Page 12 of Watch Over Me
“Duke, stay.” Kane rubbed the dog’s head. “We’ll be back soon.” He grabbed his coat.
Jenna looked at Kane. “I assumed the middle school would be closed for the blizzard. They shut down for the winter break on the twenty-second. It’s so close I figured they’d do the same as the elementary school.” She tapped her bottom lip. “Although Raya did say the school would remain open with a skeleton staff in case students’ parents couldn’t find childcare if they were working.”
“I’d say the less people traveling in this weather, the better.” Kane headed for the door.
ELEVEN
On arrival at the school, they crunched through the ash- and salt-coated blacktop of the parking lot. Jenna brushed away the snow from her sunglasses as she walked to meet the principal, who was waiting just inside the front door. “Has anyone been inside the classroom since Ms. McBride noticed the writing on the whiteboard?”
“No.” After handing them both visitor passes, the principal ran a hand through graying hair and shook his head. “I have no idea how someone just walked into the school and wrote on the whiteboard. We’ve implemented rigid security here. As you can see, you need to be wearing a lanyard to get inside unless you’re a member of the staff. We wear ID cards and come through a separate entrance, as you will see.” He led them through a side door. “The children come through in single file through the turnstiles and the scan picks up everyone. It’s a new part of the AI technology that Black Rock Falls introduced for security. We have one door into the building and emergency exits all around. If someone opens one of them, an alarm sounds.”
“If the pupils and the staff have photo IDs, the only possiblebreakdown of the system is through the visitor passes.” Kane gave him a long look. “How is your security around them?”
“I keep them in the safe in my office.” The principal looked from one to the other. “As you can see, anyone visiting the school who needs to talk to someone in administration has access through the lobby. We have the administration desk there so if parents need to see their kids or pick them up for some reason, they don’t need a visitor pass, they only need to wait in that area until we bring the children to them. Anyone needing to speak to me receives a visitor pass and these are signed in and out. The only exception being law enforcement. I know the Black Rock Falls deputies by sight, so there’s no need for them to sign in and out.”
Nodding, Jenna followed the principal along a hallway lined with classrooms on each side. Through the windows, she could see the students working with their teachers. As the principal had mentioned, all of the students had lanyards around their necks. Holiday decorations in the rooms and along the hallway triggered happy recollections of her time at school. For a brief second, a memory of sitting around a Christmas tree singing carols surrounded her like a warm hug. Letting go of the past, she dragged her mind back to the case. “What about the maintenance staff and those who work in the cafeteria?”
“They have separate entrances and have to pass through a scanner like everyone else.” The principal stopped outside a classroom. “I have CCTV footage of this morning. I’ll go back to my office and run through the last forty-eight hours and see if I can find anything useful. If you come by my office when you’re done here, I’ll show you.”
Jenna wanted more information and moved a little in front of him to stop him from retreating. “Can you tell me if anyone else has been in the classroom this morning? Obviously, Ms. McBride went in, but did you go and have a look as well? Was anything touched or removed from the room?”
“Ms. McBride did mention that the red pen used to write on the whiteboard is missing.” The principal gave her a direct stare. “The pens are usually along the bottom of the board on that small tray. Most teachers keep three colors out: black, blue, and red. The rest they keep in a desk drawer.”
Nodding, Jenna held her ground. “I’ll need a complete list of all the staff and anyone else who was here today. If cleaners were working, I’ll need to know their shift times. I want you to include gardeners and anyone else who works outside as well because I assume they would be coming inside at some time during the day.”
“I can get that for you from the office without a problem.” The principal rubbed his chin. “I don’t believe that contravenes anyone’s privacy issues.”
“Do you send out the list of shifts with people’s names on it? Or timetables for the teachers’ classes?” Kane inclined his head as he looked at the man. “If so, who was here on what day is common knowledge.”
“That’s good to know. I’ll have the office make up lists for you and have them in my office when you get there.” The principal unlocked the door to the classroom and ushered them inside. “I’ll leave you to it.” He turned and hurried away.
Jenna followed Kane inside the classroom. They pulled on examination gloves and stood in the middle of the room turning slowly. The room smelled just as Jenna remembered from her time at school. She believed all schools had the same unusual smell. It wasn’t just an old books and crayons type of smell. She’d always believed it was gym shoes and dampness from the kids after they had been playing outside. The modern schoolroom surprised her. It seemed Black Rock Falls had embraced a very modern approach to learning. Instead of rows of seats, they had the tables and chairs in an arc. Small groups of chairs were in different sections of the room, set around a single table. New equipment abounded. When she’d been at school the teacherwrote everything on the blackboard, and now it seemed that they used an interactive whiteboard. She’d noticed the kids walking around with tablets and assumed most of their work was done via a computer of some type. “Everything is computerized. I’m impressed. Although, some folk would find the expense for laptops or tablets out of reach.”
“Not here.” Kane examined a camera. “There’s funding for laptops for kids in middle grades and upward.” He indicated to the device. “This is a document camera for displaying the kids’ work or other material.” He waved a hand. “This is open learning. I’ve read all about middle school as Tauri will be here before we know it.”
Jenna walked through the chairs and stood in front of the whiteboard. Slap-bang in the middle in large red writing was written:I know where you live. She moved her attention across the board to notes made by Ellie McBride and then back to the red writing. She turned to glance at Kane, who was standing beside her taking photographs. “Is it just me or does that writing look the same as the notes written by Ellie McBride?”
“Yeah, there are some similarities.” Kane took photographs of the teacher’s notes on the board. He turned to look at her and raised one eyebrow. “If this is her handwriting, is this a futile bid for attention?”
Shrugging, Jenna turned to him. “Maybe she’s lonely, but she’s not going to find Mr. Right in my department. Most of you are already taken.” She glanced around for the missing red pen, bending to look under tables and inside a waste bin under the desk. “I can’t find the missing pen and there’d be too many fingerprints in here to check. As the perp took the pen, chances are they’d be wearing gloves anyway.”
“It does look suspicious.” Kane removed his black Stetson and his woolen cap, scratched his head, making his hair stick up in all directions, and then smoothed it down. “I guess we hold our judgment until we see the CCTV footage. If someone didenter the classroom this morning before Ellie McBride arrived, then we’ll know she’s telling the truth. Although, I admit it is suspicious when we couldn’t see her escaping from the SUV at the roadhouse.” He pulled on his woolen cap and then replaced his Stetson. “My concern is, if she wasn’t kidnapped, how did she get to the roadhouse in the first place?”
Jenna blew out a sigh. “There is only one conclusion, isn’t there? There is more than one person doing this. If Ellie is lying to us, then she has someone else involved, although I have no idea why someone would try to set up something as stupid as this scheme. The only people it inconveniences are law enforcement. Maybe if we made a comment about giving a false statement to the police and the consequences, she might change her mind.”
“That’s an option.” Kane shrugged and rested one hip on the edge of one of the desks. “My instinct is to play it out and see what happens. If we jump to conclusions that she’s involved and something happens to her, we’ll be stuck with egg on our face. The one thing we do need is copies of everyone’s handwriting, although that script is pretty standard between teachers.” He went to the whiteboard and picked up a pen. He wrote the same words and stood and looked at Jenna. “That’s obviously not my handwriting but I can write almost the same as the teacher without much effort. We should also consider someone might be setting her up.”
Allowing Kane’s ideas to percolate through her mind, Jenna gave her head a little shake. “Okay, I guess we go and look at the CCTV footage. While we’re there, I’ll ask the principal if he’ll arrange for every member of the staff to write that sentence on a piece of paper with their name and contact details. We’ll send someone around to pick them up later. I’ll email them to Kalo and he can use his magic software to see if he gets a match.”
“That sounds like a plan.” Kane slipped an arm around her shoulder, peered both ways through the windows into the hallway,and then pressed a kiss to her cheek. “It was great yesterday, wasn’t it? I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed sitting down wrapping Christmas gifts so much before. Toasting marshmallows in front of the fire with the boys will stay in my heart forever.” He looked deep into Jenna’s eyes. “Having a family like we have has always been a dream of mine. I’d pushed it so far to the back of my mind I never thought it would be possible.”
Smiling, Jenna leaned into him. “Yeah, sitting there in front of the log fire was like being in one of those holiday movies. When you say diamond days, I know exactly what you mean. We’ve had quite a few of them since we’ve had the boys, haven’t we?”
“There were a few before.” Kane turned toward the door. “The day I asked you to marry me and our wedding were very special.” He cleared his throat and smiled at her. “I hope no one is recording us at the moment. We don’t look very professional, do we?” He winked at her and headed for the door.
When they arrived at the principal’s office, Jenna requested the handwriting samples. He spoke to his secretary and then took them down the hallway and into a control center, where the security guard watched the monitors. Jenna watched with interest as a man pushing a floor polisher stopped outside the classroom, went inside for less than three minutes, and then came back out again and continued along the hallway. Playback was stopped at that point and Jenna turned to the principal. “Who is that man?”
“I have no idea.” The principal folded his arms across his chest and stared at the screen, his eyebrows raised. “Our janitor is in his late sixties and it’s obvious that’s a younger man.”