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.
22
“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.”