Читать книгу Warning Signs - Katy Lee - Страница 11

TWO

“You really think the principal is your number-one suspect?” Owen waited with Sheriff Wesley Grant outside the high school’s glass entrance doors. The buzzer signaled their authorization for admittance, and Wes pulled the door open.

“Her assistant’s got a prior arrest for possession of marijuana,” Wes discreetly informed Owen over his shoulder as they entered the school. “They neglected to share that little tidbit with the school board and don’t know I uncovered it. I’m keeping it to myself until I have enough evidence for a search warrant of their homes.”

“You seem to be putting all your efforts on these two. What is it about them you don’t like?” Owen eyed a well-dressed man at the end of the corridor sweeping the shiny floors with an oversize dust mop.

“You’ll see why when you meet them,” Wes answered. “I feel like Ms. Hunter’s constantly laughing at me. I’m a big joke to her.” He sneered.

“Well, you are funny-looking.” Owen jutted a chin at Wes’s head. “And you need a haircut, man. Have I been gone from Maine so long that the ladies dig the unkempt look now? Perhaps your principal is one of them. Maybe she isn’t laughing at you at all. Maybe she’s sweet on you. How old is she? Fiftyish?”

The green-clad sheriff chuckled. “Not quite.” Wes pointed to a door off to their left. He cleared his throat a few times. “So, you haven’t mentioned Cole since you arrived yesterday. How is your son?”

Owen’s back tensed. “He’s still living with Rebecca’s parents over in Bangor. It’s best that way. So, how do you think the drugs are getting here? This island’s pretty secluded.”

Wes nodded, taking Owen’s cue. No more talk about Cole. “My guess is Ms. Hunter and her assistant have a connection with a Canadian drug cartel. They’re helping to get the marijuana across the border by coming through my island. Then distributing it to their dealers on the mainland.”

“But some marijuana was found on school property. Why release it and take the chance of shutting down their operation?”

“Well, that’s where you come in. I need your, um, eyes to listen in on a few conversations.”

“You need my eyes to listen? I don’t understand.”

The men reached the principal’s office and entered. “Hey, Steph,” Wes said to the cute, pixie-like secretary at her desk. “I’m here to see Ms. Hunter.”

“Yup, she’s expecting you.” Steph lifted a slender arm rimmed with gold clinking bracelets and pointed toward the door. “She told me to tell you to go on in.”

“Thanks, darling.” Wes flashed a smile Owen thought might send the dark-haired girl into a tizzy the way she bloomed into the same shade of red as the netted lobster hanging on the wall behind her. Too bad for the girl if she thought Wes’s flirtations meant anything.

Wes had cut women out of his life the day his fiancée ran off with another man. But unlike Wes, Owen had lost his girl by his own hand.

Twice in two days memories of Rebecca caused his stomach muscles to twist in guilt. He let the feeling remind him to never forget. She was so young and beautiful, glowing with that new-mother look that made him fall in love with her every time he watched her snuggle their son or every time she reached for him, honoring him with her complete and total trust. His jaded heart would swell over her pure one. She was genuine and didn’t deserve to die.

But she had, and Owen had vowed to never ruin another pure heart again. Not another woman’s and not his own son’s. A solitary life would be his punishment.

“Uh, Owen,” Wes held the door handle to the principal’s office and spoke over his shoulder in a hushed voice. “There’s something you need to know.”

“What’s that?”

Wes cleared his throat again, putting Owen on the defensive. Suddenly, the door opened from the inside, yanking Wes’s hand along with it. Whatever Wes planned to say was cut off by a wiry-looking man, about five-eight, with blond hair and gold-rimmed glasses. Owen summed him up in two seconds as a nonthreat.

“Welcome back, Sheriff. We’ve been waiting for you.” The man swept a scrawny arm wide to invite them in, but his tight-lipped words implied they weren’t really welcome.

Owen extended a hand to the shorter man. “I’m Agent Matthews from the Drug Enforcement Agency.”

The man eyed Owen’s hand hanging in midair for an exaggerated second before placing his smaller, skinnier one into it. “Nick Danforth. I’m Ms. Hunter’s interpreter. Where she goes, I go.”

Interpreter? Did she not speak English? Owen thought Nick’s response odd, but he shrugged it off. “Nice to meet you.”

“Owen,” Wes called from the front of the desk. A woman stood beside him, her hair twisted up loosely at the back of her head. Her slate-gray eyes grew wide as he leveled his own gaze on her. Even without the golden-streaked red hair flowing down her back, he remembered her from yesterday out on the rock.

She was the school principal? And the number-one suspect? Could that really be true? A deaf principal in her early thirties didn’t strike him as the drug-smuggler type. Yet he supposed he’d seen all types in his line of work and knew he needed to treat everyone as a suspect.

“This is Ms. Hunter. She’s deaf,” Wes announced matter-of-factly.

Owen caught Nick signing to the principal. An interpreter for a deaf principal. Nick’s earlier response now computed. Nick shut the door behind them and sidled up beside Owen, ready to do his job.

Ms. Hunter raised her hands and signed, “It’s nice to meet you, Agent Matthews.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Agent Matthews,” Nick said from beside Owen, interpreting Ms. Hunter word for word. Only, neither of them knew Owen didn’t need an interpreter. He understood her signs fine.

Owen turned away from Nick for a pointed look at his so-called friend. He could tell by Wes’s prolonged stare and slight shake of his head that he wanted Owen to keep his sign language knowledge under wraps. A little heads-up would have been nice.

“I’ll explain later,” Wes said. “For now I would like you to get acquainted with Ms. Hunter and her staff so we can start the investigation.”

Then it clicked why Wes had brought him there. Owen would be able to spy on what was said between these two when they thought no one else understood. If they really were the smugglers, then Owen stood a chance of solving the case pretty quickly.

Owen fisted his hands at his side. “You, too, Ms. Hunter,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nick translate his words to sign language. Owen continued, “It’s my hope we can work together to get to the bottom of this problem on your island and in your school. I appreciate your help.”

She visibly relaxed and her lips quirked up at the edges as she signed, “I want that more than anything.”

“Grea—” Owen started and stopped, almost forgetting to wait for the interpretation. He deserved a swift kick for nearly giving himself away already.

“I hope you mean that,” Nick translated.

I hope you mean that? What? Owen tilted his head and tried to figure out what he’d done wrong. He thought for sure she’d said she wanted to work together more than anything. Maybe his skills were rusty for lack of use. God knows he rarely used them. Having Nick might be a good idea, Owen decided.

He shrugged off his misinterpretation. “I understand I will be a teacher undercover. My goal is to find a leak that will lead me to the source of the drug supplier and then to the person smuggling the drugs to the island.”

Nick signed as Owen spoke, staying at about three words behind him. But Owen noticed Nick signed more than what was said. Owen recognized the extra signs as, “Don’t forget. This guy is here to investigate us. Not to help us.”

Ms. Hunter’s lips twisted and a flash of humor sparked from her eyes. Then she signed to Owen, “I’ve made preparations for you to teach English in Mrs. Standish’s classroom. She’s out on maternity for another three weeks, so you’ll be her substitute teacher. I’m hoping we won’t need more time than that. Nick, stop translating. This is between us. I met Agent Matthews out on the rocks yesterday. He came to my aid when he thought I was hurt. I think he can be trusted.”

Even though Nick stopped translating her final words, Owen kept on reading. He honestly didn’t fault her for sharing their first encounter with her interpreter. He supposed he used secret codes in his line of work, too.

But never had he taught an English class in his line of work.

“Would there maybe be a gym class I could teach instead?” Owen asked. “Shakespeare never made much sense to me. Plus, teaching a class like that would take up too much of my investigation time.”

“You and lifeguards,” Nick signed to Ms. Hunter, ignoring everything Owen had said. “Just because a man comes to a swimmer’s aid does not make him trustworthy. Your breakup with Lifeguard Andy should have taught you that lesson. Although I’m glad to see you’re keeping the investigator busy and out of our hair. Your plan is brilliant. He’s not too happy about teaching English, but he said fine.”

Owen jerked. That’s not what I said at all. Owen now knew he was not misinterpreting Ms. Hunter’s signs, and he needed to inform her that her boy Nick was not translating correctly. But to do so would blow his cover and ruin any chances of “listening” in on these two and their conversations.

Wes believed Ms. Hunter guilty of covering up something. If sticking him in an English classroom had been her idea, Owen thought Wes might be onto something.

It was no wonder his friend had asked him to come all the way up from Texas instead of going with an agent from the Bangor field office or even Boston. These two were probably talking circles around him. Poor guy.

“It’s a good thing, then, Agent Matthews isn’t a lifeguard,” Ms. Hunter signed. “Or I would be in trouble for sure.” Her lips twitched again as she cast a glance at Owen. “Because he is not hard on the eyes.”

Owen clamped his teeth together. It took every ounce of strength for him to pretend he didn’t understand.

“Ms. Hunter says the English class is all she has available, and I’m to show you to your classroom,” Nick translated.

“Did she, now?” Owen bit the inside of his cheek.

“You can follow me,” Nick mumbled.

“I was kind of hoping Ms. Hunter would join us so we could go over the plan of action in more detail.” Owen directed Nick to ask.

Instead Nick signed to Ms. Hunter, “He’s not your type. And you better be careful what you say around him. I think he’s going to be harder to fool than the sheriff.”

Interesting. So Ms. Hunter was in fact fooling the sheriff about something.

Owen searched her eyes. A mischievous twinkle relayed that she definitely found something humorous. Owen now understood what Wes meant when he’d said she laughed at him. He was starting to feel like the butt of a joke, too.

The lights flickered overhead.

“That’s my TTY phone,” Ms. Hunter signed to Nick for him to translate information about her teletypewriter phone. Owen knew all about a TTY from calling his son, but he kept quiet as she explained through her interpreter. “It could be a parent trying to reach me. No one on the island has a TTY machine to type their message into, so they have to use a TTY service operator—a real live person standing by to take the caller’s message and transcribe it for me onto a screen. I can’t keep them waiting, but you go on,” she signaled with a wave of her hand and then turned the machine to face her, pushing the button to answer.

Miriam hit the button to read the message as they were about to leave. When her pleasant eyes iced over, their steps halted.

Owen zoomed in on the screen, but she hit the end call button before he could read it.

Nick raced forward.

“What did it say?” Nick’s signs demanded an answer.

Ms. Hunter shook her blanched face. “Not now.”

“Tell me.” Nick’s refusal to take her lead had Owen paying closer attention to their words. His signing secret already proved to be beneficial.

Ms. Hunter’s jumpy glances passed between Wes and Owen before she signed to her interpreter, answering his question. “Get off the island if you know what’s good for you. Now go. We’ll talk about this later.”

“Another crank call? That’s the third one this week!” Nick’s hands slapped out, seemingly unconcerned with cutting the two hearing people out of the conversation...or so he thought.

“I said not right now.” Ms. Hunter tilted her head toward Owen as she signed to Nick. Owen read the silent message loud and clear, but apparently Nick didn’t. The guy’s inability to keep his emotions at bay suited Owen just fine.

“It’s got to be someone with a TTY so they can send you the message directly,” Nick signed. “Using the operator service would be too risky. I’d give my right hand to know who on this island has one.”

“Yes. Me, too.” Ms. Hunter signed, then cringed. She studied her hands before continuing. “Well, maybe not my right hand. That would be like cutting out my tongue.”

Owen understood Ms. Hunter wasn’t worried about the pain of losing her right hand, but rather losing the only voice she had. It reiterated that his son would have the same hardship all his life—because of him.

Owen squinted up at all the diplomas and certificates hanging on the wall. There were a lot of letters after Miriam Hunter’s name. He couldn’t fathom how she’d achieved such great success. He didn’t dare hope the same for Cole.

“I still think you should report these pranks,” Nick signed quickly.

“Chasing pranks is not important right now.” Miriam signed back. “Finding a drug supplier is.”

“But what if they’re related? What if this is more than an upset islander who thinks you shouldn’t have this job?”

Owen tuned in to see what she thought about Nick’s idea. Owen thought he was onto something. The only thing he caught was a spark of anger from Miriam Hunter’s eyes. She apparently didn’t like the idea of people thinking she wasn’t worthy of her position. But come on, Owen scoffed. A deaf principal for a hearing school? She couldn’t possibly do the job right.

“I think you should take that tour now,” she signed with pinched lips. Nick’s about-face out of the room made it clear the person in charge around here was Miriam Hunter. Her authoritative expression reminded Owen of his own adolescence spent in the principal’s office.

But he had to wonder if her bravado was a cover-up for the fear he’d witnessed when she’d received that call. He hadn’t missed the pasty hue that had marred her smooth complexion. Miriam Hunter feared someone or something. But why keep it from the police?

Unless she worried alerting them would bring something else to light.

Owen followed Nick and Wes and watched them take a left out into the hall. As Owen passed by the secretary’s desk, he called out, “Give me a second, guys.” He approached the desk. “Stephanie, right?”

“Yup. Can I help you?”

“Do you have a notepad I could use?”

“Sure.” She pulled a pen from behind her multi-ringed ear and a notepad from her drawer. “Here you go.”

Owen scrawled out a message for Ms. Hunter on the notepad and tore it off. The note included his cell phone number as well as an invitation to meet later to discuss how they could work together on the case. Buddying up might get her to open up, even if they had to spend the night writing everything down.

He stepped to the open door of her office. She had her back to him. Her folded arms pulled the back of her pale blue suit coat tight. She faced the window, looking out at the distant horizon of endless water beyond the rows of the fiery foliage. For a moment, her profile came into view. He could see her worrying on her lower lip.

Knocking would do nothing to alert her to his presence. Again he wondered how a deaf person qualified for a job such as this, and he thought of the prank call he’d witnessed. It very well could have been someone who thought her disability inhibited her from doing an adequate job.

Owen thought of his son and of his future limitations because of his deafness. Owen had to agree with the prank caller. He couldn’t see how Ms. Hunter could perform her duties adequately. She obviously had the ability to fool a lot of people to get her position.

He stepped to her side, causing her to flinch. For a split second, Owen caught a glimpse of fear in her eyes. It retreated as quickly as the tide, leaving nothing but sparkles of wonder behind.

He’d never seen anyone so expressive before. She gave an elegant tilt of her head and an encouraging smile, and he could tell she was asking him what he wanted, even though she said not a word.

Owen handed her the paper, at a loss for words himself. A full smile blossomed on her face as she read the note. He wasn’t expecting to see such joy—or to undergo the effects it seemed to have on him. His invite wasn’t meant to make her happy, but for some reason he was glad it did.

A slender hand reached out toward him with graceful fluidity. It took him a second to realize she meant to touch him. Her hand landed with a slight squeeze on the arms he crossed at his chest. So much for a barrier. Alarm bells rang through his mind. Her touch felt like a branding iron leaving its mark on him. Owen belonged to no one. He couldn’t. Not anymore.

He stepped back and gestured to the note. “Tonight,” he said clearly, demanding that she read his lips and his body language.

She nodded as her countenance slipped to the same stunned look she’d had when she’d received the crank call. Good. She read him loud and clear. Let’s hope she didn’t forget it so easily.

Unlike Owen who could feel himself forgetting his punishment with each expressive thought she displayed on her upturned face. Her pale beauty and endearing freckles sprinkled across her cheeks made him think of sandy beaches on summer days. Her gray eyes washed over him with each cleansing bat of her lashes fooling him into thinking his sins could be washed away so easily.

Owen headed for the exit with quick steps. Speed became critical. He needed to close this case and get off this island before the charmingly beautiful principal made him forget his reason for being there.

Before Miriam Hunter made him forget his punishment permanently.

* * *

Lord, have you sent Owen Matthews to help me get to the bottom of the drug issue, or is he here to make me leave, too?

Perhaps she would have figured out by now who had placed the bag of marijuana on her desk if it weren’t for people trying to scare her away. She felt the edges of her lips bend down and pressed them hard to rein in her emotions. Regardless of what the islanders thought, she cared about these kids and this school. And even this town.

Miriam straightened, breathing deeply. And whether they liked it or not, she wasn’t leaving.

Not even for her dark-haired rescuer.

Miriam reread Agent Matthews’s note. He wanted to work together. The idea of the two of them working side by side conjured up romantic images of late-night dinner meetings.

Stop it! This is serious, she told herself.

She blinked hard to get her mind back on track. Agent Matthews wanted to meet tonight. Should she cook? Or should they go to a more public place? The topic of discussion needed to be kept private from overhearing ears.

Miriam had an overwhelming urge to make her lemon chicken dish. She’d wanted to serve that since she’d come to the island. The thought of having her first guest elicited a spark of excitement. Of course, she never thought it would take this long, or that the first guest to sit at her table would be a DEA agent.

And a very handsome one at that.

Her hand still tingled where she’d laid it on his forearm. The sensation had surprised her, but it was the yearning to touch him again that really threw her. Maybe working together wasn’t such a good idea after all. I should do this on my own. I can’t be losing my focus whenever Agent Matthews shows up. I might as well pack my bags and buy a ticket for the next ferry.

Not willing to give up just yet, Miriam opened her top desk drawer and tossed the note in with the three other notes she’d recently received. She noticed how they were all written on yellow legal paper.

Agent Matthews’s note didn’t tell her to leave the island like the others, but she wondered if they all came from the same pad...and the same desk.

Stephanie’s desk.

Miriam instantly disregarded that idea. Most likely every teacher in the building had oodles of these pads lying on their desks for someone to tear a sheet from. Following this line of reasoning sure wouldn’t identify her threatening pen pal anytime soon.

Miriam reached for a student’s file from the top of the pile on her desk. She’d been poring over any and all documented details about each student’s past and home life that might point her in some direction.

Name: Colin Steady

Age: 16

Address: 285 Bluff Point

Parent/Guardian: Sam and Vera Steady

Miriam read through the past teachers’ reports on Colin. All favorable descriptions of a boy who’d never had a detention and made himself at home on the honor roll. Always willing to lend a hand to teachers and help peers in their learning.

In other words, the dream student.

Miriam closed the file and moved on to the next.

Name: Deanna Williams

Wait. Miriam slapped the file closed. She’d been reading them in alphabetical order and knew of at least one student whose surname began with a T.

Ben Thibodaux aka Troublemaker.

She rustled through the remaining files. The final four of the full high school enrollment total of fifty-two. She checked her notes, counting the number she’d already explored.

Forty-seven.

I’m missing a file. Miriam hit the buzzer on her intercom for Stephanie. When her secretary failed to appear in the doorway, Miriam went in search of her.

She approached Stephanie’s unmanned desk; the girl’s opened diet cola had been left behind. The clock above the entry door read 3:40 p.m. Stephanie didn’t usually leave until four o’clock, so she still had another twenty minutes to go. Miriam saw her secretary’s coat hanging on the coat rack beside her own and Nick’s. She was still in the building.

The girl had probably taken a bathroom break. Miriam decided to check the file cabinet and skirted around the desk to the cabinets lined up on the wall. She pulled the heavy metal drawer wide and flipped through each file, starting back with the A’s until she reached the end of the line with the S’s. The rest were on her desk, all except for Ben Thibodaux’s.

A quick glance on Stephanie’s desktop showed no sign of it there, either. Her gaze drifted to the cabinet beside Stephanie’s desk. Her secretary considered it her personal drawer, so Miriam didn’t want to open it, out of respect.

After another five minutes, Miriam walked to the hallway and peered down the empty expanse toward the faculty restroom.

She always carried a notepad and pen in her pocket in case Nick wasn’t with her and she needed to write something down to a person. She patted her right suit pocket to be sure the items were there and struck off down the empty hall.

Miriam reached the bathroom marked Faculty Women. Knocking would serve no purpose, so she pushed the door and entered, letting it swing closed behind her. The room contained two stalls, one of which was closed.

Mariam refused to speak. She hated speaking. She hated not knowing what she sounded like. She hated the looks people gave her when she tried. There had been a time when her mother and teachers had urged her to speak, even forced her to, but no one could force her now.

She crossed the yellow-tiled floor to the stall door and pushed on it. It opened easily. Empty. Stephanie wasn’t in there, after all.

Miriam headed back to the door. She curled her hand around the cool metal handle and pulled.

It didn’t budge.

She shook the handle a few times, wrenching it toward her, but no matter how much muscle she put into the pull, the door stayed shut.

Is it locked? But the door didn’t lock on its own. It had to be locked with a physical key. A key that Stephanie kept on her desk. Had Stephanie locked the door for the night, thinking no one was in there? Wouldn’t she have checked first to make sure?

Miriam pounded on the door. If Stephanie was still out in the hall maybe she would hear the banging and come back. Miriam fisted her hands and kept up the banging.

Please hear it, Stephanie, please! Miriam’s words were only in her head. But in the next moment, the lights went out, and Miriam opened her mouth to speak aloud.

It was now necessary.

She hoped she was getting the words out correctly and loud enough for someone to hear. Her fists pounded harder. She fumbled in the pitch blackness for the door handle and yanked again and again. She banged and yelled some more. She banged through throbbing hands. She banged until they were numb. Someone had to still be there. Someone had to walk by sooner or later. If she let up, they would never know she was in there.

She pressed her cheek to the cool wood, feeling her drubbing vibrations pick up speed to a level of thrashing. Her heart rate joined the pace until sweat drenched her and she couldn’t stand on her feet any longer. Her pounding weakened and slowed as her strength fizzled. She had no idea how long she’d been in there. It felt like at least an hour. Everyone was surely gone by now. Slowly she turned her back to the door and slid down to the floor.

Where was her dark-haired rescuer now? Probably down at the pier having dinner with one of the pretty local girls, laughing over something that wasn’t even funny and making friends with people who could understand him.

Someone not like her. The freak, as Mother always said.

Miriam touched her face with pulsing hands and felt hot wet streaks of tears. She vaguely wondered when she had started crying as she stared off into the black room. She accepted she would be spending the night locked in this dark room as though she were ten years old again and being taught a lesson. And like all those other times of punishment, Miriam wasn’t sure what she had done wrong this time to be locked away, once again isolated into a cold, dark world, when all she ever wanted was to find a home.

She closed her eyes, preferring the darkness behind her lids to the darkness around her. It gave her a sense of control in a situation where two of her senses were lost. Her hands moved by memory, calling on her heavenly Father as she had all those times of punishment in her mother’s home. And once at her grandmother’s when she’d come to Stepping Stones to visit with her mother.

That had been the worst darkness ever. So much so that Miriam, to this day, tried to block the horrifying images out, never wanting to relive the terror of that room in her grandmother’s basement again. With its damp dirt floor and salty, musty air, it had been so much scarier than the closet at home. Her chest tightened. Pain ripped through her lungs from the remembrance. Images that could only have been the workings of her wild imagination still haunted her.

A woman with bulging eyes. A man’s hand grabbing at her.

No one had been in that room with her. Mother had told her she’d made it all up. But if that was the case, why did it feel so real? So real that even though she now lived in her grandmother’s house, she still refused to enter that room. It was locked, and it would stay locked forever.

Breathe, she told herself. I’m not there now. I’m in a bathroom at school. Nothing scary here. Please, God, find me. She leaned back and called on her true rescuer—the only one who could find her in the darkest of places.