Two of Holt Halsey’s baseball players went by. “Chuck, Marty,” Anne said. “I’ll be at the game this afternoon.”
“We’ll win,” Chuck said confidently. He and Marty paused to talk. Anne was popular with the baseball players, due to her status as Coach Halsey’s girlfriend.
Anne’s back was to the front doors as she listened to Marty’s analysis of the Panthers’ pitching roster. So she missed Tom Wilson’s entrance through the main doors, his passage through the metal detector without a beep. The startled faces of the boys warned her. Anne swung around, alerted by her survival sense.
Wilson was smiling, his teeth gleaming in the overhead lights.
He decked her. Anne could have taken the blow easily, and it took every scrap of her self-control to keep from leaping on the man and dislocating his shoulders or breaking his arms. But she had to go down, because Principal Anne DeWitt would not know how to deflect a punch.
Anne landed on her back on the linoleum. It was in character for Anne DeWitt to lie there, breathless and stunned. To her immense gratification, Chuck and Marty landed on Tom Wilson like a ton of bricks.
It was all Anne could do not to smile, though she was bleeding from a bitten lip.
The whole school thought it was romantic that Anne had been saved by her own students, and Anne’s popularity soared. It was also delightful that Coach Halsey had dashed out of the teachers’ lounge and plowed through the crowd of students like an ice-breaker. Coach had checked that the police had been called (they had, by multiple cell phones), that Anne was conscious and wanted to stand (no, she had to wait on the paramedics, Lois Krueger insisted), and that Wilson was being restrained by the students until the police arrived (there might have been some unnecessary roughness involved).
Tom Wilson smiled through the whole episode.
Holt told Anne that night, “I had wondered if the Risperidone might be a cover, or a plant. But he needs it.”
Anne’s face was bruised, and her lip swollen, but since Wilson didn’t know how to hit, nothing was broken or fractured. She glanced in the mirror and away. No one likes to look battered, she told herself. “It took everything I had to just lie there. It was demeaning.”
“But way smart,” Holt said practically. “You’re certainly the darling of the school now.”
“That’s great, but I guarantee the school board is going to have questions about this,” Anne said. “They’re going to wonder why this first husband — one I completely deny having married — is stalking me. They’re going to think I did something to spark this incident. They’re going to wonder if he’s — by some weird chance — telling the truth.”
It was true. Rumors were flying fast and furious through Colleton County. People who’d never heard Anne’s name before were talking about her now. In a very short time, Anne realized she was in peril. Sympathy had swung to curiosity, and then to gossip.
A story like this was not what the people of Colleton County wanted to hear about their high-school principal.
“Who would want such a thing?” Anne said to Holt, as she pulled lasagna out of her oven. “Who wouldn’t know my original name, and yet want me disgraced or dead? Because if Wilson had brought a gun, I would have been bleeding all over the Travis High floor. He didn’t even slow down at the metal detector. He could have shot me from there.”
“Someone that crazy... if he knew your real name... he would have said it by now,” Holt agreed. “He doesn’t know. But who have you scared or angered that much, as Anne DeWitt?”
“Well, Delia was a ‘suicide,’ ” Anne said. “And no one has ever hinted any different. I think that’s out. We adjusted Sarah Toth’s situation. We fine-tuned a couple of others. What about your ball-player?”
Holt was getting plates out of the cabinet, and he turned with them in his hand. “The last time I saw Clay’s parents they couldn’t stop talking about what a success Clay is having at U of A. He’s not the starting pitcher, but he’s gotten on the mound several times. They’re in hog heaven.”
“So Clay’s out. Besides, he never knew it was us.” They’d motivated Clay to straighten up his act, so his pitching would lead to glory for the school.
“And Sarah seems to be doing fine at Davidson, according to her mother — who just got engaged, by the way, to Coach Redding.” Sarah Toth and her mother had endured a lot from JimBee Toth, until he’d fallen down the stairs in their home while he was drunk. And alone. The football coach would be a much better spouse.
“I heard. What happened to her brother?”
“He went into the military.”
“So that’s all the Toths accounted for. Let’s see what the police say about Tom Wilson.”
Later that evening, two detectives came to Anne’s house. They had called ahead. “I’ve seen you at the games,” Nedra Crosby said. “We still go sometimes. My husband played football and I played softball at Travis High, back in the dark ages.”
Since Crosby was in her mid forties, that was a slight exaggeration, but Anne and Holt smiled obligingly. The other detective, Leland Stroud, a very dark man with hair cut close to his scalp, was the strong, silent type. So far.
Anne offered the two Coca-Cola or tea, but they both refused. “Can you tell me who this Tom Wilson is?” Anne asked.
“Yes,” Crosby said. “His prints were on record. His mental problems have landed him in trouble before now. Wilson has just gotten out of a mental-health facility in South Carolina. His family reported him missing a week ago. He had a legal driver’s license, so he was able to rent a car and check in at the motel here with no problem. He had quite a bit of cash, and a prepaid Visa gift card. We don’t know where he got it. His family members all deny giving him money.”
“So why did he come here?” Anne asked. “Why did he target me?”
Crosby said, “We wonder that too. You’re sure you’ve never seen this Tom Wilson before?” There came the shadowing of doubt.
“I’m sure,” Anne said. Holt nodded in agreement.
“He had some documents in his car,” Crosby began. Anne had an ominous feeling. “Including some personal letters signed by you.”
Anne didn’t have to feign her astonishment. “No, they’re not,” she said. Anne didn’t write letters for that very reason: People could keep them.
Crosby looked thoughtful. “We’ll show you facsimiles, and you can give us your opinion,” she said. “Can we have some samples of your handwriting?”
Anne nodded. “I’ll find some.”
Crosby glanced at Stroud, who took up the torch.
“I know it seems silly to ask you this, Ms. DeWitt, but you can’t think of an enemy you have...?” He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, looking as sincere as a judge.
Anne laughed. “I wish it were silly to ask. Principals do have enemies, Detective. Parents used to back the school administration, but now they back their kid, no matter how stupid or vicious the child is. That seems to be the new idea of showing love. So — yes, there are parents who don’t like me at all. But they’d be more likely to slash my tires or file a lawsuit than do something as elaborate as this.”
“No one else with a more personal motive?” Stroud asked. “Someone you might have rebuffed?”
Anne shook her head. “If there is, I don’t know who it might be.”
“This whole situation is so puzzling, especially since you can’t think of any reason someone would do this to you,” Detective Crosby said. “But please, look through your memory book and let me know if anything comes to your mind.”
“My memory book,” Anne repeated. She and Holt looked at each other. “I hope you brought these letters with you.” She went to the kitchen and got a grocery list and a to-do list. She handed them to Stroud.