Outline for Murder

by Anthony J. Pucci

  Something else was troubling Bishop. It was something that Sarah Humphries, the guidance counselor, had said to him during the dance. They were both standing near the door, watching the kids, and trying to be as far from the music as possible at the same time. Stephanie (a.k.a. Catwoman) was actually dancing with the kids. It was as if wearing that mask had allowed her to escape being Miss Harris for a brief moment. Perhaps encouraging Ron to pursue his interest in her had been a mistake.

  Sarah looked Bishop up and down. “Twain again?” she said disapprovingly. Bishop chose to ignore her petty comment. She had not even bothered with a costume. Never had. Doing so would have made her the object of possible derision. She much preferred to be the one dishing out the snide remarks. She kept her eyes on Stephanie as she danced closer to them. Speaking loud enough to be heard over the music, she said, “She’s a beautiful woman, isn’t she? I’m glad that she and Ron seem to be hitting it off so well.”

  Bishop chose not to comment on her remark. He wanted to see where she was going with this line of talk. Knowing her penchant for gossip, he didn’t think he would have to wait long. Then she added, “Steph had me worried when she went out with the coach, God rest his soul, but it didn’t take her long to figure out that Ron was a much better choice.”

  He was shocked. “She went out with Zappala? I didn’t know that!”

  “Well, I guess I shouldn’t call it ‘going out.’ I know that she met him at least once right at the beginning of the year.”

  “Did Steph tell you about it?”

  “No, she never mentioned it and neither did I. I had walked into the teachers’ lounge, and I guess they didn’t hear me. They both had their backs to the door. I heard her tell him that she would meet him after practice.”

  “Then what?” Bishop’s mind was racing at the number of questions he wanted to ask.

  “That was it. I turned around and left, so I don’t think that they knew I had been there. She didn’t seem all that happy to have made the date if you ask me. I wouldn’t have looked twice at that guy, but I figured that she was a grown woman, and it was none of my business. I hardly knew her myself. She must have found out what he was like because I never saw them near each other again. And then…”

  “And then what?”

  “And then he was dead.”

  As Bishop reflected on what Sarah had told him, he wasn’t ready to believe that Stephanie had gone on a date with Zappala. There might have been other reasons for them to meet after school although he couldn’t think of any at the moment. He wondered if Ron knew about this.

  ***

  As expected, Ron called the next day. “Am I interrupting?”

  “I was grading a set of essays, and was just thinking about a break, so you did me a favor.” He got up from his chair at the desk and plopped into a recliner.

  “I wanted to thank you again for your help last night with Chris and Eric. That scene might have gotten ugly in a hurry if you hadn’t been there to deal with Chris.”

  “No problem,” Bishop replied dismissively. “I’m worried about Chris, though. He’s been under a lot of pressure lately.”

  “No doubt. And Eric certainly was asking for it. I probably would have popped him one myself if I were in Chris’s shoes,” Ron admitted. “I plan on calling each of them in on Monday just to be sure that this taunting is stopped in its tracks.”

  “Good idea.”

  “I’ll give Eric an in-school suspension and call his parents.”

  Bishop agreed that that was a good approach. Suddenly, Ron turned the conversation in a different direction. “By the way, what did you think of Stephanie last night, or should I say, Catwoman?”

  Trying to be diplomatic, he simply said, “It was a bit of a surprise.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.” Ron explained that when he picked her up, she was wearing a cable knit sweater and slacks and carrying a duffle bag. She told him that she had her costume in the bag and that she would change when she got to the gym. She didn’t mention what the costume was, and Ron hadn’t asked. When they arrived, she went off to change, and he started supervising the last-minute preparations. When he caught a glimpse of her in that outfit, he was flabbergasted. By that time, the kids were arriving and it was fairly hectic, so he didn’t have a chance to warn her that she might be taking this masquerade business a bit too far.

  “She definitely made a rookie mistake, and she hasn’t made many of those,” Bishop said, trying to put a positive spin on her poor judgment. “Did either Sister Ann or Sister Pat say anything?”

  “Luckily, no. Pat was giving her dirty looks all night, though.”

  Bishop commented that it was better if she confronted her directly. At least she would have the chance to defend herself, and Pat was likely to back down as is the case with most bullies. However, her other course of action was to talk disparagingly about her behind her back. Ron agreed with Bishop’s assessment. Just about anyone who worked at Trinity had Pat figured out pretty quickly.

  He decided not to mention to Ron what he had heard from Sarah about Steph meeting with Zappala. He had two reasons: first, considering gossipy Sarah as the source, he wanted to ask Steph about this directly; and secondly, if true, he thought that Ron should hear it from Steph herself, not him.

  Before he could ask, Ron answered the obvious question. “Neither one of us mentioned it on the way back to her place. We talked about the kids, mostly.” When he pulled up at her apartment, Steph said that she was tired and just wanted to get some sleep. That was fine with Ron who waved at Miss Avery who was watching from her living room window as he pulled away from the curb.

  After ending that call, Bishop decided not to return to his desk and the stack of ungraded papers. His thoughts turned to the boxes of papers that had been removed from Zappala’s closet. Ever since he had discovered that the coach had given $25,000 to Holy Trinity, the thought plagued him that amidst all of those papers was something else of importance. He grabbed another box and decided that he would allow himself an hour on this search. Making it harder was the fact that he didn’t know what he was looking for. As he shuffled stacks of sports programs, newspaper clippings, and bundled stacks of financial statements, Bishop began to realize that Zappala had apparently never met a bank that he didn’t like. He had accounts with most of the banks in Groveland as well as with a number of financial institutions in Madison where he had lived until coming to Holy Trinity three years ago.

  He may not have known what he was looking for, but as soon as he saw it, he knew he had found something. It was a check register from the People’s Trust of Madison from about three years ago. What caught Bishop’s eye was the entry that the coach had made for a withdrawal of twenty-five thousand dollars. The notation was simply, “HJ.” This was an account that otherwise had very little activity. Bishop had marveled at how large a position that man had in cash. Why would he withdraw that large a sum? He might have purchased a new car. He could well imagine Coach Al Zappala walking into the showroom and plunking down the cash for a luxury car. But if he did that, word would have spread about his wealth, and since most people didn’t know about it, it was unlikely that he would have used the money that way. Besides, “HJ” reminded him of the “BK” notation he had found on the calendar on the desk at his home.

  Bishop regularly told his students that having the right answers was often not as important as asking the right questions. Coach was prepared to use twenty-five thousand dollars to buy Bonnie King’s silence. At least that was the theory. More recently, he had used that same amount to buy influence with Sister Ann. This withdrawal had been made while he was still a teacher and coach at Madison. Who was HJ? It was at that moment that Bishop decided that he would be taking a drive to Madison the following weekend. He had a friend who taught there, and it was time he paid him a visit.

  Chapter 17

  Monday arrived all too soon as it usually did. Bishop pulled his Toyota Corolla in next to a shiny new maroon Nissan Mu
rano. At first, he thought that one of the seniors had parked in the faculty lot hoping that no one would notice. Then, he realized that someone was still in the car, checking phone messages. It was Jim Davenport who taught math at the school. Jim’s wife was a successful lawyer in town which explained how he could afford that car.

  When he saw Bishop, Jim put his phone in his pocket, grabbed a book bag and his brown bag lunch, and greeted him with a huge grin. With his rugged good looks and his designer clothes, he looked like he was going to a photo shoot for a fashion magazine. “Seems like we never left, doesn’t it?”

  Bishop had heard that line many times before and had even used it himself on more than one occasion. It was certainly hard to argue with the fact that the weekends always seemed so short. Add in class preparations, grading, and attending a school function, and the weekend during which you had hoped to accomplish so much had quickly disappeared. He had gotten used to the feeling over the years. “Yes,” Bishop replied, “I know what you mean.” Then he added, “Nice car.”

  “Thanks. Just picked it up on Saturday. It’s actually Sue’s car, but she’s working from home today so I thought I’d give it a spin.”

  “Good luck with it. I hear that Muranos are really nice. You can expect that Steve will give you a hard time about it when he figures out that that baby is yours.” He looked around the lot, but didn’t see Marshall’s beat up minivan. “He tends to get a little jealous when someone gets a new car.”

  “Don’t worry. I can handle him, but thanks for the warning.” Before they arrived at the front entrance, Jim changed the subject. “I hear there were some fireworks at the dance on Saturday.”

  Bishop was quick to reply. “Oh, that scuffle between Delaney and Munro? That was nothing really. No punches thrown. Just some trash talk and some posturing.” He hoped that that was the incident that Jim was referring to and not the spectacle caused by the appearance of Catwoman. Before Jim had a chance to say anymore, they were greeted by the scowling Sister Pat. They both said, “Good morning, Sister.”

  “What’s so good about it, I’d like to know. Look at some of these kids. Walking in here half asleep, carrying no books.” The look of disgust on her face matched the tone of her words.

  Neither teacher responded. They were familiar with her sour disposition. It wasn’t likely that Sister Pat would ever get a job as a Walmart greeter.

  ***

  Twice a month, Bishop was assigned to monitor the cafeteria before homeroom. It was an assignment that he didn’t care for very much since he would rather spend that time in his own room getting ready for the day. Several years earlier, there had been a nasty fight between two senior boys. One of them ended up in the hospital, the other was expelled, and the school barely escaped a lawsuit for allowing students to wait for school to start in an unsupervised cafeteria. Thereafter, a teacher was assigned to the cafeteria at all times of the day.

  For the most part, the kids were no problem. Some of the early arrivals busied themselves with the homework that they had failed to complete the previous night. Some played cards. Some tapped to the beat of the music pounding in their earbuds. Others were too sleepy to do much of anything except chat with their friends. Bishop sat at a desk placed at one end of the cafeteria.

  Reading an essay and writing comments on it took much longer than normal in that environment. Despite his best efforts, there was just too much noise for him to concentrate on anything of substance. Usually, he spent the time just grading quizzes or reading the morning newspaper.

  He was working his way through a set of spelling quizzes, dismayed at the number of times he encountered, “buisiness,” when he picked up the voice of a girl. “Yeah, I hate that bitch.” Such language was unacceptable, and he was just about to make that point to the offender when he heard more. “I’ll have that bitch crying by the end of the day.” The sounds of approval from those of around her, kept her going. He didn’t recognize her voice. He kept his head down as if he was totally absorbed in his papers. He wanted to hear more.

  It was a source of amazement to him that students spoke so freely in the presence of a teacher. Were they so caught up in themselves that they didn’t realize he was sitting close enough to hear what they said? Did they think that he had a hearing problem? Did they think that he wouldn’t care what was said? Was it possible that they didn’t care whether he heard them or not? In the few years since this morning proctoring had begun, he had heard all sorts of things from arguments that students had with their parents to incidents that had occurred in classes to what they did or didn’t do on their dates. Nothing much surprised him any more.

  He kept grading and listening. Who was “the bitch”? Her mother? Another student? Sister Pat? Why did she hate her? What was she planning to do to her? Within a few moments, the picture became clearer. This girl’s boyfriend, Tommy, had recently dumped her, and he was now dating “the bitch.” She was sure that this girl didn’t even like Tommy and that she was dating him only to make her jealous. If that was the case, Bishop thought, it certainly had worked. Her anger was clearly directed at the other girl, not at Tommy.

  As he continued to appear to be absorbed in his grading, Bishop picked up details of this girl’s intentions. She had left a threatening and anonymous note in her locker. She had enlisted some of Tommy’s friends to convince him that his new girlfriend was a slut. She had arranged for one of her friends to slam her in gym class later that day. The list went on. This girl, whose reedy voice Bishop was unlikely to forget, had developed her plan as carefully as any politician preparing for a campaign or any student outlining before writing an essay. This was her outline for revenge.

  It struck Bishop that whoever had killed Zappala had done much the same type of preparation. His death had not been a random act of violence. It had been carefully plotted by someone who perhaps had been hurt by him and sought to hurt him in return. Whether the motive was revenge, jealousy, anger, greed, or something else, the result was the same. Destroy the enemy. But how? What weapon to use? How to obtain that weapon? When to use it? How to avoid suspicion? There were many steps to be considered. Someone had written an outline for murder.

  Suddenly, the bell rang, signaling that it was time to report to homeroom. Bishop stuffed his papers into his briefcase and left the cafeteria before many of the students had begun to move. He made no attempt to make eye contact with the jilted girlfriend. Before going to his room, he had two quick detours to make. One was to Terry in the main office. She was a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge of who was dating whom. There were only a couple of students named Thomas in the school. He had Thomas “TJ” Donnelly in class. He happened to know that TJ was dating Mary Flanagan. Without explaining why, he asked Terry if a young man named Tommy had recently broken up with his girlfriend. Not one to disappoint, the secretary informed him that Tommy Calhoun had dumped Shelley Olson for Hannah Driscoll in a rather heated exchange in the student parking lot the day before.

  His second stop was at Ron’s office. After giving the assistant principal a concise summary of what he had overheard in the cafeteria, he rushed up to his homeroom, arriving just before the second bell.

  ***

  Bishop was discussing the novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles in his first period class of juniors. Although the story itself is fairly straightforward, the students were having difficulty with some of the novel’s implications.

  Mary Flanagan, a bright and self-confident girl, raised her hand. “Why would Gene jounce that limb on purpose and cause Finny to fall? I mean, Finny is his best friend.”

  “That’s an excellent question, Mary. If jouncing the limb had been an accident, which is what Finny believes or wants to believe, then there’s really no problem. No sin. No guilt. So why did a good person such as Gene intentionally do something so harmful?” He looked to the rest of the class. “Who wants to explain that to us?”

  At first, there were no takers, but Bishop knew that if he gave them a few minutes to th
ink about it, someone might contribute a comment that would move the discussion forward. Just as Bishop was about to suggest that the class look at a particular passage for insight, Charles Petrillo, raised his hand. He was one of those well-rounded students who did as well in math and science as he did in the humanities, all while being a three-sport athlete. “I think it … like … took Gene himself quite a while to figure out why he did it. Doesn’t he come to understand that there is within him … like … something dark? He realizes that, even though he is basically a good person, he is … like … capable of evil.”

  These were the moments that kept Bishop teaching long past the age when others had retired. Through their analysis of good literature, these students were gaining valuable insights about human nature in general, and about themselves in particular. He would mention his overuse of “like” some other time. “I think that you’re absolutely correct, Charley! Gene is a good person, but Gene also confronts the reality that evil comes from within the human heart. Once he accepts that, it liberates him, doesn’t it?”

  Just as Phil Perry was going to add something to the discussion, everyone heard a burst of laughter from the class across the hall, and then Miss Harris shouting, “That’s quite enough! One more remark and I’m putting the whole class on detention!”