Die Job (12 page)

“I’ll try. I don’t even know all the kids’ names, though, so I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

I showed him where I’d encountered various kids and the route I’d taken chasing Lonnie. I gave him times as best as I remembered them and closed my eyes to try to remember who I’d seen outside watching the fireworks.

“That’s it?” he asked when I finished.

“What do you mean?”

“Pretty loose supervision. You only saw each pair of kids—what? Ten minutes in an hour? One of them could’ve driven to Disney World and shot Mickey for all you know.”

“It’s not like I was the only chaperone,” I said hotly, mad at him for remarks that pricked my already sensitive conscience.

“Where were the other chaperones?”

“Coach Peet took Tyler to the bus,” I said, “and I assume he stayed there.”

“No, he didn’t,” Dillon said, tossing the pencil down. “He took Tyler to the bus but left him with the bus driver who then fell asleep. Tyler snuck away, so we can’t account for Peet, Tyler, or for that matter, the bus driver.”

“What about Tasha Solomon? Her daughter was part of the class.”

“
Dr.
Solomon. Mother of Ari Solomon. Spent most of the evening in the carriage house museum with a couple of teens who got excited about an owl hooting and thought it was the ghost. She and they split up when the fireworks drew everyone outside, though.”

I nibbled on my forefinger, thinking. “Do you think someone deliberately set off the fireworks to create an opportunity to . . .”

“To kill McCullers? Possible. Although Lonnie Farber copped to the fireworks and vehemently denies going back in the mansion.”

“And if it was him, up on the landing when Braden got hurt, there’d be no need for another ghost costume, would there?” I said, thinking about the sheet Spaatz and I had found in the armoire.

“You’re right.”

The faint hint of surprise in Dillon’s voice told me he hadn’t made that connection and I felt a flash of triumph at having helped. “What about Sunday night?”

“What about it?”

His face got that closed look that told me I wasn’t going to learn anything, but I persevered anyway. “What were the”—I stumbled over the word “suspects”—“what was everyone doing? Who had the opportunity to get to the hospital?”

He gave me the “we don’t share investigation details with civilians” look. It was an eloquent look; he practiced it a lot. “Where were you last night?”

“When?”

Dillon just looked at me, brows slightly elevated. I sighed. “Six thirty—handed out candy with Mrs. Jones. Seven
thirty or so—ran to the store with Vonda. Eight o’clock—home alone, watching a DVD, then sleeping. Midnight—investigating an explosion at Mrs. Jones’s house.”

“What?” He spluttered coffee on the blueprints and dabbed at the spots with a sheet of paper.

Pleased at having startled him, I explained.

“I’ll see what the SEPD came up with,” he said, making a note and asking me to spell Varina’s name.

“What about you?” I asked, feeling daring.

“What about me what?”

“Where were you last night?”

“I’m not a suspect.” He said it with a purposely smug expression.

“And I am?” I asked indignantly, even though I was sure—pretty sure—he didn’t really think I’d killed Braden McCullers.

A certain light in his eyes told me he was amused. “I was helping my troop learn first aid techniques.”

“You’re a Scout leader? Don’t you have to have a son?”

“Who says I don’t?”

I goggled at him and the grin he’d been suppressing spread across his face. “I’ve got another appointment,” he said, rolling up the blueprint.

Fine. If he wouldn’t volunteer information about his kids—if he had any—I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking. I looked at my watch. “I’ve got to get over to the school. If I think of anything else, I’ll call you.” I kept my voice cool, but it didn’t seem to faze him.

“Do that,” he said. Picking up his mug, he said, “I haven’t seen Shears around recently. Is he staying busy up in Atlanta?” His tone was so casual I knew his interest was more than that.

“He
got a new job—in DC,” I said, equally casually. “I was supposed to visit next weekend, but that fell through.” I rubbed at a smudge on the glossy table.

“Really?”

“Um-hm.”

The conversation trickled to an awkward halt. I looked up from under my lashes to see him staring at me intently. His gaze lingered on my mouth. “I’m going to be late,” I said, bolting for the door.

In my car, I pounded the steering wheel. Why had I run out like a nervous high schooler? I drove too fast on the way back to St. Elizabeth and parked outside Mom’s; I knew from experience that parking within two blocks of the high school was impossible on a school day. Mom’s house is situated on Bedford Square, the historical shopping district in town, and the high school was only six blocks away. It was actually a relief to walk to the high school and let the pre-hurricane bluster blow away my confusion and frustration. The wind kicked up leaves no one had bothered to rake this fall and flung them at me. Stepping into the gutter and scuffing leaves up with my feet, I watched the wind swirl them away. It was fun and I arrived at the school feeling better than I had all day.

St. Elizabeth High School, a characterless rectangle of red brick from the ’60s, housed about a thousand students. The school’s mascot, a sabertooth tiger, leered at me from the wall beside the office. A strange orangey color, the sabertooth’s paint was flaking off in spots, revealing a mint green layer beneath that made him look like a Dr. Seuss character. The hall surged with jean-clad teens, laughter, and the clanging of locker doors as the students switched classes. Many of them stopped at a large display on a folding table that said: “Winter Ball Fund-raiser!! Vote for Your Favorite Teacher or Friend
to Shave His/Her Head!!! Each Vote $1.” Coffee cans with slits in their plastic covers were placed beneath photos of five people I took to be SEHS students and teachers. The kids in the hall were egging each other on to put money in the cans. As the crowd thinned out, I looked into one coffee can; it was crammed with bills. A bored-looking kid with severe acne sat behind the table, probably to ensure money got put into the coffee cans and not taken out. Sad. He eyed me suspiciously but didn’t say anything.

Putting a dollar into each of the cans, I approached the office. Standing at the half door, I told the heavyset woman at a computer terminal why I was there.

“Oh, yes, Miss Terhune,” she said in a high-pitched voice that didn’t match her generous build. “The principal wants to see you.”

Ye gods! I’d only been back in the building two and a half minutes and already I was being sent to the principal’s office. It was weird how those words made my tummy do a little flip. Not that I’d spent much time in the principal’s office when I went here, but still. The woman motioned me through a full-sized door to my right and then led me past two unoccupied desks, a water cooler, and a dying philodendron to a door with “PRINCIPAL” and “Merle Kornhiser” stenciled in gold. Rapping once on the open door, the woman said, “Merle, here’s Miss Terhune.”

I walked in not knowing quite what to expect. The massive oak desk and straight-backed leather chairs I remembered were gone, replaced by an acrylic or glass desk that looked like a drafting table and a rounded, armless love seat in pale orange with matching chairs. A stack of three large pillows upholstered in a bright geometric print suggested some lucky visitors got to sit on the floor. During my years at SEHS, Mr. Iselin, a tall, spare man with a Hitler-type
mustache, had been principal. He knew all the students by name and always addressed us as “Miss Terhune” or “Mr. Parker,” but with an inflection that made the titles more snide than respectful. When I entered, Mr. Kornhiser came around his desk and held out his hand. He was the anti-Iselin: short, with thinning blond hair pulled back into a stubby ponytail, and wearing a turquoise and pink Hawaiian shirt. He could’ve been any age between forty and sixty, judging by the crinkles around his eyes and the gray threading through his hair.

“Grace—I can call you Grace, can’t I?—I want to welcome you to St. Elizabeth High and thank you for helping with our fund-raiser.” He pumped my hand.

“I’m happy to do it, Mr.—”

He held up a hand. “Ah-ah. Merle. Call me Merle.”

“Okay. If you’ll just tell me where—”

“Actually, Grace, I was hoping we could chat for a few minutes. About the incident Saturday night.” He motioned to one of the orange chairs and I sank into it gingerly. He dropped gracefully to one of the pillows and crossed his legs.

I had to look down at him to converse and it felt very weird.

“It makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it?” He grinned, revealing a gap between his front teeth. “I like to play with our cultural notions of power. In most meetings, the grand poobah sits at the head of the table, or behind a desk, while the lesser minions sit along the wall. I consider myself a servant of this school and our students so I sit here.” He patted the pillow.

I made no response. What could I say? Very democratic of you? I like your pillow? What kind of drugs do you take with your corn flakes and OJ?

After a long moment of silence, he continued, “It was very servant-minded of you to volunteer your time Saturday night to chaperone our field trip. Really. I, personally, appreciate it. And I’m more sorry than I can say that the evening ended on such a negative note. You didn’t happen to observe anything, did you, that would clear up what happened?”

He sat back, seemingly relaxed, bracing himself with his hands behind him, but his eyes watched my face carefully. I decided he was probably in his fifties and worried about school liability just like any other administrator in his position would be. The “I’ll sit at your feet approach” wasn’t going to cut much ice with a jury if the McCullerses sued him.

“Not really,” I said. “What have the students told you? Did any of them have a grudge against Braden?”

“A grudge?” He blinked his eyes rapidly several times. “You’re not implying that one of our students could have
intentionally
harmed Braden? It must have been an accident. Or maybe someone else was in the house. Tourists.”

I gave the man an A plus for grasping at straws. “I don’t think it gets much more intentional than smothering someone with a pillow,” I said. Merle was living in la-la land if he thought the police could hang the murder on a random tourist from Topeka, visiting Rothmere hours after it closed, who decided on the spur of the moment to toss Braden down the stairs and then finished the job with a pillow in the hospital.

“Braden McCullers was a good kid,” he said. “A real servant-leader. Captain of the football team, a GPA that got him accepted to MIT, homecoming king, state-level debater. I can’t imagine any of the students had a beef with him.”

“Have you asked?”

“No. The police have been interviewing the field trip students all day,” he admitted, “creating a lot of negative energy in the school.”

I thought it was probably Braden’s death that was bumming the students out, not the police investigation. “Did the McCullers family say anything to you about when the funeral would be?” I asked, standing. “I’d like to go.”

Merle reached a hand up to me and I took it reluctantly, helping him to his feet. His knees crackled. “I explained to them how Braden’s friends, all of us at SEHS, need closure, but they said they preferred to say their good-byes privately. They wouldn’t even authorize a memorial service.”

He sounded personally affronted. It was a little strange, but maybe the McCullers family couldn’t face Braden’s friends and classmates right now; the sight of all the seniors going on to graduation, college, marriage might remind them too painfully of milestones their son would never reach.

“Let me walk you down to the auditorium,” Merle said. “I expect I’ll be losing this”—he tugged at his ponytail and grinned—“before the week is out.”

He delivered me to Rachel at the door of the auditorium and hustled off to “brief the school board on the situation.” Rachel looked wan, her face paler than usual against her black hair and clothes. A camera dangled from a strap around her wrist. “Thanks for coming, Grace,” she said, managing a tiny smile.

I gave her a quick hug, glad she’d mustered up the courage to come to school. Being around her classmates was the best thing for her right now, I was sure. Much better than crying alone at home. “Happy to do it,” I said. “Are there a lot of takers?”

For answer, she pushed open the auditorium door. Eight girls waited on the stage with a chair positioned in the center. “They’re all here for Locks of Love. We’ll do the head shaving at the pep rally on Friday. I’m supposed to take photos for the yearbook.” She indicated the camera.

I surveyed the girls, a lonely clump on the bare stage surrounded by the echoing emptiness of the auditorium. I advanced toward them and thanked them for donating their hair to Locks of Love. “Tell you what,” I said. “These are hardly ideal hair-cutting conditions.”

They bobbed their heads in agreement. “How about if y’all come down to Violetta’s after school and we’ll do it there? That way, we can give you a shampoo and make sure you get a style you’re happy with. You can tell all your friends that they can get a free cut at Violetta’s if they’re donating their hair to charity, okay?”

The girls looked relieved. “I only have study hall last period,” said Lindsay, the tall brunette from the field trip. “Can I come now?”

“Sure,” I said. “If that’s okay with the school. And I’ll see the rest of you later this afternoon?”

They nodded and headed for the hall. “I should’ve thought of that,” Rachel said. “It’s, like, a way better idea than cutting hair here.” She swung the camera moodily.

“Either way would’ve worked. You’ve done the hard part by motivating them to part with their hair,” I said. “Want me to take pictures today?”

“Sure.” She handed me the camera and trudged down the hall, a slim figure in black, looking very alone.

“She’s taking it hard. Braden’s death, I mean,” said Lindsay’s voice beside me.

I looked up at the athletic girl who topped my five-six by several inches. Her brown eyes were fixed on Rachel. “They
were very close,” I said. “But I’m sure it’s hard on a lot of Braden’s friends.”