bad enough, but to have him taken away from you by another human being? I looked at Gus. “You’re absolutely sure?”
“Classic signs of strangulation. They were so obvious even I could figure it out. The scarf around his neck helped.”
Shame filled me. “Gus, I didn’t mean—”
He patted my arm. “You’re not questioning my skills; you just don’t want there to be another murder in Rynwood.”
I nodded thankfully.
“You’re not alone in wanting Sam’s death to be from natural causes, believe you me. But facts are facts.” His demeanor shifted from normal, friendly Gus to that of a law enforcement officer at the scene of a crime. “Now. I’ll need to ask you a few questions.”
I opened my mouth, but he was ahead of me.
“Just like last time,” he said, “the Dane County Sheriff’s Department will be taking over the case. But that hasn’t happened yet, and until it does I’m in charge of the investigation.”
I wondered when the sheriff’s department would show up. Tonight? Tomorrow? And would Deputy Sharon Wheeler be in charge of the investigation? She’d headed things up when Agnes died, and, while she and I hadn’t been outright enemies, we weren’t kindred spirits, either. But Dane County was big, and so was the sheriff’s department. The chances of Deputy Wheeler being assigned to this particular matter were—
“Good evening, Chief Eiseley.”
—were apparently quite good. Deputy Wheeler strode into the room, trim and fit in her brown and tan uniform. Even the bulky brown coat flattered her figure. The deputy shook hands with Gus, who’d stood to greet her, and looked at me. “Mrs. . . . Kennedy.” She dragged my name out of a year-old memory, something that would have taken me fifteen minutes of hemming and hawing. “How are you?”
Tired, sad, scared, and filled with a need to hug my children. “Fine, thanks. Yourself?”
She gave a short nod, then turned to Gus. They started talking about crime-scene contamination and estimated time of death.
I sat in my chair, trying not to hear what they said, trying to make myself small. If I were really small, they would forget I was there. They’d leave the vacant office Gus had commandeered and I’d be able to pick up the kids and go home. I probably shouldn’t have been listening to their conversation, anyway, as it might have been privileged police information. The thought must have occurred to Gus and Deputy Wheeler at the same moment, because they both swung around to look at me. Under their steady gazes I felt like a butterfly stuck onto an insect collection.
“What time did you and Erica leave the building?” Gus asked.
“After seven. The meeting started at six and lasted until . . .” Suddenly I remembered my secretarial role. “Hang on.” I sorted through the contents of the diaper bag, pulled out my yellow legal pad, and scanned my notes. “Here it is. Meeting adjourned at six forty-seven p.m.”
“Six forty-seven exactly?” Deputy Wheeler sounded amused.
“According to my watch, yes.” Even at the time I’d thought writing down the exact minute was silly, but it had been 6:47, and rounding either up or down didn’t seem right. The time was the time and, thanks to my stickler-for-accuracy son, our household set clocks and watches a minimum of once a week.
“And Mr. Helmstetter stayed the length of the meeting?”
“Yes. No, hang on.” I thought back. “He left at one point, then came back.”
“Cell phone call?” Gus asked.
I frowned, trying to remember. “I don’t recall hearing a phone ring.” At the beginning of every meeting Erica asked everyone to turn phones off or to vibrate. Most of the time it worked, but every so often we’d get someone with a new phone and the meeting would be interrupted by the digital notes of Beethoven’s Fifth, or the University of Wisconsin fight song, or (my personal favorite of the year) “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
“But he might have had his phone set to vibrate,” I said. “Tina Heller was sitting next to him. Maybe she’d know.”
Deputy Wheeler scratched some notes on a pad. “Thank you, Mrs. Kennedy. A couple of more questions and we’ll let you go for the night. Did you see anyone in the parking lot when you and Mrs. Hale walked out? A person, a car, anything?”
“We were the last ones to leave the building. Well, except for—” I came to a screeching halt.
“Except for Harry?” Gus asked.
I blew out a small sigh of relief. He already knew about Harry. I didn’t have to worry about being a tattletale on the only other person I knew who understood the importance of the Selke Trophy.
“Harry clocked out at six thirty,” Gus said, “and was standing in line at Sabatini’s, waiting for his pizza, at six forty-five. He met up with a friend who came in at six fifty, and they sat down in the restaurant to eat.”
“Good,” I said, but I was wondering who Harry’s friend was. Last I knew, the only real friend he had was the late Agnes Mephisto. “Fast work.” I looked from city police officer to sheriff’s deputy, not sure where to aim the compliment.
Gus shrugged. “Not really. Harry came back a few minutes ago to check the doors and to make sure a classroom floor was drying okay. Some kid’s lunch hadn’t sat right and it went all across the floor.” He made a sweeping motion with his arm. Deputy Wheeler and I winced simultaneously.
“One more question, Mrs. Kennedy,” the deputy said. “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill Sam Helmstetter?”
Any lightheartedness that had slid back into me disappeared. “No. I can’t.”
“No one?”
I shook my head, and the weight felt too heavy. My neck wasn’t big enough to support the leaden thoughts inside. Poor Sam. His poor family. All their lives they’d have this sadness hanging over them. “No one.” I looked up at her. “We call him the Nicest Guy on the Planet. Everybody likes Sam. No one could possibly want to kill him.”
Deputy Wheeler slid her notebook into the pocket of her coat and didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. “Same phone number as before, Mrs. Kennedy?” I nodded, and she headed over to the next office to talk to Erica.
It had been Erica’s suggestion that the two of us split up. “It’ll make things easier for all of us,” she’d said. All of us, except for me. I hadn’t liked sitting alone in the empty office of the former school psychologist. As I looked at walls once covered with photos of wildflowers and baby birds and lambs and chicks, I wondered who we’d get next. Good school psychologists were worth their weight in five-year-old cheddar; the search had been going on since June.
And now we had another murder in our midst and no one to help the kids deal with it.
“Tired?”
Somehow I’d forgotten Gus was in the room. “Why do you ask? Do I look tired?” I pushed my eyelids apart. “Wide open, see?”
“Keep doing that and your eyeballs will dry up and fall right out of your head.”
I smiled, but didn’t laugh. Couldn’t, really. I released my eyelids and blinked away the sandpapery dryness. “Gus, why would anyone kill Sam?” I desperately wanted an answer to my plaintive question. Please give me a reason. Please put some order back into this tragic night. Please give me a world that makes sense.
But I should have known better. Gus and I had known each other a long time, and never once in all those years had he dusted sugar coating onto any truth.
“I don’t know, Beth. Tonight there are a lot more questions than we have answers. But what I do know is that he didn’t deserve to die.” Gus’s lips were set in a straight, firm line. “Not so young, and not that way.”
I shied away from the reality of murder. “They’ll find out who killed him, won’t they?”
“It’s not my case.” He put up a hand to stop my protest. “It’s not my case,” he repeated. “But Sam was one of Rynwood’s own. None of us will rest until his killer is put where he belongs.”
“Promise?” I held up my right hand in the Girl Scout salute, palm out, thumb holding down my little finger, three middle fingers standing straight. Scouting was another thing Gus and I shared.
Gus returned the salute. “I promise.”
And, oddly enough, I felt better.
