Strawberry Shortcake Murder

Chapter Fifteen

When Hannah got back to the shop at four o’clock, she found Andrea waiting for her. “I thought you had a showing.”

“I did.” Andrea started to smile. “I sold it, Hannah. John and Wendy Rahn made an offer, and Mrs. Ehrenberg accepted it. John’s older brother owns the land next to it, and they’re going to farm the whole parcel together.”

Hannah patted Andrea on the shoulder. “Good for you!”

“Al said I was a genius for showing it to John and Wendy. And he told me that from now on, I can work my own hours. That means I’ll have even more time to help you. Do you have to bake more cookies, Hannah? I think I’ve got the hang of rolling those dough balls now.”

“Thanks, but the baking’s all done for today.” Hannah draped a towel over the box she’d carried in from her truck, so her sister wouldn’t notice that the only cookies left were the lopsided ones she’d made.

“How about Lucy? Did you get a chance to talk to her at the meeting?”

“She never showed up. Gail Hanson brought her camera, and I ended up taking the pictures.”

Andrea frowned. “I wonder where she is. Nobody’s seen her all day.”

“Bonnie Surma said this isn’t the first time that she’s flaked out on an assignment. Lucy was supposed to cover the Brownie Scout award ceremony last month. She never showed, and Bonnie had to ask one of the mothers to take pictures.”

“Then you think she’s just out chasing down a bigger story?”

“I don’t know what to think, but I don’t have the time to drive around town looking for her. We’ll just have to catch up with her at the bake-off tonight. If she’s alive and kicking, she’ll be there.”

Andrea shivered at Hannah’s choice of words. “I wish you hadn’t said that. I’ve got a real bad feeling about this.”

“Don’t borrow trouble,” Hannah advised. “We’ve spent the whole day chasing after Lucy and we should have been trying to help Danielle. Are you any good at talking to shrinks?”

Andrea’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean, like in counseling session?”

“No, on the phone. Danielle said that Boyd made an appointment with his shrink on Tuesday, right after he gave her that black eye. I need to find out if he kept it.”

“I can do that.” Andrea reached for the phone. “That’s Dr. Holland at the Holland Clinic in St. Paul?”

“Right. I’d like to find out what they talked about, but I don’t think Dr. Holland will tell us that. Shrinks don’t like to discuss their patients, even if they’re dead.”

“Leave it to me.” Andrea looked very confident as she punched out the number for directory assistance and asked for the number of the Holland Clinic.

Hannah listened as her sister got Dr. Holland on the phone. That took some doing because he was with a patient, but Andrea managed to convince the receptionist that her call was an emergency. She couldn’t tell much from Andrea’s side of the conversation. “I see,” and “Of course I understand,” weren’t very revealing.

“What did he say?” Hannah asked, after Andrea had hung up the phone.

“Not a whole lot. Boyd kept his appointment, but Dr. Holland said he couldn’t tell me what they discussed. He told me that Boyd arrived at two o’clock and he left the clinic at two-thirty.”

“That’s only thirty minutes.” Hannah was surprised. “Don’t most counseling sessions last an hour?”

“Fifty minutes. I asked Dr. Holland about that. He said that Boyd cut his session short because he had to drive back to Lake Eden for a parent-teacher conference after school.”

“Danielle didn’t mention that.” Hannah pushed the steno pad over to Andrea. “Check out our notes.”

Andrea paged through it to find the notes she’d taken. “Here it is. Danielle said Boyd drove to St. Paul to see Dr. Holland, and he didn’t get home until after six that night.”

“Danielle didn’t know he’d gone back to the school.” Hannah thought about that for a moment, then reached for the phone. “I’d better call Charlotte Roscoe before she leaves for the day. She probably keeps a record of parent-teacher conferences, and she can tell us who was at the meeting.”

* * *

Hannah gave a little toot on her horn as she parted company with her sister. Andrea was going to collect Tracey at Kiddie Korner, and they’d meet later, at the bake-off.

As she drove past the park, Hannah flicked on her lights. This was the most dangerous driving time of the day. Night was falling fast, and while she could still see, everything outside the range of her headlights had lost its color and faded to shades of gray.

There weren’t many cars in the school parking lot. The teachers had gone home, and the audience for tonight’s bake-off wouldn’t arrive for another hour and a half. Hannah had brought her outfit with her and was planning to dress in the girls’ locker room. She’d have a miffed feline to contend with when she arrived at her condo after the show, but Moishe could get along on his own for another few hours.

Charlotte Roscoe, Jordan High’s secretary, had been very helpful on the phone. She’d checked Boyd’s schedule but hadn’t found a record of the meeting. She’d told Hannah that Jordan High teachers only kept records of their academic conferences. She’d suggested that the conference could have involved one of Coach Watson’s team members and advised Hannah to check with Gil Surma, Jordan High’s counselor, to see if he’d been involved. Gil was still at the school, meeting with his Cub Scouts. Since it was winter outside and the auditorium was off-limits during the bake-off, Gil was teaching them to pitch a canvas teepee in the hallway outside the principal’s office.

Once she’d parked and climbed out of her truck, Hannah walked around to the back to grab a large bag of yesterday’s cookies. Cub Scouts were always hungry, and they could eat them on their way home. She hurried across the parking lot, darted around the side of the building, and entered through the main door.

Hannah started to grin as she came around the corner and encountered an unusual sight. A khaki-colored tepee was collapsed in a heap near the principal’s door. There were several squirming lumps inside, making it seem as if it had developed a life of its own, and she could hear Gil’s voice as he attempted to take command.

“Come on, boys. Stop wiggling and let me find the opening. You don’t want to stay here all night, do you?”

This was followed by a volley of childish laughter, and Hannah decided to lend a hand. She walked up to the jiggling teepee, lifted the front peak of the canvas, and held it up until a head emerged.

“Thanks, whoever you are.” Gil crawled out of the opening on his hands and knees. Then he looked up and smiled. “You saved us, Hannah. I was just showing my troop how easy it was to set up a teepee.”

Gil got to his feet and took her place, holding up the peak of the teepee. Five young Cub Scouts crawled out, one after the other, and all of them looked delighted to see Hannah. Hannah knew it wasn’t her winning personality or the fact she’d helped to extricate them from the tent; they’d spotted the bag of cookies she’d brought.

“Is you meeting over, Gil?” Hannah asked.

“Yes. It should have been over fifteen minutes ago, but the teepee wasn’t very cooperative.”

Hannah passed out the cookies, four to each boy, and they left crunching happily. When the last one was out of earshot, she said, “I need to talk to you, Gil. It’s about Boyd Watson.”

“A terrible thing.” Gil shook his head. “Mr. Purvis told us that the authorities were investigating the possibility of foul play, but one of the other teachers mentioned that Boyd had seemed depressed lately. Do you think that it was suicide?”

“No way. Nobody commits suicide by cracking his own skull open with a hammer.” Gil looked a little sick, and Hannah wished she hadn’t been quite so descriptive. “Are you all right, Gil?”

“I’m okay. They didn’t describe exactly how Boyd died on the news. And Danielle was the one to find him like that?”

“Yes.”

“Poor Danielle. She must really be hurting. I’d better drop by the house and see if there’s any way I can help.”

“She’s not at home, Gil. Doc Knight put her in the hospital.”

“She’s that sick?”

Hannah decided that stretching the truth wouldn’t hurt. She certainly didn’t want Gil to know that Danielle was a suspect in Boyd’s murder. “She’s had a bad cold for a week or so. The shock made it worse, and Doc decided to keep her at Lake Eden Memorial until she recovers.”

Gil looked very sympathetic. “We’ll send flowers. I’ll set up a donation can in the faculty lounge. And the players on The Gulls can chip in. Danielle should know that she’s not alone at a time like this.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Hannah jumped in before Gil could do any more planning.

“The flowers?”

“No, The Gulls. I just found out that Boyd had a conference with one of his team members on Tuesday after school. Were you there?”

Gil shook his head. “I have chess club on Tuesdays. Of course, I would have canceled if Boyd had asked me to sit in, but he didn’t.”

“But you were here, at the school?”

“No. I took the whole club to my house. It’s only three members, two seniors and a junior. We watched a tape of Bobby Fischer’s last match.”

Hannah sighed. This wasn’t working out the way she’d hoped it would “Then you didn’t see who Boyd met with?”

“I’m afraid not. We left right after the bell rang. Why do you want to know?”

Hannah sighed. She really didn’t want to lie, and perhaps she didn’t have to make up another story to disguise her true motive. Gil was the Jordan High counselor and obligated to obey the same set of shrink confidentiality rules that Dr. Holland did. “If I tell you something in confidence, you can’t repeat it, right?”

“Yes, if this is a counseling session.”

“Okay, it’s a counseling session. Just don’t bill me for your time.”

Gil laughed. “I won’t. Talk to me.”

“You said you didn’t know who Boyd met with, so we’ll have to go after this another way. Do you know if Boyd was having a problem with any of his team members?”

“Yes, he was. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you who it is.”

“You have to tell me!” Hannah felt her frustration level rise. “I know about your professional ethics and all that stuff, but this could have a bearing on Boyd’s murder!”

Gil held up his hands in surrender. “Hold on, Hannah. I didn’t say I wouldn’t tell you. I said I couldn’t tell you. Boyd didn’t give me the student’s name.”

“Oh.” Hannah felt slightly ashamed of her outburst.

“All Boyd did was pose a hypothetical. He asked what I’d do if I were the head coach and I discovered that one of my basketball players was using steroids.”

“Steroids?” Hannah was surprised. As far as she knew, there’d never been a problem of that magnitude in Lake Eden. Last year, three members of the football team had been suspended for a couple of games when they’d thrown a keg party out at the lake, but that was about it. “What did you tell Boyd?”

“I said I’d suspend the player for the rest of the season. The school rules are very clear about performance-enhancing drugs.”

“What did Boyd say to that?”

“He posed another hypothetical. He asked me what I’d do if the boy’s father threatened to withdraw his support from the school athletic program. I told him I couldn’t let that influence my decision and I’d still suspend the boy.”

“Did Boyd take your advice?”

“I think so. We talked about the best way to tell the boy’s father that his son was about to be suspended. Boyd even jotted down a few notes. Then he thanked me for making his job easier. That was on Monday, Hannah. If Boyd scheduled a conference after school on Tuesday, it could have been about that.”

Hannah’s heart began to race as she asked the most important question. “Did Boyd suspend a boy from his team?”

“No, I checked on that. Either Boyd changed his mind, or…” Gil stopped speaking and looked a little sick again.

“Or what?”

“Or he was murdered before he had time to fill out the forms.”