An Educated Death (13 page)

"Did the two of you usually communicate by phone or by letter or what?"

"Phone. And letter. Both. I mean, what else is there?"

"Some parents also visit fairly often."

She shook her head. "No. No, we didn't visit much, I regret to say. Mr. Taggert and I are awfully busy. That's why we thought it was better for her to be at a boarding school. So she wouldn't be alone so much."

"I take it you and Mr. Taggert travel a lot?" She nodded. "On business?" Again the nod.

"So other than Columbus Day weekend and Thanksgiving, you hadn't seen Laney?"

Marta Taggert's expression was annoyed and suspicious. "I don't know what you're talking about. We hadn't seen Laney since we brought her up here in August. She came a week early to help with the new students' initiation. I told you. We've been very busy. Jack travels a lot and I go with him." Her eyes narrowed. "I know at Thanksgiving she went home with her friend Merri but I didn't hear anything about that other weekend. That's just what I was saying to Mrs. Chapin. This place is supposed to keep track of their students and now you're telling me she was allowed to go off campus for a weekend and no one knows where she went?"

That wasn't what I'd said at all. I hadn't said a word about Laney going off campus either weekend. I'd only suggested I assumed she'd spent them with her parents.

I searched through the file, found what I wanted, and handed it to her. She stared down at the two pieces of paper in her hand. One was a photocopy of the sign-out cards the house parents were supposed to keep—the ones the school had gotten a bit lax about—signing Laney out to her parents for the Columbus Day weekend. The other was a hand-written note from Jack Taggert, asking that Laney be released for the weekend. She stared at the note, rereading it several times.

"You can see why I was confused," I said.

Her mouth opened and shut like a beached fish. Finally she handed them back to me with shaking fingers. "I don't know anything about this," she said. "You'll have to ask Jack."

I delivered Marta Taggert into Dave Holdorf's capable hands, suggested some sherry might be in order, and went to ask Lori if Mr. Taggert was around. She shook her head, her ponytail bobbing. "Dorrie took him for a walk," she said. She looked out at the campus to see if she could spot them. "There they are now. Coming back across the circle." I joined her at the window. Dorrie was easy to spot. Although her coat was a demure and sensible gray tweed, she had a cheerful scarlet hat and scarf and matching red gloves. "She does that so she'll be easy to spot," Lori said. Beside her, Jack Taggert lumbered along like a tame bear.

"I like him," Lori said. "He's nice. He reminds me of my father."

"When they get back, will you ask him if he can give me a few minutes?"

"Sure," she said. "Do you need me to cancel someone to free up some time?"

I started to say no but the opportunity to postpone Curt Sawyer was more than I could resist. "Yes. Please. Can you reschedule Curt Sawyer for first thing in the morning?"

"You bet." Lori grinned impishly. "Sure you can take that so early in the day?"

"Better than at the end. I need to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to deal with him."

"That helps?" I shrugged. Lori laughed and picked up the phone and I went back to my office, my soul filled with longing for a sandwich. Unfortunately, I'd used my lunch hour meeting with Marta Taggert. For years I've meant to reform and start carrying something like multigrain high-protein health food bars in my briefcase for food emergencies like this—something quick and nutritious and filling. My problem is that all those trail bars taste like cardboard and the complete-meal diet bars taste like rodent droppings, or like I imagine rodent droppings would taste, so I never do it. As a result, I spend too much of my life with headaches caused by lack of food. I could feel one coming on now.

I called Lori and asked if she could find me a Coke. Her reply was like water to a thirsty man. "Dorrie had the kitchen send over some sandwiches. I was just about to call and ask if you'd prefer turkey or tuna?"

"Tuna," I said, "unless it's on white bread."

"Nice, nutritious oatmeal," she said, "coming right up."

The sandwich and my next interviewee arrived together. In fact, he brought the sandwich. "Thought I'd save Lori the trip," he said, setting it down before me with a flourish. Through the industrial-strength plastic wrap, I could see thick sandwiches skewered with frilled toothpicks, carrot sticks, olives, and high-quality chips. I pushed away the greedy, drooling part of me that longed to devour the sandwich and concentrated on the man sitting before me. Chas Drucker, who had been Laney's advisor and her English teacher, was wearing a flat tweed cap dusted with snowflakes, a tan shearling jacket, and sturdy brown hiking boots whose water-shedding properties spoke of years of tenderly applied mink oil. He hung his cap carefully on one of the points of the chair back, unbuttoned his coat and unwound an ancient striped scarf, and crossed his legs, carefully drawing up his trouser legs.

I pegged him at somewhere between fifty and fifty-five. His wavy hair was graying and slightly too long. He had a manly cleft in his chin and a handsome face that was just beginning to sag. In a few years, he'd begin to look raddled and the boyish hairdo would become foolish. For now, he remained a strikingly attractive man. I explained my mission and asked him to give me his view of Laney.

He bent forward, clasped his hands around his knee, and studied me thoughtfully. "You never met her?" His voice was deep and calm. I imagined its cadence rolling over decades of English classes. I shook my head. "That's too bad. She was a very unusual young woman. Gifted and rather misguided is how I'd describe her." He sat back as though that satisfied his obligation.

"I'm afraid I'm going to need a little more than that, Mr. Drucker," I said.

"Call me Chas. Please. Mr. Drucker sounds terribly formal and old. What is the purpose of all these questions about Laney, anyway?"

I'd already explained it and I was sure Dave Holdorf had, as well, but I after a sudden death, people close to the deceased were often in a state of shock. While they might seem to function rationally, they really were so distracted by their grief they had trouble focusing on things around them. This man had been her advisor as well as her teacher. If they are doing their jobs right, faculty advisors get very close to their students. I knew that sort of attention was emphasized at Bucksport. It made Chas Drucker an important source of information. It also meant he was vulnerable and needed to be handled gently.

"As a faculty member," I said, "I know that you're aware of the impact of a student's death on a school like Bucksport. No one is callous about what happened to Laney Taggert. It's been a shocking and devastating experience for you, for all the faculty and staff as well as for the students. At the same time, from an administrative point of view, the situation has to be managed carefully to prevent a reactive outflux of students or prospective students withdrawing their applications. I guess you'd describe me as the damage-control department. Mrs. Chapin has asked me to do an inventory of the procedures for ensuring student safety and well-being, a spot check, if you will, of whether the school took adequate care of Laney and whether things should be changed in the future."

His face had taken on an aggrieved, almost peevish look. I headed him off before he could say what he was thinking. "I know, at first hearing, that this sounds rather callous and self-serving, Mr. Drucker. But it's important to bear in mind that we have to consider the interests of the other 250 students at Bucksport. Their academic lives go on, of course, and they need stability and comfort, not upset and sensation. And then, too..." I hadn't been going to say this, but he still looked peevish and I needed his cooperation. "Not only are the ongoing educational interests of the students an important consideration, but the livelihood of the faculty and staff depend on a well-regarded and economically healthy school."

In other words, damage control was essential to his job. He got the message.

"Along with an overall procedures audit, I'm trying to get a view of how Laney Taggert fit into the picture and to collect information about her activities on the day she disappeared. I'd like you to think of yourself as a camera. Give me a wide-angle shot of Laney in the Bucksport community which gradually narrows down to a close-up of Laney herself and finally a shot of the last time you saw her."

"That was very eloquent," he said. "What's your background? Photography, fine arts?"

"Before I started working with independent schools, I was a newspaper reporter and a social worker. I like this better." I tucked back an annoying curl trying to wrap itself around my nose. "At Human Services we used to keep informal KBI ratings."

"What does KBI stand for?"

"Kids battered in. It got so depressing I could hardly bear to go to work in the morning."

"This is better?"

"No. This is the worst possible situation a private school can find itself in. Traumatic for everyone. But it does have to be dealt with." I could tell that Chas Drucker wished it didn't have to be. He didn't want to talk about Laney and he would go on making irrelevant conversation as long as I'd let him. "Was she a good student?"

He hesitated. "She had a good mind. She was clever. Quick. She took honors courses but she didn't like to apply herself. She'd gone to public schools until she came to us, as I'm sure you know, and she simply hadn't learned the habits of critical thinking. If all that was required was to regurgitate textbook and lecture materials, she did fine. If deeper analysis was called for, she sometimes floundered. Not," he added, "that she didn't have techniques for dealing with that, too."

"I don't know what you mean."

His brow furrowed and he looked at me suspiciously. "Surely everyone is telling you the same things. Laney Taggert was the one of the most accomplished manipulators I've ever seen. It was a skill she'd perfected long before she came to us. If a teacher gave her a bad grade, she'd be in there pleading flu or cramps or depression or some reason why she should get a second chance. She was hard to resist."

"Did anyone ever resist her?"

He gave me a curious look, hesitating before he answered. "We were learning, but it was difficult. Her excuses, you see, were all things we might have accepted as reasons from some other student. With her, people were getting wise to the fact that she did it consistently. Once we became aware of the pattern, we went back and talked to her teachers at Ellanville. They confirmed that she'd been like this there, as well. I suppose she had to learn it to survive living with the lush and the lump."

"You mean her parents?"

"I see you've met them."

"I have."

"Well," he said, "I think deep down Laney desperately wanted to be loved and accepted by her mother. I hope this doesn't sound too much like second-rate psychology, but when you've worked with students as long as I have, you do begin to see patterns. Laney was very well defended. She was afraid to let people get close because she didn't want to be disappointed. But like any child—and they really are still children in a good many ways—she wanted to be known and loved. She'd settled for being admired. If she wanted your attention, she'd work hard to please, but she had no concept of working out of responsibility. I don't want you to get the wrong impression of Laney. If I let you think of her as sly, manipulative, and badly educated, you'd be missing the real Laney. She was quite a fascinating young woman. My analogy would be to a firefly."

"A firefly?" I wondered where he was going with this.

"Yes. She had a kind of magical illumination but it didn't come with any warmth. Hers was a cold, chemical brilliance. She had a knack for caricature which was both astonishing and terrible. She did devastating imitations of people."

"So I've heard. You were her advisor. Did you ever discuss these imitations with her?"

"Of course. I tried to tell her how hurtful they could be but she wouldn't listen to me. She just shrugged and said it was all in fun and she didn't understand how anyone could take it any other way." He shrugged. "It was one area where she felt successful and she wasn't willing to give that up."

"But people were upset, weren't they? Would you say that Laney made enemies through those imitations or is that putting it too strongly?"

He studied his knuckles and considered my question. "I hate to admit it but I'd have to say yes. She made some enemies. Or at least that she hurt some people rather badly and it made them quite angry at her."

"Angry enough to want to hurt her?"

He looked shocked. "Not the way you're suggesting," he said. "Bucksport is not that kind of community. We try to foster an environment of caring, communication, and responsibility. It wouldn't be consistent with the Bucksport ethic to strike out at someone physically because they'd hurt you with words."

"Even if you knew that words wouldn't work."

"No," he said, "not even then."

He wasn't going to budge and I didn't want to annoy him before I'd finished my questions even if he was being deliberately and unhelpfully naive. With some people I might have sighed and urged them to grow up, but I sensed that Chas Drucker took himself very seriously. Staying in the private school world all their lives sometimes allows adults to remain unnaturally unworldly and idealistic. "Had she seemed unusually depressed to you lately?"

"No."

"Did she tend to be a depressed young woman?"

"No." He wasn't even listening to my questions.

"Did Laney ever confide in you or consult you about her love life?"

"Her love life? The girl was only sixteen."

"And involved in a rather tempestuous relationship with Josh Meyer. You did know about that?"

"Well, of course, but she certainly didn't confide any of the details."

"She never mentioned their fights or asked you for advice?"

"I was her academic advisor," he said stiffly.

"Mr. Drucker, please. We're talking about a tragic death here. We both know that the role a student's advisor plays at a boarding school is not so limited. She never talked to you about relationships?" From the stubborn set of his jaw, I knew he wasn't going to cooperate.