The Math Teacher Is Dead

by Robert Manners

  “I didn’t, I just now guessed.”

  “Well, how did you guess?” Danny wondered.

  “I know Janacek was gay; and though it’s hard to tell at your age, I think you may be gay as well,” the policeman shrugged, smiling to show the boy he wasn’t being judgmental, “It’s the first thing that came to mind when you said you didn’t want to prejudice me against Janacek. It is very easy to construct a prejudice when a grown man seduces a boy your age.”

  “It was I who seduced him,” Danny insisted hotly.

  “Why?” Officer Kelly wanted to know.

  “I don’t know,” Danny shrugged, looking back toward the lake, “Because he was there, like Everest. I could see he was attracted to me, and I liked him, so I pursued him.”

  “I have a hard time believing that.”

  “Oh, come now, Officer,” Danny looked at the man sternly, “You know perfectly well that a man like Mr. Janacek would never in his wildest dreams think he had a chance with a boy like me. I’m beautiful, much too young, and extremely sexy if I do say so myself; and I belong to the most powerful family in town. He wouldn’t ever have approached me, he would have just kept gazing and fantasizing. But with my looks and my privileges, if I want something, I simply get it. That probably makes me a not-very-nice person, but I can’t have you thinking ill of Mr. Janacek. He was a very sweet man and he resisted me as hard as he could, but I bulldozed right over his moral convictions just to have my own way.”

  “Oh, hey, don’t cry,” Officer Kelly started forward with alarm, looking around for a box of tissues, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Danny snuffled into a napkin he plucked from the lemonade tray, “I’m a bit of a crybaby, the waterworks come on without much prompting.”

  “Well, then, to return to the main point,” the policeman measured his words, hoping he wouldn’t set the boy off again, “Is there anyone who knew about this affair? Any of your friends, or his?”

  “I never breathed a word of it to anyone until just now,” Danny said after thinking it over carefully, “And I can’t imagine him telling anyone, it would put him in a terribly awkward position.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend who might have found out?”

  “I have a boyfriend,” Danny said, not very pleased with the connotation, “But he doesn’t know anything about the people I’m sleeping with. And if he did, he’d just break up with me. He’s very sweet and gentle, he scoops up spiders on pieces of paper and carries them outside instead of squishing them; he’d never be able to strangle a man, and certainly wouldn’t be able to drag a dead body through the woods. Did Mr. Janacek have a boyfriend? You say you know he was gay.”

  “There is a man he lived with. I don’t yet know the exact nature of their relationship, but I assume they were lovers, or partners, or what-have-you. He hasn’t said he knew anything about you. Nevertheless, I am looking into his whereabouts on the night in question. But in the meantime, I need to follow all leads.”

  “Of course,’ Danny agreed, “And speaking of which, I have been thinking about the other question you asked me, if I could think of why someone would leave the body where it was… and I have a theory.”

  “OK, shoot.”

  “What if the killer was trying to drag the body into the lake, intending to send it to the bottom where it wouldn’t be found for months, and then to sweep over his tracks to conceal the place the murder happened? But I interrupted him before he got all the way down the path. What if the killer was right there, where the dragging trail stopped, when I came around the bend, and he didn’t get a chance to finish the job or cover his tracks? I made a lot of noise, screaming and carrying on, a herd of elephant could have been in those woods and I wouldn’t have heard them.”

  “That’s a very good theory,” the officer was impressed, “It covers a lot of the factors and is wonderfully feasible. But the forensic evidence shoots it down in one: the body was there where you found it for at least three hours, the dew had settled on his back and the surrounding ground, but not underneath the body, and the weather people assure us the dew settled between three-thirty and four a.m.”

  “That’s very inconvenient,” Danny quoted from a favorite movie, Evil Under the Sun, though the officer didn’t get the reference.

  “Time of death was most likely a little after midnight, and there is some evidence that the body lay in the underbrush near where he was killed for a few hours before being moved.”

  “That’s awful,” Danny shivered at the thought.

  “The place where he was killed is a well-known cruising ground,” Officer Kelly watched Danny closely to see if he knew what that phrase meant.

  “I’ve heard about it,” Danny admitted frankly, “from several men I know. I’ve never been up there, though.”

  “On a temperate Friday night, the place would have been jumping; whoever killed Mr. Janacek would have to hide the body immediately, or it would have been discovered much earlier. Which leads me back to my theory, that someone put that body there so you would find it.”

  “I just honestly can’t imagine why anyone would do that,” Danny shook his head in disbelief, “What possible purpose would be served?”

  “It might have been a warning,” the officer suggested, “or, as I pointed out earlier, a gift.”

  “Well, then, it was a failure either way. I can’t take a warning when I don’t know what I’m being warned against, and I am certainly not grateful for such a gift.”

  “Perhaps the warning is to keep it in your pants,” the officer joked.

  “Do you think so?” Danny didn’t hear the humor in the man’s voice, and took the suggestion seriously, “I hadn’t thought about that. Do you think any of the other guys I’ve been with are in danger?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Officer Kelly tried to reassure him, though making a note of the suggestion and the reaction to consider later, “But on that topic, and please don’t think this a prurient question, how many guys have you been with?”

  “I can’t say it out loud,” Danny blushed, “You’ll think I’m a horrible slut.”

  “Well, it’s really none of my business, but I feel it’s my duty as a police officer to suggest you refrain from seducing any more adults,” the policeman said as gently as he could, “Stick to your own age, OK? You’ll be a lot safer.”

  “It will break their hearts,” Danny laughed ruefully, “But I think you may be right. It isn’t nice to put men in such a legally perilous position. Though I think you’ve been here long enough now to know that my father would never allow you to prosecute someone if it meant my name being put in the record. Yet he could hurt them in other ways, so I think I should take your advice.”

  “That’s a good lad,” the officer reached over and tousled Danny’s hair, a gesture he’d been resisting but couldn’t hold back any longer.

  The sound of several notebooks hitting the floor with a noisy crash interrupted the conversation, and Danny and Officer Kelly looked up to see Ash standing in the doorway, a look of abject horror on what was visible of his face.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammered after a long frozen moment, stooping to retrieve the notebooks, “I tripped on the sill.”

  “Ash!” Danny cried out happily, “I’m so glad to see you! You remember Officer Kelly?”

  “Yes,” Ash nodded, stacking the notebooks onto a wicker table by the door.

  “Ash very kindly offered to pick up my homework,” Danny explained to the officer, “Would you like some lemonade, Ash? Or something else to drink, or eat? We have staff today, I can ring for anything you like.”

  “I’m fine,” Ash said, still apparently rattled.

  “I wonder, Officer Kelly,” Danny’s face lit up with a new idea, “if Ash might have been the target, the person meant to find the body, rather than me. What do you think?”

  “I understood from Mr. Phillips that his trip out to the hotel trails was unplanned, not part of his routine, and he didn’t tell a
nyone he was going there. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” Ash whispered.

  “Can you think of any reason why anyone would put a dead body in your path?”

  “No,” the boy’s one naked eye was as wide as a saucer.

  “So,” Officer Kelly closed his notepad and put it away, “While I will certainly keep my mind open to the possibility, Mr. Vandervere, I have to assume you were the target, if there was a target intended, since your being on that route at that time of day is part of your weekly routine and at least one person knew you’d be there; and though that person is, generally speaking, above suspicion, there are probably more people you aren’t aware of.”

  “What do you mean, ‘generally speaking’? How could you possibly suspect Tia?” Danny frowned at the man in outrage.

  “I don’t, I don’t,” Officer Kelly put his hands out in a calming gesture, “except insofar as I have to suspect everyone at this point. For example, I’m not going to ask you this officially, Mr. Vandervere, since I value my job, but: what were you doing between eleven and four on Friday night?”

  “Sleeping,” Danny answered.

  “Can you prove that?” the officer asked.

  “Well, I can’t call an eye-witness,” Danny said, then thought for a moment, “But the burglar alarm would record if anybody had left the house between those hours, it’s armed automatically at ten and goes off at six, one has to enter the code to go in or out when it’s on. You can check the log in the main console, it’s in the mudroom.”

  “I’ll do that,” Officer Kelly smiled, “Though like I said, not officially. I doubt your father would take kindly to it.”

  “Don’t worry too much about my father, Officer,” Danny smiled back, “His bark is worse than his bite, and though he has been known to ask the police to look the other way when Vanderveres misbehave, he’d never obstruct justice in something this serious.”

  “I hope you’re right,” the man shook his head, “Just having you as a witness, he’s been breathing down our necks. And you, Mr. Phillips? I don’t suppose you have eye-witnesses for Friday night?”

  “No,” Ash said after clearing his throat, “Home, asleep, alone.”

  “Well,” the officer put on his hat and stepped toward the door, “My request still stands: if either of you think of anything, anything at all that might have a bearing on the case, please call me right away.”

  “God, sometimes I hate being a Vandervere,” Danny spat angrily after the policeman had left, “Can you imagine? What if I had killed poor Mr. Janacek? Or if anyone in my family had? We might go Scot-free, with the police afraid to even investigate us!”

  “I’m sure it’s not as bad as that,” Ash told him, “If he really suspected you, he’d pursue it.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Danny reached out and grabbed Ash’s knee, “He does seem like an honorable man. But being a Vandervere isn’t good for one’s morals, I can tell you that.”

  “You seem to be doing OK,” Ash smiled at him, pulling his sketchpad out of his bag.

  “I do things sometimes,” Danny admitted sadly, “which, if looked at in a certain light, aren’t very nice.”

  “So don’t look at them in that light,” the boy reasoned, “Do you mind if I do another sketch? I thought I’d try you with pastels.”

  “I never object to being immortalized,” Danny grinned at him.

  “I don’t know about ‘immortalized,’” Ash looked at him shyly over the edge of the pad, his hair tucked behind his ear again, “That depends on if I ever get famous.”

  “I’m sure you will be.”

  “How? You’ve never seen my work.”

  “I can tell. Oh, look, tea!”

  Rosa and Maria both came out onto the porch, the former bearing a pitcher of iced tea with two glasses, the latter with a tray of fresh-baked oatmeal cookies and bunches of green grapes. They set these up on the low cocktail table in front of Danny’s bed and backed away into the house, giggling like geishas the entire time.

  “Do they always act like that?” Ash wondered, staring after the departing girls.

  “What, the giggling? Not all the time, but whenever they’re around me and nobody’s there to reprimand them. They’re both fatally in love with me,” Danny rolled his eyes, “Rosa likes you, too.”

  “How do you know that?” the boy blushed.

  “She said so, in between gusts of giggles. They think that since my Spanish accent is so bad — ‘Sesame Street Spanish,’ Tia calls it — I don’t understand theirs; but I’ve been listening to Tia rattling on in her native tongue since I was a baby, I understand Colombian accents better than any other form of Spanish.”

  “Why do you call your housekeeper ‘Tia’?” Ash wondered, only partly paying attention, most of his focus on the drawing in front of him.

  “Because my mother would go postal if she heard me call her ‘Madrecita,’” Danny laughed, “She really is like a mother to me now that my nanny is gone. But when I had them both, she seemed more like an aunt than a mother, since Mademoiselle Marnie was like a mother.”

  “How long did you have a nanny?”

  “From birth until my thirteenth birthday.”

  “When is your birthday?”

  “August second. When’s yours?”

  They went on like that for another hour and a half, an amiable back-and-forth of questions and answers, each answer spawning another question, as Ash scribbled industriously with his pad and a box of pastels, wiping the colors from his fingers onto his black t-shirt until it looked like tie-dye.

  “May I see?” Danny asked politely when Ash finally put down his pencils, giving up on the drawing in the waning light as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, leaving a sort of twilight that drained all the color out of things.

  “It’s not that good, just a sketch,” Ash hesitated, looking at the drawing critically.

  “Well, I don’t want to push if you don’t want to show me, but I’m madly curious. I want to see how you see me.”

  “Okay,” Ash relented and turned the pad around so Danny could see it.

  “Oh, my God, Ash! It’s beautiful!” Danny said truthfully; though it was very roughly drawn, and some of the proportions were slightly off, the picture was quite lovely… it was a fairly accurate likeness and showed Danny looking happy and animated in a nest of pillows.

  “I can’t get the line between your cheekbone and chin quite right. I made your neck too long, and your nose too short,” the artist pointed out the errors as if to accuse himself.

  “I’m not an artist, myself, Ash,” Danny told him sternly, “but I do know art. That’s a good likeness and it shows a very lively touch. It really is beautiful.”

  “You’re just being polite,” the boy protested, letting the curtain of hair fall over his face.

  “Look here, Ash,” Danny was slightly irritated by the boy’s self-deprecation, but covered it with a light conversational tone, “I am always polite, but I am also always honest. If I thought your drawing was bad, trust me: I’d find a terribly polite way of saying so. But your drawing is very good, and I know what I’m talking about, so don’t argue.”

  “OK, OK,” Ash laughed delightedly, thrilled that Danny so adamantly liked the drawing, “You like it, it’s yours.”

  “Really?!” Danny gasped, equally thrilled, “I can have it?”

  “Of course,” Ash carefully tore the page out of the spiral-bound book, then propped it in the other chair.

  “Oh, Ash, thank you!” Danny reached out for the other boy’s hand, and then pulled him down onto the cot, hugging him tight, “That is so sweet of you!”

  “It’s nothing,” Ash mumbled into Danny’s neck, unsure of where to put his hands.

  “We need to work on your self-esteem,” Danny put his hands on both sides of Ash’s face and held it so he could look into the boy’s eyes. Ash just stared back at him as if hypnotized, his eyes wide and his mouth slack, and Danny was overcome by how beautifully
vulnerable he looked; he kissed Ash lightly on the mouth, and when the boy didn’t resist, he kissed him again, this time with passion.

  Ash lay paralyzed against Danny, kissing back but only weakly, his kittenish little moans muffled by Danny’s questing tongue, his hands gripping Danny’s bare shoulders, his feet still on the floor. Danny felt himself light up inside, felt himself harden, and was thinking about how to get Ash under him without lowering his ankle, until he tasted salt.

  “What’s wrong?” Danny whispered, pulling Ash’s head back to look into his face.

  “I don’t know,” Ash whispered back helplessly, tears streaming in rivers.

  “You’re not sorry I kissed you, are you?”

  “No. No, I’m glad,” Ash leaned in and kissed Danny lightly to prove it, “I’ve never kissed anyone before.”

  “I cried the first time I kissed a man,” Danny told him, smiling and wiping the tear off Ash’s cheek with his thumb.

  “Ahem,” Mrs. Espinosa coughed theatrically in the door, making Ash leap to his feet and step away from Danny, his eyes wide with terror, “I brought your dinner.”

  “Don’t worry, Ash,” Danny sat up and grabbed the boy’s hand, pulling him back to the cot, “Tia knows about me. It’s OK.”

  “Did you draw that?” the housekeeper asked as she turned to set the tray down on an ottoman and saw the drawing propped up in the chair.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ash whispered, still obviously scared.

  “It’s very good,” Mrs. Espinosa said, turning on the table lamp beside the chair, tilting her head to one side and then the other, “You’ve really captured his personality.”

  “Thank you,” the boy was still whispering.

  “I’ll be back in forty minutes for the dishes,” the housekeeper said, smiling at Ash and putting her hand on Danny’s head, “I expect to find you both decent.”

  “Oh, my god,” Ash moaned aloud when Mrs. Espinosa had left them, sagging against Danny in relief.

  “I’m sorry, Ash,” Danny lay his arm around Ash’s shoulders and stroked his hair, “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “I feel so exposed,” Ash said after a moment’s silence.