Murder at Birchwood Pond by Jade Astor

Author:Jade Astor [Astor, Jade]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-23T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

As soon as he left the station, Darian headed home to his computer. There, he spent a couple of hours researching lawyers who would be sympathetic to Aaron’s plight. He found several who had listed their services on a progressive website, crosschecked their references and reviews, and made a few calls to their offices. No one picked up at the first two offices, which wasn’t surprising given that the workday was almost over. His third attempt reached a tough-sounding female defense attorney who promised to head right over to the jail and sort things out. She seemed to assume Darian was Aaron’s boyfriend and spent more time reassuring him than he really required. He decided Aaron could provide a more detailed explanation, thanked her, and hung up.

Assuming Aaron might need him to post bail or give him a ride home, he kept the phone close at his side while he moved on to another search. This time he scored the internet for records relating to the earlier death in the Birchwood pond. Since it had happened so long ago, and Birchwood had presumably not been eager to publicize the incident, he found nothing beyond a barebones account that had appeared in the local newspaper. The sparsely worded article implied that the teacher, Mr. A. Roderick Talbott, had died in an unfortunate accident involving a slippery bank and an enfeebled older man. The reporter had clearly been careful not to offend anyone connected with Birchwood. Perhaps he was an alumnus himself.

Still, a thirst for more information about the incident nagged at him. Pocketing his phone, he headed back to his car and drove to campus. The library was almost deserted, thanks to Jeanette Wexler’s canceling all classes and meetings in deference to Timothy’s memorial service that morning. Luckily, a single student worker sat behind the front desk doing his math homework.

“Do you know where I could find old campus newspapers or yearbooks? I want to go back about twenty years,” Darian told him.

“Archives,” the young man told him. “Go past the periodical room and take a left. Most of the stuff is in glass cases, but they’re not locked. You can leave it on the tables when you’re finished.”

“Thanks.”

The smell of fading ink and decaying paper rose from the dingy volumes stored in the archives, and a puff of dust flew out of the binder Darian selected. Birchwood’s venerable student paper, ironically titled The Parchment, contained a single article that reported Roderick Talbott’s demise without details. “Died suddenly,” was the euphemism of choice. A later issue recounted a memorial service on a much smaller scale than Timothy Pryor’s. The headline read, “Mr. Talbott, a Birchwood legend, laid to rest.” The write up that followed proved perfunctory in the extreme. The final paragraph noted that a memorial would soon be erected beside the pond that Mr. Talbott had loved. This, Darian realized, was the stone shelter where Timothy had accosted him the day before his own death. So there was a connection, after all, though not in the way he expected.

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