Page 96 of Snow Creek

“Will do.”

“And one of those German pretzels too.”

“That goes without saying.”

Leavenworth is distinctly an American oddity. Nestled in the Cascades along tumbling Icicle Creek, it bills itself as a Bavarian village, a gamble to save the town from dying by mandating a makeover. It worked. It’s a town dripping in gingerbread, beer steins; women in dirndls and men in lederhosen. Every business from the grocer to one of the countless cuckoo clock purveyors is required to adopt the Bavarian theme in signage and architecture. Whether it makes sense or not.

Hence, Der Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I find a spot in the parking lot at Chelan County Sheriff’s Office. Before going inside, I make a call to the school that Ellie had offered as part of her arrangement with the prosecutor’s office. I speak briefly with the head administrator, Paul Singer, asking if the subject is there. I tell him only very little, but I can easily sense his distress. I text him a photo.

“Yeah,” he says, “that’s her. Can you come after the kids are out? Staff stay an extra hour or so to plan the next day.”

“That would be perfect. I’m at the sheriff’s now and will be there no earlier than four.”

“Okay,” he replies.

Forty-Four

Paul Singer sits silently in his bleak, impersonal office, a whiteboard, some drawings his dad had made when he was in college, a poster of the private school’s mascot, a falcon. The call from Jefferson County Sheriff’s Detective Carpenter has rattled him big time. She’d indicated that his most recent hire was in major trouble.Criminal trouble.Sweat begins to bloom under his arms. He’s made a mistake, something he was loath to do.

A big one too.

He thinks back to the new teacher’s interview at tiny Orchard School. Becky Webster was everything the kids between Leavenworth and Cashmere had hoped for in a small school. Young, kind and beautiful. She wore her hair shoulder length and dressed in stylish clothes. The kids at the school were a lively mix of disadvantaged locals and seasonal agricultural workers who toiled up and down the West Coast. Teachers worked there for the love of what they did, certainly not for money.

While the detective didn’t specifically say what trouble Becky was in, he knew the fallout would not be pretty. He was worried for himself, of course, but also for the school. The work they were doing was important.

He reaches for the tissue box to capture the excess moisture under his arms.

Becky told him that her paperwork was in her luggage that had been lost on the train, but her credentials were solid.

She was so damn beautiful.

No problem, he’d told her, smiling. It was a lingering smile.

His jaws tighten, then relax.

He looks down at her application, remembering.

Sorry about your folks.

Car accident. Went off into a ravine in the mountains out West.

That’s awful. No emergency contact? Sibling, maybe?

None.

Forty-Five

I check my rearview mirror: two deputies follow my Taurus as we speed past row upon row of apple, cherry, peach and plum trees. Ripening fruit dangles from propped up branches and I crack my window. I’m not sure but I think I can smell the Honey Crisps that are my go-to apple. I peek at my phone, noting new texts from Mindy and Dan. I don’t read either. My focus right now is to bring home a killer.

Orchard School is at the end of a long, narrow gravel lane, bordered by farmland and homes that appear, sad and slumped into the landscape. It’s a world just barely getting by. It reminds me of Snow Creek and how the lottery of where you’re born directs much of one’s life. The main building has a cinderblock façade that’s been painted with what I expect are school colors: bus yellow and midnight blue. A school flag of a bird of prey flutters under the American flag on a pole adjacent to the entrance. A dozen cars are parked to the west of the building; beyond those are a playfield and two large trailers, which I presume are used as classrooms when enrollment is up.

I tell the deputies to keep back.

“Guys,” I remind them, “let’s keep it low key. I’ll park and go in. I want you to stay back and come in five minutes later. Set a timer or something. Alarming her in a place like this could make all three of us famous for all the wrong reasons.”

I check in at the front desk and am quickly escorted to the administrator’s office.

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