I accepted his apology. We talked for a while, both leaning against the side of my truck. He made no promises about reform or change or what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He did not break down sobbing in tears. He was a confused young adult doing a little talking.
As we spoke, the parking lot emptied of cars. A few of the faculty saw us. We got some strange looks. Meg waved but didn’t come over to chat.
Dan said, “What’s going to happen to my dad?”
“My best guess is he’ll get charged with arson, probably attempted murder.”
“He really hated you, Mr. Mason. You’re the first person I’ve ever known that he didn’t frighten or bully into giving him his way. That’s part of the reason I’m here apologizing. I wish there was something I could do to help you out.”
“Maybe there is,” I said.
He leaned up a little straighter, looking wary.
“I’m not going to ask for secrets about drugs or illegal activity,” I said. “I just want you to tell me everything you remember about the night of the murder. From the time you got back from the hospital until you left.”
The sodium arc lights in the parking lot flicked to life, giving his blond hair a slightly reddish sheen.
Dan told his story. He’d come in with Jones. They’d talked for a few minutes. Jones had pressed him again to get psychiatric counseling. “I got mad at that. He was always bugging me about it.”
Maybe Jones hadn’t been as much of a milquetoast with the kid as I’d thought.
Dan had walked away. Georgette was still in the office when he walked out. Dan hunted for Dalrymple to talk to her, but at first he couldn’t find her. He knew she usually didn’t leave until late, so he hunted all over the school for her.
“Who did you see?”
“I found Donna, Mrs. Dalrymple. We talked a few minutes. I left her and walked out. Everybody was gone. I saw the janitor, the old guy who’s in charge. He seemed all excited about something.”
“How could you tell he was excited?”
“He kept singing to himself—something about ‘I’m in the money.’ I figured maybe he just won the lottery. The old fool practically danced down the hall with a cane.”
“He was blackmailing the killer,” I said. “Maybe he walked in on whoever did it.”
We talked for a while longer, but Dan remembered nothing else significant about that night.
I wished him luck as he left, and I meant it. He might or might not turn his life around, but I wished him well.
I turned to my truck and clambered into the seat. Because of the oversized tires I had a panoramic view of the grounds around the school. My eye roved over the façade of the structure On the third floor, in the front of the new section, a light gleamed in a lone window. Third from the left on the top floor should have been the English department office. I started the car, wondering who was upstairs.
At the edge of the parking lot it hit me. I backed up, turned around, and parked. I entered the building through the doors near the gym. A basketball game organized by the Park District with men from the community rumbled over the wooden floor. I mounted the stairs through the all-too-familiar darkened halls.
I opened the door of the English office. Al Welman sat at his desk, scribbling on a piece of paper. At the sound of the opening door, he turned. I got a wintry smile.
“What’s going on, Al?” I asked.
“Because of you I have to replan every one of my lessons for the next month.”
“I didn’t set the fire, Al.”
“But you agreed with everybody else about the distribution of books. You’re just making my job harder.”
I sat on top of the desk next to the one he was working at. He rubbed bloodshot eyes and sighed tiredly.
He said, “On days like this, I used to be able to go home and Mabel would have dinner ready and hot tea on the stove.” He sighed. “I miss her.”
I said, “It’s Wednesday, Al. Where’s your cane? You bring the umbrella on Fridays.”
He put his red pen down.
“I talked to a witness who saw the blackmailer with a cane just after the murder.”
Al’s right hand shook nearly uncontrollably as he tried to lift his cup of tea to his lips.
“My cane’s at home,” he croaked.
I said, “Let’s go look.”
He shook his head.
“I thought you and Marshall were friends,” I said.
The tea spilled on a pile of student papers on the desk. He mopped at it clumsily.
“Marshall found the cane at the scene,” I said. “He was going to blackmail you. Why would a close friend turn on you?”
Welman sighed, then told the story. “Marshall needed money. He wanted out of this place. He knew he was going to get fired soon. He saw this as a way to get a free meal ticket for the rest of his life. I had to shut him up.”
I listened to his confession, his plotting and planning, the theft of the knife, waiting for the right moment in Jones’s office when no one was around. In his excitement he’d dropped his cane, gone back for it, but it was gone. Then Marshall had begun the blackmail. They were to meet last Sunday. Welman found him asleep on the roof and took the chance to smother him. He’d tried to get into Longfellow’s home since then to try and recover the cane, but he’d been unsuccessful. After a while he figured that even if the police found the cane in Longfellow’s house, they’d never associate it with him. Only someone from the school could do that.
I called the police from the phone in the office. As we waited for them to arrive, Al said, “Jones was a mean man. If he’d been a little understanding, a little nicer, I could have retired in a couple years in peace.” His last words to me just before the police walked in were “I’m glad I killed him.”
On the shores of Lake Superior we huddled in our fur lined black-leather jackets against a rising north wind. A cloudless sky glowed faintly blue in the west as we watched shadows grow around us. We stood on a rocky promontory on one of the last reaches of an island that was still technically a part of Wisconsin. From our vantage point we could barely see the twinkle of light from the windows of our cabin. No other sign of human habitation disturbed the serenity of the moment. Scott put his arm around me and we moved close.
BY MARK RICHARD ZUBRO
The “Tom and Scott” Mysteries
A Simple Suburban Murder
Why Isn’t Becky Twitchell Dead?
The Only Good Priest
The Principal Cause of Death
The “Paul Turner” Mysteries
Sorry Now?
Stonewall Inn Mysteries
Michael Denneny, General Editor
DEATH TAKES THE STAGE
by Donald Ward
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE MYSTERIOUS
FRIEND OF OSCAR WILDE
by Russell A. Brown
A SIMPLE SUBURBAN MURDER
by Mark Richard Zubro
A BODY TO DYE FOR
by Grant Michaels
WHY ISN’T BECKY TWITCHELL DEAD?
by Mark Richard Zubro
THE ONLY GOOD PRIEST
by Mark Richard Zubro
SORRY NOW?
by Mark Richard Zubro
THIRD MAN OUT
by Richard Stevenson
LOVE YOU TO DEATH
by Grant Michaels
THE NIGHT G.A.A. DIED
by Jack Ricardo
SWITCHING THE ODDS
by Phyllis Knight
THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF DEATH
by Mark Richard Zubro
THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF DEATH. Copyright © 1992 by Mark Richard Zubro. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
eISBN 9781466802810
F
irst eBook Edition : October 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zubro, Mark Richard
The principal cause of death / Mark Richard Zubro.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-07767-X (hc)
ISBN 0-312-09896-0 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3576.U225P75 1992
813’.54—dc20
92-1100
CIP
First Edition: May 1992
First Paperback Edition: October 1993
The Principal Cause of Death Page 19