The Game Changer, стр. 59
“You’re not fine,” Joyce said. “I think you should go home. You’re not going to miss any huge headlines.”
“And we’ll call you if something happens,” I added, trying to look like I had been perfectly calmly going over my story. I didn’t even glance up from the papers on my desk, I was so focused on my work.
“Well…” Mary Jean hesitated.
“Well, nothing,” Joyce said. “You’ve already got your coat and your purse. Just go home, take some heavy duty meds, and come back tomorrow.”
Mary Jean still looked unconvinced. But she was also still shaking, and I was no longer certain if Joyce was getting her out of the office on my behalf, or if she, like me, was legitimately getting worried about our feverish boss.
“Okay,” Mary Jean said. “But I’m going to leave my phone on. Turned up loud, too. So if anything happens—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Joyce said, plugging her earbuds back into her ears. “We’ll call you first.”
Mary Jean left, and I waited approximately zero seconds after she rounded the corner to the parking lot before I was up and out of my chair, racing for my own jacket on the coat rack by the front door.
“Thank you,” I said to Joyce on my way out. “I owe you.”
She screwed up her face in confusion, slowly taking out one earbud. “For what?” she asked. Then she winked, and plugged her music back into her head.
I had to hand it to her—she was good.
I smiled and ran out the door, a million questions for Agnes swirling through my mind.
Agnes Tellerman was pacing in front of the library’s third floor window, wringing her red hands raw. By the time I got to her, I was out of breath and felt a little like I was going to throw up. If I was going to keep gobbling baked goods, I seriously needed to get to the gym.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” she said, and her chin twitched into a pathetic crumple.
“I’m here, I’m here,” I said, holding out one hand as if to physically hold back her tears.
“I was getting ready to leave, and then my story would never get told,” she said. My efforts to hold her tears back failed. She was crying again.
I waited for her to pull it together. “Do you mean the police still haven’t talked to you?”
She produced a wad of used tissue out of nowhere and scrubbed at her face. “Just that night.”
“They haven’t brought you in to give a statement or anything?”
“No, ma’am.”
I was guessing they were definitely sure it was Evangeline if they didn’t even want to talk to the sole eyewitness. Even though Brooks had told me their suspicions about Evangeline, from the way he kept changing the subject, I still thought there must be more to it. Did Evangeline have enough motivation to knock off Coach Farley?
I’d been with Evangeline just before it happened. And again just after. But at the moment of the screech and scream, I had just finished my hot dog and was talking with Ernie. I had no idea where Evangeline was at that moment. Or at any moment between the fight and the accident scene, come to think of it.
“So what’s your story?” I asked, pulling up a chair for each of us.
She hesitated, and I could tell she was trying to get herself under control before speaking. “It was really dark down there in that lower lot,” she said. “It always is. It’s unsafe. So I keep thinking maybe what I saw was just an accident after all. Maybe whoever hit him didn’t even know he was standing there because they couldn’t see anything.”
“Seems unlikely,” I said. “Didn’t they have their headlights on?”
To my surprise, she shook her head. “That’s how I noticed that they were round, because I actually looked right at them thinking they should have been on or how else was the driver going to see anything? Plus, with the lights off, I couldn’t see the license plate at all.”
“Did you see the color of the car?”
She shook her head. “It was so dark down there. All I saw were the shadows of a man and a lady standing in the parking lot. They seemed to be arguing. I went the long way around so I wouldn’t interrupt their conversation, and as soon as I turned my back, I heard this sound. Thump-thump. When I turned around, the lady was running away, and there was a car there. Only it took off before I could see anything else. And it was gone.”
“Could you describe the lady you saw?”
She nodded. “She was about this tall.” She stood and leveled her hand a little higher than her own head. “And she was kind of round and curvy and her hair was dark, like maybe dark red. And her run was kind of different.”
“Different? How so?”
“She ran like maybe her feet were hurting. Kind of like…” Agnes hobbled in place to demonstrate. It did look like the gait of someone whose feet were hurting.
So the mystery woman’s hair was long and dark—maybe even dark red. And her feet were hurting.
My feet are killing me.
Evangeline?
Maybe Brooks and Chief Henderson were onto something with her. But how could she be in the car if she was arguing with Farley outside the car? Could it have been a set-up? Could Evangeline have been distracting the coach, keeping him in one spot, while the driver got into place? Could Agnes be remembering it wrong? Maybe I was reading into things. Surely Evangeline Crane wasn’t the only redhead with bad feet in Parkwood.
We both paused as sirens blared out of nowhere and Chief Henderson’s car raced past the library, then went back to our conversation.
“Did you see what kind of car it was? Was it a Jeep?” I asked, though I was starting to feel a little bit of