Merciless Crimes: A Thrilling Closed Circle Mystery Series (Merciless Murder Mystery Thriller) Read online

  “Sally was a student at the school years ago,” replied the principal.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Martha squinted over our heads to look at a table behind us.

  I glanced back to see Sally sitting with Nick now. Their heads were bowed close together. If I had to guess, their relationship was more than collegial. I wondered if their boss noticed it too.

  Halfway across the room, at another teachers’ table, Ruby was having a loud and animated conversation with a lean, tanned male teacher in a golf jacket.

  “Tom White,” said Martha as she saw me look his way. “My science teacher.”

  Tom White oozed confidence and sexiness like you’d expect from someone on the cover of Esquire, not from a high school teacher.

  Isabella, the tall girl who’d pushed the young student on the school grounds, was at a student table across from Ruby and her companion. Ruby’s back was toward Isabella, so she didn’t see what happened next.

  As we watched, Isabella blew a kiss at Ruby’s male companion. Tom winked at her, and turned his attention to Ruby who was still talking, arms waving in the air.

  Even from where I was sitting, I saw the red flush creep up Isabella’s face.

  Does that girl have a crush on the hottest teacher in school?

  It would be understandable, but something about the way Tom winked at her told me there was more to this than just a schoolgirl crush.

  “Do you know what quality I look for in my staff?”

  I turned back to Martha who was now scrutinizing her dinner fork, a thoughtful expression on her face. I hoped she wouldn’t find fault with the utensil and yell at the poor server girl again.

  “What do you look for?” asked Katy.

  “Loyalty,” replied Martha.

  “It’s essential they understand the burden I carry in my position. I expect them to acknowledge the hard work I do to maintain the reputation of this school, and they must acquiesce with the decisions I make for the good of this institution.”

  “With no questions asked?” said Katy, taking a sip of water, eyeing the principal like she was glad she wasn’t working directly for her.

  “It’s lonely at the top,” replied Martha. “I carry the responsibility of this establishment on my shoulders. In return, I expect them to be devoted to their job and to the school. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

  “Is Sally one of your most loyal staff members?” I asked. “Is that why you sent her to us?”

  Martha didn’t know I suspected Sally had opened her letter to me, but something told me to hold back that information for now. I needed to get to know everyone better before I started opening up, and Martha May was giving me an odd vibe.

  There was much more to her than met the eye.

  “Sally’s a good girl,” she was saying. “She was a good student back then, and she’s a good worker now. One of my youngest staff members, and she always does what I tell her.”

  I was about to ask her about Tom White when someone approached our table.

  It was a middle-aged woman with a plump face and ruddy cheeks, wearing a chef’s hat. In her arms were three soup bowls.

  “Ah, Cathy, what do you have for us today?” asked Martha.

  “Good evening, ma’am,” said the woman, placing a ceramic bowl deferentially in front of her. “Tonight, we have sweet pumpkin soup with cinnamon and nutmeg.”

  She placed the remaining bowls in front of Katy and me and stood in between us, hands clasped behind her like a soldier at attention. I noticed she’d chosen the farthest position from the principal as possible.

  “For the main course tonight,” she said, “you’ll have honey roast duck with grilled beans and carrots. This will be followed by a strawberry rhubarb pie. All from the garden as you requested, ma’am.”

  If I had any doubt that the headmistress ruled her kingdom with an iron fist, Cathy’s nervous demeanor confirmed it.

  Everybody here, except for Ruby, seemed terrified of Martha.

  The only reason she was being cordial and open with Katy and me was because we were here to help her maintain her position with the board. We weren’t a threat to her. We were an asset.

  With an old-fashioned curtsy, Cathy excused herself and walked back to the kitchen. I watched as she stopped by Lou-Anne, the young server who’d replaced Martha’s knife. Cathy touched her on the arm and said something that made the girl smile.

  “Has Cathy been with you long?” I asked, turning back to the principal.

  Martha picked up her soup spoon.

  “My head cook? She’s a fixture, like Sam. Been here forever.” A dark shadow crossed her face. “But unlike Sam, Cathy’s trouble.”

  “Trouble?” said Katy in surprise. “How?”

  “That woman’s getting everyone riled up in this place.”

  “Riled up about what? She seems so nice.”

  “The damn woman wants to unionize the staff,” snarled Martha. For the second time that day, I conjured fangs in the principal’s mouth.

  “Unionize?” said Katy.

  Martha thumped her fist on the table, making the cutlery clink and Katy jump. “They should be happy they have jobs.”

  “What do they want?” I asked.

  “A pay raise and more leave. Ungrateful creatures,” she growled.

  I made a mental note to speak to the kitchen staff first thing the next day.

  This spat may have nothing to do with the disappeared girl, but I knew unhappy staff were more liable to talk openly than loyal ones.

  I’d just picked up my spoon when Katy nudged me. I turned in the direction she was looking to see a tall, athletically built man in his twenties walk into the hall. He was in track pants and running shoes and was sauntering over to the farthest teachers’ table from us.

  “That must be your Phys Ed teacher,” said Katy. “Jayden, I think?”

  Martha nodded.

  “Jayden Samuel Brown. Good teacher. Hard worker. If he keeps up with his performance, I might even invite him to dine at the head table permanently.”

  So Martha May didn’t know Jayden was considering leaving his post. Or did Sam mishear?

  Katy and I ate silently after that, listening to Martha May drone on about the school and its history.

  We were finishing the main meal and waiting for dessert when a commotion near the entrance made us all turn.

  Two girls crashed through the hall doors, screeching. A handful of students at the nearby tables rose from their seats and surrounded them, chattering excitedly.

  “Goodness gracious.” Martha shook her head, annoyed. “Can’t these teachers do their job and keep the girls under control, for heaven’s sake?”

  A loud murmur rippled through the room as news of something spread from table to table. The girls whispered in each other’s ears, and turned shocked faces around to their companions.

  What’s going on?

  Jayden, the teacher nearest to the doors, pushed back his chair and stepped up to the crowd that had congregated near the entrance.

  “Oh, my god!” came a shrill voice from within the cluster of students. “You gotta believe me!”

  “Just now!” came another shriek. “I saw him too.”

  Martha May scraped back her chair and stood up.

  The entire hall fell silent.

  “You two!” she hollered, her sonorous voice cutting through the room. “Come here, right now!”

  Everyone spun around to look at the two girls by the doorway. I could feel their palpable concern. Every single person here was glad they weren’t the ones called to the hot seat.

  “I said, now!” shouted Martha, throwing her napkin on the table. “Did you not hear me?”

  Jayden took the two students by their hands and walked them over to the head table.

  Seeing the headmistress’s eyes on them, the girls had gone completely silent. They trudged over like lambs being ushered to a lioness’s den, trying in vain to hide behind their Phys Ed teacher
.

  One of them stumbled and elbowed a dessert tray off a nearby table as she walked over. The tray flipped, propelling a slice of rhubarb pie across the table and smack against a student’s face. The girl shrieked. Another burst into tears.

  A calm evening meal had turned calamitous in just a few seconds.

  But Martha’s furious eyes were focused on the two students.

  As the girls got closer, I could see they were shaking. Their faces were flushed, and they clutched Jayden’s hands tightly as he nudged them along.

  I felt bad for the kids. They were barely in their teens.

  “Apologies for the disturbance, Ms. May,” said Jayden when they got to within a few feet of our table.

  “What’s going on here?” snapped Martha.

  “Seems like they saw something near the back of the school just now,” replied Jayden. “They got spooked. They didn’t mean to interrupt the meal.”

  Sam was right. Jayden Brown was a good man.

  Martha turned to the cowering girls. “What were you doing outside when you should have been in here, having your supper?”

  “Jaime lost an earring today, and they went looking for it,” said Jayden, looking like all this had been his fault. “It’s her mother’s heirloom piece, so she was worried she’d lost it.”

  I sat up.

  An heirloom earring?

  But the one I’d found had been three days ago, near my bakery, hundreds of miles from here. Was that a coincidence?

  “How dare you come in here screeching like mad banshees at suppertime?” said Martha. “This kind of behavior is not acceptable. You will be punished.”

  Before anyone could answer, one of the girls let go of Jayden’s hand and stepped forward. Her yell echoed across the hall.

  “But Ms. May! You gotta believe us. It’s Sam! He’s dead!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  A collective gasp went around the hall.

  Martha jerked back so suddenly, she hit the chrysanthemum vase on the table, making it fall over. The water spilled on the tablecloth and dripped to the floor.

  But something more important caught my eye.

  “What’s that you have?” I said, noticing one of the girls holding something tightly in her hand.

  The girl moved her arm toward me and opened her fist.

  Katy took a sharp breath in. Jayden stared in shock. She’d been holding an injection syringe.

  “What in heaven’s name?” said Martha, taking another step back in alarm.

  I grabbed a clean napkin from the table and turned toward the student.

  “Put it in here, hun,” I said, “you shouldn’t touch that.”

  The girl gave me a petrified look, too frozen to move. Jayden reached over and plucked the syringe from the girl’s hand and placed it in my napkin.

  Great. Now his fingerprints would be on it too.

  I covered the syringe with the cloth and slipped it into my pocket.

  “Where did you find it?” I asked.

  “N… near Sam,” stammered the girl. “In the g… glass house.”

  It took a few minutes for Jayden to coax the girls to tell us what they’d discovered.

  I hung my head as I heard the news.

  The two girls had walked into the greenhouse thinking a magpie could have flown off with the earring and dropped it near the garden. That was when they had stumbled over Sam’s body lying across the threshold.

  Something nagged at the back of my mind.

  Though he had shared nothing of value, I was sure Sam had seen something. Something important to our investigation.

  I wasn’t so sure Brianna had run away anymore. If someone had taken her, they could have seen us talking to him and feared he was going to divulge key information.

  I turned to Katy, who’d been watching the drama unfold, her mouth open, still seated. I didn’t have to say a word. She pushed her chair back and got up.

  “We’ll go look,” I said to Martha May. “Call emergency services.”

  I didn’t wait for her to answer. Leaving Jayden to deal with the girls, Katy and I rushed out of the dining hall.

  We scampered to the back of the building. I was glad there was still some waning afternoon light.

  Footsteps crunching on the gravel behind us made us turn. It was Jayden running after us, a worried expression on his face.

  “Sam,” he said breathlessly, as he came up. “Sam is my friend.”

  I nodded.

  The three of us jogged abreast silently toward the greenhouse.

  “Oh, no,” said Katy as we entered through the opening in the cedar hedge.

  Sam was lying by the door next to the red chrysanthemums flower bed, his arms and legs splayed out.

  We ran over.

  I picked up his right wrist, while Jayden took the left, but it didn’t take me long to realize Sam was no longer alive.

  His body was still warm, but his fingernails and lips had turned blue.

  I stepped back and surveyed his position. He could have had a heart attack and fallen down. Someone could have also slipped in when he wasn’t looking, hit him from the back, making him fall, face first, onto the ground.

  I wanted to check the body for trauma but Jayden was clutching Sam’s wrist, desperately feeling for a pulse, his face contorted into a mix of panic and fear.

  “He’s gone,” whispered Katy, putting a hand on Jayden’s shoulder.

  “How…?” He stammered, his face scrunched up like he was about to cry. “How did this happen?”

  “The syringe,” I said, taking it out of my pocket. “Have you seen this before?”

  Jayden shook his head, but he wasn’t paying full attention.

  He was clutching Sam’s hand, staring at the old man like he couldn’t believe he was gone. I recalled how Sam had talked fondly about Jayden visiting him to chat.

  “Were you close to him?” I asked, softening my voice.

  Jayden put his hands to his face and sat quietly for a few moments. When he finally looked up, his eyes were red.

  “He was the only one I could talk to here. I missed my dad and mom, and Sam was like a surrogate father, you know what I mean?”

  Katy and I nodded.

  A tear rolled down his face.

  “It’s not easy working here and some days I just wanted to go home, but Sam made it easy. He was always here when I needed to talk.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Katy.

  Jayden nodded but didn’t speak, wiping the tears with the back of his hand.

  I looked over Sam’s body to find any telltale signs of violence.

  But there was nothing.

  There were no injuries, no bullet holes, no blood. It was almost like he’d simply fallen down and expired right here.

  “Hey, Jayden?” I said. “Was Sam in the habit of taking any drugs?”

  He shook his head.

  “Of course not,” he said, shooting me an angry look. “He was a smart man. He should have been a teacher. A physics teacher. That’s what he did in his spare time. Read science books. He’d never do anything dumb like that.”

  “Sorry, what I mean is, was he diabetic, by any chance?”

  Jayden gave a violent shake of his head.

  “He had arthritis, but he was fit for his age. He wasn’t sick.”

  Jayden was taking this hard. I felt bad for him, but I had one more question.

  “Did you see Brianna talk to Sam or hang out in the greenhouse recently?”

  He gave a start.

  “Brianna Madison?”

  I nodded.

  “The girl who ran away?”

  I nodded again.

  “Brianna never came to Phys Ed class and always had an excuse when I took everyone hiking on the trail. She was always on her phone. No, she’s never come here.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Me? I saw her in the dining hall the night she ran away.”

  I stared at Sam’s immobile body. H
ow quickly did an inquiry into a runaway girl turn into a potential murder investigation?

  Taking a deep breath in, I turned to Katy.

  “It’s time to call the police.”

  Jayden stared at me in shock. “What are you saying?”

  “What do you mean the police?” came a furious voice from behind me.

  I spun around to see Martha May stomp through the hedge opening, a scowl on her face. Her scowl lessened when she spotted Sam’s prone body at my feet.

  She stopped, her eyes on the corpse.

  “My god,” she said, putting a hand to her mouth. “They weren’t lying.”

  “We were talking with Sam just before dinner,” I said. “He was doing fine then. That was only an hour ago. This is too sudden, too out of place.”

  Martha crossed her arms and stood still, her eyes on her late gardener, silenced for once. It was quiet in the backyard. Even the birds had stopped chirping as if in deference to Sam’s death.

  “He just turned seventy-two,” she said, speaking slowly. “He was probably a heart attack waiting to happen.”

  “A fit vegan who works outdoors?” said Katy. “Do you have any medical evidence he was sick?”

  The principal glowered at her.

  “Do you have any idea what this syringe might have contained?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to speculate, but he wasn’t an addict, if that’s your conjecture.”

  “We should get the contents checked,” I said. “I know these kids like to play pranks, but the syringe was the real deal. The question is where did those girls find it, when, and what was in it.”

  The headmistress shot an angry look my way.

  “I’m paying you to find a runaway girl, not speculate on an old man’s natural death.”

  Natural death?

  “Jayden,” she snapped, turning to the teacher. “Get someone to fetch the stretcher from the clinic and bring Sam in.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend you move the body,” I said. “We need to call the authorities and have them investigate this properly.”

  I knew Martha May wasn’t someone you messed with, but I didn’t realize I’d see those fangs of hers again.

  She whirled around and glared. If her eyes could kill, I would have turned into a cinder.