2 Death Makes the Cut (24 page)

“Hi, Pat,” I said. “Looking for something?”

Her pale eyes darted down and sideways as though a reasonable answer might be skittering across the floor like a cockroach. Then she rose, pushing back the chair with a screech and drew herself up to her full height, which was fairly impressive. She topped me by a couple of inches and outweighed me by at least fifty pounds. I stepped back involuntarily.

“Yes, I needed the receipts for the new watercoolers Coach Argus purchased for the tennis team.”

This threw me. “But the team doesn’t have any new watercoolers. The ones we’re using are older than most of the kids.”

This flummoxed her for a moment, but she came back strong.

“Ah, well he submitted a purchase requisition that I approved. I assumed he followed through and actually bought them.” She sniffed at this sign of incompetence, then gave me a sidelong look, and said, “In any case, the team has approval for two new coolers, so if you want to make the purchase, you can turn in the receipts to me.”

“Okay,” I said. “Are you sure there wasn’t something else?”

“What else could there be?” she asked sharply.

Which was completely unanswerable. She waited a moment, but when I said nothing, she pushed past me and left.

I watched her go, thinking it was really a very good question. What else could there be? In this tangled and seemingly random series of events that had occurred since Fred’s death, what was I missing? And here was Pat Carver, the school accountant, whom I had never seen anywhere near a classroom, rooting through Fred’s desk. For what? Not receipts for coolers that had never been purchased. Especially not after the long pause she’d needed to come up with the lie. But if not that, then what? I sat down in Fred’s chair to think.

Pat Carver. Unlikely though it seemed, if she was connected to this in some way, then school finances might be involved. It was the first whiff of money that I’d caught in the entire mess. Why did people kill or attack other people? If you ruled out cases of self-defense, it was always for personal gain. I supposed that gain could come in many forms, but in Austin, Texas, it usually meant drugs or money.

Drugs seemed unlikely, even counting the miniature stash that Colin had found in the tennis shed. A few ounces of marijuana weren’t worth enough to be a motive, and if it had been the cause of Fred’s murder, why had it been left at the crime scene? But the accounts Pat Carver managed were something else. High school or not, Pat oversaw an enormous budget. Besides the funds allocated to the school by the state, which were substantial, Bonham had over thirty clubs, teams, and societies, and every one of them spent most of the year raising money. The senior class alone had already raised over sixty thousand dollars intended for prom. The French club was busy selling candy bars to fund next summer’s trip to Paris. The lacrosse team had just finished selling coupon books. The list went on and on. And every dollar from every fund-raiser went through Pat Carver.

Coach Fred had managed the tennis team funds. Sure, the booster club parents had done much of the work, but Fred was very hands-on when it came to money. He’d mentioned a couple of times that having a new treasurer every year was just asking for trouble because the rules were confusing. After one of the parent volunteers had accepted a cash donation, which for some reason was forbidden and which had almost caused the team to be disqualified from competition, Fred had taken over the team accounts himself. What if he’d stumbled on an irregularity in the books?

Embezzling school funds was scarcely unknown. Just last year, a school employee in Iowa was accused of siphoning over five hundred thousand dollars from her school district accounts into her own. On a slightly smaller scale, a couple of mothers in California had stolen thirty thousand dollars from an elementary school fund intended to hire school counselors and teach handwriting skills. They’d been caught because they’d charged pedicures, Swiss massages, and tickets to a Peter Frampton concert to the fund account and someone at the bank had eventually noticed. They’d been stupid, but whatever else she was, Pat Carver was not. She was far too intelligent to ever make purchases directly from an official account, but how hard would it be for her to shuffle cash around? If she wasn’t greedy, if she kept the individual amounts relatively small, would the typically unorganized and constantly changing club leaders notice? School regulations and requirements were complex—parent volunteers, no matter how competent, had a hard time keeping up. They had no choice but to believe what Pat told them. How often had I heard Laura complaining that Pat had refused to cut a check for something the FLS needed for two weeks or more? What if she delayed, not just to exercise her power but to give herself time to shuffle funds around?

I did not have much trouble believing that Pat might be an embezzler, but it was a big step from that to think that she might be a murderer. Creative accounting hardly seemed a likely bedfellow to the violence that had marred the beginning of this school year. Fred’s death, the assault on me, the trashing of my house. Maybe she was physically capable of everything, but would she really have done those things?

A clock somewhere in the room quietly ticked away the seconds as I sat pondering this last question. Start at the start, I told myself. With Fred.

Fred was conscientious, meticulous, and honorable. I could safely say that he knew all the district fund-raising rules, that he followed those rules unerringly, and that he kept complete and accurate records of the tennis team’s funds. If there had been any discrepancy at all, he would have noticed it. And he would have gone to Pat at once, not accusing, not suspicious, just wanting to correct what he would have considered an honest mistake. But what if it had not been an honest mistake? What if he’d realized that something criminal was occurring? Fred would never have let that go.

I thought about the key and the note Fred had left for me. “As we discussed, it’s just a precaution,” he’d written. What if he’d intended to talk to me about Pat, maybe providing proof of wrongdoing. And then never had the chance.

The clock continued to tick, still faint, but becoming louder now that the noises in the halls were dying down. The feeling of passing time made me glance at my own watch. Almost six o’clock. Students and teachers, even those participating in after-school meetings, were long gone by now. The sky outside the classroom windows deepened into the soft rich blue of twilight. On the other side of the building, the sun would be turning orange in the west. Time to be going home. Time. A thought occurred to me, and I looked around. Where was the clock I could hear so clearly? The obligatory classroom clock, mounted high on the wall was behind me, electronic and silent. I tipped my head listening, then rose, walking around the room. No other clock was in sight. I played an abbreviated game of Hot and Cold, and at last ended up back where I’d started—at Fred’s desk.

I sat again, and pulled open the file drawer in the metal desk. Thumbing through the hanging files, I could see nothing, but I could still hear the faint ticking. Frustrated, I pulled the drawer all the way out, and got down on my knees to peer into the cavity. In the very back, duct-taped to the underside of the desktop, hung a fat manila envelope. I reached in and detached it carefully, finding it surprisingly heavy, and sat cross-legged on the floor to open it.

Inside was the source of the ticking—the miniature clock that Fred had always kept on the corner of his desk and that I’d assumed had been collected for his wife with his other things. Pulling it out of the folder, I turned it in my hands as I had done on the day of his death. On the back, the brass plaque read,

Fred Argus,

You’ll make a hell of a teacher.

Congratulations from your friends at Tracor.

We’ll miss you.

The clockworks were electric, the ticking sound made by the jerky movement of the second hand, and instead of a pendulum mechanism, the base below the clock face held a small drawer with a keyhole. A keyhole, but no key.

Clutching it in to my chest as though afraid it would fly away, I returned to my classroom, pulling the door to Fred’s room shut behind me with a bang. Retrieving my purse, I slipped the little clock inside. My students would be getting a break tomorrow. I was certainly not going to come up with a quiz on French grammar this evening.

Chapter 16

PERFORMANCE AND PERFIDY

I was so eager to get home to look at the clock that I was practically trotting as I cut through Building A on my way back to my car. To my left, I could hear the hollow thump of basketballs on the wood floor of the gymnasium and the sharp blast of a coach’s whistle. A small group of girls giggled together like conspirators while they waited just inside the doors for a parent to drive up, not wanting to leave the comfort of the air-conditioning until the last minute. Through the open doors of the hall that stretched along one side of the theater, I could see a flurry of bright color and movement and curiosity slowed my steps. A couple of dozen kids in full, glorious costume milled about, talking in stage whispers, their makeup more garish than any worn by the Parisian courtesans that they pretended to be. They were so excited that I couldn’t help grinning. So sad that Nancy Wales and Roland Wilding were such incredible tools. These kids deserved better.

I had just started toward my car again, when Laura Esperanza sprang from the theater doors like a Pop-Tart from a toaster. Catching sight of me, she rushed forward and grabbed my arm.

“Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re here. You have to see this!” She tugged at me, trying to pull me after her. It was a little like a dachshund trying to move a fully loaded Yukon sled.

“What is it? I need to get going,” I protested, my mind on the key and clock.

“No, you don’t. You need to see this. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

I hesitated, then shrugged and followed her into the theater. She waved her hands at me in what I took to be a signal to be quiet. She held the door after we entered to make sure it closed silently, then peered around the corner, gesturing me to follow. I stood close behind her, easily able to see over the top of her head.

As before, we stood at the very back of the auditorium. Rows of darkened seats sloped downward along two aisles toward the stage, now lit up like a jewelry store by half a dozen high-intensity beams sweeping overhead. The magnificent elephant, huge and bejeweled, had been rolled to center stage, the massive glass gemstones glittering like the real thing. McKenzie Mills, blond hair swept up in a disheveled updo, stood atop its back, singing a haunting song. Her voice, rich and warm, filled the house. Hard to believe such a magnificent voice could come from such a slender little thing. No wonder Nancy had backed down and allowed McKenzie to stay on the tennis team rather than lose her altogether.

Then, ascending the stairs attached to the side of the elephant, Roland Wilding made his entrance. Much as I loathed him, I had to admit he looked spectacular in his tuxedo. His hair was an even richer gold than McKenzie’s, his shoulders were broad, his face intent and finely chiseled. He looked like an old-time movie actor, intense and brilliant.

Then he stepped onto a platform beside the elephant’s ear and joined McKenzie in song.

For a moment, what I was hearing did not compute. Then I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from howling with laughter. Reedy and clear, Roland’s voice was almost as high as McKenzie’s. Worse, it was ever so subtly off-key. Not all the time, and not every note, but randomly, devastatingly flat. In fact, being consistently off would have been easier on the ear. As it was, the uncertainty had the same effect as fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Cut!” shouted Nancy.

Roland stopped, lips pressed together in annoyance. McKenzie lowered her arms, looking anxious.

Nancy rose from her seat in the front row, where she’d been watching the performance. She wore another of her many flowing dresses, this one bright pink and vaguely Hawaiian, having a random border of palm trees along the hem. Heavily, she walked around the edge of the stage and stomped up the stairs, surely making more noise than was actually necessary. She radiated displeasure and contempt. The knot of kids waiting in the wings for their cue to come on receded like a discreet outgoing tide.

She walked right up to the elephant and said something in a low voice to Roland. His voice rose in angry response.

“She came in too early. It threw me off.” He shot McKenzie a hostile look from under gold lashes.

The girl flinched and looked away, but with a lack of emotion that told me she’d been subjected to the same complaint before and found it unjustified. And since Nancy would never have held back on publicly reaming out a kid, I felt sure that the trouble was in no way McKenzie’s fault.

Nancy and Roland spoke together a few more minutes, and then Nancy waddled off the stage and returned to her seat. The rehearsal continued without interruption, although I could see no improvement.

After a couple of minutes, Laura and I slipped out the doors, and once in the hallway, Laura doubled over in laughter.

“That was so good,” she said at last, breathless. “I’m just sorry you weren’t here earlier. If you think his singing is bad, you should see his acting. I can’t believe he lasted for a single week in New York, no matter what story he tells.”

I grinned. “And get this. You know the rush to get this play done? All for Michael Dupre’s benefit.”

“Who?”

“The director. The one who’s in charge of the movie they’re filming here,” I reminded her. “I was there when Roland fawned all over him and forced him to accept tickets to opening night.”

“No! Oh my God, that’s so pathetic. That’s why he’s playing the lead, too, isn’t it?”