Among the Cornstalks

                                #ReedsySecretsAmong the Cornstalks

     Ed Josephson wrapped his scarf tightly around his neck as he fought back the 35-mile-per-hour winds and driving snow while trying to navigate his way along Seahawk Lane.

     As he wound his way past the cornfield across from Berlin, Maryland’s Stephen Decatur High School, he thought he saw someone digging a hole in the middle of the field and removing something.

       As the winter darkness closed in it became more and more difficult for him to see, but it looked like the person had agaIn buried the object then disappeared into the woods behind the fields.

       Josephson’s instincts, finely honed after 25 years of distinguished service with the Worcester County Sheriff’s Department, told him something didn’t quite smell right about the situation. He waited for the wind to die down and then made his way over to the disturbed section of the growth area.

        Pushing aside the stalks, he surveyed the entire area for several minutes. Only two sets of oversized boot prints remained. Satisfied that he would find no sign of the dig, the former deputy left the area, taking with him the only evidence he had of the diggers–photographs he had taken with his smartphone of the impressions made by the boots.

      The former deputy’s interest in someone digging in a cornfield across from the local secondary school, it turns out, had much more importance than simple curiosity.

       The former deputy had left the force eight years prior. He then worked part-time as a custodian at the school while he obtained his insurance sales license. He began specializing in procurement of coverage for the teachers and other staff members. 

    Ed narrowed the focus of his education, specializing in selling to attractive females approaching retirement age who found they had not sufficiently planned for the financing of their post-teaching years.

        This allowed him to romance childless widows or divorcees who soon would come into large pensions or inheritances, a task made easier because he had kept himself in the same physical condition as the day he left the department.

          At first, his new occupation yielded little in the way of potential romantic targets, but he struck paydirt during his second semester at the school. 

          Josephson set his sights on Dorothy Fitzhugh, a very attractive 55-year-old blond transplant from Perth, Australia, widowed by a shark attack on her husband.

       The husband, Jonathan Fitzhugh, had operated a very productive excursion sea fishing business and had left her a large endowment.

        Dorothy, at first, had plenty of income. Later she began to enjoy the party scene a little too much and frittered away a good chunk of her fortune.

         After a while she decided a change of scenery would help her forget the loss of her husband, so she salvaged what remained of the fortune from Jonathan and relocated to the United States. 

      In her youth she had obtained a license to teach American history to children of military personnel stationed in Australia and returned to that when her bequest began to run dry.

      On the advice of the mother of one of her students, Dorothy found a lucrative instruction position at Decatur.

        She became a particular favorite of the school’s football players, who she often tutored after classes to help them obtain the passing history grades needed to keep them on the team.

        The new teacher and Josephson met after he later made an insurance presentation at a faculty meeting. He appealed to her on both a financial and a personal level and they soon began dating.

      His rough law enforcement background and her more laid-back Outback personality ignited a burning magnetism that turned to torrid passion in a short time.

       The couple soon found their differences overcoming what they had in common and this led to increasing clashes, especially over lifestyles and finances.

        Stories also circulated around the school and on social media about the insurance agent’s less-than-sterling former relationships with some of his fellow female deputies. His temper, triggered by the slightest provocation, supposedly had led to a number of physical confrontations. 

      Dorothy brought up many of these rumors, and their off-campus fights often carried on after class within earshot of her students, becoming louder and more violent.

        Her gridiron star pupils thought about intervening but decided not to risk their academic standing or future employment prospects.

         Then, after one particularly boisterous fight, Ed roughly led Dorothy to that cornfield across from the school. Shots soon rang out. 

         Ed had put a bullet through Dorothy’s skull with a throwaway gun he kept after leaving the sheriff’s department. He buried her body deep in the woods just before one of the area’s rare blizzards.

      Prior to the blizzard, construction also had begun on Oceanview East, a luxury apartment complex next to the forest adjacent to the fields.  

      Ed thought the rapidly-falling snow would cover up his crime.

       What he did not figure on was a pickup football game that took place a few days later between some of Dorothy’s students in the cornfield. 

         Although they heard the gunshots as darkness dawned after their final period classes two days before the game, they began to wonder when the teacher did not come into school and none of her colleagues had heard from her.

         They began talking about it after leaving the game. Searching the area, they found bloodstains leading up to a makeshift grave.

        As they began digging, the second blizzard in a week drove them away, but they returned a few days later to discover the body of their beloved instructor.

         Ed, returning to the area to make sure no one found the grave, discovered the prints of the boys’ boots in the snow and began thinking of a way to permanently silence them.

          Too late–the players had already texted a message about what they had seen to the Berlin Police Department.

           They had no problem ignoring a violent lovers’ quarrel between two adults at their school, but could not take a pass on the killing of their favorite teacher.