Murder in the French Teacher's Garden

by Andrew Culver

  “That’s what they told me. I didn’t hear nothing, believe me. Or I would’ve called the cops. And I’m not the type who calls the cops – I’m not the type to trust them with anything. But then they asked me why I was here so late, and I told them the truth, that I’m a UFO hunter and I live a couple blocks away from campus, but at my house there are too many trees and I can’t see the sky, so after dinner most nights I walk down to the campus and sit on the lunch tables to watch the sky. That’s how I see most of the UFOs I’ve seen. I tell the kids, sometimes you only see the amazing stuff when you’re alone in the night. If you’re staring at your phone, or yapping to your friends, you’re gonna miss it, man. You’re gonna miss it.”

  The bell rang, and break was suddenly over, even though I wanted to ask Pedro a lot more questions, but I knew that at this school there would be plenty of time to stand around and kill time by talking. There would be dances with far too many teacher chaperones, where two teachers would get the task of patrolling the area behind the gym to make sure kids weren’t back there vaping or making out. There would be Back to School weekends where we were all kind of standing around chatting with parents and each other; there were Open House evenings, benefit events, lunches and endless breaks where all you could do was talk to your colleagues.

  That day during lunch, when I arrived in the faculty lounge, the only person there was Sheila Stone, a forty-something black woman who taught AP Biology. She was a formidable presence who gave the students terrifying amounts of homework and exams that would make half her students drop the class. There were several huge projects and dissections throughout the year which would give my students heart palpitations. Shelia was an athletic, fit, intense woman who was very warm once you got to know her – but that usually took awhile, and I hadn’t seemed to get there yet, probably because I know nothing about her subject and I myself almost failed biology in high school.

  I started microwaving my lunch and figured I would try to make an effort.

  “So Sheila,” I said, “I’m just wondering. You know how they say that Jim Screbbles died from getting hit in the forehead with the spade. I’m just curious, from a biology point of view, is that possible? How hard would you have to hit someone?”

  She ate her food and thought for a second.

  “You know, believe it or not, I was thinking about that the other day. What we usually see in sports injuries is that kids tend to get concussions when they get those kinds of injuries. We don’t often see immediate death. I mean, if it’s really bad you could get a permanent brain injury. But even here, I mean, last year Shaun Garcia was hit that hard during a game. He was wearing his helmet, but the amount of force was probably the same. And he didn’t play for the rest of the year, but he was okay. He didn’t die, you know what I mean?”

  “So it’s kind of weird.”

  “It’s kind of weird. Unless someone hit him with incredible force, and repeatedly.”

  At this point Dr. Faulk came in. This should get interesting, I thought. Bill Faulk had been at the school for twenty or thirty years and had taught my wife back when she was in high school and he was teaching English. He had been in grad school for as long as anyone could remember and had several unfinished Ph.Ds, and I believe was in the process of writing the dissertation for his theology PhD. He now taught a couple of history and philosophy classes and was kind of a nomad when he wasn’t teaching. He lived in an RV somewhere and regularly took the summers to go camping in the Alps or to hitchhike across the country or go meditating in India. He had grown up in New Orleans in a Mafia family, and his brother still worked for the mob. Dr. Faulk was a large man and one who loved food – he would regularly bring in a crockpot with a pork butt that had been slow-cooking in Pepsi all night, and he would proceed to pull it apart and make sandwiches for whoever wanted one.

  “So what’s the topic today?” Dr. Faulk said, grabbing a handful of frozen White Castle burgers out of the fridge.

  “Sheila was telling me that it’s weird the way that Jim Screbbles was killed,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Faulk said. “I’ll tell you what, just for the record: I’ve known Pauline Gallard for twenty…twenty-two years I think now, and anyone who thinks she had anything to do with that is a fool. There is no way she killed anyone, first of all, and second of all a man she hated, at her place of work, and then left the body there for everyone to find the next day.”

  “I’m just saying, physically, that it would take a very large and strong person to kill him with a shovel to the forehead in one strike,” Sheila said. “And someone as large as Jim Screbbles would’ve fought, and he would’ve had his hands up to protect him.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t just stand there like Wile E. Coyote getting hit with an anvil,” said Dr. Faulk, miming the way it would look for Screbbles to stand there with a dumb look on his face waiting to get hit in the face with a spade.

  “What do you think happened?” I asked Faulk. He had theories on everything from the JFK assassination to the fate of Jimmy Hoffa to St. Augustine to the perfect hoagie sandwich, and I wanted his take.

  “I’ve thought a lot about this,” he said, looking into the microwave to check on his burgers. “I think someone killed him somewhere else and dragged the body here. Hear me out. This reminds me of a time when I was a kid and one of my dad’s buddies in the mob got killed. They actually were associates, he was a guy named Tommy DiMeola. What they did was brilliant, because DiMeola was killed by a rival family who wanted to send a message to the people my dad worked for. They were kind of saying, ‘Hey, stay out of our territory.’ So they shot him and put his body in the parking lot of the headquarters of another rival family, the Santuccis. There were three families running different parts of the south at that time and they all hated each other. So the Santuccis got in trouble for it and it messed up their reputation for years,” he laughed. “My dad got mad every time he told that story!”

  “So someone wanted to frame Pauline?”

  He took his burgers out of the microwave. “Pauline wouldn’t have done it. She couldn’t have done it if she wanted to. She’s about a hundred and twenty pounds, there’s no way she could kill a big like him with a shovel. I think it was a couple of guys who did it and put the body here. Listen, I know a few of the teachers at Kennedy. The word was that he had to leave Texas for some shady business he did while he was a rancher down there. I think he was run out of Texas for some reason.”

  He started to wolf down his burgers and I made another pot of coffee to get myself through the afternoon slump, and I sat there and thought to myself while the art teacher, a young woman in her twenties named Eileen, came in and started talking to Sheila. Eileen was kind of hippy-dippy and started all her classes with a meditation session. She was in some way affiliated with the Shambhala Meditation Center in town, and I didn’t know exactly how. Then Father George came in and started chatting with Dr. Faulk and pretty soon they were deep into some kind of debate about the Lady of Guadalupe.

  I had to learn more about Jim Screbbles. The answer to this mystery was somewhere in his murky past. I had to go talk to Steve Gonzalez. But I had to be careful. I couldn’t act like I suspected him of murder – that generally had bad results in all the mystery books I’d read. People tend to get defensive when you accuse them of whacking someone to death with a gardening tool. How would I even start the conversation, assuming he was even working when I walked in? This was such a long shot, I despaired. I needed an excuse to bring up the topic of Jim Screbbles – some way that I knew his son was a student of his.

  I left the faculty lounge with my coffee, lost in thought, and walked through the quad. It was a warm spring day and the sounds of the kids laughing and playing cheered me up as it usually did. It was good to work in a place where kids were being reckless and wild all around you. It’s not that it keeps you young, but it’s just cheerful to have them around. They’re playing and joking and teasing each other as if they’re never goin
g to have their hearts broken. It’s wonderful that they don’t seem to realize how riddled with fear and disappointment adult life can be. I have an ingrained cynicism that (I realize now) I probably get from my dad’s side of the family – a kind of fatalism, you could call it. This town was good for me – and this school was too. It was a little gemlike bubble where things were simple. It was a better place than LA had been. LA makes you give up on people.

  I was standing there, drinking my coffee, lost in these thoughts, when Pauline came out of her classroom and approached me with a smile. She was holding a newspaper.

  “I have the answer for your problem,” she said, handing me the Mountain News. She pointed at an article about a Kennedy student who was getting a big basketball scholarship to UCLA. It was Conner Gonzalez, senior at Kennedy high school, and as I knew, former student of the deceased Jim Screbbles. The article featured an interview with some of the kid’s teachers and his dad, Steve Gonzalez, owner of Gonzalez Wood.

  “You go to get your wood,” she said, “and you notice that, ‘oh my goodness, I just read article about your son and his basketball scholarship, congratulations. Oh, coming to think of it, I happen to remember that I find a teacher from your son’s school dead in my school. Is it possible that you know of this teacher?’ You know how you Americans make your small-talk, as you say. This is your way in.”

  “Okay, Pauline,” I said, smiling. “You’re not too bad at this detective stuff. I only hope that he’s working when I go there. What if he’s in the office or out cutting down trees or something? I mean, this is kind of a long shot.”

  “Are you even reading the article, English teacher?” she said, pointing furiously to the paper. I read:

  We tracked down Steve Gonzalez at his Gonzalez Wood and Lumber, a family operation where he not only takes orders and supervises his three employees, but he is the first person you will see when you open the door. He said he “Couldn’t be prouder of that kid,” and that he always assumed his son would join him at the family business but he guesses he’ll settle for a career in the NBA…

  I smiled again and gave the paper back to her. “Alright, Pauline. I don’t have any more excuses. I’ll tell you what I find out.”

  I WALKED into Gonzalez Wood and Lumber that Saturday and sure enough there was a guy sitting at the front desk talking to a customer about an order of lumber to some construction site somewhere in the mountains. This place was pretty serious, and I was a bit intimidated stepping into the manly world of construction. But there was a sign up on the wall that said “Firewood and BBQ Wood available – ask about our selection.” That was all I needed. I was just another customer. Steve Gonzalez finally finished up his business and I went up to make my order. He greeted me pleasantly and I had trouble imagining this guy telling someone he would “bury” Jim Screbbles. I ordered almond wood and apple wood, my two favorites for barbecuing. I had seen on their website that they did delivery, and he said he could actually get the wood out to me later that day, and I couldn’t have been happier with the service. Since no one was behind me, I then pounced.

  “By the way, I read about your son in the newspaper,” I said. “Congratulations on that. He goes to Kennedy, right?”

  “Thank you, he does.”

  “By any chance, did you know Jim Screbbles? I know he taught there.”

  A look flashed across his face. “Oh yeah, my son had him. A shame to speak ill of the dead, but…” He didn’t know how to continue.

  “Well, he died at my school. I teach at St. Ignatius. I actually found the body.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “I’m just curious who could’ve done something like that to him. Wondering if you have any ideas on that.”

  “Look, I’ll be honest. I hated the guy. I don’t lose my temper much, okay? I’m in business here, this is a small community. I can’t go around shooting my mouth off, yelling at my employees and telling customers to go F themselves if they make me mad. But when it comes to my son, and my son’s future – look, he was on track for a free ride to UCLA on a basketball scholarship. He’s a good kid, he’s a good student, and he’s suddenly in this a-hole’s class where the guy doesn’t teach, doesn’t prepare them for the AP exam, and the guy gives him an F for complaining about it. That’s the only time I’ve been that angry. But I’ll tell you, nothing’s worth going to jail for. There’s no reason to kill a guy and then jeopardize my whole family and their livelihood. Whoever killed him not only hated him, but they must’ve been crazy in the first place. And let me tell you, lots of people hated him. The guy who hated him the most, and was crazy, was probably Anthony Scaleri. He taught science over at Kennedy when my oldest son was there. He was a bit of a loose cannon, he’d been in the Marines I think. He would flip out sometimes, he would get DUIs every now and then, and he spent some time in an institution for depression or something. He was a good teacher when he was feeling okay, but every now and then…he would have like a flashback or a PTSD moment and start yelling at the kids. So anyway, Screbbles became the head of the science department over there and got the school to fire him. He basically ended Scaleri’s teaching career. Ever since then, I’ve seen him around…but he’s not the same guy. I think he fell in with a group of drug dealers and he’s gone off the rails big time. I mean, last time I saw him he was actually working in construction for a buddy of mine. I went to do a delivery at my friend’s construction site and I saw this guy who used to be my son’s science teacher, and he was working construction. I remember I talked to my friend about it for awhile. He said, ‘Yeah, he’s an okay worker, but I’m kinda scared of him. I feel like he could kill someone if he just snapped.’ So…that’s my take on this. I mean, that was maybe six months ago when I saw him. I don’t know what the guy is up to now.”

  Another customer was behind me, and I thanked Steve for everything and left. I had myself a new suspect.

  5

  I was in the garden helping Pauline plant the sage all along the fence. She’d ordered several native varieties of salvia – the white sage that you can find everywhere in Southern California from the desert to the mountains, and the fragrant black sage, and then one that had a bright red flower. As we were putting them in the ground the ones that already had blooms started attracting bees and butterflies.

  “Do you see?” Pauline said to me and the couple of kids who were planting with me. “Look! I told you that the pollinators prefer the natives. Now, you will see as the plants grow and more insects come to the garden to feed on the pollen, and more birds and lizards and even bats come to feed on the insects. And soon we have ourselves a little wildlife preserve area.”

  I hadn’t had time to discuss what I’d learned from Steve Gonzalez because there was no privacy and she was weird about the topic, as if we were secret agents or something. I waited until the kids were all working independently and she wasn’t talking to them, and I approached her as she was pouring fertilizer on the roses.

  “So I went to the lumber place, and I talked to Steve about Screbbles.”

  She perked up and asked me what I’d learned, and I told her.

  “Okay,” she said. “We will have to see how we can contact this Scaleri. I have not heard the name before. This may be difficult. But listen to what progress I have made: A friend of mine who run a nursery tell me she has some information about Screbbles. She deliver flowers to Screbbles in his garden many times. She did not have time to speak to me the other day, so I invite her to dinner at my house next week. And you are invited, with your lovely wife. I make traditional French meal, which you will not find in a French restaurant. You can only have this food if you have a French grandmother.”

  “I can’t wait. What should I bring?”

  “If you can find a good white wine at Cold Creek Wine store,” she said, mentioning the wine bar in town, which she probably thought had too many big fruity California cabernets. “Nothing too sweet, please. All the American white wine taste like lemo
nade.”

  “Of course. I’ll get a good dry white wine. I’ll get a couple.”

  “Very good.”

  “So what part of France are you from, Pauline? I don’t think you told me.”

  “I am not from France. I tell you this before. I grew up in Algeria.”

  “Oh, I don’t remember that. So you’re from Algeria, like Albert Camus.”

  “Yes, I am from the same neighborhood in Algiers like he was. We leave when I was a teenager after the war.”

  “The war of independence?”

  “Yes, my whole childhood was during that war. The Algerians want independence, and Algeria to us was like, I guess like if California wanted independence from America. It was…just part of France.”

  “What was your family doing there?”

  “My father work for the civil service. The Algerians would come and tell us they were going to bomb the house next door, to attack someone they wanted to get rid of, and we had several hours to leave, and we would go up into the hills to watch. The whole block would blow up, you know. Yes, it was a very bad time.”

  “Have you ever gone back?”

  “I will never return. I have seen enough. We had to leave there when it was clear the French would lose and they could not guarantee our safety. All I remember is bombs.”

  “How did you end up here?”

  “My husband get a job teaching at University of Redlands, and we move here from France. Here we lived and had the kids, I got my MFA, I started as teaching Art History here, I begin teaching at the colleges and then we get the divorce and my husband move back to France. So I have to teach full time the French here to pay my bills. It is like teaching kindergarten.”

  We sat down on one of the benches.

  “And then I get sick with stomach cancer, and it take me three years to get rid of it,” she said ruefully. “I avoid everything that can bring it back. I will not drink the contaminated tap water, or all your American junk food. If the cancer come back, I tell you honestly, I will just wait. I do not need to go through the treatment again.”