“I could be wrong,” she offered. “I mean, it might just have been a party that got wild and didn’t have anything to do with that girl. Maybe at somebody’s house when the parents weren’t home, and damage was done.”
He shrugged acknowledgment. “You’re right. But if it was that bad, wouldn’t you expect the parents to have been bitching?” He shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”
He could tell Olivia didn’t, either. From her quote, it was apparent the boys she’d overheard were scared, not just afraid someone’s dad would be pissed. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened this fall in Crescent Creek—except for the one tragic death—so there had to be some sort of connection there.
Their pizza arrived. Different waitress than he and Carson had had, fortunately. He didn’t tell her he’d eaten here last night with his son. He was glad to have gone with a veggie special today, for a change of pace.
They dropped the subject for a minute, but between bites, he asked about the boys she’d heard talking.
“Maybe you don’t want to tell me who they were.” She looked uncomfortable, and he nodded. “I assume they were juniors or seniors?”
“I think all the kids we employ are. I mean, they have to be sixteen.”
“Right.” He frowned. “Tell me one of them wasn’t Tim.”
Olivia chuckled. “No, Tim doesn’t talk.”
Ben laughed. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I’ll ask Lloyd to keep an ear to the ground, too,” she offered.
Lloyd Smith was roughly the same age her father had been, early sixties. Growing up, Ben hadn’t known him well, but his face was familiar. He had thinning white hair, a deeply creased face and brown eyes framed by crow’s-feet. Days spent lifting heavy sheets of plywood and operating the forklift kept him lean and fit. He seemed like a good guy to Ben.
“He okay with you being in charge?” he asked.
“He seems to be. I half expected a problem, since I’d never worked with him before. He was at the lumber mill, you know, before they closed the doors.”
Ben nodded.
“But he says he’s happy running his side and letting me handle the hardware side. Claims he doesn’t know much about keeping the books, but I’ve found him to be sharp when we sit down to try to figure out directions to go.” She took a couple of bites before her next question showed that her thoughts had reverted to Jane Doe. “Have you talked to the police?”
“Sure.” The Crescent Creek Police Department consisted of the chief and five officers, two of whom weren’t that long out of high school themselves. It was the chief himself who had been to see Ben immediately, the morning Marsha found the girl. “Chief Weigand’s first thought was that the girl had to have friends here in town. Why else would she be here? It was at his prompting that I called the assembly. He spoke to the kids, described her, asked for a call if she sounded familiar to anyone. He borrowed an artist from the sheriff’s department, and they got out a sketch as soon as possible.”
Again, Olivia nodded. Presumably they hadn’t been able to make a dead girl look alive enough to want to flash around a photograph. Especially to kids, he thought, although he worried about the liberties the artist had had to take to give that illusion of life.
“Did he notice the reaction you described?” she asked.
“He didn’t comment. I didn’t, either. How could I, when I don’t know anything?”
And, God—when he’d been excruciatingly aware that Carson had been out the night before. Supposedly spending it at a friend’s house, but who knew? He was one of the students whose reaction to the news had been subtly off. Who had been more withdrawn than usual since. And until Ben knew what role, if any, his son had in the events being kept hushed up...he’d as soon the secret wasn’t sprung open.
Seeing the slight crinkles in Olivia’s high, usually smooth forehead, he was assailed by guilt. She thought they were having an open and honest exchange of information, and really he was holding something in reserve.
But how could he help it? His first loyalty went to Carson. It had to.
“So...what do we do?” she asked.
He was warmed by that “we” even as he shifted on the bench in renewed discomfort because he was holding out on her.
“I don’t know what we can do but keep an ear out.”
That dimple quirked again. “Thumbscrews,” she suggested.
It felt good to laugh again, to let go of the guilt. “Keep some in my desk drawer.”
He was pleased when she asked how he’d ended up in administration instead of teaching, and especially how he’d gotten himself hired as principal when he was younger than most of the teachers at the high school. He hoped it meant she was curious and not just scrabbling for a topic to get them through the rest of the meal.
He told her about going back for his master’s degree even as he taught high school history and government, then making the decision to return full-time for a doctorate in education. “I always liked to be in charge,” he admitted. He opened his mouth to say, I guess you knew that, but he changed his mind when he saw the way her eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t have had a chance at a position as principal anywhere but here, not so soon. I gather they weren’t getting many quality applicants, and, well, I was the hometown boy.”
“So that’s why you moved back.”
“Partly,” he said, then shook his head. “Mostly it was for Carson’s sake. You know I have a stepson?”
Her “I’d heard” wasn’t very revealing.
“I thought he needed family.” He shrugged. “This seemed like a good opportunity all around.”
She nodded. He waited for her to ask about Carson—why he was raising a boy who wasn’t his biologically—but she didn’t go there. Either she wasn’t curious, or she didn’t want to admit to being.
So he asked what her plans were, and she told him she really didn’t know.
“I never intended my return to be permanent. When I first came, I thought I was just filling in for Dad.” She sighed. “Then I was so focused on him, I didn’t think much about the future. It was just day to day.”
She looked so sad, Ben wanted to lay his hand over hers, but he didn’t dare.
“And now it isn’t necessarily in your hands.” He’d no sooner heard about Charles Bowen’s death than he’d worried that it meant Olivia would be returning to whatever life she’d temporarily laid aside. That was when it struck him that her mother must now own the store. And Marian had never, as far as he knew, so much as worked part-time to help out. If she could get a good price for the business, why would she want to keep it?
The “if” was a big one, though; in small-town America, “Going Out of Business” signs were more common than transfers of ownership were.
“Yeah, you’re right.” Her smile was small and crooked. “That hit me about the same time she announced she was selling the house. I’ve been having fun running with some ideas—only suddenly, it was bam. Not my store, not my decision.”
“Tough,” he said with a nod.
She told him some stuff she and her mother had talked about—including the fact that they had talked last night. Made up after their lunchtime debacle. He liked all her ideas for the business and was impressed at how well thought out they were. The hardware store had always been solid, and, from all reports, her dad had