The Silence of Murder (18 page)

T.J.’s already reading over my shoulder. “Wow! That’s the real deal, Hope. They were asking him to play for the Yankees. Coach never said a word about this, not to me anyway—not that that’s saying much. He might have told Chase and the others.”

“I can’t believe he didn’t talk about it all the time.” I put the letter back and close the drawer.

“Some of the guys used to ask him about when he played ball, but he’d say, ‘The past is in the past. And any man who has to live in his isn’t doing what he ought to in the present.’ ” He does a lousy imitation of Coach’s voice.

“I don’t know,” I say, thinking out loud. “It might be kind of nice to have a past you’d want to live in again.”

In the bottom desk drawer, I find a stack of old high school yearbooks. I bring them out and stick the flashlight between my teeth so I can thumb through. I flip pages and pages of kids who look too old to be in high school.

I’m leafing through the last yearbook when I see a picture of Rita in a cheerleading uniform. She’s trim, at least thirty pounds thinner than now, with the same giant boobs. No wonder every guy in the tricounty area had a thing for her. There’s some writing on the bottom of the picture. I take the flashlight and get a better look. It says: “To my Jay Jay—Hugs and kisses … and so much more! Love, Rita.”

I close the book and put it back where I found it. Rita was a tease. A flirt—that’s what Bob said. She probably wrote that in every panting guy’s yearbook.

I know we have to leave. T.J.’s on the last drawer of the file cabinet. But I haven’t checked the piles on top of the desk. I shine the flashlight around. Coach had sticky notes to remind him to do everything: “Turn off lights.” “Buy feed.” “Call Max.” But none of the notes sound threatening or suspicious.

There’s a small pile of rosters to one side of the desk. I
shine the flashlight in that direction. These rosters are filled in, held together by a rubber band. I fan through them. They’re dated, and they seem to be in order too. The top one is for June eleventh, the day Coach was murdered. My stomach knots, and I take a few short breaths. It almost feels like I shouldn’t be holding this—was it one of the last things Coach touched?—but I can’t help myself.

I move the light down the row of names. They’re all familiar now, part of my suspect list. Only the top name is crossed out. I hold the roster closer, shining my flashlight directly on it. “Chase Wells” is crossed out, and “T. J. Bowers” is penned in. I check the date again. It’s definitely the right day, the right game, Wooster versus Grain at home.

“T.J.?”

“Hmmm?”

“Didn’t you say Chase was going to be the starting pitcher for that Wooster game?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Look at this.” I show him the roster with his name written in as starter. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Coach came to his senses?” He laughs a little, but it’s a fake laugh. “It’s weird, though. I wonder when he did it.” He stares at the roster, at his scribbled name, as if it’s a code he’s trying to decipher. “I admit I was pretty surprised when Coach said he was going to start Chase. He’s good—I don’t mean that. He may even be a better pitcher than I am. But he can’t bat worth a hoot. Dad said he thought Chase’s dad had something to do with Chase getting to start that game.”

“Really? I thought Sheriff Wells and Coach didn’t like each other.” I remember what Chase said about Coach not appreciating the sheriff’s after-game criticism.

“You got that right. Manny—you know him, center fielder for the Panthers—he said he heard Coach and the sheriff really getting into it after practice. Maybe Sheriff Wells won the argument, but Coach changed his mind later? Who knows?” He turns away. “It doesn’t matter anymore anyway. Can we get out of here now?”

“Not yet, T.J.” I start to take the roster with me so I can show Chase. But I change my mind. What good would it do for him to know that Coach didn’t choose him after all? It sure wouldn’t help for Chase’s dad to know. At least now his dad gets to think Chase was going to pitch.

“Hope, maybe there’s something here.” T.J. is still at the files.

I tuck the roster at the bottom of the stack. Then I join T.J. at the file cabinet. “What did you find?”

“Loan applications. Some went through. Some got denied. There are a bunch of unpaid medical bills here too. Maybe Coach really did have money troubles.”

“Maybe his wife did.”

I stare at the papers in T.J.’s hands. He pulls out another file full of forms.

“T.J., we have to take these with us. I want Raymond to see them.”

“You can’t just take them,” T.J. protests. “That’s theft. Besides, they can’t be evidence unless the police find them. Tell Raymond they’re here and let him worry about it.” He shines his flashlight on his watch. “
Now
can we go?”

“All right. Just let me finish with the desk. One drawer left.”

“Hope,” he whines.

I pull at the tiny drawer on the left side of the desk, but it’s stuck.

“Hope?”

“One minute.” I yank hard, and it comes out. The whole drawer is filled with canceled checks. I look through them. Everything seems pretty normal—electric, gas, groceries, feed store—until I see four checks, dated December, January, February, and March, each for a thousand dollars … and all made out to Rita Long.

“T.J., why would Coach Johnson
pay out that kind of money to Rita?” We’re walking away from the barn so fast that I’m straining to catch my breath. Our footsteps and my heavy breathing sound out of place in the stillness around us.

T.J. sticks out his arm like a school-patrol fifth grader and stops me cold. “Wait,” he whispers, looking both ways before letting us cross the open barnyard. “Okay. Now!”

We tiptoe-trot, zigzagging like we’re dodging gunfire again. When we slow down, camouflaged by the tree-branch shadows, I ask him again. “Tell me! Why would Coach give Rita so much money?”

“I don’t know, Hope. You said Jeremy was a great stable hand.”

“Not
that
great! Nobody’s that great.” A dozen possible reasons for those checks fly through my head, none of them good. Was Rita having an affair with Coach Johnson? Her Jay Jay? She’d been staying out all night. Even the night before Coach’s murder, Rita hadn’t come home until after dawn.

T.J. takes my hand. “Don’t turn around, but we’re being watched.”

Immediately, I imagine that white pickup truck. I glance over my shoulder, expecting to see it, but I don’t see anything.

“I said, don’t look.” His grip tightens. It hurts a little, but I’m too scared to care.

“Is it the stalker?” I whisper, making my eyes focus straight ahead.

“It’s Caroline Johnson,” he whispers back. “We should have gotten out of there before she spotted us.”

I whirl around before he can stop me. In a lighted window of the old farmhouse, I make out the shadow of a woman in a dress, or maybe a nightgown. “She’s standing up! T.J., did you see—?”

He yanks me back around, jerks me up beside him, and keeps me there, one arm around my waist. He’s about ten times stronger than he looks. “Don’t let her see your face.”

I fall into step and do what T.J. says, but I know it’s too late. She’s seen us, and she’s seen us seeing her. She knows that we know. Everybody else believes poor Mrs. Johnson is bedridden, that she needs help getting in and out of her wheelchair. But we’ve seen her. “She can walk. Coach’s wife could have walked to the barn, T.J. She could have murdered her husband.”

“Yeah, but who’s going to believe we saw her?” he says, speeding up. His dad’s car is in sight now. “And who are we going to tell?”

“We can tell Chase. And he can tell his dad.”

“I can see that,” T.J. says, his voice filled with a sarcasm I didn’t know he had. “ ‘Dad, when Hope and T.J. were breaking
into Coach’s office after ransacking the crime scene, they happened to see Caroline Johnson standing on her own two feet. So that proves she murdered her husband, right?’ I’m sure the sheriff will run straight over and arrest her—after patting
us
on the back for breaking and entering.”

I hate sarcasm. But I have to agree we’d be in a lot more trouble than Caroline Johnson if we told what we saw. And she knows it.

We reach the car and get in fast. T.J. starts the engine, then turns to me. “We’ll figure something out.” He backs up and wheels the car around without turning on the headlights. “Hope, what if Caroline knew about the money Coach was giving Rita?”

My brain hasn’t even gotten that far. “Do you think she did? Of course she did. She had to know, didn’t she? I mean, with him not making all that much money, and her not making any, and a thousand dollars going out each month? You can’t hide a thing like that. She would have known.”

“Uh-huh. And that would give her motive. I don’t know if she knew about her husband and Rita, or the money, but it’s got to be good enough for reasonable doubt.” The car hits a rut, and I remember to fasten my seat belt. T.J. still hasn’t turned on his headlights. I know he’s trying to get out without anybody seeing us.

“Plus,” I say, gripping the dash, “we’ve got those rejected loans. They give her a motive for killing her husband—money.”

“And the canceled checks,” T.J. adds. “All great stuff for giving her motive.”

“Motive, which is something Jeremy never had. Raymond has to get Caroline back on the stand and ask her about the money. Just asking her about it should give the jury reasonable doubt.”

T.J. is quiet for a minute. Then he glances over at me. “Only … only that means everybody will know about the money he paid to Rita. They’ll say things about Coach and Rita, whether they’re true or not, Hope.”

“Do you think I care if the world discovers Rita and Coach were having an affair, or worse? The only thing I care about is getting my brother out of jail.”

T.J. still hasn’t turned on the headlights. He quits talking and keeps taking peeks in the rearview mirror. I turn around and stare out the back window. Far behind us, about the length of a football field, I see two headlights, white eyes watching us through the darkness.

“T.J.!” Panic rises like bile in my throat.

“I know.” He touches my knee, then puts his hand back on the steering wheel. I don’t understand how he’s staying on this road without headlights. He must really be familiar with this part of Grain. The road winds one way, then the other, with no warning. He takes a turn, and for an instant there are no lights behind us. Then they pop up again. “Who’d be following us this time of night? If Mrs. Johnson called the police, they’d just arrest us and get it over with.”

“It’s the white pickup truck,” I mutter. When he frowns at me, I explain as fast as I can.

“Why didn’t you tell me somebody was following you?”

Because I told Chase
. “I should have. What can we do now?”

He rolls down his window. A rush of humid air floods the car, bringing in clover and dust and a faint scent of skunk. “I’m pretty sure there’s a path up on the left,” he shouts above the wind. “I think we can lose him if I can find—There it is!”

He brakes, and we swerve left. Weeds slap the sides of the car. There’s a blur of fence, barbed wire. The car skids at a ditch and stops.

I look behind us in time to see a pickup speed by our turnoff. “He’s gone. You did it! You lost him.”

T.J. leans his forehead on the steering wheel. “I think I’m turning in my license.” He looks over at me. “Was it the pickup?”

“You didn’t see it?” My heart is clawing to get out of my chest. “It was definitely a pickup. I couldn’t tell the color, but it had to be the same one. Why would anybody do that?”

In almost a whisper, he says what I’ve already figured out. “Because somebody doesn’t want us investigating Coach’s murder.”

Rita’s car is gone when T.J. pulls up in front of my house. He insists on walking me to the door and checking inside before he leaves. We’re both so tired we can barely stand up. “See you in court,” he says, glancing at his watch. “In a couple of hours.” He starts down the sidewalk but turns back, hands in his pockets. “My dad needs the car again today. I asked Chase to give us a ride to court.”

“Okay.” I try to pretend like it doesn’t matter one way or the other. Then I race inside, and the first thing I do is text Chase. I can’t text everything I want to, but I get in the general outline of the night, knowing he won’t get the message for a couple of hours anyway.

Two minutes later, my cell rings. “Chase?”

“Hope, what did you do? Tell me I didn’t read your text right.”

I tell him about the loans, the checks, seeing Coach’s wife standing up, and about the white pickup truck. When I stop, he doesn’t say anything. “Chase? Don’t be mad. I had to do it. I needed to see the crime scene for myself.”

The silence is too long. Finally, he says, “I thought … I was going to tell you I couldn’t help you, that we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

Something burns a hole in my chest. I don’t want it to matter. I don’t want
him
to matter.

“But I can’t,” he says.

“Can’t see me anymore?” I ask.

“Can’t stop seeing you.”

Neither of us says anything, and I picture our breaths traveling from cell tower to cell tower and back.

“Start over, Hope. At the beginning. Tell me everything.”

I do. I go into more detail this time.

When I’m done, he says, “Those checks? Hope, what do you think they mean?”

That’s what it comes back to—the checks made out to Rita. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “But as soon as Rita steps in the door, you can bet I’m going to find out.”

An hour later
, Rita still hasn’t come home. I pace the living room, trying to come up with an explanation for those thousand-dollar checks. If Rita did have an affair with Coach, who’s she seeing now? I never ask. I never want to know.

I have to do something, so I search Jeremy’s room for his batting gloves. Then I check Rita’s room for her old high school yearbooks.

Zilch. Nothing.

After another restless hour, I stretch out on the couch to see if I can catch a few minutes’ sleep. But when I shut my eyes, I see Caroline Johnson standing at the window, watching. Or I see Coach Johnson curled up on the barn floor.