Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 06 - Extracurricular Murder (14 page)

I held up the cup of coffee. “You know me and my coffee.
This is the only place in three hundred miles to get a good cup”

She looked up at me expectantly. “What can I do for you?”

I gestured to the ARD room. “Just a couple of questions.
Clarification really. Won’t take five minutes.”

She led the way and took a seat on the far side of the round
table. I had discovered early in my so far unimpressive PI
career that the best questions were usually the most direct ones.
I began with a direct question. “Did Frances Holderman know
about your abortion on June 8, 2003 at the Birth Control
Planning Clinic?”

Her face turned to marble; her smile faded. She eyed me
coldly. I added, “The doctor was Evan J. Hodges, Kim. I know
all about it ” I paused. “I’ve told no one about this. I know it’s
very personal, but I also know George Holderman set it up for
you. Personally, knowing what I do about you, about your
daughter, Alicia, and your dedication to her, I find it difficult to
believe you would abort unless you were forced.”

The icy expression on her face faded into a wry grin. “You
think I killed George because he forced me to abort?”

“It’s one dandy motive. I heard that Frances Holderman
threatened a scandal if you didn’t abort.” I sipped the coffee
casually. “Anything to that?”

Her eyes lit gleefully, as if she was harboring some deep,
dark secret.

The amusement in her eyes unnerved me. “Something
funny?”

She chuckled, arching an eyebrow in such a manner that
instantly transformed her from a wide-eyed innocent into a
hard-faced woman of the street. “It would be a dandy motive if
it were true. But it isn’t.”

My jaw dropped open.

She narrowed her eyes. “Frances knew about the abortion.
But she didn’t threaten any scandal. In fact, she’s the one who
found Hodges. Abortions were his specialty. She knew him
from her old days. I never asked, but I imagine she used him
once or twice herself.” The brown-haired PE teacher gestured
at me. “Close your mouth. You’ll catch flies.”

“Huh?” I closed my mouth. The candor of her sordid admissions had stunned me. Regardless of the feminist movements
of the seventies and eighties pushing into various bastions of
masculinity, I was still of the school that believed in mother
and home and apple pie.

“I wanted the abortion.” She leaned forward, her eyes blazing. “You have any idea how expensive it is for a single mother to rear an autistic child?” Without giving me time to reply,
which I couldn’t have anyway, she said, “You do it because you
love them. You do everything for them. The cold, hard truth is
I didn’t have time for another.” She shrugged. “So I aborted.”
The fire in her eyes grew as cold as ice, daring judgment.

“What about Holderman?”

“What do you mean?”

“The abortion. He want it?”

A faint sneer twisted her lips. “Poor George. He wanted
whatever Frances wanted.”

I blinked in surprise. “What?”

“Yeah. Whatever Frances wanted, George did.”

Suddenly I had the picture. “So you’re saying that when you
learned you were pregnant, you went to Frances Holderman?
She set up the abortion, and George was simply the wheel man”

“No.” She shook her head. “Nothing like that. When Frances
found out about me and George, she pitched a fit. I had just discovered I was pregnant, and I didn’t need the additional hassle
of a betrayed wife. I broke it off with George, and at the same
time I told him I wanted the abortion. He said he’d find someone. So, he went to the most logical source for a doctor who
performed abortions, his own wife.”

I hesitated. Something didn’t make sense. “You mean,
despite the fact she was upset about you and George, she still
helped you out?”

She arched an eyebrow. “Hey, Tony, it wasn’t as if she were
a pristine virgin or anything like that. Sure, she was upset, but
she knew he was fooling around. He was always fooling around.
It upset her when she found out I was the one he was fooling
around with. But she cooled off in a hurry when she realized if
I didn’t abort, I would demand child support money. She knew
George’s history. In fact, she’d played the game before. That’s
how she got him.” Her voice dropped to a lower timbre. “Before
me, he slept with Eunice Seebell. According to Frances, he’d
had a couple of affairs earlier, even before he came to Safford
ISD. Naturally, Frances was angry when she found out about
me, but by then, she was used to his philandering.”

I glanced at my notepad. “You split the sheets in 2003. Who
came afterward? I mean, after you?”

She shrugged. “I think Frances stopped George.” She chuckled at a secret joke, then winked at me. “The truth is, I think she
swore to do a little clipping if he didn’t behave. You know, the
Lorena Bobbitt thing.”

When I first met Kim Nally, she had reminded me of a
Sunday School teacher, but now I knew my innocent little
Sunday School teacher was in truth not an innocent Sunday
School teacher after all.

She narrowed her eyes. “Look, Tony. I don’t care what you
or anyone thinks about me. My personal life is mine.” Her eyes
grew soft. “My child wants for nothing. She never will. Maybe
one day, she can go out on her own, in a small sort of way.” A
wicked gleam grew in her dark eyes. “In the meantime, when I
feel the itch, I’ll find somebody to scratch it”

She stared at me defiantly.

I stared back at her. I grinned. A slow smile played over her
lips in return. “Tell me one more thing, Kim.”

She stiffened. I sensed her growing antagonism. “No. Not about you.” She relaxed visibly, and I continued. “I was going
over Holderman’s appointments, I discovered seven sets of initials, yours included. Now, I think I know what relationship
most of them had with Holderman, but there is one set that
puzzles me. HW. The only school person I know with those initials is Harper Weems.” I didn’t tell her that something had
been nagging at me about Weems.

She nodded. “So?”

“So, do you know if Weems and Holderman had any business deals together?”

“Not that I know of. I didn’t think they had anything to do
with each other outside of school, but I could be wrong.”

I made a few notes in my notepad. “Weems been teaching
here long?”

Her forehead wrinkled in a faint frown. “I’ve been here nine
years. Harp was here when I came. I think he’s been here fifteen years or so”

An idea popped into my head. “He always been in the
wheelchair?”

“He was when I got here. Motorcycle wreck. I don’t know
how long ago. Paralyzed from the waist down. Can’t move a
muscle, but I think I told you that before.”

“But, didn’t he have some kind of accident just a few years
ago? Seems like he mentioned it to me”

“Yeah. He was out for a couple of years or so. Wrecked his
van on the way to visit his brother in Colorado. Some kind of
amnesia, but he’s fine now.” She hesitated. A curious grin
played over her tanned face. “Surely, you don’t suspect Harp,
do you?” When I didn’t reply immediately, she exclaimed,
“You do. You think Harp might have killed George.” Her tone
was incredulous.

“Well”-I shrugged-“stranger things have happened.”

She giggled. “Harp wouldn’t hurt a fly. Besides, Mr. PI,” she
said with a touch of amused sarcasm in her tone, “how would
he get upstairs? Don’t forget. We’re in the old wing. And it was built forty years before all the fancy handicapped stuff became
mandatory. No elevators. Not even a handicapped men’s room.
What do you think he might have done, walked on his hands
upstairs and then back down?”

That was it. That was what had been nagging at me about
Weems. His hands. That was it. His hands were soft. They should
have been callused from fifteen years of pushing a wheelchair.

Nally spoke up again. “You can’t be serious about Harp.”

I ducked my head, then looked up at her. “It would have been
a good trick, wouldn’t it?” But that was exactly what I was now
thinking. Of course, I hadn’t figured out just how Harp could have
slipped up on Holderman with the ball bat. Unless he wasn’t paralyzed. But if he wasn’t, then what kind of game was he playing?

She laughed. “Yeah. It would have been a good trick.”

“So,” I added, shifting the subject, “who do you think killed
him?”

She shrugged. “Beats me. I didn’t, and I don’t think Perry
Jacobs did either. And I know Harp couldn’t.”

“No ideas at all?”

She grew thoughtful. “I’ve studied it. I don’t see how anyone
could have slipped in there, killed George, then got away without someone spotting them. You’ve talked to everyone who
went into that wing, haven’t you?”

“What about someone slipping out the front door of the lobby,
cutting across the quadrangle to the side door of the old wing?”

Kim arched an eyebrow. “Frances?”

She was quick. I grinned. “Or Fred Seebell.”

She shrugged. “The band uses the quadrangle for practice.
That was football season, and during that time, they use the
quadrangle every night. The band director, Chase Sherman,
might have spotted someone. He always videos band practice.”

A surge of excitement coursed through my veins. “Chase
Sherman, you say.” I jotted the name.

“Yeah. Maybe he can help.”

Dropping by the band hall, I visited with Chase Sherman. As
he slipped the video of November 11, 2004 in the VCR, he
explained, “We video all our practices from three different
angles. If anyone was out there, they’ll be on video.”

For two hours, I reviewed each of the three angles from 8:40
to 9:45. Not a single soul cut across the quadrangle to the side
doors.

I grimaced. The videos blew the heck out of my little theory
that either Fred Seebell or Frances Holderman could have
slipped away from the reception and through the side door
unobserved. And their names were not on the list kept by the
hall monitors. Consequently, if they couldn’t get to Holderman,
they couldn’t kill him.

As I headed back to my pickup, I reprised my theories about
the others. Tentatively, I eliminated Kim Nally as a suspect,
pending Frances Holderman’s verification of Nally’s version of
her abortion.

Although I had concocted a possible scenario involving
Harper Weems, I found it difficult to believe he was the killer.
I did want to completely eliminate him from any suspicion, and
the easiest way was to find out if he could walk or not.

Remembering the two flats on my previous visit, I checked
the tires before I moved my pickup. Whoever was playing
tricks was serious this time. They had placed a roofing nail
under each of the four tires. I removed them and dropped them
in my pocket.

I studied the building before me, wondering if my trickster
was standing at a window watching, and laughing.

I headed for the Safford ISD administration building. From
the assistant superintendent of personnel, I learned the identity
of Weems’ primary care doctor, J. Marion Jeffcoat.

At three o’clock, I finally managed to see Dr. J. Marion
Jeffcoat, who proved grudgingly accommodating, not so much
because of my charm, personality, and devastating good looks,
but because of a telephone call from Billy Vanbiber, Chief of
Police, Safford, Texas, a call I had requested the chief make.

Jeffcoat was angry when the nurse showed me into his office.
“I don’t have much time, Mr. Boudreaux, so if you’ll tell me
what you want, I’ll answer as quickly as I can.” His words were
hard and clipped.

“Harper Weems, Doctor. The accident that paralyzed him.
That’s all I’m looking for.”

He nodded to the nurse. She disappeared, leaving us alone in
the office. The tension was palpable. I tried to be pleasant.
“Nice place you have here, Doc.”

His eyes were wide-set and icy green. “Harp in trouble?”

“Nope. Just a description of the injury that paralyzed him.”

The nurse re-entered and handed the doctor a folder.