The Homewreckers(63)

“Okay if I record our conversation?”

“Yes, I guess that would be all right.”

He tapped the record button on the phone.

“I understand you were close with Lanier Ragan?”

“We were dear friends,” she said. “Her classroom was next to mine. Lanier was a bright light. It was a huge shock when she disappeared. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over it.”

“At the time, what did you think happened to her? Did she ever discuss the idea of leaving her husband? Or going away?”

“Going away? No,” Deborah said.

“Was she unhappy? At home, or at work?”

The drama teacher considered the question. “I only realized it after she disappeared, but something was definitely going on with her that fall. She’d changed.”

“How so?”

“She was … sort of closed off. Preoccupied, you might say. That fall, Lanier was always scurrying away to a meeting, or a conference, or a tutoring session. In the past, we’d meet up Saturday mornings for coffee, but she no-showed me a couple of times. The last time I saw her was at the faculty Christmas party. She was wearing one of those silly headbands with felt reindeer antlers, and a red foam nose. I went into labor the next morning.”

“You said she did tutoring sessions?”

“Yeah. Lanier was tutoring some of our girls, prepping them for their SATs, and I know Frank had her tutoring some of the boys on the football team. Between that and Emma and the house, it was a lot, you know? And Frank wasn’t around, because it was football season.”

“Did she complain about Frank? Was the marriage okay?”

“She didn’t have to complain. I saw it for myself. He expected her to be the perfect little wifey. Cook, clean, take care of Emma, help out her sick mom, plus be a saint in the kitchen and a slut in the bedroom.”

“I take it you weren’t a fan of Frank Ragan?”

“Hardly.”

“Could he have had something to do with her disappearance?”

“Possibly. But I went into labor six weeks early, the week before Christmas, and I had a sick preemie in the ICU at Memorial. That time is just a blur to me now.”

“But your baby was okay, right?”

“He’s a high school senior, six inches taller than me.”

“I’m glad,” Mak said. “You said Lanier was tutoring some of Frank’s players?”

“Two or three,” Deborah said. “Big dumb lugs who didn’t know a past participle from a forward pass.”

“Do you remember the names of any of the guys she tutored? The football players?”

“Is it important?”

“It might be. We had a tip, that Lanier had been having an affair with a high schooler.”

The drama teacher made a sound like the air escaping from a half-deflated balloon. “Ohhh.”

“It might not be true,” Mak admitted.

“I guess it’s not that far-fetched an idea. Lanier was young—ten years younger than me, and she got so involved with the girls and their lives. Maybe too involved. So yeah, I guess it could have been one of the football players. But I wouldn’t remember any of their names.”

“What if I got a roster for the football team for that year?” Mak persisted. “Maybe seeing the names would spark a memory?”

“Sorry. I just never paid attention to sports. Not my thing.”

“That’s okay,” Makarowicz. “Thanks for getting back to me.”



* * *



“This is Frank. You know what to do.”

Makarowicz hesitated. He’d left three previous voice messages for Frank Ragan, none of which had been returned. He didn’t have high hopes of hearing from the former football coach, but he’d give it one more shot.

“Mr. Ragan, this is Al Makarowicz of the Tybee Island Police Department. There has been a new development in the investigation into the disappearance of your wife, and it’s urgent that I speak to you.”

He spelled out his last name and left his number and disconnected. He was sitting in the claustrophobic cubicle that served as his office at the police headquarters on Van Horne Avenue.

Driving back to the island from his meeting with Holland Creedmore, he’d been thinking about the drama teacher’s disclosure that Lanier Ragan had been tutoring high school kids, including some of her husband’s football players, the fall before she disappeared. Could one of those “big dumb lugs” have been her secret lover? Holland Creedmore Jr. was on that team, but had he needed tutoring? Who else might fit that description?

He opened the browser bar on his desktop computer and typed in “Cardinal Mooney Catholic High Football team, 2004.” There were dozens of citations. He learned that the Knights had gone undefeated and won the state championship that year, and that Frank Ragan had been named Georgia High School Coach of the Year, and that two of his senior players, André Coates and Holland Creedmore Jr., had been named to the all-state first team.

He found a photo of the team’s two standouts, grinning and holding their all-state plaques. Coates was a beefy-looking defensive lineman, and Creedmore Jr. was, not surprisingly, a tight end. The article accompanying the story said that Coates was headed to Florida A&M, while Creedmore had signed to play at Wake Forest.