A Function of Murder (19 page)

“There’ll be a huge crowd at the service, or whatever it is, on Tuesday. What I can’t
figure out is why Kira wants me to go with her so badly.”

“Other than you’re good company?”

“How sweet.”

“My take on it? She needs you to lend a little status to her visit. She’s not just
some kid showing up alone or with other kids; she’s the friend of a professor. It’s
like having a date for the prom.”

“Not so sweet.”

Bruce shrugged. “You asked.”

We leaned on his black Mustang, enjoying the perfect chill in the air. Rainstorms
were forecast for the next few days, so we were making the most of the friendly weather.

“I just hope Virgil doesn’t arrest her before then,” I said. “I know Kira. She’s innocent.”
I shook my head. “She’d never survive even an arrest, let alone anything that might
follow.”

“Not that you’re going to do anything about that, right?”

I frowned and shook my head with vigor. “I’m just going to wait patiently to hear
what they find in the mayor’s emails, whether he reciprocated or acknowledged her
feelings in any way. That’s it.”

“I’d like to believe that,” Bruce said, getting into his car.

I was impressed by the stamina he had, ready to go back to work tonight. He claimed
he slept through most of his shifts, but I knew he and his crew were on alert even
when their eyes were closed.

“It’s going to be tough going back to my little sedan,” I said, patting the door of
his car.

“I’ll bring this muscle car around for a visit tomorrow.”

“Don’t forget I’ll be at Zeeman Academy most of the day.”

“I thought that was a one-hour gig?”

“I might stretch it out a little tomorrow.”

“Because?”

Uh-oh, I hadn’t meant to spill out my intentions like that. “It’s the last week and
I’ll have some good-byes to say.”

How handy that Mr. and Mrs. Sampson from two houses down happened to stroll by at
that moment.

We chatted, then waved Bruce off together. I could tell that neither of them knew
why I thanked them so profusely for the little visit as I turned to walk back to my
house.

Early in my college teaching career I committed myself to volunteer in a school every
year, in a K through 12 class. Well, maybe not K. I usually worked with high schools,
leading advanced math classes for college prep students, but now and then I ventured
out into the world of younger children. This was my first experience at a charter
school.

“You just want to infiltrate those pliable young minds and brainwash them into being
math majors later,” Bruce had accused me.

Ariana had put it differently, something about young souls and old souls, but she’d
meant the same thing. They were both right. You couldn’t start too early to instill
a love of math.

Zeeman Academy was located about fifty yards back from a busy country road on the
western edge of Henley. The housing developments around the property were thought
to be tough neighborhoods, but inside the fence, it always seemed safe and secure
to me.

The long path to the school building was fronted by a short stubby brick wall with
a bright blue and white sign announcing the entrance. A massive front lawn doubled
as a playing field, which today hosted a field hockey game involving highly energetic
and noisy children I recognized as fourth to sixth graders. The building itself was
a modern two-story brick structure with a row of glass doors and a slanted roof.

As soon as I opened one of the front doors, more bedlam met my ears. Bad timing. But
at Zeeman, a K through 8 school, it was hard to figure out the schedule. At the non-charter
schools I was familiar with, classes changed at ten minutes to the hour, every hour.
You could count on it. Here, students worked in groups on projects, at their own pace,
and had only a few times during the week when they met in regular classroom settings,
and even those comprised multigrade groups. Individual differences were paramount
at Zeeman and not every child thrived with his school day divided into fifty-minute
periods.

It had taken me a while to get used to the difference in overall noise level at Zeeman,
not only compared to our college buildings, but also compared to other schools I’d
volunteered in. One Zeeman teacher had explained to me that forcing children to be
silent while moving about the hallways, for example, was a bad, stifling idea. A better
approach was to replicate the home or work environment as much as possible, with an
expected noise level.

“The corridors of an office building or a lab, where the students will work someday,
aren’t silent. They have normal noise and chatter,” she’d pointed out, without specifying
how many decibels she considered
normal
.

I would have preferred a level somewhere between a cloister and the kiddie park at
the edge of town, where we’d take Bruce’s niece, Melanie. There was no question in
my mind, however, that I would adjust to any environment if it meant I could keep
working with pupils. My forte was teaching math skills; I was happy to leave it to
others to design the proper environment and to prepare students for the more social
aspects of their future career paths.

I arrived at Zeeman at ten, an hour before Rina Flores, the Spanish teacher, would
corral twenty fourth, fifth, and sixth graders into a classroom for me, probably calling
them in from a fun pickup game on the back lot, or a robot-building project. I had
my work cut out for me.

But first I wanted to work on that chat with the school’s principal. I’d had few dealings
with Mr. Douglas Richardson, and he’d been very pleasant when we met by chance in
the hallway or parking lot. I’d invited him to visit my class at any time, but he
had “a lot on his plate,” as he explained.

I knew from newspaper articles that Richardson was my age, but he seemed older. Maybe
it was the fact that his suit jacket didn’t quite close around his spare tire. Also,
his hair was nearly all white, whereas I was blessed with only one streak of gray,
across the front of my forehead, an artifact many thought I paid regularly to have
planted there. It was quite possible, too, that I had a warped view of how old I looked
to others.

I’d taken a little time before nodding off last night to look over a brochure I’d
received at a volunteers’ orientation meeting early in the year. I didn’t remember
looking at it since. There was nothing like a murder to refocus one’s attention.

The philosophy as laid out in the booklet seemed
forward-looking: “Zeeman Academy unites an imaginative, community-based, academic
curriculum with emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning through workshops, projects,
and internships.”

Overall I liked the premise of the innovative curricula that charter schools offered.
Though ex-military Bruce didn’t approve of the lack of structure that characterized
some of them, I saw the advantage of having schools that didn’t follow a strict regimen,
helping kids at both ends of the learning spectrum. Whether gifted or challenged,
kids could profit from having the freedom to move from one subject to another without
a rigid schedule.

My reason for wanting to meet with Richardson now, however, had nothing to do with
the philosophy of students’ obtaining work permits versus sitting still for in-class
memory drills, or chatter versus silence in the hallways. I wanted to know why he
and the mayor were at odds. According to Kira, the issues were grade inflation and
test score fraud, but Kira had proven herself unreliable lately, and I needed to gather
information at the source.

The intimate language of Kira’s emails to the mayor had come to my mind often since
yesterday, edging out Elysse’s inflammatory Facebook posts. I wondered if I could
count on Virgil to let me know what the mayor’s emails revealed, especially whether
Kira’s affections were reciprocated. Not that I had a plan for what I would do about
it, either way, except perhaps help Virgil—and Kira—evaluate the relationship.

As I approached Richardson’s door I mused over how to broach the subject. Plans I’d
made last night seemed too flimsy in the light of day. I couldn’t seem to do any better
now. “By the way,” I might begin, “did you and the murdered mayor have any bad blood
between you?” Or, “Did the mayor, by any chance, catch you cheating on your grade
reports so you’d get continued funding?”

I heard voices behind the door now, an argument for
sure. Was it me or was there a lot of infighting going on these days? I couldn’t make
out the words, but I could tell there wasn’t a party going on. I might have a few
minutes to rework my opening after all.

Thwack!

I was stunned by a head-on, or rather head-to-chest, collision. A large mass exited
Richardson’s office and plowed into me, knocking my purse and briefcase into the hallway.

“Pardon me,” a gruff voice said.

I stepped back, struggling to regain my footing. I looked up and saw my attacker—Superintendent
Patrick Collins. His face was red, most likely from his argument with Principal Richardson.
I doubted my short, small frame could have caused him to blush or made a dent in his
massive front.

“Mr. Collins,” I said. How awkward.

“I’m so sorry, Miss…?” He looked perplexed, as if he wanted to ask how I knew him
and why he didn’t know me. We’d shared a cocktail party and a stage only two days
ago. Clearly I hadn’t made an impression. Or I simply looked different without my
cap and gown.

I sprang to attention while he bent over, at considerable cost to his respiratory
system, and picked up my purse and briefcase.

As he righted himself, I zeroed in on his bald head and his glasses, which nearly
fell off in his struggle to retrieve my belongings.

I had a crazy thought and decided to run with it. I started with, “Did you enjoy our
graduation ceremony on Saturday?”

The superintendent looked confused for a moment, perhaps surprised that I knew his
whereabouts on the weekend. He recovered quickly with, “Oh, at Henley. At the college.
Yes, of course, very nice. Always good to cheer on the next generation, isn’t it?”

I gave him an enthusiastic nod, as if I were agreeing with a deeply philosophical
and insightful statement. Perhaps we should have invited him to give the graduation
speech. “I was glad you could make it. And didn’t I see you in Franklin Hall afterward?”
I counted on the fact that Collins wouldn’t know I was still on the stage at the time,
having stuck it out until the last mortarboard reached its peak in the sky, stopped,
and made its way down.

“The science building?” he asked.

“Math and science,” I said, with a smile. “The first floor is for the Math Department.”

He managed a chuckle while still catching his breath from the deep knee bend. “Yes,
I needed a fax machine and someone pointed me in that direction. You know, we’re always
on call these days, aren’t we?” He patted his pocket, where a cell phone might be.
“Wired in,” he said.
Grass wasn’t growing under his feet
, my mother would have said.

I gave him a sympathetic, “Yes, we certainly are,” and added, “Too bad you had to
trudge all the way over there. There’s a copy center in the Administration Building
and also one in the library, both of which would have been a much shorter walk for
you.”

“I guess I asked the wrong person.”

Or you were looking for someone
, I thought.

The superintendent stuffed my purse and briefcase into my arms without ceremony. “I’d
better run to my next meeting,” he said, adjusting his suit jacket and tie. He made
off down the hallway as fast as his bulk could carry him, which no one would have
called running.

Like principals’ offices in every school I’d ever been to, including my own K through
12 schools, this one had a bench outside. I took a moment to sit down and rearrange
my things, making sure nothing escaped from the outside pockets of my purse. While
I straightened myself out, I mulled over Superintendent Collins’s claim that he’d
been looking for a fax machine. Woody, who had no reason to
lie, told me he’d asked for the restroom. Maybe Collins was too embarrassed now to
tell a lady, especially one he hardly recognized, that he’d needed a bathroom.

More likely, he was looking for the mayor. Since I hadn’t been paying attention to
him, I didn’t see when Collins left the stage on Saturday. He could easily have slipped
away during the exodus from the back rows right after Mayor Graves walked off, just
before degrees were announced. I had an image of the bulky Superintendent Collins
following the young mayor across campus, entering the building after the mayor had
ducked into my office. It would have been too suspicious for him to ask Woody where
the mayor was.

I regretted that I could think of no way to find out if the two met in or outside
of Franklin. Or later that evening.

It occurred to me that the three times I’d seen the superintendent, he’d been irritated
for one reason or another. I’d seen him arguing with the mayor at the college president’s
pre-graduation reception. Later, it was clear that he’d been disgruntled during the
mayor’s commencement address, and most recently he’d nearly knocked me over after
an argument with Zeeman’s Principal Richardson. An unhappy man. I wondered if he and
Woody had gotten along during their brief interaction in Franklin Hall.