kept the extra key, I went to her place. Her car was parked in its regular spot. Her purse was inside the apartment. When I heard about an unidentified woman jogger being injured up at the park on Boxer Bluff, I contacted the police.” He glanced back at the hospital, three floors rising toward the gray heavens, snow covering the grounds and piling on the cars parked in the lot.
“So, they asked you to ID her.”
“Yeah.”
“They were homicide detectives.”
“I know. I don’t get it,” he admitted. “She was still alive when we got here and I thought it was just an accident.”
“So did I.” Her eyebrows knitted for the briefest of seconds before she forced a smile again. “Well, tell Eli I said hello.”
“I will.”
She was off then, black boots walking quickly across the lot to a spot where a silver Ford Edge was parked. She opened the SUV’s door and turned, waving to him, before sliding inside. Less than a minute later she’d reversed out of the space, then cranked the wheel and driven out of the lot, her taillights twin red dots as she melded into a stream of traffic.
Trace hadn’t even realized he’d been standing and watching her until her car had disappeared. Then he finally climbed inside and fired up his Chevy.
Funny how he found Eli’s doctor attractive.
At that thought, he scowled and reminded himself she was off-limits. Besides, there was something about her that reminded him of Leanna, Eli’s mother, and that was enough to convince him to remain single. His marriage to her had been thankfully brief, and he’d ended up with a son out of the deal, even if the boy wasn’t biologically his.
Didn’t matter.
He ground the gears of the old truck, flipped on the wipers, and watched as they shoved an inch of snow off the windshield. Easing the Chevy out of the lot, he glanced back at the hospital and thought of Jocelyn Wallis, his kid’s teacher, a woman with whom he’d made love. Now dead. His jaw slid to one side. Didn’t seem fair. Had she tripped and fallen in a freak accident? Or, he wondered, had she been helped over that short wall with the hope that she would end up in the river?
Why else would
Had someone jostled her, knocked her over the ledge, and then, panicking, taken off? Or had she been intentionally pushed? A random victim? Or a target?
Snow was really coming down now, big, fat flakes that covered the streets and flocked the surrounding shrubbery. Rather than driving directly back to the ranch as he’d planned, he turned onto the road that wound around the edge of the bluff to the park. The road was steep; the old engine ground as his tires slipped a bit. At the crest, he nosed into a parking spot and climbed out to walk along the jogging path to the area where Jocelyn’s body had been discovered.
Hands plunged deep into the pockets of his jacket, he stared across the short, crumbling, ice-encrusted wall. Far below, the river rushed by, its angry roar echoing in his ears. Above the swift, icy current a ledge protruded, and Trace saw that the snow upon that rocky shelf had been disturbed, big ruts and divots cut into the blanket, now slowly being recovered by new flakes.
“What the hell happened?” he whispered, his breath fogging, his words inaudible over the sound of the surging river. He couldn’t help feeling a little stab of undeserved guilt. What if he’d been around to take her call? What if he’d met with her? What if something he’d done, one little seemingly innocuous thing, could have changed the course of history? Could a bit of timing have saved her?
“I’m sorry,” he said aloud but wasn’t even sure he understood why he’d murmured the words. Her death seemed such a waste.
Preventable?
Who knew?
He turned his gaze away from the river, to the park, where spruce, pine, and hemlock showed frigid, frosted needles and the aspens stood with naked branches. Two groups of women in stocking caps and gloves walked briskly by, a man jogged, and a couple, their baby wrapped close to the husband in some kind of sling, strolled past.
Seemingly serene.
A winter wonderland.
Aside from the snow disturbed on the ledge far below, where Jocelyn Wallis had tumbled to her death.
With no answers about a woman he barely knew, he returned to his vehicle and backed into the street, then guided his truck to the road that wound out of the town to the surrounding farmland. He needed to see about his kid and relieve Ed and Tilly. They did have a ranch of their own to run.
All the way home, he thought of Jocelyn and Leanna and, now, Acacia Lambert, the doctor who reminded him of two women who had been a part of his life, but the foremost thought on his mind was how he was going to tell his young son that his teacher, Miss Wallis, was gone.
“I can’t tell you much about Jocelyn except that she was an excellent teacher,” Barbara Killingsworth said from the far side of a wide desk in an office decorated with framed, matted artwork created presumably by the students of Evergreen Elementary. Rudimentary houses drawn in crayon were mounted beside detailed representations of buildings and still lifes brushed in shades of watercolor or etched in pencil.
Pescoli and Alvarez were seated in the two visitors’ chairs, while the principal, a slim woman with slightly pinched features and pale skin, folded her hands over the desk. She sat as straight as if she had a metal rod up her spine; her blouse was crisply ironed; her brown sweater without a speck of lint or bit of fuzz. Not one strand of highlighted hair dared be out of place.
The terms
The wall behind Killingsworth’s desk was a bookcase filled with tomes on child psychology, education, and school administration. The top of her desk was neat as a pin, with only a bud vase holding a sprig of holly, a picture of her and some friends in a tropical paradise, a sun-spangled blue ocean glittering behind three women holding up drinks with parasols in the cups, and a thick manila folder marked WALLIS, JOCELYN.
“I know she was married a couple of times, no children, and her parents live in Twin Falls, Idaho, and, I think, a sister who lives in San Francisco. She visited there last summer.” Principal Killingsworth’s neatly plucked brows drew together to show a small line in her forehead.
“I believe her sister’s name is… Jacqueline. I remember because it was a lot like her name. But… I’m sure she referred to her as a stepsister. Maybe ten years older? I think Jocelyn said her father had been married once before, but I’m not sure of that.” Sadness darkened her eyes, and her hand trembled slightly as she touched the tips of polished nails to her lips. “This is a very difficult day for all of us at Evergreen.”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Alvarez said.
Killingsworth nodded, and her gaze focused a little more tightly on Alvarez. “You said you were detectives. Do you think there was more to her death than an accident?”
“Just covering all our bases.” Pescoli gave the stock answer, but the principal didn’t look as if her worries were allayed. She set up appointments with Mia Calloway, the school secretary and a friend of Jocelyn Wallis’s, and two other first grade teachers, part of the “team” who worked together, offering to step into the classes as the teachers spoke to the detectives.
They didn’t learn much more about Jocelyn Wallis, only that she had definitely been married twice, she had no kids, the exes were out of the picture, and other than a little online dating, the only man she’d seen since moving to Grizzly Falls was Trace O’Halleran.
Eventually, they left Evergreen Elementary, where the bell had just rung for recess and the kids were walking in long, snaking lines toward the covered playground area.
They slid into Pescoli’s Jeep, and Alvarez said, “Let’s get coffee,” just as her cell phone rang. Answering with one hand, she clicked on her seat belt with the other as Pescoli drove around the teachers’ vehicles and out of the
