Gayle Wilson - The Suicide Club

Without so much as an introduction, he and the two deputies had disappeared inside. From then until now, maybe an hour later, no one had bothered to tell her anything about what they were doing or what they’d found.

In this close-knit neighborhood, it hadn’t taken long for a couple of neighbors to join her on the front lawn. Especially since the cruiser was still parked along the curb. Both had expressed disbelief at her assertion that someone must have put the snake into her hamper.

“That thing probably just crawled in there while you were at PTA,” Betty Savage had said.

“And closed the lid behind it?”

“Lindsey, you don’t honestly believe somebody broke into your house and put a snake in your clothes basket, do you? Who in the world would do somethin’ like that?”

“Maybe it was in some gardening clothes you brought in out of the yard,” Milt Trump suggested. “You just didn’t see it.”

Faced with their disbelief, Lindsey hadn’t continued to argue. Maybe their determination to deny what she was telling them was based on an unconscious realization of how much believing her might change their view of this neighborhood.

That was okay with her. She no longer had any doubt what had happened tonight. And now, after more than an hour of having nothing to do but think, she also had an idea of why.

The three of them turned when a second police cruiser pulled into the drive, lightbar flashing. When Shannon’s friend Rick Carlisle climbed out from behind the wheel, Lindsey walked over to meet him.

“Heard about your snake on the scanner as I was heading home,” he said. “You think somebody put it in your hamper?”

She hadn’t thought about how quickly her accusation would spread when she’d made it. Still, it’s what she believed had happened. And no matter how unpalatable that belief might be to anyone else, she wasn’t going to back down from it.

“That rattler didn’t crawl in there by itself. The basket was closed, Rick. Somebody had to put it there.”

“That’s a serious accusation, Linds.”

“Yeah? Well, it was a ‘serious’ snake. A pissed-off one.”

“You got an idea who might have done somethin’ like that?”

“A few.”

“You want to tell me?”

“I can’t. Not specifically.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t have a suspect, but…”

“But?”

“I think I might know what this is in relation to.”

“You make somebody at school mad at you?”

“Shannon told you that Detective Nolan thinks some of my kids might have had something to do with the church fires. I think this may have something to do with that.”

“Like what?”

“Nolan took me to dinner after the football game last week. He just wanted to pick my brain, but some of my students made a big deal out of seeing us together.”

“A ‘big deal’?”

“Like it was some kind of romantic relationship.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t even know the guy, Rick. After we ate, he took me out to Rohanna to show me the ruin.”

Rick’s mouth pursed. “To prove what?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe just to make me more aware of the destruction. He doesn’t think they’re through.”

“Whoever burned the churches?”

“He believes that since they can’t do that anymore, they’ll turn to something else. Maybe this is it.”

“You think this is what they’re doing because we’ve got patrols on the churches? Putting snakes in clothes hampers.”

Rick sounded amused, which she resented. “Not exactly.” She hesitated to put into words what she had been thinking. But since she’d started this…“I think when they saw me with Nolan, they thought I’d sold them out.”

“You know something about the fires you haven’t told us?”

“Of course not. Until Jace said it, I’d never had any reason to think about my students in connection with them.”

“Jace?”

“Nolan,” she amended, catching the look in Rick’s eyes. “I had dinner with the guy. During the course of the meal, we exchanged first names. It’s…” She shook her head, realizing she’d gotten off track. “Look, I probably wouldn’t have put any of this together except yesterday my seniors made such a thing about seeing me with him.”

“Give me some names, Lindsey.”

“I’m not saying there’s a correlation with the kids who brought it up. They were just the ones who saw us. But you know how things like that get talked about. And then tonight…Tonight, when every kid in that high school knows where I’m going to be and when I’m going to be there, I come home and find a rattler in my laundry basket. I can’t help thinking—”

The front door opened, and the deputies and the guy with the sack and the pole came out. Although she didn’t want to look at the bag, Lindsey could tell there was now something inside.

As the older man headed toward his pickup, one of the deputies started across the lawn to where she and Rick were standing. On the way, the deputy nodded to her neighbors, slowing to answer a question one of them asked, before he continued toward her. Neither she nor Rick said anything as they waited for his arrival.

“I don’t think you’ve got anything else to worry about, Ms. Sloan. We poked around in there pretty good.”

Despite the cringe factor inherent in having people look through her closets and less-than-orderly cabinets, she had pleaded with them to check out the rest of the house. While that wasn’t as reassuring a message as she’d hoped for, they’d probably done all they could tonight. Whether that made her comfortable enough to go back inside and crawl into bed…

“She thinks somebody put the snake into that hamper.” Rick raised his brows, shrugging slightly. “I don’t see how it could have got into a closed basket otherwise.”

In spite of her own conviction that that’s what had happened, hearing him put it into words created a sickness in the pit of Lindsey’s stomach. Never in her life had anyone deliberately tried to hurt her. To think that one of her students might be involved in this made her question every day of the ten years she’d spent in the classroom.

“You see any sign of forced entry?” Rick asked.

“No, but we weren’t looking for them, either. You got any idea who might have done something like that, Ms. Sloan?”

She remembered what Shannon had said. In a town like this even the suggestion of wrongdoing could taint a kid’s life.

“No.” She didn’t dare look at Rick.

“Lindsey.”

She turned her head, meeting his eyes. “I don’t. I told you I don’t have a name. Anything else is just speculation.”

“I’d say it’s a little more than that.”

“Not really. Besides, what I’m willing to tell you as a friend is very different from what I’m willing to put into a police report.” She looked back at the deputy who’d responded to her call. “Thanks for taking care of the snake and for searching the house. If I think of anything, I’ll call you.”

“You teach at the high school, don’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Think this could have been some of your students? Some version of the old puttin’ a frog in the teacher’s drawer.”

She should have expected the question, once the subject was broached. “I can’t think of a child I teach who’d do something like this.”

She heard Rick’s snort of disbelief, but she wasn’t being dishonest. Whether she bought into the idea that her students were involved in the fires or not, she couldn’t believe any of them harbored this kind of animosity toward her.

And toward Jace Nolan?

“Okay, then,” the deputy said, sounding relieved. “If you think of anything else or if you want us to check out the whereabouts of any of your students tonight, let us know.”