Outline for Murder

by Anthony J. Pucci

  When he unlocked the front door, he found that everything looked just as it did when he had walked in with Hodge the other day. What on earth would have possessed anyone to do this? What were they looking for? Had they found it? Once he was in the kitchen, he noticed a couple of opened doors. One was a pantry closet whose contents had been scattered about. The other led to the basement. He had never gone down to the basement although he was certain that the police would have done so. He decided that it was worth a look.

  He flipped the light switch which didn’t do too much to illuminate the stairs. He descended the old wooden steps carefully, each one creaking as he reached it. It felt as if the entire staircase was about to collapse under his weight, but if it held for Zappala who had him by fifty pounds, he reasoned that it should hold for him. The thin railing on only one side didn’t instill much confidence, but he held it firmly for lack of something better. Once he reached the bottom, he saw that the floor was covered with various mismatched pieces of old linoleum that had buckled and cracked. It was obvious from the extent of the cobwebs that whoever had trashed the upstairs had not bothered with the basement. To the right stood a furnace, hot water tank, and a holding tank for the well. Straight ahead, he saw an old bed, several broken chairs, a chest of drawers with the top drawer missing, and a pool table piled high with cardboard boxes. On the left was a washer and drier, a workbench with some tools scattered about, and two metal shelving units leaning precariously under the weight of more boxes.

  He reached for one of the boxes from the top shelf of the first unit and placed it on the washer. Flipping open the top pieces that had been folded into one another, he found some Christmas decorations. There were strings of garland, a couple of packages of tinsel, a metal tree stand, and a few ornaments. Zappala hadn’t seemed the type to bother with holiday decorations, and the condition of the contents of this box confirmed that opinion. Having folded the pieces of the top of the box back together, he replaced it on the shelf and grabbed another. He was probably wasting his time, but since he was already feeling grimy from being in the cellar, he thought he ought to take a peek at what the other boxes contained. Eventually, all of this stuff would be hauled off to the dump. The sooner the better as far as Bishop was concerned.

  It was in the fourth box that he found something that complicated his understanding of Zappala. This box contained items from his childhood. As he began sifting through the contents, he recalled that his will had made clear that personal items were not to be given to the family. That was such an odd request. If there were old family photos or other remembrances, one would think that he would want his sister and her family to cherish them. There were hundreds of old photos, most of them in black and white. Most of the photos lacked any writing on the backs, so he had no clue as to who these people were. Some of the photos were undoubtedly of the coach as a boy growing up in Connecticut. One showed a scrawny boy of about six displaying the sand castle he had built for whoever was taking the picture. To his right was a dark-haired girl in her twenties pretending to be inspecting his work. There were also documents such as Zappala’s birth certificate, some grade school report cards, expired driver’s licenses, and other odds and ends.

  The real find was a stack of letters still in their envelopes tied with a string. It appeared as though these letters had not been read in many years. The postmark of the letter on top of the stack was “Nov 17, 1965, Hartford, Connecticut.” It was addressed to “Master Albert C. Zappala.” The return address was “Domenico Santorini, Hartford VA Medical Center.” Bishop pulled on the string, and the letters came loose. They were all addressed in the same manner, and all originated from the same place. He hesitated as he removed a thin, fragile piece of paper from the first envelope. He ended up reading for more than half an hour. All of them had been written by Zappala’s father while he was a patient at that facility. One in particular stood out:

  April 27

  My dear Albert,

  I received your letter of April 21st. You are getting to be quite a

  good writer. I am feeling better every day and hope to be able to

  return home soon. I know that living with Maria makes you

  very unhappy, but son, please try to be a good boy and do what she

  says. This is not an easy thing for Maria either. You must obey

  your sister. I am sure that she does what is best for you.

  I do not want you to hate your mother. She will always be your

  Mother. Don’t forget that. Even though you do not receive any

  letters from her, I am certain that she still loves you very much.

  You have to understand that she is not well. That is why she left.

  When you are older, you will understand better.

  Keep up the good work in school. I am very proud of you.

  All my love,

  Father

  From what he could piece together, Zappala’s mother had left the family. It wasn’t clear when that had happened. Reading between the lines, Bishop speculated that she might have run off with another man. The father became ill and sought medical treatment at a VA Hospital, leaving his young son with Maria, his older sister.

  Just then, he was startled by the vibration of his cell phone. It was Stephanie. She was finishing up her grades. She was uncertain how to handle a particular student’s grade, and she wanted his input on the matter. He told her that he would be glad to listen, but asked if he could call her back within the hour. She had no problem with that. His watch and his stomach told him that it was well past lunchtime. He decided to take the box of photos and letters with him. It just didn’t seem right to toss them out with all of the junk. It was possible that he might find something else of interest if he took more time.

  ***

  When he checked the fridge and the cupboards, he realized that he had forgotten to do any food shopping lately. Lunch turned out to be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. With a cup of Earl Gray tea in hand, he went to the sunroom, sat down in his favorite chair, and put his feet up on the ottoman. Even though he had only been away overnight, it always felt good to be home. For years after Grace died, he had difficulty coping with the emptiness. He had considered selling the place and moving into an apartment in a new complex that had recently been built on the Westside. He had even made an appointment to look at one, but then changed his mind. There were too many memories to leave behind. In addition, there were too many aspects of country life that he enjoyed too much. Sitting in the sunroom with its panoramic views of distant hills was one of them. As Wordsworth had written, “Let nature be your teacher.”

  When he returned Stephanie’s call, he learned the nature of her problem. One of her students in French III had an average of 64, and she wasn’t sure if she should pass him or leave the grade as is. Then she added sheepishly, “He’s one of the boys that was meowing and laughing at me that day in class.”

  “You can’t let that incident cloud your judgment,” he replied emphatically. He shared with her some of his thoughts on the topic. Grading was one of the toughest parts of teaching. Occasionally, a student or a parent would look at a particular grade as an assessment of the individual as a person. Nothing could, in fact, be further from the truth. Bishop took pains to make clear to his students that the grade given reflected only on the quality of the work completed, whether that be a single test or essay, a quarter mark, or even a final grade. He also knew that it was essential that the students could count on his fairness. Grades were based on performance, nothing else. He knew that he was perceived by many as a tough but fair grader. He could live with that. His message to Stephanie was that grades should be used to motivate and to reward students, not to punish. He apologized for his mini-lecture, and ended by adding, “Steph, you have to make this decision for yourself, and I don’t even want to know what you decide to do. Personally, I would never give a 64. I don’t think my grading skills are that precise,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh.

 
She thanked him for sharing his perspective, and the conversation moved in another direction. Bishop was still trying to assimilate what he had learned on his visit to Madison. Complicating that was his discovery of Zappala’s letters. He decided to share his recent discoveries with Steph, believing that verbalizing his thoughts would help clarify them. He told her about going to Madison and talking with Joel Lindstrom, the man who bought Zappala’s home. He also recounted what Lily, the waitress, told him about her experiences with the coach as well as the sad story of Honesty Jones and the way that Edward Bostwick, the former principal at Madison, had handled the case.

  Stephanie listened carefully. Then she said, “I can’t believe that that creep was able to get away with what he did to that girl! And then he gets a job at Holy Trinity where he could potentially do the same thing!” It was a sentiment that Bishop shared. In fact, he planned to ask Sister Ann some pointed questions about exactly how much she knew about Zappala when she hired him. He realized, however, that asking the questions and getting truthful answers were two distinct things.

  Bishop also told Stephanie about the letters he had stumbled upon in Zappala’s cellar. He summarized what he had been able to piece together. As he did so, he had to admit to himself that he couldn’t help but feel sorry for the boy who had received those letters.

  “Did his father ever come back?” asked Stephanie as if hoping for a happy ending.

  “Apparently not. The letters stop in December of 1966. I imagine that he died.”

  “What do you make of the references to obeying Maria?”

  It was purely conjecture, but he explained that the young Zappala probably felt betrayed by his mother. He might have even blamed her for his father’s illness. He seems to have been very unhappy living with Maria and her husband. Maria had been placed in a difficult situation. As the older sister, she had to care for her brother, but she was married with a child of her own. When the father died, Albert became her responsibility until he came of age.

  “How does all of this relate to his murder?” Her question hit Bishop like a bucket of cold water thrown in his face. Solving that mystery was, after all, the reason for his visit to Madison in the first place. Was he really any closer to an answer? If anything, it added a few more people who might have wanted to kill Zappala. Was it realistic to think that any one of them would wait several years to seek out their vengeance?

  “I’m not sure that it relates to it at all,” he admitted. “I just think that it helps to explain a lot about the type of person that Zappala became. The trauma of his mother’s actions might have caused him to fear trusting or loving any woman. Maria’s resentment of having to care for her brother in those days might explain why he refused to help her and her family save the bakery.”

  Steph added, “It would also explain why he didn’t want any of his personal belongings to be given to them, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose he was still trying to hurt them in any way that he could since he had been hurt so much himself.” Bishop suggested that that would explain why he had never married, and why he held women in such low regard.

  “Mike, you can’t possibly be trying to justify what he did to did that poor girl, Honesty Jones, because of these letters. Nothing could justify what he did!” She was clearly upset at even the suggestion that the coach was to be pitied.

  “No, of course not. I’m not condoning his treatment of women. I’m simply trying to understand it.”

  Shifting topics once again, Stephanie asked, “Do you think whoever got into his house is also the person who murdered him?” With so much of his focus in the last day or two on Zappala’s past, he had almost forgotten that the vandals were still unidentified. He hoped that Lieutenant Hodge might find some other explanation for the discovery of Chris’s ID card at the scene.

  “Actually, I don’t. I think the murderer is much smarter than that.”

  ***

  He decided to call Lieutenant Hodge so that he could fill him in on his trip to Madison and on his discovery of the letters. Hodge listened as Bishop recapped his weekend excursion, only interrupting to ask for a clarification a few times. “I’m impressed with what you were able to find out, Mike. You would have made a good detective,” he said with a laugh.

  “I’m not so sure about that, but thanks. I don’t know how you deal with all of the ugliness that you must encounter on a daily basis. I’m happy working with young people and maybe helping them learn to make the right choices so that you never have to deal with them down the road.”

  The growing respect that each had for the other had been largely unspoken up to that moment.

  Hodge told Bishop that he thought the letters provided a different perspective on the man, but that he didn’t believe they had any relevance in the investigation of his murder. He also admitted that he had never understood why Zappala would have left Madison after coaching so successfully there for so many years. Knowing the story of Honesty Jones answered that question for him. “I seriously doubt that she was the first,” he added on a somber note.

  Those words sent a chill through Bishop. How many others might there have been? How many more might there have been if he hadn’t been murdered? His thoughts returned to Bostwick. How could that man live with himself knowing that he had not only covered up a criminal act, but that he had paved the way for more by helping him secure the job at Trinity? Bishop also couldn’t escape the feeling that Bostwick had not told him everything he knew.

  Before the conversation ended, the Lieutenant shared a thought that he had been mulling over in the last few days. Hearing about his troubled childhood just brought the thought to the fore. “You know, we’ve been looking at all of the people who might have a motive to kill the coach, from Rocco, to Doug Sanders, to Chris Delaney, to Delaney’s father, among others. There is one person that had access to the cyanide that we haven’t even mentioned.”

  Bishop had no idea where Hodge was going with this. “Who?” he asked, genuinely lost.

  “Albert Zappala.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding, Lieutenant!” The idea that Zappala might have committed suicide would never have occurred to him. Zappala kill himself? It didn’t seem possible. Not Zappala. He had never exhibited any of the warning signs, at least as far as he knew.

  “I suppose that it’s possible,” Bishop admitted reluctantly. “But I do know one thing for sure.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He didn’t come back to ransack his house!”

  When Hodge stopped laughing, he said, “I have to agree with you on that one,” and then he started laughing again.

  Bishop’s thoughts returned to the mysterious discovery of Chris Delaney’s ID card in the investigation of the vandalism. “You don’t really think that Chris did that, do you?”

  “Well, I want to believe Chris, and finding his card there, in and of itself, is insufficient proof of his guilt. I just don’t know.” He seemed to be talking to himself more than he was to Bishop. The investigation had reached another dead end.

  Chapter 23

  As Bishop opened his classroom door the next morning, he couldn’t escape the feeling that, despite all that he had learned over the weekend, he was no closer to figuring out who had murdered Zappala. He thought of Ahab and his pursuit of the white whale. His determination to find the answers to the mysteries of life had become an obsession, a monomania. Was he becoming obsessed in his search for answers? He vowed not to let that happen. He, unlike Ahab, could recognize his limitations. Perhaps the questions that nagged him would be answered when he least expected it.

  Having flipped on the fluorescent lights, he noticed that someone had slipped a piece of paper under the door. He placed his bag on his desk and picked up the paper. The loose leaf sheet had been folded in thirds. Students occasionally handed in an assignment that way if they knew that they were going to miss his class later in the day. Something told him that this wasn’t an assignment. He unfolded the paper and read,
<
br />   Mr. Bishop, I need to talk to you after school today. Thanks. Aaron

  All sorts of possibilities flooded his mind. Aaron had previously shared with him that he had overheard Chris Delaney’s father threatening the coach. What could it be this time? Of course, Aaron’s request might have nothing to do with Zappala. He folded the sheet, put it in his pocket, and resolved to put this out of his mind until the end of the day. He didn’t want to turn into an Ahab. He had classes to teach.

  As he went about the business of getting all of his books and folders out of his bag and setting up his laptop, he was aware of someone entering the room. “Can you tell me what I got on my report card?” Bishop looked up to find Jimmy Wagner waiting for an answer. With his baby face and short stature, Jimmy was an 11th grader who could be mistaken for a 9th grader. He was also a little short on social skills that Bishop had been trying to develop. Bishop smiled as he spoke. “Good morning, Jimmy! How are you today? Did you say something to me?” He sometimes had to gently remind his students of the importance of politeness and of the need to make eye contact when speaking to someone.

  Jimmy’s face became flushed as he realized his mistake. “Sorry, Mr. Bishop. Good morning. Did you have a nice weekend?”

  “Yes, I did, thank you,” he replied, choosing to ignore the fact that he had been stung by a bee, gone into anaphylactic shock, and ended up in the emergency room. “What can I do for you, Jimmy?”

  “I was wondering what I got in English this quarter?” He was strumming the coil of his spiral notebook as if it were a musical instrument.

  “Well, as you know, the grades won’t be officially available for viewing on the school’s portal until Wednesday.”

  “Yes, but a lot of the other teachers are telling kids their grades,” he pleaded.

  “That may be true, Jimmy, but as I’ve said before, some other teachers may choose to do that even though they are advised not to.” It irritated Bishop that so many teachers did, in fact, give out grades before the official release date. If teachers couldn’t follow the rules, why should they expect students to do so? He then attempted to put the focus on grades into perspective. “Jimmy, how do you feel that you have done this quarter? You’ve seen all of your graded quizzes, tests, essays, etc.”