Page 31 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Road Kill

point at precisely eleven o’clock, and to bring along another girl to
corroborate her story. She had no idea of what was going to happen.”
I still couldn’t accept it. “Why would Ronny want to kill Ross
Ewidge?”
“Ah, the motive.” She nodded sagely, her eyes burning. “He more
or less gave that away when he stole the records. That indicated to
me that someone in the class was not doing very well and wanted to
hide the fact.”
“Not doing very well? My god, how bad it could be for him to
consider murdering his teacher?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised how many students think about doing just
that, Mr. Holloman. Don’t you watch television? Well, it took me a
few days of talking to the friends of all the students in that life
science class to find out who was in danger of failing the course.
Quite a few, actually. Selma Sohl, Bill Harzia, Heather Heath, Juan
Olivia and Herb Schnorr were among them. As was Ronny Knowles.
But he had more to lose than the others: he needed to pass in order
to get an athletic scholarship to Golden State College.”
I dimly remembered passing along the application papers for that
award. A boy like Knowles would have had to pin his hopes on
getting that kind of scholarship. Otherwise he would wind up
struggling with the academic requirements at some junior college
where he would have no status or perks. And I could imagine the
disdain Ross Ewidge would have heaped on any special pleading
Knowles might have made.
Labelle went on, words tumbling out as fast as she could say them.
“So he was a prime suspect. But that wasn’t hard to figure out—if
you wanted a suspect. Captain Fassner didn’t, so he didn’t look into
anybody’s motives. I shouldn’t be too hard on him, though. He saw
the photograph, but he didn’t see the fall. I saw both, so I knew the
hat was wrong.”
“Wrong? What sort of hat should one wear on a field trip?”
She laughed, not a girlish giggle but a harsh ironic guffaw, an
indication that her adulthood was not far off. “Anything providing
shade, Mr. Holloman. But Mr. Ewidge’s hat was the right size. When
I saw him running and stumbling over the edge of the cliff it was too
large. It came way down on his head, as if he had to pull it down to

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