An Educated Death (10 page)

It was only then that I noticed that, in addition to the two Band-Aids on his face, one of his hands was wrapped in gauze. Oh, boy. And the neighbors had thought I was bad. I flipped to Ryan's number and picked up the phone.

"Are you calling him?" Bobby asked. I nodded. "It won't do you any good. He moved out yesterday. I spent the whole day trying to find him. No one has seen him, or will admit that they have. The rotten pig. I can't believe—"

"Stop." I said. I only meant I didn't want to hear any more because it was too painful but Bobby took it as a personal dismissal. His face ashen, he bolted from the room. I flipped through the cards again, found the one I wanted, and dialed a number. In the course of my adventurous life, I've had occasion to need the services of people who clean up apartments after a disaster. I had just the man for the job. I got him on the phone, reported what had happened, and told him to see the manager for a key. Then I called my insurance agent and did the same. I'd been in the office for an hour, hadn't even gotten to the pressing things, and already it felt like eternity.

I picked up my messages again. Sarah stuck her head around the door. "It's Yanita Emery again. You want to take it? She sounds desperate."

"I'll take it."

The King School was an alternative private school for black males and I'd sent Yanita there to be the assistant head. Since I felt responsible, I couldn't ignore her pleas for help. I knew she wouldn't claim something was urgent unless she believed it. She sounded flustered, a state distinctly at odds with her usual poise and calm. "Well, Thea," she said, "It's hit the fan this time."

"Denzel?" I said. "And a woman?"

"What else?" She sighed. "No. That's not fair. I honestly think that he's been set up. That the woman is lying. But he's stonewalling me, won't talk about it except to say that she's lying and he's not going to lower himself to her level. Along with everything else, we've got a serious case of wounded pride here. Help!"

I wasn't surprised by the nature of her problem. Denzel Ellis-Jackson was an absolutely gorgeous man. Magnetic. An educational visionary. A brilliant speaker. And unfortunately, a man who liked women too much. Yanita and I and Arleigh Davis, the head of the board of trustees at The King School, had worked hard to make him mend his ways, and for the most part, we'd been successful. He seemed to understand that these days even a hint of sexual harassment could bring the roof down and that one man's friendliness was another woman's harassment.

I thought about my schedule and looked at my watch. "Yanita, I'm up to my ears with that drowned student out at Bucksport, but I can squeeze out some time tomorrow. I'll need Denzel and Arleigh, too, okay? I'll call you again at the end of the day to go over things, and then we'll do the face-to-face?"

"Sure you can't do it today?"

I sighed. In her position, I would have asked the same thing. "I'll see what I can do, but I'll have to call you later."

"Whenever you can make it," she said.

Time to go. I'd told Lori to start scheduling my appointments at ten. I had to leave before anyone else came along and dumped another problem on me. I already felt like a camel with a challenged back. I took another look at Laney Taggert before I stuffed the file into my briefcase. A Slavic face, I thought. She and Josh must have made a striking couple. I glanced through it. Bucksport was not one of those places that pretended it didn't believe in tracking and Laney had had all honors courses. She was also seriously involved in drama and played field hockey. It seemed odd that a strong athlete could have drowned but I didn't know much about death by drowning. Maybe Rocky could help me. And let me read the autopsy report. Probably he'd think I was too young for that sort of thing. I realized that I'd never asked Dorrie what might have led Josh to think I was a detective. One thing for her to have a plan, but how would he know? That was one mystery I could solve today.

The first person on my list was Dave Holdorf, impeccable as always. I noticed that he'd been biting his nails. He handed me a schedule. "We've got your day all planned, as you can see. I hope you don't mind."

"No problem, Dave. Want to give me a rundown on who they are?"

"That's what I'm here for. You heard my instructions. I'm to smooth the way. Right now I'm afraid it's like spreading chunky peanut butter, but I'll do my best." He shrugged helplessly. "You can probably guess where I'm having my biggest problem."

"Sawyer?"

"Of course. When he just did buildings and grounds he was fine but now that he's also in charge of security, he's developed this absurd paramilitary attitude. I'm afraid one of these days we're going to have an incident we'll regret." His smile was thin and unmerry. "Other than this, I mean. He understands trees and grass but teenagers are beyond his grasp. He doesn't realize that they're our raison d'etre. He regards them as a threat to his carefully groomed environment. Every time he finds a condom in the underbrush he practically dies of apoplexy."

"Is that a big problem around here?"

"Condoms or apoplexy?" I just raised my eyebrows. "No. Not a big problem. But these are kids in the full flower of youthful lust and things do happen. The best we can do is limit their opportunities and challenge their inventiveness. It's part of our creative-thinking-skills curriculum."

"I see you haven't lost your sense of humor."

He managed a wry smile. "Bruised but not broken. Like I told you yesterday, everyone here is deeply affected by this. For me, joking is one way to keep depression away." He got up and dusted off his pants. Either he was obsessive or the air was full of things that I just wasn't seeing. "You'll have to reach your own conclusions on this, but I don't believe we were careless about Laney. She just used her ingenuity to slip through the cracks. You will discover, I think, that she was quite ingenious."

There was a knock on the door. "That'll be Joanne," he said. "Good luck."

He was replaced in the chair by a petite, aggressive-looking woman with black hair and black eyes. Joanne Perlin was the dean of students. By reputation, a very good one. We'd worked together before. We went over the basics of Bucksport's system for keeping track of students. In addition to the evening curfew and routine bed checks by the senior proctor on each floor, there were several occasions during the day when a student's absence would be noted. The faculty took attendance in each class. There were faculty members at each table in the dining halls who regularly ate with the same students. Faculty members were also the athletic coaches, so that a student's absence from sports would be noted. In addition, all students not on detention were allowed to sign out in the afternoon and evening to take a bus into Sedgwick—the bus stop was at a local ice cream store—and juniors and seniors could sign out on weekends to go home with friends who were day students. Someone diligently checked to be sure that all the students who had signed out for town returned.

"I've got the general picture. Now let's focus on Laney Taggert. At what point on Friday was she last seen? Was she there for bed check?"

Joanne sighed. "We think she signed out at the end of the afternoon to spend the weekend with her friend Merri Naigler. Merri is a day student."

"What do you mean, you think?"

"I mean we think but we don't know," Joanne said defensively. "No one can find her sign-out card. The students are also supposed to verbally check out with their dorm parents but I'm afraid someone was a little lax about that."

"When did you notice that it was gone?"

"The card?" Joanne hung her head. She looked deeply ashamed. "Sunday."

"So no one expected her at dinner or was surprised to find her gone at bed check?"

With every question I asked, Joanne looked more like a guilty child. "I'm afraid it's a little more complicated than that."

"Complicated how?"

Joanne spread her hands in a gesture of submission. "Okay, I know I'm being silly, trying to keep this from you. You're going to be talking to all these people anyway. I won't do anyone any good pretending this isn't an incredible mess. I wish you luck. It would take a detective to sort this one out."

"That reminds me of something," I interrupted. "Yesterday I had no sooner gotten into my office than a kid called Josh Meyer came in, threw himself into that chair, and asked me if I was the detective. Where could he have gotten the idea that I'm a detective?"

Joanne was wringing her hands together so vigorously her knuckles were white. It hurt to watch. "I'm afraid that's my fault, too." I waited for her explanation. This nervousness and hesitation were unlike the Joanne I knew. "Well, Kathy Donahue, one of the house parents in Laney's dorm, was extremely upset because she did the bed check Friday night and when Laney wasn't there, she accepted the roommate's explanation without checking. She's sure that Laney's death is her fault. She said that she and Laney had been talking about how pretty the woods are at night when a full moon shines on the snow. She thought as a result of that conversation Laney had sneaked out to see the woods and fallen through the ice and if she'd only paid more attention, Laney might have been saved."

"I told her I was sure that wasn't it, that the situation was a lot more complicated than she realized, and that Dorrie was bringing in a private school consultant to act as a sort of procedures detective. I'm afraid I wasn't particularly careful about what I said. Josh had been waiting outside the door to see Kathy. He must have overheard."

"I see. Okay. Tell me the rest of the story."

"I hope I don't miss anything, there are so many twists and turns. Let's see. Laney finished basketball sometime between three-thirty and four. You know that all our students do sports the first two years...." She jammed an unruly strand of hair behind her ear. "Laney was a junior, but she'd missed a term her sophomore year, so she had to make it up." She hesitated. "Not sick or anything, she just managed to miss it. That, as you will learn, was Laney's talent, avoiding what she didn't want to do." The hair slipped back down, tickling the end of her nose. "Damn! I'm going to get a crew cut one of these days." She pulled a bobby pin out of her pocket and pinned it into place.

"On her way to the locker room, one of her coaches, Mimsy Spence, asked if she was going to the movies that night. A whole busload of them were going. Laney told her that she wasn't sure she was going to see the movie because she was planning to go home with Merri for the weekend and she didn't know what Merri's plans were." Joanne stopped and counted out some numbers on her fingers.

"You've talked with Merri?" Joanne nodded. "What does she say?"

"She says she was expecting Laney to meet her in front of the administration building so her mother could pick them both up, but Laney didn't show and when she went over to Laney's dorm, no one had seen her. But she says Laney had been moody and hard to get along with lately and they had argued in the locker room after basketball, so she figured maybe Laney was sulking and if she got over it, she'd know enough to call. Merri doesn't live far from the campus. Then Merri left."

"Did anyone see Laney Taggert after sports?"

"Yes. Josh says he saw her on her way back to her dorm and tried to talk to her but she was distracted and in a hurry and she told him she had to meet someone and she'd see him later at the movie."

"What time was that?"

"Sometime between four and four-thirty."

"And then?" Joanne didn't say anything. "Is that it?" I said. "Was Josh the last person to see her?"

"No. Chas Drucker, the faculty member she sits with at dinner, who is also her advisor and her English teacher, says Laney came up to him when he was on his way to the dining hall and said she wasn't feeling well and was going to skip dinner." Joanne lapsed into silence again. She seemed far away.

"That's all?"

She roused herself. "Not quite all. There was one more thing... I mean there may be one more thing. One of the maintenance men saw a girl heading off toward the jogging path around five o'clock. He didn't know Laney and it was too dark for him to notice much about her clothes, but the girl was wearing a long skirt like Laney was when they... when she... when she was found."

"Are all these people on my list?"

"All except the maintenance man but Curt Sawyer's on your list. If you need to talk to the man directly, Curt can arrange it. Look, I'm sorry, Thea, this has probably been the most disorganized interview you've ever had. I can't seem to make myself think clearly about this stuff. I start to think about that poor dear girl and all the order just goes right out of my thoughts. Ask me anything else and I'm sharp as a tack. I don't know what's come over me."

It sounded like shock. Shock and guilt. As dean of students, Joanne was probably the one most directly responsible for the welfare of the students. Being placed in a situation where someone might accuse her of not caring was the ultimate reproach. Even if no one else had said it, she was saying it to herself. It looked as though Dave Holdorf was right. It wasn't just the students who needed help handling this.

"As far as you know, five was the last time she was seen?"

"If it was Laney that he saw, yes."

Joanne and I went over some of the details of the sign-out system. Even though I hadn't been hard on her, she left looking like someone who'd been called on the carpet. When you hold yourself to a high standard, no one can hurt you more than yourself.

Joanne's place in the chair was taken by Warren Winslow, director of residence. He was a quiet, self-contained man who volunteered nothing and showed no signs of emotion. It was almost a relief after Joanne's angst. He confirmed that house parents are supposed to be informed if a boarding student is spending the weekend off campus, whether it is with a friend or with their parents. There's a card the students fill out with their hosts ' name, address, and phone number. For absences other than to the home of a day-student classmate, a note from the boarder's parents was required. In addition, the house parents try to keep a close eye on the emotional well-being of their students and there is a policy that they will have at least minimal contacts with each student daily.