“Long lunches?” Daisy asked. “The Coach?”
“He called them ‘meetings’ so Wilma wouldn’t start asking questions. He went over to Parkwood so she couldn’t just stop by.” He nodded toward the photos on the coach’s desk—three blonde women standing on a beach with their arms wrapped around each other. One of the women I now recognized as the widow I’d seen at the visitation—Coach Farley’s wife, Wilma Louise.
Curious. I had never seen Coach Farley lunching in Parkwood anywhere. There were only so many choices. Where was he really going?
“I was planning to turn him in and then show the superintendent that I was ready and able to step into the job. I need the raise. My wife’s cat’s about to have another litter. Expensive little buggers.”
A litter of King Archies would put me in the poorhouse in food bills alone.
“But you never made it to the superintendent because Farley got killed the night before.”
He nodded miserably. “And now I can’t ask for his job or I’ll look guilty. Someone else will get it and I’ll have to stop bringing my tuna fish again.” I had never seen anyone look so forlorn about canned fish in my life.
“What kind of car do you drive?” I asked, switching gears.
“It’s a 1969 Mustang, why?”
The 1969 Mustang was a sweet muscle car with rounded headlights, that was why. This theory was starting to have more and more promise every minute.
“But I can prove I’m innocent,” he said quickly. “I have video.”
My mouth dropped open and I felt the insta-buzz I always got when I received a huge lead on a story. “You have video of the hit-and-run?”
He shook his head, dashing my excitement. “It’s a video of me packing up the equipment. I have a friend in district security. I got him to let me look at the footage from the stadium cameras once I realized people could be suspicious about me. I thought maybe you could see me on one of the cameras and it would prove I didn’t do it. And I was right. My friend could get fired, but he owed me, so he sent me this as long as I don’t use his name.”
He pulled out his phone and hunted around on it, then turned the screen toward us. The video showed a man wearing a baseball cap scooping footballs and helmets into bags. With the cap on, it was impossible to tell who it was. Could have been Kermit, but it also could have been just about any other man in Parkwood. It was thin proof at best.
“Wait, is that your car?” Daisy pointed to a tiny speck in the background, way off in the upper parking lot. A red muscle car with rounded headlights.
He nodded. “I had to carry those bags all the way out there by myself, as you’ll see in the recording. It’s at the eighteen minute mark.”
I checked the time stamp on the video. “How long is this recording?”
“Twenty-two minutes. I had a hard time getting one of the helmets in.”
He touched the bottom of the screen and slid his finger slowly to the right. We watched as sped-up Kermit—at one point he turned and scratched his head in consternation, revealing his face to the camera—packed up for eighteen minutes, then hauled the bag up the hill toward the upper lot. I did a little mental math. His story checked out. If he was packing and loading materials for twenty-two minutes, there was no way he could have been driving through the parking lot where Coach Farley was killed.
“Will your friend send me that?” I asked, thinking I could possibly turn up other useful clues if I got a good, hard look at it on my own time. Maybe the real killer was in the background somewhere.
He blanched and turned the phone screen to his chest, as if we hadn’t just been watching it. “No way. He wants his name kept out of this, remember?”
“I won’t bring it in. He can send it to me anonymously.”
“Or you could leak it.”
“She wouldn’t do that,” Daisy said, and in that moment I loved her for her loyalty.
He seemed to think about it, then changed his mind and shook his head, backing away from us. “No.”
“And you don’t think the police will want to see it?”
“They probably already have. If not, they can write up a warrant for it. I’m not getting my friend fired.”
“Even if that means you might be sitting on a clue that could solve the crime?” Daisy asked. “Like a video of the killer’s car driving away? You’d let one friend’s murder go unsolved to protect another friend’s job?”
He swallowed nervously. “I already told you. Gerald Farley and I were not friends.”
“Thank you for your time,” I said quietly. I turned to Daisy. “You ready?”
By the indignant look on her face, I could tell she clearly hadn’t caught on yet. “But he has all kinds of motive. And round headlights.”
“I thought you were going to be unbiased,” Kermit said.
“We’re done here. Get out.” And there was something in his voice that told me this time he meant it.
But I was ready to go, anyway.
There was video proof: Kermit Hoopsick was not our guy.
We were silent in the car on the way to Wilma Louise’s house. I was pretty sure we were thinking the same thing—if it wasn’t Wickham or Kermit, we had two swings and two misses. So far all we’d managed to prove was who didn’t kill Coach Farley. If we were going to solve the crime by process of elimination of everyone who might have had a grudge against the coach, this was going to take a while.
“We still need to talk to Paulie,” I finally said, breaking the silence. “That may be the conversation that blows this whole story wide open. You never know.”
“Yeah,” she said, staring out her window. “I guess.”
“What do you mean, you
