The Crazy School (29 page)

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“Gerald, that’s horrible,” I said. “Do you know who did it?”

“She couldn’t tell me outright.”

“Why not?”

“Because she knew I wouldn’t be the only one reading her letter. The kids have to leave the envelope unsealed when they write home. All mail is opened and searched, incoming and outgoing.”

“But she managed to give you some idea who was responsible?”

“She did,” he said. “And I think that’s why she was killed.”

“One of the teachers?”

He shook his head. “David Santangelo.”

I shivered. “And he
killed
her?”

“David wasn’t here when she died. He was somewhere in Mexico.”

“San Miguel de Allende,” I said. “Dhumavati told me he’s got a house there.”

“If I’d known she was in danger . . . if I’d gotten here sooner . . .”

“You couldn’t have known,” I said.

“This has to end,” he said. “This
place
has to end. I’m going to Cartwright as soon as I’m sure.”

“And here I was thinking you’d killed Fay and Mooney,”

I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Can you tell me why?” he asked. “If they’ve got something on me, I’ll need to explain that to Cartwright as well.”

“Well, there were two things,” I said. “The fi rst was that you were in charge of the punch, and the second was that you gave Lulu my jacket that night. Then, of course, you’re the one who found them in that loft.”

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I left out the part about his having allegedly grabbed Parker’s dick.

“What’s the importance of your jacket?” he asked.

“I found Fay’s necklace in the pocket when I was taken down to the station for questioning the next morning. The chain was broken, but I knew she hadn’t taken it off since Mooney gave it to her. Someone must have done that after she was killed, then planted it on me. Up until tonight, I thought you were that someone.”

“There was no necklace in your pocket when I picked it up at the Farm,” he said. “I wasn’t sure the jacket was yours, so I checked for a wallet. You had cigarettes and a lighter and birthday candles. Nothing else. I brought it up here to hang on Lulu’s doorknob. I wasn’t expecting to run into her.”

“Why did you leave the Farm?” I asked. “Weren’t you on overnight duty?”

“That’s something I’ll have to tell Cartwright, too,” he said, looking stricken. “I left in the middle of the night for a couple of hours. Second worst thing I’ve ever done.”

“If you’d been there, you would have been asleep anyway,” I said. “There’s no way you could have prevented what happened.”

“Maybe I’d have heard something,” he said. “Maybe I could have stopped whoever did it. I can’t forgive myself for that.”

“No one else heard a thing,” I said. “None of the kids. Or Tim.”

“Still if there was any chance my having been there would have changed things . . .” he said.

“So why did you leave?” I asked.

“He was coming here to meet me,” said Sookie.

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42

I looked at Gerald. “The fact that you were with Sookie—you alibi each other. That matters. It means that whoever really did this can’t blame it on you. You have to look at it in that light—that it might mean they won’t get away with it.”

“You’re very kind to say so,” he said.

“Just honest.”

“Honesty doesn’t negate kindness,” said Sookie.

Gerald took her hand.

“So who do we think is responsible, if not Santangelo?” I asked. “Who else stood to gain from their deaths?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to pin down,” said Gerald.

“Someone told me you’ve been seen doing a little, um, research,” I said. “After hours.”

Gerald went pale. “Who?”

I squirmed in my chair. “Does it matter?”

“Very much. If that’s common knowledge—”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think anyone knows but me and Lulu.

And, well, Wiesner.”

“Wiesner? I thought he was on the road, long since,” he said.

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“I don’t know where he is, but he’s not far away. He’s been wandering around campus at night. He’s seen you wandering around, too. Checking out offi ces, making lots of notes here.”

“That’s not comforting news,” he said, his face grave.

“I know the two of you don’t exactly have a pleasant history, but he’s not about to tell anyone else. He just knew I thought you might have . . . been involved, so he told me about it. Now that I know you’re in the clear, I don’t think it will matter, do you?”

“I guess not,” he said. “Not if Wiesner’s the only one who’s seen me.”

“Far as I know.”

A clock chimed on Gerald’s desk.

Sookie looked at her watch. “I have to get home,” she said, getting up and taking her wineglass to the kitchen.

“Just leave that,” Gerald called after her.

“I’ll rinse it. Won’t take a second.” She came back out and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You two will be all right?”

“Of course,” he said.

He walked her to the door. “Drive safely.”

“Call me tonight,” she said. “I want to know what you fi nd out.”

They kissed again, and she left.

“Didn’t anybody at Santangelo know you were related to Mary-Claire?” I asked once he’d sat down again.

“I hadn’t ever been here,” he said. “I was so busy in Tokyo.”

“But you knew she’d never mentioned you to anyone here?”

“Family always calls me Gerry,” he said. “I gave Mother an allowance, so she sent the tuition checks. I was pretty confi dent no one would know, and I was right.”

“So what exactly have you been looking for?” I asked.

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“Proof,” he said.

“Proof of what?”

“I’m on the verge of discovering who killed Mary-Claire.

And I think knowing that will tell us who killed Fay and Mooney, too.”

“You believe there’s a connection?”

“I know there is,” he said. “I just don’t know quite enough to convince the police.”

“So it’s not Santangelo this time, either, is it?”

Gerald smiled at me. “Can you imagine that man hauling his fat ass up into a loft?”

“I can’t imagine him tying his own shoes.”

“Not to mention that none of the kids trust him,” he said.

“There’s no way he’d ever get Fay and Mooney to follow him anywhere in the middle of the night. Much less share any of his punch.”

True enough.

“How are you planning to come by this proof?” I asked.

“Another round of offi ce-breaking?”

He pointed to the phone on his desk. “I’m expecting a call.”

“From whom?”

“A detective,” he said. “Someone I’ve had on the payroll for a very long time. After tonight I hope he’ll be off the clock. So does he, I would imagine. I know he’s tired of traveling and wants to come home.”

“Where is he now?”

“South America,” said Gerald. “And damn unhappy about it.”

“What the hell is there to fi nd out in South America?”

Please not Peru. Not Lulu.

“Gerald,” I said. “Did you know Fay was pregnant?”

He nodded.

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“She and Mary-Claire, they looked a lot alike, didn’t they?”

I said.

He nodded again.

I remembered how reluctant Fay had been to go to Santangelo’s house after Mooney punched the window. And how certain Santangelo had been that she liked cocoa with marshmallows.

“Mooney wasn’t the father of Fay’s baby, was he?” I asked.

“No,” said Gerald. “I don’t think he was.”

The phone rang, and he picked it up.

“Yes I’ll accept the charges,” he said.

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43

Gerald was quiet on the phone.

“And you’re sure Gloria. Landry was on that fl ight?” he asked.

Not Lulu, then.

“The girl who died in Indiana?” he said. “Of course I remember.”

He listened again for a moment. “Have them follow up with a telex. You’ve got the number. No, I can just explain that to Cartwright, as long as I get it in writing later.”

He grabbed a pen and a message pad. “That’s with the country code? Certainly, if he wants to call back. How late? I’ll let him know. Thank you for the good work, Bob. You’ll have your check by the time you get home.”

He hung up.

“Gloria?” I asked.

“It’s not her real name.”

“Neither is Dhumavati,” I said. “Please tell me what South America has to do with all of this.”

“It has to do with motive,” he said. “It has to do with secrets.”

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“What kind of secrets?”

“The kind someone would go to any lengths to protect. The kind that get people killed.”

“Gerald, just
tell
me.”

“I want to show you. I want to run you through the whole thing, start to fi nish.”

“Fine,” I said.

“We need to go to Sookie’s offi ce.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where I’ve been keeping the fruits of my research. I didn’t think this apartment was safe enough.” He stood up. “Someone broke in not long ago. They didn’t fi nd what they wanted, but I haven’t left anything important here since.”

“That’s why you were going into the offi ces at night?”

“Partly that,” he said. “And partly to dig up the information I needed in order to know where I’d have to send my detective on the last leg of his travels.”

“South America’s a big place. Where did he go?”

“Georgetown,” he said, heading for the door.

I trotted along behind him. “That’s not a particularly Latin-sounding destination.”

“Perhaps because it’s the capital city of a country whose offi cial language is English,” he said.

“Gerald, spit it out—
what
country?”

There was a knock on the front door.

We both froze, and he held a fi nger to his lips.

More knocking, and a woman’s voice saying, “Gerald?”

Dhumavati.

“Is Madeline with you?” she asked. “Her husband wants her to call home.”

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Gerald pointed to the back door, and we both crept toward it.

He led me into the woods behind the faculty apartments.

“The Mansion’s the other way,” I whispered.

“There’s a back entrance.”

“There is?”

“It’s close to the edge of the trees. They used it to sneak in runaway slaves.”

“I always thought Santangelo made that up,” I said.

“Lucky for us it’s one of the few things he didn’t.”

We’d reached the edge of the road that ran between campus and the faculty apartments. The school’s front gates were a hundred yards to our right.

Gerald waited until a lone car had gone by before he grabbed my hand to sprint across.

We bashed on through brambles and fallen boughs and snow piles for a good twenty minutes. Past the grape arbor Lulu and I frequented, Gerald bushwhacked into another overgrown patch of woods. I was panting and sweaty before the trees began to thin out again.

“Be careful where you step from here on in,” he said. “Try not to make any noise.”

I walked behind him, placing my feet where he had in the snow. We dropped down into a little gully, then climbed back up its far bank.

Ten paces more, and he stopped.

I could see the hulk of the Mansion ahead of us in the dark.

No lights in any of its windows, just a thin splash of brightness spilling across the snow from a pair of old lanterns on either side of the front door.

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Gerald led me toward a decrepit shed at the tree line, then opened the metal cellar door set into the ground beside it. He pulled me close and placed his mouth next to my ear.

“Third tread is broken,” he whispered before stepping down into what lay beneath.

There were nine steps total before my foot touched dirt.

“Stay right here,” he said. “I’m going to close up behind us before I turn on my fl ashlight.”

I heard him climb back up a few steps, then the protest-ing creak of old hinges as he gentled the heavy door back into place.

The fl ashlight that clicked on wasn’t Gerald’s.

Its beam came from the far side of the room, illuminating columns and dirt and spiderwebs without disclosing the identity of its owner.

Gerald turned on his own light in turn.

The face it revealed was Wiesner’s.

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44

“Fancy meeting you here,” said Wiesner, standing next to a sleeping bag and a small pile of canned food. “What brings you to my secret hideout?”

“Something important,” I said.

“I bet.”

“Madeline and I need to go upstairs,” said Gerald. “We don’t particularly have to tell anyone we saw you on the way.”

“Be my guest, then,” said Wiesner. “By all means.”

“Gracious of you,” I said.

“And you,” he replied.

I followed Gerald across the room toward a narrow portal set in its far wall.

“Don’t let the door hit you in that fi ne ass on your way out, Madeline.”

I turned back to glare at him. “Shut
up,
Wiesner.”

Gerald worked the latch and revealed a staircase. I climbed it in his wake.

We came out in a pantry closet.

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“There’ll be enough light from outside once we get into the kitchen,” said Gerald, shutting off his fl ashlight.

He was right. A small parking lot lay just beyond the kitchen windows, and its streetlight was plenty to navigate by.

We made our way past the old stove and through another pantry, then cut through the Mansion’s formal dining room on our way to the grand front staircase. Three fl ights up, he slid a key into the lock of Sookie’s offi ce. We could still see dimly by the light of the parking lot below.