He sprang to attention. “Yes, Mrs. Kennedy.”
I led the way to my office. “Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble.” I closed the door behind us. “And this is more of a personal matter, anyway.”
“Yes, Mrs. Kennedy.”
Time and time again, I’d asked him to call me Beth. “I cannot, Mrs. Kennedy,” he always said. “It would be disrespectful.” Maybe to him it was disrespectful, but it made me feel as if my mother-in-law were standing behind me.
I sat in my desk chair and Paoze perched on the edge of the chair facing me. “Remember the night I dropped you off at your house?” I asked. “Well, a couple of blocks away I thought I saw a . . . a friend of mine. This friend went into a two-story house, a white house with black shutters and what looked like a metal door.” It also had bars on the windows, but so did most houses in that neighborhood.
Paoze didn’t say anything.
“Do you know the house?” I asked.
He looked at his knees, at his hands, at his knees. “Yes.”
The drawn-out hesitation kicked my anxiety into alert mode. He knew something about the house. Something bad. It was a drug house. It was a brothel. It was—
Paoze looked up and met my gaze. “This friend. Do you know her well?”
I frowned. “Her? It’s not a she at all. It’s a he.”
The boy’s brown eyes opened wide. “A man? At that house?” His fingers began tap-tap-tapping his kneecaps. “No man should be going to that house. No man should be let in the door. It is not safe.”
“Not safe? What are you talking about? Randy went up to the door and knocked. The door opened, and he went inside. What’s unsafe about that?”
“Randy? Big Mr. Jarvis?” Paoze spread his arms wide.
“Well, yes.”
The kid smiled, and the tension left his body. “Then this is right. Mr. Jarvis belongs there.”
This conversation might have made sense to Paoze, but I was missing something—like the whole thing. “Belongs where?”
“I . . .” He went back to studying his knees. “I should not tell.”
Shouldn’t or couldn’t? Or wouldn’t? Though his grasp of the English language was firm in a general way, sometimes mistakes slipped into his speech. “Why not?” I asked. “Mr. Jarvis isn’t doing something wrong, is he?”
“Oh, no.” Paoze shook his head vigorously. “Mr. Jarvis is a very good man. I wish to be like him when I grow older.”
Randy as a role model? The mind boggled.
“Kayla says—” He came to an abrupt halt.
“Sara’s roommate?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “And I should not say more.”
Curiouser and curiouser. What could involve an attractive college junior and a sixtysomething man from Rynwood who ran a gas station and ate large bags of nacho chips for breakfast? I knew Sara, Kayla, and Paoze had a comfortable friendship, but how did Randy figure into the mix? “I don’t want you to break a confidence,” I said. “I just . . .” Just what? What exactly was I trying to do here?
“Kayla only goes during the week.” Paoze’s hands were gripping each other. “I am glad she does not volunteer on weekends. That is when it can get very bad.”
What could Kayla be doing as a volunteer at a place with a metal door and bars on the windows? “Mr. Jarvis is also a volunteer.”
“Yes.”
I thought about this. Randy, a volunteer. Kayla, a volunteer. Kayla’s major was social work. Randy was the treasurer for the Tarver PTA, a child advocacy organization. There were dots here to connect, but the dots were a little too far apart for me to make the leaps.
“Kayla said Mr. Jarvis is very brave,” Paoze said. “I do not worry about her when Mr. Jarvis is there.”
Dot to dot to dot. I’d figured it out. “That house is a women’s shelter,” I said. “Where women and children can go if they feel they’re in danger.”
Paoze’s brown face went very still. “I should not have said. It is much of a secret.”
“Don’t worry.” I smiled at him. “The secret is safe with me.”
“You will not tell?”
“I will not tell, Paoze. And neither did you,” I said softly. “I reached my own conclusions, that’s all.”
After he left, I took the list out of my desk drawer and picked up a pen. I drew a line through the name of Randy Jarvis.
Two down, nine to go.
“Thank you for meeting with me.” Gary Kemmerer, Tarver’s acting principal, folded his hands on top of the desk. Erica, Randy, Julie, and I were representing the PTA, and all four of us were uncomfortable. Five, I amended, as I heard Gary’s toes tapping under the desk.
“As acting principal,” Gary said, “I might not remain in this office for long. The school board is starting a search, and they’re anxious to appoint a new principal as soon as possible.”
“You apply for the job?” Randy asked.
Erica and I blinked at his tactlessness. Julie moved her hands over her oversized belly and looked radiant.
“Yes, in fact, I did.” Gary frowned at Randy. “But that’s not the purpose of this meeting. I invited you here to establish common ground with the PTA. The past ten years have seen a fair share of adversarial instances, and I want to say I’ll do my best to . . .”
He was lapsing into corporate-speak. I put a noncommittal expression on my face and drifted away. Jenna and her apology for whatever. Oliver and enuresis. Paoze. Marina. WisconSINs. Halloween. The threatening e- mails.
“Beth? You don’t approve of this idea?” Gary asked.
I jerked back from the memory of a Marina too frightened to talk. “Um . . .”
“The PTA,” Erica said, “is more than pleased to work hand in hand with Tarver’s leadership—”
“What if the police don’t find the killer?” I blurted out. “I’m worried about these kids if the murderer goes free.”
Erica, Randy, Julie, and Gary all stared at me.
“I know this isn’t what we came here to discuss,” I said, “but it’s a huge concern of mine.” For lots of reasons. “I hear the police have been talking to the teachers. Have they been talking to the staff and administration, too?”
“Good point,” Erica said. “Staff dealt with Agnes from eight thirty in the morning to four in the afternoon. I’m sure most of them had occasional run-ins with her. How about you, Gary?”
“What about me?” His chin went up.
“Do you have an alibi?” Erica smiled, but the steel wasn’t far below the surface.
“As a matter of fact, yes. Now about this—”
“What is it?” Julie asked.
“What is what?”
“Your alibi.” She folded her hands over her tummy. “I think the parents of Tarver children deserve to know that the acting principal has a solid alibi.”
“The police were satisfied.”
“But I’m not.”
They stared at each other, grim-faced, until Erica spoke up. “She has a point, Gary. If you tell us, we can reassure everyone that Tarver is in good hands.”
“The police—”
Erica shook her head. “What the police think doesn’t matter. It’s what the Tarver parents think that counts.
