Lila Newbury looked as if she had been plucked up from a sixties flower garden and thrown into it all.
Sam couldn’t help but think that if this woman was the guidance counselor, many of the kids at the school would wind up like nervous terriers, running back and forth, afraid, and not even close to certain about what they wanted to do with their lives. She hadn’t been there when he’d gone to the high school himself. In fact, he hadn’t seen any of the teachers or office personnel he had known. Sure, he had graduated fourteen years ago; people did move on. Still, there had to be someone here he still knew. He’d look into that later.
“Mrs. Newbury?” he pressed softly. She hadn’t actually agreed to see him. He’d walked in while one of the office girls had been trying to call and warn her that he was there.
“Yes, yes, I’m thinking, of course,” she said.
Thinking, of course. She was thinking of a way to get rid of him.
“When this comes to court …” he warned vaguely.
“We have several hundred students here … I’m trying to recall … Malachi Smith had been pulled out of the public system some time ago. His father—God rest his soul—had decided on homeschooling.”
“But I understand that was prompted by an incident at the school,” Sam said.
“Yes,” she admitted uneasily.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Sam asked.
“He looked at a boy … and the boy was convinced that he had some kind of power that could hurt him,” she said, not looking at Sam, but toward the clock on the wall, as if the clock was going to save her if she just watched the seconds tick by long enough.
“I need to know exactly what happened,” Sam said firmly, leaning forward. He was an attorney with no power as far as law enforcement went, but he was pretty sure she didn’t understand the law at all and that he could bully her. “You’re in danger of obstructing justice, Mrs. Newbury. You can and will be subpoenaed, and if you commit perjury or continue to hinder an investigation into the truth, you can be prosecuted yourself.”
He was glad of his reputation even though it didn’t give him the power to arrest anyone. Mrs. Newbury didn’t seem to know the difference.
“Teachers and counselors can’t be everywhere, you know!” she said, suddenly angry. “The kid seemed to wear a target. Probably because he couldn’t be riled. He was different, and trust me, Mr. Hall, children can be very cruel. They liked to throw food at him in the lunchroom. Well, one of the boys was throwing food at him and he turned and looked at the boy …”
As she continued with the familiar evil-eye story he’d heard a couple of times now, he almost couldn’t wait for her to finish before he blurted out his next question: “And you believed this?”
She flushed.
She had!
“No, of course not. But we had to call the parents in, And …”
“And?”
“Well, the boy was David Yates. His father is one of our city councilmen,” she said weakly.
“And he asked that Malachi Smith be expelled—and someone agreed to it?” Sam demanded, outraged.
Lila Newbury shook her head vehemently. “No! It never came to that. Abraham Smith stormed his way in here. He said that he wanted his son out of this horrible place. I helped him arrange for homeschooling.” A pencil suddenly snapped in her fingers. “Look, Mr. Hall, I did it as much for Malachi as I did for anyone. He was a sweet boy. I liked him, personally. But this is an understaffed facility, like most public venues of education. I couldn’t protect him all the time. He was going to get hurt. Like I said, children can be cruel. And, as we all know, they can be lethal, as well!”
“You just said that Malachi was a sweet boy. Do you really believe that he could have killed anyone?” Sam asked.
She looked away. He thought that she didn’t believe it herself.
But she was a woman without the strength of her own convictions. She’d never stand up for anyone if it was contrary to public opinion.
“What about Peter Andres?” Sam asked.
“What about him?” she asked nervously.
“He substituted here?”
She nodded. “And at other schools!” she said defensively.
“You know that Malachi is suspected of his murder?”
She waved a hand in the air. “Rumor, of course.”
“Rumor—of course. But rumor goes a long way. Did he ever teach Malachi Smith?”
“Well, yes, of course … he was a substitute and we often called him in.”
“Did they get along?”
She hesitated, and then apparently appeared to be truthful. “As a matter of fact, they got along quite well. Peter was strict, and Malachi didn’t mind strict. Peter liked the boy. He said that he was ‘special.’ He didn’t mean that in the mean way the other children did.”
“Did you ever tell that to the police?”
“The police never asked me.” She sighed impatiently. “Peter was killed over in Andover, what, about six months ago? Malachi was not one of our student body then.”
Sam stood up. “The boy with whom the altercation took place—David Yates? Is he still in school here? He’d be … a senior, so ready to graduate next June, right?”
“Yes,” she said almost inaudibly.
“Well, thank you, Mrs. Newbury. You’ve been a tremendous help.”
She looked up at him, and her face appeared stricken. She hadn’t wanted to help him at all. She managed a jerky nod.
He left her office, very afraid for the youth of the day.
Jenna had thought that there might be a For Sale sign on the farmhouse where Peter Andres had been murdered.
There was. And it was already showing signs of wear and tear. No matter how great a deal the property might be, many people would be loath to live at a place where a heinous murder had taken place. While they loved to stay at “haunted” hotels and bed-and-breakfast inns, they didn’t particularly want to spend their lives in places with actual “evil” reputations.
Jenna put through a call to the Realtor. The woman who took her call seemed surprised by her interest in the property.
“You want me to show it to you?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” Jenna said.
“I … uh … of course. I can meet you in, say, half an hour.”
“Thank you. May I look over the grounds until you arrive?”
“Um, yes. If you wish. Look, I feel obliged to tell you that the previous owner was murdered in his barn,” she said.
“I know. Thank you.”
Jenna hung up quickly, glad that the woman didn’t press to make sure she had a serious interest in the property.
She left her car on the curb and walked toward the house itself. It was a typical New England farmhouse. There was an empty paddock to the right of the house, and overgrown fields beyond. The barn was to the left rear of the house.
She