Sherry’s voice lost its song. “Don’t sound so surprised,” she said. “The sheriff trusts me.”
“No, that’s not—look, that’s fine with me,” I said. “In fact, it’s more than fine. Did he happen to mention what I’m supposed to be asking Mr. Jeffries?”
“He said Joe would know,” she said, still wounded.
“Did you say you all went to high school together? You, Bo, your husband . . .”
“Jimmy,” she said.
“Jimmy, of course. Grace and Shane Mullen—”
“They were a few years ahead.”
“Leila?”
She didn’t answer right away. “She was there.”
“Was she a friend of yours?”
“It’s going to sound bad,” she said.
“Say it.”
“She was . . . in a different crowd,” she said.
“Which crowd were you in?”
“The fun one,” she said. “You know. We just had laughs, drank on the weekends.”
I thought back to high school. “So which way did she go? Jocks and cheerleaders? Nerds?”
“Stoners,” she said finally. “Kind of. I mean, really? I don’t think she had any friends at all. She was more like a ghost.”
THAT AFTERNOON I went to the café early and waited for school to get out and Jeffries to disentangle himself from football practice. I hadn’t wanted another meeting in his office—Joshua aware of my presence there, the other Boosters ladies talking it over later—but now it seemed like a better option than meeting in broad daylight in the center of town.
Too late to make a change of location. Anyway, I had a crisp copy of the Spectator and a fat raspberry scone slathered with butter in front of me. Rather a nice assignment from the sheriff. Out of the apartment, out in the sun. The leaves were turning, and it wouldn’t be long before the wind became chilled and unwelcoming, and I’d find any excuse to stay inside. Across the street, the courthouse rose above the square in cold, limestone majesty. The world, soon enough, would seem as though it had been cut to match.
Jeffries arrived earlier than expected and greeted me warmly. He left his satchel by the side of the vacant chair and went inside for a cup of coffee. I watched him through the glass door. The old man behind the counter lit up at the sight of him. Jeffries gleamed like the statuette on a trophy. Today, all my senses piqued, I couldn’t help but notice.
He came back out, sitting across from me and stretching his legs into the sidewalk.
“Thanks for meeting with me on short notice,” I said.
“Please. It’s a pleasure.” He shrugged out of his suit coat and folded it carefully over the next chair. “May I?” he said, one hand over the knot of his tie. I smiled. He pulled at the knot until it hung loosely around his neck, and one button at the neck of his shirt had been sacrificed to his comfort. “I’m glad to get this chance to follow up with you. About Joshua.”
I tensed. “This isn’t about Joshua. The sheriff—”
“No, I know,” he said. “I have good news for you, though, if you don’t mind. Whatever you said to him—well, it worked.” He sat back, elbows on the arms of the chair, his hands folded over his stomach. “I’ve heard some good reports already. Homework finished, at least.”
“He was getting hung up on the aesthetics, I guess you could say,” I said. “But I’m glad to hear good results so soon.”
“I’m amazed to receive results so soon. He’s really turning himself around, from what I hear. Our head librarian—we monitor first lunch together every day—she mentioned how industrious he was. Usually, library periods are treated like recess.”
We smiled at each other until I finally looked away. I liked the affection in his voice when he talked about the students. He seemed to understand them, to accept the wildness in them that might make other adults—me—nervous. If Joshua still needed a mentor, here was the best candidate. It made sense. It made so much sense that I nearly cried from relief. He already took an interest. He seemed willing to share his insights. A local sports god.
I couldn’t ask if he played video games. Instead I said, “The sheriff seemed to want us together?”
“Right,” he said, a strange Mona Lisa twitch on his lips. “You’re saving me from a pile of work in my office.”
“What about football practice?”
His hand stopped on the way to his satchel. “It was in-service for the teachers today. No classes for the students, as you know, so no practice.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.” Except if I’d known about it, I’d forgotten—and where the hell had Joshua gone at seven this morning?
Jeffries extracted a manila envelope from his bag and slid it across the table. “This is what we’re dealing with. Keller said you might be able to help. Not solve the case or anything, but maybe—I don’t know—give us some ideas.”
The envelope was heavy with a set of eight-by-ten glossy photos. I slid them out onto the table and held one, then the next, by the edges. There were six altogether, each one capturing a different section of bright graffiti on the side of a brick building. When I placed them side by side in two rows, the spray-painted words connected and congealed into a smattering of swear words, epithets, drawings that might have been sexual—they were terribly drawn, but I sensed the intent.
“Is this the school?”
“One of the outbuildings,” he said. “The school keeps lawn equipment there. There’s been a rash of these lately around the county. A bridge, I think. Nothing yet on the school itself. They did us that bit of courtesy, I suppose.”
“Kids.”
“I—well, I suppose that’s the going consensus,” he said. “Keller came out when they first went up, or when Griffin—the maintenance guy? Carl Griffin?—when he discovered them. We had the yearbook advisor take those pictures. Keller thought maybe you could wave your magic wand over them and tell us who left us the mess.”
Magic wand. I wondered what the sheriff actually said, if he thought I could really help or if he weren’t playing some sort of trick on us all.
“I can try to tell you something about them,” I said. “It’s not foolproof and won’t stand as evidence in court. But getting some kid to confess might be easier if you’ve already figured out he did the deed.”
“Anything you can offer.”
I gazed down at the prints for a while. “It’s more than one kid.”
He leaned forward.
“I would say three separate people. To be fair, I can’t say definitively that they are boys, but I think you’re safe to say that. From the—” I waved my hand toward the corner where a sexual organ had been reconstructed by someone either sloppy with the paint can or inexperienced sexually, or both. “Probably young.”
“We get sixth graders when they’re eleven or twelve.”
“Thirteen. Maybe fourteen, tops,” I said. “Again, not definitively—these just seem so . . . juvenile.”