Murder at Birchwood Pond

by Jade Astor

  The Birchwood Academy Files 1

  Murder at Birchwood Pond

  by

  Jade Astor

  Published by Jade Astor at Kindle Direct Publishing

  Copyright 2020 Jade Astor

  First edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

  Other titles by Jade Astor:

  Snow Bite, Blood Red

  Bachelor and the Beast

  Pete and His Werewolf

  The Werewolf Tutor

  Night of the Satyr

  Ebb Tide

  The Baron’s Gargoyle

  Artemis Gardens

  Passionate Lessons

  Passion Unmasked

  The House on the Cliff

  Kiss of the Dark Prince

  Chapter 1

  By 6:30, every cell in Darian’s body ached. His lungs burned, his leg muscles screamed, and his teeth hurt from jarring together. Even the marrow in his bones throbbed as he pounded down the packed-dirt path. Wet leaves, sagging from the weight of the chilly morning dew, reached out to slap at his neck and elbows. A squawking crow seemed to laugh at him as it swept over the still pond.

  Though both of his moms swore by the benefits of early-morning running, raising it almost to the level of a spiritual pursuit, the appeal of so much pain and sweat continued to elude him. When he’d started teaching at Birchwood Academy, the sedentary nature of the job had persuaded him to give their favorite pastime a try. They’d been thrilled to hear of his plan. He hadn’t dared tell them that so far, he wasn’t warming up to it much.

  On the other hand, he couldn’t deny that his new routine was having a positive effect on his body. In just under a month, a daily jog around the campus pond had melted off the excess pounds he’d picked up in grad school. The three suits he’d bought at the beginning of the semester no longer felt tight around the waist and shoulders. Maybe by summer, now eight months away, he’d be ready for a daring swimsuit.

  Halfway along the trail, a small stone shelter marked the edge of the Birchwood campus. Here, the vegetation grew thicker around the water and the trail hugged the shoreline, eventually looping back around and leading back to the school’s ponderous gothic structures. The shelter had been fashioned from the same heavy gray slabs and erected as a memorial to some longtime faculty member who had died in 1998. Lichens and grime had obscured most of the commemorative plaque, including most of the man’s name. Darian had jogged past it every day since the beginning of September, but he’d never stopped to clear it off and read it. The poor fellow might as well have died in 1898 for all anyone remembered him, it seemed.

  Ritual had made him faster as well as fitter. He’d reached the familiar spot quickly this morning. Right away, he noticed something different. A slight scraping noise came from inside the plain granite walls, and a shadow flickered over the moss-flecked steps. Darian slowed, startled, just as a figure stepped forward.

  He knew who it was right away. Even in a school blooming with youthful male beauty, Timothy Pryor stood out. He was a bit older than most of the other students, having enrolled for a “gap year,” Birchwood’s euphemism for a desperate attempt to remedy grades too low for Ivy League admission. Despite his academic deficiencies, Timothy’s easy confidence, which a good number of Birchwood’s population had no difficulty calling arrogance, both repelled and impressed Darian. No matter how long he lived or how buff he got, he doubted he’d ever achieve that level of self-assurance.

  When Timothy recognized Darian, his smile faltered. He’d been expecting someone else.

  As always, he recovered quickly. “Morning, Mr. Winter.”

  Darian could have grunted out a reply and run past, but Birchwood stressed gentlemanly behavior as rigidly in the twenty-first century as it had been at its founding in the late nineteenth. He settled for slowing and jogging in place.

  “Hello, Timothy. You’re out and about early, aren’t you?”

  “I could say the same of you, Mr. Winter.” Timothy’s smile was deceptively casual. His dark grey slacks, white shirt and tie, and orange cashmere sweater suggested that he wasn’t on a power walk before his first class. “Actually, I thought I’d take a stroll to clear my head. Up since the crack of dawn working on my essay for Mr. Finch’s senior seminar. Shelley and Keats and all that muck. I figured since nature inspired them to write so much, I should try it myself.”

  “And is it working?”

  “Nah. Still stuck. I’m not worried, though. One way or the other, I’ll be done with it soon.”

  Darian wondered if one of those ways might include persuading another boy to write it for him. Everett had confided that very suspicion to Darian in the teacher’s lounge the last time Timothy came up in conversation—which seemed to happen often.

  “Glad to hear it. Well, good luck to you.” Darian nodded and was about to take off again when Timothy crossed his arms and thrust up his chin.

  “Do you ever worry that your students don’t take you seriously? You know, because you’re only a few years older than most of us are?”

  Despite the cool breeze blowing over the pond, Darian felt warmth spread across his face and under his arms. “No,” he said firmly.

  “What about the other teachers?” Timothy pressed. “You have to admit, you do look kind of young. Almost young enough to hang out with me and my friends. That’s not a bad thing, though. Plenty of guys would give their right n—ah, arm to be one of us.” His gaze slid down Darian’s sweat-soaked t-shirt and briefly dropped lower. He licked his lips. “Maybe I should take up jogging. You seem to enjoy it. We could run together. Side by side.”

  Darian pretended not to understand him. He waved in the direction of campus. “I have to go now. Class starts in an hour.”

  “So it does.” Timothy gave him a mock salute. “See you around campus, Mr. Winter.”

  Jaw clamped, Darian jogged on. Despite his quick denial, he often did wonder if his students thought of him more as a peer than a teacher. People were always eager to insist he looked younger than his twenty-four years. During the last year of his master’s degree studies, a university librarian had hassled him about checking out books with a grad student ID. During his first week at Birchwood, a security guard had accosted him when he made a weekend detour to his office to pick up some grading. If he were honest with himself, his youthful appearance was a constant source of insecurity—and Timothy had picked up on it right away.

  The encounter doused whatever mild enjoyment he had found in his daily bout of physical torment. Picking up his speed, he ran back to the school athletic complex—one of the few modern buildings on their staid Victorian-era campus—and hastily showered and changed into his teaching clothes. In the locker room’s full-length mirror, he gave his tie a Windsor knot and closed all the buttons on his suit jacket in an attempt to look older. Sadly, he still looked like a high school kid dressing up for his yearbook photo. He swiped his fingers down either side of his too-rosy mouth. Maybe he should grow a beard.

  Across the quad in Gregorius Hall, familiar voices carried through the open doorway of the faculty lounge, along with the appealing scent of dark roast coffee. Darian stepped inside to find Aaron Macklin, the history teacher who had
been there only a year longer than him, commiserating with an older man and a middle-aged woman.

  “It’s just the expense of the thing I can’t wrap my head around,” he was saying to Everett Finch, Darian’s fellow English instructor. “I mean, three thousand dollars for a few framed pictures, a wedding album, and a video of the ceremony and reception? Can’t people do pretty much the same thing with their phones these days? And for free?”

  “You should get the best photographer you possibly can.” Patricia Woodley, the math teacher, waved her coffee cup for emphasis. “Jake and I disagreed about that when we were in the planning stages, too. But I won out, which probably saved us an argument or two later. You should let Caryn decide. Good pictures are so important to the bride and her family. Men don’t get it.”

  “But they’re so expensive,” Aaron said with a moan.

  “I’m with Aaron on this one.” Everett peered through the half-moon glasses perched on his long, narrow nose. “Seems an inordinate amount to waste on something you’ll probably look at once for the entire rest of your life. And if you split up, the whole bunch will end up in barbeque pit anyway.”

  “Everett, that’s terrible,” Patricia scolded. “Surely you’ve all heard the old saying: the wedding is for the bride, the honeymoon is for the groom.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Everett retorted. “Save the money and spend it on a jaunt to the tropics.”

  “At least you saved on food, having married a chef.” Aaron met Patricia’s gaze uncertainly. Patricia gave a horsey laugh.

  “Oh, come on! You don’t imagine Jake catered his own wedding! Well, okay, I admit he got a substantial professional discount from some of his friends in the biz. I can’t deny it helped the bottom line.”

  Everett harrumphed. “There, you see? It’s always who you know in this world.”

  Patricia winked at Darian. “Well? What’s your take on this dilemma?”

  “I have no idea,” Darian said, blushing. “I’ve never been involved in planning a wedding.” He had seen photos of his two moms’ commitment ceremony, which took place back in the days before same-sex weddings became common and legal. The photos had been done by friends, probably for just that reason. But maybe things were different now.

  “Typical single guy,” Patricia said with a theatrical gesture. “But things change, Darian. Remember that.”

  “Leave the poor fellow alone,” Everett said, staring at Darian with sympathy. Darian was relieved he hadn’t called him a “poor boy.” “You’ll scare him off before he’s even made it through his first term.”

  Darian managed a wan smile as Patricia picked up her books and left for class. Aaron followed with obvious relief at his escape.

  Everett was about to walk out, too, but Darian stopped him. “Can I talk to you about something?”

  “Of course,” Everett said. “I hope you won’t let Patricia’s nattering disturb you. She’s quite harmless. Most people simply assume everyone else is exactly like them. Don’t worry about it.”

  “It isn’t that,” Darian said, though he was grateful for Everett’s support. They two of them had recognized each other as fellow travelers the moment they’d met, and in fact he’d wondered if Everett’s influence had helped him win the job in the first place. At the same time, Everett had kept things quiet, no doubt because he’d come out at a time when alternative sexuality wasn’t a fit subject for public discussion. Though Everett was old enough to be his father, Darian preferred to think of them as closer to a gay nephew and an even gayer uncle.

  “Okay, so people think I’m straight and twenty. As long as they don’t assume things about my political party,” Darian joked. “I just worry that someone I’d really like to meet might make the same assumptions and stroll right on past me.”

  “Oh, don’t concern yourself with such matters. When the right one comes along, he’ll know as well as you do. It will be obvious to both of you what’s going on.”

  “Is that life experience speaking?”

  “More like the road not taken,” Everett said wistfully.

  “Anyway, thanks, but it’s no big deal. Not looking.”

  “And as we all know, that’s just when it will happen.”

  “We’ll see. That wasn’t what I wanted to ask you about, though.”

  Everett grew more interested. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I ran into Timothy Pryor. Literally ran. He was kind of…well…forward with me.”

  “No surprise there. I’m afraid that young man, charming though he may be, is steadily fraying my last nerve, too. He has no passion for his schoolwork, that’s for certain. I can only presume he’s here to ease a different sort of itch. And I can sympathize with that, as no doubt you can, too, but only to a certain extent. Be sure you don’t make the mistake of scratching him.”

  “No chance of that. I’m careful.”

  Everett grinned. “Not too careful, I hope. You’re only young once, Darian, something I realized too late for my own good.”

  “Not worth the risk of gossip.”

  “Worse at an all-boys school than any other sort. Yes. Agreed, and I don’t deny that Timothy is just the type to spread it. Other people’s livelihoods—even their lives—are little more than a game to him.”

  “Are you saying he’s done this sort of thing before?”

  “I couldn’t say for certain—only that it wouldn’t shock me if he had.” Everett leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Don’t worry, though. He’ll get what’s coming to him. His sort always does.”

  Darian arrived at his first class, Great Books of the Western World, slightly sweaty from rushing. The boys had read Othello and seemed eager to discuss it.

  “Iago’s motivation seems clear enough to me,” one of the students in the back piped up in response to Darian’s discussion prompt. “He was in love with Othello. Because it was forbidden in that time, he turned his emotions inward and became evil.”

  “Well…that is not exactly a new theory, but it is a plausible approach to the play’s central question,” Darian said, forcing himself to sound unruffled. He was well aware that every pair of eyes in the room had become riveted on him. Timothy’s handiwork, perhaps? Or was he just being paranoid? “Some critics do believe that. Others reject it emphatically.”

  “Do you, Mr. Winter?”

  “It’s an unanswerable question. There’s some evidence in a few key scenes that could support such an interpretation. But nothing we could call definitive proof.”

  “But maybe they were like Gilgamesh and Enkidu,” the student persisted. “You know, warriors who loved one another.”

  “Possibly. We don’t know what that relationship was supposed to be, exactly. But we do know their closeness strengthened them both. Iago and Othello’s connection is what we would today call toxic.”

  To his relief, he managed to steer the discussion back onto a less controversial track. The students, lively and interested, continued to debate the possible motives of Iago’s treachery toward his gullible friend and military superior. Darian listened with pleasure as they came up with several plausible interpretations involving both the psychological makeups of the characters and the cultural mores of Shakespeare’s time.

  Toward the end of the class, he happened to turn and glance out of his classroom window. Through it, he spotted Everett and Timothy standing on the path that led to the library. They seem to be exchanging heated words. At one point, Everett raised both arms, waved them around, and dropped them heavily to his side in a gesture of exasperation. In response, Timothy smirked and shook his head as if to express pity. With a final shrug, he turned to walk away. Everett was still sputtering as the younger man sauntered off in the direction of the dormitories.

  Without interrupting the flow of the lesson, Darian crossed the room and closed the shade. Then he went on with his lecture.

  After his last class, Darian filled his briefcase with work and headed back to the small cottage the school had provided as
his living quarters. Though it was theoretically within walking distance, the weight of his books and the stacks of essays he invariably hauled home forced him to traverse the relatively short distance in his aging compact car. In a year, or perhaps slightly less depending how he managed his money, he would be able to invest in something more trustworthy. At least breaking down between home and work wasn’t much of a concern for the time being—at least until winter hit.

  For a while he thought about calling home as a pretext to discussing the Timothy issue. Ultimately, he decided against it. High time he started to handle things on his own. Besides, the whole issue embarrassed him so much he didn’t want to talk about it. The implication that he looked young enough to date students, and was perhaps eager to do so, was best not even put into words.

  After changing into jeans and a sweatshirt, he headed for the kitchen. Maybe tonight was a good time to tackle the meatless lasagna he’d been planning. The recently emailed recipe was tacked to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a moose, and the ingredients lay ready in the fridge and cupboards. No sense waiting until something went bad. Pushing Birchwood and its petty dramas out of his mind, he set about retrieving everything he’d need and spreading it out across the countertop. Then he took down the recipe

  Ten minutes later, he was dialing his cell phone. Housekeeping dilemmas, he reasoned, fell under a different category than overly forward students.

  “I’m trying to make the lasagna,” he blurted the moment his mom Ange picked up. He’d expected her to be alone. Riki, who managed an upscale hotel in Miami, usually didn’t get home until well after dark. As a university professor and department chair, Ange made her own hours to some extent. “You didn’t write down how long I need to boil the noodles. I don’t want them to get soggy.”

  “You don’t have to boil them at all. Layer them in between the ricotta and sauce. They’ll come out just the way you like them.”

  “I don’t need to boil them at all?” Darian repeated, feeling silly. “Won’t they just get brittle and dry up?”