“Don’t see why not. Did you want to talk to Mary, as well? She’s here with me... You kids quiet down!... Sorry. When can I expect you?”
“Soon. We’ve wrapped up our ‘reunion’ at the lodge.”
“Fine. See you soon. You know the address?”
“Yes, I have it.”
She clicked off. If Stock was their man, he was one cool customer.
Krista stepped inside the banquet room. Her father was over sitting at his table with a beaten-down-looking David Landry. She curled a finger at him and Pop joined her. They stepped into the hall.
She said, “Ken Stock’s at home with his wife and kids.”
“Good. Mary Stock’s an important cog in this, too — she may be covering for him.”
“If he’s our man.”
Her father thought about it. “I have to finish up with our friend David, then I want to ask the group whether anyone else has heard these rumors about everybody’s favorite English teacher and his female mentees.”
“I’ll go on ahead,” she said, nodding. “You can follow me in the Impala, when you’re free here. Give me your phone and I’ll put Ken Stock’s address in. I’ve got his cell and a landline, too.”
He handed it over and she entered the info.
Pop said, “Are you sure you don’t want to wait, for us to go out there together?”
“I’ll be fine. Get what you need here and join me. Interviewing Stock and his wife will take a while, unless he lawyers up. And then we’ll really know.”
Her father wasn’t thrilled with this plan, but he finally nodded, and she left him to wrap up here.
Outside the night and a windy cold February were waiting. The overcast sky could not quench the nearly full moon, which persistently peeked around the edges of clouds. In the parking lot, zipping up her thermal jacket, she stood for just a moment beside the Toyota, her breath fuming, and looked toward the trees that guarded Lake View Lodge, naked pillars of wood bursting out of patchy snow, their spindly arms seeming insufficient to their mission. As the moon and the clouds fought, ivory would sweep over the bare trees, giving them a glow only to be swallowed by darkness again.
She got behind the wheel and started out. The seven miles to the highway were windy and demanded respect, particularly on a night like this. Fairways and forest fought their own battle and they too would glow, then disappear, as the moon and clouds clashed.
Krista recalled a poem Pop had read to her as a child:
Years later she had asked Pop why that poem — the romantic tale of a criminal, after all — had been something a policeman chose to share with his young daughter.
“It’s the sound of it,” he’d told her, “and it’s an exciting story, too. I wanted you to think of reading as something enjoyable, fun, not just schoolwork.”
The irony of this moment, this flashback to a poem she’d treasured as kid, was that Mr. Stock had once asked her English class if anyone had a favorite poem.
She had responded with: “‘The Highwayman,’ Mr. Stock. By Alfred Noyes.”
He had laughed and now, in her memory, she detected a cruelty in his response that she’d missed as a student.
“‘Noyes,’ I’m afraid, is a misspelling,” he’d said. “That’s corny noise, Ms. Larson.”
She’d stood up for herself but sold out her favorite poem doing so, saying, “I was only eight and didn’t know better, but I liked the way the words flowed.”
“Fair enough,” Mr. Stock had said, bestowing upon her a smile.
Overall Mr. Stock had been a positive influence, encouraging her to write, enlisting her for The Spyglass, the school paper, and The Ship’s Log, the yearbook. And, as she’d told Pop, he’d never done anything, during all that time, to make him seem a letch much less a sexual predator.
The Lake View Lodge road, this time of year, wasn’t much traveled, except for a few stretches along which were condos and elaborate rentals tied in with the place. So the approach of headlights in the left lane, someone coming home from town or heading to the lodge, was nothing to be surprised much less alarmed by.
At least not until the driver hit the brights, all but blinding her, and those unrelenting headlights swung her way, washing the Toyota in glaring light, the vehicle bearing down on her, engine roaring.
She swung the wheel right and avoided being hit, but the ditch took her, not treacherously deep but enough for the weight of the Toyota to give way to gravity and then the car rolled and as it did her right hand on the wheel twisted at the wrist, almost breaking, and when the Toyota landed at the bottom of the mini-ravine, upright, airbag not deploying on rollover, she tried to open the door with her left hand, but the door was jammed, and when she got out of her seat belt to reach over to the rider’s side door, her right wrist sprained and hurting like hell, she couldn’t open it, not with her outstretched left, either.
Footsteps in brittle snow were crunching toward her, the brightness of the headlights gone, and yet she knew it wasn’t help on the way.
Keith was finished with David Landry, who had told him of the strict locked-door policy of the rehab facility in Florida. Landry provided phone numbers and names and other contact info, so Keith could verify that the resort manager had been a virtual prisoner, unlikely to be able to slip out and make a Clearwater murder run.
Standing before the unhappy group of eight at their four tables, Keith said, “Mrs. Webster says rumor has it Ken Stock has had affairs with female students — perhaps with many over the years. Have any of you heard of that?”
Frank Wunder and his wife both shook their heads, and Landry said, “No. Never.” And Dawn didn’t react at all.
But the Braggs were exchanging troubled frowns.
“Bill?” Keith said. “Kelly? You wish to comment?”
The football coach said, “I don’t pay much attention to rumors. Repeating them just seems...” He shrugged, unwilling or unable to say more.
The girls’ gym teacher said, “I never witnessed anything. But the girls would talk. Still, it was all secondhand. Never did any of them say, ‘It happened to me.’ Always it was, ‘I know a girl who...’”
Both Braggs had trailed off, and Keith could well understand that the couple, in their situation, would be sensitive about what harm a nasty rumor could do to a good teacher’s life and career.
No longer the gracious host, Landry asked, “Are we done?”
“Wait here a moment,” he told the group.
In the hall Keith tried Ken Stock’s cell number; it went to voice mail. Then he tried the landline.
“Hello, Keith,” Mary Stock’s voice said. “What can I do for you?”
“Hi, Mary. Let me talk to Ken, please.”
“He’s not here, I’m afraid. He’s over in Dubuque doing some library research. Can I help?”
A chill went through him. “Uh, interesting. Does he do that often? Library research?”
“Oh, yes. He’s been working on a novel about the Civil War. That gets into everybody’s blood, I guess, in Galena, General Grant and all.”
“Was he researching last night, too, by any chance?”
“Why, yes. He’s really getting into it these days.”
“Thanks, Mary. I’ll call again later.”
He clicked off.
Stock was their killer, all right — and, on his cell, Stock had pretended to be home when he spoke to Krista, summoning her to come meet him. What exactly that portended, Keith did not know.