She held out her hand. When I gripped it, her handshake was firm enough to make me wince.
“Sorry about that,” she apologized, catching what must have been a pained expression on my face.
“It’s nothing,” I told her quickly. “I hurt my fingers a few months back. They still give me problems every once in a while.”
“Too bad,” she said with a sympathetic click of her tongue. “Well then, come along. I was just going back to my office.” I followed her back up the stairs and down a long, narrow corridor into a large but nonetheless crowded and messy office. Like Marcia Kelsey, Kendra Meadows seemed to thrive in an environment with the appearance of total chaos. Not only the desk but the credenza, chairs, and several extra tables were piled high with stacks of file folders and loose pieces of paper. She cleaned off one of the chairs and motioned me into it.
Once Kendra Meadows had seated herself at the desk, she extricated a stack of papers from the general clutter and sat holding it, regarding me with yet another warm smile. Kendra Meadows’ natural charm, so obvious in person, hadn’t been at all apparent in her abrupt telephone manner.
“I took the liberty of making a preliminary list for you, Detective Beaumont,” she explained, reaching across the desk and handing me several 8?-by-11-inch pieces of paper with neat handwritten lists of names, telephone numbers, and addresses on them.
“The first list is of the people who were here at the office on the morning in question, after the bodies were found. You’ll find Mr. Jacobs there, but it would probably be better if you didn’t try to contact Martin until I get a clear go-ahead from his doctor. You’ll notice Jennifer Lafflyn is on that list as well. She’s usually on the desk downstairs in the mornings, but she wasn’t there just now.”
“Right,” I said. Under Jennifer Lafflyn’s name were five more names I didn’t recognize. “Who are the others?”
“The next few are on our substitute teacher scheduling crew. They come in every morning at five. Even though we already knew school was going to be canceled on Monday, those five you see there are the ones who still managed to make it in. They were here to help handle the extra volume of calls from anxious parents. I thought you’d be interested in talking to them. After all, one of them might have seen something without realizing it.”
Kendra Meadows should have been a cop. She paused and waited while I ran my finger down the list of names and telephone numbers.
“Is this the kind of thing you had in mind?” she asked.
“Absolutely, Mrs. Meadows. This is great.”
“Kendra,” she said. “Call me Kendra. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. The next list includes the names of most of the people here in the building who worked closely with Marcia Kelsey. Her secretary and the staff members who reported directly to her. That list also contains the names of those she reported to.”
“Good,” I said. “Having them broken down into groups like this will be a big help when we start the interviewing process. What’s the next page?”
“That’s a list of district employees from outside the building who probably worked with Marcia on a regular basis. Some are certified employees, some are noncertified. As director of Labor Relations, she wasn’t just responsible for our dealings with the teachers’ union. There are several other unionized entities as well. I’ve put the names of the unions as well as their addresses and phone numbers right there at the bottom of the page.”
Halfway down this list I discovered the name, address, and telephone number of Andrea Stovall. I’m not sure how Kendra Meadows did it, but it struck me that her sources of information were very thorough. In all my years of doing homicide investigations, I had never before started a case with that kind of comprehensive background material on a victim.
I turned to the last page. On that one there was only one entry. Seattle Security. Poor dead Alvin Chambers. His death kept being short-changed at every corner of the investigation.
“This is all you had on the security guard?” I asked.
“Since he worked for a subcontractor, we don’t have any specific information on him. I’m sure you can get that from Seattle Security.”
Once more I paged through the extensive list. On further examination it proved to be even more impressive than I had at first thought.
“How did you manage to get all this pulled together in such a short time?”
Kendra Meadows laughed. “Of course, I had some help from the computer,” she said, “but there are some things people do best, wouldn’t you say?”
“I certainly would,” I told her. “I can see it was a good deal of work. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Detective Beaumont.” Kendra Meadows’ dark eyes were suddenly serious. The good humor disappeared from her face and the laughter from her voice.
“You’re right. It was work, hard work. I was here half the night, pulling it all together, but I’m glad to be of use. You see, I knew Marcia Kelsey. We weren’t close, but I’ve known her for years. Something terrible must have gone wrong in her life. I can’t imagine what it would have been. Do you know?”
I shook my head. “We’re working on it, Mrs. Meadows. That’s all I can say for right now.”
“You must find out what happened, and quickly too, so we can all put it behind us and go on with the real job of educating children. It’s impossible for children to learn to live non-violent lives when they see well-respected adults behaving this way.”
“That’s true, Mrs. Meadows,” I said, rising to go. “I couldn’t agree with you more.”
At the door to her office, I turned back. “One other thing. Do you happen to have a key to this building?”
She frowned. “Yes. Of course. Why?”
“Do many other people?”
“A few. Not many. It’s bad for security.”
“Did Marcia Kelsey have a key?”
“Probably. I could check the list. It won’t take a moment.”
Kendra Meadows heaved herself out of the chair, hurried over to a file cabinet in the far corner of the room, and extracted a file folder. She moved her finger down a piece of paper inside.
“That’s right. Marcia had a key. It says so right here. And the locks were changed as of the first of October.”
“Are all the people with keys on that list?”
“As far as I know.”
“May I see it?”
She passed it to me without a murmur and I scanned down it to the S’s Andrea Stovall may have had a key, but her name did not appear on the master list.
“Thanks,” I said. “That tells me exactly what I need to know. May I have a copy of this?”
Kendra Meadows smiled her gap-toothed smile and shrugged her broad shoulders. “Certainly. I don’t see why not.”
I left Kendra Meadows’ office with wonderfully comprehensive lists of people to interview and with one real additional bonus-the sure knowledge that, for whatever reason, Andrea Stovall was a liar.
It was a lead. Maybe only a small one, but in this business, a small lead is a hell of a lot better than no lead at all.
I wanted to make a series of phone calls, fairly private calls, so instead of returning to the reception area, I went to the superintendent’s suite of offices and threw myself on Doris Walker’s mercy. She politely showed me into a small private office and then left me to use the phone, discreetly closing the door behind her. In view of what happened next, I was tremendously grateful for that closed door.
I called down to the department to check in and got hold of Margie. She sounded relieved to hear from me.
“It’s a good thing you called in,” she said quietly. “Watty’s on the warpath. He’s looking for you. And where’s Detective Kramer? The prosecutor needs him in court this afternoon.”
“Kramer’s on his way downtown; in fact, he should be there by now. What’s Watty pissed about?”
“How should I know? I’ll connect you and let him tell you himself.”
Sergeant Watkins came on the phone a moment later. “Where the hell are you, Beau?”