The Cereal Murders gbcm-3

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Any way I can get out of here without creating a fuss?”

  “You can’t go by the main staircase, they’d all see you. Where do you want to go?”

  “Cookbooks?” Any port in a storm.

  She led me around to the back of the third floor and then circled the room through another maze of bookshelves. Eventually we made our way to the other side of the main carpeted staircase from the speaker. Audrey stopped in front of a door taped with a photo of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.

  I said, “Not a cookbook by this guy.”

  “We’re in Crime, silly,” Audrey said quietly so as not to disturb the stultifyingly boring speaker, who was declaiming, “College is an investment, like real estate. Location, location, location!”

  Audrey whispered to me, “Go down two flights and you’ll come out in cookbooks.”

  “What’s on that window, a poster of Julia Child?”

  “They just do it up as a refrigerator door.” She glanced over at the speaker. “I’ll handle things. Better not be gone more than thirty minutes, though.”

  I thanked her for being such a great assistant and pushed through the Silence of the Lambs door. It closed behind me with a decisive thud. With the guilty enjoyment of escaping duty, I quickly descended the concrete stairway. Once I made it down to the cookbook section, I felt immediately at home. I searched out a recipe for piroshki, then flipped through a marvelously illustrated book on the cuisine of Italian hill towns. Educating Your Palate was the name of one of that cookbook’s subsections. I sat in an armchair next to one of the windows.

  My uniform-coated reflection looked back at me, cookbook in hand. Educate your palate, huh? I had never had a formal education in cooking; I had taught myself to cook from books. But I made my living at it. Naturally, the courses I’d had on Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare hadn’t helped, although they’d been enjoyable, except for the Milton. And needless to say, the psychological savvy needed for the business had no referent in any of my papers on the early thinking of Freud.

  But so what. I was educated, self-proclaimed. Period. With this delicious insight I walked over to the first-floor bank of registers to buy the Italian cookbook, then realized I’d left my purse upstairs. I reached into my apron pocket, where I always kept a twenty in case someone had to run out for ingredients, and had the satisfaction of paying for the book with cash earned from catering.

  When I pushed past Hannibal Lecter again, Tom Schulz stood waiting near the door. The speaker said, “One last question,” and moments later the parents were milling aggressively around and standing in line to have their books signed by the expert. Audrey and several other staff members began folding up the chairs.

  “I’m glad to see you,” I said to Schulz. I looked around at the breakdown of the room. “I really should help them.”

  Schulz shook his head. “The food’s gone, the people are leaving, and you have some disks to give me so I can deliver them to the Sheriff’s department tonight.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said suddenly. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Why hadn’t I taken them down to the first floor with me? I fled into the kitchen. No purse. I rushed back out to Audrey.

  “Seen my purse?” I demanded.

  “Yes, yes,” she answered primly, and snapped a metal chair shut. “But don’t ever leave it out like that again, Goldy. Kids at that school have a terrible reputation for stealing. The only time I bring a purse is when I need my wallet with all my cards. Otherwise, I wear my keys.” She went to a closet and returned with my purse. I almost snatched it from her. The computer disks were inside.

  I handed Schulz the disks. He hadn’t mentioned coming over to my house later. Perhaps he didn’t want to. I immediately felt embarrassed, as if I’d overstepped some invisible but important boundary.

  Once again he was reading my mind. Leaning toward me, he whispered, “Can I meet you at your house in ninety minutes?”

  “Of course. Will you be able to stay for a while?”

  He gave me such a tender, incredulous look: What do you think? that I turned away. When I looked back he was saluting me as he sauntered out the third-floor exit. Julian had gone, presumably to his friend Neil’s house; the Marenskys and Dawsons had disappeared. Chalk another one up for Greer not helping with catering cleanup. Maybe that wasn’t required for Occidental.

  Audrey and I cleared the trash and washed dishes. My heart ached for her as she recited all the latest cruel deeds foisted on her by Carl Coopersmith’s insidious lawyer. Finally, but with some guilt, I told her I was expecting a guest at my home momentarily. With Heather’s begrudging help, the three of us loaded our boxes into the van. In an extremely casual tone Audrey inquired, “What was that policeman doing at the store tonight?”

  “I told you, I was giving him those disks.”

  “It’s like he doesn’t trust us,” she said darkly.

  “Well, can you blame him?” came Heather’s sharp voice from the backseat.

  “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it,” Audrey snapped.

  “Oh, Mom.”

  And we drove in unhappy silence all the way back to their house in Aspen Meadow.

  Plumes of exhaust drifted up from the tailpipe of Schulz’s car when I pulled up by the curb in front of my home.

  “Everyone will see you if you park here,” I said when he had rolled down his window.

  “Oh, yeah? I wasn’t aware I was doing anything illegal.” He hauled out a plastic bag. It said BRUNSWICK BOWLING BALLS.

  “What did the disks say?”

  “Talk about it inside.”

  I pushed the alarm buttons and opened the door. The bowling ball bag yielded a bottle of VSOP cognac. In a cabinet I found a couple of liqueur glasses that John Richard had not broken on one of his rampages. As we sat in my kitchen and sipped the cognac, Schulz said he wanted to hear about my evening first. I told him about the bookstore spats, and about Macguire Perkins getting in the middle of it. I also told him about my suspicion concerning Macguire’s use of steroids.

  “Was that what Keith’s newspaper article was about?” I asked.

  “No,” he said pensively, “it wasn’t.” I toyed with my glass. Relax, I ordered myself. But Arch’s problems at school and Julian’s troubling anxiety seemed to be in the air, even though neither of the boys was at home. And despite the afternoon interlude with Schulz the day of the spider bite, I was not used to being alone with him in my house. At night.

  Schulz refilled my glass. “How about Julian? Did he get involved in the argument at the bookstore?”

  “Oh, no.” I brightened. “Good news on that front, in fact.” I told him about Julian’s scholarship.

  “No kidding.” Schulz seemed both pleased and intrigued. “That’s interesting. Who gave him the money?”

  “No one knows. I’m wondering if it’s some kind of bribe.”

  He sipped his cognac. “A bribe. For what? Did you ask him?” I told him I had not. He pondered that for a minute, then said, “Now tell me how you got those disks.”

  “Can’t, sorry, they were given to me in confidence. Do they contain evidence? I mean, is it something you’ll be able to use?”

  “I don’t know how.” But he reached inside the Brunswick bag and handed me some folded papers. “I got a printout of Keith’s article. The rest was notes for a paper on Dostoyevski. The other disk had a list of expenses from his visits to ten colleges. The article sums up the trips.” Seeing my puzzled expression, Schulz added, “That’s what Keith was going to expose, Goldy. His personal views on college education as he’d already experienced it. I wanted you to take a look at it, but it just looks like his opinions.”

  If that was all it was, I told him I would read it in the morning. I was too tired even to read the word midterm tonight. “If it’s just Keith’s opinions on what’s going on in higher education in the world at large, what’s the big deal?”

  “I don’t know. But nobody I can find seems to have had the slightest idea what h
e was researching for that article. Sometimes people are more afraid of what they think you’re going to expose than they ever would be if they knew exactly what you were going to expose. You fear what you don’t know.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said as I drained the last of the cognac in my glass. Heady stuff.

  “Like with this smoke stunt. Someone wants you to think you’re going to be hurt.”

  “Marla broke her leg,” I pointed out.

  “She may have gotten off easy.” He put his glass down. His face was very grim. “I know I’ve said this a few times already, Miss G., but I’d feel a lot better if you’d all move out, quietly, until we solve this murder.”

  I blinked at him. How many times had I run away in fear? Too many. The running part of my life was over, and 1 was not going to budge.

  17

  Schulz moved restlessly in his chair. I poured us some more cognac and had the uncomforting thought that if we got really drunk, we wouldn’t even notice if someone smashed another window or stopped up every chimney in the neighborhood.

  I sipped and looked at the clock. Ten o’clock. The odd feeling of being alone in my home with Schulz brought full wakefulness despite the fact that catering in the evening usually exhausted me. My mind traveled back to the Marenskys and the Dawsons, Brad Marensky morose and silent, Macguire Perkins embarrassed when ordered to shut up. When our tiny glasses were again empty, Schulz stood and walked out to the living room. I followed. The place still smelled faintly of smoke, and the pale yellow walls were the color of toasted marshmallow. In the near future I would have to hire someone to do a cleanup. Schulz got down on one knee to peer up the chimney.

  “Any ideas? Did you ever hear anything out on the roof?”

  “No ideas, no weird sounds. My theory is that this is the same person who did the rock and the snake. I wish I knew who was so pissed off with me. Arbitration would be cheaper than making glass repairs and paying for professional cleaning.”

  “Somebody strong, somebody athletic,” Schulz mused. “The only thing all these things have in common is a threat to Arch. Scare him while he’s home alone, put something in the locker, fill the house with smoke while he’s here with you and Julian… but that part wasn’t planned, was it?”

  “Being home? No, he fell on the icy front steps, prelude to Marla. Maybe that one was meant for me,” I said wryly, remembering the spider-bite incident.

  “Who’s mad at you? Or Arch?” His eyes probed mine and he gently took my hand, then reeled me in like a slow-motion jitterbug dancer.

  “I don’t know,” I murmured into his chest. He was warm; the clean smell of aftershave clung to his skin. I pulled back. Around his dark pupils was only a ring of green luminosity.

  “All this talk about starting fires…” I said with a small smile.

  And up we tiptoed to the silent second story. The cognac, the desire, the comfort of Schulz, seeped through me like one of those unexpected warm currents you encounter in the ocean. In the dark of my room he stood beside me while we looked out at the glowing jack-o’-lanterns in the neighborhood. He rubbed my back, then kissed my ear. I set my alarm for four and then slipped out of my clothes. We both laughed as we dove for the bed. It was a good thing Schulz always used protection. Ever since we had started making love, I had forgotten the meaning of the word caution.

  When he pulled me next to him between the cool sheets, his large, rough hands brought calm to nerves inside and out. When he kissed me, something in my brain loosened. Before long I had abandoned not only caution but all the other petty worries that had crowded into my brain.

  After our lovemaking Schulz went downstairs. He came back up and said, “Twenty minutes,” then got dressed.

  “Until what?”

  “Until the first shift of your surveillance shows up.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why? I mean, why now?”

  He counted off on his fingers as he enumerated. “Two murders, broken glass, anonymous phone calls, a poisonous snake followed by a poisonous spider, booby-trapped steps, and a vandalized chimney, which I didn’t get to see until now. And a woman with two boys who won’t move out, despite the best advice of her local cop.”

  “Arch will call his friends,” I retorted mildly, “focus on the squad car with his high-powered binoculars, and pretend we’re in the middle of a coup. Your cops will think we’re nuts.”

  “You’d be surprised at how many loonies we get.”

  “Actually,” I ventured, “why don’t you just do the surveillance?”

  “I wish.”

  I pulled on a bathrobe and stood by a bedroom window. Glowing pumpkin-candles illuminated the silky night air. Schulz went outside to his car. Five minutes later, an unmarked police car showed up. I watched Schulz leave, then I watched the jack-o’- lantern flames flicker and die. Eventually I slipped back into my empty bed that smelled of Tom Schulz. I slept deeply, dreamlessly, until the alarm surprised me.

  Groaning, I slipped out of bed to start stretching in the dark. My yoga teacher had told me once that if you were just going through the motions, it wasn’t yoga. So I emptied my mind and my breath and started over, saluting to the east, where there was as yet no sun, then breathing and allowing my body to flow through the rest of the routine until I was revitalized and ready to meet the day, even if we were only four and a half hours into it.

  Too bad they didn’t have a resident yogi at Elk Park Prep, I mused on my way downstairs. How could you have class rank with yoga? Its whole essence was noncompetitive, the striving with one’s own body rather than being obsessed with the accomplishments of others. Which is what education should be, I decided as a jet-black stream of espresso spurted into one of my white porcelain cups. Stretching oneself. But no one was asking me. My eyes fell on the folded papers still on my kitchen table – the article printout from Keith’s computer disk. Correction: Schulz had asked me. I sat down with my coffee and started to read.

  WHAT’S IN A NAME?

  – Anatomy of a Hoax As a senior at Elk Park Prep, this fall I have visited ten of the top colleges and universities in this country. The qualification “top” is commonly given by the media and, of course, by the colleges themselves. I went to these schools because this higher-education journey is one I will be taking soon. It’s a journey I’ve been looking forward to. Why? Because of what I thought I would find: 1) enthusiastic teachers, 2) a contagious love of learning, 3) academic peers with whom I would have mind-altering discussions, 4) the challenge of taking tests and writing papers that would give me 5) an introduction to new fields of learning so that I would have 6) the chance to develop my abilities.

  I expected to find these things, but guess what? They weren’t there. My parents could have shelled out eighty-plus thousand dollars for a hoax!

  The first place I visited I went for two days of classes. I never saw a full professor the entire time, although several Nobel prizewinners had prominent photographs in the college catalogue. I went to five classes. I wish I could tell you what they were about, but they were all taught by graduate students with foreign accents so thick I couldn’t tell what they were saying… .

  I went to an all-boys school next. I never even saw humans teaching courses, only videotaped lectures. Over the weekend I wanted to have intellectual discussions. But all the guys had left to go to the campus of a girls’ school nearby.

  The next place had real people teaching. So I went to a section meeting of the introduction to art history. It turned out the class was concentrating on thirteenth-century Dutch Books of Hours. The instructor said at one point that something was a prelude to Rembrandt, and one of the kids said, Who’s Rembrandt? After the class I asked why the instructor was teaching such an obscure topic, and one of the students said, Well, that was the subject of the instructor’s dissertation, and he was trying to do his research while teaching the class… .

  I knew somebody from Elk Park Prep at the next place I visited. She graduated from our school five years ago and was no
w a graduate student. She needed to talk to her advisor about her dissertation, but he was doing research in Tokyo, and hadn’t been at the college for two years…

  Finally I visited a school with a fantastic teacher! I went to his class on modern European drama. It was jammed with students. They were having a lively discussion of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and nobody was using Cliff’s Notes. The professor was storming back and forth, asking why did Hedda Gabler just keel over at the end. After all the disappointment at the other schools, I came out feeling great! But when the class was over, the other students were glum. When I asked why, they said that this fabulous assistant professor, who had just won the Excellence in Teaching award. had been denied tenure! He hadn’t published enough… .

  Who is supporting this hoax in higher education? Certainly not yours truly. Do American students really want this false pedigree? Do we want good teaching, or an empty reputation? Do we want an educational process, or an impersonal stamp of approval? Students in the schools, unite… .

  Well, well. He sounded like a valedictorian, all right. In a number of ways the article resembled Keith’s speech the night he died. But this essay was not an expose. There was really nothing in it anyone would kill to keep secret. Not that anyone else knew that, however.

  Keith Andrews must have posed a threat to someone. Julian hadn’t liked him, and neither had a number of the other students. And in the last two weeks, somebody or bodies had been trying to hurt Arch and me. Why? What was the connection between the murder and the attempts on us? Was the murder of Kathy Andrews in Lakewood part of the killer’s scheme? How did the Neiman-Marcus credit card figure in what was going on? None of it added up.

  Outside, the chilly Halloween night had given way to a snowy All Saints’ morning. Because the first Saturday in November is notorious for heavy snowfall, the College Board opted to give the SATs locally in the mountain area rather than have all the Aspen Meadow students attempt the trek to Denver, forty miles away. In the spirit of noblesse oblige, Headmaster Perkins had ordered me to prepare quadruple the amount of morning snack, so we could serve – his words – “the masses.” Time to get cracking.