The Skeleton Takes a Bow

by Leigh Perry

  I took a bite of biscuit. “Him disappearing around the time of her death is an odd coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose it is,” he said, but went no further.

  “Do you suppose that ‘unsavory path’ you mentioned had anything to do with his disappearance?”

  “If it did, then he has only himself to blame.”

  “Was it something dangerous?”

  He actually shrugged—Charles never shrugs. Then, with an air of finality, he said, “I am sorry if Robert has come to a bad end. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some tasks I must attend do.”

  I tried to prod a little more while I helped him clean up, but Charles is discreet to a fault. It was the only time I’d ever wished that he, or in fact any living person, were more like Sara Weiss.

  I did a little work from the privacy of my mother’s office, then met with the students who wanted advice on the assignment due the next day. Some hadn’t even done the reading about which they were supposed to be writing: one of my favorites, a meaty article about the effect of comic books on modern culture. Still, knowing that some of them were going to have to pull an all-nighter to catch up, I tried to treat them gently. It’s just that being diplomatic was harder than usual because I was still trying to figure out what it meant that my murder victim—probably—was connected—however tenuously—with a recent death—that could have been either suicide or an accident. I was just glad I didn’t have to parse out a sentence that convoluted for any of my students.

  After I shooed off the last student, what I really wanted to do was go talk to Sid. Unfortunately, according to my watch it was going to be several more hours before that happened. So I did something desperate—I went looking for Sara Weiss.

  21

  Luckily, Sara was at her desk in the adjunct office—from her active use of a red pen, I assumed she was grading papers. I resisted the impulse to smile when I saw her because she knows she’s not my favorite person and would instantly suspect any direct attempt to engage. Instead I tried to act normal, in that I ignored her presence as I went to my desk and opened up my laptop so I could pretend to Web surf. Then I muttered, “Robert Irwin, Robert Irwin,” as if I were trying to remember something.

  “Robert Irwin?” Sara said, turning in my direction. “Did you know Robert?”

  “I was just reading an article about a man who went missing,” I said, “and his name is ringing a bell but I’m not sure why. No, wait. The article says he was a high school teacher. That might be it—maybe he taught at a school Madison went to.” I acted as if the matter was settled as far as I was concerned.

  But Sara was just warming up. “You could have worked with him. He used to be an adjunct.”

  “Really?” I made a show of looking through the article. “It doesn’t say anything about that here.”

  Sara said, “He switched to teaching high school. Robert and I were at UMass Lowell for a semester years ago, but I knew he wasn’t cut out for the life.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Didn’t have the brain for it, no real feel for biology. He was one of those who tested well, but couldn’t do the work.”

  “The person who created standardized tests has a lot to answer for,” I said. “I wonder what happened to the guy.”

  “No idea, but I seem to remember there was something not quite right about him.”

  With anybody else, I’d have said something to prompt her further, but I knew I could count on Sara to keep dishing dirt.

  After a short pause, she said, “He always had more money than he should have. I mean, it’s not like we didn’t all get paid the same.”

  “Maybe he had a side gig.”

  “If he did, he never talked about it.” To Sara, that was an automatic indictment—she thought she was supposed to know what everybody was doing. I wondered what she’d think about my part-time work at PHS.

  I was waiting for her to come up with more, when the mail cart went past the door and Sara jumped up. “Mail call. I’ll get yours while I’m up!”

  She was outside the room before I could object, and was gone an undue amount of time to just grab our mail. She was almost certainly flipping through mine, but since I was still hoping to pick her brain for information about Robert Irwin, I let it slide.

  When she came back and slapped mine onto my desk, I said, “Thanks. So, about Irwin . . .”

  But she was looking through her own mail. “Damn.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I sent a note to the Sechrest Foundation, and they haven’t even bothered to reply.”

  I remembered that that was the group that Yo had been wary of. “A grad student I know got a letter from them, and it sounded suspicious, so maybe you should be grateful.”

  “Some of us can’t afford to be picky,” she said. “We don’t all have friends in high places, like you and your parents.”

  My parents were a source of irritation to Sara, or at least the fact that they were both tenured faculty rankled. Never mind that they’d been on sabbatical the whole time I’d been at McQuaid, and I’d gained very little benefit from their officially still being on staff. She was incredibly jealous that I got to use my mother’s office, and she was sure I was getting other perks as well, almost certainly to culminate in their handing me a tenure-track position.

  I cast around for a subtle way to move the conversation back to Robert Irwin, but the best I could do was, “So, this missing high school teacher—”

  Before I could complete my lame gambit, Sara said, “Well, I’ve got no time for idle gossip. I’ve got a class to teach.” She bundled her things together with an insufferable air of superiority and flounced out of the office.

  Since I didn’t have anybody else there to talk to, and there were still hours to go before I could talk to Sid, I put the murder and/or missing person case completely out of my head and concentrated on work. Well, I tried to, but I honestly wasn’t at my most productive. I kept trying to guess what terrible things Robert Irwin and Patty Craft could have been involved with.

  I grabbed an early lunch at McQuaid’s Campus Deli before heading to PHS for my first SAT prep class.

  22

  My classroom—or rather, Mr. Chedworth’s classroom—was occupied when I got to PHS, so I stayed out in the hall until the bell rang. Then I played salmon-swimming-upstream as the students flowed outward. Madison was one of the students caught in the tide, but we only had time for a quick wave before she was carried away.

  The teacher in charge of the classroom was a substitute brought in to keep the kids quiet—he had no experience in teaching the SAT. Despite my earlier concerns, since Madison was a freshman and wouldn’t take the PSAT until fall of her junior year and then the SAT the following spring, it really wouldn’t do her any harm to have the study hall. The two classes I was teaching, however, were juniors and they would be taking the SAT in May, so it was considerably more important that they be ready.

  I made nice with the substitute, then got myself settled in. Since I’ve never had a permanent classroom in any of the colleges where I’ve taught, I’m used to getting myself ready to teach in just a few minutes. So when the bell rang to start the class, I was ready and raring to go.

  The students in the class, however, seemed to be neither. Fortunately, years of teaching sections of a required course had left me uncommonly prepared for the situation. I have a standard first-day-of-class wake-up speech committed to memory and only had to change the particulars to match. So after I introduced myself, took attendance, and explained that I’d be taking over for Mr. Chedworth—which they already knew—I said, “The SAT is a joke.”

  As usual, the students looked confused.

  “It’s an arbitrary test and its predictive validity—” I stopped, remembering this was high school, not college. “And the only thing it predicts with any accura
cy is how well a student does during the first year of college. Not if you ultimately do well, not if you graduate, nothing vital. Just how you do your first year. So yeah, it’s a joke.”

  I definitely had their attention.

  “But taking the SAT is required for a large percentage of the colleges to which you’ll be applying. That’s not because college admissions people are stupid—they know the limitations of the SAT as well as anybody. They use it because it’s a way to differentiate between the vast number of students applying each year. When you realize that each of you will be applying to six or more colleges, you can see why admissions people need something to help them figure out their best candidates. And what they’ve got is the SAT.

  “So if you want to maximize your chances of getting into the college you’re dying to attend, then you’re going to want to get the best score you can on this test. And I’m here to help you do that.

  “You know I’m not here long term and I get paid no matter what. That means the only one who will pay the price if you fall asleep during this class is you.” I clapped my hands together to simulate enthusiasm. “So let’s get started!”

  It worked as well as it usually did, which is to say that I got about seventy-five percent of the class ready to do the work. As for the rest, they were welcome to nap as long as they didn’t snore and disrupt the class.

  Mr. Chedworth had prepared a seating chart, which I appreciated mightily. After years of adjunct life I’m good at memorizing student names quickly, but a cheat sheet never hurts. Since the kids were two years older than Madison, I didn’t recognize many of the names, but a couple were familiar from Madison’s stories about Drama Club, including Fortinbras, Laertes, and the boy playing Rosencrantz to Madison’s Guildenstern.

  The period went by quickly, again thanks to Mr. Chedworth. He had the students in fairly good shape already—about all I’d need to do to make sure they were ready was to lecture on test-taking strategies and administer a few more practice tests.

  The second class went pretty much the same, except that it included the student playing Hamlet. I wasn’t sure if he was perpetually emo or was using the Method to prepare for his rendition of the melancholy Dane. Whatever it was, it was certainly drawing the attention of several of the female students.

  I wasn’t overly surprised when Ms. Rad happened to wander by after the class was over—she took her role as acting department chair seriously.

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “Pretty well. They seem invested in the process, which is good.”

  “SAT prep is an elective, so nobody is in the class if they’re not college bound. Other than a couple whose parents want them to be college bound, of course.”

  “I’ve seen a few of those pushy parents on college campuses, too. They expect college instructors to call them with their kids’ grades—they don’t realize our students are presumed to be adults.”

  “That’s nothing compared to what we get around here. You’ll see on parent-teacher conference night.”

  “I will?”

  “Of course. Mr. Dahlgren mentioned it at the meeting yesterday?”

  “I didn’t think that applied to me. I mean, I’m only part-time and I’ll only have taught a few classes by then. Plus I’ll be meeting with Madison’s teachers.”

  “Don’t worry about that—you can catch up with Madison’s teachers any workday. But parents will want to meet you.”

  “But—”

  She was looking at me, somehow implying I wasn’t taking my teaching job seriously. Which I wasn’t exactly, given that I had another reason to be hanging around the school, but I still owed it to PHS to give it my best shot.

  I swallowed a sigh and said, “Of course I’ll be there.”

  She offered to explain the procedure for the evening, and though I’d intended to walk around a little and see what I could snoop into, I couldn’t very well turn her down. Afterward we walked out to the parking lot together.

  Since Madison didn’t have rehearsal or choral ensemble that day, I’d told her that she could pile her bike into the backseat and catch a ride home with me, but she’d told me she wanted the exercise and was already gone. I’d wondered if she was still disgruntled about my taking her to task about her biology grade, and soon got the answer. By the time I got home, she’d already grabbed Byron and retreated into her room with the door closed and her music turned up louder than usual. Definitely disgruntled.

  I had several options. I could try to jolly her out of it, but that wouldn’t be supportive of her feelings. I could patiently explain my reasoning to her once again, but that might undermine my parental authority. Or I could wait her out—she was a teenager and sooner or later she’d want food. I went with that one.

  At least she’d helped Sid regroup before secluding herself, and he’d gone up to his attic.

  I knocked at the door.

  “It’s open,” he yelled down, and I climbed up to find him at his computer playing Facebook games.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

  “Who were you expecting?”

  I could just tell that if he’d had eyes, he’d have rolled them. So he was in a mood, too. But since I didn’t have to be supportive of his feelings, I had no parental authority to exert, and I sure as sacrum couldn’t wait for him to get hungry, I was free to snark back at him. “Okay, then. I was going to tell you what I found out about Robert Irwin, but I can see you’re in the middle of a game.” I started back down the stairs.

  “Stop, stop, stop!” He managed to get ahead of me, probably because he wasn’t afraid of bruising or even capable of it, and blocked the door. “Please, Georgia, come have a seat and visit. I’m dying to hear about your day. Or I would be, if I hadn’t already . . . you know.”

  “If you’re sure I’m not interrupting . . .”

  “I’ve always got time for you.” He smiled winningly, which is harder than one might think for somebody who smiles 24-7. “Please, have a seat. Would you like me to go get you a cold drink? A snack?”

  I was tempted, but I decided I had let him squirm enough. “No, thanks, but I would like to chat.”

  “Then pull up a chair and spill.”

  I did so. “You know the first body the police found, the one we thought was our murder victim at first?”

  “The woman who died of an overdose? Yeah.”

  “When I went to her funeral, a couple of people were saying they were surprised her ex-boyfriend wasn’t there—they’d been broken up for a while, but it was pretty serious for a long time.”

  “So?”

  “So her ex-boyfriend was Robert Irwin.”

  “Oh, my sternum! So you think he—I mean, maybe she—” Sid scratched his skull, though I was quite certain it couldn’t itch. “I don’t know what this means.”

  “I don’t either,” I admitted. “But remember how I told Deborah that having two bodies found in one week in Pennycross was just a coincidence? Now I’m thinking that maybe it wasn’t a coincidence at all. Maybe the deaths are linked.”

  “But how? And how did you find out?”

  “I had a hunch yesterday, but—”

  “You realized this yesterday and didn’t tell me?”

  “First off, I wasn’t sure. Second, with you and Madison going after each other hammer and tongs, and not exactly showing me any love, I kind of got distracted.”

  “Fair point.”

  “So why didn’t you tell me that Irwin had been an adjunct? Was it not in the information you found?”

  “Of course it was, but it was years ago,” he protested, “and I couldn’t find any link between those years and anybody at PHS.”

  “Okay, that makes sense. Anyway, I had this hunch yesterday, and then I talked to Charles today to confirm it.” I recounted the conversation and added the lit
tle I’d learned from Sara.

  Sid said, “I know Charles is a quiet kind of guy, but that was sort of a mild reaction to finding out that a guy he knows has gone missing, wasn’t it?”

  “A bit. I think he disliked Irwin a lot, so either he was just being too reserved to say ‘I hope the guy is dead’ or he feels guilty for not realizing it before.”

  “Maybe, or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  Sid looked at me, eye sockets wider than usual, which was impossible but pure Sid. “Georgia, how well do you know Charles?”

  “I’ve been friends with him for years. You know that.”

  “Yeah, but I just had an awful thought. What if the McQuaid gossip queen was right and he really was dating Patty Craft?”

  “He never said one word about them dating.”

  “Did he tell you they weren’t?”

  “Not explicitly, but he said they weren’t close until she got ill, and he hasn’t been acting like a bereaved boyfriend.”

  “Okay, so they weren’t dating, but he did do a lot for her, right? He must have cared for her.”

  “He’s a very loyal friend.”

  “So what if he blamed Irwin for Patty Craft’s death? I mean, the louse dumped her after she was diagnosed, which is pretty low. And suppose Charles saw Irwin while he was driving around town looking for a place to live once he moved to Pennycross? Might he have wanted to avenge her?”

  “You think Charles killed Irwin?”

  “You said yourself that he said he’d have cut him if he’d been at that woman’s funeral.”

  “Cut him dead, not cut him with a knife. Besides, why would Charles and the guy have gone to PHS? And how would they have gotten in?”

  “No ideas on the why, but from what you’ve said, Charles is pretty good at getting into places where he shouldn’t.”

  Sid was one of the few people I’d told about Charles’s unusual living arrangements. Of course Charles must be good at sneaking into buildings. How else would he have managed to squat in colleges all through New England?