Melanie Travis 06 - Hush Puppy (5 page)

Hasten? I thought. Was that what he’d said? I knew the word existed, but I’d never actually heard it used in conversation before. Just for kicks, I tried it out myself.

“I’d be delighted to hasten things along any way I can.”

“Good.” Russell reached in his pocket and produced a key. “There are a number of entrances to the lower level. You’ll find the most convenient one in the front hall, tucked in the back beneath the stairs. The storeroom you’re looking for is beneath the southwest corner of the building.

“I’m told there’s a table in the room, and there should be ample lighting for your purposes. Of course, you may feel free to bring anything upstairs that you wish to examine further. Krebbs informs me that the door is customarily kept locked, so I’ve had an extra key made. You may return it to me at your leisure when the project is finished.”

I pocketed the key and turned to leave. Russell, however, remained where he was. “Is there something else?” I asked.

The headmaster’s frown had returned. “First bell rings for assembly at precisely eight-forty-five. Not unreasonably, we expect our teachers to be in their classrooms, with their coats off and their day planned by then.”

“Yes sir,” I said without a trace of sarcasm. First bell had been ringing as I’d come through the back door. Now I could hear the sound of the students beginning to fill the upper hallway. Assembly had just let out. I tucked my coat behind my back. “That’s not a problem.”

“Quite right,” Russell agreed mildly. He turned and walked away down the hall.

This is my first year teaching at Howard Academy and, so far, it’s been an interesting experience. The students are different than those I’d encountered in the public-school system, and their problems sometimes make me feel as though I’ve stepped into the setting of a Jane Austen novel. Asked to have a substandard test signed by a parent and returned the next day, I was given a choice between accepting the nanny’s signature or receiving a fax from the parents who were vacationing in Bruges. What the hell, I thought, and opted for the fax. It was probably as close as I was going to get to Belgium anytime soon.

I’m a tutor, not a classroom teacher, so by the time a student gets shifted into my special help program a problem has already been identified. Usually it’s something simple and a bit of extra attention is all it takes to get things back on track. Because the needs of the children change constantly, so does my schedule, and I enjoy the freedom that gives me.

Russell had been entirely correct. I often have periods during the school day when nothing is scheduled. That morning I had one at ten-thirty. Curious now about what I might find, I used it to head down to the basement.

The main building at Howard Academy is a turn-of-the-century stone mansion, built in opulent times by a man to whom money was no object. Over the years, the salons and drawing rooms have been converted to more functional classrooms, but much of the charm of the mansion remains. This is especially true in the front entrance hall with its burnished hardwood floor, dramatic split staircase, and hand-rubbed antique furniture.

My first sight of the entrance hall had left me gasping in pleasure. Now I scarcely noticed it as I hurried through, intent on my quest. Twin portraits of Joshua and Honoria Howard hung side by side above a mahogany console holding a vase filled with fresh, fragrant flowers. Their eyes seemed to be on me as I found the door just where Russell had said it would be in the darkened recess beneath the stairs.

I half expected the door to creak open, revealing rickety stairs and dim lighting, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Like everything else at Howard Academy, the basement was in excellent shape. There was a switch plate next to the door, and when I flipped on the lights, I could easily see my way down the solid wooden stairway.

The lower level was huge, mirroring the house above it; and only part of it had been finished. Though several rooms had been partitioned off along one wall, it was clear that the basement’s major function over the years had been as a depository for excess supplies and equipment. I walked past wooden packing crates, stacks of old textbooks, and several rusty appliances on my way to the other side. Nearly everything was overlaid with a thick coating of dust.

The door to the first room stood partly open, and I glanced inside as I went by. Judging by the racks that lined the back wall, it had, once upon a time, served as a wine cellar. Now nothing remained of that bygone era but a torn label on the floor and a musty aroma. I was about to move on when a fleeting flash of color caught my eye.

I stepped back and heard the quiet shuffle of footsteps from within. At least I hoped it was footsteps. If not, Eugene Krebbs was going to have to deal with some rather large rats.

“Who’s there?” I demanded.

“Who wants to know?” a voice came back, equally sharp.

I smiled in relief. “Jane, is that you?”

“No.” Now she sounded sullen.

I stepped into the doorway and turned on the light. Jane was standing in the corner of the small room, looking much as she had the last time I’d seen her. In fact she didn’t look as though she’d changed her clothes since. Aware of my scrutiny, she jutted out her chin and stared at me defiantly.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“What’s it to you? And how do you know my name anyway?”

“We met last week, remember? Upstairs, in the prop room behind the stage.”

“I guess.” Jane hooked her thumbs in the pockets of her grimy jeans. “You were with that nasty old guy, Krebbs.”

“Actually,
you
were the one with Krebbs.” Casually, I took a step closer. The room was empty; I couldn’t see any reason why Jane would have been in there. “As I recall, he was asking you to leave.”

“Yeah, well I did, didn’t I?”

“But you came back.”

“Obviously. With smarts like that, I guess it’s no wonder you’re a teacher.”

“And with an attitude like that, I guess it’s no wonder Krebbs figured you for trouble. Were you enjoying the play?”

Jane stared at me suspiciously. “What play?”

“Much Ado About Nothing.
I found it on the couch in the prop room after you’d left.”

“That wasn’t mine.” Her answer was quick and defensive. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“Too bad. Shakespeare’s one of my favorite writers. I thought maybe we could talk about him sometime.”

“Why?”

Despite the sharpness of her tone, Jane appeared genuinely puzzled, as if no one had ever taken the time to seek her opinions and she couldn’t imagine why anyone would.

“Why not?” I asked. “That’s what people do. They talk about the things they enjoy.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“How come?”

I looked around for a place to sit. Jane seemed to be relaxing a little. Maybe if I did the same, she might hang around long enough for me to get some answers. There weren’t any chairs or boxes; I ended up leaning against a shelf.

“ ’Cause it’s nobody’s business what I like,” she said.

“Surely it’s somebody’s business,” I said gently. “What about your parents?”

“That’s nobody’s business either!” Jane strode past me toward the doorway. “I gotta go.”

“Where?”

“Where what?” She paused.

“Where are you in such a hurry to get to?”

“Away from here.”

I followed her out into the main room of the basement. Jane was heading toward a door in the far wall that led outside. “Hey!” I called after her. “Are you hungry?”

Her steps slowed, then she spun around angrily. “What’s the matter with you, anyway? How come you keep asking so many questions? Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

“Because I can’t,” I said honestly.

Jane made a disgusted sound and waved a hand through the air. She shoved the back door open, bolted through, and disappeared.

Who was she? I wondered. Not a student, yet she obviously knew her way around the campus. But if she didn’t belong in a classroom at Howard Academy, why wasn’t she in school somewhere else?

It was the question about her parents that had made her run, I thought. She had to have a family somewhere. Did anyone know where she was during the day? Didn’t anyone care?

I’d tried not to come on too strong so I wouldn’t scare her off; it hadn’t seemed to help. Next time we met, I’d probably be better off grabbing her and holding on until I had some answers.

Two doors down from the wine cellar was the room where the archives had been stored. It was easy enough to find; that was the only door with a lock on it. Though I used the key Russell Hanover had given me, the gesture seemed superfluous. The lock rattled in its casing and the door fell open easily. A child with a bobby pin could have picked it.

Most of the other rooms in the basement had been empty. This one was crammed full, stacked from floor to ceiling with crates and trunks. The light fixture looked only slightly younger than Edison, but its hundred-watt bulb illuminated the space easily. As Russell had promised, there was a table. Though old, it was made of wood and looked sturdy enough. It had to be, to hold the boxes stacked on top of it.

Looking around, I realized for the first time the enormity of the job Russell had handed me. I wondered if he’d had any idea. I walked over and lifted the top of the closest box. A yellowing piece of paper caught my eye.

 

 

Smiling, I lifted the paper and read the one beneath it. It was a receipt for roof repair to a barn, dated four years later. Below that was a playbill from the 1960s,
Camelot,
starring Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet.

I thumbed through the rest of the box, skimming through odds and ends that didn’t seem to be organized by date or function. Reaching the bottom, I straightened and gazed slowly around. Howard Academy had been founded in the 1920s. Basically, what was stored in this room was three-quarters of a century’s worth of debris.

I looked at my watch and sighed. Though I’d barely begun to look through the records, my free period was just about over. Students were due in my classroom in ten minutes.

I shoved the top box aside and picked up the one beneath. I might as well take it upstairs with me. That way, I could sort through it during the rest of the day.

Lunchtime at Howard Academy is a carefully scripted event. Students are seated at large, round tables, set with tablecloths and linen napkins. A member of the faculty presides at each one. The kitchen staff serves the food, which is usually hot and always delicious. Conversation is quiet and respectful.

Teachers take turns eating with the students. Those who are free usually sit together at the end of the dining room. Michael had scheduled another committee meeting over lunch period, however, so I fixed myself a tray in the kitchen and carried it down the hall to the teachers’ lounge.

I was the first to arrive, but Sally Minor walked through the door a moment later. She was an ample woman in her early fifties, who had the privilege of being highly respected by both students and administration alike. She was sharp, canny, and fiercely committed to the educational process. I didn’t know her well, but I liked her a lot.

“Grab a seat at the table while you still can,” she said, staking out one end for herself. “Let Ed balance his lunch on his knees. Maybe that will slow him down enough to keep him from arguing too much.”

“What’s the matter now?” I walked over to the sideboard and poured a cup of coffee from the pot. “He can’t still be upset about that smoking thing. The whole building’s nonsmoking, he’s always had to walk outside when he wants a cigarette.”

“Or sneak into the boys’ room,” Sally muttered.

“He really does that?”

“Does it? He makes a habit of it. What kind of example do you think that sets for the kids?”

I added a dollop of milk to my cup, carried it over, and sat down. “Why doesn’t Mr. Hanover stop him?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe he doesn’t care. Anyway, the newest problem had nothing to do with that. After you left the last meeting . . .” Sally’s eyes flickered up toward Honoria’s portrait, now gazing down upon us from the east wall. “. . . we all just started throwing out ideas. Everyone was feeling pretty desperate by then.”

I nodded, remembering. I’d been just as happy to escape.

“Anyway, Ed started talking about how Joshua Howard was rumored to have made some of his money bootlegging during Prohibition. He seemed to know a little bit about liquor being brought in from Canada across the Great Lakes and somehow he managed to parlay that into the notion that the pageant ought to be a play about pirates.”

“Pirates?” I laughed. “Joshua Howard was no saint, but I don’t think he was a pirate.”

“Of course he wasn’t a pirate! Everybody knows that. This is just another one of his harebrained schemes.”

“You must be talking about Ed.” Rita Kinney opened the door and carried her tray inside.

“How can you tell?”

“For one thing your face is all red.” She came and sat down beside us. “That’s pretty much your usual reaction whenever he’s around. And speaking of which, he’s right behind me so watch what you say.”

“I’ll say whatever I please,” Sally said firmly. “Ed’s the one who can watch out.”

“Ah, Sally.” The door pushed open once more and Ed Weinstein appeared. He held his tray in front of him like a shield, and the thick, black mustache that adorned his upper lip was twitching like a rabbit’s nose. “Is that your tender voice I hear, or is there a foghorn blowing on the Sound?”

“Oh stuff it, Ed. Now that Melanie’s back, you can consider your pirate idea voted down. She didn’t like it any better than the rest of us did.”

“Fine. Be that way.” Ed pushed Rita’s tray to one side and made a place for himself at the table. “I don’t see you coming up with anything better. At least the pirate idea had potential. I don’t know what we’re killing ourselves for, anyway. It’s not like this is a big tradition or anything. There’s never even been a spring pageant before. I’m beginning to think maybe we should just scrap the whole idea.”

“Good thought,” Sally said sarcastically. “Do you want to be the one to tell Mr. Hanover his pet project’s been abandoned, or should I?”

“Everybody here? Excellent!” Michael Durant was the last to arrive. He entered the room on the run and went straight to the coffeepot to pour himself a cup. “How’re we doing, people? Who’s got something great for me?”

“I’m sure Sally must,” Ed said snidely. “Since she seems to think that all my ideas are unworthy.”

Michael hadn’t brought his lunch with him, and he didn’t join us at the table. Instead he paced around the room, coffee cup in hand, a study in frenetic energy. “Sally? Thoughts?”

“The chicken’s excellent,” she said.

At this rate, the spring pageant was never going to take place.

“I have an idea,” I said. “It’s not a great one, but at least it’s something we could discuss.”

“Go on,” Michael prompted, training his intense gaze my way.

“What if, instead of aiming for a huge theme, we tried doing something smaller? A slice of life kind of thing. There’s a whole storeroom full of records in the basement. I was down there looking at them this morning.”

Ed was already shaking his head, but Michael ignored him. “What kinds of records?”

“So far, I’ve hardly done anything more than open the first box. It was filled with pretty mundane things, a couple of receipts, a bill of sale for some chickens.”

“Chickens!” Ed snorted. “And you thought my pirate idea was bad.”

“I’m not saying we should build the pageant around the chickens.” I decided to ignore him, too. “Just that we might find something useful there. And barring that, we might find enough information about how Joshua and Honoria lived in the early years of this century to reconstruct a day in their lives. I think the kids might enjoy that.”

“Speaking as their history teacher, I think that’s an interesting idea,” Rita said. “Students are always asking why it’s important to study the past. This could be a way to make a piece of that past come alive.”

Sally’s no pushover when it comes to her kids, but even she was nodding. She was probably afraid that a “no” vote might have us all talking to parrots and sewing eye patches come spring. “The idea’s got potential,” she agreed. “You say there’s a whole room filled with records?”

I nodded. “Mr. Hanover gave me the key this morning. So far, I’ve only looked at one box—”

Outside the room, someone ran past the door and down the hall, the tread of their footsteps echoing loudly. As teachers, it was our duty to punish such infractions. We all glanced toward the door, but nobody got up. A moment later, a second set of footsteps, sounding equally hurried, followed. I wondered what was going on.

Michael turned back to me. “Do you have any idea what’s in the rest of the boxes?”

“No,” I admitted. “Judging by what I’ve already seen, I doubt that it’s anything earthshaking. Still, I imagine we’ll be able to reconstruct quite a bit of information about the early years of the school.”

Michael walked over and perched on the edge of the table. “I think Melanie has something here. Unless anyone objects, I say we go with it. A Day in the Life of Joshua and Honoria Howard.”

Broadway would never come calling, but for our purposes, it just might do the trick.

“Who’s going to write the script?” I asked.

“That’s my job,” said Michael. “And I’d like to get started as soon as possible. Keep me informed of everything you find that you think I might be able to use. In fact, I might just go down and have a look around myself.”

As he finished speaking, the class bell rang, long and loud, in the hallway outside.

“That was quick.” Sally stuffed the last bite of crumb cake into her mouth. “Have we been here that long?”

I looked at the wall clock. “No, it’s early. We should have fifteen more minutes.”

“That’s odd,” said Ed. “You don’t suppose one of the little pranksters has sneaked into the office—”

“And rung the bell that would call them back to class early?” Rita asked skeptically. “I doubt it.”

We all heard the sirens at the same time. Automatically, our heads turned toward the window, but since the teachers’ lounge was in the back of the building, facing the parking lot, there was nothing to be seen.

“Fire?” asked Michael.

“No alarm.” I got up and opened the door. “If there were a fire, someone would pull that first thing to get the kids out of the building.”