Secrets to the Grave

32

Mark Foster was younger than Mendez expected him to be. He had imagined the head of the music department in a prestigious school like McAster, and a town like Oak Knoll—known for its summer classical music festival—would be old and stodgy in a rumpled brown suit, wearing little wire-rimmed glasses and with white hair growing out of his ears.

Instead, Foster was probably in his late forties, fit and good-looking with close-cropped thinning brown hair. He was dressed in khaki pants and a blue oxford shirt with a knitted brown necktie. The only part Mendez had gotten right was the wire-rimmed glasses.

At seven thirty in the evening Foster was still working, preparing for a rehearsal of his senior honors brass quintet. Mendez and Hicks stood in the conductor’s area of the stark white music room that rose up around them in level after level of chairs and black metal music stands. Foster distributed sheet music to the stands near them where his quintet musicians would sit.

“I’ll help any way I can,” he said. “I was horrified when I heard the news. What’s the world coming to? The murders last year, now this. You don’t expect that kind of thing here. We live in such a pretty little bubble most of the time. I remember talking with Marissa last fall after Peter Crane abducted that teacher and tried to kill her. We couldn’t believe it.”

“You were good friends?” Hicks asked.

“We ran in the same circles. Saw each other socially, occasionally met for drinks, that kind of thing.”

“When was the last time you saw Ms. Fordham?” Mendez asked.

“A couple of weeks ago at dinner,” he said. “It was so weird. I had gone to Los Olivos to try a new little hole-in-the-wall place I’d heard about. I’m a food fanatic,” he explained. “I live to find places nobody else has discovered yet. I was shocked to see anyone I knew. But there was Marissa, smiling and waving. She was always so vibrant, so full of life.”

“We were told you dated her,” Hicks said.

“We went out from time to time,” he admitted. “Plus One was Marissa’s specialty.”

“What do you mean?”

“She liked charity fund-raisers—the social scene, dressing up, having a good time, rubbing elbows with all the right people,” he explained. “But she never had to buy a ticket. She was always somebody’s Plus One.”

“A party girl,” Mendez said.

“I guess you could say so, but she wasn’t wild. She just liked to have a good time. She was a free spirit. She liked men, and men liked her.”

“Was she ever more than Plus One to you?”

“We were just friends,” Foster said, his expression carefully blank.

“Did she know you’re gay?” Mendez asked.

If Foster was shocked at the question, he did a good job of hiding it.

“I’m not gay.”

Mendez looked at Hicks, pretending confusion. “Really? Someone told us you are.”

Foster shrugged it off. “That’s nothing new. Single artsy teacher, hasn’t gotten any co-eds pregnant—must be gay. I’m not.”

“Huh,” Mendez said. “He seemed pretty sure of it.”

Foster shrugged. “Well, whoever he was, he was mistaken.”

“When did you last speak to Ms. Fordham?” Hicks asked.

Foster thought about it. “Hmm ... Sunday. She called me Sunday afternoon.”

“For any particular reason?”

He shook his head. “Just to chat.”

“How did she seem?

“Fine. Normal.”

“She didn’t say anything about being worried, or that someone was bothering her?”

“No. We talked about the holiday fair coming up. She’s been doing some work with silk. She was excited about having pieces for sale in her booth.”

“Can you tell us where you were Sunday evening?” Hicks asked.

“Dinner and a movie at a friend’s house. Home in bed by eleven thirty. School night.”

A door opened at the top of the room and two of Foster’s quintet came in carrying trumpets.

“Is there anything else?” Foster asked. “I can postpone the rehearsal if you need me.”

“No, thanks, Mr. Foster,” Hicks said. “We’re done for now.”

Mendez handed Foster a card. “Thank you for your time. If you think of anything, please call.”

Foster put the card in his pocket. “I’ll do that. Good luck. I hope you find the person that did it.”

Halfway to the door, Mendez turned around. “Mr. Foster, was Ms. Fordham with anyone when you saw her at that restaurant?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She was having dinner with her attorney.”

Steve Morgan.

“I told you!” Mendez gloated as they walked across the parking lot. “I knew it!”

“Could have been an innocent attorney-client dinner,” Hicks said.

“You don’t sneak out of town to an out-of-the-way restaurant nobody knows for a simple client dinner.”

Hicks conceded the point.

“That bastard!” Mendez said. “I want him in the box. Now.”

“It’s not against the law to have dinner,” Hicks said. “Or to cheat on your wife, for that matter.”

“He’s connected to a murder victim.”

“He’s a lawyer. He’ll never consent.”

“He’s got a big ego,” Mendez said, pulling open his car door. “Maybe he’ll want to prove us wrong.”

“What do you think about Foster?” Hicks asked as they got in the car.

“Single artsy teacher with no pregnant co-eds?” Mendez said. “Sounds gay to me.”

“He was pretty cool about it.”

“If he’s used to people assuming he’s gay, maybe it’s no big deal to him.”

“There’s a big difference between someone saying you’re gay and someone being able to prove it,” Hicks said. “We didn’t ask him who he was with at that out-of-the-way dinner.”

“Like you said: There’s no law against having dinner. Unless he was making out with another guy between courses, it doesn’t matter who he was with,” Mendez said.

“I see,” Hicks said. “It’s okay for Foster to meet a boyfriend for dinner, but Marissa Fordham being seen with Steve Morgan gives Morgan a motive for murder. That’s some double standard you’ve got there, compadre.”

“Don’t ridicule my theory of the crime,” Mendez said. “I mean, do you really think the powers that be at McAster would be shocked to find out their music director is gay? That’s like saying they’d be shocked to find out half the girls’ softball team are lesbians. Would they really care?”

“They’d care if there were photographs,” Hicks pointed out.

“So would Steve Morgan,” Mendez countered.