Murder by the Slice (17 page)

Her eyes widened. “Oh, Lord. I don’t believe it. You think Gary killed poor Shannon.”

“We just need to ask him some more questions—” Mike began again.

Frances sank wearily into her chair and waved them out of the office. “Go on,” she said. “I don’t believe it, but do what you have to do.”

Mike led Fitzgerald and Harrison out of the office and down the hall toward the cafeteria. The walls seemed strangely bare to Mike, and it took him a moment to realize why that was so. There were no Halloween decorations. When he had gone to elementary school, the walls would have been covered with cardboard jack-o’-lanterns, witches, skeletons, and mummies. Not in these days of political correctness run amok, though, when the absolute worst thing anybody could do was offend someone else’s delicate sensibilities. Mike sighed as he reached the cafeteria, wondering if kids today even had any idea of what they were missing.

A pair of doors led into the big room, one of them down at the end of the hall, next to the door that opened out onto the playground. Mike motioned wordlessly for Fitzgerald to cover that one; then he and Harrison went into the cafeteria through the first door.

Gary Oakley and another custodian were carrying one of the tables into its proper position for lunch. The table was turned on its side, the bench seats that formed its legs still folded against the bottom of it. When the custodians had it in place they would unfold the benches and set the whole thing upright. About half the tables were already set up. The others were still folded and leaned against the wall.

Oakley’s back was toward the doors as he and the other man carried the table. The other custodian saw the deputies entering the cafeteria and looked surprised, as anyone would have under the circumstances. Oakley must have noticed the man’s expression, because he turned his head to look over his shoulder.

“Mr. Oakley,” Mike said, “we need to talk to you for a minute.”

He was watching Oakley’s face closely and saw the sudden leap of fear in the man’s eyes. Oakley’s gaze darted from Mike and Harrison across the room to Fitzgerald and back.

Uh-oh,
Mike thought.

Oakley dropped the table with a crash, spun around, and darted toward the front of the cafeteria. A stage was located there, so that the big room would be converted to an auditorium for PTO meetings, programs, assemblies, and the like. Mike recalled for a second that when he was a kid, it had been common for rooms like this to be referred to by the odd hybrid word “cafetorium.”

He didn’t know if there was any way out through the stage area. A backstage door might lead into another room, the music room, for example. He just didn’t know.

So he broke into a run after Oakley and yelled, “Stop!”

Chapter 16

Oakley didn’t even slow down as he slapped a hand on the stage and vaulted onto it. Steps at each side of the stage led up to it, but Mike didn’t take the time to veer to either side. He leaped onto the stage right behind Oakley and tackled him just as the custodian started to push his way past the closed curtain. The thick, heavy curtain slowed Oakley down just enough for Mike to be able to catch him.

Both men struggled on the smooth wooden floor of the stage as the curtain swirled around them. Oakley desperately tried to writhe out of Mike’s grip, but Mike managed to get a good hold on Oakley’s right arm, and twisted it behind the man’s back. Oakley yelped in pain. He flailed with his left arm and cracked his fist into Mike’s jaw in a backhanded blow. Mike grunted and felt anger surging up inside him. He suppressed it with an effort. A lawman couldn’t afford to lose his temper. He tightened his grip on Oakley’s wrist and twisted harder. Oakley sobbed and went limp.

Harrison and Fitzgerald reached them just then. Harrison had his handcuffs out. He clicked one of them shut around the wrist that Mike held, then Fitzgerald jerked Oakley’s other arm behind his back and Harrison cuffed that wrist, too. Mike let go of Oakley and rolled onto his back to catch his breath as the other two deputies took hold of the custodian and hauled him to his feet.

“You’re under arrest,” Fitzgerald said.

“I—I didn’t do anything!” Oakley said between sobs.

“How about resisting arrest and assaulting an officer?”

“I didn’t mean to! I just got scared! I didn’t assault anybody!”

Mike climbed to his feet and rubbed his jaw where Oakley had clipped him. “Tell that to my jaw,” he said. “If you didn’t do anything, why’d you run?” Quickly, he held up a hand before Oakley could say anything. “Don’t answer that.”

He took a laminated card from his shirt pocket and read Oakley his rights, making sure the man nodded that he understood them before anything else was said. The custodian who had been working with Oakley had come to the front of the cafeteria to watch the ruckus, along with the ladies who worked in the school kitchen. There were plenty of witnesses to the fact that Oakley had been Mirandized properly.

“All right, let’s go,” Mike said as he tucked the card away. Sheriff Haney would want to handle the interrogation. Mike wanted to ask some questions, but he knew it would be better to wait.

They drew plenty of attention—more than Mike was comfortable with, actually—as they led the sobbing, handcuffed Oakley out of the school. Several teachers and kids saw them and stared in shock. Frances Hickson and Katherine Felton stood in the office doorway watching them, along with the school nurse.

“Gary, I’m sorry,” the principal said as they went by, but Oakley didn’t seem to hear her. He didn’t look up as he stumbled along between Harrison and Fitzgerald. Each of the deputies held one of his arms.

Mike paused just outside the office. “I’m sorry about this, ma’am,” he told Frances. “I hope we didn’t disrupt things too much.”

“Did you hurt him?” she asked accusingly.

Mike touched his sore jaw again and said, “He gave better than he got.”

* * *

Phyllis read the newspapers and watched the TV news reports with great interest, but by Monday morning the sheriff’s department hadn’t made any arrests, or really even said much about the case … at least on the record. She thought about calling Mike and asking him if there were any new developments, but she didn’t want to bother him, or have him think that she was trying to take advantage of the fact that he was a deputy. But she couldn’t help being intensely curious. After all, the murder had taken place right there in the school, only a few hundred feet from where she had been at the time.

That thought made her a little nervous, even though obviously she didn’t have anything to fear from the killer. Her only connection with Shannon Dunston had been the school carnival, and that was over and done with.

Unless … maybe Russ Tyler had seen
her
that day over in Fort Worth, just as she had seen him and Shannon. If he was the killer, he could be worried that Phyllis might link him romantically to Shannon, thereby revealing his motive.

That was reaching too far. “You’re just a paranoid old woman,” she told herself aloud as she stood in the kitchen, pouring herself a final cup of coffee after breakfast.

“Oh, I don’t think you’re paranoid, dear,” Eve said from behind her. Phyllis jumped a little; she hadn’t realized that Eve had come into the kitchen. The retired English teacher went on, “You’ve always seemed remarkably levelheaded to me.”

Phyllis set the empty carafe back on the coffeemaker and turned around. “Thanks … I think,” she said.

“What makes you think you might be paranoid?”

Phyllis couldn’t explain without revealing her suspicions about Russ Tyler, and she couldn’t justify those suspicions without telling Eve what she had seen in Fort Worth. So she said, “Oh, nothing. I’m just worried about that murder.”

“Yes, I understand. It was a terrible thing. And to think that it happened practically right under our noses!”

“That’s exactly what I mean. It makes you realize how fragile life really is.”

“And when you get to be our age, I think you appreciate it more,” Eve said.

Phyllis nodded. “That’s right. I know I don’t have that much time left, relatively speaking, but I want to enjoy every bit of it that’s still coming to me.”

Shannon Dunston hadn’t had that chance. True, she had seemed to be an unhappy woman, but surely she’d still had good moments, too. And things might have turned around in her life so that she was even happier; you never could tell about that. The only real constant in life, thought Phyllis, was that nothing ever stayed the same for very long.

And the idea that Shannon would never even have the opportunity for things to get better angered Phyllis. It wasn’t right. No one deserved to have their future ripped away like that.

Maybe she
could
help the sheriff’s department find out who had killed Shannon. Maybe it was her duty as a human being.

It was time to find out the truth about Russ Tyler.

That could be a tricky matter, though. She sat down at the table to sip her coffee and think about how to proceed.

“What are you going to do today, dear?” Eve asked as she sat down, too.

Figure out how to investigate a murder,
Phyllis thought. But she couldn’t say that, so she said, “Oh, I don’t know. I thought about making a casserole or something and taking it over to Shannon’s house. I don’t know if her ex-husband has moved back in to take care of the little girl, or if Shannon’s son still lives there, or what, but whoever’s there, they’ll need food.”

Carolyn came into the kitchen in time to hear what Phyllis was saying, and she joined in, “That’s an excellent idea. I’ll make something, too, and we can take it over there together.”

“I can get a sympathy card,” Eve said, “and we can all sign it.”

Phyllis nodded. “That’s what we’ll do. Do you know where Shannon lived, Carolyn?”

“No, but I’m sure we can find out from Marie.”

Phyllis liked that idea, too. She needed an excuse to talk to Marie, to try to find out more about Russ and the state of their marriage. It would have to be done carefully, though.

Carolyn began working on a green bean casserole. Phyllis knew that was one of the dishes people always brought to bereaved households, but to be honest, she didn’t like green bean casseroles. If that was what Carolyn wanted to do, though, it was none of her business. Phyllis decided to cook some sweet potatoes instead, with plenty of marshmallows and brown sugar. That was another widely accepted “grief food,” if you wanted to call it that.

When everything was in the oven, Carolyn called Marie to find out where Shannon had lived. While the phone was still ringing, Phyllis said, “Why don’t you ask her if she’d like to go over there with us? That might be better, since you and I really didn’t know Shannon all that well.”

Carolyn nodded her agreement, and a moment later Marie answered. Phyllis could tell from Carolyn’s end of the conversation that the younger woman was proving agreeable to the suggestion. Carolyn said, “We’ll be by to pick you up about eleven o’clock, then.” She said good-bye and hung up.

“Poor Marie,” Carolyn went on as she turned to Phyllis. “I could tell she’s very shaken up about everything that’s happened. I think she really did like Shannon, despite all the friction between them.”

Or it could be, thought Phyllis, that Marie was shaken up because she had discovered her husband’s affair with Shannon and killed the other woman. Or that she had discovered Russ was the murderer.

Phyllis warned herself not to jump to conclusions. She had to keep an open mind. She didn’t
know
anything yet.

When the food was ready, they covered the dishes with aluminum foil. Eve had run downtown to a card shop to get a sympathy card, rather than going all the way out to WalMart. The three women signed it; then Eve said, “I’ll go up and see if Sam would like to sign it. After all, he was at the carnival, too.”

And Eve would seize any excuse to be around Sam, Phyllis thought. Still, she had to admit that Eve was right; Sam would probably want to sign the card.

He did so, coming back downstairs with Eve to say, “This is a nice thing you ladies are doin’. I’ve always admired the way folks rally around a family that’s goin’ through a time of trouble. Makes me feel like there’s a little hope for the human race after all.”

“Would you like to come with us?” Phyllis asked.

“No, I reckon I better not. I don’t want to be sexist about it, but comfortin’ grievin’ folks just seems to me like something that ladies are better at. When it comes to death, women bring food and men carry the coffin.”

Carolyn said, “That
is sexis
t … but I think you’re right. Too many people have forgotten that there are differences between men and women, and that’s the way the Good Lord intended it.”

“
I’ve
never forgotten that,” Eve put in, smiling at Sam.

Somehow, that made Phyllis feel better in a way. Eve was nothing if not consistent.

Phyllis and Carolyn left a few minutes later in Phyllis’s Lincoln. Carolyn gave her directions. Marie and Shannon had lived in the same neighborhood, an upscale residential area on the south side of town, across the interstate. Traffic was bad part of the way—the huge boom in new business construction along the highway made the traffic almost as thick as in Fort Worth, Phyllis thought—but soon enough they found themselves following a winding street lined with large, expensive brick homes. It was a very nice neighborhood, but Phyllis preferred the older, more sedate part of town where she lived, with its massive trees shading the houses and the yards, and its air of history and gentility.

The curb had house numbers painted on it. “This is it,” Carolyn said when they reached Marie’s address.

Phyllis parked at the curb. Marie must have been watching for them, because she came out the front door of her house before either of the older women could get out of the car. She was dressed in a brown skirt and jacket and looked nice. The cold wind plucked at her skirt as she came down the walk carrying a casserole dish of her own.

She got into the backseat and said, “Hello. This is very thoughtful of you ladies. I wanted to take something over to Shannon’s, but I wasn’t sure if I ought to or not.”