4 The Killing Bee (24 page)

"And the next game's a home game!"

"And a Kangaskahn and a Snorlax and . . ."

And needless to say, it was a while before Andrea and I could get back to the business of murder.

17

But we did eventually get back to it. I called Barry and asked if our kids could do a sleepover at his house. It turned out, though, that he and Ronnie were going out tonight. They didn't think their babysitter, a twelve-year-old girl, would be up for taking care of our kids, too.

I asked Barry if he could come over himself around midnight, just for an hour or two, but he also nixed that idea. "Sorry, old chap," he said, "but the little woman and I are going to have that rarest of all treats for married couples: a romantic evening for two."

So I got off the phone and called Judy Demarest. I wasn't too enthusiastic about that, because I knew she'd pepper us with pointed questions and would get ticked off when we didn't answer them. Newspaper reporters are funny that way.

Judy was at home,
and after our requisite bantering and sparring, she agreed to come over. So at the stroke of two a.m., with the kids sound asleep upstairs, Judy stood in the front hall watching Andrea and me don dark jackets and pull dark baseball caps down low over our eyes. We thought about using our kid's watercolors and going in blackface, but it felt too politically incorrect.

Judy shook her head, amused. "Now I get it. You're planning to break in somewhere, aren't you?"

"No way. We're going stargazing," I said.

"Five to one you'r
e back in jail before the night’s out," Judy said.

"Hey, this time he's got m
e with him," Andrea said. "It’ll be a piece of cake."

"Famous last words."

But we ignored Judy's negativity and marched out the door. I reached into my Toyota and grabbed Melanie's flashlight.

Just in case there were any cops or killers keeping tabs on us, we stuck to the shadows as we headed down Elm Street, turned right on Long Alley, and then
came back up Ash to Ms. Helquist’s house. There was no wind and all the dogs were asleep, or at least silent. Except for our own footsteps, the only noise came from the occasional buzzing streetlights. Easing down Ash, our hearts stopped when we thought we saw a dark figure lurking alongside a house half a block away. But then we decided it was just a bush.

We stepped past Ms. Helquist
’s panoply of flowers onto her porch, and I pulled out my AAA card. Getting the door open took maybe five seconds. I felt like a pro.

Unfortunately, the
cliché "no pain, no gain" turned out to be an accurate description of our search of Ms. Helquist’s domicile. We found plenty of seed packets and gardening magazines, but no envelopes from BOCES and no standardized tests.

"I hope whoever killed Ms. Helquist didn't take those tests away," Andrea said as we stepped out of the house onto the porch.

"And I hope whoever buys this house takes care of her flowers."

Still sticking close to any cover we could find, we oozed on down the street, took a couple of rights, and found ourselves on High Rock Avenue. We saw our first moving car of the evening, which turned out to be a cop car. We ducked down behind a parked SUV and waited for it to pass by.

A couple of blocks away loomed the object of our criminal designs, High Rock Elementary. Across the street from it was the Robinson house, and Andrea and I both noticed at the same time that the lights were on in their front downstairs window.

"You think they're awake?" Andrea said.

"Let's reconnoiter."

We edged up the street, then hid behind a row of bushes in front of
the house next door to the Robinsons. We stood there for about three minutes and didn't see any signs of activity.

"Looks okay to me," I whispered.

"We should look in the window and make sure. I don't want them jumping us from behind."

"You women are always so cautious," I said, but didn't mean it. A little extra caution wouldn't be such a bad idea here.

We slunk up the Robinsons' driveway toward their house. I almost tripped on some object, which I then realized was a skateboard. Probably Mark's. I shook my head. He'd made such a point of stealing it back from Meckel, and it had gotten his whole family into such a mess, and now here he left it just lying around on the driveway.

Andrea and I moved around the front wall of the house and looked in through the windowshades, standing a couple of yards back from the window so nobody in the front room would be able to see us.

But the room was empty. Andrea and I watched for a while, then withdrew. I was careful to steer dear of the skateboard this time.

Then Andrea and I headed across the street to the school. We walked up to the front door. This time it was locked.

"Do not fear," I said, "Triple A is here."

I took out my card and set to work.

Then I set to work some more.

But nothing happened. The magic was gone. "I'm so embarrassed," I said.

"Let’s try the other doors."

And we did. We went around the school and tried every single one. But nothing gave. My AAA card let me down again and again. I was seriously pissed. Maybe next year I'd let my membership expire.

"How about if we just break a window?" Andrea suggested.

"I'm worried about the noise, but I guess we'll have to," I said. Then I got a minor brainstorm. "Wait a minute.
Let’s try the window to Meckel's office. Me and that cop might’ve damaged it when we were pushing our way out."

So we went over there. Sure enough, the window was open slightly, maybe a quarter of an inch. I was able to work the tips of my fingers in
there and pry it open a little farther. Now it was open maybe an inch.

"You try opening the bottom of the window," I told Andrea, "and I'll get the side."

So we wedged our fingers in and pulled. I groaned, Andrea grunted . . . and suddenly the window slid wide open.

"Cool," Andrea said.

"Way cool," I agreed.

The windowsill was about five feet off the ground. I gave Andrea a b
oost, and she dropped into Meckel's office. Then I scrambled up to the sill, and dropped in myself.

We made sure the windowshade was all the way down. Then we turned on Melanie's flashlight and began exploring.

Almost immediately we found a huge pile of mail on Meckel's desk, addressed to either "Samuel Meckel" or "Principal, High Rock Elementary School." Evidently the mail was sitting there waiting for the next principal to come along.

I went through t
he pile quickly, and within seconds found a familiar large brown envelope at the bottom of the file. It was about twelve inches wide by fifteen inches long, and filled with papers. I turned the envelope over and read the return address: BOCES in Albany.

"Jackpot," Andrea said.

"Hopefully."

I removed the envelope's contents and Andrea shone the flashlight on them. It sure looked li
ke a jackpot. Just as we'd anticipated, these were the High Rock students' Terra Nova answer sheets, as graded by BOCES. The three hundred or so answer sheets were divided into twelve manila folders, one for each class.

Andrea and I started with
the answer sheets from Melanie's class. We checked the first test, from a girl whose name I didn't recognize. At the top of page one was her official score for the English portion, which was an eighty-four. The page looked like something from a college SAT test. It had all of those little ovals you're supposed to fill in with a number two pencil.

Shining the flashlight cl
osely, we noticed that several times someone had erased one oval and filled in a different one. But we didn't find reason to believe anyone but the student herself had made these changes. In fact, about half the time the change resulted in the student getting the wrong answer.

"I don't see any evidence Meckel or Melanie or anybody else cheated on this test," I said.

"Let’s check the math section."

We turned to the math, where the student had scored a ninety-one, and found two pages that didn't have any ovals on them. Here the student had to write down actual numbers instead of circling multiple-choice answers. Also, there was an empty space for her to do calculations before she wrote her answers.

Andrea and I checked the answers, and found hardly any erasures. Then we checked the answers against the calculations. They matched. No obvious chicanery here, either.

We examined a
n answer sheet from another student of Melanie's, and again came up goose eggs.

Then we tried four or five more. Still
nada
. Was Melanie clean?

"Let
’s try Elena's tests," I said.

"I hope we don't find anything," said Andrea, still loyal to her friend.

Outside the wind was starting up, rattling the windowshades in Meckel's open window. We were leaving it open in case we had to make a sudden escape, like I'd made the last time. I checked my watch: five minutes to four. "Whatever we find, we better find it fast," I said.

But the first test in
Elena's batch didn't yield anything interesting, and neither did the second, third, or fourth. It was enervating. Soon it would be getting light outside, and we'd have to take off with nothing to show for all the risks we'd taken.

I put Elena's folder back down on Meckel's desk.

I picked up a couple of other folders and flipped through them, feeling dispirited.

But as I flipped, something suddenly caught my eye. I looked again. It was still there.

Meanwhile Andrea was saying, "Maybe we should just head back home—"

"Wait."
I stared at the answer sheet I was holding in my hand.

"What?"

"Holy tomato juice."

"What
is
it?"

I pointed to the top of the answer sheet. "Eighty seven. He got an
eighty-seven
in English."

"Who?"

"Justin Richardson."

I flipped to the math portion and read the official math score. "And he got an eighty-six in math."

Andrea frowned. "I thought you said he scored over ninety-five in both."

"I
did
say that, 'cause that’s what it said on the other thing—the page of preliminary scores I found in Meckel' s office that night." I was talking fast, because I was excited. "The scores Meckel did before he sent the tests off to BOCES for official tabulation."

"So what are you thinking?" Andrea asked. "That Meckel scored the test wrong?"

I had a flash of inspiration. "Wait a minute, I bet Meckel didn't score those tests himself—Ms. Helquist did it for him. That would explain everything."

"Slow down and explain it to
me."

"Try this out. After Ms. Helquist scored the test, Barry got hold of the score sheet. And he changes his kid's preliminary score because he wants him to get into
the gifted program." I snapped my fingers. "I'll bet Barry didn't even realize those scores were just
preliminary
. The way Ms. Helquist did it, it looked official."

"But how could Barry have gotten hold of the score sheet? You think he snuck into Meckel's office at some point?"

"Or Helquist’s office. Hey, he volunteered in the school. And he hung out sometimes to talk to Meckel about stuff. He probably saw the scores lying around one day and took advantage. He figured, I'll just change these scores before Meckel sees them."

"So you're thinking Barry
might’ve . . ." She stopped.

But I didn't stop, I kept going. "I think Meckel realized
the numbers were changed and figured out it must be Barry. So on Tuesday morning, he sees Barry heading for the john, and he goes, 'Come in my office.' So Barry does. And Meckel accuses him: 'Somebody changed these scores. It was you, wasn't it?' So Barry denies it of course, and Meckel gives him a hard time, and Barry starts yelling, and Meckel says no way in hell will your son ever get in my gifted program, you sonufabitch. And then somebody pushes somebody, Barry grabs the trophy, and he doesn't mean to kill Meckel . . ."

"But he does."

"And we can prove it. The cops took that preliminary score sheet I found in Meckel's office to the police station. If they find Barry's fingerprints on it, and they find somebody erased Justin's scores and put in new ones—"

"
—then I'd be in trouble," a voice said.

Andrea screamed.
So did I. It was Barry Richardson's voice, coming from outside. In the dim light we saw Barry's face above the windowsill. We also saw a gun, pointed straight at Andrea.

"Voices down, please," Barry said, his own voice tight. "Andrea, come here and climb over the windowsill, if you would."

"Barry, what are you doing?" I squeaked.

"If you really want me to shoo
t you here in Meckel's office, I will. But I'd prefer you to climb out. You've got ten seconds."

His voice was preternaturally calm. Andrea and I looked at one another, each of us hoping the other would know what to do.