Searching for Secrets

Searching for Secrets

Author's Preferred Edition

By Elaine Orr

Searching for Secrets

Revised, 2011 and Copyright 2011 by Elaine L. Orr

This ebook edition is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be sold or given to other people. If you would like to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy for each person. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Discover other books, novellas, and short stories by Elaine Orr.

Biding Time (young adult)

Tess and All Kinds (short story)

Secrets of the Gap mystery with a touch of romance)

Appraisal for Murder (first of the Jolie Gentil cozy mystery series)

Rekindling Motives (continuing the Jolie Gentil series

When the Carny Comes to Town (third of the Jolie Gentil series)

www.elaineorr.com

AUTHOR'S NOTE

PREFERRED EDITION

I generally make all my revisions to fiction before publication. In 2006, Author House issued Searching for Secrets as a short mystery that put almost as much emphasis on a potential romance between the two main characters, a teacher and police officer in Iowa City. After a lot of thought, I issued a new version of the book, initially as an e-pub. Why? I didn't like the earlier version. The romantic elements seemed forced and took away from the story. I liked the story itself, so I reworked parts of the book. The book you will read now is much the same, but with less focus on the characters' thoughts about one another. It flows better.

Is this sacrilege? Maybe. Am I happier with the new version? Definitely. This will be the only time I publish a revised piece of fiction. My skills are now at a level I'm happier with. It doesn't mean everyone will like my writing, but I will. And I may let some of it sit longer in a drawer before putting it out there.

CHAPTER ONE

CHRISTA HECKERTT HAD ARRIVED so early that the front door of Buckingham Elementary School was still locked. She opened it and dropped her ring of school keys into her large carry-all bag. It was more than an hour before the first school bus would drop its load of lively passengers. She couldn't wait for this day to start. Last night she had worked until eight o'clock loading software onto the three computers her class had won in the mayor's competition. Her favorite was the spelling bee, complete with a ticking clock to time the students.

There was no one in the principal's office yet, so Christa signed the teacher log and continued toward her classroom. Construction-paper pumpkins the kindergarten class had made were arrayed on a bulletin board, and the first-graders had collected bright orange and yellow leaves to rim the display. She stopped to examine them, wishing her fourth graders were still interested in crafts. But, as they informed her, they were too old for paste and colored paper. It was no different than how your own children might behave, she reasoned. They were always ready to cast aside tricycles before parents were prepared to move to a two-wheeled bike.

She stopped when she got to her closed classroom door. That was odd. Since she had departed so late and would be in so early, she had left it open when she finally went home last night. Now it was locked. She sat her bag on the tiled floor and rummaged through it for the keys. Was that a shuffling sound in the room? She found the keys wedged in the bottom corner of the canvas bag and stuck one in the lock. She was certain she heard the door that led to the courtyard close as she opened the door from the hallway.

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed, regarding the large classroom. Light streaming in the windows fell on two of the three computers as they sat on the tables she had moved into the room just yesterday. The third was on the floor and someone had removed the housing, baring the complex assortment of brightly colored wires and computer chips. Next to the computer were a small screwdriver and a pink plastic bag.

Christa crossed the room and looked out the window. No teachers locked their door that opened onto the enclosed courtyard. Was that the door to the Jennie’s kindergarten classroom shutting? The only way to get to it was from another classroom. Someone could easily have run from the fourth-grade classroom to that one. Christa ran down the hall. She knew she could not get to the kindergarten class before the thief ran out. Maybe she could glimpse a car leaving the area. Breathless, she stood in the main entrance and scanned the front lawn and parking lot. Principal Macklin's mini-van sat next to her own car, but no other vehicle was in sight.

She hurried back inside and into the main office. "Sandra!" she called. "Where are you?"

Sandra Macklin strode from her private office into the small reception area. "What's wrong?" Just the sound of the older woman's voice had a calming effect. Christa had always thought her even-keel approach to life was what made her such a good principal. But, a school break-in would be a new experience.

"Someone was trying to steal the computers from my classroom. I think I interrupted them and..."

"Good heavens." Sandra moved to the office door and, shut it firmly and turned the lock. "We'll call the police."

Christa followed her into her office and sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk. She should have had more sense. What was she thinking, running after a thief like that? As she listened to Sandra tell the 9-1-1 dispatcher to send police first to her office, Christa moved to the window. If any other teachers arrived she would stop them at the entrance.

Sandra hung up the phone and the two women stared at each other for a moment. "When's the last time somebody chased a burglar from the building?" Christa asked, trying to ease the worried line that had formed across Sandra's brow.

"We've had kids egg the building and I can't count the different classes of fifth-graders that have decorated the big maple tree with toilet paper, but burglars are a first." Sandra regarded Christa. "Did you see anyone?"

Christa shook her head. "I heard someone in the room and then I thought I saw the door to the kindergarten close, as if the person went in over there."

The flashing lights of a police cruiser bounced off the mirror that hung on the wall near the window. Christa walked toward the door to Sandra's office. "I'll take the police down to my room while you stop folks at the entrance," she said.

The two speeding patrol cars slowed just in time to stop at the curb. An officer jumped out of each and walked quickly toward them.

"Who's in charge?" barked the taller of the two.

"I am," Sandra Macklin said. "Someone broke into..."

"We'll search the building first," he said, and gestured that the other officer should go down the left hallway of the square building and he would go right. "Any kids or teachers in here?" he called as he moved away.

"No," Sandra and Christa said.

Christa's eyes followed the wide shoulders of the taller man. She had had only a quick glimpse of the brown eyes and a chin that jutted out more than she would have expected from his square face. Distracted, she glanced at Sandra as the principal explained the situation to the two arriving teachers now standing in the school's large foyer.

Christa looked down the hall, straining for the footsteps of the two officers. The building was a perfect square, so they would both end up at the foyer at about the same time. She wondered who the taller man was, and squelched the thought. What difference did it make? Her only concern was making sure that her kids and their computers were safe.

The slow jog of two sets of feet reached her and the men approached from opposite directions. The taller of the two moved to Christa. His eyes looked directly into Christa's as he extended his hand. "Kirk Reynolds."

"Christa Heckertt, she said. She realized her hand was shaking slightly, and was glad for the strong clasp of his hand.

"This is Officer Mark Hadley," he continued. “We didn’t see any obvious signs of a break-in. Did you notice anything unusual as you came in?”

“I didn’t notice anything at first,” Christa said, “but I only went from the front door to my classroom.”

“It’s possible,” Sandra Macklin said, “that the person came in when the custodial crew was cleaning. It was a warm night, they could have had a door propped open."

"And stayed here all nigh?" Officer Reynolds asked.

Sandra shrugged. "Just a thought."

“I’d tell the crew to be more careful,” said Officer Hadley, as he gestured to Sandra to join him in answering questions from the growing group of detainees at the front door.

Kirk turned toward her classroom and Christa fell in step beside him. "Is that your classroom with the computer on the floor?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, very aware of his presence.

"Then the purse and canvas sack in the hallway are also yours." He said it more as a statement than a question.

"Gosh, yes. I should have picked up my purse at least." She felt like a child being scolded for leaving her toys in the living room.

"Natural reaction is to leave the area. Probably safer, too." They had reached the room and stood together viewing the computers. "When were you last here and exactly how was the room arranged when you left?"

"The computers are new, so I was here until eight o'clock last night working with them, and..."

"You a computer geek?" he asked

There was no smile, but his eyes glinted. Christa wasn't sure if he meant the question as a dig, so she ignored him. "The room was arranged pretty much the same as now. I always have the desks in four short rows, so no one sits back too far." Christa surveyed the neat room, with the Spanish vocabulary words on the back bulletin board and the long division problems on the front black board. She was determined that her students would learn the reasoning behind the numbers they so quickly achieved with a calculator or spreadsheet program.

"And just yesterday I brought those two tables up from storage for the new computers. You can see from the marks on the floor that I moved the guinea pig cage from that spot to the window ledge."

"I wondered if you had done that or the burglar. The door was locked of course."

"Well, no." She felt herself getting flustered under his gaze. "The building is locked, but unless there is an evening activity in the building, we don't lock the individual classrooms." His look was unreadable, but Christa felt Kirk Reynolds take in her full five feet three inches, from her shoulder-length auburn hair to her low-heeled tan pumps.

"Did you get a look at the perp..., the guy who broke in here?" he asked. He stared at her intently.

"No. In fact, I can't be sure if it was a man or a woman." Christa explained what she believed happened as she had fumbled in her bag for the keys to her classroom.

"Let's see what we have here, then. Hadley's checking to see if there are signs of forced entry to the building." His eyes scanned the room and he walked over to look into the courtyard. "We know someone tampered with the computer, because we see it on the floor with that little pink bag. They got in through an unlocked classroom door at an undetermined time and may have left when you arrived at...?"

"Just after seven." Christa felt certain he was mocking her. I heard someone in the room. I didn't imagine it. "Can't you take fingerprints or something?"

"We generally don't if nothing was stolen. On the other hand, this is a school." He paused. "I'd have to impound your computer to check for fingerprints, assuming you don't want our crew in your classroom with the kids."

That was the last thing she wanted. "I wonder why they didn't just carry it out," Christa mused. She stooped and picked up the pink plastic bag. It was an odd texture, and she vaguely remembered that when she had uncrated her fairly new home computer some of the accessories had been wrapped in the same material. "This isn't my bag." She held it out to Kirk Reynolds, but he didn't take it.

Instead, he put his notebook in his breast pocket. "I'll file a report, but since there's no sign of a break-in and nothing was taken, I'm not sure there's a lot more that we can do. You might want to lock the classroom door now that you have these computers in here."

Christa felt her level of irritation rise. Or did her feeling have less to do with his limited investigation and more to do with the fact that she didn’t want Kirk Reynolds to think she was a bubblehead who didn’t even know enough to lock a door? She met his gaze and spoke evenly. "What about the fact that this is a place where children come and go all day. Doesn't that make it more important to follow through?"

He held the door open for her to precede him into the hall, and Christa saw his jaw tighten. "Yours is my second call, and I've been on duty less than an hour. Frankly, I should have stayed with the first one, a small-time drug dealer on Market Street. But, since this was a school with an intruder, I dropped my surveillance and got here ASAP. Nobody's hurt here, but somebody bought some drugs and the dealer got away."

Somewhat taken aback by his harsh words, Christa fumbled for a response. "I'm sorry you couldn't make your drug arrest, but my first concern is these kids, and..."