Murder in the Middle: A Susan Wiles Schoolhouse Mystery by Diane Weiner Page B

car in front of it and ran the red. Bet he isn’t expecting to go where I’m heading. Flooring the gas pedal,Susan pulled up in front of the police station. When her hands stopped shaking, she let go of the steering wheel. The Toyota had zoomed off. She wished she could remember the plate number. She took a slow, deep breath. Her knees were still quivering. When she finally felt her body was back in equilibrium, she got out of the car.
    Inside the station, she discovered that Jackson and Lynette were both out on a call. Now what? She really needed to talk to her. Susan decided to help Lynette out and drive over to Dr. Witherspoon’s office. He was located in the basement of the hospital––next to the morgue. Knowing all about privacy laws, she devised a plan on the way.
    “Hello, Dr. Witherspoon. My name is Susan Wiles. I’m taking a college course in forensics and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions for an assignment I’m doing.”
    “A college course?”
    “It’s one of those courses they offer for retirement learning. Great idea, don’t you think? We seniors get to register for all kinds of interesting classes. Never stop learning is my motto. Guess that comes from being a teacher all those years.”
    “I’m really busy, but I was about to take a lunch break.” He looked at his watch. “I guess I can spare a few minutes.”
    Susan pulled a notepad out of her purse and pushed her bifocals into place. “What sorts of things do you do as a forensic pathologist?”
    “I’m a consultant for several neighboring police departments. Sometimes I’m hired by private investigators. Mostly I’m asked to determine cause of death.”
    “You mean you help solve murders?”
    “There aren’t a whole lot of actual murders in this area. Sometimes a person dies from no obvious cause––like a heart defect or a metabolic disease. I try to figure out why. Helps the families with closure.”
    “I just read about a murder in the paper the other day. Man’s name was Caleb Bartolo. Did you work on him?”
    “That’s not something I’m free to discuss,”
    “Do you ever find cases of poisoning? Blunt force trauma? Accidental falls?”
    “Most of the time, they don’t need me for that. Poisons show up pretty readily upon autopsy, and blows that are hard enough to cause death can usually be seen with the naked eye.” The doctor glanced at his watch. “I need to be going. Hope I’ve helped some.”
    “Oh, yes. Thanks so much for your time.”
    Susan thought she’d try dropping by the station again on her way home. She couldn’t stop analyzing the new clues she’d found. Rusty and Lindsay were involved with each other. They both knew where Caleb lived and had reason to want Caleb dead. Rusty was friends with Sophie and felt protective of her. Maybe protective enough to turn up at Caleb’s house, thinking he was holding Sophie. When he didn’t find Sophie, maybe he got angry and clobbered Caleb over the head. He’d been seen in the area a few days earlier by Caleb’s farmer landlord.
    Lindsay hated Caleb for breaking off their engagement and had recently found out that he was back in town. Maybe she went after him. Susan could see that she still harbored lots of anger towards him by the passion and venom that came out of her mouth when speaking about him. And she was crazy. She’d heard that more than once.
    She shook the snow off of her boots and went into the police station. Now Lynette was back in her office.
    “Mom? What are you doing here?” said Lynette.
    “I came by to give you some new information. I went to see Josie at Rite Aid, and we discovered that Caleb had hidden an envelope behind the cork board over his desk.”
    “You went back to Rite Aid? An envelope? We went over Caleb’s work space and didn’t find anything like that.”
    “It looked like the board may have just pulled away from the wall recently.” She closed her hand to hide her chipped nail. “Anyhow, to make a