one knee Franklin Valsecci peered beneath.

Jesse stood at the back end of the concrete parking slab, book-ended by two state patrol officers. Bonnie recognized the blond pair from a multiple murder she had the misfortune of stumbling upon some sixteen months previous. Male and female, the Aryan giants towered over Jesse. From the boy’s body language, Bonnie found it impossible to tell if he was in trouble or just standing out of the way.

Maybe both.

The crowd around her seemed to have already made up its mind. Murmuring grew louder. A palpa-ble animosity filled the air. A woman pulled her young daughter close. A tall black man in paint-splattered white coveralls scowled. People who’d been Jesse’s neighbors and possibly even friends now stared at him like he’d been transformed into something unholy.

This isn’t good.

Pressing close against painter-man, Bonnie craned her neck to see beneath the trailer.

“It’s a corpse,” Painter-man’s deep voice boomed. He nodded toward the trailer without looking at her.

Franklin stood, and revealed the disturbing truth. Unmistakably, a body lay partially hidden in the gloom behind the lattice. Someone had crammed the corpse into the narrow recess. A blue-jeaned leg and corre-sponding white tennis shoe protruded into the morning light. Across the bottom of the shoe, in red block let-ters, the word Samurai was printed from toe to heel. The corpse’s face was obscured by gloom, but Bonnie didn’t need to see a face to identify the corpse. A shaft of sunlight reflected starkly off the blond-on-brunette highlighted hair.

Oh God, Edmund, how the hell did you end up
here?

Franklin spotted her. She tried to disappear back into the obscurity of the crowd, fully expecting him to read her the riot act for being at yet another crime scene. Much to her surprise, he signaled her forward.

He lifted the tape to let her within the cordon. “I never thought I’d hear myself saying this, but I’m glad you’re here.” He steered her to the trailer. “This is a lot to ask, but do you think you could handle a quick look at Edmund?”

She nodded.

Evidently, the plan was for her to squat down. Using her crutch as support, she lowered herself to one knee.

This close she could make out Edmund’s face. The boy’s eyes were wide open, staring upward. He ap-peared to be snarling, lips curled away from his upper teeth.
Dear God, he died in pain or in extreme fear.
Even though she knew Edmund was almost surely a murderer, her heart broke for this clever boy who played video games and collected comic books.

And what about his parents?
“How did he die?”

“We won’t know for sure until the crime scene guys clear the scene, and we can extract the body. There’s no violence evident.”

The body?
Edmund Clark Sheridan had been re-duced to this common denominator. “But his face?”

“Don’t go there, Missus P. Very few of us go peace- fully into that dark night.” From inside his jacket, Franklin extracted a penlight and shone it on Edmund’s flannel shirt. “Look in the breast pocket.”

Maybe twenty percent of a silver circlet was visible sticking out of the boy’s wide flannel pocket. It was enough. A cobra’s ruby eyes glittered.

“It’s a necklace, a choker.” She wanted to be any place but here. She certainly didn’t want to say what she had to say next. “It belongs to Ali Griffith. She wore it to Knowledge Bowl last Thursday.”

Franklin must have seen how much it pained her to finger a student. Tight-lipped, he said, “I’m sorry, Missus P.”

She swallowed down the storm of emotions flood-ing her. She needed to know everything as if in the knowing she could turn confusion into order. “Who found the body . . . Edmund?”

Franklin nodded toward Jesse. “Poole called it in. About six o’clock this morning.”

She gave Franklin a questioning glance and looked past him to the blond officers who still had Poole be-tween them.

Jesse’s anxious gaze darted from her to the crowd. Gone was the grieving but confident young man from the previous night. Also gone was the angry sopho-more from Thursday morning’s fight. The new Jesse looked beaten down, defeated.

“And you arrested him?”
How much is one young
man supposed to endure?
Even as she regarded Jesse she tried to ignore an inner voice that whispered,
He
could easily have murdered Edmund then called it in.
Remember, Edmund stole Jesse’s pickup and tried to
frame him.

Franklin helped her to stand. “He’s not under ar-rest. We have to ask him some questions.”

An angry shout came from the crowd.

“You need to do something, youngster.” Bonnie whispered like she was walking through a graveyard. “These folks seem woefully unaware of the subtle dif-ference between apprehension and questioning. This could get ugly.”

“Can you blame them? They need to believe their children are safe. That we, and by that I don’t include you, have everything under control.”

“They damn well need to know Jesse didn’t murder Edmund.”

“I can’t promise them that. Can you?”

There it was out in the open. And she couldn’t condemn Franklin for voicing what she herself half sus-pected. “If you take him away in custody, it won’t be safe for him to return.”
Assuming he does return.

“I’m sorry about that, Missus P, but I’ve got three homicides to solve. I can’t concern myself with niceties. Right now, Griffith and Poole are the most likely places to get some answers.”

Again, she stared at Jesse. She had sat with him less than ten hours ago. Without any vehicle, how in hell could the boy have snatched Edmund let alone mur-dered him?

“Would you have any objection to Jesse coming home with me after you’re done with him?” The words spilled out of her mouth a few steps ahead of the half-baked thought that formed them.

“That’s a real bad idea, Missus P.”

She couldn’t disagree. She found herself worrying what Armen would say. “Jesse comes back here—someone’s going to get hurt.”

Franklin held her gaze, and she had no trouble read-ing his thoughts.
He goes home with you, you could
get hurt.

“I’ll be okay. Armen will be with me.”

Franklin snorted. “That makes all the difference in the world.”

He shook his head in resignation. “We both know you’re going to do what you want to do, and nothing I say will change your mind.”

She wanted to offer something that would con-vince Franklin she was right, but first she’d have to convince herself. Instead, she searched the crowd for Armen. When she couldn’t find him she turned back to Franklin.

“What happens now?”

“I’ve called for sheriff and trooper backup to main-tain the integrity of the crime scene until the CSI boys can release the body. We’ll get the locals to pick up Ali Griffith and take her to Jade Hill.” He hooked a thumb back toward Jesse. “As soon as I can leave, I’m out of here with Poole.”

“Do you mind if I talk to him?”

Franklin gave her an up-from-under glare.

I’ll take that for a yes.
She hobbled over to Jesse. “You’re not under arrest, but Sergeant Valsecci is going to take you in for questioning.”

Head down, Jesse blinked back angry tears. “I don’t know how Edmund got there.” He nodded to-ward the trailer.

She lifted his chin with a forefinger until his eyes met hers. “Be that as it may, you’re going to have to go with him in a few minutes.”

She patted her pockets. When she couldn’t find what she was looking for, she turned to the woman state troop-er. “Emily, isn’t it? Do you have paper and pencil?”

The woman looked stunned that Bonnie knew her name. She extracted a small pad of paper from her breast pocket, and the male officer offered a pen.

Bonnie accepted both and wrote her cell phone num-ber onto the paper. “Take this.” She ripped free the upper sheet. “When you’re done at Jade Hill, call me.”

“Missus P, I—”

“No arguments. Just do it.”

Jesse nodded.

“Good. Don’t forget, and don’t lose that number.”

“Jesse certainly can’t remain in this park. I wouldn’t put it past several members of East Plains’ esteemed trailer community to let fly with a preemptive strike.” Armen hesitated, pursing his lips. “You’re not worried Jesse might actually have killed Edmund?”

Even as her mind formed around a lie, she released it like a balloon in the wind. She wasn’t sure when it happened, but she didn’t want to lie anymore to this man. “A little, but only a little.”

He nodded, saying nothing. Neither of them need-ed to voice aloud the understanding that he’d be at her house as well. His hand found its way to the small of her back, and they walked together back to Armen’s trailer.

She stopped at the door and faced him. “I need to go home, feed my animals, change clothes. A good soak in a hot bath wouldn’t be unwelcome either. This boot itches like the dickens.”

“Sounds like a plan. Valsecci won’t be done with Jesse any time soon.” He opened the door and held it wide to let her in.

As she squeezed by him, she kissed him. “You re-ally are one darling of a man.”

He pulled her close. “And don’t you forget it. Uh oh.”

She turned to stare the way he was looking. A cur-tain in the next-door trailer pulled shut.

Armen chuckled. “I’m afraid I may have compro-mised your reputation.”

Bonnie slapped his chest. “It’s your reputation, too.”

Armen made a poor effort at appearing contrite. “You know how it works. A man’s reputation only improves if a beautiful woman is seen wearing his pajamas.”

She groaned, knowing he was right. The conserva-tive tongues of East Plains would wag, and her name was the one they’d be repeating.

Screw it.
She planted another kiss on Armen.

“Give ‘em something to talk about.” As she passed into the trailer and started gathering the last of her pos-sessions, she found herself smiling.

Beautiful, eh? You’re not so bad yourself Mister
Callahan.

They were out the door and on their way within ten minutes. Having driven the back roads from East Plains to Black Forest for the past thirty years, Bonnie directed Armen away from the main highways. The shortcut would save ten miles and fifteen minutes. Be-sides, Alice seemed to like dirt roads.

“I’ve been thinking,” Armen said, once they were rumbling down one particularly isolated red dirt lane.

She squeezed his knee. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

Eyes wide, he regarded her hand. “Now you’ve got me thinking about something else entirely.”

“Sorry about that.” She blushed and removed her hand. “As you were saying, Mister Callahan?”

He chuckled. “As I was about to say, regardless of Edmund’s culpability in Stephanie’s or Peyton’s deaths, we have a whole new ball game now that Edmund has been murdered.”

An understatement, to say the least.
“Any ideas?”

“A few. First, there’s Ralph Newlin. He had means, opportunity, and possibly motive, to kill all three students.”

She arranged herself, particularly her cast, so she could give Armen her full attention. “One of those stu-dents was his own son.”

Armen waved away the comment. “Forget that for a moment. Take Stephanie. Thursday night, the good colonel bolted from his home long before Stephanie died on Fulton Hill. If he discovered Stephanie knew something about Peyton’s disappearance—”

“Oh, my God, Ralph Newlin plays softball! He probably has baseball bats in the trunk of that yellow Stingray.”

Armen didn’t say anything, but she could tell he’d reached the same conclusion.

“And Peyton?” she asked.

Armen drummed “Shave and a Haircut” on the steering wheel. “Suppose, in terror, Stephanie told Ralph where Peyton was hiding before she died. It’s now early Friday morning. Ralph drives to the Sheridan’s, slips into the barn from the rear, and finds his son.”

“His famous temper gets the better of him.”

“Precisely.”

“Does Edmund stumble upon this violence and get himself killed?”

“Something like that.”

Bonnie tugged at her ear. “Much as I’d like to lay all of this on Ralph Newlin, I have a few problems with your theory.”

“I welcome your criticism, Holmes.”