1 Catered to Death

by Marlo Hollinger

  “It sure does. Did it seem to you like they hated Frank Ubermann most of all?”

  “Let me think about that.” I sipped some more wine as I tried to reconstruct the luncheon. I had been so busy fussing and worrying over the food that I hadn’t been paying too close attention to what was going on but Steve’s right; I do tend to notice details and I’ve always been good at picking up on auras and the aura in that room was very tense, especially between Frank and Jack. “Jack Mulholland and Frank got into it pretty good.”

  “Who is Jack Mulholland?”

  “The art teacher. The one who helped me unload the car today.”

  “Isn’t he the one Maxi the bus driver said had it in for Frank Ubermann?”

  DeeDee nodded. “You’re right, she did! I wish you could have seen Jack. He looks just like Fozzie Bear on steroids. All hairy and huge.”

  “Sounds charming.”

  “Oh, he was nice enough to me. He let me in the back door and helped me carry everything up to the teachers’ lounge. He did make some cracks about Frank and Claudine when he let me in but he didn’t get combative until Frank got on him about taking out the garbage.”

  “The teachers have to take out the garbage?” Steve asked incredulously.

  “The school is supposed to be run on a cooperative basis—remember that article in the newspaper when Eden Academy opened? Everything’s run by committees and everyone’s supposed to pull their fair share. You said at the time that it would never work.”

  “And it looks like I was right. So was it Jack’s turn to take out the garbage?”

  “I guess so. Jack and Frank got snippy with each other over the garbage and then they started arguing about how much electricity Jack’s kilns use. Frank wanted Jack to kick in some money for the electricity and Jack got even angrier at him. He stormed out of the lounge but not before he blew up at Frank and Monica.”

  “Who’s Monica?”

  “Frank’s administrative assistant. According to Jack, until Monica started going over all the books with a fine tooth comb, no one cared how much electricity his kilns used.”

  “All right, so we know there wasn’t any love lost between Jack and Frank but I seriously doubt anyone would kill someone because they told him to take out the garbage or asked him to kick in on an electric bill,” Steve observed.

  “Probably not,” I agreed. “Jack was mad but he didn’t seem murderously mad.” I considered my statement. “Although I suppose anyone can snap.”

  “Who else had it in for Frank Ubermann? Did you notice anybody else giving him the evil eye?”

  “Not really. He certainly had a way of talking to them that wasn’t what I’d call pleasant but I couldn’t say that there was a whole lot of active hate going on either. He was a little impatient with the student teacher because she didn’t follow the correct format to leave early but that’s about it.”

  “He sounds like he was a pompous ass but what boss isn’t?” Steve remarked.

  “Pompous is a good word to describe him.”

  “So who else was at this luncheon?” Steve asked.

  “Let’s see.” I set down my wine glass and began listing the guests on my fingers. “Frank, of course, Claudine, Monica, Junebug, Jack, the student teacher and Simpson Ingalls. Simpson’s a teacher. Out of all of them, he probably said the least. He just ate the food and kept his mouth shut. He didn’t interact with anyone very much.”

  “Smart man.”

  “I think he is smart. He’s the one who told me that none of them like each other. He does have a history with Frank Ubermann though. Frank was his Boy Scout leader.”

  “It’s a connection,” Steve said. “What about Junebug?”

  I shrugged. “She was late and then when she got there she didn’t talk too much to the other teachers.”

  “Because she didn’t like them?”

  “I don’t know. She just seemed…out of it. She’s older—in her early seventies, I’d say, and it might have been too much for her. I overheard Frank and Claudine and Monica talking about her and it sounded like they think she’s past ready for retirement.”

  “Do you think she’d kill Frank because he was trying to push her out?”

  I started to laugh as I remembered the tiny woman in the red cowboy boots with the befuddled look on her face. “I don’t think so. She didn’t seem like the type.”

  “There is no type,” Steve informed me, “and like you said, anyone can snap.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “That sounds like a pretty small party.”

  “It really was. Like I said, if there hadn’t been a free meal involved I had the feeling that no one would have shown up.” I stopped suddenly, a picture of Frank, Claudine and Monica popping in my head with Frank’s hand almost surgically attached to Claudine’s knee.

  “What? You look like you just remembered something.”

  “I did. It was about Frank and Claudine. I was setting up in the lounge when Claudine came in to say hello. Frank was there too because he’d stopped in and introduced himself to me and we were still chatting when Claudine showed up. Frank was pretty brusque with Claudine and she was kind of snotty right back at him. I thought it was odd that they were so nasty to each other in front of a stranger but I didn’t really think too much about it. Then when they left the room, I swear I saw Frank’s hand brush across her fanny and it wasn’t an accident either. And she didn’t seem to mind in the least. If anything, I think she liked it.”

  Steve raised his eyebrows. “Do you think there was some funny business going on between the two of them?”

  “I don’t know. Claudine struck me as the type of woman who wouldn’t hesitate for a second to slap someone across the face if she thought they deserved it. She was dressed kind of trampy but she has an extremely forbidding personality. Very stiff and prickly but then during the lunch I saw Frank’s hand on her knee and she just sat there smiling. Monica wasn’t too happy about it, I could tell. When Monica sat down next to Frank I noticed that Claudine gave her a look right out of the deep freeze. Jack had mentioned to me that Claudine was something of a cold fish but this look was really incredible. I almost expected instant ice crystals to start forming on Monica’s dress.”

  “Interesting,” Steve said. “How did Monica react?”

  “She didn’t. She was so busy staring at Frank’s hand on Monica’s knee that the building could have burst into flames and she probably wouldn’t have noticed.”

  “Maybe ol’ Frank was something of a player and had something going on with both Monica and Claudine?”

  “I thought the same thing.”

  “He must have been quite the ladies’ man. Was he good looking?”

  “I guess so.” I hadn’t told Steve that there was something about the late Frank Ubermann that reminded me just a little bit of vintage Robert Redford. Steve always got so ridiculously jealous whenever I watched The Way We Were which I only did two or three times a year. I decided to compare him to Burt Reynolds instead. “He was a little bit like Burt Reynolds in his prime. Sort of confident and cocky and definitely comfortable in his own skin and around women. Nice looking but he came across as more handsome than he really was because of his attitude. Alpha male all the way.”

  “Do you know if he was married?”

  “I think so. He said he was going camping with Sylvia this weekend and I assumed that’s his wife.” I shuddered. “How awful for his wife to get a phone call saying that her husband had been murdered. Especially in such a bizarre way.”

  “Murder is murder,” Steve replied matter-of-factly, “but you’re right. Getting shot by an arrow has to be one of your lesser happening crimes in today’s world. That must have hurt something fierce. I wonder why they were using regular bows. Wouldn’t you think that a school would use something with safety tips?”

  “I thought about that too and I asked Simpson why Eden Academy didn’t use something that was safer for students. He said that Frank was a stickler for ac
curacy. Frank was a Boy Scout leader for years and years and was really into the whole outdoor thing and that he wanted to teach the kids how to shoot with the real deal, not an imitation.”

  “Well, I bet he wishes he’d gone with the imitation now,” Steve observed. “Frank Ubermann sounds like he was pretty heavily into the whole macho thing. A lesser man would have been pretty leery of teaching high school students how to shoot bows and arrows without any protection.”

  “Maybe he trusted his students,” I suggested.

  “He was a fool if he did. Maybe it was a student who did him in. That’s a possibility—a kid with a grudge against him for flunking him.”

  “I don’t know—a high school student?”

  “Have you watched the news lately? Innocence is a thing of the past.”

  I considered and then rejected the idea. “It still seems too well thought out to me. I don’t think Tyler would have been able to come up with something like that when he was in high school—not that he would have ever done anything like that in the first place.”

  “Tyler barely managed to get his butt to school most of the time he was in high school so I seriously doubt he could have master minded any kind of plot, criminal or otherwise. DeeDee, let’s get back to what happened today. The lunch ended and then what?”

  “Well, let me think. I was cleaning up when I heard this horrible scream out in the hallway. I went to the door just as Claudine was running up the stairs shouting that Frank was dead. It seemed like everyone came out into the hall and raced down the stairs to the basement at the same time.”

  “Did you go too?”

  I nodded.

  “What did you see? Exactly?”

  “Frank was in the gym lying on the floor right in front of one of those bull’s eye targets.” I drank more wine as I remembered how Frank Ubermann had looked stretched out on the floor, an arrow sticking out of his chest straight up into the air like something out of an old western. His blue eyes had been open and had been staring straight ahead up at the ceiling yet not seeing a thing. I closed my own eyes as I tried to wipe out the memory.

  “So Claudine found him. That might be a might handy cover for having killed him.”

  “I don’t know. She’s awfully thin and doesn’t look like she’d have the strength to pull a bow and arrow.”

  “It doesn’t take all that much strength, DeeDee.”

  “But it takes some, doesn’t it? I remember taking archery in high school and you had to aim and pull back if you wanted to hit your target. Claudine’s emaciated looking. Not the athletic type at all.”

  “She’s still a possibility,” Steve insisted. “We’re going to operate on the everyone guilty until proven innocent theory. Then what happened?”

  “Someone must have called the police because they arrived within a minute or two. Then we were all told to go back to the staff lounge. That’s about when I called you, Steve. Everything else is pretty much a blur.”

  For a long moment Steve and I looked at each other from our respective recliners. “What a mess,” Steve finally remarked as he finished the rest of his drink.

  “I’ll say it is,” I agreed.

  Steve reached for the remote control and flicked on the television. “Well, I guess all that really matters is that you’re all right and that’s the main thing. Let’s try to forget about it for the rest of the night. I don’t want you having nightmares. I am sorry this had to happen on your very first catering job, babe.”

  “Me too.” I polished off my wine and tried to focus on the program Steve had turned on but my mind couldn’t seem to relax. How was I ever going to get anyone to hire me once they learned that I was the person who had fixed Frank Ubermann his last meal? I felt like a cook on death row at the state prison. “I think I’m going to get some more wine,” I announced.

  “Go ahead, honey. You earned it today.”

  In the kitchen, I poured myself another glass of wine. I stood for a moment as the wine slid down my throat, finding comfort in the feel of my familiar kitchen floor under my feet, the soft fabric of my favorite lavender fleece bathrobe hugging my body. Everything looked so normal—the geranium plant in the window, the checked dish towels hanging next to the stove, the Corning Ware coffee pot that I used every morning because it makes the best coffee in the world. It seemed hard to believe that everything could look the way it always had when I felt as if I’d been through a tornado.

  “Hon, while you’re up could you bring me some cheese and crackers?” Steve called from the family room.

  Instantly, I felt better. Steve didn’t seem to be too bent out of shape over the day’s events. Surely if he could be fairly relaxed over the fact that I had a front row seat to a murder, it couldn’t be that big a deal.

  Tyler came in the back door just then. “Hey, Mom,” he said when he saw me, “Jane sent me a text and said you had your first catering job today. I forgot all about that. How’d it go? Anything exciting happen?”

  I began to laugh and cry at the same time as I reached up to give my six foot four baby a big hug. “Oh, it was memorable,” I replied. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Chapter Eight

  Monday morning after Steve left for work I sat down at the round oak kitchen table with a cup of fresh coffee and allowed myself the luxury of a small nervous breakdown. I was still shaking from the events that had happened on Friday, even after a routine weekend and two nights of fairly good sleep. It just seemed impossible to me that someone had been shot by an arrow and died while I was upstairs making sure that everyone had enough herb butter for their croissants and refilling glasses of iced tea. The part I couldn’t seem to get past was that it hadn’t been anyone anonymous but someone I had met and spoken too, a living, breathing human being. A living, breathing human being who no longer existed.

  Even though Steve and I are in our fifties, we haven’t known too many people who have died. Our grandparents, of course, and Steve’s dad. But while those losses were hard, none of them were totally unexpected. Neither of us had certainly ever known anyone who wound up murdered. It seemed incomprehensible to me. Who could have done such a thing? Who could hate Frank Ubermann so much that they wanted to see him dead? It had to be one of the teacher’s. That was the only solution that made any sense.

  I warmed a croissant from the batch I’d baked Sunday afternoon and slathered it with butter and homemade strawberry jam to soothe my nerves. Comfort food at its finest and I needed it since this whole mess was making me a mess. Sipping my coffee after I finished the croissant, I mentally reviewed the teachers I had met on Friday. Really, it didn’t take a whole lot of stretching of my imagination to think that any one of them could have done it. The only person out of the entire staff who seemed even vaguely normal was the school’s receptionist, Ruth Sparrow, and even if Ruth appeared normal the woman had to be harboring at least a small grudge or two against the rest of the Eden Academy staff for treating her like an untouchable.

  True, Ruth said she didn’t mind not being included in things like luncheons and parties but I wasn’t totally sure if I believed her. Even with her sweet personality it had to be hard on her ego to be ignored all the time and I was willing to bet my last stick of butter-flavored Crisco that Ruth wasn’t paid very well either. Why would Ruth stay in such a thankless job?

  Then again, Ruth was around my age, possibly divorced or widowed, and finding another job once a person was over fifty was a lot like trying to find a parking spot at the Mall of America on Black Friday. Not going to happen. That was probably why Ruth put up with being dissed by the rest of the staff; she needed the job so she had to put up with their crap. Still, I didn’t think Ruth was a killer; she was too sweet and way too passive. Sweet and passive wouldn’t apply to any of the other people I’d met at Eden Academy, including Maxi, the loud bus driver. But Maxi hadn’t been in the building when Frank was shot so that cleared her.

  Sorting through the suspects, I decided that if I had to bet who might h
ave killed Frank Ubermann, my money would most likely be on Jack Mulholland. It didn’t help that Jack looked so freaky with his shaved head, huge beard, creepy glasses and a wardrobe that was straight out of a remake of Easy Rider. I’m perfectly aware that it’s not fair to judge someone on how they dress but from the moment I met Jack there was something about the man that had made me uneasy. There was an air of distinct weirdness floating around Jack Mullholland that made connecting the dots between him and Frank Ubermann’s killer a pretty short and straight line. I wondered if the police had made that connection yet.

  Getting up, I reheated my coffee and then returned to the kitchen table, my mind mentally moving around the fateful luncheon table and finally resting on Frank and Claudine. Maybe Steve was right and their pre-lunch animosity was just a show so no one would suspect what was really going on between the two of them, although I wasn’t sure why either of them would care what I thought. Then again, if they were going to put on an act, it made sense to put it on for everyone, even the caterer.

  I made a mental note to find out if Claudine was married. Maybe her husband had snuck into the school and killed Frank out of jealousy. From what I’d witnessed on Friday, if Claudine did have a husband it looked to me as if he had every reason in the world to be jealous, or at the very least suspicious, of Frank Ubermann.

  Claudine had also been the most clearly upset after Frank’s body had been found but that might have been because she was the one who had found it, although Monica ran a close second. The rest had been almost calm, eerily calm, come to think of it, and Ruth hadn’t bothered to come out of her office until the police showed up. Maybe they were all in on it together?

  Quickly, I dismissed that farfetched thought. The Eden Academy employees struck me as the kind of people who wouldn’t be able to board an elevator together in any kind of unison. They’d never be able to hatch a murder plot and pull it off without one of them ratting everyone else out. It had to be a single murderer and Claudine might have been doing what Steve suggested the other night, giving all of them a very clever performance to cover up what she’d just done—murder the boss.