Dark Places (11 page)

“Oh, he's real demanding. Shrill. Moody. Hateful. Nasty.”

I met her gaze steadfastly. “Doesn't sound like you liked him much, Maxine.”

“Well, I guess I could put up with him better than most people. I'm a pretty easygoing person and he needed me, so he treated me better than other people.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just to be his friend. Everybody needs at least one friend.”

“Yeah.” I didn't have many more than that, but that was beside the point. “So you consider yourself his only friend here at the academy?”

“Uh-huh. He probably thought he had some friends but most of them were nothing but suck-ups who really loathed him behind his back.”

Loathed him, huh? “Does that describe you, too, Maxine?”

Maxine's face looked startled, then she glanced around as if Classon's ghost might walk in and go off on her. She lowered her voice. “Okay, listen, truth is, I hated him, too. Nobody knows that, though, and I don't want it to get around.”

Uh-uh, Christie knows it. Probably everybody else, too. “You ever have words with Simon Classon? An argument or serious falling-out?”

“Not really. Everything depended on his mood when he came in the morning. He could be nice at times, of course, but it never lasted long, believe me. And usually that was to get something he wanted out of people.”

“So you're saying you never had a serious disagreement with the victim?”

She shook her head and her earlobes gave me a rendition of “Sleigh bells ring, are you listenin'?” “I just never said anything back to him. That's the trick. Just listen to his rants and keep working, that was my motto. Sometimes when I did that, he'd feel guilty afterward and try to play nice, but I had to avoid eye contact and act the victim.”

“Doesn't sound like much fun to work under conditions like that.”

“Oh, God, no, it sure wasn't fun. Not even pleasant. But like I said, he wasn't half as hard on me as he was on the others.”

“What others?”

“Well, the other professors really got on his nerves. He called them morons and stupid idiots. They hated him back and avoided him like the plague. Nobody came down to his end of the hall unless it's absolutely necessary. I've known people who'd walk outside in the pouring rain to avoid his office.”

“And who might they be?”

“Well, one was Stuart Rowland. He's a professor here, too. He teaches paganism, but he's really a pretty nice guy. He and Simon really, really hated each other's guts.”

“Why?”

“Well, I can't say for sure. One thing was, Stuart didn't like the way Simon threw things at him.”

“He threw things at him?”

“That's right. Whatever was nearby. Staplers, books, anything. I hate to say it, but I think Simon had some underlying psychological problems. Maybe a personality disorder, too, you know, something that made him act despicable.”

“Despicable?”

“Yes, I'm sorry, but that's the best way to describe it.”

“Have you ever known Mr. Rowland to get into it physically with Simon? You know, shove him or make some kind of threat against him?”

“Oh no, Stuart Rowland's pretty mealymouthed, I'd say. He'd trash Simon behind his back, but when he was up against Simon, face-to-face, Stuart pretty much wilted and went away. But everybody did. Simon was a real hard-ass. He could say the cruelest things, you just wouldn't believe how awful and demeaning he could be.”

“Is Mr. Rowland on campus today? I need to talk to him, too.”

“I doubt it. He ran his car in the ditch across the road last night on his way home. He slept in his office last night, so I bet he went home this morning after they got his Mustang pulled out.”

Suddenly I was more than anxious to check on the whereabouts of Professor Devil Worshipper for the last few days. “Do you expect he'll be here tomorrow?”

“Should be. The director announced not long ago that regular classes will resume tomorrow.”

“I see. Do you know of anyone else who made threats against Mr. Classon?”

Maxine nodded. “Just about everyone did, but always behind his back. Joking, kinda, making up scenarios of what we'd do to him if we got a chance. Just for fun, you know, being silly.”

I stared at the docile little woman. She was describing her boss as Hitler, for Pete's sake. Had Classon really been that bad?

“If you had to guess who perpetrated this crime, who would you say?”

She actually laughed. “Again, it could be anybody, anybody at all. Especially after he ran off Wilma.”

“Who is Wilma?”

“Wilma Harte's her name. She was a girl who worked as a part-time custodian here while she took some of our classes. Actually I remember that she took his class, too, and the course on paganism, if I recall. Simon got to picking on her in class, embarrassing her in front of the other students, stuff like that.” Maxine shook her head and played me another sleigh song. “Poor kid. Wilma was a bit eccentric, you know, into slasher movies like
Halloween
and
Hellraiser
with lots of killing and blood and gore. She painted her fingernails black and stuff, wore lots of black clothes. Sorta into Goth, I guess you'd say, but she was likeable enough. She had this long red hair that she always wore in pigtails. Sometimes she seemed a little simpleminded but harmless. I do know she had lots of trouble making passing grades, but she didn't cause anybody trouble that I know of. She certainly wasn't evil like Simon.”

So we'd graduated now from mean and cruel to just plain evil. Maybe I should take Maxine's opinions with a grain of salt. Nobody could've been that bad, except maybe Adolf Hitler or Satan's spawn.

“You speak of Wilma in the past tense. Is she deceased?”

“Nobody knows. She just up and disappeared one night. Some think she was depressed and might've gone off to commit suicide, that's how upset she was. No one knows for sure what happened to her.”

“When did this happen?”

“I guess it's been a week or so now. Simon really liked to single her out for his abuse. I mean, he found fault with every single thing she did, right or wrong, until I guess the poor kid just couldn't take it anymore. She wasn't a very strong person. Psychologically, I mean. You might ask Christie Foxworthy about her. They were sort of friends for a while, I think. I used to see them eating lunch together once in a while. They took Stuart Rowland's class at the same time, too, I think. The one about pagans. But then I heard they had a falling-out and couldn't stand each other. So I guess you can't really take all this as gospel.” She shrugged.

“Anyone else here a friend of hers?”

“She worked with another custodian named Willie Vines. And Stuart seemed fairly chummy with her after she took his class.”

I made a note to check out Wilma Harte's friends about her disappearance. It seemed a bit coincidental that she took off right before Simon's murder, the man who'd been harassing her. There hadn't been a missing-person or a suicide report on her in our county or I would have heard about it. Maybe we could track her down. It sounded like she might have more than a few interesting things to tell us about Simon Classon.

“You said that Wilma Harte was a custodian here, right?”

“Yes.” Maxine shook her head. “I guess she knew how Simon felt about her. She gave him a Christmas card right before she left, and he ripped it up into little pieces right in front of her.”

“Why? Did they have some kind of run-in? Exchange angry words?”

“Not that I know of. He just didn't like her, and confrontation wasn't Simon's style. He did his nasty stuff behind the scenes. He had a knack for manipulating board members. The director, too.”

“How did he manage that?”

“Nobody could ever figure out how he got away with the things he said and did. I heard once that somebody in his family donated some land to the academy way back when. I don't know if that's true, but he sure gets away with murder around here.” Maxine realized her faux pas and colored with embarrassment. “Sorry, Detective Morgan, I didn't mean that the way it came out. But really, why, I've seen him go into somebody's office and swipe everything off the desk, then stalk out and slam the door like a little baby. The director never did a thing about it. I'm surprised somebody didn't punch Simon in the nose a long time ago.”

Now somebody had done much worse than punching Classon in the nose. Somebody who, I now believed, could be just about anybody who knew him. The man was not thought well of, to put it mildly.

“Did anything unusual happen around here in the last few weeks or months? Anything that particularly upset Mr. Classon?”

“Well, except for Wilma taking off so unexpectedly, I can't think of anything. But Simon was glad she left. He couldn't stand her for some reason. Oh, one thing, Simon had a fit last month when they gave a personal assistant in Building Red a surprise baby shower.”

“Why?”

“He said people shouldn't have to buy baby presents for every little bitch who got herself knocked up.”

I couldn't think of anything to say to that for a moment but Maxine added, “But it wasn't even required that anybody had to buy her a gift, just if you wanted to you could. It was her first baby, and she and her husband didn't have much, so most of us gave her something.”

“Okay. Anything else you can remember that might be pertinent to our investigation?”

“No, not that I can think of.”

“Anybody around here you think might be capable of murdering somebody, Maxine? Anyone with a terrible temper, for instance? Anybody who stood up to Mr. Classon's rages or tried to strike back, either openly or secretly?”

“Actually, the director held up pretty well against him, but then he'd give in to whatever Simon wanted. Know what you ought to do? Check into the salaries around here. See how the ones who sucked up to Simon got big raises under the table.”

“Did you get a big raise under the table, Maxine?”

She hesitated, even looked guilty. “Yeah. Every year. That's the real reason why I kept working for him.”

“Where were you last Wednesday?”

Maxine looked scared in a big hurry. “You think I did this? Me? Oh God, I'm innocent, I swear.”

“No. It's just a question I have to ask everyone I interview.”

“I was at a Christmas party at my daughter's house. Actually I took off a few days when Simon was on vacation and helped Amy cook and clean up after the party. Amy had everyone on her staff from the medical clinic out to their house. She's a doctor in Osage Beach. So's her husband.”

“And there are people who can verify you were at that party?”

“Oh yes, all of them. We played charades and bingo.”

I closed my notebook and stood up. “Good, then it sounds like you don't have anything to worry about. Okay, I won't take up any more of your time. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Maxine rose from behind the desk. “Detective? How did he die? I heard that he was found hanging from a tree limb.”

“Yes, he was.” I waited, not ready to release further details. The director knew so it was probably traveling like wildfire through the school's grapevine.

“I never would've believed he was the type to commit suicide. That surprises me, it really does. He had things too good around here. You sure he killed himself?”

“We don't know exactly what happened at this time, Ms. Knight, but I can tell you that it was definitely a homicide. That's why my partner and I are here.”

“Wow. I guess a person just can't be as mean as Simon and not have something horrible come down on him sooner or later. You've heard that old saying, haven't you, detective, about what goes around comes around?”

I'd heard it, all right, but throwing staplers wasn't in quite the same league as the horrific torture somebody put Simon Classon through. Nobody deserved to die in that sleeping bag. And Bud and I were going to have to sort through a whole slew of suspects this time, all of whom had it in for the victim. It might be easier to find somebody who
did
like the man. So far he was almost as popular as Saddam Hussein at the White House.

Uriel caught the big yellow bus the next morning and rode into a town called Osage Beach with a bunch of kids he didn't know for his first school day in his new life. All he thought about, though, was going back to the secret cave and tending to all of Gabriel's creatures. His grandma would let him because she liked Gabriel so much. She said a bunch of times that Gabriel would teach him godly ways and to listen to him.

At school Uriel was shocked to see teachers weeping as they walked down the halls. A bunch of little girls were carrying on, too. Then, in the corridor outside the principal's office, he heard an older girl say that Freddy was dead. Uriel stopped and stared at the girl when she said Freddy died from an allergic reaction to hornet stings, then she looked down at him and said, “What are you staring at?”

Uriel forced down a sick feeling, then ran down the hall to the elementary rooms. Gabriel was there, waiting for him at the water fountain. He took Uriel aside and squatted down so their eyes met. “Look, kid, don't you dare go all crazy on me. Wipe those tears off before somebody sees you and gets suspicious.” He glanced around to see if the kids at the nearby lockers were listening. They were pushing each other and laughing. “Now, listen up, Uriel, I made a bad mistake last night. But hell, I didn't know Freddy was allergic. He went into this bad thing called anaphylactic shock, I think that's how they pronounced it. Things like this's gonna happen to bullies like Freddy. They always get theirs. We didn't mean it but it had to be God's will, see? Anyways, no need to get racked up over it, he's up in heaven now, and that's a helluva better place than down here. That's for sure.”

Uriel felt funny inside, kind of like he was going to throw up. He swallowed hard. He'd never live that down on his first day at school. Now Gabriel was smiling, nodding, and ruffling his hair, like nothing was the least bit wrong. Surely Gabriel knew what he was talking about. And Gabriel didn't mean for Freddy to die, anyway. God must've thought Freddy deserved to die.

“You ain't gonna tell on me, right, Uriel? Remember how you promised you wouldn't ever tell my secrets? You're still my special friend, ain't ya?”

Uriel nodded then looked down the hall to where Gabriel's basketball buddies were yelling for Gabriel to get a move on.

“Gotta go, Uriel. Bell's gonna ring any sec. We'll talk later, okay? Just keep your mouth shut and keep thinkin' about what he did to you at the funeral. It's definitely God's will, just like everything else is. Some people are just on God's books to die young. They act up and they get taken to heaven early for it. Or down to hell, if they're really bad.”

Gabriel hurried off toward his friends, and Uriel walked into his classroom and sat down. The kids around him were whispering about Freddy, and pointing to his empty desk in the front row. Later that morning when they were having mathematics, Freddy's big brother came to clean the stuff out of Freddy's desk. He was tall, even taller than Gabriel, with short blond hair, and his eyes were red and puffy like he'd been crying all night. He wore a sweatshirt that said USM. Uriel wondered what the letters stood for.

A few days later, Uriel went to another funeral at the white clapboard church and stared down into the gaping grave. This time everybody that showed up moaned or wept, especially Freddy's family. His momma cried the most and kept crying out, “No, no, no, this can't be, he can't be gone! I won't let you take him! Oh God, why? How did the hornets get in? Why didn't I check that screen?”

Uriel knew exactly how she felt and wondered if he should go up and tell her about how angels came early and took Freddy so he wouldn't suffer much. Uriel was afraid to. Instead, he sat in back, close between his grandma and Gabriel and listened to the preacher say good things about Freddy's family.

The casket was open, and Uriel filed past like everyone else and stared, horrified, at the boy inside. Freddy's face was grotesquely swollen from the hornets. He couldn't even tell it was Freddy. They closed up the small casket and carried it out to the grave. As they lowered Freddy into the ground, Gabriel whispered to Uriel, “Now look who's goin' into a grave. Not you, Uriel, but him. He deserved it, too, don't you forget that. Freddy got what was coming to him. From now on, anybody messes with us, they get it where it hurts. We're gonna be God's own avenging angels, Uriel and Gabriel, and we're gonna make bad people pay. You got that, Uriel? You with me all the way?”

A thrill shot through Uriel, sorta like he felt when his daddy let him put the match to bottle rockets on the Fourth of July. He realized he could do something about people who hurt him now. What he felt was powerful, now that Gabriel and God were on his side. Uriel smiled and whispered in Gabriel's ear. “He sure did deserve to die. Nobody better mess with me, not ever again.”

“Attaboy.” Gabriel looked pleased. He ruffled Uriel's hair then they went to the heavily laden tables under the trees and filled their plates with sliced roast beef and scalloped potatoes and green beans and cherry pie. The church ladies were all really good cooks, and the boys ate until they couldn't eat another bite.