She felt like Meredith had slapped her. But she covered it and drilled her with a steely look. “If you think you have valuable information, Meredith, then by all means, go to the police. I’m not afraid of anything you tell them because I had nothing to do with his death. I sure as hell didn’t engage in any type of sordid relationship with him. He had too much respect for me to do that.”
Meredith’s mouth curved into a smile, but it didn’t dampen the anger in her eyes. She shook her head. “So naïve, Allie. You continue to remember Mr. Williams through rose-colored glasses. I’m so glad we had this chat.” She rose from the chair. “I want you to stop messing in my daughter’s life. Or I will file a complaint against you with the administration.”
With that, Meredith turned on her high heels and was gone, throwing the door wide so it slammed against the wall. Allie flinched. But she wasn’t worried by Meredith’s threats. The bitch had nothing to lord over her. She had done her worst to Allie years ago. The heartache she’d felt sophomore year when Meredith had bragged about all the parties she and Sam were going to together no longer affected her. Nor did her gleeful tale of their late night hook-up in a dark bedroom at Dan Carothers’s house.
Allie was over it. Completely. A long time ago.
And seeing Sam and Meredith together again today, making a date for the weekend, well, she truly couldn’t care less.
Allie’d had no claim on Sam?
?s heart back in high school. But as Allie’s best friend, Meredith had known exactly how Allie felt about him. She’d initially mocked Allie for her feelings for the quiet, reserved jock who Meredith said had the personality of a tree—solid but deadly dull. But then the bitch had gone out of her way to snare Sam for herself.
Allie hadn’t really blamed Sam back then for falling prey to her. What did she expect? Sam to ask her out? Hardly. He hadn’t known Allie other than as the dorky chubs in the newsroom.
But today? Today she wasn’t going to be so forgiving. Forget it. Besides, she had seriously misjudged Sam if Meredith was the kind of woman he wanted to take up with.
She was better off without the jerk. Much better off.
She walked over to the windows and gazed out across the barren lot still cordoned off with police tape.
The final resting place of Jackson Williams.
It had been over a week since his body was found, and still no official word on cause of death. From what the paper said, the remains had been sent to a forensic anthropologist who should be able to discern how Mr. Williams had died within a week or so.
The area was still taped off, even though the police seemed to have gathered everything they needed and hadn’t been back since those first few days. The latest word was the school might be able to resume construction in the area soon. Which really should take a huge load off her mind, considering how obsessed she’d been for the past few months, wanting the school’s centennial to be a monumental success.
So, why she didn’t feel any relief? Quite the opposite, in fact.
Maybe it was her conscience niggling at her.
Allie hadn’t been completely upfront with Meredith. It was true that anything down in the archive room relevant to the video project had been destroyed in the fire. Her search this weekend through those last boxes confirmed nothing of interest remained.
But she wasn’t letting that stop her.
Jeremy had mentioned Mr. Williams’s personnel effects had all been returned to his family. To a sister. With help from Jeremy’s secretary, Marie, who tracked down the sister’s name and address, Allie had sent her a message through Facebook last night. Although she hadn’t heard back yet, she was optimistic.
But whether she heard from the sister or not, she still wasn’t giving up.
Another plan simmered in her brain.
She could tape live interviews with people who had known Mr. Williams. Get their recollection of what the man was like…and maybe secretly figure out who might have had reason enough to kill him.
Allie had a few ideas of who she would start with. The fact his body was buried on school grounds might indicate the person had been affiliated with the school. Maybe still was. Someone with access to the building. Where they could have hidden the body until it was nighttime, and they could bury it.
Someone who could do it again, exactly the same way.
And she might well be next.
Chapter Nine
“I heard what happened to your car over the weekend, Allie. Rotten luck,” Tim Allred, Janine’s fiancé, said Tuesday afternoon as Allie angled her video camera a little to the right to get his face centered. “Did the police think there was any connection to the things going on here at the school?”
“If they did, they didn’t share any information with me,” she murmured, preoccupied with the camera.
He nodded. Tall and lanky, Tim looked cramped and uncomfortable as he sat in a chair in her classroom and waited for her to begin. He was being a good sport, though. He didn’t hesitate to accept her request to sit down and discuss Mr. Williams on camera. Unlike a few others.
“It’s really a shame, though,” he continued. “A hundred years of files and records, and who knows what else…all gone.”