“He came by the theater office one day near the end of summer vacation,” Younger said. “I was in doing some extra work. If I’d stayed home, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Jones said that as part of the new system of ordering, they’d put all the departmental and special orders on a new computer program that the office would manage. I told him that wasn’t necessary. I would have told him that the program was at home, but the computer with all the discs was right there. I had to give it to him.”
Jones had gone through the system and found all the discrepancies. He’d confronted Younger a week ago, saying that if the entire amount was paid back, the police wouldn’t be called. Younger had until the end of the school year to replace the money. Jones said he would take the final payment along with Younger’s resignation.
“Jones said if I didn’t pay back the money, he’d take the matter to the school board and everything would be made public. I couldn’t take my reputation being ruined. I’ve helped a lot of these kids. They look up to me. A lot of parents respect me for what I’ve done. I’d have to move. I’d probably never get a decent job teaching theater again.”
He cracked his knuckles for the fifteenth time during the conversation. I wanted to break his hands.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do. I begged and pleaded with Jones to give me a second chance. The guy had no mercy. Jones was implacable.”
“So you killed him,” I said.
“No, I swear! I was nowhere near the office that night after school. I admit I was in school at the time, but it wasn’t me.”
“How much money do you owe?” Scott asked.
“Over six thousand,” Younger said.
“How could it be that much?” I asked.
“We have the largest high-school drama department in the state. One of the largest in the country. We’ve won all kinds of awards locally and nationwide. We’ve got clout. I took a little over a thousand a year. I couldn’t possibly raise the money to pay him back. I had a meeting set up with him next week to discuss it.”
“I wonder if he told Carolyn,” I said.
“I don’t know,” Younger said.
“Did you see anybody else in the school that night?” I asked.
“No, I stayed in the theater department the whole time.” He cleared his throat. “You know I’m not the only one who was threatened by Jones. There were other people on the faculty.”
“Who?” I asked.
He cracked his knuckles again. “I really shouldn’t say.”
“You’ve gone this far,” I said. “We don’t want to cause you any trouble. I’m trying to find out who killed him to help clear my own name. Anything you can tell us would probably help. And you’ll be clearing your name, too. You had a reason to kill him.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He sighed. “All right. I’m not sure about this.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I heard that Dan Bluefield is having sex with one of the faculty members and that Jones found out about it.”
He smiled with satisfaction.
Sex between kids and teachers was something I could never fathom. I know guys I’ve talked to, both straight and gay, who said they had sex with teachers when they were in high school. They were happy they did it, and felt no trauma because of it. They were probably the lucky ones. Far too many are unlucky, abused, and hurt by the incidents.
I asked the obvious question. “Who’s the teacher?”
He hesitated. “I don’t want to ruin another person’s reputation if it isn’t true.”
“We can at least check it,” I said. “We need all the help we can get.”
He said, “Not a teacher. Donna Dalrymple.”
I spent the remainder of the few minutes we talked together being fairly flabbergasted. I barely heard as Scott tried to find out where Younger had heard the rumor. He couldn’t remember specifically, but vaguely recalled that it had been talked about in the teachers’ lounge.
He left.
I said to Scott, “Sex with kids?”
“It would explain her attitude toward the boy,” Scott said.
A few minutes later we left the room. I saw Meg just coming in the funeral-home door, and motioned her over. We reentered the empty viewing room. I told her all we’d learned.
She said, “I can’t believe I didn’t know some of these things. I know these past couple years I’ve been learning less, but …” She shrugged. “Anyway, I didn’t know. I did find out a tidbit about Denise Flowers. She was born in Buenos Aires. An American archeologist for a father, and an Argentinian mother. Supposedly a romantic beauty. It’s probably not much help, but it’s all I found out this evening. Want me to see what else I can find out?”
“Yes,” I said. I thought a minute. “I wonder if Donna showed up tonight?”
“I’ll check,” Meg said.
She left the room but was back in less than a minute. “She just walked out.”
Scott and I hurried to catch up with her.
Outside, a quick glance around showed no one in the parking lot. I listened for a car engine starting but heard nothing.
“Missed her,” Scott said.
I leaned down to look through the windshields of the parked cars. I grabbed his arm. In the far corner of the parking lot, nearly hidden by the dangling limbs of a willow tree, I’d seen the dome light inside a car flash on and off. “It’s Donna,” I whispered. In the brief illumination, I’d caught a glimpse of her.
I listened for the start of the car. I debated dashing after her now or running to our car and chasing after her. Minutes of silence passed. I said, “Odd. I thought she’d start the car.”
A car swung into the parking lot. I pulled Scott and myself into a shadow of the funeral parlor. I said, “Let’s pay her a little visit.”
Scott nodded. Crouching down, we skulked between cars until we stopped behind a gray station wagon, ten feet from Donna’s car.
I inched my head up to get a glimpse into Donna’s car. “She isn’t alone,” I said.
Scott raised his head. He nodded in confirmation. “You recognize who it is?”
I looked again. Their heads were close together in earnest conversation. They weren’t interested in us. I glanced at the entrance to the funeral parlor. We were well hidden. Only the owner of the station wagon would see us if he or she came to get the car.
On hands and knees I crawled to my left. I felt the cool asphalt and tiny stones on my palms and through my pants. I hoped I wouldn’t rip them. Next to the front tire, I paused and lifted my head. The passenger door of Donna’s BMW opened. The two heads leaned together. I watched a lingering passionate kiss. They separated. An arm and a leg, quickly followed by a slender torso topped with permed hair: Bluefield. They whispered good nights. Bluefield fled into the darkness. I hurried forward, yanked open the passenger door, and jumped in.
Donna said, “What the hell?”
I looked back. Scott hurried forward. I unlocked the back door. He joined us.
Dalrymple stared at us angrily.
I said, “You’re having sexual relations with Dan Bluefield?”
In a swift motion, she grabbed her purse and swung it at me. Before it slammed into the side of my head, I caught it and held it tight.
“I just saw that with Bluefield,” I said. “It wasn’t an innocent kiss. You’ve been bullheaded and unreasonable about Bluefield, and we’re getting to the bottom of this whole problem. You should be supporting your fellow teachers and helping them out, not screwing some sixteen-year-old .”
“He’s eighteen,” she said.
I eased my grip on her purse. “You have been having sex with him.”
“I didn’t say that,” Dalrymple said.
“You didn’t have to,” I said. I stared directly into her eyes. “Tell me no, lie to me if you dare. We have other sources that confirm it, besides the obvious we’ve seen here.”
She reached in her purse, came out with a pack of Virginia Slims, rolled down her window, lit a cigarette,
and blew a long plume of smoke into the night air. “What is this, the Inquisition?” she said. “You have no right to interrogate me.”
“How did Jones find out?” I asked.
Dalrymple looked stubborn and uncooperative.
I said, “If you don’t talk, I’m going right to Carolyn Blackburn with this. And don’t think we won’t get the truth. If some kid’s had sex with an adult, he’s bragged to his friends. Some teenager will blab.”
Dalrymple’s shoulder slumped. She exhaled another stream of cigarette smoke. “I’m not sure how Jones found out. I think Dan may have told one of his friends who got in trouble. Dan swore he hadn’t told anyone, but I think one of his buddies traded the information for leniency from Jones. Whatever way he found out, he came to me with the information early last week.”
“Why have sex with a kid?” Scott asked.
“Because … because …” She snuffed the cigarette out in the ashtray. “Because he was kind and warm and my husband ignores me. It made Dan feel good, and me, too. On the days we had sex he would always calm down. He’d be better, more cooperative. I enjoyed it,” she finished defiantly.
“How long’s this been going on?” I asked.
“Is it important? I’m not going to give you dates, times, and his cock size. I’m going to have to quit anyway. Jones was actually fairly calm about it. I’ve been expecting Carolyn Blackburn to visit me anytime. Maybe Jones was true to his word and didn’t tell anybody. He’d be the first administrator I know who was.”
“He threatened to tell?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. To bring me up in front of the school board and everything. I couldn’t take the public humiliation. My husband would divorce me. I probably wouldn’t go to jail. Society in its infinite hypocrisy doesn’t frown quite so hard on women who seduce eighteen-year-olds.”
We sat in silence. She had smoked half of another cigarette before I said, “I don’t want to bring harm to you. I just want to find out who killed Jones. You’ve got a motive. Do you know of anybody else?”
She gave me a disgusted look, ground out the burning ash and said, “This is only a rumor. Jones was after Denise Flowers’s teaching job. She thought he was going to try and fire her. I’m not sure how much was her own paranoia, and how much was real. I know this is only her second year teaching, and she wasn’t tenured yet.”
One of the innovations Jones had started was to take the evaluation of all nontenured teachers out of the hands of the heads of departments. This had caused a major uproar, but he’d gotten his way. By evaluating the new teachers himself, he thought to build a corps of good young teachers.
Minutes later we watched her drive away.
“I feel sorry for her,” Scott said.
“She’s got a motive for murder,” I said, then sighed. “She didn’t give us much to go on.”
“But it’s worth checking out,” Scott said, then added: “You know in some ways this Jones guy doesn’t seem to be so awful. He had some pretty powerful stuff on some of these people. He could have simply blown the whistle and ruined some careers. At least he gave them a chance to save their reputations.”
“I’m not sure they all saw it like that,” I said.
“Well, some of these cases are pretty complex. I’m not sure what I’d do if I had somebody’s career or reputation in my hands. He had to make some tough decisions. All these teachers had reason to fear him. They’d all done something that, if it got out, would ruin their reputations.”
I said, “A lot of them were in trouble because Jones was a vigilant, competent administrator. His own competence killed him.”
“Yeah,” Scott said, “but it was also his method of being kind. He gave all these people a chance to save their skins. Somebody tried to off him before he could tell. It was his promise of discretion, his kindness that killed him.”
I agreed. We decided to stick around the wake for a while trying to see if Denise Flowers showed up. We reentered the funeral parlor and for the next hour we stayed in the background observing. By checking the sign-in book I found she hadn’t been there, but my cursory look showed over half the faculty had been in so far that afternoon and evening to pay their respects.
While we waited we filled Meg in on the latest. She waited with us for a while, but left after half an hour saying she had to get home.
We thought about leaving, too. It was nearly ten, and the crowd had thinned out considerably. I saw Carolyn Blackburn walk in the door. She spotted us and came right over. She nodded at Scott and said to me, “I’ve got to talk to you.”
We returned to the empty parlor.
Carolyn said, “We just got done with the school-board meeting. We couldn’t call it off on such short notice. We were just going to do a memorial to Jones and adjourn, but Mr. Bluefield showed up.”
I got an uneasy feeling. “This doesn’t sound good,” I said.
Carolyn said, “He demanded to make a public statement. They can’t refuse him, because they’ve got that public-comment part of the meeting. He mentioned your name in the first sentence, Tom. I immediately stepped in and said that any comments about teachers had to be made in closed session. The board president immediately called for an executive session. Before we let Bluefield in, I told the board they better be careful. We had to protect your rights, Tom, and the board had to cover its ass.”
“You let Bluefield in to talk to the board!” I was furious. “You let that bigoted, ignorant fool address the school board? All he had to do was show up, and he gets an audience. This lunatic shows up, and he gets to say anything he wants?”
Scott said, “Carolyn is trying to help, Tom. She’s on your side.”
She said to Scott, “Tom has a right to be angry. If I’d known Bluefield was coming, I could have taken more vigorous action, but he surprised us all.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe this,” I said. “How dare the board give in to this maniac? This isn’t the first time he’s caused trouble. You all should have known he was an idiot. By letting him talk to the board, you’ve encouraged him.”
“He didn’t get his way, Tom. You will not be fired. Not as long as I have any say in the matter, and you know you have legal protections.”
“Is this about Tom’s being gay?” Scott asked.
“No, although Bluefield tried to bring that up. I was fairly proud of the school-board president”—this was Jessica Allen, recently elected—“she stopped him each time he tried to mention you. She made him talk about his kid. Still, Bluefield managed to get in a few licks.”
I found that I was sitting in the chair Younger had sat in while we questioned him. Carolyn walked over and sat next to me. “Don’t be angry. We stopped him. Kept him busy enough so he couldn’t get out to make any statements to the press. First thing tomorrow I’m going to call the reporters for the two River’s Edge papers. They owe me a couple of favors. I’ll do everything I can to keep anything Bluefield ever might say out of the papers. I think I’ll be successful.”
I mumbled thanks. She left.
Scott came over and sat next to me. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. He said softly, “Let’s go home.”
In the car I said, “I need to stop at my place for a couple of things first.”
“We’ve got enough stuff at my place.” This was true. We’re close enough in size so that we can wear each other’s clothes, but I insisted that I needed a few essentials.
As we crossed 191st Street at Wolf Road on the way to my place, several emergency vehicles passed us, sirens blaring. I had my arm out the window, my head resting all the way back in the seat cushions.
As we pulled over to let the fire truck pass, I sniffed the pleasant autumn air. It contained barely a hint of the cold of winter lurking only a month or so away.
Up the rise and over Interstate 80 and I saw the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles beyond the white oil-storage silos on the right.
I sat up straight. “What the hell?” I asked.
We drew closer. They were at my place. Looking through the trees, I could see fire streaming out the bedroom and kitchen windows. A fireman tried to wave us past, but we pulled into the driveway. He cursed and swore and came up to the driver’s side of the car. I leaped from the car, not pausing or caring what Scott said to him. I raced to the house like some idiot in a cheap movie. I heard shouts around me, then felt arms encircling me and drawing me back.
I watched my home burn to ashes.
6
I remember bits and pieces of the next few hours. I know Scott stood next to me, his closeness providing comfort. A couple of firemen eventually recognized him and tried to come over and talk, but he waved them away. Somebody handed us coffee and sandwiches. I only took a couple of bites before throwing mine away.
Finally the last fire truck sat at the top of the driveway, ten feet from the damp and blackened embers. I found myself sitting next to Scott in the front seat of his car.
“It’s three in the morning,” Scott said. “We should go. There’s nothing you can do here.” His voice was its softest and most soothing.
“In a few minutes,” I said. I got out of the car and walked to the place that had been my home for fifteen years. The smell of smoke and ash permeated the air. Under my feet the ground had been turned to mud by the water the firemen poured in their vain attempt to stem the flames.
A fireman met me a few feet from the house. He was a roly-poly man about twenty-five years old. “Mr. Mason,” he said, “there’s nothing you can do here now. It’s still too dangerous for you to go in. We’re going to stay here a while longer. We think it’s out, but we always like to be sure. There’ll be an arson investigation in the morning.”
“Was it arson?” I asked.
He looked doubtful. “I’m not the expert,” he said, “but it sure was caught good when we got here.”
“Arson,” I said.
I began to walk around the house.
The fireman said, “Here, Mr. Mason, I wish you wouldn’t. I could get in trouble if you hurt yourself.”
The Principal Cause of Death Page 10