“She wore glasses attached to a chain around her neck. There were beads or something on it. I could hear them when she moved.”
Kendra remembered the crime scene photos of the glasses and broken chain near her corpse. She shook off the memory. “I don’t remember Ms. Wessler wearing glasses when I was a student here.”
“She put them on only when she was reading something to us. But in her last few classes, she was fidgeting with her glasses a lot more. I could hear the beads.”
“Fidgeted…like she was nervous?”
“Exactly,” Ariel said gravely.
“She didn’t do that before?”
“Never. And she took a lot of deep breaths between sentences. And they were kind of jagged. She was upset or nervous about something.”
Kendra nodded. She knew what the girl meant. She’d been able to pick up on such subtle cues since childhood, as could most blind children. If there was anyone to take seriously about this, it was Ariel and Elaine’s other students.
“Did she say why anything could have been wrong?”
“No. I thought maybe something happened to her foster dog, but I don’t think that was it.”
“I don’t think so, either.” Kendra took one last look around the office. “Thanks for your help, Ariel. I think I’m done here.”
“You’re welcome. If I think of anything else you should know, I’ll be sure to call the FBI.”
Kendra could imagine Metcalf taking that call, and she didn’t want to chance this child being hurt by a brush-off. She found Ariel’s odd mixture of glowing fragility and toughness very appealing. “Suppose we keep it between ourselves?” She handed Ariel her card. “But you’ve already been very helpful and you mustn’t feel bad if you can’t remember anything else.”
“I know that, but I have to be ready in case I do.” She tucked the card in her jean pocket. “Now, where are we going?”
“You are going back to your class. I’m walking you back and making sure your teacher keeps a closer watch on her students.”
“Are you gonna make a scene?”
“Would it embarrass you if I did?”
She thought about it. “Nope, not a bit. Go for it.”
Kendra laughed. “You’re a strange little girl, you know that?”
A luminous smile suddenly lit her face. “Oh, you have no idea.”
* * *
Kendra delivered Ariel back to her class without making too much of a scene since the recess supervisor was already mortified that one of her charges had slipped away unnoticed. Kendra called Metcalf as she walked back to her car.
He was in the middle of a meeting, but he answered her call and continued the conversation in the hallway outside the conference room.
“You didn’t have to leave your meeting on my account, Metcalf.”
“Aah, it was getting dull anyway. What’s up?”
“The missing key in Elaine Wessler’s house…It was a spare key to her office at the academy.”
“How did you find that out?”
She told him about the academy’s colored-jacket system for their keys. “And since there was no sign of a forced entry at her house, I’d say that it and the other items were taken by someone with a key to her place. Like maybe her ex-husband.”
“Her ex? We talked to him on the phone because he was in Tokyo on business. You have the interview notes in the case file. No bad blood there, and he had a great alibi since he was on the other side of the world.” He paused. “How do you know he had a key to her place?”
“He still walked and fed her dogs when she was away.”
“Nice.”
“Maybe. But if he took those things from her house after Evidence Response did their sweep, I’d sure like to know why.”
“Me too. I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow morning.”
“Why not now?”
“He just got in from Tokyo early this morning. He made an appointment to come in and talk to us tomorrow. Besides, I’m tied up here for the rest of the afternoon. But first thing tomorrow we can—”
“Is his address in the interview notes?”
“It should be.” He paused. “You’re not going to wait until tomorrow, are you?”
“Thanks, Metcalf. Gotta run.”
“Come on, Kendra…”
“I’ll let you know what I find out. I promise.”
She cut the connection.
Chapter
7
It was almost sunset when Kendra’s Uber car rolled up in front of the Bayside Lofts complex within sight of the Coronado Bridge. It was one of several warehouses south of downtown that had been converted to “artists’ lofts,” code for bare-bones living quarters hardly fit for human occupancy. They were situated along a