Schooled in Murder (11 page)

It was the middle of the night. I tossed and turned. Scott was asleep on his stomach. He had his arms under his pillow. It takes a lot to keep Scott from getting a good night’s sleep. I slipped out of bed and headed into the living room. I took a book from a bookcase and a blanket out of the cupboard. I sat on the couch and snuggled in with the blanket close around me. The wind was up. Rain rattled against the windows. I’d picked an Agatha Christie mystery I hadn’t read yet. I love her books, and dear Agatha is a mystery master, but she also puts me to sleep. There is such comfort in her surety and expertise. I read for a while. The house was quiet.

I thought about turning the heat up, but the flannel blanket was warm, and I was finally feeling drowsy. My eyes would start to close, then Peter Higden’s face would rush into my imagination, and I would start back awake.

15

I awoke the next morning exhausted. A miserable night’s sleep, finding both bodies, being involved in an investigation, and anger at Benson and Frecking’s betrayal combined to enhance my apprehension and fear. Betrayal by friends, enemies, can be devastating and in this case endangered me and entangled me much deeper in a murder case.

Scott was up early. He had meetings that morning in Chicago with his agent and some advertising people. While I showered, shaved, and dressed, he hovered around me in his underwear. I knew he was trying to distract me for a little while. A video of him in his snug boxer briefs would prompt viewers to rush to a store to buy whatever brand he was wearing.

Okay, it was distracting, just not for long enough.

Scott drove me to breakfast. Meg would drive me to school. I wasn’t sure when I’d get my car back. As Scott kissed me good-bye, he said, “If you need anything, call. And keep our lawyer’s cell phone number handy. Don’t be afraid to just chuck it all and come home. If you need me to, I’ll cancel my
meetings. I’m not sure I shouldn’t anyway. I’ll be back in time for lunch. I’ll stop at school.”

I thanked him and assured him I was all right–that I was meeting Meg for breakfast, so I’d be starting the day with a trusted ally. I told him I loved him, and he drove off.

The weather had cleared and the first cold snap of the fall was settling in.

For years Meg Swarthmore, the librarian at Grover Cleveland, and I had met on Friday mornings for breakfast. On institute days especially it was essential to fortify ourselves with gallons of caffeine and a decent breakfast in hopes of being able to keep alert, active, and awake during the day. The institutes could be more leadenly boring than the speeches by Mabel Spandrel at our departmental faculty meetings, although the institutes tended to have far less acrimony.

Meg saw me, hurried over, and gave me a quick hug. “You look awful.” Direct and to the point, as always, one of the many things I liked about her.

I said, “I’ve been better.” She wasn’t much over five feet tall and was plump in a grandmotherly way. She was the ultimate clearing house for all school gossip. If there were secrets to be known, Meg, if not knowing all, would know a great deal.

The manager seated us in our usual corner. Meg used a cane these days. A year ago, she’d broken her right hip falling from a ladder in the library at school. She used the cane on occasion when her hip pained her. Mostly she used it to rap the tops of the desks of kids who were talking above a whisper in the library.

The waitress, familiar with us from our years of Friday breakfasts, asked if we’d heard about what happened at the school. I deflected her with noncommittal answers. She clucked in dismay at the state of education today and the incidence of violence among volatile teenagers.

When she left, Meg asked, “Did you really almost run over Peter Higden?”

I said, “Almost. He was on the ground behind my car. He was already dead.”

“How did he die?” Meg asked. Her voice was a whisper. “I received phone calls last night, each rumor more ludicrous than the last.”

“However they killed him, after they did it, they put his body behind my car.”

“To implicate you in some way.”

“I was lucky. If I’d run over him, there would have been evidence. As it stands, though, the simplest forensic investigation will show there isn’t any residue of his death under my car.”

Meg said, “A logical deduction to make based on where the body wound up is that we’ve got a stupid killer who is trying to implicate you.”

I said, “Or he wasn’t killed by being run over. I didn’t see any blood. He must have been murdered somewhere else, them moved. They could have killed him somewhere else in the parking lot and planted him near my tires. I don’t know where he parks his car.”

“Lots of possibilities.”

I said, “And if I’d just bulled ahead with my car and run over him, it would complicate my situation. I’m not sure how accurate they can be in determining when he died if it’s a matter of minutes, but I’d sure like to know what the police estimate is.”

“Thank god you stopped. And all this, after your having been the one to find Gracie–I’m surprised you have the wherewithal to go in today.”

“To not come in might suggest that there was something I had to feel guilty about. Plus I want to have a little talk with Brandon Benson and Steven Frecking.”

“What happened?”

I told her the story from the beginning. Our food arrived in the middle of my tale, a fruit medley and plain toast for her and an omelet with tomatoes and feta cheese for me.

When I was done with my story, she said, “You were lucky with the police. Hell, after all that, I might have thought about arresting you.”

I said, “They were officious, tough, typical. I’ve got to remember to thank Frank Rohde for putting in a good word for me. The oddest thing, besides the murders, was the different groups that came to ask me for help. Both the suckups and the old guard want union protection, and the administrators think I can get them inside information.”

“Frank Rohde is a friend of yours. They’re kind of right.”

“As if I’d help them.”

Meg said, “With two of the suckups dead, it’s got to look like the old guard did it. Or at least they need to be questioned.”

“Jourdan was pretty nervous,” I said

Meg said, “I think the suckups did it. I think they’d devour their own. It would be a convoluted conspiracy, but that’s the best kind of conspiracy, a convoluted one.”

“But why do all that?” I asked.

“They’re nuts? Because they can? Those people have never made sense to me. I think they are capable of any lie, any distortion, using any insane self-justification.”

“Proving there’s some vast conspiracy is another issue.”

Meg said, “Look at those threatening notes Pinyon got. I heard the same rumor you did, that he wrote them himself. I never noticed the administration paying particular attention to them or doing much to investigate at the time.”

“Maybe they did but didn’t tell you.”

Meg said, “They don’t consult me quite as often as I’d like. With the rise of the suckups, I’ve been getting less gossip.”

I said, “Maybe word is out that you’re not a backstabbing Nazi.”

“Shows they got that right. Maybe they’re only ninety-nine percent stupid instead of one hundred percent.”

I said, “I’m not sure that’s much of a difference.”

Meg said, “Something that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me is that Graniento, our idiot principal, has encouraged dissidents to come to him, yet it’s the suckups and Mabel Spandrel who are in the driver’s seat in the English department. They wouldn’t have to go to Graniento; Spandrel is already on their side.”

“I’m not sure of the politics of the whole thing. Spandrel and Graniento could be working together, but to do what? They’re already in charge. Nuts as they are and as revolting as they may be, I don’t think they’d lead a rebellion against themselves. Even they aren’t that dumb.”

Meg said, “Maybe they want to be superintendent and assistant superintendent. Although I’m not sure what the hell for. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. However, I don’t think those two are the most dangerous. If I was going to pick an administrator who I think was capable of killing someone, I’d pick Bochka.”

“Technically she’s a school board member, not an administrator.”

“Usually you’re not quite so punctilious,” Meg said.

“Sorry, I’m a little shook up this morning.”

“Understandable,” Meg said. “You’re forgiven. My money’s on Bochka, the overdressed Nazi bitch, not that I want to prejudice you against her.”

“We’re not supposed to call them Nazis.”

“So says the right wing who want to control us and the language we use. Those people are what they are, and Nazi describes it perfectly. Especially Bochka. That woman’s got murder in her beady little eyes. Anyone who wears that
many designer outfits can’t be right in the head. Or who can afford that many.”

I noted Meg’s understated jeans and sweater.

“Bochka’s a killer?”

“She’s got my vote,” Meg said.

“What would she have to gain?” I asked.

“Maybe at those conventions school board members go to they have competitions. Who can make the most teachers miserable, who can be most autocratic, who can be the most penurious …”

“Penurious?”

“I can be a walking dictionary just as much as you. I bet they get points for which one is the biggest asshole. It’s like this big competition.”

I said, “And if you murder a teacher you get bonus points?”

“Think about it,” Meg said. “Competition would explain a lot about their loony behavior. Remember when they wanted to build a new junior high but call it a middle school? Not a one of the board members understood the difference between the two concepts or what it would take to build one or the other. Of course, the good old voters shot that one down, as usual, so the board got nothing for all its trouble. Who in their right mind wants to be on a school board? Or why would anyone with an ounce of sense want to be a school administrator?”

“I’ve known some good ones,” I said.

“Whose fault is that?” Meg asked. She shook her head. “I’m being too harsh, sorry. Being a school administrator is a thankless job. Everybody hates you: kids, teachers, the union, parents, your bosses. You get pressure from everyone and satisfaction from none.”

“A few of the administrators, some board members, too, have been kind people who would listen and really want to
help. Not many.” I shrugged. “Maybe it’s something simpler. Maybe they want to fire all the old-guard teachers.”

“It could be part of some huge sinister plot to do that, but they could accomplish the same thing by doing their paperwork. It’s not that hard to fire a tenured teacher, despite what the right-wing assholes would have everyone believe about how powerful unions are. How would resorting to murder help any of that?”

I said, “Depends on who gets accused of murder and who they kill. Still, murder just doesn’t seem a logical response. They already think it’s easier to make a teacher miserable and get him or her to quit than to do their administrative jobs. You know the drill. Look what they’ve tried to do to Jourdan in the past year.”

Jourdan had been under pressure to change the way he’d been teaching. He lectured to the kids and put them to sleep. Same lectures. Same stories. No projects. No group work. No changes. Nothing that connected to their lives or anyone else’s. The kids in his classes did the same thing day after day: desperately try to stay awake. He needed to change. As usual, the lazy-ass administrators wanted to accomplish this by bullying, commanding, and/or breaking the contract. All they would have needed to do was file some paperwork, do a bit of homework and follow-up, and make recommendations that have logic behind them, mixed with cajoling and authority. Some dare call this leadership.

I said, “Spandrel’s been in there with her evaluation forms numerous times. I’ve had to talk to him and her. The meetings with the two of them are pretty nasty. But if Jourdan was angry enough, why kill Gracie Eberson? It would be much more effective to go after Spandrel. She’s the one who wanted him to change.”

“The whole situation isn’t making sense,” Meg said. “And speaking of not making sense–”