Are You Nuts? (17 page)

I tried sitting at my desk. No tacks on the chair. I leaned my elbows on the desk. It crashed to the floor. If this was a comedy sketch, this would be the funny part. I wasn't laughing. Papers covered the floor past the first row of student desks. My coffee cup had spilled its cold contents on a stack of computer disks. While I fumed, I began cleaning the mess.

Moments later the door burst open. It was Kurt.

“Somebody said there was a terrible noise down here.” He pointed to the desk. “What is that?”

I held up one of the legs. It had been sawed off and replaced under the desk, as had the other three.

Kurt chuckled.

I still wasn't up to the humor of the situation. Kurt, seeing my displeasure, tried to stifle his mirth. He helped me pick up the papers that had scattered when the desk fell. I checked the drawers. They were empty. I no longer had tape, grading pencils, thumbtacks, paper clips, masking tape, overhead markers, and a hundred other little items.

“I've been cleaned out.”

He came and looked over my shoulder. Together, we did a careful examination of the room. Hidden in the bottom of a storage cabinet was a pile of all the materials from the desk.

“It's a joke,” Kurt said.

“Why would somebody be doing this? It's past the point of silly harassment. Mixing it in with death and destruction is poor timing at best.”

“Have you found out anything that would clear Meg?”

I sat at my desk and began replacing all the items in their proper spots. I wasn't going to waste my time trying to get the police to take fingerprints off them. Finding usable prints would be unlikely. They had murder to deal with. Who cared about practical jokes? I did, and I was tired of it. I wasn't sure what the point was of replacing this junk in a broken desk. Perhaps it was reassuring to have stuff in its normal place.

I answered Kurt's questions about the investigation. After I finished, he said, “Your buddy Beatrix cornered me again.”

“Can't we just take her out and shoot her?”

“She keeps things interesting.”

“Beatrix seems to have outdone any person in history for duplicity.” I told him about her getting concessions from both candidates.

“Amazing. I didn't imagine Beatrix had it in her. I knew she was stupid, but boldly stupid. I am impressed.”

“Carolyn was trying to work the candidates and they her. Jerome and Seth were truly desperate.” I filled him in on that part of the conversation.

When I finished, he said, “I had more hopes for Carolyn. That seems faintly unethical.”

“I thought it was a little out of the ordinary. Then there's the Trevor Thompson mess. The poor guy is scared out of his mind about losing his job. He either needs to find a bigger closet or switch professions. He'd promise either Jerome or Seth his support for guarantees about his job.”

“There are no such guarantees.”

“We know that. He didn't. What is going to happen with the election?”

“I talked to the local office. They left it up to us. For a while I was thinking of making it a hereditary monarchy, but I heard some kindergarten teachers are planning a coup d'état and are going to declare a dictatorship.”

“I can hear tanks rumbling in the streets.”

“I wouldn't mess with a bunch of kindergarten teachers. Anybody who can deal with five- or six-year-olds on a daily basis is tougher than anybody I know on this planet. So who killed Jerome and Belutha?”

“Somebody connected these people back in the past. Everybody, except for Trevor, fits in. I have lots of information, but it is not complete. If it came from Lydia Marquez, I've assumed all along it was distorted. Now I don't know if I should have believed any of it.”

“Would anyone know the total connection?”

“I'm not sure. Normally, I'd try Meg, but I haven't been able to talk to her. What can you tell me about this Beorn Quigley?”

“He was one of the assistant coaches on the football team for a few years. While I was athletic director, I recommended to the administration that he be dropped.”

“Why?”

“He began trying to run everything as if it were a marine boot camp. Calisthenics were turned into an endurance contest. I think the boys were afraid of him. Fear as a motivation on the athletic field has lost some of its cachet in the last few years.”

“What kind of teacher is he?”

“He's got a couple shop classes. I've never heard of any complaints from him or about him from anybody. He got bent out of shape at the administration when he lost the coaching job. He calmed down some when I told him I was the one who recommended he be let go.”

“What did he do when you told him that?”

“Mostly he looked kind of confused and lost. At one point he did vow to run against me in the next union election. He never did. Too lazy? He got over it? He's just an all-around mope? I don't know.”

“The administration ever say anything to you about him?”

“No. I know he worked in the district as a custodian during the summer for a few years. His family has that feed-store business, but he didn't work there that I know of until you told me.”

“He was a custodian. He could have had keys or certainly access to them.”

“Possible.”

“I want to talk to him again.”

 

I found Quigley in the shop area. He was sharpening saws. He gazed at me. If it weren't for his face, he'd be put in a calendar for leather and butch men. He had a mature/muscular/sexy look. However, I would have voted against the tattoos on his forearms.

He nodded a greeting and picked up another saw and began to hone the edge.

“I'd like to ask you a few questions.”

“Okay.”

He continued sharpening. I waited for the loud grating noise to halt for a moment, then asked, “Could you stop that a minute?”

He put the saw down next to him on a bench. The shop area was basically a large garage. One entire section was for car repairs. Each semester they got a used-car business in the community to donate a wreck that the classes would spend the semester taking apart and putting back together. The shop teachers got to use any profit from the sale of the cars to buy more tools for the department. Furnaces for the school took up another quarter of the room. Immediately around Beorn and me were wooden tables with vises, saws, hammers, and other tools scattered about. On the walls were hooks and nails with the outlines of tools to show which piece of equipment went where.

Beorn's gray steel-rimmed glasses glinted in the fluorescent lights. I noticed his hands were extraordinarily large. Plenty big enough to grasp a large encyclopedia. His hands had streaks of oil on them, and they glinted with tiny shards of metal from the saw sharpening. Next to him was a pair of gloves.

I said, “I heard you were a custodian in the district for several summers.”

“That why you came down here to talk to me, to discuss jobs? I doubt it. Just say whatever it is you've got to say and be done with it.”

“The murders had to be done by somebody with access to the schools. As a custodian you'd have had a chance to handle keys. You could have made duplicates or kept a set, or you could have found ways to circumvent the security system.”

“Not in the new building.”

“Aren't you scheduled to be teaching over there?”

“All the shop teachers in the district rotate. I take a few classes that don't fit into other schedules. I got one here and two there. Depends on your specialty. They don't give us keys or instruction manuals for disarming the alarm system because we're going to have classes over there. You think I killed those two?”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Where were you last night?”

“With a friend.”

“All night?”

“From eight in the evening on.”

“Do you have keys to this building?”

“No.”

“I was told your family didn't get along with the Marquezes and the Muffins.”

“That was my parents.”

“But it must have affected you.”

“Why must it have affected me?”

“Because then you would know details that would fill in some of the things I was missing about the background of all the people involved.”

He almost smiled. “My mother and father died in their early sixties. Of natural causes. My father had a stroke. They were very involved in the community. My dad ran for mayor years ago and lost the election. I think Lydia Marquez was part of the reason he lost.”

When I moved to town, I wasn't all that interested in the local politics of River's Edge. I spent most of my time running to Chicago working with various gay organizations on equal rights bills in the Chicago city council and the Illinois state legislature.

“How was she part of it?”

“It was more than working in a campaign. She was younger then, but her tactics were the same. Nowadays, mostly, I happen to agree with her politics. Back then Lydia was from a faction we didn't want to take control. My father and his friends had been in charge for a long time. River's Edge was like their perfect little small-town America. It didn't make any difference that housing subdivisions were beginning to hem the town in on every side. This was utopia. Lydia was part of the faction who were outsiders who didn't want to keep it like it had been when we were growing up. Look what's happened since they gained control. Growth is out of hand. No planning seems to go into anything. Houses are built too densely together. The streets can no longer handle the traffic. Have you tried to get into Orland Park anytime on a Saturday?”

“You murdered them because traffic is bad?”

“I guess you must enjoy making sarcastic comments, but do you really think they help you get anywhere? You play all these put-down games, but nobody likes it.”

“Who's nobody?”

“I don't.”

He picked up a saw and began testing the edge.

“And is picking up that saw supposed to be some kind of threat? Am I supposed to be impressed with how tough you are and stop asking questions because you can rub your thumb over a sharpened blade?”

“No, actually, I'd just picked it up at random. It wasn't meant as a threat.” But he didn't put it down. “What did you expect me to do? Saw you to death?”

“I'd put that crack in the sarcasm end of the spectrum.”

“I'm taking lessons from you.”

“What happened with the election with your dad?”

“People were angry. People's feelings were hurt. My father never forgave them for the lies they told.”

“Lies?”

“That's how they won the election. They made up stuff about my dad. It was like a national election. Rumors went around that he was unfaithful to my mother. My dad was no saint, but he never cheated on my mother. There were rumors started that he was secretly meeting with developers and was going to sell out the community. Of course, when their side won, they couldn't get to the developers soon enough to start plowing under everything this community had ever been.”

“You must be really angry at Lydia and Belutha and Jerome.”

“Yes.”

“But how could you come to the meeting and make those statements that make you sound like a Nazi?”

“I'm very conservative. I can have those beliefs. I agree with Ms. Marquez, unfortunately. I didn't vote for her in the election, but I voted for the other three candidates. They represented changes I think should be made in this district.”

Trevor Thompson walked in. He and Beorn exchanged a look. I glanced at Beorn's ring finger. No little band of gold.

“I'll be through in a minute,” Beorn said.

“What's going on here?” I asked.

“Don't talk to him,” Trevor said.

Secrets and closets, oh my. “You two know each other?”

Beorn answered, “Trevor and I hang out together sometimes.”

“You're gay?” I asked Beorn.

He shrugged.

“Don't talk to him,” Trevor said.

“Will you cut that out,” I said. “I want to find out what the hell is going on here.”

“Get used to disappointment,” Beorn said. “I don't parade my private life in front of anyone. I don't think you should be parading your sexuality in front of everyone. If you kept it quiet, I wouldn't mind.”

While Beorn put away all the saws, Trevor stood next to the door. I got no more information about past history from Beorn.

I decided it was time for a Meg confrontation. She'd been downright nasty. She had answers I needed to have.

I called Scott. I told him I'd be home after talking to Meg. He wished me good luck. Outdoors, the break from the summer humidity continued. The refreshing breeze was from the north. The humidity had been dropping all day. If you didn't have a classroom that faced south or west, you might be able to get through the day tomorrow.

My truck was fine. I drove to Meg's. She'd lived in Frankfort for a short while, but moved back to River's Edge a few years ago.

I saw her car in the driveway. She answered the door. She was dressed in a purple sweat suit and sneakers. I got a look that would have withered the soul of the worst student discipline problem.

“I'd like to talk, Meg. It's important. You know it is too.”

She moved away from the door. She left it open but did not invite me in. I followed her.

We stood in the middle of her living room.

I began, “I don't understand what it is I have done so wrong that has made you so angry.”

“You silly twit. Haven't you figured it out? I did bash Jerome with that book.”

“Oh.” I sat down. “You killed him?”

“Yep.”

“Then why did you hide that second book in my room?”

“I didn't. The police mentioned it, but it made no sense to me. I refused to answer their questions, so they refused to give me any explanations. I like your lawyer and his advice. What book?”

“There was another copy of
Smith's Comprehensive Encyclopedia
in the back of one of my cabinets with blood and everything. It had no fingerprints on it except for mine. I inadvertently touched it when I found it.”

She sat down. “How odd.”

“What happened that night?”

She gazed out the front window at the flowers and shrubs she'd planted around her house. I let the silence go beyond the uncomfortable. She didn't seem to notice.

“I didn't plan to kill him. It just happened. He wanted to make me convince you to support him for union president. He threatened me.”

“With what?”

“In the first district I worked in the teachers called a strike. I crossed the picket line. That may not be a tragedy, but I've always been ashamed of it.”

“Would you really bend to that kind of threat?”

“I did indeed refuse to bend to that kind of threat. He got vicious and mean—called me a scab. I've always felt ghastly about my behavior then. It's why I quit that district and why I've been so pro-union since. I was trying to make up for it. At any rate, he and I were both out of control. Much worse than in the meeting. Finally, he picked up a book and threw it at me.”

“Then it was self-defense.”

“No, I ducked and laughed at him. He screamed at me at the top of his lungs and told me I'd be sorry. He'd made me so angry that when he turned his back, I picked up the first book that came to hand. I took a running start and smashed him one from behind.”

“How could that be the first book? The body was halfway around to the other side of the room.”

“That was so odd, and now you tell me about this other book.” She shook her head.

“Belutha was bashed with another volume of the same encyclopedia.”

She smiled briefly. “How ironic.”

“I heard a rumor you were at school last night.”

“Checking everything?” Her smile was cool. “I was home. Alone.”

I cleared my throat. “I don't get something. How did he get to that odd corner of the room? You said you ran after him. Did you chase him?”

“No. He walked past the checkout desk. I hit him there.”

“There was no blood near the checkout desk.”

“I know.”

“Meg, what's going on?”

“I'm not sure why I'm telling you. Maybe I'm just tired of holding in the truth. I couldn't tell the police I hit him—that stupid I'm not. After I bashed him, I tried to revive him but without success. I remember kneeling next to him listening to the quiet. I remember hearing the clock over the checkout desk tick and thinking about my mother's funeral. Sort of odd, but I wasn't thinking clearly at that instant. Then I ran to the nearest washroom to get some water to try and revive him. He was breathing when I left. When I got to the washroom, I didn't have a cup with me to carry any water. I had to run to the teachers' lounge to get something to hold water. I couldn't have been gone more than five minutes. By the time I got back the body had moved.

“I figured maybe he'd awakened on his own and had simply got up and left to find the police to press an assault charge. I was sure he would.

“That's when I noticed the books on the floor. I walked around the room and there was his body. The book I'd hit him with was next to him. He was dead. I noticed a few dark smears that I realized must be blood. I hadn't seen any when I hit him. I thought I might have just missed the blood the first time. There wasn't all that much. I thought it was odd, but I figured maybe he recovered long enough to stagger around the room, probably fallen again, and hit his head on something. Even if that was true, I'd still be implicated for the initial hit.”

“Had you really forgotten your purse?”

“Actually, yes. I also had a meeting set up with him. No one was supposed to know about it. That was Jerome: if you have a choice, always tell a secret.

“I thought it was kind of odd, but I presumed I killed him. That's why I didn't want you investigating. I was afraid you'd figure it out. Now, I just out and out told you. I can't imagine why you'd want to still be a friend or why you'd want to investigate the murder.”

“Maybe you didn't kill him.”

She gazed at me for a brief moment, then smiled. “That's kind of you to be loyal. I guess I shouldn't have snapped at you at the courthouse, but really, what choice did I have? You were going to stick your nose in it and make it worse. If by some miracle I didn't kill him, I realized that I was capable of harming another human being. I always thought of myself as a rational, thoughtful person if not an outright pacifist. How could I be driven to such an extreme?”

“He must have made you very angry.”

“He kept denying reality. That drives me bonkers. Trust me. When people are willfully stupid, I get loony.”

“Willful stupidity as a felony offense. Works for me.”

I actually got a small smile out of her.

“Listen, Meg. It's not easy to think of yourself in a different light. Violence can be frightening. It may not be easy to accept, but you need to give yourself time. We're all capable of it, even if we don't want to face it. You also need to think right now. Certainly, you hit him and knocked him out. You don't remember blood from that first time. Maybe there wasn't any. Maybe someone came in and finished the job.”

“I can never prove that.”

“I've found out that there are a lot of secrets that all these people have been harboring.”

“Dead is dead. Down is down.”

“Belutha said she saw you in the hall. I hadn't heard you left before the end of the meeting.”

“Where was I going and for what?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Just trying to cool off and do some deep breathing. I know that doesn't sound dramatic, but it's true.”

“How did your purse get next to the body?”

“I was in such shock, I thought I must have put it there.”

“But it was lost. How could you have?”

“I guess I just must have.”

“I've got another question. How did the book get next to him?”

“What?”

“When you hit him, where did you put the book?”

“I'm not sure.” She thought a minute. “I was in such shock, I don't remember. I must have just put it down on the counter.”

“When you came back with the water, you didn't pick up the book?”

“No.”

“Try this instead, Meg. You bash Jerome. You run off. You were gone, what, five minutes?”

“At most.”

“Meanwhile, the killer comes in. Moves the body.”

“Why?”

“I don't know yet. The body is moved for whatever reason. The killer must have been watching and listening from behind the stacks or in the hall. Using gloves or only touching the edges of the book, he or she bashes him again. This time blood is drawn. The murderer takes your purse and puts it next to the body to add weight to the prints you have left on the book.”

“Why put that book in your room?”

“That book in my room is more proof you didn't do it. The killer wanted to add me as a suspect. You wouldn't implicate someone else in something you did. It had to be pure accident that the killer happened upon your quarrel.”

“Serendipitous murder? I guess it's possible. I didn't think I'd kill somebody. Why do you think I wouldn't try and implicate someone else?”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“If you wanted to implicate me, you'd have put both books in my room or wiped one off completely and left only the one in my room. The killer wanted to implicate both of us. So, the killer takes another book and wipes off the prints and bashes him again. He or she had to be planning on the spur of the moment. Under those circumstances, it's easy to screw up.”

“Why wipe off the prints?”

“So that I would be implicated as well. The killer couldn't put my prints on it. Whoever it was had to simply eradicate all of them.”

“That's an awful lot to do in a short period of time.”

“A person drags or carries the body to the back. The killer took the book with your prints on it to finish the job.”

“And gets another book? And does it again? And risks capture?”

“Maybe it was an afterthought.”

“And why drag the body to the back?”

“To avoid being discovered? If the killer heard someone come in while he or she was dragging the body, it would be easy enough to plausibly say they were trying to revive him. Jerome gets bonked a second time. Was the part where you told the cops you called 911 true?”

“I called after I found him the second time.”

“Did you examine the rest of the library?”

“No.”

“Maybe the killer was in there while you examined him.”

She shuddered.

“Or maybe he or she was there all along. Or maybe you simply left too soon. The killer didn't have time. It is possible you really misplaced the purse and the killer found it or was bringing it back and finding Jerome out cold changed everything forever. Adding the purse would point to your guilt.”

“That sure worked. How did the killer know I wouldn't just stay there or even begin to search the library? I could have stayed put or found a custodian right outside the door. The killer would have been trapped.”

“Maybe the killer was ready to bash you as well. Not a lot of time to plan and think, if it was a crime of passion.”

“Mine was.”

“While you were with the body, you were in danger. Whoever it was waited for you to leave both times. Maybe the second time was when the killer decided to try and implicate me as well. If the murderer was improvising, then he or she could have been making all kinds of mistakes. We don't know yet that the cops aren't going to try and pin part of this on me.”

“Why would you murder Jerome?”

“General principles? He was too stupid to live?”

She actually smiled. “I hadn't thought there was a possibility that I wasn't the killer. Thank you for giving an old friend some hopes. It's most kind, but it is useless.”

“Why?”

“Even if I didn't kill him, I'm going to prosecuted for assault.”

“By whom? Your victim is dead. He's not going to care. All we have to do is find the real killer.”

“I don't have that kind of energy. The theories you're expounding are just a little too unbelievable. If you try them on the police, they'll laugh you out of the station. Maybe even try and include you in as an accomplice. I wouldn't bother, Tom. I know what I did.

“When Todd drove me home, he didn't ask all kinds of silly questions, which I couldn't have answered then anyway. I think I'm going to call him and tell him I'm prepared to plead guilty. It would be too humiliating to go through a trial. I'll take my punishment. If I received the death penalty, I'd probably die of old age before they got around to executing me.”

“I think it's a little premature to pick out the correct execution attire. Even then, the murder wasn't premeditated. You'll be around for quite a while. There is more to this than either one of us knows so far. I'm going to get to the bottom of it. You should call Todd and tell him all this.”

“I will.”

“I'm going to keep investigating. What I'm trying to find out is what is this big secret or secrets that people are dancing around.”

“There is another secret I have.”

I wasn't eager to hear more confessions. I could barely handle what I'd heard so far, but I prepared myself to listen.

“I was part of the problem with the Quigleys.”

“Beorn told me that his dad died of natural causes.”

“I was young and foolish, perhaps half his age. He was prominent in the community, the head of the school board. He got me my first job here. We had an affair. I thought we were so discreet. We had our tryst in Chicago, when the Conrad Hilton was still the Conrad Hilton, not whatever it is today. It was bliss, but it ended after our first real date. What happened was an election. His opposition threatened to tell about us. They wanted him to withdraw. It would have meant divorce and disgrace. He was a pillar of the community when the scandal broke and he couldn't take it. The first I knew about it was in the papers. I was married at the time.”

Old Meg had a secret affair as a young adult. Hidden fires indeed. That Beorn remembered it differently, I didn't doubt.