“If Bernadette was in the building any time after she sent the resignation letter,” she told Lindsey, “someone would have seen her. We have a security system and teachers and staff need to swipe their cards to get in and out. I’d say the answer is pretty obvious. Bernadette didn’t write that letter. She didn’t send the postcard, either.”
“You think whoever killed her did.” Lindsey made a note of this, looking up at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows when he was done. “Makes me wonder how you know so much about it.”
“I don’t know anything about it.” Jazz felt like throwing her hands in the air, a commentary on the man’s logic, his reasoning, and his people skills. She controlled herself because she knew that was exactly what he was waiting for and she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. “I’m just guessing, that’s all. Just thinking that’s what makes sense.”
“Like that dog finding the body.”
“That makes plenty of sense. Gus is well trained and he’s certified. He’s got a great nose.”
“But if you knew where the body was to begin with—”
“Really?” This time, she didn’t care what Detective Lindsey thought of her or her reaction. The single word flew out of Jazz along with a snicker of disbelief. “I killed Bernadette three years ago and kept her body hidden all this time just so I could use a dog to find it and impress a bunch of seventh graders today? Doesn’t make much sense, does it?”
“Murder usually doesn’t,” Lindsey said.
Jazz begged to differ. From what she’d seen of murder, it made plenty of sense, at least to the murderer. This …
She looked around at the unused attic space, at the access room where Bernadette had remained hidden for so long. It made sense, all right. Perfect sense. So did the resignation letter that explained Bernadette’s absence after break and the postcard that pretty much guaranteed she and Eileen wouldn’t try to contact Bernadette. Wrapped in plastic, frozen, forgotten, decomposing in a place where no one would notice the smell or the scurrying of the small rodents that had obviously found Bernadette early on.
It made sense, all right.
Except for the part about how Jazz could have had anything to do with it.
Before Jazz could remind him, Eileen stepped forward. “I know you have questions to ask both of us. Maybe we should start with that resignation letter Jazz told you about. It would be in Jazz’s office, in the personnel files.”
“Yeah, that’s good.” Lindsey tucked his notebook in the breast pocket of the black sport coat that didn’t match his navy-blue pants. “There’s nothing else we can do here.” He led the way back to the stairway and waited for Eileen to go down ahead of him, and Jazz brought up the rear. “So tell me, Sister, you know everyone here at this school. Tell me, who could have had a reason to kill this Bernadette Quinn?”
At the bottom of the stairs, Eileen waited for him and for Jazz to step out in the hallway, too, before she twined her fingers together in front of her and set her mouth in a firm line.
“Well,” she told him, “me for one.”
CHAPTER 4
Detective Lindsey got a phone call just as they were all about to walk into Jazz’s office and he took it out in the hallway.
That was just fine with Jazz; it gave her a chance to sidle up to Eileen and hiss, “Are you crazy? You can’t say things like that to a cop. You had a reason to kill Bernadette? What’s he going to think?”
Eileen brushed her off and went into her own office, where she kicked off the pumps she’d put on in honor of Assembly Day and slid back into her TOMS. By the time she got back, she looked more like herself. More comfortable. More in control. “If he didn’t hear it from me, he was going to hear it from someone else,” she told Jazz. “That would make me look even more suspicious.”
“You’re not suspicious at all.” Jazz didn’t want it, but she poured a cup of coffee for herself from the to-go container the caterers had brought at the start of the day. It seemed like a million years ago. While she was at it, she poured a cup for Eileen, too, added cream and sugar, and handed it to her. “Anybody who thinks you could kill someone would have to be totally nuts.”
“You’ve got to admit…” Eileen took a healthy glug of the coffee. “There were days there at the end of the term when Bernadette gave us all reason.”
“You don’t say.” Detective Lindsey stepped into Jazz’s office. If he was impressed by the leaded glass, the high ceiling, or the rich oak flooring, he didn’t show it. In fact, he settled his weight back against one foot, and when he crossed his arms over his broad chest, the plastic bag he was holding crinkled.
“She was going through a hard time,” Jazz told him, eager to back up Eileen’s assessment. Just as eager to—Jazz hoped—get Lindsey’s mind off what he’d just heard—she crossed over to the filing cabinets, unlocked the proper one, and took out Bernadette’s file. Page by page, she made copies of everything in it, but when she got to the resignation letter—the last thing in Bernadette’s file—she knew better than to touch it. She glanced over it and the words that had seemed so normal, so mundane.
“It is with the greatest regret that I inform you that as of today…”
Rather than go on, Jazz looked over her shoulder at Lindsey, pointed.
He set down the evidence bag he was carrying on Jazz’s desk, and from inside it Bernadette’s big gold cross caught the light and winked at Jazz. All that was left of Bernadette. Cross and bones.
Jazz’s heart clutched, but before she had a chance to give in to the sadness that wrapped around her like a dark cloud, Lindsey closed in on her, slipped on a pair of latex gloves, and dropped the resignation letter into another evidence bag.
“Fingerprints,” he explained. He really didn’t have to. Jazz had seen enough cops shows on TV. She knew the drill.
Jazz glanced at the other evidence bag, the one he’d set on her desk. “What about fingerprints on Bernadette’s cross?”
“If we’re lucky,” he conceded. “Now, you were saying…? About Ms. Quinn being difficult?”
Jazz knew she’d get nothing else from him. Not about the cross. Not about anything else they might have found up in the attic. “I was saying that Bernadette was good at what she did. When she was in front of a class, she was really on, if you know what I mean. But it was her first year teaching and she still had a lot to learn about working with the staff and the other teachers, about keeping that connection going with the girls even when class wasn’t in session. She didn’t think that was a problem. Maybe that’s why it was so frustrating dealing with her.”
The detective turned a look on Eileen. “So that’s what you meant when you said you could have killed her?”
“I didn’t say I could have killed her,” she reminded him, her voice as even as the look she gave him. “I did say if I was a different sort of person, I might have had reason. The last day Bernadette was here…” She considered her words. “We had an argument. About how the school was trying to help Bernadette adjust and Bernadette didn’t think she needed help. Our talk…” She put a spin on the word that should have told Lindsey exactly how ugly it got. “It was loud and it was long. Maybe if I’d been more patient … Maybe if I’d been more understanding…”