The Whistle Blower Page 13

  Every cell in her brain gave up simultaneously. “You know what? This isn’t meant to be.” She slid the phone and card across the counter toward him. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” She turned, put her hands on the cart, and began to walk away.

  “You wanna just use my phone?” He called after her. “If you’re only going to use it for three minutes?”

  She paused. Was that a good idea? She didn’t know. She turned back. “Thank you for the offer.” She stood thinking about it. He stood waiting for her to think. “Is it a fire phone?” she asked.

  He furrowed his brow. “I don’t think so.” Then he picked up the eight-dollar phone from the counter, still in its package. “It’s just like this phone.”

  She let out a long breath. This was just crazy enough to work. “Yes, thank you. Thank you, thank you.” She rushed back to her favorite Walmart employee of all time. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  Chapter 38

  It took the police only two hours to show up at her front door.

  She opened it to find them standing on her porch. She recognized the officer on the right. He was Chip Buker of the giant Buker family who took up the last three pews on the right-hand side of the sanctuary. She hadn’t seen him in church for a while, but she remembered he used to come occasionally. His blue uniform had made him stand out from the crowd.

  He wasn’t in uniform now. Both officers wore suits, making them even more intimidating.

  “Are you Mrs. Provost?” Chip asked. The recognition was not mutual.

  She nodded.

  “I’m Detective Buker, and this is my partner, Detective Slaughter. We’re with the Maine State Police. We need to ask you a few questions. May we come in?”

  Why was she so nervous? She hadn’t done anything wrong. She stepped back to let them in, nodding. “It didn’t take you long to find me.” A nervous trill of a laugh escaped her, and her cheeks got hot. “How did you find me?”

  Without looking at her, Chip said, “You were on camera, ma’am. And someone recognized you.”

  Shoot. The fame of being a principal’s wife. She motioned toward the living room as she shut the door behind them. “Please, make yourself comfortable.” When she entered her living room behind them, she saw that there was no place for them to sit. Toys and electronics occupied every cushion in the room. She swept an arm down the couch, knocking all the mothering paraphernalia to the floor at one end. Then she motioned to the couch again. Detective Slaughter looked reluctant, as if she feared getting attacked by a soggy Cheerio—which was a possibility—but she did sit down, and Chip followed her lead.

  Slaughter, Sandra mused. What an apt name for a police officer. If Sandra were a cop, she’d want to be called Detective Slaughter.

  “You made an anonymous phone call,” Chip said.

  Was that a question?

  Chip waited for Sandra to say something, and when she didn’t, he asked, “Why did you choose to be anonymous?”

  Why had she chosen to be anonymous? There were a million reasons. There was no good reason at all. “I was scared,” she said quickly.

  “What were you scared of?” Slaughter asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. A man was murdered. Maybe I’m scared of the murderer.” She hadn’t meant to sound so snarky, but neither officer reacted, so maybe snark came with the territory for them.

  “What made you think the poison was in the water bottle?” Chip asked.

  “Was it?”

  “No way to know. We don’t have the water bottle.”

  She gasped. “And no one grabbed it as evidence?”

  Chip glared at her. “Please answer the question.”

  She didn’t want to. She was having too much fun. “But you haven’t found another source for the poison, have you? So I’m probably right?”

  “Ma’am, please.”

  Oh, fine. You’re no fun. “I’m a soccer ref.” She sat up straighter as she said this. It wasn’t entirely true, not yet. She hadn’t even taken the test yet, but it felt good to say it. Still, she told herself she had to concentrate on being more truthful. Either that or give up her new secret sleuthing career. So far, her amateur methodology led to far too much misrepresentation. “I was just thinking, at my last game ... the schools always give us water bottles. It would be really easy to put poison in one of them.”

  Chip stared at her, looking contemplative. “Did you know the deceased?”

  “I met him thirty seconds before he died.”

  Chip nodded as if he knew that. “And how long have you been a soccer ref?”

  “I just started this season.” No need to tell him she had only started a week ago.

  “And do you have any idea who might have been angry enough with the deceased to kill him?”

  Sandra shook her head, but as she did so, a face appeared in her mind. “I don’t know if he would have been angry with him, because I don’t know him, but have you looked at the man who was reffing with him that day? That guy would have had easy access to the water bottle.”

  “We can surmise who had access to the water bottle,” Slaughter said, and Sandra didn’t like her tone. “We’re asking if you knew anyone who was angry with Mr. Fenton.”

  “You didn’t even know the poison was in the water bottle, but now, a week after the fact, you’re going to figure out who had access to it? Oh, please. And I just told you. I didn’t know Mr. Fenton. So how could I know who was angry with him?”

  Slaughter gave Chip an exasperated look. “I think we’re done here.”

  Chip held up a hand to stall her. “You said that you met him thirty seconds before he died,” Chip said. “Does that mean he spoke to you?”

  Sandra stared at him, wondering if she should share what Frank had said. Of course she should, right? These were the police. She should tell them everything. Yet, she was feeling kind of selfish. She wanted to figure this thing out herself. And if Frank had been doing something illicit, she was reluctant to get him into trouble. Though she hardly knew the man, somehow she’d grown rather attached to him.

  Chip mistook her hesitation for confusion. “You said you met him. It just seems a weird phrase if all you did was watch him die.”

  Sandra felt a gentle nudge from inside her, telling her to be truthful. So, even though she didn’t want to, she came clean. “He said to me that I had to stop White.”

  So much for poker faces. “And you didn’t tell anyone this?” Slaughter cried.

  “You’re the first one to ask.”

  The detectives exchanged an embarrassed look.

  “What do you think he meant by that?” Chip asked.

  Sandra shook her head slowly. “I really don’t know for sure, but the referee in charge of this district is named Mike White.”

  Chapter 39

  Sandra sat in the minivan watching Peter’s team run dribbling drills. Sammy sat behind her, chewing on his fingers. Joanna was at a friend’s house having a playdate, and Sandra was lonely. And not just lonely for any old friend either. She wanted Bob. She was dying to tell him about her visit from the po-po and had even sent up a prayer requesting his presence. Of course, she prefaced her request by saying that she knew angels were busy, but if he had any spare time, she would love to see him. No emergency.

  Practice was almost over when her phone rang. Excited for someone to talk to, she looked at the caller ID to see that Mike White was calling. A chill overtook her, and beads of sweat broke out on her brow. She considered ignoring the call, but of course she couldn’t do that. He was her boss now. Plus, she was trying to gather information about him, so surely it didn’t make sense to dodge his calls, no matter how much they creeped her out.

  Maybe he’s not a bad guy, she told herself. Innocent until proven guilty, right?

  “Hello?” She tried to sound confident and failed.

  “Good afternoon. Is this Sandra?” He sounded hesitant.

  “Yes! Hello.”

  They exchanged pleasantries, and he aske
d her if she had taken her written test yet. Her stomach turned. She had been meaning to.

  He read her mind. “Don’t be nervous. Don’t forget, it’s an open-book test.”

  It was? “I’ll do it tonight.”

  “Awesome. I know you’ll do great.”

  How could he possibly know this?

  “I have some games for you. How does middle school girls at Lisbon sound tomorrow?”

  Excitement tickled her gut. Middle school games at Lisbon sounded quite lovely, in fact. “Sure. What time?”

  “Three-thirty. I’m pairing you up with Moose again. He spoke highly of you. It sounds like you two work well together. You can carpool with him if you like. He knows where the fields are.”

  She stammered to come up with an excuse. Nothing against Moose, but she didn’t want to carpool with any man she didn’t know, or even any man she did know, save her husband. “I think I’ll be running kids around on the way to the game, so I’ll just get there myself. Thanks anyway.”

  “Okay, and before I let you go, can you do two middle school boys’ games in Naples on Saturday?”

  Peter opened the passenger side door and climbed in wordlessly.

  She didn’t even know where Naples was, exactly, only that it was far. She started to accept, nonetheless, when she remembered Fall Fest. “Oh shoot. Sorry. I can’t do Saturday. I usually can, but this Saturday is Fall Fest at church.” As the excuse left her lips, she thought it sounded lame, so she added, “It’s a bigger deal than it sounds.”

  He chuckled. “I understand. Family comes first. All right then. I’ll write you down for Lisbon for now. I’ll assign you some more games soon, though, so keep an eye out.”

  “Okay, great, thanks.” She hung up the phone and looked at her son. “Hi, honey. You looked great out there. Did you have fun?”

  He gave her an annoyed look. “It’s not supposed to be fun, Mom, not anymore.”

  She thought she knew what he meant, but she didn’t like the sounds of it, so she feigned confusion. “What?”

  “Soccer is serious business now. I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  She started the van, disappointed that she hadn’t seen Bob. “I don’t care if you’re a hundred. If it’s not fun, there’s no point in playing.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I think the professionals would disagree.”

  She looked over her shoulder as she backed out of the parking spot. “Honey, one of my daily prayers for you is that you end up with a career that you love, a job that is so much fun you would do it for free.”

  He snickered. She knew he was trying to act like he was still annoyed, but she could also tell that he appreciated her sentiment. “Well, then I hope someone will pay me to play video games for the rest of my life.”

  “You never know.” She pulled out into traffic. Why were there so many people on the road? This road didn’t even go anywhere.

  “We’re going to Fall Fest?”

  “Of course. We go every year.”

  “I know, but I hadn’t heard you mention it this year, so I was hoping we were skipping it. You’re not volunteering, are you?”

  He had a point. She did usually volunteer. Guilt tried to worm its way through her brain, but she pushed it out. “I’ve been a little busy.”

  “I know. So, can we skip it?”

  She was tempted by the idea. Fall Fest was not her favorite occasion. An all-day outdoor affair, when it was usually too chilly for an all-day outdoor affair. The kids all bobbed for apples and then ran around with wet hair and blue lips. Some poor sap, usually the youth pastor, sat dripping and shivering in the dunking booth. And there were always a zillion people there—an introvert’s nightmare. But she also knew that Nate wouldn’t want to skip it. “Sorry, honey, I think we have to do it, but you can hang out with me.”

  He rolled his eyes again. She wondered if his eyes ever got tired. She was pretty sure she had never been allowed to roll her eyes at her parents like that. But she rolled her eyes often enough now to make up for it. She knew where Peter had gotten the habit.

  “Oh sure, that will help my social situation a lot if I hang out with my mommy all day.”

  She giggled. There had been many a Fall Fest when he had, in fact, hung out with his mommy all day, and gladly. But those days were over now. She missed cute little snuggly Peter, but she also really liked this version of him. “Maybe you could bring a friend from school? Then you wouldn’t have to talk to the church kids.” The absurdity of what she had just said was not lost on her.

  “I hate to break it to you, Mom, but Fall Fest is kind of lame. I’m not sure any of my friends would want to come. Though I have heard some girls talking about it. I guess Jack and Ethan are bringing their girlfriends.”

  Sandra’s stomach rolled. Those kids had girlfriends? They were way too young. Did Peter have a girlfriend? Of course not. She would know if he did. She could ask him, just to make sure, but he was actually talking to her, and she knew that if she took it into awkward territory, the conversation would quickly cease. “Sorry, honey. I’m afraid we’re just going to have to suck it up. It’s only one day.”

  Chapter 40

  Though Mike White had told her it was an open-book test, she couldn’t bring herself to believe him. If he was a murderer, he was also probably a cheater. And besides, she wanted to prove to herself that she knew the rules. So, she squirreled herself away in her bedroom with her laptop, locked the door, and logged on. A few of the questions made zero sense, and she wrestled with those until she eventually surrendered and just chose C, grateful there was no time limit. But of those questions that did make sense, she got one hundred percent of them correct, leaving her with a total score of 94 out of 100. Beaming with pride, she closed the laptop and ran downstairs to tell everyone.

  No one cared. Nate nodded absentmindedly, never moving his eyes from the television. She couldn’t bring herself to be angry. She knew he’d had a rough day and was exhausted. She was more disappointed that Peter didn’t care, and had to remind herself that he was a kid. She was supposed to be proud of his test scores, not necessarily the other way around. Of the four of them, Joanna was the most excited and gave Sandra’s legs an enthusiastic congratulatory hug. Sandra knew that Joanna didn’t understand what had gone right in Sandra’s life, but she still appreciated the support. She and Joanna were going to have to stick together in this male-dominated family.

  She sat down beside Nate and waited for commercials. Then she said, “How committed to Fall Fest are we?”

  He turned toward her, his brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”

  She leaned back into the cushions and exhaled slowly. “It means that we’re all pretty busy, and it might be nice to just hang out and do nothing on Saturday. Plus, I got offered two games for that day, which I’ll have to turn down if I do Fall Fest.”

  “Didn’t you say reffing wouldn’t interfere with family time?” She didn’t have to look at him to know he was scowling at her.

  “Fall Fest isn’t family time, unless you count me pushing Sammy around in the stroller. Everyone else is off doing their own thing.”

  “I can’t skip it,” he said. “I’m running the pony rides.”

  Of course he was. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “Did I need to tell you that?”

  She hadn’t meant to start an argument. “Of course not. I just didn’t realize.” Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t surprised. Nate never missed an opportunity to be involved in a community event. He loved seeing his students outside of school.

  Sandra glanced at her oldest son and tried to convey love with her eyes, as if to say, I tried.

  He gave her a little nod that said he knew that she had.

  “You want to help your dad with the ponies?”

  Gratitude vanished from Peter’s face. “No!” he cried. “Mom, just drop it!”

  She didn’t want to drop it. She was desperate to fix it. “We can make a big deal about how we’re fo
rcing you to help, and you could act all cool and complain the whole time.” She forced a laugh, as if by laughing at herself she could somehow make herself funny.

  Nate gave her a confused look. “What’s this?”

  “Mom, I’ll be fine. I’ll just go to the stupid thing like everyone else.” He grabbed his backpack and stomped up the stairs.

  “What was that all about?”

  She stared at her husband, wondering how he could be so clueless. “What was that about? If your son hates going to church because of the other kids there, why would he want to go hang out there on Saturday too?”

  Understanding dawned on Nate’s face, and he looked sympathetic. “I guess he doesn’t have to go.”

  “Really?” This shocked her. “So maybe he and I could just skip it?”

  Nate’s frown returned. “No, I need you there.”

  She knew he didn’t need her there at all. In fact, she could vanish and he wouldn’t realize she was gone until suppertime, but she didn’t see any benefit in arguing the point. “Well, we can’t just leave Peter home alone.”

  “True.” He looked thoughtful. “He needs to go too. We’ll keep a close eye on him, make sure nothing bad happens.”

  Sandra, knowing how subtle teen bullying could be, couldn’t imagine how they could do that, but she would try. She wished she had the ability to red card kids in real life, just blow her whistle, whip out that little red piece of plastic, and send the offenders home. In fact, she’d red card the parents too.

  Chapter 41

  The Lisbon middle school soccer field was like a back road in a Maine March: there was a pothole every six feet. Sandra was spending so much time looking at the field, making sure she didn’t fall into a sinkhole, that she wasn’t really watching the game. Moose mentioned this, when he stopped the clock for an injury. One of Lisbon’s halfbacks had indeed fallen into a crater that was almost as big as she was.

  Sandra tried to defend herself, but Moose cut her off. “Oh, I know. This field is treacherous, but we still need to watch the game. If you break an ankle, you can sue.” He held his belly with both hands and laughed as if this was hysterical. “I haven’t been lucky enough to break an ankle yet.”