Are You Nuts? (6 page)

She said, “I don't know how anyone could think Meg did it. She is one of the nicest people around here. They've got the wrong person.”

“I agree. How well did you know Jerome?”

“Each year, as with you, we talked about kids in his classes. We worked closely together for years.” She sniffed again. “I can't think about him. I need to immerse myself in work. Do you have a few minutes? We've got to discuss these seniors that are going to be in your remedial reading class.”

We did a student analysis every year before school started. These kids would have needs starting the first day of school, but I was anxious to do everything I could to help Meg. I told Celia this as gently as I knew how.

But she was persistent. “I have the class lists,” she said. “If not now, when?”

Celia was a good person, and if a few minutes of rational work would help her, I could spare it. As we walked to her room, I told her about parents asking for kids to be taken out of my classes.

“You're so good with these kids. It would be a shame for these children not to have you for a teacher.”

“I guess some of their parents don't see it that way.”

“It's their loss. Let's presume the best. You're going to teach and have kids in class.”

We spent thirty minutes examining the list of kids. When we finished, I asked, “Were you at the PTA meeting last night?”

“No. I had no business with the PTA last night. I've got a million kids to get ready for. I have to have daily plans for all of them. They've got to be in order for when school starts.” She dabbed a tissue on her eyes again. “You know, I talked to Jerome as he was leaving school yesterday.”

“Do you remember if he said anything significant?”

“He said he had a lot of people to see and that he felt obligated to attend the meeting. I thought about going. Maybe if I'd gone, Jerome would still be alive.”

“Do you know his wife?”

“She's a good woman. They loved each other.”

“Did you ever meet his kids?”

“No.” She started to sniffle again. I tried to say some comforting words. When I left, she was pulling out a stack of forms.

I trudged down to my classroom. I wanted a few minutes to think and then begin my plan of attack. When I opened my classroom door, I stopped. Something was different. I walked farther into the room. Papers from yesterday still littered the desks and tables. They seemed to be in the same order I had left them. It was remotely possible that the janitors had been in to sweep up. I checked the floor. Stray bits of packing material still clung to the tiles. Even with the marginally competent crew we had, they would have gotten these scraps with the most perfunctory cleaning. The custodians hadn't been in.

I sat in the chair behind my desk and carefully looked at each item in my view. Then it struck me. Yesterday, all the textbooks resting flat on their sides on the shelves had had the open end facing toward the door. Now they all faced the window. What earthly purpose did it serve to change the books? I took several off each shelf and looked behind them. Nothing.

I shrugged off the feeling of uneasiness. Before I left, I checked everything else carefully. The computer was intact and undisturbed. I was most concerned about my union files. I take notes at every meeting I have as union building representative. As grievance person, I'd kept a file on every complaint I'd received. The originals of all these were at home, but I kept copies of everything in school. I'd lost several years' worth of originals in my fire. None of the cabinets in this old section had locks that locked securely. My classroom doors, like the library's, were easy enough to break into with any kind of hard edge.

I systematically checked all the files. I thought several might have been tampered with. I don't memorize every piece of paper that goes into each folder, but I do have a system. I always save my notes from each time I talk to a teacher or administrator in chronological order. In several folders these were slightly out of order. One of these was Beatrix's. Another a first-year teacher who couldn't control her classes. I couldn't swear in court that the problem wasn't simply that I had misfiled these.

I wasn't sure what the new placement of the textbooks or the disturbed files meant, but I was determined to get to the bottom of both problems. I also needed to find out if they were connected to the missing plan book yesterday.

I drove to Zachary Taylor Elementary School to find Seth O'Brien, author of the nasty diatribe. I found him sitting at his desk, writing on a sheet of legal-size paper. He wore baggy shorts and a T-shirt that reached to midthigh. His room was decorated with cheery, bright posters of cuddly animals, and the alphabet marched across the top of the front of the room—white letters on a green background. One bulletin board had a smiling Mr. and Ms. Times-Tables. He looked up as I walked in.

I said, “I saw your flyer about the election.” I held it up in my hand. “What did you do, talk to me then run to your computer? You might have waited. I hadn't talked to your opponent yet.”

“I knew you weren't going to support me. I saw no reason to wait. I put the notes in the high school mailboxes last night, before the meeting, and in the elementary schools early this morning. I thought of taking them out of the mailboxes after I heard about last night's unfortunate incident, but it was too late by then. People had started to read them. Anyway, they aren't about Jerome.”

“You don't think it was a little harsh?”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I don't like your tone. You don't sound very professional. Why are you taking this so personally?”

“You print and distribute a personal attack on me, and you accuse me of being unprofessional? You don't expect me to take a personal attack personally? Are you nuts?”

“This is just the kind of thing I was talking about. You're being much too confrontational. So has Kurt and the union.”

“You mean, you get to say something outrageous, untrue, and totally stupid, but if I say anything, I'm confrontational? Do you have the slightest logic circuit in your brain?”

“Why should I bother to fight with you? I'm going to win the election now.”

“How convenient for you.”

“How dare you? The police are at the high school. They're trying to get everyone who was at last night's meeting rounded up to interrogate. If I hadn't been running for union president, I wouldn't have been involved in any of this. I wish I hadn't gone to the meeting last night. I didn't ask for any of this.”

“You don't sound heartbroken about Jerome's death.”

“It's a horrible thing. How can you presume I'm not upset about his death? I taught in the same district as he.”

“I thought you said you weren't going to the meeting.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Where were you after the meeting last night?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What time did you leave? Did anybody see you go?”

“Did I miss something? Are you on the River's Edge Police Department?”

“Not yet.”

“Nor will you ever be.”

“My friend is accused of murder.”

“You want to be an amateur sleuth? Please, leave that Jessica Fletcher crap alone. I'm not answering any of your questions.”

An unpleasant impasse if I ever heard one.

He got up from his desk and walked toward the door.

“You're just walking out?”

“I'm going to the bathroom.”

“In the middle of a conversation?”

He simply left.

I hunted down the new head custodian in the district, Robert Tusher. He was a short, roly-poly man. All the custodians wore brown uniform pants with a brown work shirt. Probably from the same company that made Frank Murphy's suits. I asked if anybody had been in my room this morning.

“You're the guy from TV talk shows with the baseball player?”

“Yeah.”

“Your room in the west wing of the old high school?”

“Yes.”

He thought a minute. “Wasn't supposed to be anybody in there. Except for a couple community service kids, we were all over at the new school getting it ready for the big meeting Friday. We're setting up tables and chairs in all kinds of different places. Those community service kids don't do the slightest thing more than what they are told. You've got to watch them every minute.”

I believed that.

He gave me more details than I needed for the next few minutes about opening the new building, difficulties with teenagers on probation, and impossible teachers. I let him talk. It's always a bright idea to keep on the good side of a custodian. After the school secretaries, they are the most powerful people in a school. He finished, “Didn't you have some kind of trouble yesterday afternoon?”

“You heard about that?”

“My staff has to report any problems to me at the end of the day. One of the kids said you talked to him.”

A snarling but loquacious teenager. I asked, “Which of your people were on duty last night?”

“I heard Meg Swarthmore is a friend of yours. You worried about her being accused of murder?”

“Yeah.”

“I already talked to the cops. They've cleared my people. They were in each other's presence the whole night.”

“They went to the john together?” I asked.

“My folks vouch for each other. Do you have somebody to give you an alibi?”

“I was home.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“I was with my wife. Sounds like you've got more to worry about than I do.” He walked away.

Working with the list I had gotten from Carolyn, I returned to the high school and went in search of people to question.

First, I stopped outside the library. The light inside came from several skylights they'd installed in the roof in the past year. Warm sunlight flooded the room. Police barrier tape covered all the entrances. I had to do all my observing from the doors. I could see nothing of significance from my vantage point.

At the entrance to the old wing, I saw a few people sitting in folding chairs outside the science office. These must be people waiting to be interviewed. A young cop near the door said to me, “Can I help you, sir?”

“I wanted to talk to a few people.”

“Were you at the PTA meeting last night?”

“No.”

“Then if you could leave, sir, that would be a help to the police.”

There was no point in crossing her. I retreated. The school was starting to heat up in all its unair-conditioned splendor. I supposed I could simply wait around the corner for people to come by.

Lydia Marquez came trundling down the corridor toward me. Not often in our lives do we get to see evil incarnate walking toward us. Lydia was probably in her early forties. She did not have horns, a tail, and cloven feet. She was in a sleeveless rayon shirt that revealed mounds of flesh best left covered. If the overstuffed-sausage-casing look ever became fashion law, she'd certainly dwarf the competition. Her jeans were baggy enough to cover the bulges of the back end of a rhinoceros. The pant legs billowed around her, making her resemble somewhat a tent on legs. Her fat butt jutted out behind her. She had a downcast look. Her look said even if a busload of comedians showed up at her house, she'd be too tired to laugh. If there was a street, I'd have walked across it to avoid her.

I didn't have to worry about whether to approach her or not. Once she made eye contact with me, she marched over and planted herself directly in front of me.

She introduced herself, then said, “I've heard so much about you, but then who in the district hasn't?”

“I'd rather be loved than famous. Didn't somebody say that?”

“There's something I don't understand about you.”

“What's that?”

“What I don't get is if all the running around and arguing and fighting is all worth it.”

“It's worth it for Meg. We're more than good friends.”

“No, I meant with all these television shows. It certainly can't be fun.”

“I don't define my life by doing only that which is fun.”

“Maybe I didn't say that well. There's got to have been an enormous emotional toll on you. Is it worth it? Is the price you're paying in emotional health, psychic strength, loss of sleep, physical and emotional exhaustion, worth what you are getting out of it?”

This was almost more nasty than a melodramatic confrontation. At least then I could make sarcastic and witty cracks while she prattled on like an imbecile. Now she was coming across almost as someone who cared that I lived and breathed. Now I was being melodramatic.

She concluded, “For a choice you made, you are suffering a great deal.”

“The choice I'm making is to stand up to people like you.”

“You know, you really aren't very important.”

“Pardon me?”

“You may have been on television, and you may have tenure, but in the larger scheme of things, you aren't very significant.”

“How kind of you to point that out to me.”

“Retribution will be exacted.”

“By whom? You? For what?”

“I may not be the instrument. God will decide.”

“How nice for him or her.”

“Blasphemer.”

“I guess.”

She pointed a finger with a large turquoise ring on it at me. “I'm a school board member here. You have to treat me with respect.”

“No, I don't. Respect isn't something just conferred on someone because they get a few more votes than someone else. Just think Richard Nixon, and you'll get the point.”

Her jaw twisted at an odd angle. A vein in her forehead seemed about ready to pop. I wondered if causing someone to have a stroke was actionable. While she was deciding whether to explode or not, I asked, “What time did you leave the meeting last night?”

She began walking away. “You'll be sorry.”

This was the second person in less than an hour to just up and leave. I wondered if this was the new “mature person's response” to stress. Certainly I could put her in the lifelong-enemy category.

In the teachers' lounge, I found two people, heads together and laughing hysterically. When I walked in, they greeted me warmly.

Rachel Seebach, a member of the English department, said, “You should have been at the meeting last night. I'd like to have bust a gut laughing. Meg was hysterical.”

“You were both at the meeting?”

They nodded.

Rachel was in her midtwenties. She wore casual shorts and a Harvard University T-shirt. From the grime and dust on her hands, I presumed she'd been unpacking textbooks in her room. Rachel was fun to sit next to at department meetings. She had plenty of sarcastic comments to share under her breath. The funniest times were when she would make a joke, I would laugh, and she would sit stony-faced as if she had nothing to do with my roaring mirth.

I said, “Meg's been arrested for murder.”

“We know,” Rachel said. “That's part of what is so funny. I can maybe picture Meg slowly reading someone to death, but not bopping them over the head.”

“Everybody knows how it happened?”

“I heard it was the
Oxford English Dictionary
. The abridged, one-volume edition.” This comment was from Jim Geraghty, another member of the department. A good-looking man, he spent a great deal of time campaigning to be English department chair. He was pleasant enough and usually on my side in interdepartmental squabbles.

“You guys aren't sorry Jerome's dead?”

“Are you?” Jim asked.

“I worked with him a few times with the union.”

“I'm sad about him dying,” Rachel said, “but it's like at a wake, especially when you didn't know the person. Laughter helps sometimes, and Meg was so funny last night.”

I put some quarters in the pop machine, got a soda, and sat down at their table.

I said, “I wish I'd been there. What happened?”

“Well,” Rachel began, “first one of those religious-right people got up and said we should start the meeting with a prayer and saying the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Jim continued, “Louis Johnson just gave a weak smile and said he guessed it would be okay. Before anybody could object or say something intelligent, there we all were standing up praying and pledging.”

“Louis is a waste of good breathable air,” Rachel said. “Before Amelia Gregory could get halfway through her opening statement, Lydia Marquez stood up and said she had a point of order. Poor old Louis never had a chance. Before long both sides were shouting to be heard. Carolyn Blackburn finally took control. That helped keep things sane, but it didn't keep people from saying some pretty nasty stuff.”

Jim put in, “While Meg was giving her talk at the lectern, one of them walked up with a Bible and waved it in front of her. All Meg said was, ‘It would help some if you were literate enough to read that.'”

“Did anyone see Jerome leave?”

“We've been trying to figure that out,” Jim said. “Each of us has been in to talk to the cops. They told us not to discuss it among ourselves, but this is the biggest thing to happen in the school in ages. We're curious too.”

“As near as we can figure,” Rachel said, “he left about the time the voting began.”

Jim nodded. He added, “We know for sure he didn't come back and wasn't there for the announcement of the results.”

“They talked about you a little,” Rachel said.

“That didn't get far,” Jim said. “They can't just take off after a teacher at some PTA meeting. A lot of the teachers lined up to talk after that. Their side could barely get a word in edgewise. We've got to protect our own.”

“Who left when?”

“Hard to remember,” Rachel said. “Louis Johnson announced the vote so he was there at the end. A lot of people were still around. There wasn't an organized exodus.”

I said, “The police must be keeping a huge chart on who was where when.”

“Maybe not,” Rachel said. “They've got their suspect. When they talked to me, they seemed to be more interested in confirming what they already knew. If I were you, I'd be suspicious of everyone.”

Jim said, “To save you the embarrassment of asking, Rachel and I left the meeting together. We stopped at Oleantha's Sports Bar in Orland to get something to eat. We left about midnight.”