Schooled in Deception: A Michael Bishop Mystery

by Anthony J. Pucci

  Chapter Three

  Bishop was teaching his last class of the day. This English 9 group had been discussing George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The students were quick to understand that the story could be read on different levels. On the surface, it was simply a beast fable in which animals acted like human beings. However, on an allegorical level, the story was so much more than that. It was the story of the Russian Revolution and in its aftermath, the rise of Joseph Stalin to power. It was a warning to the people of other nations to safeguard their freedoms or risk losing them.

  Chad Evans, one of the more inquisitive young men in the class, raised his hand. “How come the other animals let Squealer get away with so much?”

  “That’s a good question, Chad.” Squealer, one of the pigs who had taken the farm away from its owner, Mr. Jones, was a master of deception. “Give me an example of what you mean,” Bishop said.

  Chad didn’t hesitate in his response. “Well, there are lots of examples. He changed all of the original commandments.”

  “That’s right,” Bishop said as he turned toward a girl who was looking out the window. “Ashley, which commandment should we use to illustrate Chad’s point?”

  “The one about alcohol.” Ashley blushed as a few of the students reacted to her answer. Bishop wondered if a recent incident had triggered that reaction. They were 9th graders, after all, and some had undoubtedly experimented with alcohol if not worse. Bishop urged her to continue with her answer.

  “The animals were not to drink alcohol because that’s what Mr. Jones did, and they didn’t want to be like him.”

  “Correct.” Bishop then focused on Jerry, one of the giggling boys. “How did Squealer change that commandment?”

  Still smiling, he said, “He changed it to say that it was all right to use alcohol as long as they didn’t drink to excess.”

  “And that applied only to animals that were twenty-one or older,” added Bishop without any change in his expression.

  Jerry looked confused, but most of the others smiled knowingly at his facetious quip. “The key point here,” Bishop said as he brought everyone back on task, “ is that Squealer had the ability to manipulate words. He rewrote the commandments to the benefit of the pigs.” As class was about to end, he left them with this thought: “This novel illustrates an important lesson: we can’t just assume that someone is telling the truth.”

  ***

  When Bishop checked his email that afternoon, he found this message from Sister Ann:

  We regret to inform you that our custodian, Ed Cooper, died in a tragic accident earlier today. Please pray for Ed and for his family.

  Bishop shook his head in disbelief. A co-worker dies in the school’s auditorium, and all that merits is a two-sentence email from the principal. Bishop had worked with her for the last twenty years or so, but her lack of sensitivity continued to astonish him. Undoubtedly, the negative influence of Sister Pat was a factor. Was it possible that they were more annoyed by the need to hire a replacement than they were genuinely saddened by this young man’s sudden death?

  His own thoughts drifted back to the young woman that he and Ron Jennings had met at the trailer that morning. He wondered how Amy reacted when Officer Hollins gave her the bad news. Had she been Ed’s wife or his girl friend? Did he have other family in the area? He wondered about Debbie Bates, the cafeteria worker who had recommended Ed for the job. How well did she know him? Bishop hoped that she had left the building before that email arrived in her inbox. What a horrible way to learn of the death of a friend. He decided to stop by her place on his way home from school. Offering his assistance and support would be the least that he could do.

  He packed up his papers for the night, closed the windows, and locked his classroom door. He went down to see if Ron was free. Not counting his glimpse of the body at the bottom of that ladder, something about what he had seen in the auditorium bothered him. He couldn’t quite say what it was. He wanted to look around that area again.

  On the way to Ron’s office, he stopped by Terry’s desk. Once the dismissal bell rang, the halls cleared out fairly quickly. Terry had to wait a half an hour after the bell before leaving the building.

  “Rough day, huh?” she said, stating the obvious. Terry was in her mid-forties. A single mother of two, she had had her share of difficult times. When she was going through her divorce, Bishop was always there for her with a sympathetic ear. And when Bishop’s wife, Grace, died suddenly of a burst appendix, Terry was there for him.

  “That’s for sure,” he replied. “It brought back a lot of unhappy memories from earlier this year.” As he answered, his mind drifted back to that September day when he had found the body of a colleague.

  Sensing the need to prevent Bishop from dwelling on that sad chapter from the past, her eyes sparkled as she announced in a hushed voice, “I picked up a few tidbits about Ed this afternoon.” Terry was a very efficient secretary. Her job often placed her in the middle of the action, and she just loved every minute of it. She also loved sharing her insider knowledge with those in her inner circle, and Bishop was one of them.

  After taking a quick glance to her left and right to make sure that no one else was within listening distance, Terry spoke rapidly and in not much more than a whisper. “Debbie went home in tears after Sister Pat went into the kitchen and berated her for recommending Ed for the custodial job in the first place. Apparently, she referred to Ed as ‘a big loser.’”

  Bishop wondered whether making people feel bad made Sister Pat feel good. Did it ever occur to her to think before she spoke? He definitely wanted to stop by Debbie’s place on his way home to see how she was doing.

  The phone rang, and Terry held up one finger signaling that she had more to say and that Bishop just needed to wait a minute. After connecting the caller to the extension requested, she checked that the area was still all clear, and then continued the sharing of tidbits. “Ron went with Officer Hollins to give the bad news to that Amy person, the one you guys met earlier in the day.”

  “That poor woman. How did she handle it?”

  “No hysterics or anything. She handed over a box of Ed’s belongings. Apparently, that trailer is hers, and she just let him crash there for a while when he got out of prison.”

  “Prison?” Bishop said, louder than he should have.

  Terry put her index finger to her lips. “Shush, for Pete’s sake or you’ll get me fired.”

  Bishop hadn’t expected to learn that Ed Cooper had been in prison. That might have been the reason that Cooper had delayed filling out an application. It was unlikely that Sister Ann had known about that when she hired him. Then again, perhaps she had known. As long as he wasn’t a sex offender, why shouldn’t he be given a chance to start his life over after paying his debt to society? Officer Hollins would be able to check on Ed’s prison record, but it probably didn’t make any difference at this point.

  “Now, don’t go spreading this stuff all over the school,” she teased because she knew that Bishop wasn’t the type to do that. Besides, that would deny her the pleasure of doing that herself.

  “Have a good evening,” he said as he made his way to Ron’s office.

  ***

  Alyssa Franklin was just leaving the assistant principal’s office. Clearly upset over something, she was dabbing at her reddened eyes with a tissue. She turned back to Ron and said in a shaky voice, “Thank you for your help.”

  “You’re quite welcome,” he replied, although he knew that he hadn’t done anything to help her, at least not yet.

  Bishop loosened his tie as he walked into Ron’s office. He had already removed his lightweight sweater. Dressing for school could be tricky at this time of the year. The mornings were still cool enough that you needed that extra layer, but the afternoons could get quite warm. With all that had happened since he drove in that morning and noticed the striping of the parking lot, he hadn’t had time to appreciate that it had turned out to be a picture-perfect, late-May
day.

  “Have a seat,” Ron said as he took a tissue box from his desk and put it back on a low bookcase located behind him and to his left.

  “Alyssa seemed upset. Did that have anything to do with Ed’s death?” Ed had only been working at the school for a few weeks, but the idea of someone accidentally falling and dying in the auditorium where graduation would soon take place had unsettled many.

  “No, she never mentioned that. She had been in to see Sister Ann early this morning because she had had some money stolen, and Sister Ann told me to talk to her.”

  “That’s the third incident in the last few weeks, isn’t it?”

  Ron looked at a piece of paper on his desk. “Actually, that’s the fifth incident of late, all taking place in the gym locker room, and all for a sizable amount of money. There might be others that I don’t know about.”

  One student had mentioned some recent thefts to Bishop. Donna Larson had lost $75. When he had asked her why she kept so much money in her locker, she explained that she was going to purchase a copy of the yearbook, the Trinitarian.

  “How much did Alyssa lose?”

  “Eighty bucks.”

  “Was she going to buy a yearbook?”

  “Nah. Prom tickets.” Ron began to vent his frustration. “Kids these days don’t think twice about bringing a C note to school. Then, when someone clips it, they expect me to get it back. I’m afraid it’s not that easy.” He looked up at the ceiling as if the answers might be written there.

  “Do you think that the thefts were committed by the same person?”

  “Absolutely. I’d bet on it. Whoever is doing this is pretty clever.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He started counting with his fingers. “For starters, all the thefts have occurred in the girls’ locker room. There’s no camera in there for obvious reasons. Next, the only thing missing is money. An expensive watch, iPods, and iPads have all been there for the taking, but left untouched. Cash is a lot simpler to deal with. Plus, whoever it is has figured out a way to gain access to the lockers when no one is around. Finally, all the kids that I’ve talked to claim that the locks were locked and that they hadn’t given anyone their combination.”

  Bishop reflected on the fact that those combination locks weren’t the easiest to open even when you knew the combination. The same type of locks were used on lockers in the classroom wing, and he had been asked on many occasions over the years to help students get into their own lockers. Sometimes, he could open the lock on his first try which embarrassed the student to no end. On other occasions, he was as unsuccessful as the student had been.

  “That’s it!” announced Bishop in a eureka moment.

  “What’s it?”

  “Anyone can open a lock if they have that little key that fits in the back!”

  Ron shook his head. “I never thought of that,” he admitted, “but only a few people have one of those keys.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Well, Sister Pat has one, and Jack has one. There’s also one in the main office that Terry uses if neither of them is available.”

  “It might be a good idea to see if one of them might have lost that key or loaned it out to someone else.”

  Ron agreed to look into that the next day. He also agreed to accompany Bishop down to the auditorium. The veteran English teacher couldn’t explain exactly what he hoped to accomplish by going down there again other than to say, “I have a feeling that something’s not right. Things happened so fast this morning that I didn’t have a chance to process everything. I thought that if I went down there again, I’d remember what was bothering me.”

  ***

  Ron used his key to open the auditorium entrance. Once they were inside, he pulled the door closed behind him. He inserted another key in a small panel by the door, and the house lights slowly brightened. “I didn’t even know that there was a storage room under the stage,” said Ron as they walked down the main aisle.

  “I imagine most people don’t know that it’s there. I remember seeing a few productions here in the old days in which the trap door was used. Mostly Shakespeare. That’s how the ghost of King Hamlet made his entrances and exits. It was actually more trouble than it was worth, and they stopped using it years ago. The storage area still came in handy, however, because people had direct access to it from the back of the building.”

  As they walked up to the closed trap door, Ron remarked, “I’m surprised that people didn’t trip on this handle.”

  Bishop tapped the handle with his right shoe, and the handle fell into place so that it was now flush with the floor. “There. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. I guess the officers didn’t realize that the handle folded flat. Since the ladder is broken, let’s go around the other way. I want to take a look around that storage area.”

  Ron didn’t seem too keen on the idea. “Well, if you insist, but I don’t know what you expect to find down there.”

  “Neither do I,” replied Bishop with a slight smile. “That’s why I want to look.” As they left, Bishop spotted a safety cone off stage, pulled the door completely open, and placed the cone at the edge of the opening to prevent another accident.

  The auditorium, with its seating capacity of one thousand, had a number of exits, including one on either side near stage front, and one from the balcony which opened to a hallway which eventually led to a service doorway. When they arrived at the entrance to the storage room, Bishop was looking up at the roof of the building.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Ron, perplexed by his friend’s behavior.

  “Cameras.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Cameras,” Bishop repeated.

  “There aren’t any cameras on this side of the building. Just a large wooded lot back here,” added Ron, stating the obvious.

  “That’s just the point, my friend. Anyone coming out of that lot could approach this entrance without fear of detection.”

  Ron found that prospect a bit unsettling. “And this door was unlocked when Ed’s body was discovered.”

  “Indeed, it was,” replied Bishop as he waited for Ron to unlock the door.

  It was quite dark as they walked in to a corridor with the only illumination coming from the opened door. Ron noticed a bare light bulb in a socket suspended from the ceiling. He pulled the chain. “There, that’s better.” Pointing ahead, he added, “There’s another light.”

  As they approached the area where the ladder led up to the trap door, the corridor led to a large open space. The walls were whitewashed cement, and the floor was composed of wide-width boards, not unlike those that had been used on the stage itself. They were dulled by years of neglect. There were boxes stacked against one wall, their contents unknown. Placed against the opposite wall was an old sofa, its cushions covered by some wrinkled sheets. Next to the sofa were a tall, skinny lamp and a small table with a stack of magazines and newspapers. Bishop was surprised to find that some of the magazines were only a few months old, and the newspapers were from within the last week. Had Ed Cooper made himself a man-cave out of this room? Is that why he seemed to disappear for hours at a time?

  As Ron wandered around aimlessly, Bishop was lost in thought as he studied the ladder leading to the trap door. “We have to assume that Ed fell when those steps gave way, right?”

  “Right,” said Ron who was caught off guard by Bishop’s sudden breaking of the silence.

  “If that is so, would the door above be open or closed?”

  Ron felt that he was in a class taught by Bishop and that he was in danger of failing. “Well, we know that the door was closed because it was Bill from your AP class who first opened it.”

  “That’s right. My guess is that Ed stood on the top rung, grabbing the door by the inside handle. When the ladder gave, he let go of the handle, and the door simply slammed shut.”

  Ron’s stomach was growling as it was past time for his afternoon snack. He tried to hurry Bishop alon
g. “Well, that’s it then. The combination of his inebriated state and the failure of those old wooden rungs did him in. It’s a real shame.”

  “The wooden rungs!” Bishop shouted. “That’s what was bothering me earlier.”

  “What do mean?”

  “When I first looked down at the body, I noticed that there were pieces of the wooden ladder on the floor, but some were on the body itself. If Ed’s weight had caused those two rungs to break, the pieces most likely would have fallen to the floor before his body. Those pieces should have been underneath his body, not on top of it.”

  “What are you saying?” said a confused Ron.

  “I don’t think that Ed fell because of the condition of the ladder. Those rungs were broken afterwards to make it look like an accident. Whoever did this made the mistake of leaving the handle on the stage side of the door in an upright position.”

  Ron stood there in disbelief as Bishop said, “I think we need to contact Lieutenant Hodge.”

  Chapter Four

  Bishop made the call from Ron’s office. The other administrators, the office staff, and most of the faculty had left for the day. Since Hodge was unavailable, he left a short message asking that he return his call as soon as possible.

  Bishop began to feel that it was just as well that he hadn’t connected with Hodge. Perhaps he was wrong. Bishop often had to caution his students from reading too much into a work of literature. There had to be textual support for an interpretation. He recalled one student’s recent assertion in class that Iago’s revenge against Othello was racially motivated. It was an interesting theory given what was happening in our world, but our world was not the world of Shakespeare. Iago himself offered a number of reasons for his own destructive actions. Ultimately, it was more likely that Iago sought to destroy Othello because he represented an innate goodness that Iago knew was lacking in himself.