“I suppose I should have thought about that myself. Of course, I did hire a private detective after the case went cold. It cost me a lot of money and a lot of heartache.”
Taking out a note pad and a pencil, Decker said, “Did he have any success?”
“Certainly nothing that cracked the case.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“Phil Shriner. I haven't talked to him in years.”
“I'll check him out.”
“Fine if you do, fine if you don't.” She shook her head. “When I think about what Mike took on when he married me … my rock-bottom finances, and my needy boys … admiration for the man just grows logarithmically.”
Mike was Michael K. Warren of Warren Communications. His techno specialty was voice activation. He and Melinda had lived in this piece of paradise for ten years. The interior had natural wood floors, a two-story fireplace, and walls of glass. The furnishings were white and spare, but the place didn't blow a frosty attitude. Maybe it was all the knickknacks—the tchotchkes, as Rina would say.
“Logarithmically,” Decker said. “You must have been a math teacher?”
She smiled. “And you must be a detective.”
“That's how Ben and you met.”
“Right again.” Her eyes misted. “I've had so much misfortune in my life, but I've also been overly fortunate in the relationship department. I guess you can't have it all.”
Decker wondered what her other misfortunes were.
Melinda said, “May I ask who offered to donate the money?”
“Genoa Greeves. She's the CEO of Timespace.”
“I've heard of Timespace. What was her connection to Ben?”
“She was his student in the early eighties. She describes herself as a typical geek, and according to her, your husband was the only person other than her parents who ever gave her a word of encouragement. Smart people have long memories.”
She raised an eyebrow and said nothing.
“Do you remember her?” Decker asked.
“Not at all, but her words don't surprise me. Ben was always doing things for other people. I've never met a more altruistic man in my entire life. Sometimes I almost wish I had discovered a drug habit or a mistress. It would have made him more human. By now, the man has reached Godlike stature in my eyes. Everyone falls short. Although I adore Mike, he can never …” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I'm sorry. This is very painful.”
“I'm sure it is, but if I'm going to do this case correctly, I have to start from the beginning.”
She dabbed her tears with a Kleenex. “I'm afraid I don't have anything new to tell.”
“It would be helpful if you went over the incident for me.”
A heavy sigh. “Why not? I've only told the story about a million times. Ben said he'd be home around seven. When he wasn't home by ten, I started to worry. I got in the car and went down to Civic Auditorium, trying to find someone from the meeting. Everyone was gone. I drove back home and called the police. They told me to call back in forty-eight hours. A grown man missing is no big deal.”
“Do you remember who you spoke to on the phone?”
“Wendell Festes. He wound up apologizing to me for his flippant attitude, but then started saying things like ‘you gotta understand what usually happens.’” Melinda clenched her teeth. “I really didn't give a damn about what usually happens. The man was rude, and I told the captain that when I spoke to him.”
Decker nodded. “So what did you do after speaking to Festes?”
“A few of my friends came over to the house to keep me company. Their husbands went out searching for Ben. They found his car and called the police, and the police found Ben.” She sat down on a leather club chair and made a swipe at the tears in her eyes. “That's really all I can recall … I'm sorry.”
“What do you think might have happened that night?” Decker asked.
Melinda shook her head. “I thought about it endlessly for years. His car was all alone at Clearwater Park. Maybe he got a last-minute phone call and was meeting someone there, although his car phone records didn't indicate that. But he could have made a call from a phone booth. The cell phones back then weren't reliable.”
“Who would he have met?”
“If he was meeting anyone, it was a student in trouble. I suggested that to the detectives at the time, but that went nowhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how teenagers are, especially the boys. Risk takers. They do stupid stuff and usually get caught. Doing something idiotic doesn't mean that the kid is a sociopath. Ben was their best advocate. He went the extra mile for them the first time.”
“And the second time?”
“Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Ben had a sense of fairness and justice. If you didn't prove yourself to be trustworthy, you didn't get trusted.”
“So it is possible that Ben might have angered the repeat offenders.”
“The chronic troublemakers would have gotten expelled, anyway, regardless of what Ben might have told the administration. You can't sell pot continually to your fellow students and expect not to be expelled.”
“Do you have a specific kid in mind?”
“Darnell Arlington … a real charmer. One of the few kids who fooled Ben in a big way, but I must tell you, the police checked him out thoroughly. Darnell had moved to Ohio to live with his grandmother. The night of Ben's murder, he was playing in a basketball game at the local high school. About a hundred people saw him.
“From what I was led to believe, Darnell was turning his life around. His grandmother was a no-nonsense person. But check him out if you want.”
“Do you remember any other wayward students?”
“Not specifically, but there could have been others. I do remember Ben being upset about Darnell even after he moved. For some reason, the kid tugged at his heartstrings.”
“Did Darnell ever come to the house?”
“No, not on your life. Ben kept his students away from his family. He never gave out his home phone number or his car phone number.”
“What about his pager?”
“From what I recall, no one had paged Ben that evening.”
Her memory was correct. No activity was recorded on Ben's pager on the evening of his demise. Still, Decker didn't have Ben's pager records for the previous morning and afternoon. It was possible that someone had paged him earlier in the day and Ben used a public phone to return the call that evening. Maybe a hasty meeting was set up. That would
