That wasn’t exactly my promise, and the man was a hazard: A fire could have started. Or maybe I was over reacting to what I’d seen as a dangerous situation. When Frank Murphy came back, I could reassess my decision not to tell.
“Nobody’s going to hire a sixty-eight-year-old drunk,” he whined. “You promised not to say anything.”
I told him I wouldn’t. I asked if he’d seen anybody else. He hadn’t. I had no way of telling who’d seen Jones last, Fiona or Longfellow. Or maybe there’d been a whole string of people to see Jones.
When I got back to my classroom, I found Scott sitting on top of my desk talking to Meg, who had been telling him about the day’s progress. I told them both about Longfellow.
“So you’re double in the clear,” Scott said.
“Yes, but I promised not to tell the police or the administration about either one of them.”
Meg said, “And each one of them claims to have left Jones alive … . You know Longfellow and Welman are close friends?”
I gave her a quizzical look.
She said, “They used to go out drinking every Friday night. A couple of years ago Welman got a scare about his liver, and he stopped drinking. I don’t know how close they are now.”
Scott said, “Could the two of them have planned the murder?”
We discussed the issue further, but got nowhere. Meg went back to the library. I told Scott about the rat and the porno pictures.
“The kid’s out to get you,” Scott said, “but we still can’t prove anything.”
Reluctantly I agreed with him.
“Let’s go to my place,” Scott suggested.
“I want to go to Jones’s wake tonight,” I said.
“You sure that’s a good idea? The family will be there. Someone might tell them you’re under suspicion.”
“I doubt if the police go around to each family and announce who they think did it. The relatives wouldn’t recognize me, anyway. I’m sure some of the faculty will be there. I’d like to try and talk to a few more, see who might have seen something. This running around school takes too damn long. With a lot of people in one place, maybe I can get more questions asked more quickly. We need to find out if anyone else was around, or if somebody else had a motive.”
“I wish Frank Murphy hadn’t gone on vacation,” Scott said. “He might have some good suggestions about what to do about Bluefield. That kid has got to be stopped.”
5
On our way to the car, in the hallway outside the office we ran into Carolyn Blackburn. She didn’t look happy to see us. We sat in her temporary quarters. I didn’t make introductions; she and Scott had met several times before at various parties and functions.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Plenty. The police called. Bluefield’s dad was down at the station with an attorney. He wants to press charges against you for attacking his kid. Fortunately, you’ve got a good reputation down there, and, it seems, some clout. I did what I could to put a stop to it, including telling them about the horrors we found on your desk, but I think the guy is going to try to get a judge to do something. He tried calling a few board members, but they told him to talk to me. That put an end to the nonsense from that end, but Mr. Bluefield is on a personal crusade to see you fired. I wish we could do something.”
We discussed the attacks on the house, the dead rat, and the porno pictures. We discussed my staying in the city at Scott’s.
“This is so sick,” she said. “I think Scott is right. You two should stay at his place in the city for a while, at least until this blows over.”
“I keep swinging between fear and anger,” I said. “The dead rat on my desk has me shook up more than I thought. Still, I’d rather stay at my place.”
Scott said, “Look, Tom, let’s go eat something and talk it over some more. If you really want to stay at your place, we can try and work something out, okay? We’ll get through this.”
“One odd thing about the police,” Carolyn said. “They didn’t mention anything about molestation charges.”
“Dan only told Dalrymple, but not his dad. Curious,” I said. We examined the implications of that for a while, but came up with little.
Before we left Carolyn filled us in on the latest in the investigation. She said, “The police wouldn’t tell me all of what they know, but they did say they have the fingerprint report back. Your prints, Tom, along with many others, were in the office.”
“I was there,” I said.
Carolyn added, “They didn’t find any fingerprints on the knife. The killer wiped it clean.”
“Not a lot of help there,” I said.
“They told me a bit more. It’s not good. They asked me about your disagreements with Jones. It’s not a secret you and he fought, plus you’ve got a history of being antagonistic toward administrators.”
I started another protest, but Carolyn held up a hand to stop me. “I know it’s part of being a good union rep to stand up to the bosses and not be pushed around. You’ve done a lot of good. I was a union rep when I was a teacher, so I understand. I tried to make the cops see that, too.”
“Are Johnson and Daniels going to question me again?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. Not today, anyway.”
“Maybe I should talk to a lawyer,” I said.
Carolyn said, “Maybe you should.”
“Is it that bad?” Scott asked.
“It’s not real good. They don’t have anything to pin the murder on you specifically, but I think they’re having trouble coming up with other suspects, and that nonsense from Dan Bluefield didn’t help.” She frowned and said, “I’m worried about Donna Dalrymple. Not the material she repeated from Dan, but that she believed it so readily. I find her reaction odd, to say the least.”
I filled Scott in on my conversation with Donna.
“What’s going on between the two of them?” Scott asked.
“I’m not sure,” Carolyn said, “but I’d like to find out. What have you discovered in your questioning?”
“I’m surprised Daniels and Johnson haven’t harassed me about that,” I said.
“I’m supposed to be warning you not to talk to people,” Carolyn said. “And you do need to be very discreet. Nosing around could cause trouble.”
I didn’t break my several promises to keep people’s stories quiet. I was still miffed about my treatment of the night before, and while I did trust Carolyn, I wasn’t ready to take her any further into my confidence at this moment.
Scott asked, “We were planning on attending the wake. Do you think we’d have any problem with the family?”
Carolyn said, “I don’t think so. They haven’t released a lot of information to the press, although someone at the wake could recognize you and tell the family. It’s not a tremendous secret that you’re under suspicion.”
“The rumor is certainly around the faculty that I’m a major suspect,” I said.
“Be discreet,” Carolyn suggested again. “I wanted to give you the information and to tell you to take care. I suppose the police will probably be around to question you again. Try not to worry about it.”
I thanked her. As we walked down the hall to our cars I said, “They must have talked to the family. They usually look pretty closely at the wife in this kind of thing.”
“I heard she had a solid alibi,” Carolyn said. “She works at a day-care center and was there until six-thirty that night. She’s in the clear. I know Jones didn’t have any other close family around here. They were from Centerboro, in New York.”
As we said good-bye in the parking lot Carolyn said, “Be careful of Dan Bluefield. My guess is that you’ve got more to worry about from the boy and his dad than you do from the murder.”
We thanked her, and she left.
“I need to get away,” I said as Scott drove the Porsche out of the school parking lot.
Scott asked, “Why not call in sick tomorrow and forget all this?”
“I n
eed to get away right now for a little while, but I’m not calling in sick. I’m not giving up until I clear myself in this murder investigation, and we’ve got to resolve this Bluefield thing.”
“Maybe there isn’t a resolution,” Scott said. “Maybe it will just take time.”
We decided to eat at Cookies in Minooka, a quiet little town a mile or so off the interstate, about a half hour’s drive from Joliet. At Cookies the food is good and the atmosphere is relaxed. We didn’t say much to each other as we drove. We listened to a folk-music tape I’d compiled from several of my favorite albums. Two hours later I felt somewhat revived and ready to attend the wake.
The funeral home was on Front Street in Mokena, across from the fire station. They’d taken an old Victorian mansion, renovated it, and added rooms in back.
As I reached for the door handle of the Porsche, I noticed a person lurking in the shadows on the west side of the fire station. I tapped Scott on the shoulder. “I think that’s Bluefield,” I said.
He looked where I pointed.
The shadow moved farther into the darkness. Scott said, “Are you sure?”
“No. Maybe we should check it out.” He agreed. We crossed the street and hunted through the shadows, but whoever it was had taken off.
Inside the funeral home twenty-five or thirty people milled around the viewing room. A few near the casket seemed to be the family. I spotted various faculty members and several students. One of these detached herself from a small group and came over to us.
I recognized Sheila Tarelli. She’d been in my Senior Honors English class, the brightest kid I’d had in my classes in the past five years. She had a full scholarship to De Paul University, where she planned to major in theater. She wanted to be a playwright, actress, director, and producer. I had no doubt she would be someday.
She came over and smiled happily. We had become good friends over the year I’d had her in class. I introduced Scott. She gave him the same radiant smile and said, “The baseball player. Nice to meet you.” And then dropped the topic of Scott’s profession. A few other people in the crowd had noted his presence, but so far, perhaps because of the funeral-home atmosphere, had yet to venture close.
We moved into a corner in the hallway, out of the way of many in the crowd, but where we could still see who entered. We talked about her college classes and several of the kids from class last year, most of whom I still remembered.
Suddenly she gave a little gasp and placed herself so that we were between her and the doorway.
“What?” I asked.
She whispered, “It’s Mr. Younger. I don’t want to see him. He’s poison.”
“I thought you liked him,” I said. “You had all the major female roles in the plays your junior and senior years.”
“I’m taking one theater course now, and I’ve got a small part in the first production of the season, and in both places I’ve learned what an amateur he really is. He doesn’t know anything about directing. Last year, especially, I thought his method of directing by tirade was totally childish. Now I know it is. I’m not saying that because I’ve graduated, I know everything. It’s just—He was such an awful person. He puts you through hell. It should be hard work, but you should get some fun out of it. Plus, he hates me.”
“Why?” I asked.
She moved even closer, still keeping us between herself and Younger. “You can’t tell anyone this,” she said, “but I caught him last year. He cheats on the account books for the plays. He’s been skimming money from the production budgets. He orders props that never show up and keeps the money. Same with makeup, scenery, paint, everything.”
“How’d you find out?” I asked.
“I’m good at math and computers—quick—you know.”
I nodded. Last year she’d told me she’d been only several points from a perfect score on the math portion of her SAT.
She continued, “He gave me some orders to fill out and put into the computer. I didn’t understand the program at first, and I called up the incorrect data. It was the past years’ orders, and I thought maybe I could just tie last year’s in with them. I noticed the prices and was struck by the discrepancy between last year and the years before. At first I thought it was just some mistake somebody made putting in the numbers into the computer. I checked the catalogue we order from. I thought I’d be doing him a favor by making the corrections. He got real mad when I told him about it. Told me to keep my snotty nose out of his business. He dared me to turn him in. Said no one would believe the word of a kid against a teacher. Besides, he had the computer disc with the proof.”
She shrugged. She told us about running into a friend of hers this past summer who had helped Younger the year before. The friend had told Sheila that she, too, had thought something funny was going on and had mentioned it to Younger. He’d threatened her the way he’d threatened Sheila.
“My friend wouldn’t go with me to report him or anything,” Sheila explained. “She said she didn’t want to be involved. There was nothing I could do.”
I sympathized with her and then told her about the problems I’d been having at school and how uncooperative he’d been when I tried talking to him. “I’d like to use what you told me as leverage in getting him to talk.”
She got a wicked smile on her face. “The jerk was rotten to me. In fact, I don’t care if you tell him you heard it from me. He can’t hurt me. I hope you nail the scummy creep.”
We thanked her and wished her luck in her classes. She went back to her group. We hunted for Younger. I saw him up at the casket talking to the family. Several people reached out and touched Scott’s arm and introduced themselves as we waited for Max in the back of the room.
As Max passed us, I leaned over and whispered in his ear. “We have to talk.”
He glared at me. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Let’s talk about cheating on your ordering.”
Briefly his pink cheeks turned grayer than the corpse. I took his elbow, and we entered an unused viewing room. I introduced Scott.
Younger barely acknowledged the introduction. He said, “What do you mean by that rude remark? I’ve never done anything untoward in the theater department.”
“Our source says you did.”
“Lies.”
“Why don’t we go check the records right now?” I said.
“Who told you this bullshit?” Younger demanded. “Was it that Sheila Tarelli? She’s hated me for being honest with her. She doesn’t have enough talent to make diaper commercials for illiterate natives in the Amazon.”
“Let’s go check the records,” I said.
“You can’t make me do anything,” Younger said. He turned toward the exit.
Scott moved swiftly to place himself between the theater teacher and the door.
Younger turned back to me. “You can’t keep me here,” he said.
I grabbed a fistful of his shirtfront and pulled the five-foot-eight man to within an inch of my nose. “Listen, Max, unless you talk within two minutes, I’m taking an accusation straight to the administration. We’ll ask them to do a little audit of your books for the last five years.”
“Let me go,” Younger squawked.
I held onto him tightly, easily fending off his feeble attempts to free himself.
I had a sudden thought. “Jones caught you,” I said. “He was competent. He checked over everything. He watched where every nickel went. He devised the new ordering system. Something put him on to you.”
His corpselike pallor returned. “He did no such thing,” Younger said.
Still gripping his shirtfront, I gave him a shake. I heard his teeth rattle. Younger struggled briefly again. Saw it was futile.
I eased my grip on him.
Younger shrugged his shoulders so that his corduroy sport coat with leather patches at the elbow settled correctly onto his frame. He straightened his tie and tried to regain his dignity.
I said, “I want to hear the whole story,
or we go to Carolyn Blackburn tonight.”
“Shit,” he said.
We waited.
Finally he said, “All right. Fine. I guess it was too much to hope that it would die with him.”
The room had five rows of chairs facing the front, where a casket would be placed. Younger sat in one of the chairs in the last row. We turned two others to face him.
Younger loosened his tie, cracked his knuckles, and then told us the story. It started six years ago when he first began teaching. He’d been put in charge of the theater and with no experience except several college courses, he’d ordered far more material than was necessary. To his surprise, no one said a word. It turned out that most of the theater-department ordering went through a separate budget category, was seldom checked up on, and was often done in cash.
Such anomalies in accounting often cropped up in a school district as large and old as River’s Edge; besides, we’d had a series of incredibly incompetent administrators. With Carolyn Blackburn and Jones things had begun to change.
In the past no one checked the amount of money Younger took out of the account. No one ever asked for receipts, and quite often, he found by looking at past records, teachers had simply written the cost of an item on a piece of paper and added it to the budget file. They’d had to computerize the system two years ago, but that still hadn’t been a problem. All Younger had to do was put inflated prices in the right spots in the computer. “My problem came when I got lazy. I let the kids enter the figures. I never thought the administration would check. They never had before. I was stupid to let Sheila do it this year after the kid last year caught on. How was I to know they’d both stumble on the same thing? I thought I had the program well guarded. These goddamn kids who are so computer literate make me sick.”
When Sheila found the discrepancies, she’d told Younger. He’d gotten angry, which was a mistake, but at least she didn’t turn him in. I’d been right, however, in guessing that Jones had caught on.
The Principal Cause of Death Page 9