Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 06 - Whiskey and Soda (14 page)

“If you’re asking me whether Mark and George got along, the answer is yes. George was instrumental in hiring Mark. After having been headmaster himself for fifteen years, he was ready to step down, not retire but rather remove himself from the day-to-day running of the school. Oh, there was pressure from the Board and some of the parents to make a change, but I believe that George accepted it. He had met Mark at a couple NAPA conferences—”

“I’m sorry—what’s NAPA?”

“National Association of Private Academies. It’s an accrediting organization, highly esteemed. I accompanied Mark when he came here for the interview last spring. We discussed the pros and cons of his accepting the position. The salary was less than he could have commanded on either coast, but the cost of living in Michigan is relatively low. We both liked Magnet Springs so much that we imagined retiring here, and we got an excellent price on this house.”

When she told me the figure, I nearly swooned.

“Were Loralee and her husband facing foreclosure?”

Pauline frowned. “Loralee’s husband never lived here. We bought the house from George Bentwood.”

“Was it part of the school?” I asked.

“It was never part of the school. It was George’s private love nest.”

“Love nest?” I stupidly repeated the phrase.

“Let’s put it this way,” Pauline Vreelander said. “George owned the house and he visited often. Loralee and her daughter Gigi lived here, after Loralee’s husband threw them out.”

I wanted to hear Pauline’s take on the scandal. “George is married, isn’t he?”

“In the eyes of the law.” Her tone was as dry as the best martini.

“Loralee moved out and your husband moved in?”

“Mark needed to move in before Loralee had found a place. So he worked out an arrangement. Loralee stored her belongings in the basement and moved to a motel until she could find an apartment.”

Pauline paused deliberately.

“Mark and I believed that George sold the house because his wife found out about it. We also thought she’d found out about Gigi, who is George’s daughter, although George hasn’t admitted paternity.”

Anyone who works in real estate hears more tales of domestic drama than the average barkeep, but this was shaping up to be a doozy.

“Why does Bentwood’s wife put up with him?” I said.

“Who knows? I’ve never met the woman. They own a second home in Naples, Florida, where she spends most of her time. According to Mark, Mrs. Bentwood has her own money and lots of it. George, of course, has a trust fund. The only career he’s ever had has been directing this school in some capacity. He draws a modest salary, yet he lives very well.”

“By ‘very well’ you mean the homes and the mistress?”

I hoped that Pauline would spill every dirty detail she’d ever heard. Although she was a classy lady, rage and resentment simmered beneath her polished surface. I wanted to lift the lid and smell the whole stinky soup.

“When Mark came to work here, he discovered quite a web of intrigue. George Bentwood has his issues, and so does the PTO. It appears that the PTO plays nicely with others only when it suits them to do so.”

“And when it doesn’t suit them?”

“They do whatever it takes to get what they want.”

“What does the PTO want?” I said, truly clueless.

“What does any private school PTO want? Occasionally, it’s something that directly benefits the children. Usually, though, it’s something that will raise the parents’ stock by making them look prestigious.”

I recalled Stevie McCoy’s comments about the PTO’s vanity and possessiveness.

“You’re saying that parents at The Bentwood School feel entitled to call the shots?” I asked Pauline.

“You won’t find a private school where that isn’t at least partly true,” she replied. “Here, however, it’s completely true.”

Her voice was dark with bitterness. I asked my next question cautiously.

“Did the PTO continue trying to run the school after your husband arrived?”

“They didn’t try to run it. They absolutely did run it. Mark instituted policies and rules that the mothers subverted at every turn. They went so far as to …”

I half-expected her to say “murder him.”

“ … pressure Bentwood into making Mark back down.”

“But I thought the PTO didn’t like Bentwood. I thought that was why he hired Mark.”

Pauline said, “The PTO doesn’t like anyone who interferes with their preferences, whether it’s their tradition or their brand-new idea.”

“But what leverage do they have?”

She cocked her head as though she couldn’t believe my density. “Tuition. If parents stopped sending their children here, the school would cease to exist.”

“Isn’t that Stevie’s job as recruiter, marketer and general go-getter?”

“Stevie can’t sell a school that is blackballed in its community.”

“The PTO could do that?”

“The PTO would do that if their demands weren’t heard. Trading favors is the preferred currency of The Bentwood School. George is open to many options, and so are the other players.”

Her choice of the word “players” caught me off guard. I imagined a giant game board with stand-up cardboard cut-out figures that looked like Bentwood, Vreelander and the most aggressive PTO moms.

“How did your husband feel about his job?” I said.

“Mark loved working with children. Their needs always came first. As for dealing with adults, he had the ability to pick his battles, to decide what mattered now, what could wait, and what he could surrender without regret.”

“I imagine that’s an essential skill set for this job,” I commented.

“Mark had an extraordinary ability to read people and, to some extent, to play people. He could make them think they were winning when in fact he was winning. I used to wonder if that were due to his military training or a natural talent.”

Suddenly, I had a strikingly different view of Mark Vreelander. Not merely the buff, youthful career Army educator bent on shaping up The Bentwood School, but a canny leader and manipulator keen on subtlety and careful plotting.

I wondered how their marriage worked. They seemed like a “power couple,” two professionals pursuing individual goals that required them to live far apart. Mark had looked younger and more attractive than his wife. Did any of the PTO moms try to seduce him? Did anyone succeed?

“It must have been difficult for you to live apart this year,” I ventured.

“We’ve lived apart most of our marriage,” Pauline said. “Twenty-six years. When Mark was in the Army, I was assistant principal and then principal at three different schools, none of them located near where he was stationed. Fortunately, I had a fairly flexible schedule during summers and holidays, and that’s when we spent time together. Otherwise, it was mainly a long-distance marriage.”

She inhaled deeply as if to steady herself.

“A challenge, yes, but it worked for us. We talked on the phone every day of our lives. Mark and I are—were—strong individuals. Independent. And yet we loved each other very much. We were looking forward to living together here in Magnet Springs.”

For the first time, Pauline’s voice cracked and I saw that she was genuinely overcome. This was not a woman who permitted herself to show emotion. She tried to cover the surge by smoothing her hair, which didn’t need smoothing. My hair did. I turned away to pat my own unruly curls and give her what privacy I could.

My mind reeled. How could a man as physically attractive and energetic as Mark Vreelander have lived a nearly celibate life? In my experience, a typical guy could sublimate his urges in a gym or on a bike for only so long, and then he needed sex. Live, hot, intense sex. And maybe even companionship, somebody to hang out with. How could daily phone chats and a few in-person visits a year sustain a man with a healthy libido? Even inmates got more conjugal visits than Mark Vreelander. Did he lack a libido? Or was he taking care of his needs in a way that Pauline either didn’t know about or didn’t want to know about? Maybe Pauline did know, but she didn’t want anyone else to.

I had a lot of questions but no graceful way to ask them. I took another approach.

“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d like to know how Bentwood sold this house to you and Mark in the first place. Did he mention it to Mark as soon as he offered him the position?”

“He did,” Pauline said. “George made it sound like an offer that was too good to refuse. He encouraged us to look at comparable homes in the area, which we did. George’s asking price was well below the competition, and he even included the furnishings. We liked almost everything.”

“Loralee is an outstanding designer,” I said.

“If only she put that much enthusiasm into her teaching,” Pauline said. “Mark wouldn’t have had issues with her.”

Jenx had remarked that Vreelander was ready to fire Lowe. I asked Pauline if that were true.

“He wasn’t going to break her contract, but Mark did warn her that she needed to make definite and specific improvements before the end of this year.”

“Such as?”

“Mark was highly skilled at developing training programs. He insisted on working with Loralee to devise one that would shore up her weaknesses as a teacher. She refused, however. I’m sure she thought George would save her.”

“What are her weaknesses?”

“Content area, mostly. She’s sloppy when she teaches science and history and often doesn’t get her facts straight the first time around. If she backpedals to correct herself because somebody points out her errors, she only confuses the students more.”

“Do parents complain?”

“Some do, but Loralee has a powerful ally in George, and Kimmi Kellum-Ramirez is her best friend.”

Finally, we were talking about my least favorite mom, the one I most relished dishing. I asked Pauline to tell me what she knew about Kimmi.

“What can I say? Every private school has some version of her, the hot nouveau-riche young mother with too much money, estrogen, and time, and absolutely no breeding. Kimmi’s the type who has plastic surgery as a hobby.”

“Also shoe-shopping,” I said, and Pauline smiled.

“Seriously, though, Kimmi knows how to organize her peers. She may lack impulse control, but she’s skilled at convincing others to do what she wants them to.”

Kimmi was in fact the one who had organized the bike trail blockade. I wasn’t sure, though, if she had intended for it to be a stop along Vreelander’s last ride.

“Who else caused Mark trouble?” I said.

“Robin Wardrip was a continual thorn in his side.”

“Why? What was her issue?”

“Robin disliked George as headmaster because he didn’t encourage sports and was too soft with her boys. She thought he was turning them into wimps. Then she disliked Mark because he was too tough, or so she said. The truth is she started working against Mark the minute she realized she couldn’t control him any more than she could control George.”

“So who killed your husband?”

Talk about popping the question. That came out way more abruptly than I’d intended. I thought about rephrasing, but what was the point? Pauline pursed her lips. I expected her to say she had no idea.

Instead, she said, “Whomever George Bentwood likes best.”

“Are you saying that Bentwood is connected to your husband’s death?”

Pauline Vreelander shrugged.

“Probably not, at least not directly, but I deeply believe that George’s life was simplified when Mark’s life ended. Anyone who—”

A three-tone chime interrupted her sentence. Someone was at the front door. Pauline excused herself to answer it, leaving me alone in Mark Vreelander’s chaotic home office.

What I did next does not comply with my personal moral code, except when I work as a volunteer deputy. Jenx had asked me to do what I could to find out who killed the headmaster. Since there was no time to check the files on his computer, I rifled through whatever I could lay my hands on, starting with the loose papers scattered everywhere. Mostly they were printouts of boring professional articles, on which Vreelander had highlighted passages and made indecipherable margin notes in a cramped hand. With titles like “Strategies for Pooling K-8 Information Streams” and “A Holistic Design Approach to Educational Evolution,” the articles appeared unconnected to his death.

Mixed in among those pages were random household bills, advertisements, and lists. I had about as much luck translating Vreelander’s to-do lists as I did his article notes, but I did recognize a few phrases, including “put away porch furniture” and “winterize gas grill.” I also found bits of scratch paper featuring the kinds of doodles most of us make while chatting on the phone.

In other words, I had nothing.

I moved on to his desk drawers, which were as disorganized as his desktop. Stray rubber bands kept uneasy company with paper clips, pens, highlighters, sticky notes, scissors, rolls of tape, loose staples, cough drops, and chewing gum. What did I hope to find? A flash drive, a checkbook, or an address book would have been helpful.

From downstairs came Pauline Vreelander’s voice uncharacteristically raised in anger. I froze. What was she saying? To whom was she saying it? I caught the emphatic phrase “absolutely not” followed by the word “no” repeated several times. I heard another female voice, not as loud or distinct. Pauline talked over much of what the woman tried to say.

“You need to leave, and you need to leave now.”

The words were pronounced by Pauline as if for the benefit of someone deaf, senile, or exceedingly stupid. The door slammed. I yanked open the one remaining desk drawer, using more muscle than necessary in my rush to finish. This drawer was so light that I nearly pulled it free. Inside were a broken stapler, some index cards and two flash drives. I popped both drives into my jumper pocket, carefully closed the drawer and listened. No sound came from within the house. Was Pauline calming herself before returning to me?

Outside a car door slammed. Too late, I realized that the headmaster’s home office faced the front of the house. Had I been more alert, I might have glimpsed the visitor. Now I scrambled to the dormer window across from the desk, raised the mini-blinds and peered out. A white SUV was peeling away from the curb. I had no clue whether the visitor had been the driver or a passenger.