“Next year,” she told me. “We just need parents to know that there are fees associated with it.”
I handed over the forms and she peered at them over the reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Emily’s had a good first semester, I take it, since you’re re-enrolling?”
I nodded. “Very much so.”
“She’s such a sweet girl,” Eileen said. “A pleasure to see around here.”
“She’s a good kid,” I said. I smiled and added, “Most of the time.”
She sorted the paperwork into several different trays, then dropped the check into a small box to her left. She folded her hands on her desk and smiled at me. “So. Guess you’ve had a wild week.”
I tried to laugh. “Yes, been a little…hectic.”
She nodded. “We were driving past the day the police were there. The kids nearly broke their necks trying to look out the window.”
“So did mine,” I said. “It was like a long lesson in crime scene forensics.”
“Do they know any more about what happened?”
“If they do, they aren’t sharing it with us.”
She made a sympathetic face. “That must be frustrating. But I guess the bright side is they don’t think you did anything.”
“Yeah, pretty sure they’ve crossed us off the list.” I took a step back from the counter, intending to leave.
She adjusted the glasses on her nose. “I would hope they are looking at his ex-wife.”
I froze. Slowly, I turned around. “Do you know Helen?”
“Oh yes,” she said, pursing her lips for a moment. “She used to play in a monthly bunco group I belong to.”
I’d never been invited to a bunco group and I’d never played the game. I wore it like a badge of honor.
“We finally asked her to leave about a month or so ago,” she said. “It was…uncomfortable.”
“Why did you ask her to leave?”
She glanced over her shoulder. The other women in the office were deep in conversation, their gazes fixated on a book opened in front of them. “I was never what you’d call friends with her,” Eileen said in a soft voice. “She was always a bit too in your face for me. Telling you all about herself and that kind of thing, like she wanted to show off. I could tune her out most of the time, but I tried to make sure I never sat at her table.”
I nodded. One more person was describing the Helen I’d gotten to know over the previous week.
“But it got to the point where all she’d talk about was this man she was supposedly dating,” she continued. “And none of us really cared. I mean, it was fine that she seemed happy, but a lot of us were still friends with Olaf, so it was just sort of awkward.” She frowned. “But she just wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t play the game. She’d just keep talking about him. We really didn’t understand why she was there.”
“Did she say who he was?” I asked.
Eileen thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I don’t believe she ever mentioned his name. She just went on and on about how sexy he was, how good looking he was.”
Sexy. There was that word again. But it just felt like a choice of word being used to impress rather than tell the truth. Of course I thought my husband was sexy, but I didn’t go around using it to describe him to other people.
“I know he came one time to pick her up,” Eileen said. “From bunco, I mean. Her car wasn’t working or something like that, but she made a big to do about him coming to get her.”
I set my hands on the counter, my curiosity piqued. “So did you meet him?”
“No.” Eileen shook her head again and the tiny flare of hope I’d felt extinguished itself. “He didn’t come in. He texted her when he got there and she made sure we all knew he was there to pick her up.” She chuckled. “So we all ran to the window to get a look at Mr. Sexy before they left. I think half of us thought she was making him up and expected to see a taxi outside. But he was there.”
“So you saw him then?”
“Not really,” Eileen said. “It was dark because it was late. So we really just saw his shadow.”
I tried to hide my disappointment. “Ah, okay.”
“But there was one funny thing,” Eileen said, leaning forward, lowering her voice yo a whisper. “And it makes me sound like a terrible person for saying it, but we all just laughed because of how she’d gone on and on about how sexy he was.”
I wasn’t following. “What do you mean?”
She tried not to laugh. “Helen’s a tall woman, you know?”
“Sure.”
“I did not expect Mr. Sexy to be shorter than her,” she said. “The image was just funny when he opened the car door for her.”
“Shorter?” I asked, disappointed that it wasn’t something more significant.
Eileen nodded. “He barely came up to her shoulder.” She shook her head, her eyes twinkling. “I just expected that Mr. Sexy would, at the very least, be able to look Helen in the eye.”
FORTY ONE
Detective Priscilla Hanborn was leaning against the trunk of her car—which was parked in my driveway—when I returned home. Her thick winter patrol jacket gave her the appearance of a stay puffed marshmallow man. Or woman.
“I saw small bodies scurrying around inside,” she said as soon as I stepped out of the car. “Smart kids, not answering the door.”
“They aren’t fond of visitors unless we are home,” I told her. Nor would they appreciate being referred to as ‘small bodies,’ I wanted to add. But I kept my mouth shut.
“Nothing wrong with that.” She nodded her approval, her buzz cut standing still against the cold wind. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the house. “I was going to show you something, if you have a minute.”
I threw my purse over my shoulder and followed her into the snow-covered yard. I trudged behind her, trying to step in her tracks so my boots wouldn’t sink into the foot of snow that had piled up along the back side of the house.
“I pulled some old blueprints from the town planner last night,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Found the original ones from when your house was built. It’s been bothering since me the first day I came out here.”
I shot her a confused look. The blueprints of my house had been bothering her? Since when had she become an amateur architect?
“Did you know there was an outside access point to that coal chute?” she asked me. She pointed a finger at the side of the house.
I looked down at the side of the house, but saw only siding. “No.”
She squatted down and, with her gloved hands, began clearing snow away from the siding. “It looks like way back when, they probably backed whatever they used to deliver the coal and dropped it right about here, then dropped it down into the chute so they could shovel it into the furnace.” She made a fist and knocked lightly against the siding. “Should be right about here?” She turned and looked up at me. “You mind if I pull off the siding to take a look?”
“Go ahead,” I said, unsure of how one pulled siding off to begin with.
She used both of her hands and ran her gloves along the bottom of the next to last piece of siding. She lifted with both hands and the siding gave, the long strip of white vinyl popping off with a groan. She set it to the side and then began feeling along what looked like concrete or brick beneath the siding. Her fingers flexed, her brow furrowed, and she pulled.
And out came a concrete block.
“Knew it was here somewhere,” she said with a satisfied smile. She set the cinder block to the side, then reached down and grabbed another and did the same thing. She stood and pointed. “Take a look.”
I stepped over to the opening and bent down. I could see the crawl space in the basement through the narrow opening.
“Pretty sure that’s how Mr. Stunderson’s body got into your basement,” she said. “I don’t think they used your door. Those blocks came out pretty easily…which tells me they’ve been moved and replaced recently. If they’d been in place for a long time, they would’ve been a lot harder to move. I’d guess that the ones around it were moved, too, but I didn’t want to take them all out right now. Just wanted to see if I was right about the opening.”