Different Paths (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

Lenny and Tess were at the farm when we got home. Tess came running out to greet us, Queenie on her heels, and Nick picked her up and swung her around while she squealed.

When he set her down I ruffled her hair. “Hey, Pumpkin.”

“Why aren’t you using your crutches? Is your foot all better?”

“Well, it
feels
better.”

“Mom said you were kinda crabby when it hurt.”

Nick turned a laugh into a cough.

I took a breath through my nose, then said, “I think we all get kinda crabby when we hurt, don’t you?”

“Oh, sure. You should’ve seen Mom when she had the stomach flu last winter. I didn’t want to even talk to her.” She leaned closer. “But that was also ‘cause she smelled bad.”

Now Nick did laugh, and I felt a whole lot better.

“Come in for lunch, guys!” Lucy was framed by the kitchen window as she yelled out at us.

“We’d better not tell your mom we were talking about this, okay, Tess?”

She looked surprised, but agreed. “Okay.”

The table was set for five.

“Zach’s not eating with us?” I asked.

Lucy set the steaming plate of ribs on the table. “The boys went back to Randy’s place. I guess he has some paint they were going to use for their signs.”

“In Randy’s car?”

“Why? What’s wrong with his car?”

“Nothing.” That I knew of. “It’s just that Zach’s parents don’t want Zach riding with Randy.”

She filled my glass with milk. “Didn’t know that.”

“How come?” Tess asked, already with a milk mustache.

Lucy wiped it off with her thumb. “Probably because Randy’s a brand new driver.”

“Yup,” I said. “And a boy, at that.”

“Hey, now,” Nick said.

“You know what I mean.”

The floor shook and Lenny appeared from the living room. “Hey, all. Smells great, hon.”

She sat, and we sang the blessing—“God is Great” set to “Rock around the Clock,” accompanied by snapping fingers. I spared everyone’s ears and snapped while everyone else sang.

“So, Lenny, Lucy tells me you helped the Hershbergers move in last Saturday.”

He took a piece of fresh bread and smeared a slab of low-fat margarine on it. I guessed Lucy was trying to reduce that gut of his. “Sure did. Ma called the night before, trying to round up movers. I was glad to help out.”

“Did many people show up?”

“Lots, actually. A whole group from their church, including the MYF, and her brother-in-law. Katherine and her sister mostly told us where to put stuff.”

I took a bite of ribs and spent a moment savoring the rich taste. “Awesome, Luce.”

She grinned. “Thanks.”

I swallowed and took a drink of milk. “What about the church? Did you take stuff over there, too?”

“Yup. They’d packed it all so her work things were in the front of the truck. We took out their personal things and moved on to the church. There wasn’t all that much. Books and artwork and stuff.”

Stuff that had all been ruined.

“Did their son help? Trevor?”

“High school age, right? I guess you could say he helped, but mostly he just hung around and watched us work. The one time he did try to help carry a big dresser he stepped on their dog.”

I winced. “Hurt it?”

“They were afraid he broke its ribs. Ma had ’em call Carla, and she came out to look at it.”

I froze. “Carla was there?”

“Yeah. She was on-call that weekend and figured with them moving and all it was easier for her to drive out instead of making them go to the office.”

And she had a whole supply of vet stuff right on her own truck. At least until the next day.

They were all looking at me, Nick with more understanding then the others.

“What?” Lucy said. “You think it had something to do with her…” She glanced at Tess. “With her truck?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at my plate and considered how cold it would get if I got up to make a phone call. I decided it didn’t matter. I crossed the room and dialed Carla’s number. This time neither she nor Bryan answered. I left a message for her to call me—saying I meant it this time—and sat back down.

Somehow the food wasn’t quite as appetizing as before.

I had finally found a connection.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Detective Willard was in court for the day, and Gladys wasn’t sure she’d see him again before tomorrow. She promised to leave a message on his cell phone to call me as soon as he could.

I didn’t know what else I could do, until I thought of one more connection between Carla and the Hershbergers. Well, not a
connection
, exactly, but a way someone would’ve known about them both.

“Nick?”

He blinked up at me from the couch, where he had just lain down to take an after-lunch nap. I studied him, hoping not to see the bloodshot eyes he got when he was feeling really sick. I was glad to see what would pass as normal tiredness.

I sat on the arm of the sofa. “What kind of information do you think I could get on Bryan at his old schools?”

He squinted. “What do you mean?”

“Like if I went to the office, would they tell me anything?”

He scrunched a throw pillow against his chest, resting his arms on it. “Maybe the year he graduated, but nothing interesting, I’m sure. What are you trying to find?”

I swiveled to put my feet on the couch, and rested my elbows on my knees. “I don’t know. Anything that would give me a clue to his background.”

Nick sighed. “Why are you having such a hard time trusting Carla on this?”

“Because she just
met
him. She’s known him less than a month and he’s sleeping over at her house. I don’t like it. I want to find out more about him. And what if…”

He waited.

“What if he’s the one doing all this stuff?”

He blinked. “Now you’ve lost me. Why would he torment women? And kill a doctor that’s not even his?”

“Do we know that for sure? That she wasn’t his doctor?”

“Stella…”

“I don’t know why he’d do it. But that’s what I’m saying. He sees Carla every day. Every night, too, while he’s staying at her place. He could easily know about the Hershbergers through her, since she went on a house call there.”

“And the church?”

I lifted my shoulders, and dropped them heavily. “There could be a connection.”

“Sure. There could be.” He took a deep breath and sat up. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”

“No. Stay here.”

“But—”

“You need to sleep. And I don’t want to leave Lucy here, alone with Tess.”

“But if I’m asleep—”

“Your truck is still out there. It looks like more people are here.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” I got down and hobbled over to get my keys. “I shouldn’t be too long.”

“Be careful. Here.” He held out his cell phone. “Take this, just in case.”

“In case what? Miranda calls and wants to have a nice, sisterly chat?”

He laughed and pressed it into my hand. “Just you wait. Some day you’ll be surprised. You might actually end up liking each other.”

“Yeah. Sure. Like that’s gonna happen.”

I thought maybe I should kiss him good-bye, but he was already lying down again, and his eyes were closed. I shut the door quietly on the way out.

After telling Lucy where I was going, I made my way to North Penn High School. The building was huge, and it took me a few minutes to find a parking place and trek to the office.

“Can I help you?” The secretary gave what was probably supposed to be a smile, but came through as something else. Poor woman looked harassed.

“I’m doing some research and was wondering if someone might talk with me about a student who graduated here some years ago.”

“Oh, like a historical paper?”

Yeah, right. “Something like that.”

She glanced around the office, but no one else was listening to our conversation who could jump in. “Who are you researching?”

“Bryan Walker. He graduated in the early 90s. ’93, I think.”

She pursed her lips and shook her head at the same time, which made her look pretty funny. I didn’t laugh.

“I wasn’t here then, yet.” She turned. “Viola? Hey, Viola.”

An older woman looked up from her computer, sliding her glasses up onto her nose to look at the secretary. “Yeah?”

“You were around in ’93, weren’t you?”

“I’ve been here since ’85.”

The secretary pointed at me with her thumb. “This lady wants to know about someone named— What was his name?”

“Bryan Walker. He graduated in ’93.”

“What do you want to know?” The older lady again. Crabby and blunt.

“Whatever you can tell me.”

“There’s copies of the school yearbooks in the library, but other than that you’re on your own. I couldn’t say anything even if I could remember it, and let me tell you, with three thousand kids in this school every year I don’t remember many of them. They’ve got to be really bad or really good to make an impression.”

“So he wasn’t either?”

“Not so’s I remember. But then, like I said, I couldn’t tell you if I did.”

She turned back to her computer, her back to me. The secretary shrugged. “There’s your answer.”

Great. “So where’s the library?”

She pointed out the door. “To the left. Down the hall. Can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.” A whole helluva lot.

“Wait!” She stood up. “You’re going to have to sign this—” A Visitor list. “—and wear this.” A clip-on badge that said, “VISITOR.”

I did both, and left.

The library was teeming with kids, which shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Somehow I didn’t figure students into my trip to the school except for sitting quietly in class, texting each other. It’s hard to imagine teenagers actually going into a library, but I suppose they have to sometimes, when their teachers make them.

The librarian was a young woman with short hair and a pixie nose, who looked happier to be in a school library than seemed possible. A plaque on her desk said, “Ms. Richardson.” She smiled. “Can I help you find something?”

“School yearbooks.”

“They’ll be in the reference section. Over there. Second shelf from the top.”

“Thanks.”

“Let me know if you need anything else.”

Like a reason to justify my hesitation about Bryan? She didn’t look old enough to remember when he’d attended school. Although maybe as a classmate.

“Did you go to school here?”

She looked surprised. “No, actually, I grew up in Illinois.”

“Oh. Never mind, then.”

The annuals were easy to find, but picking Bryan out of the crowd proved a lot harder. As the crabby office lady had said, there are thousands of kids at North Penn High School, and it took a major event for someone to stick out.

I had the advantage of the Internet search, so I picked out the ’92-’93 yearbook first, and found him on the basketball team. And the cross-country team. Of course. Hadn’t Babs said he goes to the gym to run? (And run, and run, and run?) A peek in the yearbooks around that one showed he actually graduated in 1994. His senior picture, serious, with him in dark suit and tie, looked just like him. He’d only added a few wrinkles. And his hair was now a bit thinner.

While looking at that year’s cross-country section I was struck with an idea. I put back that yearbook and grabbed the most recent one. The basketball coach was different now, but one glance at the cross-country team showed the same guy. Older now, with gray hair, but the same. Royce Byler. Then and now.

Talk about commitment.

I slid the annual back into its slot and returned to Ms. Richardson, the librarian. She looked just as happy as before.

“Can you tell me where I might find the cross-country coach?”

She pondered this for a moment before turning to her computer and typing briskly. It didn’t take long.

“He’s teaching freshman health right now. Class will be over in—” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “—twelve minutes.”

“And where would that be?”

She looked back at the computer. “Second floor. All the way down the hall. Room 47.”

I thanked her and left the library, finding the stairs after a minute of searching, and the classroom exactly where she said it would be. Through the door’s window I could see the coach/teacher at the dry erase board, scribbling something no one could possibly read. Then I stepped back and leaned on the wall to wait.

Ten minutes later I about had a heart attack when the bell rang and the door slammed open, almost crushing me. Guess I should’ve stood on the other side.

I waited for the rush of kids to stop before stepping into the doorway. Royce Byler was still at the board, but this time he was erasing the illegible scribbles. He glanced up, taking in my VISITOR tag. “Help you?”

“Yeah. You’re the cross-country coach?”

“Sure am. You interested in helping out?”

Uh. Right. “No, I’m doing some…research…and wondered if you might remember a runner named Bryan Walker.”

“Bryan? Sure. He was one of my best for a couple of years.”

“Just a couple?”

He shrugged. “Things happen.”

“Like what?”

The eraser stilled, and he studied me. “Who are you, again?”

“Name’s Stella Crown. Just trying to find out some information about him.”

“Because…?”

Honesty? Seemed the best route, as I’m a terrible liar.

“My friend recently started dating him. I’m looking out for her.”

A smile tickled his lips. “Watch dog, huh?”

“Sort of.”

He finished wiping the board and leaned against it. “Bryan was a good guy. Strong runner. Good student.” He hesitated.

“Was?”

“Oh, he’s still a good guy. He just had some struggles. His dad died during his sophomore year. Left him with his mom and three younger sisters. He was never the same after that. Much more serious. Actually worked harder at running, if that were possible, but his heart wasn’t in it. During the fall of his second year, before his dad died, I’d thought he’d be able to get an athletic scholarship to college, when the time came, but that never happened. I’m not sure he even went to college.”

“He did. MontCo. At least for a year or two.”

“Probably didn’t run, though.”

“Don’t know about that.”

He pushed himself away from the board and looked at his watch.

I paused, then asked, “How about girls?”

“Like girlfriends? No. At least none that I knew about. And he didn’t joke around, even with friends. When we’d go on trips with the women’s team he’d be the guy in the front of the bus sleeping. And those meets that lots of parents would come and take their kids home with them? He’d be one of the two kids returning on the bus. Sad, really.”

“You know his mom?”

“Just to look at. She rarely came to a meet. Had those three younger daughters, you know.”

Students began trickling into the classroom and Byler’s attention wandered toward them.

I backed out of the way. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“Sure. I hope it turns out well. He really was a good kid. I hope she’s a good one, too.”

Uh-huh.

I waited for a break in the flow through the door, and made my escape.