Schooled in Murder (10 page)

It must have been frightening to sit down on a bus and not move in Montgomery, Alabama, in the mid-1950s. Speaking up about a slur in a school in 2007? Courage? Can they say
adult?
Cowards needed to die as badly as the suckups. That’s what the bullies want: silence in the face of their unpardonable behavior. And when their behavior gets thrown
back at them, they act all stunned and innocent. The world had changed since the 1950s. Obviously not enough.

Higden’s bushy, throwback-to-the-seventies hair was caught under my left rear tire. His jacket was slightly awry. Rain flowed into his lifeless eyes and beaded down his cheeks. I felt for the pulse in his neck. Nothing. He was dead.

Two deaths in less than eight hours.

I leaned against the side of the car. I don’t remember if I felt the rain pelting down on me. I shook my head and bent over. Death in unexpected places was always a shock. For a few moments I thought I might be ill. Marine training or not, all this was not easy to take.

I saw Scott pulling around. He drove up to see what the delay was. He peered out his windows at me. His windshield wipers swished back and forth. I opened the passenger door of his Porsche and climbed in.

He said, “What’s wrong?”

“Peter Higden is dead.”

He looked out the windows. “Who is he? Somebody on the radio?”

“No. One of the teachers.”

“Where?”

“About three feet from here. Just this side of the back wheels of my car.”

“Did you hit him?”

“I haven’t moved from my parking space. I tried to go backwards. He was wedged behind the rear wheels. I couldn’t move the car.” I shuddered. “At least I didn’t try and use the four-wheel drive to climb over him.”

Scott said, “Nor did he plop in your path.”

“Close enough.”

He touched my arm and asked, “Are you okay?” “I’ve been better.”

He pressed the OnStar system button. In a few seconds a
voice came through the radio speakers. He told them to send the police. They didn’t need to ask where we were. The satellite system would pinpoint our location.

Scott took out his cell phone and dialed our attorney. Todd had gotten to the interstate but promised to come back immediately.

Scott turned off the windshield wipers and then the engine. He left the headlights on so the police would be able to spot us more easily. The rain thudded on the roof. I pulled my jacket tighter around me. It was a warm, furry one I’d purchased when we were in Provincetown last summer.

“Cold?” he asked.

I nodded. He turned the engine back on and turned up the heater.

“Did you know him?” Scott asked.

“A leader of the suckups. I didn’t know him all that well.

“I think I remember you talking about him. The African American Nazi?”

“Yep.” I sighed. “It’s going to be a long night.”

“He was a leader?” Scott asked.

“He went out drinking with the gang every Friday night. That was their criterion for letting you into the group’s secrets.”

Scott said, “Did they have a secret handshake?”

“Only if it involved fewer than two steps.”

“You used to go out with the staff, didn’t you? I remember stories of mild escapades.”

“Years ago. Not with these people, and
mild
is the operative word. We were young. We went out. We were enjoying the world. We weren’t trying to shove our crap down everyone else’s throats.”

“Which does seem to be the operative problem tonight,” he said.

“It was, until this guy decided to nap under my tires.”

Twirling red and blue lights interrupted our morbid repartee.

It was the same two detectives. Gault said, “You again.” “I found another one,” I said.

Half an hour later, I was being interviewed. We stood under umbrellas in the pouring rain. Scott always kept an extra one in the car. He made sure we had one in both cars, along with a first-aid kit, flares, the OnStar system, and every other crisis-management equipment devised for auto travel. He used to keep a full gas can in the back of his car. I had put my foot down about that, but the likelihood was that he stopped only because carrying extra gas had been ruled hazardous.

Cars’ headlights, more rotating Mars lights, and cop floodlights illumined the scene.

“You know this guy?” Gault asked.

“Yep.”

“Colleague.”

“Yep.”

“This guy know the other corpse?” Gault asked.

“We were in the same department.”

“They friends or enemies?”

“They were on the same side in the fights.”

“They get along?”

“As far as I know.”

“You fight with him?”

“Never directly.”

“What does that mean?”

“We had differing views on some issues, but we never disagreed in public. I never had a private discussion of educational philosophy with him.” I added the bit about the anti-Semitic remark.

Scott asked, “How did he die?”

Gault said, “We’re waiting for the medical examiner.”

“Did he die here?” I asked.

Gault said, “When we can tell you something, we’ll let you know. For now, stick around.” My attorney said, “No.” Gault glared at him.

I said, “I’m tired. I’m hungry. I didn’t kill him. I’m going home. Unless you’re going to charge me, I’m not staying. You have my address. My car hasn’t moved. Scott will drive me home.”

My attorney nodded.

Then Vulmea asked, “Mr. Carpenter, may I have your autograph? For my kids.”

They always added “for my kids.” I sighed. Scott is unfailingly polite. The cop held out a scrap of paper. Scott signed.

13

At home I changed into jeans, thick white socks, and a heavy sweatshirt. I checked our messages while Scott began putting dinner together. I had a call from Meg Swarthmore. She wanted to know if I was all right and if I needed to cancel our usual Friday-morning breakfast. The message said that no call from me meant that breakfast was on. I didn’t call.

For dinner Scott warmed some spinach-cheddar soup he’d made the other day. I unpacked fixings for sandwiches. Two kinds of Genoa salami, plus ham, roast beef, prosciutto, sharp cheddar cheese, hot olive salad, sliced tomatoes, toasted bread, olive oil, a dash of vinegar. We started with soup.

Scott said, “I’m worried about you.”

“Thanks.”

“This is more stress than any teacher needs.”

I said, “It’s not the kids, it’s the adults that drive me nuts. Murder. This is insane.”

Scott said, “Aside from the corpses, the part I don’t get is crowd after crowd rushing to you for help. Certainly, I’d pick you as the one to go to, and frankly they’re right, but it
doesn’t make sense. Did I get this right? The suckups and the old guard came for help, and the administration wants some kind of intervention.”

I said, “Maybe they could all just die. It would make my life easier.” The soup was great reheated. He’d been downloading recipes from the Food Network and trying them. Over the years he’d become a reasonably decent cook.

Scott said, “The administration put up with a lot of verbal abuse from you.”

“I guess I was kind of rude.”

“Kind of?”

“Okay, I was honest to a fault.”

He sighed. “The real question is,
why
did they put up with it?”

“They want something. They’re in on it? One of them is in on it and has the others duped? Some odd combination is going on there. I’m most pissed about Benson and Frecking. Those two assholes are going to pay.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Talk to them.”

“That doesn’t sound lethal.”

“How the hell do people just lie like that?”

“They did. They aren’t the first ones. They won’t be the last. They’re desperate.”

“I thought that closeted stuff was on its way out.”

“Less so than we thought, I guess. Although the lies in this case might have more to do with that Benson guy being married. Two-timing, gay or straight, does have a way of making a guy reticent.”

“Yeah, well, their butts are going to be in a sling.”

“Will they be fired?”

“I’m not sure how the cops are going to handle it. I don’t know if they’ll tell the administrators. I don’t think the making out had anything to do with the murder. The cops aren’t
required to tell the administrators anything about their investigation. It might depend on how well the administrators know the cops.”

“They didn’t seem to. They came to you for help.”

“I don’t know.” I bit into the sandwich, thick with condiments. I dipped one end into a small bowl of hot olive salad to absorb some of the oil, took another bite, then grabbed a spoon to pick up some of the olives. Comfort food.

After I finished chewing, I said, “What I don’t get is why Peter Higden is dead. That makes no sense. Of course, the first murder already made no sense.”

“And what was he doing under your car?”

“Not much.”

“That is a very old joke.” “And not a very good one.”

More chewing and almost a smile. Another swallow, more soup, some spicy olives. I said, “Two suckups die. The most logical suspicion has to rest on the old guard.”

“Did you see Jourdan again after you two talked?”

“No. The cops will have to be around again in the morning. By the time we left almost everybody was gone, and it was late. They can’t very well roust everybody out of bed in the middle of the night.”

“Gault and Vulmea?” Scott said. “I wouldn’t put it past them. They seemed to be willing to push efficiency to the point of tediousness.”

“We’ll have cops swarming around the school tomorrow. At least it’s a teachers’ institute day so there won’t be any kids.”

“Who benefits from those two dying?” Scott asked.

“I’m not sure anybody does. The old guard cannot be assured of nonsuckups being hired. In fact, it would be the other way around. A younger teacher might be appointed to fill Eberson’s position, but murder for such a nothing job? I
can’t see how anyone would benefit. Certainly, it’s not someone who’s obvious.”

Scott said, “If it was, there wouldn’t be a mystery.”

“Don’t be snarky. It’s obvious to the killer. Not to us.”

“One killer?” Scott asked.

“Got to be,” I said. “Two dead bodies and it happens to be coincidental? The first one is obviously murder. You don’t cram an eraser down somebody’s throat accidentally.”

“It had to be somebody strong,” Scott said.

“Presumably. Or at least someone who surprised her. Before she realized what was happening, it was too late.”

“Or he hit her first, then crammed it in.”

“Or she, let’s not discriminate. Lots of women in the department. The second one could have been explained as an accident up to the point where the body was under my car.”

“Maybe it was a hit and run,” he said. “It could have been thrown from where it was hit and landed there.”

“More likely someone was trying to frame me and dragged it there. Then Benson and Frecking lying. That strikes me as at least partly a frame-up.” I shrugged. “I’m not sure what this all means.”

“The police didn’t say who they believed, you or those two guys.”

“I was lucky Frank Rohde called and that our lawyer showed up.”

“What are you going to do tomorrow?”

“I’m going to talk to Benson and Frecking. If I believed in beating the shit out of lying fucking assholes, they’d be at the top of my list.”

“A not unreasonable thought, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Nor would our attorney.”

“I suppose not.”

14