The Witch Of Agnesi Part 24

There it was out in the open. And she couldn't condemn Franklin for voicing what she herself half sus-pected. "If you take him away in custody, it won't be safe for him to return." a.s.suming he does return. a.s.suming he does return.

"I'm sorry about that, Missus P, but I've got three homicides to solve. I can't concern myself with niceties. Right now, Griffith and Poole are the most likely places to get some answers."

Again, she stared at Jesse. She had sat with him less than ten hours ago. Without any vehicle, how in h.e.l.l could the boy have s.n.a.t.c.hed Edmund let alone mur-dered him?

"Would you have any objection to Jesse coming home with me after you're done with him?" The words spilled out of her mouth a few steps ahead of the half-baked thought that formed them.

"That's a real bad idea, Missus P."

She couldn't disagree. She found herself worrying what Armen would say. "Jesse comes back here-someone's going to get hurt."

Franklin held her gaze, and she had no trouble read-ing his thoughts. He goes home with you, you could get hurt. He goes home with you, you could get hurt.

"I'll be okay. Armen will be with me."

Franklin snorted. "That makes all the difference in the world."

He shook his head in resignation. "We both know you're going to do what you want to do, and nothing I say will change your mind."

She wanted to offer something that would con-vince Franklin she was right, but first she'd have to convince herself. Instead, she searched the crowd for Armen. When she couldn't find him she turned back to Franklin.

"What happens now?"

"I've called for sheriff and trooper backup to main-tain the integrity of the crime scene until the CSI boys can release the body. We'll get the locals to pick up Ali Griffith and take her to Jade Hill." He hooked a thumb back toward Jesse. "As soon as I can leave, I'm out of here with Poole."

"Do you mind if I talk to him?"

Franklin gave her an up-from-under glare.

I'll take that for a yes. She hobbled over to Jesse. "You're not under arrest, but Sergeant Valsecci is going to take you in for questioning." She hobbled over to Jesse. "You're not under arrest, but Sergeant Valsecci is going to take you in for questioning."

Head down, Jesse blinked back angry tears. "I don't know how Edmund got there." He nodded to-ward the trailer.

She lifted his chin with a forefinger until his eyes met hers. "Be that as it may, you're going to have to go with him in a few minutes."

She patted her pockets. When she couldn't find what she was looking for, she turned to the woman state troop-er. "Emily, isn't it? Do you have paper and pencil?"

The woman looked stunned that Bonnie knew her name. She extracted a small pad of paper from her breast pocket, and the male officer offered a pen.

Bonnie accepted both and wrote her cell phone num-ber onto the paper. "Take this." She ripped free the upper sheet. "When you're done at Jade Hill, call me."

"Missus P, I-"

"No arguments. Just do it."

Jesse nodded.

"Good. Don't forget, and don't lose that number."

ON THE WAY BACK TO ARMEN'S TRAILER, BONNIE IN-formed him of her plan to let Jesse Poole stay at her house. She fully expected Armen to pour forth a num-ber of logical and, as always, reasonable objections. He surprised her by agreeing.

"Jesse certainly can't remain in this park. I wouldn't put it past several members of East Plains' esteemed trailer community to let fly with a preemptive strike." Armen hesitated, pursing his lips. "You're not worried Jesse might actually have killed Edmund?"

Even as her mind formed around a lie, she released it like a balloon in the wind. She wasn't sure when it happened, but she didn't want to lie anymore to this man. "A little, but only a little."

He nodded, saying nothing. Neither of them need-ed to voice aloud the understanding that he'd be at her house as well. His hand found its way to the small of her back, and they walked together back to Armen's trailer.

She stopped at the door and faced him. "I need to go home, feed my animals, change clothes. A good soak in a hot bath wouldn't be unwelcome either. This boot itches like the d.i.c.kens."

"Sounds like a plan. Valsecci won't be done with Jesse any time soon." He opened the door and held it wide to let her in.

As she squeezed by him, she kissed him. "You re-ally are one darling of a man."

He pulled her close. "And don't you forget it. Uh oh."

She turned to stare the way he was looking. A cur-tain in the next-door trailer pulled shut.

Armen chuckled. "I'm afraid I may have compro-mised your reputation."

Bonnie slapped his chest. "It's your reputation, too."

Armen made a poor effort at appearing contrite. "You know how it works. A man's reputation only improves if a beautiful woman is seen wearing his pajamas."

She groaned, knowing he was right. The conserva-tive tongues of East Plains would wag, and her name was the one they'd be repeating.

Screw it. She planted another kiss on Armen. She planted another kiss on Armen.

"Give 'em something to talk about." As she pa.s.sed into the trailer and started gathering the last of her pos-sessions, she found herself smiling.

Beautiful, eh? You're not so bad yourself Mister Callahan.

They were out the door and on their way within ten minutes. Having driven the back roads from East Plains to Black Forest for the past thirty years, Bonnie directed Armen away from the main highways. The shortcut would save ten miles and fifteen minutes. Be-sides, Alice seemed to like dirt roads.

"I've been thinking," Armen said, once they were rumbling down one particularly isolated red dirt lane.

She squeezed his knee. "Don't hurt yourself."

Eyes wide, he regarded her hand. "Now you've got me thinking about something else entirely."

"Sorry about that." She blushed and removed her hand. "As you were saying, Mister Callahan?"

He chuckled. "As I was about to say, regardless of Edmund's culpability in Stephanie's or Peyton's deaths, we have a whole new ball game now that Edmund has been murdered."

An understatement, to say the least. "Any ideas?" "Any ideas?"

"A few. First, there's Ralph Newlin. He had means, opportunity, and possibly motive, to kill all three students."

She arranged herself, particularly her cast, so she could give Armen her full attention. "One of those stu-dents was his own son."

Armen waved away the comment. "Forget that for a moment. Take Stephanie. Thursday night, the good colonel bolted from his home long before Stephanie died on Fulton Hill. If he discovered Stephanie knew something about Peyton's disappearance-"

"Oh, my G.o.d, Ralph Newlin plays softball! He probably has baseball bats in the trunk of that yellow Stingray."

Armen didn't say anything, but she could tell he'd reached the same conclusion.

"And Peyton?" she asked.

Armen drummed "Shave and a Haircut" on the steering wheel. "Suppose, in terror, Stephanie told Ralph where Peyton was hiding before she died. It's now early Friday morning. Ralph drives to the Sheridan's, slips into the barn from the rear, and finds his son."

"His famous temper gets the better of him."

"Precisely."

"Does Edmund stumble upon this violence and get himself killed?"

"Something like that."

Bonnie tugged at her ear. "Much as I'd like to lay all of this on Ralph Newlin, I have a few problems with your theory."

"I welcome your criticism, Holmes."

"More in the nature of questions, my good Watson. Imagine yourself Ralph Newlin in the Sheridan's barn. You've just murdered two teenagers, one of whom is your son. Why do you take the time to bury one then drive the other to Jesse Poole's two nights later?"

Armen stroked his goatee. "Keep in mind Peyton was the one buried-a final goodbye from father to son. The burial could be seen as an act of remorse. As for why Newlin carried Edmund's body around in his car for two days before depositing it beneath Jesse's trailer, I chalk that up to the workings of a desperate mind."

Bonnie nodded. "Fair enough. Any theory as to how Ali's cobra choker got into Edmund's pocket?"

This question caused Armen a moment of hesita-tion. "We can still a.s.sume the love affair between Ali and Edmund. She gave the necklace to Edmund as a token of her affection, and it was still in Edmund's pocket when he stumbled upon Ralph murdering Pey-ton." Armen drew in a long breath as if the explanation had exhausted him.

"Very neat." She had to admire Armen's clever-ness, if not the theory itself. "It also ties up the loose end of the incriminating e-mail. Do you really buy this theory? Keep in mind Stephanie would have to get in a car with Ralph."

This time he didn't hesitate. "Not so much now that I hear that part spoken aloud, although the Ralph-as- Murderer-Hypothesis might explain why Ralph didn't report to Peterson Air Base Friday morning. If a guy has a corpse in his trunk, he doesn't much want to go onto a restricted base where that same trunk might be searched."

"Then why not just dump the body? East Plains has no shortage of isolated locales."

If Armen had an answer to her question, he kept it to himself.

"I don't want to browbeat your hypothesis into a coma, but it also fails to explain how one of Edmund's hairs made its way into Jesse Poole's truck-a truck that tried to run me down-not Thursday when Pey-ton, Edmund, and Stephanie supposedly died, but Friday night."

Armen bit at his lower lip, pulling his beard into his mouth. "It keeps coming back to Edmund even after his death."

"Seems like it."

"Which still begs the twenty-thousand dollar ques-tion."

You got that right. "Who killed Edmund Sheridan?" "Who killed Edmund Sheridan?"

BONNIE EXPECTED AND RECEIVED NO WELCOME FROM her brood of animals. Euclid scolded her then displayed his pink and puckered rear end by way of raised tail and indignant departure.

"I have a good excuse," she called after him.

The three dogs glowered when she released them from the laundry room/dog run antechamber. Hypa-tia, always the spokeswoman for the group, shook her s.h.a.ggy head in disappointment.

"Give me a break, lady," Bonnie entreated. "I spent the night in a morgue."

The beasts would hear none of it. Bonnie had left them, not just through mealtime, but overnight. The period of shunning would be p.r.o.nounced.

Bonnie poured copious amounts of dry food in their ma.s.sive bowls and filled a water bowl the size of a truck tire. "Fine! I can do the silent treatment, too." Her strident words made a lie of her proclamation. Besides, she'd never seen her four pets this angry.

She handed Armen a can of cat food and the opener. "I can't face them a moment longer. Would you feed Euclid? I'm going to soak in a bath."

Armen saluted her with the opener. "Oui, Mon Capitan."

Stow it, Callahan.

She was in no mood to be cheered up. She pa.s.sed through the living room to the guest bedroom, which held the house's only bathtub. A major funk sat heavily on her. She was going to need an especially hot bath to wash it off. The hot full on, she barely turned the cold tap.

As she shed her boot and her clothes, her brain con-tinued the conversation she'd had with Armen. If not Ralph Newlin, then who? If not Ralph Newlin, then who?

She slipped gingerly into the steaming water, scarcely aware of the temperature. Ali Griffith? Ali Griffith?

Certainly, the e-mail Molly Sheridan had shared implicated Ali, but why would Ali have wanted Stepha- nie dead? Two responses presented themselves.

First, there was the heated argument in Math a.n.a.l-ysis. Could Ali have been nursing a grudge and only pretended to have forgiven Stephanie at Knowledge Bowl? If asked that question two days ago, Bonnie would have emphatically answered, "No." That was before the e-mail. Now, she wasn't so sure.

Bonnie turned off the water and slid down until only her head and knees remained above water. The heat felt blessedly good on her mangled foot.

What about the scholars.h.i.+p? Of the four students, Ali Griffith was the only one who actually needed col-lege a.s.sistance. Each of the other three-the other dead three-came from well-to-do families. Even without the free ride the Sullivan scholars.h.i.+p afforded, they could attend any school which accepted their ap-plication. Of the four students, Ali Griffith was the only one who actually needed col-lege a.s.sistance. Each of the other three-the other dead three-came from well-to-do families. Even without the free ride the Sullivan scholars.h.i.+p afforded, they could attend any school which accepted their ap-plication.

Tarot be d.a.m.ned, Rhiannon had seemed awfully sure Ali would win. This business of witchcraft put an entirely new spin on things. Bonnie had always as-sumed Rhiannon's and Ali's religious affiliation benign. But had she been naive? Witches, at least in literature and the movies, weren't especially known for their for-giveness or compa.s.sion. This business of witchcraft put an entirely new spin on things. Bonnie had always as-sumed Rhiannon's and Ali's religious affiliation benign. But had she been naive? Witches, at least in literature and the movies, weren't especially known for their for-giveness or compa.s.sion.

Play it out, Bonnie. You would have made Armen do it.

Ali gets a love-besotted Edmund to slay Stephanie. Peyton flips out when he learns of Stephanie's death. Edmund is forced to kill his friend and bury him behind the barn. Edmund is now frantic and perhaps more than a little unbalanced. Using Jesse Poole's truck, he drives to see Ali on Beltane night. For one reason or another, she sends him away, later claiming that Poole was the one driving the truck. Now despondent and angry, Edmund comes upon a stranded math teacher walking through the desert. In his angst angst, he decides to have some fun with her.

Good up to a point. However, it presupposes Ed-mund overcame his grief, relented on his plan to kill the world's greatest math teacher, and returned the truck. Why? The last was indisputable. After all, the truck was returned. The last was indisputable. After all, the truck was returned.

Then what?

Did Ali decide Edmund was unreliable and do him in to protect herself?

An image of Edmund's body lying beneath Poole's trailer sprang into Bonnie's mind-Samurai written on the sole of the right sneaker.

The writer of the nefarious e-mail had called Ed-mund Samurai, but Bonnie was certain that wasn't the first time she'd heard the nickname used in conjunction with Edmund Sheridan. Frame by frame she played back the minutes since Thursday morning, and a minor incident, one she would never have considered impor-tant, sprang onto center stage.

At Knowledge Bowl, before the compet.i.tion start-ed, the team had gathered around the tally board. Ali Griffith insulted Edmund, and he said, "You know you love me. Don't hide your true feelings behind this hos-tile facade."

Ali responded, "In your dreams, Samurai."