4 The Killing Bee (5 page)

It looked like this
particular fountain of information was about to dry up. I might as well hit her with the question I'd been meaning to ask ever since I realized her cold was bogus. "What about
you,
Ms. Helquist, if you don't mind my asking."

"What
about
me?"

"Did you want to kill him?"

She stared at me, then broke into a laugh. "I'm too close to retirement to want to kill anybody."

But the way she pointed those shears, it sure looked like she wanted to kill
me
.

It was two o'clock already. Two hours since I'd asked Judy Demarest to take care of my kids for an hour. I should act responsible and go home. I got in my car, fully expecting to do just that.

But then somehow my Toyo
ta Camry got all rebellious. She flat out refused to take the right turn that would have led me back home. Instead she turned left, toward Lou and Sylvia Robinson's Xerox store on Grand Street. Funny how cars will do that to you sometimes.

This particular car, an '85, had been with me so long she knew me as well as I knew myself. When I
struck it rich two years ago, I thought about purchasing a sleek new vehicle. But I just couldn't bring myself to part with my old love. I mean, she only had 160,000 miles on her, that’s all. And she still ran perfectly, as long as you fluttered her gas pedal just right when you started her and murmured a few sweet nothings to her engine. And the ride was nice and smooth, if you didn't mind her loud muffler and the wind blowing through her half-rusted-out doors like they were made of fishnet.

Lou and Sylvia's store, L & S Copies, was located in an old storefront that looked as weather-beaten as my car. It contrasted sharply with the shiny new Kinko's that had opened up six months ago on Broadway, right in the heart of downtown. Every time I drove past L & S, I half expected to see
for rent
and
going out of business
signs on the front window. But so far, Lou and Sylvia were hanging in there.

My Camry shuddered to a halt. I grabbed a couple of oil-change receipts from the glove compartment and took them into L & S with me. I was the only customer.

At the front counter, Lou gave me a big welcoming smile when I came in. Lou was an amiable balding guy in his forties who'd given up a steady gig at Quad Graphics, a local printing company, to run his own business. I wondered how he felt about his career choice now that the two-ton chain-store gorilla had just come storming into town.

"Hey, Hollywood, where you been?" Lou greeted me. For a large man,
over six feet tall and two hundred pounds, he had a surprisingly high voice. "Hanging out with Arnold and Keanu?"

"No, I've been around, Lou. Just haven't written any screenplays that needed Xeroxing."

"And here I thought you deserted me for Kinko's like all the rest of my fair-weather
fiends."
But despite the harsh words, Lou still had that smile. He could be loud and opinionated—we used to have raucous arguments about Ross Perot, back when Lou was a big supporter—but he never seemed to get too perturbed by anything. He rolled with life's punches pretty well. It was hard to picture him seriously threatening to sue Meckel—or killing him.

What about Sylvia, though? She was off to the side doing some Xeroxing. Also in her forties, with a pronounced vertical worry line creasing her forehead, she was never very
communicative; she let Lou handle the customer relations. Maybe she was the strong, silent type. Or maybe not. I tried to picture her as the screaming woman that Barry had heard in Meckel's office this morning . . .

She felt me watching her and looked up. "Hey, Sylvia," I said.

"Hi, Jacob," she replied with a brief smile, then went back to work.

"So is that writer's block still kicking your butt?" Lou asked. "You could make a movie out of this place. Right, Syl?"

"Maybe a short one," she said dryly.

I handed Lou the
oil-change receipts. "Got a couple of pages for you. Two copies."

"On the house," he said, going over to the funky old Xerox machine at
the front of the store and setting to work. "But when you finally get around to writing your next movie, I better not catch you at that other place."

I laughed, allowed a brief pause to c
ome in, and then said, "So that’s pretty terrible about Meckel, huh?"

"No kidding. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy
—which is pretty much what he was."

"Why's that?"

From behind her machine, Sylvia said, "Honey, don't be speaking ill of the dead."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Lou grumbled. "I just don't appreciate the way he treated our son."

"Lou,"
Sylvia said warningly.

He threw up his hands in surrender. "Alright."

But I wasn't about to let the subject die so easily. "Was it something about your son having ADD?"

Voicing that magic acronym was all it to
ok for Lou's dam to break. "That’s a bunch of bull," he spilled out. "Mark doesn't have ADD, ADHD, or any other kind of D."

"I didn't mean to say
—"

"He's got this complete joke of a teacher, Melanie Wilson, straight out of college, doesn't know diddlysquat about teaching. Only reason Meckel hired her, she's got a nice ass
. You can ask Sylvia, she volunteers in the class—"

"Let it go, Lou," Sylvia said.

But it would have been easier to stop Niagara Falls than to stop Lou right now. "All the other boys are running wild too, and screaming, even worse than Mark. But this stupid broad singles out
my son,
says he's got 'attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.' Horseshit. If Ms. Wilson was a half-decent teacher, Mark would start paying attention just fine."

I c
lucked my tongue and said, "That’s awful," to prime the pump a little more.

Sylvia tried to staunch the flow with, "I'm sure Jacob doesn't want to hear this
—"

It didn't work. "Kid's in fifth grade. None of his teachers ever complained about him before," Lou
said. "You'd figure Meckel would see through Ms. Wilson's crap, right?"

"Yeah."

He waved my oil-change receipts at me. "But this lazy quack psychologist they have, she and Wilson are thick as thieves. She just rubber stamps whatever Wilson says. And Meckel backs them up. Sticks a label on my kid, wants to put him on some kind of
drug
. For my money, Meckel was nothing but a pusher," Lou spit out. "May he rest in peace or rot in hell, either way is fine with me."

Obviously I'd overestimated Lou's ability to roll with life's punches. Of course, this was one heck of a punch, having somebody tell you so
mething is seriously wrong with your kid.

That must be the biggest punch there is. God knows if someone ever said anything like that about Latree or Charizard, I'd feel like strangling him.

"I hear you were gonna sue Meckel," I said.

"I was thinking about it, that
’s for damn sure."

I took a flyer and tried, "Yeah, his secretary said you had a meeting with him this morning."

Lou wrinkled his forehead. "Not this morning, no.”

"Oh, maybe it was Sylvia." I looked over at her.

She looked back at me. Something I couldn't define flickered across her face.

Lou, intent on putting new paper in the machine, didn't notice anything. "No, Syl was here at the store from, like, seven o'clock. We got a big order from the arts council. Thank God we still have a few loyal customers."

Sylvia stepped away from her Xerox machine. The way her bright green eyes flashed fire at me, she should have been nicknamed Charizard herself. That look could melt boulders into cinders, easy. "Why are you asking us about this morning?"

"No reason," I squeaked nervously.

But I didn't fool her for a second. Jabbing her finger at me, she turned toward Lou. "Do you know what he's doing?"

Lou stared blankly at the two of us for a moment, then he got it. He eyed me in astonishment. "Are you
interrogating
us?"

"Look, I'm talking to
everybody,
okay? I'm just trying to get my friend out of jail—"

"And you waltz in here acting like
my
friend?" He threw my Xeroxed pages at me. They landed on the floor. I bent down self-consciously and picked them up.

"I'm sorry," I said, for at least the third time that day.

"Yeah, you're sorry, alright. Get your sorry ass out of my store."

That sounded like good advice. So I took it. But as I opened the door, I turned back and checked out Sylvia one more time.

I'm lucky I didn't go up in smoke.

5

My Camry wanted to head over to the Saratoga County Arts Council on Broadway so I could check on Sylvia and Lou's alibi. However, I managed to wrestle the steering wheel into submission and drove home.

When I got there, Judy Demarest’s car was gone. But my wife's minivan was in the driveway now. She must have caught wind of Meckel's murder and come home early.

That meant my child-care services weren't needed, and I was free to go hit the arts council after all. I just had to take off
before Andrea and the kids spotted me and I got too busy with all my domestic duties to pursue Meckel's killer.

So I fluttered the old gas pedal again, said, "Come on, baby" to the engine in my sexiest voice, and started off. Two minutes later I was back downtown, driving past Kinko's and parking in front of the brand-spanking-new Saratoga Cultural Arts Center. This complex, compl
ete with high-ceilinged art gallery, fancy theater, classrooms, and office space, was the million-dollar brainchild of Gretchen Lang, the executive director of the Saratoga County Arts Council. A vibrant woman in her fifties with big dreams and a big heart, she had dedicated the past ten years of her life to nurturing the local arts scene and making the center a reality.

When I walked into the elegant gallery, Gretchen herself was behind the front desk doing paperwork. "Jake!" she said warmly. "Just the man I wanted to see!"

"Nice exhibit, Gretchen," I said, pointing to the abstract nudes all around me. Some of them had one head, some two or three, and their arms numbered anywhere from zero to a dozen. The arts council used to specialize in bland watercolors of flowers and racehorses, but when Gretchen took over she really livened things up.

And she was still as exuberant as ever. "Hey, Jake, how would you like to judge the Annual Children's Poetry Contest?" she asked, her voice chirping cheerily.

Perish the thought. "I don't think I'm your man."

"Why not?"

"Well, to start with, I hate poetry."

"But you're a writer."

"I know, I know," I said, a little sheepish. "But poems always seem like just
words
to me."

"You'll love
these
poems, Jake." She held up a folder full of the darn things. "They'll warm the cockles of your heart. Maybe they'll even inspire you to write again."

Why did so many people seem to think I was so eager to write again? I was perfectly happy with my life just the way it was . . . wasn't I?

"I
need
you, Jake," Gretchen cajoled. "You know I'll just keep bugging you till you say yes."

She had me there.
"Okay," I said resignedly, holding out my hand for the poems. "Warm my cockles."

"You won't regret it."

"I already do. Listen, I have a question. Did L & S do any Xeroxing for you today?"

"Yes, for our annual fund-raiser."

"You happen to know what time they finished the job?"

"
Let’s see, I called at ten and they weren't done yet. Then they called me right before lunch and I picked it up. Why?"

"How big a job was it?"

Gretchen shrugged. "Not all that big. Four pages, double-sided, eleven hundred copies."

Having done a lot of Xeroxing in my life, I did some mental calculations. That kind of project wouldn't take more than half an hour or forty-five minutes. And it wasn't like the Robinsons had a lot of other jobs competing for their attention.

"So it sounds like they didn't go in early this morning to finish your job." There went their alibi.

Gretc
hen cocked her head at me. "What’s this about?"

"Uh, nothing import
ant. Hey, thanks for the literature." I headed for the door.

"I need the three best poems from each grade level by Friday," she called after me.

"No problem. I'll just throw them all down the stairs, and whichever poems go the farthest are the winners."

I was just acting grouchy for effect. The truth was, I expected to like
the kids' poems more than I like most grown-up poems.

I mean, at least the stuff would probably rhyme.

When I'm alone in my trusty Camry, I like to sing. So on my way home, I fought the creaky windows and succeeded in rolling them up. Then I let loose with the old chestnut "What do you do with a drunken sailor?" Except instead of "drunken sailor" I substituted the words "busted alibi."

I was hoping my choral efforts would loosen up the old mental neurons and get them inspired. But it didn't work. They seemed frozen solid. I knew there was no point in going to Chief Walsh with my too vague suspicions about the Robinsons. But what else could I do?

When I got home and asked Andrea for advice, her neurons weren't working any better than mine. She was distraught about Laura's incarceration, though for the first few hours we didn't get a chance to talk about it in much detail. We were too busy keeping the three boys
—especially Adam—distracted.

First we went outside to the driveway and played basketball with them, to wear them out. Then we cooked Adam
's favorite dinner, plain unbuttered noodles and popcorn. After that we rented his favorite movie, the old Fred MacMurray version of
The Absent-Minded Professor.
When we put them to bed, I read aloud a few chapters of his favorite book,
Redwall
.

Despite our herculean efforts, though, Adam burst into tears four or five more times that evening. And he didn't get to sleep until after midnight.

When our baby-sitting chores were finally done—for today, anyway—Andrea and I lay in bed exhausted. We spoke quietly, so we wouldn't wake up the kids in their bedroom down the hall. "So what do you think?" Andrea asked.

"I think I sh
ould go down to Grand Avenue tomorrow, by Lou and Sylvia's store, and find out if any of their neighbors saw them there around seven-thirty—"

"I mean about Laura."

"Oh." I scratched my head. The fact was, despite my best efforts to convince myself Lou or Sylvia was the killer, in my heart of hearts I still felt it was Laura. But if I admitted to Andrea that I suspected her bowling buddy and dirty joke guru of murder, would she jump down my throat?

I decided to take the coward's way out. "I don't know. What do
you
think?" I said.

Andrea bit her lip. "Adam is Laura's baby. Ever since her husband died, Adam is all she has. She lives for him. But . . .
killing
for him?"

"Whoever did this probably didn't mean to kill the guy."

She poked at the pillow with her finger. "I feel guilty even
thinking
she might've done it. But she does have a temper. I ever tell you about the guy at the bowling alley?"

If she had, I'd forgotten. Another symptom of my onrushing middle age. Either that or it's a symptom of being married for so long I only listen to my spouse intermittently. "It doesn't ring a bell."

"This jerk tried to kick us off our lane at eight-thirty for a nine-o'clock league. Laura gave him such a tongue-lashing, I bet his balls are still shriveled."

Andrea never used to use such salty expressions. She learned them from Laura.

"I think she's still mad at her husband for OD'ing," Andrea went on. "And that makes her kind of mad at the whole world."

We both lay there silently for a moment. Then I said, "So . . . what are you saying? Do you want me to go easy on the sleuthing till we see if Laura confesses?"

Andrea flushed. "Of course not. I'm just saying . . . Oh God, I don't know
what
I'm saying. Laura didn't do it. She
couldn't
have." She shivered. "What’s gonna happen to her?"

"Near term? Tomorrow she gets arraigned. The judge will set bail."

Andrea turned onto her side and looked at me. "Laura won't have money for bail."

That was my cue. I hesitated, but only briefly, and said, "We can pay it. I doubt she'll run away."

Andrea's eyes peered into mine. "You sure you're okay with that?"

I shrugged, with more nonchalance than I truly felt. "Of course. She's your buddy."

"I love you," said Andrea. "You're the best man in the world."

Then she started making love to me. I was so wiped out, I didn't expect to respond.

But I did.

As we lay in bed afterward, I heard Andrea say, "Honey?"

Like most guys I'm not big on postcoital conversation, so I was tempted to pretend I was asleep. But I managed to say, "Mmm."

"Are you awake?"

"Mmm," I repeated.

"You know," Andrea said with feigned casualness, "you never did ask how my classroom observation went today."

Now I really did wake up. I propped myself up on my elbow. "I can't believe it—I forgot. How'd it go?"

"Not good."

Oh, no. Did this mean curtains for Andrea's tenure chances? "Are you sure?"

"I'm afraid so." Then she gave me a sly smile. "It wasn't good, it was
great
. Henry said watching me teach was
inspirational."

"Hallelujah." Henry was the department chairman. "So you're in like Flynn?"

"Looks like it." Her words may have been low-key, but she was grinning ear to ear.

"I can't believe you kept this to yourself all day."

"We had so much craziness going on, I was looking for the right moment to spring it on you."

"So you're actually
going to be one of the few people left in America with honest-to-God job security?"

"Unless I'm found guilty of moral turpitude, yes."

"Honey, I'm so proud of you." I kissed her. "You've worked so hard for this."

"There's only one thing that bothers me."

"Yeah?"

"What exactly
is
moral turpitude?"

"I doubt making love to your husband qualifies," I said, and kissed her in a different place.

She giggled. "Honey, what are you doing?"

"Trying to pretend I'm twenty years younger and can actually do it twice in a row."

But before I had a chance to pretend any further, Adam started screaming.

I threw on some pajamas and went to the kids' bedroom. Adam had woken up with a nightmare about a giant machine that crushed people. He was sitting up, still whimpering with panic, and Latree and Charizard were awake too.

I held Adam in my arms for a long while as he sobbed. I wasn't sure what to say to him, so mostly I just prayed silently. I don't do that much, because I'm not convinced there's Anyone out there listening, but that night I prayed: Please, God, let this poor kid's mom be innocent.

Eventually Adam lay back down. The three kids' breathing slowed, and they finally fell asleep again.

Then I went back to bed myself, but I was too restless to sleep. There had to be a clever way to investigate Sylvia and Lou—something slicker than just canvassing the neighbors. What would Sam Spade do? I got out of bed again and threw on some clothes. Singing in the car hadn't given me any brilliant insights. Maybe a walk in the brisk night air would do the trick.

I stepped outside. It was two a.m., and eerily silent except for the occasional buzzing street lamp. Even at the height of racing season in August, Saratoga Springs is more or less comatose at that hour. On a Tuesday two a.m. in May, the town is dead and buried.

I walked up and down the streets of my West Side neighborhood. I passed Ms. Helquist’s house, with its multitude of flowers rising out of the dark earth. I went by the Gideon Putnam Burial Ground, Saratoga's oldest cemetery. Then I headed up High Rock Avenue and found myself outside Lou and Sylvia's house. I guess that’s where I was planning on going all along, though I hadn't realized it. I eyed the house, a modest Colonial much like my own, and wondered what evil lurked therein.

Unfortunately I'm not psychic, so I didn't feel any vibrations emanating from the house. I walked across the street toward
the elementary school and imagined what might have happened there yesterday morning. Dredging up my old screenwriting habits, I created a little movie scene in my head that went something like this:

EXT. STREET
- MORNING

Sylvia Robinson, 40s, moth
er and small businesswoman, steps outside to pick up her morning paper. Her face is pale and lined and she's been up all night, worrying about her beloved but troubled son . . . and about the imminent doom of her small business. She sees a car driving past. It's Sam Meckel, school principal, pulling up in front of the school.

A terrible rage grabs hold of Sylvia. Her son has been viciously maligned by this man. Declared defective. She
hurries across the street, follows him into his office, and confronts him, screaming. Offscreen, Barry Richardson is in the john and hears it. Laura Braithwaite is out back smoking.