***
Hodge didn’t mind taking a call at home. In fact, he had planned on calling Bishop the next day. He had checked into Ed Cooper’s prison record.
“Cooper had just been released from state prison in Madison about three weeks ago.” Bishop could hear the shuffling of papers as Hodge consulted his notes. “He was sentenced to a year in jail for an aggravated DWI but was released after ten months for good behavior.”
“I suppose his driver’s license had been revoked.”
“Yeah, that’s automatic in a case like his.”
“Anything else interesting?” asked Bishop, hoping some detail might provide a clue as to who killed him or why.
“Not really. Somebody did make a note that the inmates called him “Warren Buffett” because he was always reading the financial section of all the newspapers.”
“Doesn’t sound as though he made any enemies while he was locked up,” Bishop concluded. He had thought it possible that someone that Ed had crossed while in jail might have been responsible for his death. That seemed less likely now. He asked the lieutenant about another potential source of information. “What about his cell phone? Were you able to pull any leads from that?”
“What cell phone?” asked the puzzled detective.
“He must have had a cell phone. Terry in the main office called his number repeatedly before we discovered the body.”
“I thought it a bit odd myself, but we didn’t find a phone on the body or in the box of his personal effects that Amy gave us.”
“I wonder if Amy forgot to include his phone, or if she held onto it for some reason.” He paused for a moment, then added, “And I wonder whose number Terry was dialing.”
Hodge laughed. “You sure do think like a detective. Well, good night, Mr. Bishop.”
“Wait! I almost forgot. There’s one more thing.” He grabbed that wrinkled piece of paper. That was the reason that he had called Hodge in the first place. “When Ron and I were at Amy’s trailer looking for Ed yesterday morning, there was a motorcycle parked near the front door. We thought it might belong to Ed, but that doesn’t seem likely given what we know now. Of course, it might belong to Amy, but it wasn’t there when Ron and Officer Hollins went back yesterday afternoon, and it wasn’t there when Ron and I went there after school today. I did manage to get the plate number. Do you think you could run it?”
Hodge started laughing again. “I’ve heard lots of people, including my own daughter, say you’re a good teacher, but you seem a natural in my line of work. What’s the number?”
“SL8996.”
***
Before it got too late, he wanted to give Duane Davenport a call. Ed Cooper had been given Duane’s keys when he was hired, and Lieutenant Hodge had returned those keys to the school earlier in the day. Ron looked through all the keys on that ring and verified that the small key used to open the combination locks was not among them. If Ed didn’t have that key, he couldn’t have been the one stealing the cash from the girls’ gym lockers. That would certainly put the focus on Jack once again since Sister Pat and Terry were unlikely to be involved. Even though the thought of Sister Pat being arrested for theft in front of the entire school brought a smile to his face, there was little reason for her to steal since all of her needs were provided for by the Sisters of the Holy Rosary. As for Terry, although she had access to a key, she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to enter the locker room when no one else was around. It had to be either Ed or Jack.
He wasn’t quite sure why this bothered him so much. It was nothing compared to finding Ed’s killer or even to preventing the administration from sacking some good teachers. He did, however, want to help Ron solve those petty thefts if he could, and one call to Duane was a step in that direction.
Duane answered on the second ring. His nasally voice was unmistakable.
“Duane, this is Michael Bishop. I hope I didn’t get you at a bad time.”
“Not really. I was just watching the Yankees game. They’re getting crushed by the Red Sox at the moment. What can I do for ya?”
Duane had worked at Trinity for the last three years. Unfortunately, he was quite self-conscious about his lack of education. He had been overheard many times telling some student, “You better study hard, boy. You don’t wanna end up like me.” As far as Bishop could tell, he was a hard worker. He often helped teachers without being asked. Since no one seemed to know why he had abruptly resigned a few weeks earlier, he wanted to tread carefully. “A lot of folks at school miss seeing you around. I hope that you’re doing well.”
“Ya, I miss them too, at least some of ‘em,” he said with a laugh. “I want to thank you for sending me that card when I left. That was real thoughtful.”
“You are more than welcome.”
“I didn’t get no card from Sister Pat, that’s for sure.”
Bishop didn’t respond right away, hoping that Duane would have more to say. That approach worked.
“Ya know, she’s the reason I quit.”
“No, I didn’t know that.” Clearly, Duane wanted to share his story, and Bishop was not going to get in the way.
“Not too long ago she started giving me this long list of stuff to do, and if I didn’t get it all done, she’d get after me the next day. And she never said nothin’ to Jack even though he spends half of his day doin’ diddlysquat.”
“She can be a bit difficult at times,” he said sympathetically. The veteran teacher surmised that the lists and the harassment were part of a campaign hatched by Sister Pat and approved by Sister Ann to force Duane to quit. If they let him go, they would have to pay his unemployment claim; however, if they made him miserable enough, he would quit, and they wouldn’t owe him a dime. He had observed this practice succeed on several occasions in the past.
“The last straw was when Sister Pat told me that they were cutting me from full-time to part-time. I’d be losing my insurance, too.” The words spilled out as he became more agitated. “I grabbed my ring of keys, slammed them to the floor, and walked out.”
“I’m sorry that you were treated that way,” he said. He was more than sorry. He was saddened to think that those two religious women in leadership positions were such poor role models of the Christian values of which they so often spoke.
“They actually did me a favor. I got a job over at Groveland High, and I’m working days and making more money.”
“Is that so? Good for you! I’m glad to hear it!” Fortunately, before he ended the call, Bishop remembered why he had called him in the first place. “You mentioned your keys a moment ago. Do you mind if I ask you if you had a key that opened the combination locks used in the locker room?”
“Yeah, that tiny one? I know the one you mean. We had to put it on a small ring and attach that ring to the larger ring. Yeah, I had one. Can’t say I ever used it. Why do you ask?”
It was clear to Bishop that Duane had not yet heard about what had happened to the man who replaced him at Trinity, so he filled him in on the essential facts of the case.
“I’m sorry to hear it. Poor guy. Ya know, in all the time I worked there, I never used that trap door. That storage room was Jack’s place. That’s where he’d go when he wanted to get away for a while.”
Bishop thanked him for his time and wished him well in his new job. He wondered how likely it was that when Duane slammed his keys to the floor, that small key popped free from the rest.
***
He decided to shed himself of all of his worries before bed by immersing himself in a book. He picked up his copy of Death and Restoration, a mystery novel by Iain Pears, and settled in on the living room sofa. The book would be due soon, and he had already used the library’s allotted two renewals. Having read several other books by Pears, Bishop enjoyed the way in which main characters, Flavia di Stefano and Jonathan Argyll, used a combination of hard work, intelligence, attention to detail, and a bit of luck to solve the crime. An added plus was that the action mostly took place in
Rome. Bishop and Grace had planned on traveling upon retirement, and Italy was high on their list of places to visit. His wife’s unexpected death from a ruptured appendix eight years ago had ended those plans. He would have to be content with books that could take him there.
Once he started reading the same paragraph over and over again, he knew that he was sleepy enough for bed. He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. Looking in the mirror reminded him of his age. Occasionally, a curious student would look up his picture in an old Trinitarian, the school’s yearbook. Even though he still felt the same inwardly, those photos were powerful evidence of the changes that had slowly crept up on him over the years. His moustache had turned quite grey, and what remained of his hair was cut short. Some age spots had developed on his face, but he had avoided the jowls and wrinkles that might have been expected. At seventy, how much longer would he be able to teach? He was starting to worry about losing his memory. What would he do without the stimulation of the classroom? Perhaps he would write a mystery novel of his own.
As he lay in bed in those moments before sleep, it was as if Flavia di Stefano had whispered in his ear, “Avignon 1868.” It had been written on the sheet of paper found in Ed Cooper’s wallet. How could he have forgotten that? It might not mean anything, but then again, it might turn out to be a crucial detail in solving Ed’s murder.
Chapter Ten
His arrival at school on Wednesday morning lacked the drama of an unannounced faculty meeting in which a salary freeze had been imposed, but it made up for it in other ways.
Sister Pat, all three-hundred-plus pounds of Sister Meany, had parked herself at the front entrance. She directed a venomous glare at him as she triumphantly announced, “I’m still here, Bishop! I’m still here!”
He smiled as he walked up to her. He was well aware of the fact that Sister Ann would have shared his suggestion that Sister Pat’s dismissal was the price for his help in selling the salary freeze to the faculty. “I accept my status as persona non grata in your eyes,” he said in a very genial tone. Knowing that she was baffled by Latin, he took pleasure in weaving some phrase in whenever he could. She made a clucking noise with her tongue to indicate her disdain.
He walked down to the faculty lounge to make himself a cup of tea. The place was usually empty this early in the morning except for Jack who was reading the sports section of the newspaper while sipping a cup of coffee. When he glanced up from the paper to see who had come in, he said, “Morning, Mike.” That wasn’t the typical upbeat greeting that he received from Jack. Was it possible that he was still upset by Ron’s questioning him about the key to the combination locks?
“Good morning, Jack. Looks like another nice day.” When that failed to get a response, he added, “That parking lot looks great. Nice job!”
“They hired somebody to stripe it. I’ve got too many other things to do,” he said somewhat defensively. Changing topics, he asked, “Are you planning to take your class to the auditorium today?”
“Yes. Why do you ask? Is there a problem?”
“No problem. I just wanted to let you know that I removed the broken ladder and nailed the trap door shut. Those were Sister’s orders.”
“That’s probably for the best. We don’t need another incident to take place down there. By the way, I hear that Duane Davenport got a maintenance job with the public school district.”
“That so?” He didn’t appear to be very interested in pursuing that topic as he turned his attention back to the newspaper.
Bishop decided to push the issue. “Looks as if the master key to the locks was removed from Ed’s key ring since Duane said that it was there when he turned his keys in.”
Jack slammed the paper to the table. “I didn’t have a good feeling about Ed right from the start. Those nuns always think they’re so smart. I bet they’re sorry now that they ever hired him. If that key is missing, Ed either took it for himself, lost it, or gave it to someone else because I sure as hell didn’t steal any money from those lockers.” Needing some outlet for his frustration, he picked up the paper and slammed it down again.
“Of course not,” Bishop replied with as much conviction as he could muster. He knew that Jack tended to explode occasionally, but his bursts of anger seemed to be more frequent of late. Could his wife’s illness be the cause? Could he be upset that his private escape to the storage room had been taken away from him? What else could it be?
“And did you notice that the thefts stopped once Ed was out of the picture?” Jack asked as he regained his composure.
“Well, that’s a good thing,” he said, wondering how Jack knew that. Perhaps it had been Ed. Perhaps the guilty individual had stopped stealing for now in order to shift the focus to Ed. If that was the case, the strategy seemed to be working.
***
As he walked down the hall, he kept thinking about that key. The theft of some cash from the girls’ locker room was a relatively minor event. What if Ed wasn’t guilty? What if Ed had caught the thief in the act? Could that be the reason that Ed was killed?
When he arrived at the copy room, several teachers were discussing the handwritten sign taped to the wall directly above the copy machine.
Due to financial considerations, the school will not provide copy paper for the remainer of the school year. Thank you for your cooperation.
The misspelling of “remainder” was as good an indication of who had written the note as Sister Pat’s signature.
“They’ve got to be kidding!” exclaimed Mary Nickerson, one of the math teachers, in exasperation. “I have tons of review sheets that I need to copy. What do they expect me to do?”
Roger Willis, a theology teacher, answered. “I think it’s clear they expect us to buy our own supplies from here on out. First, they take away our free lunches, then they freeze our salaries, now this.” His frustration was evident in his tone. “Just how bad are the school’s finances?” he asked of no one in particular. Apparently, he hadn’t heard the rumor of impending teacher cuts, and Bishop was certainly not about to mention it now. Teacher morale was bad enough as it was.
“Let’s not make a big deal out of this paper business. I have a free period later this morning. I’d be happy to pick up a couple of cases of copy paper. If anyone wants to chip in a couple of bucks, just leave it with Terry.”
The few teachers who were in the room at the time thanked Bishop for making that offer. They promised to spread the word to the other teachers. Bishop stopped at Terry’s desk on his way up to his room. The sweet scent from a large bunch of lilacs in a vase was hard to ignore. “Who brought those in?” he asked as he gestured toward the purple blossoms.
“Charlie did. At least somebody in the English department thinks of me,” she said teasing him. “He gave some to Sister Ann and to Sister Pat, too.”
“How thoughtful of him!” He hoped that he sounded sincere when he said that. He then told her about the collection to purchase copy paper. “I hope you don’t mind that I dumped that on you.”
“No problem,” she said dismissively. “And you don’t even have to bring me flowers. I can’t believe they put that sign up.”
“Terry, you’ve been around here long enough to know that nothing they do should surprise you.”
“You’re right about that!” she said with a smile. “Do you want me to keep track of who gives?”
“No. That won’t be necessary. I know that some will give and some won’t. We’re not all in similar financial circumstances. I’m more fortunate than most, and I don’t have a family to support. The paper will be for anyone who needs it.”
“Aren’t you worried about what our fearless leaders will say?” She spoke in a hushed, conspiratorial tone.
He smiled broadly as he replied, “Nope!”
After walking out of the main office, he stopped, turned around, and walked right back in. Terry had gone back to her typing, but no one else was at her desk. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but I just remembered som
ething that I was going to ask you.” Perhaps it really was time to start worrying about the early stages of memory loss. On the other hand, he reasoned, he did actually remember what he wanted to ask without the help of a written note. “Do you remember when we were desperately looking for Ed on Monday morning?”
“How could I forget? To think that he was lying there all that time!” Her entire body shook as if she had just felt a cold wind.
“I remember that you kept calling his number and getting no answer.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, Lieutenant Hodge tells me that Ed didn’t appear to have a cell phone, so I was wondering whose number you were calling.”
“I don’t know.” When she was confused, she usually scrunched her face as she did now. “I used the number that he gave us. All we had was his address and phone number.”
“I’ve got to get to homeroom. Do you think you could look up that number and get it to me later?”
“It won’t take a sec. I’ve got it right here.” She shuffled some papers around on her desk and found an index card with a number on it. “Here,” she said as she handed him the card, “I won’t be needing this any more.”
***
During homeroom period, Charlie Mitchell popped in to Bishop’s room and approached his desk. He leaned in toward him so that the students wouldn’t pick up on the conversation. “I heard about your offer to buy some copy paper. That’s good of you. I’d like to contribute, but I find myself a bit strapped for funds right now.”
Bishop raised his hand as if to signal a stop. “There’s no need to explain.” He glanced at the students in his homeroom. Some of them were talking quietly while others were scrambling to finish an assignment in the few minutes before first period began. He wondered what the students in Charlie’s homeroom were doing without any supervision. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed that he had left the room. He relied on their good behavior as he was often out and about during homeroom chatting it up with one faculty member or another.
Schooled in Deception: A Michael Bishop Mystery Page 8