Better Late Than Never (A Library Lover's Mystery) by Jenn McKinlay

Author:Jenn McKinlay [McKinlay, Jenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-10-31T22:00:00+00:00

“More than you told me before?” Sully asked.

“Yeah,” she said. She hung her head, looking ashamed. “I remember Matthew was very quiet.”

“Quiet like thinking-about-ways-to-stalk-and-kill-people quiet?” Lindsey asked.

“No.” Mary shook her head. “More like old-soul quiet. Matt always seemed years ahead of the rest of us, not just in smarts but in overall maturity.”

“So, he didn’t fit in?” Sully asked.

“Yes, but I don’t think he was angry or bitter about it. He wasn’t anti-social, he was more just tolerant of the rest of us, like he was an older sibling forced to sit at the kids’ table. I always got the feeling that he was patiently awaiting his freedom.”

“If he was that mature, did you sense he was interested in Ms. Whitley as more than a teacher?” Lindsey asked.

“No, she was with Benji Gunderson, and he came by the school quite a bit,” Mary said. “I’d see the three of them talking often. There never seemed to be any hostility.”

Lindsey looked at Sully. “Having Matthew be a deranged teen stalker would have been too easy of an answer, I suppose.”

“He was a poet,” Mary said. “He read one of his poems to the class once. It was full of literary references I didn’t understand but it also captured the angst of adolescence. I remember one image about standing on the knife’s edge between childhood and adulthood and hoping not to get sliced in half. It spoke so clearly of the pain of those years. I’m sure I’m not getting it exactly right, but I thought he was so much smarter than the rest of us. He seemed to have a level of understanding about life and literature that the rest of us were missing.”

“That doesn’t sound like a teen who is swept up in unrequited love angst,” Lindsey said.

“No,” Mary said. “And after Ms. Whitley was killed, he was so angry. I remember hearing him berating the principal for not doing more to find Ms. Whitley’s killer. I don’t think Matthew had a very supportive home life. Ms. Whitley was probably the only person who fostered his brilliance. It must have been devastating for him to lose her in such a brutal way and to then be considered a suspect. I never blamed him for leaving town and never coming back.”

“What about Benji?” Lindsey asked. “You said he came by the school. Did you ever see anything suspicious about him?”

“No,” Mary said. “He was funny and goofy when he came by the classroom. He always made Ms. Whitley laugh. When she was killed he seemed, I don’t know, broken would be the word, I guess. It was as if everything he had known to be true was suddenly proven wrong and he didn’t know what to do or think. Looking back, I can see how devastated he must have been, but at the time . . .”

Mary paused and looked away. Lindsey knew her well enough to know she was embarrassed about something. Sully knew it, too, because he reached across the table and took her hand in his.

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