Schooled in Murder (29 page)

During my planning time I checked the halls carefully, then made my way to the office. I didn’t see any of the suckups or administrators. Georgette asked, “How’s your day going?”

I nodded. “I’m heading to the gym.”

She said, “I’ll walk you over, then send Meg to wait at the doors so you’ve got someone with you when you walk back to class. You shouldn’t have come down here alone.”

I filled her in as we strolled the halls. She patted me at the gym doors and said good luck. I made my way to Edgar Cauchon’s office. The smell of rancid jock strap and mold were a great backdrop to the rotting tiles, dented lockers, and water stains on the ceiling.

Cauchon was behind one of the desks. He stood up. “We had the game Friday. Nothing happened.”

I said, “You and Peter had a fight last week.”

“Who told?”

I said, “Do we live in a mafia-ruled world? Every time a secret gets out, someone’s going to die?”

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

“But you had a fight with one of the people who was killed.”

“I didn’t even know Gracie Eberson.”

I said, “Do you want the police to talk to every person who was at the poker game?”

“Fine. Higden was an asshole. He’d gloat, and I’d been losing. He’d gloat the closer the hands were. If he had a flush to your pair, he was kind of okay. If he had a higher four of a kind than you did, he’d get nasty. Doesn’t mean I killed him.”

“You threatened to end his double dipping?”

“I told you, we don’t–”

I interrupted. I was angry. “Will you cut the shit? How much of all this do you want to come out? Talk to me and I’ll do what I can to keep it quiet. Keep silent, and I’ll report it now.”

“Who to? The administrators all hate you.”

I said, “I just have to find one honest one. Are you sure they’re all crooked?”

He hesitated.

I said, “I want to solve the murders, not destroy you. Although I am going to suggest you guys clean up your act.”

“Fine,” Cauchon said. “Fine. I threatened Peter. He might have been going to rat on us. I don’t know if he did before he was killed. No one has talked to me. I always knew Peter was a two-timing backstabber. That fake cheerfulness was a crock of shit.”

“Would you have cut him out?”

“No. We’d have talked. I never got the chance. You’ve got to believe me. I’ve covered my tracks here pretty well. Peter might have given us some problem, but I’d have weathered it.”

“You sure?”

“I think so.”

Not certainty. “Did anybody lose serious money at these games?”

“No, but Peter used to brag about his gambling in the city. We always heard about the convoluted bets he made and how much he won. He never told us about the losses. Anybody who gambles as much as he claimed had to be losing.”

“Anybody on the staff who would know?”

“I suppose his suckup buddies in the English department.”

“Who else didn’t like Peter?”

“He was okay most of the time. He just set me off that day, that’s all. It really wasn’t a big deal. You’re not going to tell?”

I said, “Not as long as you were honest with me.”

“I told you everything.

Meg met me at the gym doors. Teresa Merton was with her. Teresa said, “Tomorrow during your planning time, we’re going to have a little meeting. The union attorney is going to be here. Someone from the regional office of education will be present. I’ve been assembling the data all day about the grade-fixing problems. You’ll want to be there.”

“You have what you need?” I asked.

“Oh, my, yes.”

41

That day I had my usual tutoring class after school. I wasn’t much in the mood for teenagers, but they do have a positive side at crisis moments. The vast majority of them are totally caught up in concern about themselves, their world, their emotions, and their egos to the exclusion of all else. This is normal. I’d have to pay attention to their needs no matter how I felt. This was actually good, because then it could take my mind off of how pissed off I was.

Fred Zileski came in first. He found his work folder and the day’s assignments I’d prepared for him. I had his work for each week from each teacher organized and set to go. Any writing or reading assignment, we would go over. He sat in the back as he always did. A few others drifted in and began muttering and grumbling as teenagers do. Desiree Delaney bustled through the door and banged herself into the front desk in the first row. Having gotten our attention, she began to weep and blubber. “They’re dead. They’re dead.”

From the back, Fred said, “Shut up, Desiree, you didn’t even know them.”

A harsh but honest assessment. Desiree said, “Don’t be mean. It’s sad.”

I said, “Fred, don’t be mean.”

He gave me a teenage grumble that was just soft enough that I could ignore it.

Spike Faherty bashed open the door. Late, as usual. He walked to the row of desks by the window, plunked himself into his chair, and flipped his textbook off his desk. It banged against the metal cabinet near his left foot and flopped to the floor. Everybody gaped at him.

Spike was six feet tall and might have weighed 140 pounds. His goatee was sparse. He kept his hair spiked in deft swirls. He tended to change the color from week to week, although he sometimes did one-day dye jobs. He was perhaps the angriest kid that I’d dealt with who still showed up for school. The book throwing hadn’t happened since the second day of school. It was his mom I’d been on the phone with last Thursday afternoon.

I said, “That cabinet has feelings.”

Spike glared at me. He said, “These people are effed up.” At least he’d remembered to use the initial and not the word.

I said, “You want to talk about what happened?”

“No.”

I got everybody settled and mostly on task, then retrieved Spike’s work folder from the pile and brought it to his desk.

I said, “You gonna be able to get any work done today?”

He looked up at me. He said, “What’s wrong with my hair?”

Today’s color was a pretty awful magenta. I’d asked him once how he fit his hair under his motorcycle helmet. He just shrugged and said it worked okay. Today, I said, “I’m not real fond of that color, but it looks pretty normal.”

“That goddamn gym teacher, Frecking, gave me a hard time about my hair today. He made all kinds of comments and picked on me about it. And Milovec hassled me and made comments. They’re going to suspend me.”

“Why does Milovec care?” I asked. “He doesn’t have you for class.”

“He supervises lunch detentions.”

Among the first things Graniento and Spandrel had spearheaded when they started was an anti-teenage-hair campaign. I couldn’t imagine whatever for. In this day and age, pestering teenagers about their hair struck me as stupid. There were plenty of other more important things to pester teenagers about. Most of them desperately want to be individuals as long as they don’t stand out from the crowd. One way to do this was hairstyle. It was also another way to say, “Look at me, look at me, I’m a person.” I’ve generally found that if a teenager is crying out for attention, giving them some can sometimes avoid larger problems. It’s funny. With some kids, if you make sure to greet them every day, acknowledge their existence in some way, they tend to respond better in general. This works with adults as well. With Spike, I usually made some mention each time his hair color changed. I had a great art teacher for a class once. At the time, I’d been proving to myself and the world that I had no artistic talent and was never going to be a Picasso. The art teacher would walk in and marvel and exclaim, “How interesting,” no matter how awful the product I or any of her other students was creating. It’s not hard to be harmlessly effusive and neutral; ask any kindergarten teacher.

I said, “Haven’t they hassled you about your hair before? What was different about today?”

“They said if I didn’t get it cut, I’d be suspended. They said it was disruptive to the educational environment.”

I didn’t laugh. I’d like to have beaten whoever told him
that. People had used that same catchphrase during Vietnam when kids wore armbands protesting the war. They use that same phrase whenever they don’t have a logical reason to disapprove of something some kid is doing. The other kids in class usually don’t give a rat’s ass about the alleged disruption. It often becomes a disruption because some idiot administrator overreacts. It’s the adults who are disturbed and who should learn to get a grip. What Spike didn’t know–but that I did, from a friendly LD teacher–was that Graniento, Milovec, and company had conspired to make the claim that his hair was disruptive.

Today of all days, I didn’t need such a nonsensical distraction. But Spike was in a mood, and he wasn’t getting work done until he calmed down. I took out my cell phone and said, “What’s your mom’s number?”

Mrs. Faherty and I talked at least once a week so I could give her updates on his progress. She was normally at her wit’s end about her recalcitrant teenager. “Are you going to tell on me?” he asked.

I said, “Sort of.”

“I don’t care.” He filled the three words with teenage despair and defiance–a neat trick. He rattled off the numbers.

Mrs. Faherty knew my voice. I said, “Spike’s got a problem today. The principal, the head of the department, and several teachers are conspiring together to get him in trouble about his hair.”

Spike gaped at me. The other kids gave each other puzzled looks.

She said, “They what?”

I know that school personnel, like so many government officials–police are a major example–are supposed to stick together and lie to the public. What’s the point, especially over such simple stuff?

I repeated what I’d said.

She said, “I’ll take care of this.”

I knew she would.

Spike said, “They did what you said?”

“Spike, I need you to get some work done today. We can talk about the hair problem after I see two paragraphs of today’s essay.”

He gaped at me again. He fiddled with his pencil a minute, then broke it in two.

From the back Zileski said, “Give him a break, Spike. He’s on your side.”

Spike picked up his pencil parts and started working.

Mrs. Faherty arrived at the classroom door about five minutes before the tutoring session was to end. Mrs. Faherty was gargantuan. She wore an immense, heavy overcoat that covered enough acreage to keep warm the members of the football team sitting on the bench on a Friday night. Her hair was a ratty mess. She wore what, when I was a kid, we would have called combat boots.

Spike looked at her for a second, then returned to work on his essay. She swept on up to my desk. We exchanged greetings.

I said, “I didn’t expect you to come in.”

She spoke in a voice that matched her heft. She said, “He getting anything done?”

She saw what he’d done that day, and then I showed her the essays he’d worked on since the beginning of the year. I pointed out the changes and improvements. She said, “He’s never done this much.”

Spike was turning red and looking out the window. The bell rang for the end of tutoring. They hurried to leave. Spike mumbled as he rushed by, “I gotta go.”

“Wait,” his mother commanded.

He stopped.

She held out the essays. “These are good.

” He nodded.

I said, “He’s fairly bright.” And he was.

She said, “That isn’t news. That he’s doing some work is. Good. Don’t worry about your hair. I’ve taken care of it.

” Spike grinned.

His mom said, “Don’t be late for dinner.”

He left.

She turned to me. “My kid is in your class because I’d heard of your reputation for teaching even the most delinquent.”

I said, “Spike knows a great deal. And my guess is, much as he might deny it, he would like to graduate with his classmates.”

She said, “Hard to believe. Hassling him about his hair? I gave that up in third grade. What’s the point? Even though I’m on the board, they pester him. I guess I don’t speak up enough. Perhaps it’s partly my fault. I had a little chat with Graniento before I came up here. That man’s pitching stupid with a steam shovel.”

She plunked her more than substantial butt on the edge of my desk. “Sit,” she said. “We need to talk.”