‘What kind of rep?’ I asked.
‘Like, kind of unhinged?’ Chandler said. ‘Like, she’s one of those people you never really know what they’re thinking. One time, she got reamed out by Mr Landers, in history, and four days later all his tires had been slashed, and everyone figured it was her, but she never said anything and there was no way to prove it, but sometimes she gets this look, like she knows something that you don’t? You get what I’m saying?’
Lucy said, ‘I remember the incident with Mr Landers.’
‘Yeah, so I don’t really want to get on her bad side, and if her brother wants to help me out, then who am I to say no? She says he likes to write stories anyway, and he can knock off one for me in like minutes, so do I want it or not, and I say sure. So she takes out her laptop, and I’ve got my own right there in front of me, and she emails me something, then she goes on my computer and copies and pastes and stuff and makes it look like I did it myself.’
It was starting to gel for me.
‘And she made me swear that I’d never tell anybody, and if I did, she’d deny it, and so would her brother, because everybody knew what me and Mike had done, and if I ever said anything against Franny or her brother, people would know we were just trying to get back at them.’
‘Jesus,’ Malcolm said. ‘You walked right into it.’
‘Walked into what?’ Chandler asked.
‘Looks like she set you up,’ I said.
Lucy put a hand on my arm. ‘What are you saying? How could Franny set him up for something she didn’t know was going to happen?’
I met her look and waited for her to figure it out.
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘What are you thinking? That Franny killed Michael Vaughn?’
I offered half a shrug. ‘She gets Chandler — who, forgive me, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer — to hand in a story that essentially predicts his best friend’s murder. She, or someone helping her out, kills Michael, and Chandler takes the fall.’
‘Oh, this is... this is... unthinkable,’ Malcolm said.
‘It’s her way of getting even for what Chandler and Mike did to her brother,’ I said. ‘At the very least, it’s a working theory, and it makes more sense than anything else so far.’
Chandler’s mouth hung open. I didn’t know whether he was dumbstruck, or impressed.
I asked him, ‘Would Franny have known about your fight with Mike over that girl?’
He appeared to be thinking, which I suspected was not easy for him. ‘She was there. I’m pretty sure she was there.’
Lucy said, ‘It’s all set up in the story.’
‘But all Chandler has to say is what he just said now,’ Greta said. ‘That she wrote the story.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but there’s no proof. It’s her word against his. She could just say Chandler’s making this all up, as a way of getting back at Joel. Your son doesn’t have a whole lot of credibility. And it wasn’t until he started looking like a possible murder suspect that he came up with a new version of events, that he never wrote the story.’
‘I need a drink,’ Malcolm said.
He excused himself and went into his study. I decided to follow him. On one of the bookshelves behind his desk was a bottle of Scotch, as well as a couple of small tumblers.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
‘What a goddamn mess,’ he said. He poured Scotch into one of the glasses, then looked at me and raised the bottle. ‘I’ve got another glass here.’
‘No thanks,’ I said.
He downed his drink, poured himself another. ‘What a goddamn mess,’ he said again.
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘But if your son’s story holds up, then he should be in the clear.’
‘I thought... I was starting to think maybe he’d actually done it. I didn’t want to let my thoughts go there, but you have to consider everything.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘But even if he had done it, there wasn’t enough evidence, right? Would they have had enough to convict?’
‘I really don’t know,’ I said. ‘But right now, I think I need to go see Detective Duckworth. Tell him what I know. Let him take it from there.’
‘Sure, of course.’ He raised his glass. ‘Thank you for your help.’
Maybe things were going to work out okay for the Carsons, but it was hard to find much to be thankful for. One young man was dead, and a family that had already gone through hell was about to go through it again.
Eleven
Detective Barry Duckworth invited me for a coffee and a slice of pie at Kelly’s a couple of days later. He recommended the blueberry, but I opted for a slice of cherry, with some whipped cream on top. The moment the waitress set the plate in front of me, I could see Barry looking at it, probably wondering whether he should have ordered the cherry instead.
‘I wanted to show my appreciation with the Michael Vaughn case,’ he said.
‘So helping you solve a homicide gets me a piece of pie,’ I said. ‘If I solved the Lindbergh kidnapping, would that warrant a sandwich and fries?’
Duckworth thought about it. ‘Certainly a sandwich.’
I used the edge of my fork to cut into the pie, took a bite. ‘Jesus,’ I said.
‘I know. Maureen has me on a bit of a diet, but the way I see it, it only extends to a half-mile radius around the house. So, anyway, we charged Franny Blakelock.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘At first she denied everything. Said Chandler was lying to save his ass. Like her brother, she said she’d never even talked to the asshole who tormented Joel by splashing his picture all over the Net.’
‘But she decided to change her story at some point?’ I said.
He slid some pie into his mouth and nodded. ‘When we showed her the surveillance video from the school.’
‘Go on.’
‘Schools have cameras all over the place. Promise Falls High is no different. Couple of those cameras are right there in the cafeteria.’
I took another bite of my own pie. ‘Nice.’
‘Yeah. The footage or data or whatever it is gets saved for two weeks. Franny’s sit-down with Chandler matched when he said it happened. You could see her there with her laptop, then fiddling around with his. We kind of had her then. Finding traces of the Vaughn kid’s blood on her shoes and in her parents’ car sealed the deal. It went together more or less the way you figured.’
‘She was getting even with them for what they did to Joel?’
‘Yeah. Best as we can tell, Joel didn’t know a thing about it. She wrote the story herself, gave it to Chandler. The next step was to kill Mike.’
‘How’d she pull that off?’
‘She played him a bit like she did Chandler. Came on to him, said she’d been pretty upset with him over what he did to her brother, but she thought that deep down he was still an okay guy. Suggested they hook up. Made him promise not to tell anybody, though, because her brother and her parents would be furious if they found out. Be like fraternizing with the enemy. Mike went along with it. She picked him up in her mom’s car and they drove down to Clampett Park, led him into the woods with the promise of a good time. She’d hidden the bat behind a tree earlier. When Mike looked down to undo his pants, she grabbed the bat and hit him good.’
‘Franny’s quite something.’
‘Yeah. She wasn’t sure how the dominoes would fall. She didn’t expect the story she wrote for Chandler would see him sent to the office to have his head read. She just figured that after Mike’s body was found, Chandler’s teacher would see the similarities. But it all worked out just the same.’