We still hadn’t found Alyssa. My stupid, mindless mouth had hurt Alex. And here I was pulling into the parking lot of a school that had given me more questions than answers.
“Oh! Ms. Lawson!” Heddy said when I walked into the office, her orange lips a waxy O of surprise. “We’ve got someone covering you classes. Principal Lowe said that you and your friend were through with your little investigation.”
Something niggled at me and I cocked my head, narrowing my eyes at Heddy. “Our investigation? Will and I are just substitute teachers.”
Heddy paused for a beat, her lips slightly parted, crimson meshing with the red rouge already on her cheeks. “Principal Lowe told me.” She clapped a hand over her mouth daintily. “Was I not supposed to say anything”—she dropped her voice to a throaty whisper and leaned forward—“here?”
It wasn’t until Heddy’s last motion that Fallon—standing at the back of the office with a stack of file folders in her hand—even seemed to notice us. I glanced up, feeling my heart do a little double thump, hoping she hadn’t heard anything.
“Fallon,” I said to her as she stared at me.
She crossed the office in three long strides, pressing the manila folders against her far-too-ample-for-a-woman-who-couldn’t-yet-vote chest.
“I thought you were done here,” she said, her eyes cold.
“And I thought Miranda was the office aide,” I said, my eyes traveling back to Heddy.
“She is,” Fallon said. “Third period.”
In my mind, I knew Fallon was just a snotty kid. Her daddy handed her everything and she’d been blessed with Lolita-like looks and enough cunning to use them, but she was still just a kid. So I couldn’t figure out why she put me on edge so much.
“Witch.”
I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until I felt the hot press of air edge past my lips Heddy looked up at me. “Did you say something, dear?”
The word ricocheted around my head until it was droning in my ear: WITCH. Witch. Witchwitch witchwitch.
“Nothing, Ms. Gaines. Where is the library again?”
I turned my back on Fallon, still feeling the heat of her eyes boring into my back as I left.
Fallon was a bitch. She was a bully. And an office aide. She would have had access to each of the victims’ records, their home addresses, detailed confidential information about their family lives.
Did that make her a witch?
No.
There were bodies—multiple bodies. And if it was true that Suri and Gretchen had gone missing, Fallon couldn’t have had anything to do with it. She would have been a toddler then. But if she . . .
I made a beeline for the Mercy library and the librarian pointed to a tiny nook in the back of the room. “The yearbooks are all over there,” she said. “Every year. They’re getting very popular lately.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re the second person who’s asked to see them in as many days.” She smiled thinly. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
I settled myself in, pulled out my sparkly unicorn notebook, and yanked out a handful of books. I started with last year’s, flipping back and forth between the sweet-smiled Alyssa and the broad-smiling Cathy. Then I checked the index, writing down every page where the girls commingled.
There was only one.
“Lock and Key Club,” I said to myself in a low whisper. “They were in Lock and Key and one literature class together. Okay.” I bit my bottom lip. “That’s a start . . . I guess.”
I reached for another book, opening it on my lap.
“Oh, holy crap!”
I didn’t realize I’d screamed it until a selection of narrowed eyes squinted at me in a universal, “Shhhh!”
“Sorry,” I mouthed, picking up my cell phone.
“Hello?” I whispered into it.
“Shh!” This time from the librarian.
“Let me call you right back.”
I shoved the yearbooks back onto the shelf and my unicorn notebook into my shoulder bag, then apologetically made my way into the hall.
“Will?”
“Nice to hear from you, love.”
“What do you mean ‘nice to hear from you’? I’ve been calling you all morning.”
He yawned loudly into the phone. “Did you?”
“If you didn’t get my messages, why are you calling me?”
“I’m calling you because the PD came back with some info from your hole.” Will paused, then broke into a round of schoolboy giggles.
“Seriously, Will?”
“That came out wrong.”
“I know which hole you meant. What did you hear—and how did you hear it?” Alex’s pained face flashed in my memory and just as quickly skittered away.
“Not important. According to the bobbies, the bones of three different people were found there. All three women, all three seem to be in the range of sixteen to twenty-two.”
I bit my lip, my stomach roiling. “Are any of those bodies Alyssa?”
“Not likely. The bones were old. The decomposition was natural, so they’re placing the kills between fifteen and twenty years ago.”