Extra Credit

by Maggie Barbieri

  She started crying again. I had been hoping we could avoid that.

  “For what it’s worth, I can tell you with certainty that your brother ingested enough pills to kill himself twice over. To me, it seems that he was intent on making sure that he went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

  She nodded, her head bowed.

  Mac leaned in and took her hand. “I also can tell you that he didn’t suffer. There was no pain. Not at all.”

  Her weeping grew louder, and I took her other hand. My mind flashed on the vomit on the desk, and I wondered if that was normal or if Chick had had a change of heart at the last minute and tried to undo the damage that he had inflicted on his body. Now wasn’t the time to explore that possibility. Or ever.

  “Please believe me, Christine,” Mac said. “I’ve been doing this job since, oh, Lincoln was president.” He smiled when Christine laughed through her tears. “I’m so sorry, but your brother took his own life.”

  “What about the gash on his head?” she asked, grasping at straws.

  “He hit it on the desk when he passed out.”

  We sat in silence for a few minutes while Christine attempted to digest the news, news she already knew but had been reluctant to take to heart.

  When she didn’t respond, he continued. “Let’s think about this logically. How could he have been murdered,” he asked, “because I know that’s what you’re thinking, if he swallowed pills?”

  “Maybe somebody made him take them?” she asked.

  Mac nodded slowly. “Maybe.” He crossed his arms. “Did you know of anyone who wanted to kill him?”

  She smiled sadly. “I didn’t even really know my brother anymore, when it comes right down to it.” It was the first time I heard her make this admission. Maybe the truth was finally dawning on her.

  “I know you’ve spoken to the same detectives I have. No one, based on the surveillance camera mounted on the corner, came in or out of that building who didn’t belong there. They have verified every last person on that tape.” Mac touched her arm. “I’m sorry, Christine.”

  “Maybe it was someone in the building?” she asked.

  “Do you really think that someone in the building killed him?” Mac asked.

  We let that sink in for a while. The silence told me that she didn’t think a resident of that sad and depressing place had killed her brother.

  She stood suddenly. “I don’t know why I’m asking you this, but I have to.”

  Mac and I both braced for another, more pointed question about Chick.

  She surprised us both by asking something completely unrelated. “Can I give you a hug?”

  Mac stood and threw his arms out. “I thought you’d never ask.” He wrapped his arms around her while she cried a little more.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’re a very nice man.”

  “Thank you for saying that,” he said. “My ‘customers’ usually don’t send me thank-you notes for my services.”

  Typical Mac gallows humor, but it made Christine laugh, regardless of the fact that her brother had been one of Mac’s “customers.”

  We walked outside into the crisp autumn air and stood on the sidewalk in front of the low government building.

  “Lunch?” Christine asked hopefully. She looked at her watch. “Albeit a late one?”

  I didn’t really feel like eating after having been in an office adjacent to the morgue, but more than that, I needed to get some work done. “I’m sorry, but I really need to go back to school, Christine,” I said.

  She looked disappointed. “That’s fine. I have a babysitter meeting the kids after school, so I thought I’d take advantage of that.” She laughed. “Funny how I thought that once the girls were over eighteen, I’d get my life back. Now look at me.”

  “Tim’s kids seem great,” I lied. Thoughts of one of them hiding Trixie’s tennis ball popped into my mind, but I pushed them aside.

  “They’re a little … rambunctious? Yes, that’s a good way to describe them. But we’re working on that.”

  I went around to the driver’s side of the car and unlocked the doors. “Are you better now that we talked to Mac?” I asked.

  She looked at me across the top of the car. “Honestly?” she asked. “I don’t think I’ll ever be better.”

  Ask a stupid question, get a tragic answer.

  Seventeen

  The next day, I invited Meaghan to go to lunch, away from school and the hullabaloo of the cafeteria where quarters were close and a private conversation was nearly impossible. She’s not stupid; she knew if I was spiriting her off campus, there was something serious we needed to discuss.

  When we sat down at Merryweather’s on the avenue, my new go-to place for an off-campus lunch, we ordered drinks and chatted about the upcoming basketball season, her practice schedule, and the new coach. Through no fault of my own, I had been the interim basketball coach for a spell when Meaghan was a freshman, and as Fred, my volunteer assistant coach, had once said, it didn’t really suit my skill set. That was an understatement. I had never been so happy to go back to teaching, even if I missed interacting with the girls on the team.

  Meaghan knew something was up, but she wasn’t going to be the one to break the conversational ice, as it were. She kept the chatter light, asking me questions about how my semester was going, if her father and I had any plans to travel during winter break, that sort of stuff. The sort of stuff that would keep me talking and avoid the real purpose of our visit. The sort of stuff she would never ask about under normal circumstances.

  After I felt like I had answered every question she could throw my way, I got down to business. We had ordered our food and were awaiting its arrival. “So, how are things going with…?” It was at that point that I realized I didn’t know Mr. Super Senior’s name.

  “Alex.”

  “Right. Alex.”

  Her face lit up. “Great! He’s a great guy. We’re having a great time.” She took a long drag on her soda straw. “It’s so great.”

  “So, things are great?” I asked.

  She nodded vigorously.

  How to do this, how to do this … I mulled over the segue from Alex, the oldest senior on the planet, to Joanne Larkin, the cranky psych teacher, to Forensic Psych, once Meaghan’s hardest class and now her avocation, to her most recent test. “Professor Larkin is thrilled that you’re doing so well in class.”

  “Alex is a great, I mean excellent, tutor.”

  “Must be.”

  Something in my tone tipped her off. She narrowed her eyes. The jig was up. “What does that mean?”

  I poked around the breadbasket, stalling. “It’s just that you had a remarkable turnaround. First you were practically failing, and then you got a near perfect score on your test.”

  Meaghan’s the more mature of the twins, but even she turned petulant every now and again. “That’s because I studied.” She fell silent as the waitress placed a sandwich and fries in front of her. Once she was gone, Meaghan looked at me again. “And I was tutored. What are you trying to say?”

  I looked at my spinach salad and then at Meaghan’s turkey club, bacon hanging out from between three slices of perfectly toasted bread, and instantly had order envy. I tried not to focus on that, preferring to think up a good rebuttal. “What I’m trying to say is that I wonder if Alex had any sample tests that he used to help you study.”

  Meaghan, who had been using her knife to dislodge some ketchup from the bottle, dropped it noisily onto her plate. In my opinion, she came to her conclusion pretty quickly, that yes, I was accusing her of cheating, leading me to believe I had hit a nerve. “You think I cheated,” she said, her face a combination of incredulity, anger, and hurt, all rolled into one expression. Slowly, she took her napkin off her lap and placed it next to her untouched food. She stood. “I’m going to go back to school,” she said.

  “Wait!” I said, grabbing her arm, but it was too late. Her mind was made up.

  She looke
d down at me, her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t believe you think I’d do something like that.”

  “Not you! Not intentionally!” I said, trying to explain my thought process. To her back, I called, “But maybe Mr. Super … I mean, Adam?” Wrong again. “Alex! Alex!” Too late. She was out the door of the restaurant, intent on making the six-block trek back to school on her own.

  Brilliant, I thought. Well done, Bergeron. I sat at the table for a few minutes until the waitress came over. “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  Yes, but not one that you can help me solve unless you have a time machine. “No,” I said, handing her the salad, “but could you please wrap this up to go?” After she walked away with the salad, I pulled Meaghan’s sandwich and fries in front of me. Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it, I thought, taking a huge bite of turkey club, its bacony goodness tasting like the nectar of the gods but with a soupçon of guilt.

  My cell phone rang just as I was finishing up the last fry and my second soda; I was sure to be buzzing on a caffeine high all afternoon after two huge Diet Cokes. Crawford. “How you doin’, pally?” I asked.

  “Did you accuse Meaghan of cheating?”

  That didn’t take long. “Not in so many words.”

  “She’s really upset.” His voice was flat. For normal folks, that signifies things like disinterest or boredom; in Crawford, it signifies something a little more complex. This time, it was anger.

  “I know. I’ll make it right.”

  “What is this about? Do I even want to know?”

  “Where are you?”

  “The precinct.”

  “Then let’s talk about this later. In the meantime, I’ll make sure to work it out with her.”

  “Please.” He sounded exasperated. “Did she cheat?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we should get all the facts before we try to figure this out?”

  “Are you mad at me?” I asked.

  “Do you really think she cheated?”

  “Not on purpose.”

  He let out a groan. “Okay, let’s talk about this later. I don’t think I can handle it right now.”

  “Work bad?” I asked.

  “Alison, I’m a homicide detective. Work is never really good,” he said. He had a talent for stating the obvious.

  “I meant worse than usual.”

  “Yes, worse than usual.”

  Must have been a banner day for murders in our little corner of the Bronx. That was concerning.

  “It’s Christine,” he blurted out.

  Hmmm.

  “She won’t let this go,” he said. He blathered on, and believe me, Crawford is not a blatherer. “I remember this from when we were married. Once she got something in her head, she just wouldn’t let it go. Now she wants to see the surveillance tape that tracked the people going in and out of the apartment building. How did she find out about that?”

  If he didn’t know, I wasn’t going to tell him; he was the smarty-pants detective after all. “No clue.”

  “How do you tell someone that their brother was a complete loon?” he asked.

  “I think you just tell them,” I said helpfully.

  “See, that’s what separates us,” he said. “You and me, that is,” he added, as if there were any doubt.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” He sighed into the phone again. I wasn’t looking forward to our evening together, if indeed we were going to have one. “I should have retired when I had the chance.”

  Oh, that again. “You still can.” Somehow, his not retiring was turning into my fault, and I wasn’t going to be left holding that bag.

  The noise he made let me know that he didn’t think I understood just how hard it would be to undo the decision that he had made all those months earlier. Regardless, it was his choice. This time, I wasn’t getting involved.

  We hung up, the issue unresolved. I can’t say I wasn’t a little happy that he was finally as fed up with his ex-wife and her mysterious murder theory as I was; I’d thought she’d come back from London and we’d peacefully coexist, twenty miles between us. Neither of us had banked on the fact that we’d have to deal with her crazy family and the fallout from her brother’s eventual suicide.

  I thought back fondly to the time when I was an adult orphan, divorced, with only myself to take care of; it was a time before poisoned dogs, and break-ins, and stepchildren, and ex-wives. Then I remembered the crippling loneliness, and the feeling of coming home to an empty house night after night. The weekend stretches where I only used my voice once, and that was to order a coffee and a bagel at the local deli. The time B.C.: before Crawford.

  I finished my soda and threw some money down on the table. The way things were now was the “new normal,” and I was going to have to learn how to deal.

  I vowed to myself that I would be the best second wife and stepmother on the planet, even if it killed me.

  Eighteen

  Although my intentions weren’t the purest—I needed reassurance and he’s as reassuring as they come—I felt good picking up the phone to call Kevin McManus, my good friend the former priest. If anyone knew how to talk me into a better mental place, it was my old buddy.

  Thinking about Kevin, I realized we hadn’t spoken in a while. I didn’t know his work schedule, but I was fortunate to find him at home, with a few free minutes before reporting to the catering hall where he was banquet manager. I called him from my office. I didn’t ask for absolution about some of the less-than-generous thoughts I was having about my husband’s ex, but I filled him in on the situation with Christine and asked if he had any advice.

  A heavy sigh filled the space between us. “Oh, Alison. This is a tough one. I think you just have to ride it out.”

  That wasn’t what I was hoping to hear, but I wasn’t entirely sure what I had wanted him to say.

  “Is she religious? Would talking to a priest help?”

  “Why? You know someone who could talk her off the ledge?”

  “I’m just wondering if the stigma attached to suicide, for her as a Catholic, is the reason she’s holding on to this idea that Chick may have been murdered.”

  “Maybe.” I grabbed a pen. “If you have someone in mind, tell me.” I jotted down the name of someone Kevin knew in the archdiocese, thinking I would broach the subject with Christine if it came up again.

  “Do you think it is possible that he was murdered?” he asked.

  “Who knows?” I said. “I met the guy that one time and he was a wacko. I guess anything is possible. I was there, though, and it looked like he’d taken a lot of pills. I can’t imagine how someone could have been forced to do that.”

  Kevin seemed to agree. “Hey, let me know if there is anything else I can do, okay? Counseling brides and their insane mothers is a bit different than doing the Lord’s work and helping someone deal with grief.”

  I was surprised to hear him say that. Up until this point, he had never expressed any regrets about having left the Church. I let it go. “We need to get together,” I said.

  “Let me get through the fall weddings and the two bar mitzvahs on the schedule and we’ll talk.”

  Sounded like a plan. Who was I to get in the way of extravagant wedding planning and religious rites of passage?

  I left my office to get some lunch, running the gauntlet of students during the change of class, and ran smack into Sister Mary at the bottom of the stairs. She was wearing what appeared to be a smile—an expression I rarely, if ever, saw her attempt. First a smile out of Fred and now one from Mary. Things were definitely going my way.

  “How is it going with Mrs. Bannerman?” she asked, her arms crossed over her starched, short-sleeved navy blue blouse. I wanted to tell her that it was after Labor Day and her seersucker skirt should be put to rest for a few months, but wisely kept my mouth shut.

  “Wonderful,” I said. “She’s an apt pupil. Very enthusiastic about th
e class.”

  “Excellent,” Sister Mary said, and she was off, her pumps sounding like a team of Clydesdales marching across the tiled student union floor.

  “Excellent,” I murmured to myself in my Mary voice, the one that I use when Crawford has left a load of laundry in the washer overnight or has left me without gas in my car. “Did you know that ‘seersucker’ derives from both the Hindi and Urdu languages?” I continued in my best Sister Mary voice, cracking myself up. How I knew that arcane piece of seersucker lore was beyond me, but I did. I continued talking to myself in Mary’s voice, finding myself funnier than usual.

  My euphoria was short-lived. Back at my office, my lunch in a brown paper bag and just begging to be eaten, I had a little surprise waiting. Mr. Super Senior, whose name escaped me even though Meaghan and I had been talking about him only a day earlier, was standing in front of my office.

  Dare I say, he did not look happy.

  Nineteen

  “What can I do for you, Andrew?” I asked, giving it a shot at his name. I knew it began with A, but that was it.

  “It’s Alex,” he said, following me into the office and throwing himself into one of my chairs, his backpack crashing to the floor.

  “Okay, Alex.” I sat behind my desk and tried to affect my “Alison Bergeron, Serious Academic,” position by folding my hands together on top of a stack of files that for all I knew were completely empty. I wasn’t very good at keeping my desk clean. “How can I help you?”

  “Did you accuse Meaghan of cheating?” he asked, skirting the line between true curiosity and blatant insubordination.

  How much to let on here? “Alex, this is between me, Professor Larkin, and Meaghan.”

  “And me!” he protested.

  “Not really,” I said, even though it was. If he had fed her a test, even without her knowing, he was indeed involved, but for right now, I was keeping it in the family. And Joanne Larkin. “I just want to make sure that Meaghan is using typical, and legal, study habits to do well in her classes.”

  “Yeah, but I’m her tutor,” he said. “You see why…”