An Educated Death (49 page)

"But who threw the pebble into the pond?" Andre said.

"I don't know. If we hadn't accepted Laney, would it have been someone else? Was it Chas? Or Ellie? Or Laney? Or Laney's mother? Or maybe I threw it in because I wasn't watchful enough. I knew Chas was vulnerable. I'd even heard vague rumors abut him paying too much attention to some of his students, but I figured he was a grown-up, it was his problem, and besides, I was too busy trying to fix the school's fiscal mess and shore up admissions. I could even claim it's society's fault for oversexualizing everything and failing to support everyone's ability to say no."

"Can we get back to the facts here?" Rocky complained.

But Dorrie still needed to talk. She took a deep breath. "But which of those answers prevents this mess? None of them. I can learn how to keep it from happening again, but the cost of the learning curve is too high. Two dead. Three injured. Four faculty members gone. Plus Carol. Forgive me for sounding self-pitying, but no one is ever going to want me to run a school again."

"That might depend on how you handle things," I said.

"That's my girl," Andre said, patting me. "A consultant to the end."

"How do you know it was Ellie who tried to poison me?"

"She confessed," Rocky said. "She said she tried to poison you. I guess she thought she was going to die and wanted to clear her conscience."

"Excuse me," Dom said, "but if you don't need me anymore, I've got some unfinished business at home. You know what Rosie's going to say when I tell her about this?"

"What?"

"She's gonna say she told me you wouldn't have called if you didn't need help. I don't know." He surveyed the crowded room. "Looks like you've got a hell of a lot of help."

"Dom. Believe me. I needed you."

He winked and bent down to kiss me. "Any time, Princess. Life with you is never dull." Then, as he straightened up, his face changed. "Why do you have blood all over your sweater?"

I pointed a shaky finger at Andre. "Because he broke my heart."

It was Rocky who lunged forward, pushed up my sweater, and showed the world my blood-soaked makeshift bandage, which he then peeled off to view the wound.

"Don't let them put me in the hospital," I said.

"Don't worry. I won't," Andre said. "I'll drive you to the ER for stitches and then we're going home."

"Wherever that is. My mother is still waiting to know if you're coming for Christmas dinner."

"Then we've got a problem, because my mother still wants to know if you're coming for Christmas dinner."

"So what do we do?"

"Draw straws. Flip a coin. Or we could just stay home in bed and watch
It's a Wonderful Life."

"I like the stay-in-bed idea but everyone will be mad at us."

Never mind waiting 'til Christmas, I was ready for bed right now. I felt as though someone had played kick-the-cat with me. I closed my eyes, shut out the commotion, and let Andre's hand be my only connection to the room.

"We're tough. We can take it," he said.

"Deal," I said. "I got you a great Christmas present."

"Me, too."

* * *

Ellie Drucker survived, as did Chas, while Josh quietly withdrew from school and spent some time in a private institution. The morning after the debacle chez Drucker, Dorrie called an all-school assembly and publicly announced the firing of Drucker, Hamlin, and the Donahues. I wish I'd been there.

Suzanne, who was there, says it was the best presentation by a head of school she's ever seen. Sorrowful, humble, deeply caring, and certain that the welfare of the students required prompt and decisive action.

Dorrie and Rocky's relationship is rocky, owing, in part, to the incredible hours she works, but her job did survive. The trustees decided that her caring and courage and willingness to put the students' needs before her own were what they wanted in a headmistress, so she stayed on at Bucksport. Ellie pled guilty to avoid the circus of a trial. Russ Hamlin, theatrical to the end, escaped while being transported to a hearing, stole a car, and jumped off the Mystic River Bridge. I heard that Chas and his daughter Angie were moving out of state. Sure she was the one who gave him up, but maybe he knew he'd deserved it. I don't know what happened with Dom and Rosie after he went home but I have a pretty good idea.

As for me and Andre, we did spend Christmas day in bed watching old movies and indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, waiting for the rain to stop. His mother was understanding; my mother was not. When the weather cleared, we went down to the beach and tried out our four new gloves and two new baseballs. It looked as though we were a match made in heaven, unless it was in the sporting goods store. My aim was off, which Andre claimed was because I throw like a girl. I told him it was because I had a bruised ankle and stitches. For Christmas dinner we had a caviar omelet, champagne, and chocolate cake, and then went back to bed to talk about our future, with no promises and lots of hope.

 

The End

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from

 

Death at the Wheel

 

by

 

Kate Flora

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

Some days it doesn't pay to get up in the morning but usually, by the time we find that out, it's too late. So it was with me on Easter Sunday. I'd been up since the dawn. Since before dawn. My church attendance may be sporadic but I love the Sunrise Service. I'm not sure that makes me Christian. There's something deliciously pagan in celebrating the return of life to the earth; yet the words of redemption, rebirth, and renewal were etched in childhood, and they still move me.

I stood out on the back deck of my condo, drinking coffee, looking out at the sparkling ocean. The wind, after a chilly spring, was finally warm, and the perfect way to spend the rest of Easter Sunday would be to walk on the beach and then curl up with a good book. Instead, like everyone else in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I was going home for dinner, toting the obligatory potted plant. I hadn't realized how widespread the custom was until I came out of my condo carrying a plant and discovered all my neighbors doing the same thing. As I drove toward Route 128, half the houses I passed seemed to be disgorging residents in twos and threes and they were all carrying potted plants. It was like some new form of Invasion of the Body Snatchers—invasion of the plant-toters.

I turned on the radio, searching for something that would lighten my mood. There was no mystery about how the day would go. It was all predictable. My mother, worn out from her efforts to produce the perfect meal, wouldn't be able to control her anxiety about my unmarried, childless state. As the only one of her offspring likely to give her a grandchild, my reproductive prospects were a source of great concern. She would make what she considered exquisitely subtle inquiries about the state of my romantic life. If I allowed that things with Andre were going well, she'd be even more unhappy. My being married to or even seriously involved with a state trooper didn't conform to her upwardly mobile, country club notions of the proper consort. I rubbed my forehead, trying to press away the incipient headache that threatened whenever a family dinner was inevitable.

My mother's unspoken reproach wasn't all I had to look forward to. My brother Michael would be there, too. Michael the artist. Michael the talented. Michael the disgruntled, a man who had never gotten over his childhood habit of taking out his moods on others. And with Michael came his chronic girlfriend, Sonia, the workout queen, self-involved, petulant, and so virulent she made Michael look sweet. Sonia's conversation was salted with remarks that would give Miss Manners heart failure; remarks that challenged my self-control. Had I ever considered breast-reduction surgery and didn't I want the name of a good hairdresser? Did I know that skillful makeup would cover the circles under my eyes? Once, after staring pointedly at my skirt, she had commiserated about how difficult it is to get stains out of silk, one simply had to give up and throw things away, didn't one. It's not sisterly of me, but if they still had Roman games, I'd relish feeding Sonia to the lions. The poor beasts wouldn't get much of a snack, though. Under her layers of drapy garments, Sonia is rail thin.

In our minds, though never mentioned, would be my sister Carrie, dead a year and a half now, the victim of a brutal murder. Alive, Carrie had been the misfit, angry, challenging, and difficult, a constant thorn in my mother's side. I had loved her like a mother myself, my little adopted sister, and my sadness at her death, and my guilt that I had not done more to help her still lingered, especially there in the house where we'd all grown up.

Through it all, my father, the lawyer known for never backing down, would sit tight-lipped and silent, a row of little frown lines between his eyes, and then begin talking about some unrelated topic of interest to him. My dad is a sweetheart. When I was little, I was daddy's girl, and being a lawyer, he used to come home and pose legal riddles for me, delighting in my ability to solve them. We're not so close now, a fact that saddens me, but in my sometimes tense encounters with my mother, he's wisely chosen to take her side. I don't feel betrayed, just disappointed. I understand. I love my family but much of the time I don't like them. Families are given to us to make us appreciate the value of being grown up and on our own.

The radio announcer was going on much too long about how happy I'd be with a new mattress and a bottle of Bud Light. I had one and didn't need the other. I gave up on the radio and switched to the CD player, treating myself to some reggae, glad I hadn't been penny wise and pound foolish and had sprung for some luxury options on my car. I loved my bright red Saab. My husband David's rusty old Saab, a solid and dependable winter car, had gotten me hooked on Saabs, and when I replaced it, I got another. David was dead, a fact that still caused me pain, and partly my choice of Saab was memorial—a tribute to his taste and judgment. I loved my car phone and my sun roof and in the winter, I loved my heated seats. But it was April and Easter and after the awful winter we New Englanders had endured, it was impossible to stay grouchy on a warm, sunny day, even on the way to family dinner.