Page 19 of Midnight Secrets

She took the hand I offered. “Yes. What can I do for you? Pat said you wanted to speak to me about Marie.” The smile faded from her face as a sadness stole over her expression.

“I do. Have a seat.” Getting up, I pulled the principal’s now vacant chair around the desk, hoping to set a more informal tone than having us on opposite sides of it.

Grace sat, folding her hands in her lap.

I settled next to her. “Mrs. Byron said you and Marie were friends.”

“Yes. I wouldn’t call us besties or anything—well, I guess maybe we were work besties—but we did things together outside of school.”

“Such as?”

“Lunch on Saturdays sometimes, or maybe coffee. And we’d go shopping.”

“Tell me about her.”

“What she was like, you mean?”

I nodded.

“She was fun. Always joking and smiling. And smart. Man, was she smart. It made her a tough teacher, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. They liked her and her classes. She made learning interesting and fun, you know?”

I did. Several of my teachers through the years were like that. They’d been my favorite classes too. “Have you noticed any changes in her personality in the last few months? Or changes to her routine?”

Grace pursed her lips. Glancing down at her folded hands, she picked at the cuticle on one thumb with the nail from the other. “I wouldn’t call it a change, really.” She looked up. “She just seemed… down? I mean, she still joked around, still had the same enthusiasm in class with her students, but—” She stopped, looking away in thought. “I don’t know. Some of the sparkle was gone from her eyes.”

“Did that have something to do with her husband?”

She looked at me. “Pat told you about the Christmas party, didn’t she?”

Again, I nodded.

“He’s a jerk. I would not be surprised if he’s the one who murdered her. She planned to leave him, you know.”

I tipped my head. “Really?” That was news to me. There was nothing at the Hammond’s home to indicate they were on the outs.

“Yep. After they moved to Boston.”

“Why wait?”

“Because it’s expensive to move from here. Everything has to be shipped. Her family lives in Virginia. She wanted Warren to foot the bill to get back to the East Coast.”

I was well-acquainted with how pricey it was. The department had offered partial relocation assistance, but I’d still forked out over a thousand dollars to move up here. And that didn’t count my travel expenses.

“Do you know why they were moving?”

“Warren got promoted. That’s how they came here too. She said he called the move up here a stepping stone. I guess itwas, because he’s supposed to be the new vice president of acquisitions at the firm’s office in Boston.”

I jotted that down, then returned to what really interested me about what she said. “Tell me more about the problems they were having.”

“Like I said, Warren is a jerk. He drank too much, but even when he wasn’t a drunk asshole, he wasn’t very nice to her. He liked to point out how she wouldn’t have such a comfortable life without him.” Grace snorted. “They lived on her salary. His all went intoinvestments.” She rolled her eyes.

“You don’t think they were investing his salary?”

“I’m sure they did some of it, but not all of it. He spent money on himself. But not on Marie.” She shook a finger. “Every time I saw him, he had on a fancy suit, a watch that cost more than my house payment, and his car was never more than a year or two old. And it was a BMW. Marie drove a ten-year-old Honda Pilot, and all her clothes came from the local department store.”

“Did you ever ask her about it?”

“No. It wasn’t my business. She seemed content. When she was away from him, anyway. He didn’t come to many school functions. I don’t know how or why she got him to come to the Christmas party.”

---