“I know,” Missy said, rolling her eyes at Jules’s enthusiasm.
Jules was really getting into it and remembered for the first time in a long while why she took up teaching and how much she loved history. She was all wound up, excited as she walked by the desk in which Maeve had been sitting and saw the letters ES written in pencil on the top. Ethan Slade’s initials.
Jules knew she’d have to reprimand the girl for defacing school property, but for now, she took a tissue from her pocket and wiped away the scribbled initials. As she did, she was aware of Missy watching her every move.
Was she a teacher’s aide or a spy? Who knew? Either way, Jules was going to put Missy to work.
“Let’s set up some kind of guessing game and see what the kids know about sports, fashion, inventions of that era.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Jules stuffed the tissue into her pocket and rubbed at the trace of writing with her finger. “And I think we can present the positive side. We should show that even during times as bleak as the Great Depression, some people achieved great things.” She pointed at her new helper. “I assume you can access the Internet?”
“Sure.” Missy lifted a shoulder. “I’m a TA. We can get on anytime we need it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. At the computer lab.” She wrinkled her nose. “I wish we could have our own laptops or cell phones, but you know they’re taboo.”
“Even for the TAs?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “It’s all a major control issue.”
Jules gambled and pushed her a bit. “I would have thought that there would be a way to get online other than the lab.”
“How?” Missy asked innocently enough, but her easy smile faded a bit, as if she were sizing Jules up.
“Oh, come on. It wasn’t that long ago that I was your age. I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities for kids to smuggle in USB modems, devices that tap into cell towers, or even phones.” When Missy didn’t reply, Jules added, “There has to be a black market for that kind of thing.”
“I don’t know about that,” Missy said tentatively, but the glint in her eye suggested she was lying.
“Well, maybe I’m wrong.” Jules didn’t believe Missy, but she decided not to press the issue. Not right now. “Since you can get access to the Internet through the lab, that’s good enough. For tomorrow, come up with twenty-five items or events that are attributed to the thirties, then add in some other decades, anything from the forties to the nineties, to make it fun. Come up with about fifty or sixty in total. Then print them out and bring the list to me. Do we have an overhead projector? One of those electronic ones, or if not, an older one? Oh, and can you print on clear plastic?”
“I guess …” Missy didn’t seem sure.
“Good. If you can, do it and see that I get a projector or whatever it is you use now. Tomorrow, we’ll play a guessing game. The winner gets … oh, I don’t know. Maybe a can of Spam or a package of Twinkies or a comic book.”
“But you can’t offer anything like that as a prize.” Missy looked at her as if she’d gone nuts.
“Why not?” Jules asked.
“Well, I don’t think Dr. Hammersley will go for it, do you? And no way would Reverend Lynch allow us to have Twinkies here. Uh-uh.”
Jules wasn’t going to be derailed. “I’ll deal with Dr. Hammersley and the director. You just make the list.”
“O-kay.” Missy’s tone indicated that she thought Jules had a screw or two loose and was on the fast track to getting herself fired.
Which was kind of funny, as Jules was certain she’d be fired for other, far darker reasons. “I’m telling you, this assignment is going to be fun. Talk to me before class tomorrow.”
Missy nodded as Jules returned to her desk. From the corner of her eye, she watched the blond fiddle with her oversized bag, zip it shut, then hurry through the open door to the hallway, where the sounds of shuffling feet and young voices were beginning to fade.
Missy seemed to be following instructions, Jules thought, snagging a pen from her drawer and making some quick notes to herself.
So why didn’t Jules trust her new assistant?
Because of Shay.
What was it her sister had said? That the TAs were part of some kind of cult?
How ludicrous was that?
Who was to say that Shaylee, with her rock-solid bad attitude, was the goddess of knowledge of all things at Blue Rock Academy? First off, Shay hadn’t lived on campus long enough to learn the school’s inner workings. The rumor was just some teenaged gossip, campus mythology.
Jules tapped a pencil against her planner, wondering if Trent knew anything about the alleged cult.
He just might.
She glanced out the window to the coming night.
Maybe it was time for a teachers’ conference.
CHAPTER 30
The invisible cloud of cigarette smoke hit Trent before he saw Meeker walk into the gym. From his perch atop a ladder where he was reattaching a basketball net, Trent knew the officer was on a mission.
Frank Meeker looked like hell. His uniform was wrinkled, the bags beneath his eyes heavy, his jawline in serious need of a razor. He’d camped out at the school for three days, taking a small room on the main floor of Stanton House, which he’d used as his office and bunk. Trent figured that Meeker was making good use of the time, considering he was trapped at the school until the plows could get through.
They were alone in the cavernous gym, but the sound of weights clicking regularly indicated someone was pumping iron in the room up a half flight of stairs.
“Got a minute?” Meeker asked grimly.
“Yeah. Just a sec.” He finished hooking up the net, climbed down, and snapped the ladder shut, then locked it in one of the equipment closets. “We can talk in here.” He motioned toward his office.
Meeker nodded, and Trent knew it was bad news. He could see it in Meeker’s body language. Trent closed the door behind Meeker, then waved him into a side chair. “What’s up?”
“The Prescott boy didn’t make it.”
“Hell.” Trent’s stomach turned to stone. All along he’d expected Drew, a young, strapping boy, to pull through.
“Just took the call. The sheriff wanted me to tell you. He’s phoning Lynch now.” He sighed heavily and licked his cracked lips. “And he was doing so well after surgery. Woke up, talked to people. Remembered everything that went down in the barn. Then he goes back to sleep and it’s over.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. Shit.” He rubbed his jaw with a fleshy hand and looked at the floor. “I got a kid about that age. Goes to the community college. Plays football. If anything like this happened to him …” His voice trailed off, and the only sound was the regular click of weights being lifted and dropped in the next room.
“It’s hard. I didn’t know Drew well, but it never seems right when a kid dies.” Trent went quiet, recalling the sight of the young man, crumpled on the floor of the horse barn. And Nona, dead as she dangled from a rope in the loft. “Hard to take.”
Meeker looked up quickly, meeting Trent’s gaze. He swore and rubbed his knuckles. “Poor damned son of a bitch.” He placed his hands on his knees and stood. “Baines got it all on tape, and the kid seemed fine. And suddenly, couple of days later, his heart just stops beating.” He squared his hat on his head. “Couldn’t be revived. Flatlined.”
The weights had stopped clanking, and now Trent’s office was as silent as a tomb. “Makes you want to nail the son of a bitch who would take down two kids,” Trent said grimly, a dark fury sweeping through him. He met Meeker’s tired eyes. “No way can we let that bastard get away with it.”
“You’re right about that.” Meeker rubbed a hand around his unshaven jaw. “Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Meeker said as the lights flickered eerily. “Let’s catch that son of a bitch.”
Still working at her desk, Jules reconsidered her sister’s wild accusations
.
Shay wasn’t exactly the barometer for reality.
How had her father summed up Shay when he and Edie had remarried? If Jules thought hard enough, she could almost hear Rip Delaney’s deep baritone voice as he’d told Edie, “You know, hon, if there was an emotional tidal pool anywhere in a three-state radius, Shaylee would find the deep end, jump in feetfirst, then call for help.”
Edie hadn’t been amused.
Rip Delaney’s attitude about his stepdaughter had been a sticking point in an already unhappy union.
So, Jules advised herself, don’t take everything Shay says at face value. Unfortunately, Jules hadn’t been here long enough to evaluate any of the teachers’ assistants’ motives or actions. Nor had she gained their trust to the point that they would confide in her.
She was the outsider. As was Shay, who hadn’t been here much longer than Jules.
For now, Jules decided, she’d follow that particular point of law that considered all suspects innocent until proven guilty. Even the malevolent TAs. Good God, Shay could be such a drama queen.
The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree, she thought, and made a mental note to give Edie another call. Even if the teachers’ aides were innocent, there was still something very wrong here. One student dead, another missing, and a third—who happened to be a TA—seriously injured, all within five months.
Nona Vickers had been a student for almost a year, and Lauren Conway had been on campus only a few months. She wasn’t sure of Andrew’s tenure, though he would have been at Blue Rock for a while before being promoted to the level of graduate student and TA. There was also Ethan Slade, the boy who had been supposedly sexually molested by Maris Howell. Ethan was still on campus, his parents settling, his education here at Blue Rock Academy oddly ensured.
She clicked her pen nervously. Her attempts at getting information from other staff and students had been unsuccessful. It took a while for people to warm up here, staff and students alike.
So what did that leave?
The student and faculty files.
Glancing out the window, she saw the corner of the admin building where all the records were kept. Not all, she reminded herself, and replaced her pen in the drawer. Some of the records were kept in Reverend Lynch’s office, the one in the chapel.
Could she do it?
Break into the file drawers or the computers, then, if she were caught, drum up some excuse?
The bottom line was she had to.
Before someone else was hurt.
She just had to come up with a plan.
Her mind still half on her mission, she spent another half hour trying to focus on the next day’s lesson plans.
Finally, she gave it up for the night. She could do more prep after dinner. Once she was settled into her pajamas at home, she might even come up with a way to get a peek at the student and faculty files. She gathered up her notes, books, and a couple of computer disks, then shoved them into her Blue Rock Academy book bag and zipped it closed.
Hitching the strap of her bag over her shoulder, Jules made her way to the door of this fishbowl of a classroom. Darkness had already settled over the mountains, snow still falling hard. As she snapped off the lights, she wondered when the storm would break, when this school wouldn’t be so isolated. As it was now, not only the police and supplies weren’t able to get through the passes, but also families of the students, rescue workers, and the police were blockaded by the blizzard. It was as if the fates were conspiring against them, the whistling wind nearly laughing as everyone at Blue Rock dug in.
Don’t be ridiculous, she silently chastised herself, but couldn’t stop a little drizzle of dread from dripping down her spine.
She closed the door behind her.
Drained of students, the hallway was eerily quiet. Jules’s boots rang on the tile floors, echoing in her ears. Just stay calm, she told herself as she hurried down the empty staircase, intent on heading back to her room for a little time alone. Although the crimes against Nona and Drew were vile, Jules had no reason to think someone would attack her or any other teacher on this campus.
Despite her case of nerves, Jules thought about the evening ahead. She intended to call Analise again since Eli had been a TA. What was it he’d said to Jules the last time they’d spoken?
Analise was afraid you might go poking around.
Why?
Jules had considered her cousin’s concerns weird at the time. She’d thought Eli and Analise were worried about themselves and how they’d left the school, but maybe that hadn’t been it. Maybe they’d been afraid of what Jules might find….
She turned the corner and nearly ran over Maeve.
In tears, her shoulders braced against the wall, Maeve slowly slid to the floor, where she dissolved into horrid, heart-wrenching sobs, the books she’d been carrying falling onto her lap.
Jules was at the girl’s side in an instant. “What’s wrong?” Jules bent down on a knee to touch Maeve on her shoulder. “Maeve?”
Startled, as if she’d been in her own private world, Maeve looked up sharply and pulled back. “Nothing.” A bald-faced lie. She blinked back a fresh onslaught of tears and hiccupped, her eyes filled with despair as they met Jules’s.
“Oh, honey, you can talk to me.”
Maeve was sniffing and hiccuping, blinking like crazy. “I … said … I’m okay.” She scooted away, her right hand under her left sleeve and fidgeting—a motion Jules had noticed during class. “I’ll be all right. Really. Just leave me alone.”
Click, click, click!
“I don’t think so,” Jules said softly as she realized that Maeve was repeatedly snapping a rubber band against her wrist. Her face was flushed beet red, and tears drizzled from her eyes, tracking down her cheeks.
“Maeve … you know you shouldn’t be moving around campus alone, but …” Jules respected the girl’s space, but she wanted to help. “I’m here to help, okay? Is there anything I can do?”
“No!” Maeve was emphatic. She sniffed and scrambled onto her feet, losing hold of her bag.
The contents of her open purse tumbled out, scattering across the floor. She lunged for her purse and the books on her lap, and fell onto the floor, sliding on the shiny tiles. “Oh, crap!” Quickly she began retrieving items, a pink eyeglass case, a package of tissues, her wallet, keys, a plastic tampon case.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, mortified as she scooped a pack of breath mints and a pink knit cap into the purse. More tears. Black streaks of mascara. A quivering lower lip.
Jules couldn’t let this go on. “I’ll walk you where you need to go.” She tried to help, scraping up a couple of pens and a piece of paper that read OMEN. She handed them to Maeve, but the girl was suddenly furious. “Maybe you should talk to your counselor or Dean Burdette.”
“Just leave me alone! I’m fine! It’s not so weird to be upset, is it, not with everything that’s happening here.” Grabbing her wallet and eyeglass case, she sniffed loudly again, then shoved the items into her bag. She wiped the tears from her cheeks, then retrieved her notebook—the cover completely covered by ink doodles of faces, stars, hearts, and swirls of Ethan Slade’s initials—which had landed near a watercooler.
Maeve tucked the notebook under her arm, then swept the pens and note from Jules’s outstretched palm. “I don’t want your help. I don’t need your help.” But there was something in her eyes, a glimmer of self-doubt, a deep-seated sadness.
“I’m serious. I think you should talk to Dr. Williams,” Jules suggested, knowing that Maeve, like everyone else here, was caught in an emotional tidal wave, but she wondered if there was another reason other than her grief for her classmate that caused her complete emotional meltdown. “You know, Maeve, we’re all here to help.”
“You think anyone can help me?” she mocked, her face distorted by her ruined makeup. “Are you out of your mind? There’s nothing a counselor or you or anyone else can do, okay? So just leave me the hell—” She starte
d, then caught herself, blinking and swallowing back her anger. “Please,” Maeve pleaded, holding out one hand, fingers splayed in Jules’s direction. “Just go away.”
“Hey! You okay?” another voice chimed in, and Jules looked over her shoulder to see Roberto Ortega hurrying down the stairs from the second floor.
“I’m fine!” Maeve sniffed loudly and shook her head.
“You sure?” Roberto’s face was pinched with concern.
“Didn’t I just say so?” Quickly she stuffed the rest of her belongings into her purse, snatched up the remaining scattered books, and bolted outside into the storm. Cold air swept into the education hall, the slap of winter catching Jules off guard as she watched Maeve through the closing glass door. Hair streaming behind her, her gait encumbered by her bags, she ran through the falling snow. Clumsily reaching into her bag, she forced her pink knit cap over her head.
“Girls!” Roberto snorted, shaking his head as the door clicked shut. Then, as if realizing Jules had heard him, he flashed a self-deprecating smile as he checked his watch, frowned, then headed for the far end of the building. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said, but Roberto, who had picked up his pace, was already past the doors to the science labs and pushing open the exit located closest to the dorms.
Bang! The latches of the far door clicked into place, and once again Jules felt as if she were alone in the tall glass building.
Zipping her coat, she walked outside. From a distance, through a shifting curtain of snow, she watched Maeve catch up to someone standing under the overhang of the breezeway. A boy? Or a man? She couldn’t see his face, catching a glimpse of only jeans and the back of one of the blue jackets issued by the academy.
It was already dark outside, though not yet five in the evening, the dead of winter draping the mountains with early nightfall.