Schooled in Murder (17 page)

“Schoolteachers?” Meg said. “Hundreds for sure. Most likely not thousands. Certainly not millions. At least, not that I was told. Besides the athletic director, there were a couple of other coaches, plus Steven Frecking, and Higden.”

Scott said, “Can’t they get fired for that?”

“You’d get in trouble, sure,” I said. “But unless it was significant amounts of money or a mob-connected, people-getting-hurt thing, I don’t see them losing their jobs. Probably a letter in their file and a warning not to do it again.”

“But two people are dead,” Georgette said. “And it is something illegal. It could be part of a pattern.”

Meg said, “Eberson was not in the noon group. It was all male. What else I heard was that supposedly the ones at the table were participating in a scheme to double dip on athletic pay.”

I said, “I’ve heard rumors about that. Nobody actually ever complained or got in trouble.”

Meg said, “The word I have is they organized themselves pretty well.”

“How does that work?” Scott asked.

I said, “Say there are four football coaches. Maybe three stay on the field and one goes to another job at a gas station or fast-food restaurant. They rotate and still get full pay for coaching but are actually around for only three fourths of the time.”

“Nobody notices?” Scott asked.

Meg said, “They cover for each other. They’re buddies. They play poker every day. The problem is that they were afraid someone in their group was turning traitor.”

“And they didn’t know who?” I asked.

“Right,” Meg said.

I said, “And Peter was a suckup in our department, so maybe suspicion fell on him. Not enough for a guilty verdict, but a definite he’s-buddies-with-the-administration, I-wonder-what-the-son-of-a-bitch-is-up-to kind of way.”

Meg said, “Frecking was the youngest member of the group. They were suspicious of him, too. He’s bluff and studly and friendly, just like Peter, and he was a real athlete at his college as opposed to most of these overweight pretenders. He played in some minor Bowl game his senior year. He’s popular, but he’s the one they know the least.”

I said, “He’s petrified of coming out to them.”

Scott said, “For some people, popularity gives them all the more reason to be frightened. They fear losing their status, their reputation.”

I asked, “What would it benefit Peter to tell on his buddies about the double dipping or the gambling?”

Meg said, “I don’t know. Supposedly the guys had a fight one day this week. It’s another medium-confidence source. The games may have stopped.”

I said, “Maybe that would explain Peter being dead, although I’m not convinced, but that doesn’t account for Gracie Eberson being murdered.”

Meg said, “She was definitely not part of the group.”

Scott said, “We’re sure the two murders are connected?”

I said, “We can’t be sure of anything, but you don’t have two murders within hours of each other in the same school being a coincidence.”

“Wait,” Scott said, “was someone going to tell about the card games or the double dipping or both?”

“My source wasn’t sure. She was pretty angry.”

“Is this normal in a school?” Scott asked. “You guys sound like the teamsters except none of the bodies are missing. Yet.”

“Normal?” I asked. “You get petty jealousy everywhere. Workers fight, disagree. Why wasn’t somebody angry or at least offended about Higden being openly anti-Semitic?”

Meg said, “Nobody ever called him on it. Nobody mentioned homophobia either. The only other thing I got were accusations in the department about teachers stealing.”

“Stealing what?” Scott asked.

“Supplies, teachers’ manuals, old tests, just about anything that isn’t tied down. Peter claimed the woman who retired and had his room before him had stripped the place clean and left him nothing.”

I said, “Ah, that is so not true.” The last day Sandra Barkin had come to me. She was in her seventies and hadn’t been able to retire at a younger age. She’d stayed home to raise her kids and only started teaching in her forties. Then her husband had died. He’d been a freelance writer and had never made a lot, so his social security was negligible. She’d had to keep working. She was one of the feistiest of the old guard and had battled with those who she considered evil–up front and in their faces. Spandrel had hoped Barkin’s retiring
would let her run amok. Barkin had come to me that last day to say that she knew they would accuse her of stealing. She made Georgette and me come down to her classroom. She’d showed us every textbook, teacher’s manual, test, and all the remaining classroom supplies. Then she’d taken us out her classroom door, locked it behind us, and given the key to Georgette. She’d said, “They’ll accuse me. You know the truth.”

I told all this to Scott and Meg, and Georgette nodded her confirmation. Then I added, “I heard Peter accusing her. I said what I knew, and Jourdan and Morgan defended her. It was another point of conflict.”

Scott said, “It doesn’t sound very important.”

I said, “I don’t know. In a place where everybody is counting up the smallest slight to use in the next battle, you don’t know what’s going to set anybody off.”

Meg promised to keep listening. Georgette went back to the office. After a brief hug, Scott left.

23

I slipped into the back of my afternoon seminar, in which the members of the English department were supposed to learn yet another new grade book program. This one was to be implemented before January first. It was the third new program in four years. The administration kept buying the cheapest one. They never got the service contract or warranty that required the company to come in and train the teachers. The administration got what they paid for. We constantly had to learn new programs from scratch.

The new program was similar to the one I was using, but different enough for the company to charge thousands and thousands of dollars for the upgrade. Some of my colleagues insisted they’d never learn the new program. And it was a mess. I’d been doing my grades electronically for years. I didn’t mention that to a lot of people. But they knew. And some were jealous. They needed to get a life. One huge life. Judging themselves by what I was doing in my classroom was nuts.

Luci Gamboni had saved me a seat. She leaned over and whispered, “Are you all right?”

“I’ve been better,” I murmured back.

Spandrel walked up to me and said in a stage whisper, “You’re late.”

Schaven, Pinyon, and Milovec walked in.

I nodded toward them and said, “As are they.”

She frowned and drifted over toward the three even later comers.

The Advanced Grade Acquisition and Distribution Techniques Gradebook software had enough bells and whistles to cause a hard drive to have a seizure. It would allow parents to go online and see every grade their student got during the quarter by assignment. Some teachers were furious about that. They didn’t want parents to be able to see their grade books. I always gave parents a printout listing their kids’ assignments and grades. Silly me, wanting to give parents and kids precise, up-to-date information about what the child was learning in my classroom.

Spandrel mostly hovered near the suckups. They chatted and laughed during much of the presentation. The leader of the seminar walked past them several times and glared. It didn’t help.

About half an hour into it, Luci leaned over and said, “Is this right?”

I looked at a page filled with grades, student names, averages, point count. She tapped her finger near the bottom left of the screen. “I was practicing with last year’s grades. I made a copy so the original wouldn’t be messed up. Look at that.”

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking at.”

She pointed at the very bottom row. “That’s Fred Zileski’s final grade from last quarter last June. I know I gave him an F. He’s the first kid that’s flunked one of my classes in three years. They’ve got to work to flunk my class. Bochka the bitch, our idiot school board president, tried to get me to
change the grade. She got Graniento and Spandrel on my case. I refused. Somebody changed the grade.”

“Maybe the kids did it. They can hack into anything.”

“But this new program will be the first one to open grades to the Internet. Last year’s grades were only on the school network.”

“Kids can break into that.”

“Not into mine. I double protected it with a secret code. You taught me that. I did the same thing you do on your computer so the kids can’t sabotage it. No one knew the passwords and codes. No one except Spandrel. She had to have it to get into the program for when they printed out the grades. She had to be the one who changed the grades.”

I said, “That’s against the contract.”

We’d had that problem in the district before. Administrators wanting to increase graduation rates to look good on national statistics routinely went in and changed grades. The state of Illinois took extraordinary measures to keep the yearly statewide tests secret and sacrosanct prior to testing. That hadn’t stopped cheating. And Luci had certainly heard the rumor that Spandrel was feeding the suckups information so that the scores of the kids in their classes would be higher than those of the old guard. Another problem was that PE teachers were notorious for conniving to get grades for athletes changed. And with the No Child Left Behind bullshit, the problem of the accuracy of records was endemic.

Luci said, “I know Spandrel did it. No one else could have done it. I’m going to confront that bitch right now.”

“No,” I said.

“No? I’m going to fight this. This is an outrage.”

I said, “Yes, we’re going to fight this, I just don’t think this is the exact right moment for it.”

She looked uncertain. She leaned close. “What is going on?”

Graniento and Spandrel were drifting in our direction. I said, “Let’s discuss it with Teresa Merton on Monday. You aren’t the first one to complain, but you may be among the first to be able to prove it. Print out what you’ve got there.”

Graniento and Spandrel were upon us. Luci tapped my computer screen. “Are you sure that’s what I need to do next?”

I was at a command page and moved my mouse to explain the next step in the new program.

24