Closer to his chair I noted five or six empty beer cans scattered around him. He'd forgotten his resolve in less
than two days. I figured he'd passed out in his drunken state and wasn't moving for that reason. I was wrong. He wasn't moving because he was dead.
Â
Everybody showed up: the cops Daniels and Johnson; the school personnel, led by Carolyn Blackburn and the school-board president; reporters, lurking in the background. The police interviewed us separately and together.
Except for making sure he was dead, we hadn't touched anything. “How'd he die?” I asked. We hadn't been able to see any obvious wounds.
“They don't know yet,” Daniels said. “Could be natural causes, but this is another coincidence, and like I said the other day, I don't believe in them. Two deaths in five days in the same school. Your house burned down. Something is definitely screwy.”
In their questioning, Daniels and Johnson were polite and correct, but they gave me no reason to trust them or confide in them. Before we left we talked to Carolyn and the school-board president, Jessica Allen.
Carolyn said, “This is sick. The guy wasn't the greatest custodian on earth, but still.”
Allen nodded her agreement. She asked, “Are you all right, Mr. Mason? I realize this has been a tough time for you and your friend.” She hadn't done a recognition dance after being introduced to Scott.
“As well as can be expected,” I said, and thanked her for asking. “Who else was around today?”
“That congregation,” Carolyn said. “They'll probably have their own church by next summer. I can't wait. It'll be less of a problem all around. No setting up chairs in the gym, no keeping a custodian on duty.”
“I meant, were there any school personnel on duty besides Marshall Longfellow?” I asked.
Carolyn said, “I'd have to check the records, in fact the police asked me to, but as far as I remember, Marshall was it.”
“Do you think it was murder?” Jessica Allen asked. She was an attractive, intelligent-looking woman, perhaps in her middle forties.
“I don't know,” I said. I didn't want to get into a discussion of murder suspects. A few minutes later we left.
As we sat in the truck Scott said, “This is a revolting development.”
I reached over and mussed his hair. “I could use some ideas, not age-old clichés.”
“Okay. If it's murder, who profits from Longfellow's death? So far we've got lots of people who benefit from Jones's murder.”
“Good question about Longfellow. We don't know anything about his private life,” I said. “If he was murdered, it could be for reasons totally unrelated to school.”
“Or, he saw something that day and he got killed for what he knew,” Scott said.
“Also possible,” I said. “For now, the police will check into all that background stuff on him. Maybe Daniels can tell us some later, including how he died. It might not be murder.”
We decided to pursue the information contained in the files.
Donna Dalrymple slammed her door in our faces.
Next we tried Al Welman. His excuse for not telling me all the nasty things Jones accused him of was “I forgot.”
It is said that the longer people teach, the more they become like the kids in the grade level they deal with, but this was a bit much. He stuck to that excuse. I found myself shouting at him at one point. He had tears in his eyes as he responded, “Don't yell at me. You're one of my few friends. Please stop.”
As soon as he said it, I felt rotten for yelling at the poor old guy. We weren't that close. If I was one of his few friends, what must the rest of his life be like?
We told him about Longfellow. He seemed genuinely shocked. Without prompting, Al told us he'd been home
alone all afternoon working on the Sunday
New York Times
crossword puzzle.
At the student teacher's house, Ralph Hartwig let us in. He told us he expected Clarissa back any minute from shopping at Orland Square. She'd been gone since eleven in the morning. Plenty of time to get to school to do murder.
We talked baseball for fifteen minutes before the front door opened. Clarissa walked in without any packages. She saw us and threw her keys across the room. She shook a finger at Ralph and yelled, “I told you if they came back, you were not to let them in.”
Ralph looked petrified and put upon. He mumbled, “They're only trying to help.”
I said, “Marshall Longfellow is dead.” That stopped her onslaught for a moment.
“Who is he?” Clarissa asked.
I explained.
“And you came here to find out if I killed him?” she accused.
“No,” I said. “We came here to find out if Jones had turned in any reports on you to the university.”
Abruptly she plopped onto an ottoman. “He told me he was going to tell my professor at Lincoln University. Jones came in to observe my classes before I was ready. He'd sit there writing for the entire class period. I got so nervous. I forgot kids' names, what I was doing, what questions to ask, what homework to assign. It was chaos.”
“When was he going to tell?” I asked.
“I didn't kill him,” she said.
“He hadn't done it yet,” Scott said.
She gazed at him for a moment, then lowered her head and shook it. She spoke toward the carpet. “He told me he was going to do it this week. Are you going to tell the police?”
“No,” Scott said.
We found out she'd had an interview with Jones only a
few minutes before I'd come upon her with Bluefield in the science room.
Ralph said, “I appreciate your not telling the police. Clarissa's had it rough. She's wanted to be a teacher for a long time. He just wasn't fair to her. He never gave her a chance.”
We left.
Max Younger wasn't home.
Fiona Wilson met us at the door in a filmy negligee. Strange wear, I thought, for a Sunday afternoon, but then there were days when Scott and I walked around the house all day in our Jockey shorts. Those are often my favorite days.
After she invited us in, Fiona asked if we wanted to accompany her to her bedroom while she slipped into something more appropriate for visiting. She cast many covetous glances at Scott. He didn't seem to notice. He walked over to the top of the television set, picked up a photo in a frame, and asked her, “Who are these people?”
“No one you know,” she said, and disappeared down the hallway.
I joined Scott. The picture was of Fiona with what could easily have been a husband or boyfriend; a golden retriever sat in front of them. The picture had been taken in this room.
Fiona's house was typical of the vast majority of the newer sections of River's Edge. One of four types of tract homes offered by a builder with the family room downstairs, kitchen, dining room, and living room on the ground floor, and bedrooms upstairs.
Fiona came back down in a bright pink sweat suit.
Scott and I sat on the couch in the living room. Fiona sat in a purple plush armchair. She swung her legs over the side, put her arms behind her, and threw her head back. I wondered if she desired the effect, which was to emphasize the considerable heft of her breasts. She'd picked the wrong crowd to play for.
I said, “Fiona, what did Robert Jones do when you came on to him in his office?”
She looked startled for only an instant, then slowly ran her bright red fingernails up her thigh and over her abdomen, stopping just short of her ample chest endowment.
She said, “Like all men, he was interested. I enjoy sex and when he came on to me, I figured why not? I can't imagine how you found out, but its your word against mine. He'd be in as much trouble, more even, for coming on to me. So you can take your shady suspicions and shove them up your ass.” She delivered this last line with casual defiance.
“Was he blackmailing you?” I asked.
The thought had struck me that with all this negative information about people, Jones might have delved into the monetary possibilities. I didn't think it was much of a theory, but I wanted to check it out.
Fiona uncoiled herself sufficiently so that her feet touched the floor. “Blackmail?” she mused. “No. He knew a few things about me, but everybody knows I like sex. It's not a secret.”
“I didn't know,” I said.
“It's not for lack of trying.”
I looked confused.
She said, “I've come on to you numerous times. You were too naive or too ⦔ She stopped a moment, then pointed at Scott. “You guys are lovers. You're gay. No wonder you never noticed.” She sat back with her arms crossed over her chest. “That explains a lot.”
We asked where she'd been that day. She told us she'd been home alone. A few minutes later, we left, little the wiser for our visit.
Denise Flowers lived in a condo development in River's Edge just south of 167th Street. The area was starkly devoid of trees, and the smoothed-out dirt where lawns belonged testified to the newness of the development.
Denise Flowers greeted us with “Can't you leave me alone?”
I told her about Marshall Longfellow.
She said, “The guy who looks like Santa Claus. He's dead?”
I nodded.
“Why would somebody kill him?” she asked.
“We aren't sure it was murder,” I said. “I did find out that Jones was constantly observing you in your classroom and that you weren't going to get tenure this year.”
“I want to be left alone,” she said. “I don't want to talk about it. I could have been out of a job.”
I said, “I'm not trying to bring you trouble, Denise. I'm trying to find out who killed Jones. I'm sorry you were having trouble with him. If you could answer some questions, it might really help.”
Ten minutes later, after a lot of cajoling and convincing, she agreed to talk.
She said, “He'd told me that there were problems, but he claimed I had time to correct what I was doing wrong in the classroom. The only thing I ever really did wrong was make him mad at me.”
I asked her to explain.
The year before, besides her regular classes and cheerleading duties, he'd asked her to take on extra duties, to help put out the school newspaper and yearbook. At first she had refused. “He told me that I didn't have a choice. That it was a condition of my employment and that I had to do it.”
This was probably true. It's often difficult to get teachers to do extra work, so many school districts make it part of the deal in hiring you. The interviewer asks a prospective teacher if he or she is willing to do extra duties. The job seeker, willing to agree to almost anything to get the position, readily acquiesces. Later, this comes back to haunt the new teacher, who is forced to do enormous quantities of work for meager pay.
Denise said, “I'm afraid I got a little snotty with him. I apologized later, but I think even then it was too late. He'd decided to get rid of me no matter what I did.”
“Was he trying to blackmail you?” I asked.
She looked startled. “No. I haven't got enough money to make it worthwhile for him to ask me for any.”
“How did you afford this condo?” I asked. In the south suburbs the price of condos was out of control. She was be in a place that had to be worth well over a $175,000.
“I borrowed from my parents,” she said.
“You'd need a job to keep up the payments. A fairly good one,” I said.
“That's not your business,” she snapped.
“It is if you were desperate enough to kill him to keep your job.”
“He'd have passed his notes on to someone,” she said. “I'd have tried to destroy the notes, wouldn't I? His documentation on me was devastating.”
“Maybe not, if his main reason for getting you fired was that he didn't like you,” I said.
She shook her head. “He had enough stuff written down. I couldn't have done a thing about it.”
Â
In the car Scott said, “I think she's off the list.”
I still wasn't convinced, although she wasn't near the top of my crowd of likely killers.
I picked the Bluefield document out of the glove compartment, where I'd stuffed it after the confusion of Marshall Longfellow's death. “This has got to mean something,” I said. “Let's go talk to Bluefield.”
Scott glared at me. Starting the truck, he turned the key almost hard enough to snap it in two. The tires screeched as we pulled away from Denise Flowers's condo. He didn't speak until five miles later, when we were on Interstate 57.
“That is one of the dumber things you've ever suggested,” he said.
Several miles of expressway passed by before the ultimate in witty repartee occurred to me. I said, “Is not.”
“Dan Bluefield is not your best friend, the father is a sworn enemy, and the mother isn't going to invite you over for tea any time soon. Why the hell would you want to go over there?”
“I think the Bluefield family is the key to this murder,” I said.
“I don't. I think it is foolish and perhaps dangerous for you to go anywhere near anybody in that family.”
At the moment I wasn't going near them: Scott was headed home. Other than jumping out of the car while it sped toward Chicago at over sixty miles an hour, I didn't have a lot of options.
We worked out in silence at his place. My arm felt good enough for me to spend an extra half-hour working out my frustration on the rowing machine. Later I found Scott upstairs reading the Sunday paper. We get two sets of the
Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.
We each read a
separate one. I hate it when somebody else reads the paper before I do. We tried various compromises early in our relationship: At first Scott offered to wait until I was finished reading the papers, but eventually I'd find half the sections strewn across the living-room floor on a Sunday morning. Finally he got us separate subscriptions as a first anniversary present.
That night we managed to be civil to each other long enough to order a pizza and eat it. After supper Scott retired to his den to go over the itinerary for a West Coast speaking tour he had scheduled for early November. I sulked in the library, reading
The Eye of the World
by Robert Jordan. I have a weakness for science-fantasy books when upset, and Jordan's opus was one of the best I'd run across in a long while.
At nine the phone rang. I didn't hear Scott stirring, so I answered. Daniels said, “It was murder.”
That conclusion was tentative, but Daniels said Longfellow had probably drunk himself into a stupor. Anyone could have come upon him. The man was heavyset and probably a deep sleeper. It would be fairly simple and quick for someone to smother him.
Scott appeared at the library door and looked questioningly at me.
I said to Daniels, “Any idea how long he was dead before we found him?”
“We don't know what time he started drinking. It's going to be hard to tell from the contents of the stomach, I think. My guess is he could have been dead almost any time after he got there. We've got the preacher from the congregation who talked to him about nine. He says Longfellow didn't seem intoxicated. Nobody saw Longfellow after that.”
“Not much help,” I said.
We talked a few minutes longer.
When I hung up, Scott came and sat next to me on the brown leather couch. He fingered the globe on the table next to the couch. He said, “It's been an emotional week.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You know how I get when the season ends.”
He hadn't had time to go through his end-of-season depression. We've talked about why he goes through it: missing his buddies who scatter around the country; desire for the excitement of being in front of the crowds; enjoyment of a solid baseball career. Postseason workouts and being on the talk circuit don't make up for the rush of throwing a fastball over ninety miles an hour.
“You haven't had much time to adjust,” I said.
He looked at me. “No.” He shrugged. “I'm worried about you. I probably shouldn't have come across so strong this afternoon.”
“Suggesting going to the Bluefields' was one of my dumber ideas,” I said. “I'm sorry I haven't been more attentive to you.”
He does need a lot of attention the week or so after the season. His relaxation time culminates when we go up to the cabin in Wisconsin. We hardly say two words to each other the whole time, just spend the three days tramping miles and miles in the woods and along Lake Superior. After the season he's pretty tired and vulnerable, a little like an alcoholic coming down from a six-month drunk, and this year he hadn't had time to crash, because of my problems.
I said, “Next weekend we'll be up at the cabin. I'll make it up to you.”
He reached over, pulled me close, and kissed me. I enjoyed his warmth and his after-shower smell. I dropped my hand to the button on his jeans and undid it.
Several hours later we ate cold pizza in the breakfast nook overlooking Lake Michigan and Lake Shore Drive. I take pride in the fact that I'm the one who taught him to enjoy cold pizza, although he still balks at chowing down on it for breakfast. Sometimes it takes so long to train a husband.
I told him what Daniels had said.
“Two murders,” Scott said. “Longfellow had to die because of something he knew about the first one.”
“We need to find out about his personal life,” I said. “Maybe he was secretly a spy for the government and foreign agents finally tracked him down.”
Scott raised an eyebrow at me. “He was some foreign country's secret weapon to destroy the fabric of society with incompetence? I know: He was part of the first wave of alien invaders destroying society by never fixing anything.”
“I am only a little amused,” I said.
“And Queen Victoria would be proud,” he said.
I chased him around the house, almost caught him in one of the guest bedrooms, and managed to trip him in the living room an inch short of the floor-to-ceiling windows. By this time we were giggling almost uncontrollably, and then we stopped laughing as he pulled me close in a fierce embrace.
Â
The next morning as I swung open my classroom door, a flashing fist whizzed toward my head. I reacted quickly enough to deflect the main impact, but my shoulder took a nasty punch. I rocked back, assumed another punch was coming, and ducked, then dove forward. My head bashed into a lean midsection. At first I guessed it was Dan Bluefield's. I heard the breath whoosh out of my opponent as my charge bashed him against the wall. I backed up. Bluefield Senior, clutching a spot six inches above his crotch, slowly sank to the floor.
I found I still had my briefcase in my left hand. I dropped it on a nearby desk, then turned to examine Bluefield. Other than some ragged gasps for air, he looked hardly the worse for wear.
When he got his breath back, he tried kicking out at me and scrambling to his feet at the same time. A monumentally stupid person would have known he'd try something. Not being monumentally stupid, I sidestepped, twisted
around, feinted to my left, caught my balance, and brought my foot up into his crotch. Another round to Mason.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Bluefield?” I asked.
He grasped his nuts and moaned.
“Did you come to confess to killing Jones and Longfellow? Longfellow saw you sneaking around the night of the murder. He could have turned you in. Of course, how would you know he knew?” I said this last part more to myself.
“Who's Longfellow?” Bluefield asked.
“Old custodian around here.” His lack of knowledge seemed genuine.
“Think you're a smart guy, don't you?” he gasped.
“I'm not the one in this room with the bruised balls,” I said.
“You ruined me,” he said.
“The pain will go away. I'm sure you'll be able to orgasm again soon. Maybe father a few more darlings like Dan-boy.”
“The drugs, you stupid shit. My supplier cut me off. He won't pay any of my legal fees.”
“I'm heartbroken.”
Bluefield eased himself into a chair. I kept my distance so I'd have plenty of time to ward off any surprise attacks.
“You're going to be sorry you ever messed with me or my kid.”
“I've heard that tune. But if your supplier abandoned you, who posted your bail?”
“I've got a few other connections.”
“Why is Dan such a mess?” I asked.
“He's not a mess.”
“I checked the records. Arrested for the first time at eleven. In three different chemical rehab programs before the age of fifteen. Almost nineteen years old and he barely qualified to be a senior this year, and I suspect that came about because Donna Dalrymple pulled a few strings.”
Bluefield snorted, “My kid told me he was pulling her string. I'm proud of him. I made it with a couple of my
teachers when I was in high school.” I noted his build and physique, tried to imagine him as a teenager. I guessed he was in his mid- to late thirties; he would have been in his late teens when he fathered Dan, would have had Dan's stringy muscularity. The face probably wouldn't have had as many nicks and scars thenâresults, I assumed, of choosing to fight instead of negotiate his way out of difficulties.
“Did you know Mr. Jones was keeping a file on you and your kid?”
He looked confused. “Why should I care about some file some wimp principal kept? Makes no difference to me. He's dead anyway.”
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“I came to beat the shit out of a fucking faggot.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. “With all the school personnel around, you couldn't hope to get away with it.”
He gave me a blank look. I could see Dan had inherited his dad's brains, and the old man didn't have that many to spare in the first place.
“Mr. Bluefield, why don't you get the fuck out of my life? If you let your kid alone, he might have a chance at a decent life.”
“That was Scott Carpenter with you on Saturday,” he said.
I decided to flow with his change of topic by giving him a yes.
“He's a faggot like you.”
I said, “You don't get to say faggot any more in my presence. I'll beat the shit out of you next time, and any other time you say it.”
He stood up. “I'm going to call all the newspapers and tell them Scott Carpenter diddles with guys.”
I said, “They already know.”
He looked confused.
“Do you really think people you've worked with for a while don't guess when someone's gay? Do you think reporters who've covered the team for years haven't figured
it out? This closet shit is getting pretty old. You're way behind the times.”
“You're lying,” Bluefield snarled.
I sighed. “Kids are going to be coming in here in a few minutes. You have anything sane to say to me or are you going to blow stupidity out of your ass until I die of boredom?”
He looked resentful and rebellious at this, but for the moment he refrained from an outright attack.
“When did you get out on bail?” I asked.
“Why?”
“Just want to know if you got out in time to have killed Marshall Longfellow.”
“I never got near the old guy. I got out of jail and spent the day in the city trying all my contacts. I lost a lot of my stock because of you and I need to be staked again. You cost me a bundle of money. I may have to move out of town. I came to beat the money out of you, or your pretty buddy.”
“Get real. I have no fear of you or anything you could possibly do.”
I guess he objected to my arrogance, because he bellowed with rage and launched himself at me. I stepped aside and he flew past me, tripped, and landed against a corner of my desk. His face rammed into the edge of it at almost full tilt. He staggered to the floor, clutching the desk, attempting to keep himself upright. I saw a few drops of blood seep from a cut just over his eye.
I watched him put his other hand out toward the chalkboard, steady himself, then lurch or stumble toward the doorway. “I'll be back to make you pay, faggot,” was his parting shot.
I took a step in his direction. He nearly tripped on his own feet as he retreated out the door.
After a surprisingly ordinary run of morning classes, I hunted up Meg at lunch and told her about Bluefield's visit. Her comments about the elder male idiot in the Bluefield clan were not positive. I sketched out for her a plan I had
for dealing with Donna Dalrymple: Meg would go with me to confront the school psychiatrist and act as a buffer. She readily agreed.
On the way to Donna's office Meg asked me how I was handling the pressure of teaching, losing my house, being involved in a murder, and dealing with the Bluefields. I told her the kids in class were okay and that Scott generally managed to keep me on an even keel.
We found Donna Dalrymple at her desk in her office, munching on cookies and sipping a Diet Coke. A Mrs. Fields bag open on the desk attested to her excellent choice in cookie companies. Somebody who eats white-chocolate-chip cookies for lunch can't be all bad.