An Educated Death (8 page)

"Has someone told you that they suspected her death was a suicide?"

He gave me one of those don't-be-an-idiot looks. "Everyone is so careful to tell us it's an accident. Why else would they do that, if they didn't suspect it wasn't?"

"Are you always this suspicious?"

"Grown-ups have a habit of thinking we're stupid," he said.

"Has anyone specifically told you they believe she killed herself?"

He shrugged. "Some people have."

"But you don't think so. And you also don't think it could have been an accident. Why not?"

"I already told you." Insolent and angry. "She wasn't stupid."

"Maybe she didn't know anything about frozen ponds."

"Oh, give me a break!" He sighed. "We're not talking about a young naturalist here. If she didn't know anything about frozen ponds, what was she doing out there?"

"I was hoping maybe you could tell me."

"Meeting someone," he said.

"Any idea who?"

His face closed down with the predictable teenager's nobody-home look, the one where their eyes glaze over and their expression assumes an insolent blankness that makes you want to whack them. He made a show of checking his watch. "I've got to go...." He picked up his coat and started to put it on.

"Just one more question, Josh." The gray eyes landed on my face and rolled down me like rain off a slicker. I was aware of my visceral response to his maleness, to his strutting aura of newfound sexuality, and shamed by a faint desire to have him like me, an unconquered vestige of my high school days.

"Yeah?"

"What makes you think I'm a detective?"

Suddenly there was something in his thin frame that reminded me of a startled deer. "You are, aren't you?" The tones were those of a betrayed child. I made a slight assenting gesture. I wasn't a detective, but I didn't want to scare this boy into thinking he'd done something wrong. "You want to know how I heard about you?"

"If you want to tell me." I thought he was going to answer, but he'd been scared in that moment when he thought he'd delivered his message to the wrong person, and that had made him mad—at himself, and so, he thought, at me.

"If you're the detective," he said, "you can find out for yourself." He grabbed his bag and left.

Well, I thought, as I made some notes to myself, my resolution not to know anything about Laney Taggert's personal life had worked for about three minutes. I was going to have to do better than this if I was going to stay uninvolved. The last time I'd tried to find out why someone was killed I'd nearly gotten killed myself. Even if my spirit was willing, my flesh was weak. I couldn't take another round of physical abuse. I was going to have to be very clear that my task was a policies-and-procedures audit. I was not here as anyone's detective and it seemed to me that Dorrie had some explaining to do. I opened Laney's file again. This time I got through at least five minutes of reading before someone barged through the door.

I was expecting Dorrie, though she wasn't one to barge in anywhere, but to my surprise, it was Rocky Miller and he wasn't a happy camper. He dropped into my visitor's chair with such force the wood actually groaned, slapped his palms down on his knees, and glared at me. I guess I was supposed to quail before his wrath and beg to be enlightened but I'm not the quailing type. "I want you to know straight off that I don't like this scheme of Dorrie's at all." He waited again for my response, but since I didn't know what he was talking about I didn't have one. "I think this is a matter for the police, not some hot-shot woman consultant."

"I guess that pretty well damns everything about me, doesn't it, Chief? Not that I'm entirely sure which attribute it is that makes me unfit for the job. The fact that I'm a hot shot? Or a consultant? Or a woman? I might be able to clear things up for you if I had some idea what you're talking about."

"Using you as a detective is like getting a pig to direct traffic."

There it was again—the word "detective." It appeared that in our bicoastal conversations about how to manage her campus crisis, there was something Dorrie had neglected to tell me. Another agenda beyond the one she'd shared with me, which was that she wanted me to do an inventory and assessment of their systems for keeping track of the students and keeping them safe. Something Dorrie and I needed to talk about before I tried to explain myself to Rocky Miller. But Rocky Miller was sitting right here insulting me and in a flash of weakness, I yielded to my baser impulses. People who begin conversations with personal attacks ought to expect a less-than-pleasant response. "There are a lot of people who would say that's exactly what you're doing when you send a cop out to direct traffic. Others might argue that you're insulting pigs. Pigs are very smart animals, you know."

As soon as he'd said the word "pig" Miller knew he'd made a mistake. "I didn't come here to trade insults," he said.

"Why
did
you come?"

"To try and talk you out of it."

"This may come as a surprise to you, Chief, but I don't know what you're talking about. What is this thing that I'm supposed to be doing that you think I can't do?" My question didn't come out as clear and lucid as I'd hoped and Rocky Miller just stared at me with a puzzled look on his face. It wasn't an unattractive face, if you like blond men. He had good features, curly blond hair, a ruddy complexion, and a pugnacious jaw. He looked boyish and slightly preppy and stubborn as hell. I would have laid bets that he was heavily into court sports and had a little trouble keeping himself from being too competitive. Right now, his chin was down and pulled back into his neck like a bird about to strike. I didn't wait for him. I struck first.

"You heard what Dorrie said in there. I'm here to do an inventory of the system of parietals, checks, and faculty contacts, as well as take a look at campus security, to be sure that Bucksport is doing all it can to ensure students' safety. What makes you think I can't do that?"

This time it looked like he understood. "That's not the part I'm talking about. I'm talking about this damn-fool idea of Dorrie's that we have you play detective and try to figure out what the story behind the story is. Who the father of her baby was. What happened after she signed out that day. Why she went down to the pond. Who else was down there. If there's anything to be investigated here, it's police business, not the job of some zaftig civilian who's good at writing reports. There is nothing you can do here that we can't do better. You can go ahead and do your little cosmetic audit"—he waggled his fingers dismissively—"but stay the hell out of the way of the professionals who know what they're doing."

He delivered the speech to my chest instead of my face.

"I've met some arrogant SOBs in my life, Chief, but you just went to the head of the list. Do I infer from what you said that you believe there's an inverse relationship between chest size and brain capacity or is this just a cops-versus-civilians thing?"

Someone in the doorway cleared her throat. I'd been so intent on arguing with Rocky I hadn't even noticed the door open. "I was afraid this would happen," Dorrie said, coming in and closing the door behind her. "I'm sorry, Thea. This is terribly awkward. I'd meant to bring this up over lunch and explain things to you before I asked you to consider broadening the scope of your project. It's not as inappropriate as Rocky makes it sound." The looks they exchanged made it clear they'd discussed this before and hadn't reached agreement. "I think you can quite naturally fit some probing questions into your interviews, if you're willing to do so. Despite what he just said"—her tone got positively frosty—"Chief Miller has agreed to cooperate and help us any way he can. Now, they're setting up a nice private lunch for us in the trustees room. Let's go and discuss this in a civilized manner."

Rocky Miller got up and followed her out, resentment in every line of his body. He didn't let me go first. Whatever his opinions of women, and I thought I'd had a glimpse of those, they didn't seem to coexist with any old-fashioned notions of chivalry. I wondered how he could be a police chief when his emotions showed like that. Most of the cops I knew could show no more emotion than dead fish when they wanted it that way. Maybe it was a hereditary position in Bucksport. That wasn't unusual in small towns.

They had set three places for us at the end of a long mahogany table. Dorrie sat between us in the customary mother's place. She was going to have her hands full keeping peace between us. Because he'd gotten my back up, and because I was feeling mellow and kind, it being Christmas, the season of love and joy and all, I stuck out my size nine foot, expensively clad in Italian leather, and took my first step down the slippery slope. "Explain what you had in mind about this detecting business."

Rocky Miller looked like he wanted to kill me. "I wish you'd listen to me, Dorrie. I think the whole idea is stupid," he said.

Somehow, it sounded a whole lot like the conversation I'd just had with Josh Meyer. Maybe Rocky's problem was simply an extended adolescence. I knew therapists often considered it as extending well into the twenties, but into the forties? "I'm afraid I can't comment, since I haven't even heard the idea yet," I said.

"Eat your soup before it gets cold," she urged.

Dorrie had dealt with adolescent behavior long enough to recognize that's what she was seeing from us. Like a wise mother, she ignored it long enough to let us simmer down a little bit and get some food in our stomachs before she tried to deal with us. It worked fine with me. I'm a rational human being. It didn't work so well with the Chief. He scarfed down his lunch like a deprived great Dane and then tossed his fork onto his plate with a clatter. I suppose it was a symbolic form of throwing down the gauntlet. "I don't like it, Dorrie," he said. "She's just a kid. She hasn't any experience. At best it's a waste of time; at worst, it will muddy the waters so badly we'll never get this straightened out."

Phooey, I thought. If I'd had a badge and a gun, he would have been even more unhappy. This wasn't about experience; it was about control and turf. I was almost flattered by being called a kid. I'd faced the big three-oh with a mixture of courage and depression, aided by Andre and a bottle of champagne, and I was not by any stretch of the imagination a kid. Not even in comparison to a baby-faced forty-five-year-old. What really stung, even though I knew it wasn't what he meant, was his remark that I had no experience to do this job. I was better qualified for it than he was, however Dorrie defined it. I knew I had a lot more experience in the private school world than he did. He probably couldn't even identify the school hierarchy or understand the rhythms of boarding school life, and I was sure, from his manner, that he'd be no good at interrogating teenagers unless half an hour of name-calling counted as interrogation. They'd label him "pig" or "popo" or whatever kids these days called cops and clam up tight.

When someone gets my back up, I don't always act as smart as I should. I should have kept quiet. "Chief Miller," I said sweetly, "how many murders have you solved? I don't mean cases where the murderer confessed, or where there were witnesses, I mean cases that were genuine mysteries?"

He looked uncomfortable. It wasn't the sort of question he expected to be asked. He cleared his throat and studied the room and finally he said, "A couple."

"Me, too," I said. "And how much experience do you have working with the faculty, staff, and students of private schools?"

He gave me a look that was a mixture of dislike and curiosity. "Have to deal with them all the time, being police chief here."

"I have about seven years, myself," I said.

Dorrie, who is one of the quickest readers of situations that I have ever met, figured out what I was trying to do and asked a question that sounded completely out of left field. I knew that it wasn't. There was always a purpose behind Dorrie's questions. "How did the trip to San Francisco go? Did things work out for Andre?"

"Pretty well, I think. It was pretty rocky at first but by the end he was doing better. Physically he's recovered. The emotional recovery will take some time." I turned to Rocky. "Andre is Detective Andre Lemieux, Maine Department of Public Safety," I explained. "He's my..." I groped for an appropriate word. Boyfriend sounded too trivial, roommate too distant, lover too intimate. An article I read once suggested POSSLQ—person of the opposite sex sharing living quarters—but to me that sounded like something cute and small and fuzzy. Andre was fuzzy but he was neither small nor cute.

"Significant other," Dorrie suggested.

"My significant other," I said. "His close friend was killed a few weeks ago... you might have read about it in the papers... they were interviewing a murder suspect who was strung out on drugs and the suspect tried to kill both of them." I didn't elaborate. It wasn't Rocky's business. The purpose of the conversation had been to establish one of my unique credentials—cop's girlfriend. I wouldn't have thought of it, or rather, I wouldn't have broken the protective seal I keep on my private life to share it with a lout like Rocky Miller, but Dorrie had known, with her instinctive knack for knowing what's important, that it was information that would impress Rocky.

"State cop?" Rocky said. "How'd you meet him?"

"He was the investigating detective when my sister was murdered."

"So he solved the crime and the two of you rode off into the sunset?" Rocky said.

"So I solved the crime," I said, "and no one rode off into any sunsets. It was raining."

"You solved the crime?" Rocky's tone dripped disbelief.

"I wish the two of you would stop spitting at each other like a couple of angry cats so we could talk this over sensibly," Dorrie said. "Rocky, we've already discussed this at length and you agreed to cooperate, yet you've been at Thea's throat ever since you met her. What on earth has come over you?" It was another of Dorrie's virtues that while she could be exquisitely subtle dealing with the trustees, she could also be very direct. She hadn't been subtle dealing with her lawyer and she wasn't being subtle now.