“I’ll make dinner. How about pasta with meat sauce?” Everly loved getting to pick out the pasta shape she wanted and dumping the noodles into the boiling water.
“Yummy! That’s one of my favorites. I’ll get ready to leave.” Everly raced out of the kitchen.
“Well, Detective O’Mara, how did she do?” Ten asked, wrapping his arms around Ronan and giving him a squeeze.
“She’s a natural. Talking to five-year-olds about their grizzly deaths isn’t an easy thing, but she handled it with empathy and compassion. I’m so proud of our little Sherlock Holmes.”
Ten snorted. He grabbed Ronan’s shopping list and added a few items for that night’s dinner.
“Ice cream?” Ronan asked, raising a questioning eyebrow.
“Mini Sherlock deserves a treat.” Ten wasn’t totally thrilled with Everly being involved in the investigation of three dead kids, along with their kindergarten teacher, but he knew Ronan would be there to protect her and keep her safe from the monsters who’d ruined four families over fifty years ago.
11
Ronan
After his trip with Everly to the supermarket, Ronan dropped his daughter and the food off with Tennyson and walked Wolf across the street so he could hang out with Everly and Aurora while he, Jude, and Fitz got to work. Ronan gave his partners a quick recap on what they’d learned from the child spirits.
“I’m not a doctor, but it sounds to me like those kids were poisoned intentionally,” Jude said.
“I agree with you, although there’s no way to prove that unless someone confesses, and after having gotten away with the crimes for half a century, I can’t imagine the killer is going to come forward.” It wasn’t unheard of for people to admit their misdeeds decades after the fact, but in this particular case, the kids who’d been in the school that day would be in their mid-fifties, which would put their parents and the teachers over seventy years old. Ronan also supposed it would be possible to exhume the bodies to do a more thorough autopsy, but he couldn’t imagine these families wanting to go through the heartbreak all over again.
“I made a request yesterday for the police case files for the teacher and the three kids.” Jude offered a cheeky how-do-you-like-me-now grin.
“How is that possible?” Fitz asked. “We don’t have jurisdiction in New Hampshire, and our PI licenses aren’t reciprocal.”
Jude waggled his eyebrows. “I have my PI license in New Hampshire.”
“When the hell did you have the time to do that?” Ronan asked. He’d met Jude several years ago when they were in the middle of the Hutchins case. He’d taken two bullets with Ronan’s name on them and had recuperated in his and Ten’s spare bedroom for two months. After that, he started working with Ronan and Fitz, consulting on BPD cases, met Cope, and started their family.
“While I was recovering from being shot, I studied to take the exams in New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island. I passed all three shortly after I was given the green light to resume my normal activities. You never know when something like this is going to come in handy.” Jude went to the fridge and grabbed three bottles of water. “I’m hoping they’ll get back to me soon.”
“Don’t count on it. Today’s Good Friday, and Passover starts at sundown this evening.” Fitz opened his laptop bag and pulled his computer out. “I did a little work on this case last night after Aurora fell asleep.” Fitz grabbed his phone and held it up to show a picture of himself and Aurora sound asleep in his king-sized bed, her with a picture book in her hands and Fitz with his phone cradled to his chest. “Jace snapped this shot when he came home from the mission.”
“I love it,” Jude said. “We had family time. Lizbet has started surfing. She can stand on her own but hasn’t been brave enough yet to take her first wobbly step. Can you believe she’ll be a year old in two weeks?” He held up his phone to show a pic of his daughter hanging on to the coffee table with an uncertain look on her face.
Ronan shook his head. In his mind’s eye, he could see himself giving Jude CPR after he’d nearly died at the hands of a killer angel who’d stalked his prey at Salem Mercy Hospital. Lizbet had been born that same night in the same hospital. “No. The time has really flown by.”
Fitz set his phone back on the table. “I’ll get busy digging up newspaper articles in New Hampshire. Jude, why don’t you do the same with papers in Massachusetts. There was bound to be a lot of cross-coverage with Salem sitting on the border between the two states.”
“You got it. I—” A text message ding interrupted what Jude had been about to say. He snorted. “It’s the case files. Maybe the records clerk is an atheist? I’ll print copies for everyone.” Jude left the table, heading toward Cope’s office.
“I’ll dig into the Massachusetts newspaper archives,” Ronan said, opening his laptop. He started with theBoston Globe, which had several articles about the tragedy. He jotted down the names of the kids’ parents in hopes he’d be able to find them by doing a public records search. “Whoa!” Ronan gasped.
“What?” Fitz asked, pulling his eyes from his screen.
“Rumors that Miss Fairbanks was having an affair with the principal, Mr. Whittaker. Several parents of the kids in her class mentioned there being some kind of funny business going on between the two of them.” This was a promising lead. Ronan did a quick records search on the former principal. “Bingo!”
“Was his name-ooooooo!” Jude sang as he walked back into the kitchen, carrying a stack of papers.
“Don’t quit your day job.” Ronan chuckled.
“What’s the bingo about?” Jude set the case files beside Ronan and handed a set to Fitz.
Ronan caught him up on the possible connection between Miss Fairbanks and the principal. “The story gets even juicier. Karen Whittaker filed for divorce six months after the murders. She listed adultery and irreconcilable differences as the reasons for filing. According to the divorce decree, she got everything. The house, car, alimony, child support, and half of his pension.”
“Whittaker retired in 2008. The scandal didn’t seem to affect him professionally. He remained at Salem Elementary School until 1978, when he moved up to the high school. Five years later, he became superintendent of the entire Salem School system. Lastly, he worked with the New Hampshire Department of Education, overseeing schools across the entire state.” Fitz shook his head.
