The Cereal Murders

by Diane Mott Davidson

  I gave the boys pumpkin muffins for breakfast and helped Arch lug his skis, boots, and poles out to the Range Rover. Saying good-bye to him before he went off with his father was always difficult; before a holiday, even Halloween, it was excruciating.

  At the last minute, Arch dashed upstairs to get his high-powered binoculars. “Almost forgot! I might be able to see the Andromeda galaxy once they turn out the night-skiing lights. You can see Andromeda in the winter, but never in the summer!” he hollered over his shoulder. When the boys were finally ready, I sent them off over their halfhearted protests with homemade popcorn balls and packets of candy corn to share with their friends. They took off in a mood of high good cheer. Halloween was not a school holiday, but the snow, the buttery scent of popcorn, and Arch’s cone sculpture of Three Musketeers bars made the two boys laugh giddily after a week that had been grueling for us all.

  Despite his upbeat mood as he drove off, Julian’s taut face and bitten nails told another story. During the past two weeks, he had spent hours at the kitchen table, studying financial aid forms and making lists of numbers. When he wasn’t doing homework, he pored over tomes on test-taking and SAT review. Along with the rest of his class, Julian had taken the PSATs his sophomore year and the SATs his junior year. But this third time was it, he told me, the big one, make or break, do or die. These were the scores the colleges looked at to make their decisions.

  I had tried to drill him a little bit Thursday night, using the SAT review, but it had not been a pleasant task. I mean, who made up these tests? For example, one analogy asked, handsome is to corpulent as beautiful is to … obese, ugly, attractive, or dead? Weil, didn’t that depend on whether or not you thought corpulence is an attractive trait? I happened to think that it was, and argued to that effect. And when, I demanded, were you going to use the word epigrammatic in day-to-day conversation? Now, I am all for reading and vocabulary-building, but as our generation used to say, let’s get relevant. I told Julian he didn’t need to know that one. He sighed. What did me in, though, was “My friend is a philanthropist, therefore he … goes to church with his family, gives away his possessions, pays off his credit cards, or plays the glockenspiel.” Without hesitation I told Julian that he would pay off the credit cards, and maybe play the glockenspiel in the evening for the neighbors. Julian suggested I forget trying to test him, because the correct answer was “gives away his possessions.” I argued that if you pay a high rate of interest on credit cards, you hurt your family, which should be your first area of philanthropy. Julian quietly closed the big book. I immediately apologized. The smile he gave me was pinched and ironic. But the review session was over. When Julian had retired to his room, I morosely poured myself a Cointreau and zapped the kernels for the popcorn balls. So much for philanthropy beginning at home.

  On Halloween morning, with this spiritual thought still rocketing around in my head, I finished icing the Sorry Cake and took off for the church. A brief wash of snowflakes marked the end of the flurry. Wisps of cloud drifted upward from the near mountains. In the church parking lot sat only two cars: the secretary’s pale blue Honda, and a gleaming new Jeep Wagoneer that I guessed belonged to the Marenskys—who else would have the license plate MINX? Nowhere in sight was Father Olson’s Mercedes 300E, a four-wheel-drive vehicle that he claimed he needed to visit parishioners in remote locations. Well, our priest was probably off having one of his favorite things, a hilltop experience.

  When I came through the church door with the first bowls of fruit, Brad Marensky almost mowed me down.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he yelped, and grabbed a teetering bowl of orange slices from my hands.

  While he was getting control of the bowl, I took a good look at him. Of medium build, Brad was a younger, more handsome version of his father, Stan. There was the same curly hair, jet-black instead of salted with gray, the same high-cheekboned and olive-toned handsome face, smooth rather than deeply lined with anxiety. He also had his father’s dark eyes. I imagined those eyes had elicited romantic interest from more than one girl at Elk Park Prep. In catching himself and the bowl, and then sidestepping me, Brad moved like an athlete. Even without the aid of the Mountain Journal’s sports section, Brad’s all-round prowess, and his father’s relentless drills, were well known. The mothers at the athletic club made a great joke of Stan Marensky’s famous screech, “Come on, Brad! Come on, Brad!” Sometimes the coaches had to shut Stan up; they couldn’t make themselves heard.

  “Gosh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to crash into you. Aren’t you … doesn’t Julian live at your …”

  “Yes,” I said simply. “Julian Teller lives with my son and me. And I know your parents.”

  He blushed. “Well, sorry about the”—he looked down at what he had rescued—“the fruit.” He seemed tongue-tied. He held the bowl awkwardly, as if he were not quite sure what to do with it. Come to think of it, what was he doing in church on Halloween morning, anyway? Could the seniors just skip classes whenever they wanted?

  “What about you? You okay?” I asked.

  His face turned an even deeper shade of red. Avoiding my eyes, he pivoted on his heel and carefully placed the bowl on the tile floor next to the baptismal font. He turned back to me, pressed his lips together, and lifted his chin. Brad Marensky was not all right, that much was clear.

  “I have to go,” he said. “The person I wanted to see isn’t here.” His control slipped, and he added, “Uh, you don’t know when Father Olson will be back, do you?”

  “For lunch. I’m catering.”

  “Right, right, the caterer. A meeting, the secretary told me.” He glanced around the cold, cavernous church. No altar candles were lit. The brass crucifix at the front of the church glowed with reflected light from the sacramental candle. In the pale light the teenager’s face had the look of a jaundiced ghost.

  Sorry Cake

  Cake:

  2 cups all-purpose flour

  ¾ teaspoon baking soda

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ½ cup solid vegetable shortening

  ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

  l⅔ cups sugar

  6 large eggs, separated

  1 cup buttermilk

  1 tablespoon freshly grated orange zest

  2 cups Shredded Wheat cereal, broken into shreds

  1 cup cranberries, quartered

  ½ cup chopped pecans

  ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

  Frosting:

  ½ 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened

  ¼ cup (½ stick) unsalted butter, softened

  3 cups confectioners’ sugar

  1 tablespoon fresh orange juice, approximately

  1 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest

  Preheat the oven to 350°. To make the cake, sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Beat the shortening with the butter until well combined. Cream in the sugar and beat until fluffy and light. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time until well combined. Add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Stir in the orange zest, cereal, cranberries, and pecans. Beat the cream of tartar into the egg whites and continue beating until stiff. Gently fold the whites into the cake batter. Pour into 3 buttered 8-or 9-inch round cake pans. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack.

  To make the frosting, beat the cream cheese with the butter until well combined. Gradually add the confectioners’ sugar and orange juice; beat until creamy and smooth. Stir in the orange zest. Frost the tops and sides of the cake. Makes 14 to 16 servings.

  “Brad, are you sure you’re all right? Do you want to sit down for a while?”

  He lifted an eyebrow and considered. “I saw you at that college application meeting.”

  “Yes, well, I needed to see Miss Ferrell about my son, Arch. He’s … having some problems at school.” When he didn’t respond, I rushed on with, “Maybe you’d like to help me in the kitchen until Father Olson
gets here. When I’m waiting for something, it always helps me to take my mind off—”

  “Julian says you’re good to talk to.”

  “Oh. He does?”

  He regarded me again with that same lost-Bambi expression, and then seemed to make a decision. “I’m here because of something in the bulletin.”

  “Something …”

  His teeth gnawed his bottom lip. “Some discussion they’re having.”

  “Oh, the committee! Yes, they’re talking about penance and faith, I think. I’m … not sure the meeting is open to the public.” I try to be delicate. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

  “Wait.” His eyes widened. “You’re the one who found Keith, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Oh, God,” he said with a fierce dejection that twisted my heart. His shoulders slumped. “Things are such a mess….”

  “Look, Brad, come on out to the kitchen for just a while—”

  “You don’t understand why I’m here.” Tears quivered in his protest. And then he said, “I need to confess.”

  15

  “Let’s go sit in a pew,” I whispered. I had fleeting thoughts of calling Schulz, of telling this troubled boy to wait for Father Olson. But there was urgency behind Brad’s distress and I wanted to help him. Whatever his problem was, I couldn’t absolve him. Nor would I feel comfortable turning him in. He’d have to do that himself.

  We slipped into the last hard wooden pew and sat down awkwardly. Think, I ordered myself. If Julian said I was good to talk to—a surprise—then maybe all I had to do was listen.

  “I … I’ve been stealing,” said Brad.

  I said nothing. He looked at me and I nodded. His handsome face was racked with pain. He seemed to be expecting something. “Go on,” I told him. He was silent. In a low voice I prompted him. “You wanted to talk about stealing.”

  “I’ve been doing it for a long time. Years.” He hunched his shoulders as if he were small and very lost. Then he straightened his back and let out a ragged breath. “I felt good at first. Taking stuff made me feel great. Strong.” With sudden ferocity he said, “I loved it.”

  I mm-hmmed.

  “When Perkins used to say in assemblies, we don’t need locks on the lockers at Elk Park Prep, I would laugh inside. I mean, I would just howl.” Brad Marensky wasn’t laughing now. He wasn’t even smiling. His mouth was a grim, suffering slash as he silently contemplated the diamond-shaped window above the altar. I wondered if he was going to continue.

  “It wasn’t for the stuff,” he said at last. “I had plenty of stuff. My parents have money. I could have had any coat in the store I wanted. My biggest thrill was ripping off a jean jacket from somebody’s locker.” A silent sob racked his lean body. He seemed to want to cry, but was holding it in. Perhaps he was afraid someone would walk through the doors. The muffled clatter of the ancient mimeo machine in the church office came across as a distant crunch, pop; crunch, pop. A cool, hushed quiet emanated from the stone floor and bare walls. Brad Marensky’s confession was a murmur within that sanctified space.

  “I was going to quit. That was what I swore to myself. I had even decided to give something back…. I don’t even know why I’d taken this thing from a kid’s locker.”

  He seemed poised to go off into another reverie. I thought of the table and food I had to prepare, of the twelve committee members who would be arriving within the hour. “Another kid’s locker,” I prodded gently.

  “Yeah. Then one day a couple of weeks ago, I decided to put this thing back. After school. When I was slipping it back in and closing the locker, the stupid French Club let out and all these kids filed into the hall. I just, like, froze. I figured Miss Ferrell, Keith Andrews, the other kids, even your son—sorry, I don’t know his name—saw me and thought that instead of giving something back, I was taking it.” He sighed. “It was the new Cure tape. I don’t even like the Cure.”

  “Wait a minute. A tape? Not money, or a credit card?” I blurted out the question without thinking.

  “Huh?” He said the word as if he’d been punched, and gave me a puzzled glance. “No. I took money, but not credit cards. You can really get in trouble for doing that.” He looked uneasily at the front door. Before he finished, however, there was one thing I needed to know.

  “If you thought Arch—my son—might have seen you, and was going to tell, did you try to stop him? With a rattlesnake in his locker? And a threatening note?”

  “No, no, no. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Okay. Go ahead, I interrupted you.”

  But he couldn’t. He started to cry. He cradled his head and sobbed, and impulsively I put my arms around his shoulders and murmured, “Don’t … don’t cry, please … it’s going to be okay, really. Don’t be so hard on yourself, everybody messes up. You tried to make things right….”

  “That was the weird part,” he whispered into my shoulder. “As soon as I decided to quit, everything went wrong. First someone smashed Keith’s windshield …”

  “When was that, exactly?”

  Brad sat up and swiped at his tears. “The day the Princeton rep came. I remember because Keith seemed not to be bothered by the car, he just went on as calm as ever. He was early for the rep and had a zillion questions about the eating clubs and whether they’d take his summer school credits from C.U., that kind of thing.”

  “A zillion …”

  “Yeah. But later I heard he was writing this article for the newspaper, and I got scared. So I did steal something. Just one last thing, I told myself. Oh, God”—his words came out in a rush—“then he was killed.” His brown eyes were sunken and fearful. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill him. I’d never do something like that. Then somebody put that snake in your son’s locker.” In disbelief, he shook his head. “It’s like everything went haywire as soon as I decided to go straight.”

  “But after you stole that last thing, you did try to get rid of it. You put the credit card in your mother’s coat pocket.”

  His boyish face wrinkled. “What is this with the credit card? I didn’t take a credit card, and I don’t know what the story is on my mother’s coat, because I didn’t steal that, either. After Keith saw me putting the Cure tape back, I was sure the article he was writing for the local paper was about stealing. About me. So I pried open the door to Keith’s computer cubbyhole and took his disks. I thought I’d find the article for the newspaper and erase it.” He reached under his sweatshirt and pulled out two disks. “There’s an article in here, but it’s not about stealing. Can you take these? I can’t stand to have them anymore. I’m afraid if someone finds them, I’ll get into big trouble. Maybe you could give them to the cops … I don’t want a criminal record.” He didn’t say it, but the question in his eyes was Are you going to turn me in?

  I held the disks but did not look at them. This was a boy in torment. I wasn’t the law. But there was something else.

  “Look at me, Brad.”

  He did.

  “Did Keith know you were stealing?”

  “I am almost positive now that he didn’t,” he said without hesitation. “Because if Keith had something on you, or if he didn’t like you, he couldn’t keep it to himself. Once he tried to blackmail my father over some tax stuff. When Schlichtmaier called on him, he would say, Heil Hitler.” He thrust his hands through his dark hair, then shuddered. “After the French Club got out that day, he never said anything to me. I figured I’d gotten off. But then somebody killed him. Do you believe me? I can’t stand having this hanging over my head anymore.”

  Softly, I said, “Yes, I believe you.” Brad had chosen me to help him. I was duty bound to do at least that. I met his eyes with a level, unsmiling gaze. “Have you decided to stop stealing?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said as his eyes watered up again. “Never again, I promise.”

  “Can you give back what you took?”

  “The cash is gone. But … I can put the stuff in the lost a
nd found. I will, I promise.”

  “Alright.” Tenderness again welled up in my heart. The world thought this vulnerable boy had everything. I put my hands on his shoulders and murmured, “Remember what I said a few minutes ago. It’s going to be okay. Believe me?” Tears slid down his sallow cheeks. His nod was barely perceptible. “I’m going to leave you now, Brad. Say a prayer or something.”

  He didn’t move or utter another word. After a moment I slid out of the pew. As I stood in the aisle, trying to remember what I’d done with the bowl of orange slices, Brad turned and caught my hand in a crushing grip.

  “You won’t tell anybody, will you? Please say you won’t.”

  “No, I won’t. But that doesn’t mean people don’t know. Like Miss Ferrell. Or whoever.”

  “Mostly I’m worried about my parents …”

  “Brad. I’m not going to tell anybody. I promise. You did the right thing to get it off your chest. The worst part is over.”

  “I don’t know what my parents would do if they found out,” he mumbled as he turned his head back toward the altar.

  Neither did I.

  I ferried the pans of Sole Florentine out to the church kitchen and heated the oven. Around twenty minutes before noon, members of the Board of Theological Examiners began to arrive. Father Olson whisked through the parish hall first. He was in something of a state, going on about the one laywoman on the committee having a stroke and what were they going to do now? Canonically, the committee had to have twelve members to conduct interviews of candidates for the priesthood in December; the same group would administer the oral ordination exams in April. Father Olson pulled on his beard, Moses in distress. If he didn’t find a competent replacement soon, the feminists would pressure the bishop and he’d be in hot water. I wanted to ask him why, when men were looking for a woman to do anything, they assumed they’d have a problem with competence. Perhaps the real worry was that they’d find somebody who was more competent than they were.