He couldn’t tell her, didn’t know how to tell her, that this had gone beyond that; that he had started to share Boone’s conviction that there was a criminal conspiracy, here, endangering lives.
So he just said, “Thank you. I’ll think about what you’ve said.”
“Good,” she said, smiling her thin red line, extending her hand, which he took and shook, as a way of signing a truce.
And he left her, standing in the doorway, watching him go.
Even a block away, as he walked by Mary Beth’s, he could feel those dark eyes on his back.
Chapter Seventeen
The grade school was a one-story modern building on the west edge of town. It was approaching three o’clock. Crane stood near the playground across from the school, leaning against a telephone pole, watching school buses pull up for the farm kids, while older kids, who served as crossing guards, were getting in place at the curb.
He didn’t imagine too many of the kids would be making a beeline for this playground, which was a dreary little place, just a flat piece of land running back to a fence that separated it from the backyards of some modest, modern homes. There was a jungle gym, slide, swings and so on on it, but no trees or bushes, just some puddles scattered around, from a recent rain.
Soon the kids were streaming out from the school, and among them was Boone’s kid, Billy. He was wearing a blue zipper jacket and striped T-shirt and jeans. And a sullen expression. Or at least the expression was sullen once he’d seen Crane.
“What do you want?” he said.
“Your mom isn’t home right now,” Crane told the boy.
“So?”
“I just thought you should know.”
“I can walk home by myself. You aren’t walking me.”
“I’m not here for that, Billy. I came to talk to somebody at the school. But I wanted to catch you so you didn’t wonder why the house was empty when you got home.”
“Well. Okay.”
“I’ll be home in a little while.”
“I don’t care.”
The boy walked away. Another little boy, a tow-headed kid in a denim jacket, joined Billy. They roughhoused as they walked along, picked up some rocks from the playground and hurled them at each other, narrowly missing, the rocks careening off the sidewalk, flashing bright colors. Crane supposed he ought to tell Billy to quit throwing rocks, but as much as he liked Boone, he just couldn’t find it in him to give a damn about her bratty kid.
He entered the school and went to the front office and was directed to room 714, where Mrs. Alma Price was waiting for him.
She was behind her desk, grading some papers. Behind her, on the blackboard (which was green), were some multiplication problems and a geography assignment. The little tan-topped desks that filled the fourth-grade classroom seemed very small to Crane, incredibly small compared to the fourth-grade classroom in his memory.
Alma Price was a redheaded woman in her late forties, not unpleasantly plump, with a wide attractive face and the same sort of smile, which she gave Crane generously as she rose from behind her desk, smoothing out her green dress, greeting him with an outstretched hand.
He shook it and smiled back.
“There’s a normal-size chair over there,” she said, gesturing to one corner, as she returned to her desk. “Pull it up and we’ll talk.”
He did so.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking to see you here at school,” she said, still smiling, but some strain in the smile, now.
“Not at all,” he said. “I’m just grateful you were willing to put up with this.”
“Having gone through something very similar to what you are, I’m more than happy to give you whatever benefit my experience might give you. I take it Mary Beth must’ve mentioned me.”
That caught him by surprise.
“Uh, no,” he said.
That caught her by surprise.
“Why did you come to see me then? Who told you that Mary Beth had been a student of mine?”
“No one,” Crane admitted. “I didn’t know. I’m fascinated to find it out, but I didn’t know.”
She pushed her hands against the edge of her desk, as if about to rise, but remained seated, studying Crane. “Then just what are you doing here, Mr. Crane?”
“As I said on the phone, I’m aware that you lost your husband, several months ago...”
“Seven months ago.”
“And that like Mary Beth, he committed suicide.”
“In our garage. Shut himself in there, stuffed all the air openings with cloth, turned on the car and lay down near the tail pipe. He went to sleep and never woke up.”
She said that matter-of-factly, but there was a tremble under it.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Price.”
“I’m sorry about Mary Beth. I’m sorry for you. She’d have been a wonderful wife. Now. Excuse me, please, Mr. Crane, but what exactly brought you to me? Is it simply the fact that we both have suffered the suicides of someone we loved? If so, I will try to help. But I’ll be frank: time won’t heal the wound. You’ll learn to live with it, but you won’t forget it, and it won’t heal over. I’m sorry, but that, I’m afraid, is the reality of it.”
“Mrs. Price, your advice is appreciated, and taken to heart, believe me. But it’s not why I’m here. I’m here because there is something your husband and Mary Beth had in common beyond suicide.”
She nodded. “They both worked for Kemco.”
“You knew that?”
“Of all the students I ever had, Mary Beth was my favorite. Of all the teachers she ever had, I was her favorite. I kept track of her. She kept in touch with me. Of course I knew she was in town this summer, working for Kemco. Of course I knew that.”
“I think Mary Beth may not have committed suicide, Mrs. Price. I think it may have only looked like suicide. I think it may have had something to do with Kemco.”
“I see.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“I don’t know what I am. But ‘surprised’ isn’t it.”
“Then you had similar suspicions about your husband’s death?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“And?”
“I eventually dismissed them.”
“Why?”
“It’s natural to want to explain away the suicide of your husband. Or wife, or fiancée. It’s human to want to reject the notion that someone you loved, someone that loved you, would want to end his or her life.”
“So you decided your suspicions were groundless?”
“Not groundless. But I did decide that they were just suspicions and nothing more.”
“Why do I sense there’s something you’re not telling me?”
“There’s much I’m not telling you.”
“Mrs. Price, this is very important to me. I think you can understand how important.”
“Of course I can. But I don’t want to encourage this... excuse me, obsession of yours.”
“Do I sound obsessed?”
“No. You seem rational. In control. But that’s your outward appearance. I believe that, inside, you’re avoiding reality. That you will do whatever you have to to convince yourself Mary Beth did not take her life.”
“Was your husband the sort of man who would take his life?”
“Yes. He did, after all.”
“And you’re convinced of that.”
“I am. I can see there’s no way around this. I’m going to have to share something personal with you. I’d like not to. But I will if you insist. And I’m going to make you insist, Mr. Crane.”
“Please, Mrs. Price.”
“If you insist. My husband, George, had a problem. The problem was my first husband. My late first husband, by whom I had two children, boy in college, daughter married and here in town with children of her own. I married just out of high school, and it wasn’t until my first husband died, fifteen years ago, that I went to college. You see my first husband’s name also was George. George Waters. I loved him very much. He died of cancer, when he was just thirty-seven years old. You know he seemed so much older than me when we were married; I always thought of him as being so old. And now I’m forty-seven, ten years older than he was when he died. Well. So three years ago my other George came along. A sweet, caring man. When we were just seeing each other, we had no problems. After we married, well... the coincidence of having the same name as my first husband started to bother him. He didn’t like it when my friends would talk about my late husband, referring to him as ‘the first George,’ or ‘George the First.’ He came to resent my two children, both of whom were grown by the time he came into my life. He was jealous of a memory, which to make it worse had his same name. He seldom would discuss his frustrations about my late husband; he just brooded about it. Sometimes he drank. For the year before he took his life, he was quite depressed.”