The Body in the Bonfire (7 page)

Daryl walked into the room and gave her a surreptitious thumbs up, accompanied by a sewing motion.

She'd been right. Her enthusiasm for teaching Cooking for Idiots fell as fast as a soufflé after a slammed oven door.

Faith looked around the kitchen of Carleton House at the boys standing in various typically adolescent postures—heads down, heads up, a leg twitching, a finger tapping, a hand immobile. Two, whom she pegged as ninth graders, based on a paucity of facial hair, were noticeably flushed and excited, an indication of the brouhaha just raised in the chapel. The rest of the faces were clothed in studied nonchalance. Daryl's face, too, was a mask, a mask she imagined must be a familiar one for him—self-effacing attentiveness. Protective coloration. Only one boy seemed totally at ease and relaxed. He wasn't moving, yet there was a suggestion of movement about him, a great and vital energy. He was extremely handsome, Apollo Belvedere by way of J. Press. During Project Term, the school's dress code was somewhat relaxed. The boys didn't have to wear jackets and ties, although they could if they wished. Most had elected to wear turtlenecks under a V-necked sweater with the Mansfield crest. But there were subtle differences, and Faith was reminded of the way she and her friends had sought to assert their personalities, individualizing the school
uniform by pushing the accessories envelope—barrettes, knapsacks. The same was true at Mansfield, and Faith was quick to note that the paragon wore a gold signet ring and a Rolex. His nails were manicured and he wasn't getting his shining blond hair cut at the Aleford barber-shop.

Another boy stood out. The chip on his shoulder was almost visible, and if the school had permitted body piercing and tattoos, he would have sported them. His dark green school turtleneck was much too large and was untucked. His nails were bitten to the quick and he wore a curious silver ring with a highly impressionistic skull etched on the surface. Any barber could tend to his coif, which was as short and close to his head as he could get away with here. Each of the two boys had carefully crafted an image, and the messages were clear: winner and loser. And the loser, Faith was sure, would say not caring about winning was what it was all about. She sensed she was going to be learning a lot more than she wanted to know about the murky teen waters of the twenty-first century.

“Let's get started, shall we? I certainly won't make you wear name tags, but please go around the room and give me your names so I can check them off this very official list.” One had been left, of course, by the efficient Ms. Reed. “And I may even remember them by the end of the course.”

On the assumption that all boys this age were hungry all the time, she'd brought oversized chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies, with milk, plain and chocolate, to go along with them. The food was disappearing rapidly as she called roll and briefly outlined what they were going to do.

“There's no magic to cooking; only magic in eating.” She paused. It was a nice line. She'd have to try to remember it to tell Niki, who appreciated this sort of thing. She missed her assistant. The latest postcard from Australia was of a beach and had only two words on the back: “Boogie boarding!”

“We aren't going to have as much time today as I'd hoped.” She paused again, and only the two ninth graders showed any reaction. They both turned bright red and looked guilty as hell. Highly suggestible. The others nodded politely in acknowledgment of the time constraint.

“Therefore, I'm going to get right to it. We'll start at the beginning—breakfast, which can also be brunch, and even dinner, if you're so inclined.”

“Like those diners that serve breakfast all day and night,” one boy offered.

“Exactly. One of the main reasons to do your own cooking is that then you can make what you want to eat when you want to eat it. I've prepared a rough outline of what we'll be covering, with all the recipes, plus a table of measurements and a glossary of a few essen
tial cooking terms. We'll also spend some time on ‘gracious living'”—she hoped they could hear the quotation marks—“such as which fork to use at a dinner party and what to do if you spill spaghetti sauce on your date. We'll conclude with a dinner party of our own, and I'd like you to think about whom to invite. I understand some of the Cabot girls might not mind sitting down to a meal prepared by the opposite sex. It could give them hope for the future.”

“Hear, hear,” a tall, skinny boy with wire-rimmed glasses and too much chin called out.

“Okay, now please count off and we'll divide into two groups for today.”

The boys obligingly started to count. Before they got to the end, Faith noticed the boy with the Rolex, Sloane—a name she knew she wouldn't forget—slipped behind another to make sure he was in the second group. Why? She quickly looked at all the boys in the first group. Whom had he wanted to avoid? Some long-standing quarrel—or was it Daryl? Daryl, who had counted off “One” when it was his turn?

There were ten boys, creating two manageable groups.

“I'm starting you off with pancakes. You get the egg lecture tomorrow, when we have more time. Today, it's good old-fashioned pancakes—with some additions, if you wish. Of course you can buy pancake mix, but by the time you add an
egg, liquid, and shortening, you might as well make them from scratch.”

“My Dad calls pancakes ‘flapjacks,'” commented a boy whose voice was in the process of descending from the attic to the basement.

“Flapjacks, griddle cakes, batter cakes, pancakes—they're all the same, and each part of the country has some special variation. In Rhode Island, they eat johnnycakes, which are pancakes made with cornmeal. The Native Americans made them first, of course, and the settlers must have been happy to have something to add to their dreary diet, especially after they also learned from the local tribes how to tap the maple trees. We have maple or blueberry syrup today. The important thing to remember about syrup, besides getting the real thing, is to warm it. There's nothing worse than a stack of steaming-hot pancakes dripping with cold syrup.”

The boys were smiling—some with genuine anticipation, one or two, Faith was sure, in self-congratulation—literally a gut course, with only a log to keep. And Faith had made even that easy by providing her little booklet.

“Both groups”—Faith pointed to both sides of the room—“are going to make the basic batter; then we'll use one to make apple pancakes and one for plain ones.”

Soon the room was filled with activity as the two groups measured and sifted, broke eggs, poured milk, melted butter, and stirred.

“You can add chopped nuts, blueberries, or replace the whole milk with buttermilk.” She showed them how to test the griddles on the top of the stove by pouring a few drops of water on them. The water sizzled and she demonstrated the way to make a well-rounded pancake by pouring the batter from a spoon held close to the griddle's surface. Soon they were all giving it a try and watching eagerly for the bubbles on the uncooked side to appear before flipping them over.

“How's this?” The boy with the skull ring, whose name was Zach, expertly flipped a pancake into the air. It landed perfectly back in place.

“Show-off.” Faith couldn't tell who'd said it, but there was no mistaking the tone. She quickly said, “I think we have a ringer here. Where did you learn to do that?”

“I washed dishes in a restaurant kitchen last summer and the cook showed me a few things.” He was scowling.

“That's great. Restaurant kitchens are like no place on earth. The pace is frantic—a whole world apart from the calm dining room only a few feet away. Even a different language.”

“Like Adam and Eve on a raft?” Daryl said. “Two fried eggs, sunny-side up, on toast, right?”

“Right,” said Faith. “And don't forget, Adam and Eve on a raft—wreck 'em.”

“Scrambled!” Zach exclaimed, smiling, before he remembered he was supposed to be presenting a different image and the scowl returned.

“Zach, show me how to flip these. I want to impress my mother next time I'm home,” Daryl said, moving over to the stove. He passed in front of Sloane, who took a step back.

“Excuse me,” Sloane said with exaggerated politeness.

“Well, excuse me, too,” Daryl said with guarded amiability.

He was just past Sloane when the boy remarked, “I'm surprised you haven't already attained this pancake skill.”

Daryl turned around, eyes narrowing. “What are you talking about, Buxton?”

The room grew quiet and the boys who had been setting the table in the other room returned, their radar infallible.

Faith had opened her mouth to speak—a word about silver-dollar pancakes, crepes, anything—but Sloane Buxton smoothly answered Daryl. “Nothing much. Just had the impression you liked to cook. That's all.”

Of course it wasn't, and the shadow of Aunt Jemima was as clear as if Sloane had traced her kerchief-headed silhouette in black paint on the kitchen wall. The table-setters drifted back. Faith handed the warm platters, filled with pancakes, to several boys and they all prepared to break bread together.

By the time they'd cleaned up and talked about what they wanted to get out of the course—one of the ninth graders wanted to learn how to make
baked Alaska; most of the rest had riffed on the themes of quick, edible, and impressive—class time had run out. Sloane was the first to leave, giving Faith a polite compliment on the class and thanking her for giving up her time to teach “a motley and ignorant bunch such as we are.” He seemed so sincere and was truly so lovely to look at that she wondered whether she'd been wrong about the interaction she'd witnessed. Maybe he did merely think that Daryl liked to cook. Daryl, in fact, did, and he had promised to give Faith his grandmother's recipe for smothered pork chops.

Zach Cohen departed quickly also, tucking his shirt in before he left. Aside from these two, none of the boys had stood out particularly.

Faith had arranged for Tom to pick Amy up. It had been a busy couple of days and there had been no time to get back to Mansfield to check out what was in the Carleton House kitchen. She'd brought everything they needed for today's class, as well as some staples, which she started to stow in the canisters she'd noted when she'd been here with Connie Reed. Daryl had gone off with the others, but she wasn't surprised when he returned through the back door of the kitchen.

“Well?” he said.

“Well?” she replied.

He sat down, pulling a stool from the corner. Unlike those of some of his classmates struggling with various dermatological vicissitudes—there had been a distinct smell of Stridex in the air—
Daryl's face was unblemished and smooth. His appearance reminded Faith of the other handsome boy in the group.

“If I had to pick someone,” she said, “I'd go for Sloane Buxton. But Zach Cohen has neo-Nazi written all over him. Perhaps written a bit too boldly to be taken seriously.”

Daryl nodded. “Can't figure Zach out. His freshman year, he looked like all the rest of us—not me, of course, but the standard-issue Mansfield young gentleman. Came back in September looking like this. Something very heavy must have happened over last summer. I've never had any problem with him. He's a total techie, and I like that stuff, too, but he mostly keeps to himself. He is one of my suspects, though, and I steered him toward the course, which wasn't hard after I heard he'd worked in a restaurant kitchen.”

“He seems like a very angry boy, and you're right—it could explode in your direction. What do you know about his family?”

“Nada. As I said, we were never that close. And anyway, it's not the kind of thing guys talk about usually. I don't know much about anybody's background here, except that it's definitely different from mine. And”—he smiled ruefully—“so far I haven't been invited to meet Mommy and Daddy at the condo in Aspen or the family's summer place in Newport.”

“Sloane projects that image for sure,” Faith
commented, wondering if she was also going to start sprinkling her conversation with “likes.”

“He lives on the North Shore. I do know that much—and he always looks the way he did today. Perfect. Something weird about him, though—aside from his obvious belief in the superiority of the white race. But in that department, he's always very careful. If I called him out, say on the pancake business, he'd express polite surprise and suggest that whatever the problem was, it was my problem, not his.”

“Anyone else I should keep an eye on?”

“The tall kid with the wire-rimmed glasses, John MacKenzie—a senior—is the leader of what we call the Boothe Brigade. Again, it's just a feeling I get. Mr. Boothe talks like a liberal, but some of the kids who hang on to his coattails are a little strange. John was going on about Herrnstein,
The Bell Curve
guy, in psychology class before exams and the whole notion of intelligence being genetic—code for race-related. There are certain words, certain names that always make me sit up and take notice. And they were all coming out of this kid's mouth. Now he may just be in love with the sound of his own voice—a lot of Boothe's kids are like that—and not paying much attention to what the words actually meant—”

“Or it could be something more,” Faith finished for him.

“Exactly. I've really been looking at the kids here hard, even before the noose thing—back
when the E-mails and articles started coming. It may be someone I haven't thought of, but at least these three give us a place to start. Or I should say, you. Sloane and John both live here in Carleton House, which makes it convenient. John, obviously to be as near as possible to the master; Sloane because he snagged a great room. Zach is in my dorm, but it's not far. It won't be hard for you to slip into their rooms during lunch, or, if you don't mind getting up early, when we're at chapel.”