Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 by Scandal in Fair Haven Page B

and jammed his hands in the pockets of his shorts. “And I thought I heard something—like a bump, maybe?—upstairs. So I called out real loud this time for Brigit. It was quiet. Real quiet.” He looked sheepish, a different kind of embarrassment this time. “It was—I don’t know. I just felt funny. So I decided to leave. I closed the door and came back home and started mowing again.”
    I didn’t say anything. I looked at his handsome, uncomfortable face and wondered if maybe Dan Forrest had been luckier than he would ever know. If Patty Kay’s murderer had waited upstairs, listening—
    Dan mistook my silence.
    “I’m sorry,” the boy said miserably. “I guess I should have called somebody.”
    “No, you did fine, You couldn’t have known. And everything downstairs looked all right?”
    He nodded eagerly. “Yeah. Everything looked okay.”
    “You didn’t see anyone leave?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    But I hadn’t expected that. Obviously, the searcher would have heard Dan call, heard the door close. It would be easy to go down the alley or to slip through the thick woods behind the Matthews house and gain the street—or a nearby yard?—without being seen.
    “Thank you, Dan.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    I heard the mower start up again as I walked swiftly back to the house. I went by my car and retrieved my 35mm camera.
    All the way upstairs, I thought about Dan Forrest—and luck. But maybe it was also my lucky day—and by extension Craig Matthews’s. Because the trashed study had to mean something.
    Captain Walsh thought it meant I’d do anything necessary to help my “nephew.”
    I knew better.
    I took careful photos that would overlap and show the precise condition of the room.
    The more I looked at the destruction, the more somber I felt.
    The rampage that had turned this room into a shambles reflected enormous anger. And frustration?
    Surely the search was made to find something the murderer feared anyone else seeing.
    It had to be something so shocking, so revealing that the search was made despite Craig’s arrest.
    The desk was littered with papers. It would take hoursto sort through them. And, more than likely, they would mean nothing to me.
    The same was true of the emptied files.
    It looked very much as though the searcher had taken whatever came to hand and dumped it out, then mixed the papers into untidy heaps.
    Searching for something specific?
    Or angrily destroying order.
    Behind the desk, a ring-binder notebook lay spread-eagled on the floor. Gold letters on the navy vinyl cover read:
Walden School, Special Projects
. In a corner of the room was a cracked Rolodex. Jammed against the wall was an appointment book.
    I used a pencil to edge the appointment book over. I opened it to Friday, April 2.
    Patty Kay’s handwriting was as distinctive as her laugh. Oversize looping letters were scrawled in vivid scarlet ink.
    She evidently used the daybook simply to jot down appointments and reminders. That didn’t surprise me. It takes a more reclusive, inwardly turned personality for journal keeping. So I didn’t expect to find a diary entry relating the latest upheavals in what had surely been a life filled with controversy and confrontation.
    Nor did I.
    I found, instead, these un revealing notes:
FRIDAY
– 9 a.m. Class
Chuck
Brooke
Call Stuart—Brigit
Noon—singles/Craig
7 p.m. Symphony
SATURDAY
– 9 a.m. tennis
8 p.m. Charley’s A.
    I flipped back a page.
THURSDAY
- 9 a.m. tennis 9-7 Gina/5-7 Brooke/
6-2 Edith
Alterations
Walden Files
    I described the notes as unrevealing. Yes. But they did raise some questions.
    The Friday tennis game with Craig was marked out. On Saturday Patty Kay had marked through the theater date and written
“trustees.”
She had double-underlined two Friday entries, Chuck and Call Stuart—Brigit. A slash was marked through the Saturday morning tennis notation.
    Why these changes in her plans?
    Why were two entries double underlined?
    I quickly made a copy of