4 Four Play (10 page)

I turned back to Jodi. “Is Principal Dempsey available?” I asked.

“I’ll let him know you’re here.”

Jodi got up to speak to the principal, and Officer Poleski and I studied each other and listened to the conversation emanating from the principal’s office. My name was mentioned, and a most decided “What the hell does she want?” from the male voice inside.

Resolute, I kept on smiling at the resource officer as Jodi reminded Principal Dempsey about the creative writing course. He snapped something about how he couldn’t care less about next year’s curriculum, Jodi mentioned Dr. Yates, Principal Dempsey harrumphed, and Jodi stepped out.

“Dr. Dempsey will be pleased to see you now,” she told me.

***

Dr. Dempsey didn’t bother standing up when I entered his office, and he ignored my outstretched hand.

“I know why you’re here, and you can forget it,” he said. “Sit!”

I sat and watched while he pretended to read some paperwork on his desk.

“So you aren’t looking for a creative writing teacher?” I asked after a second or two.

“I’m not hiring any teachers.” He looked up in order to cackle. “Ever again!” Cackle, cackle. “And I’m not telling you anything. And I don’t care who sent you—Yikes or your boyfriend.”

“My boyfriend has nothing to do with my visit.”

“Yeah, right. He just left.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. The timing’s too perfect. First Yikes, then Rye, and now you.” He tapped his watch. “And each visit ten minutes after the last. Right on schedule.”

I told the principal I had no idea what he was talking about and reminded him I was there to discuss the creative writing course.”

“Save it. And tell Yikes she won’t get away with this. One month before I’m due to retire, and she tries to get me fired? I don’t think so. I’ve sacrificed my entire life for this school district. Twenty-five years!”

“Congratulations.”

“Save it! Save it ’til next month. I have plans, you know? My roses!”

I again told Dr. Dempsey I had no idea what he was talking about.

“My retirement! My roses! I know what’s going on here.”

“That makes one of us, sir.”

He pursed his lips and considered me. “You’re good at playing dumb. You know that?”

Maybe. But at least I was smart enough to realize the teaching premise was not flying. So I did something altogether drastic—I resorted to honesty.

“Dr. Yates did send me,” I said. “But I’m certainly not here to get you fired. I’m here to learn about Miriam Jilton.”

“It was your car,” Dr. Dempsey said.

“Which is why I’m so concerned.” I sat forward. “As I’m sure you are. Since it happened in your parking lot?”

“Not my parking lot! I wasn’t even here that night. But I know!”

“You know what?”

“Yikes will use this to get rid of me. I’ve sacrificed twenty-eight years of my life to this school system.”

I blinked twice, but decided not to quibble over Dr. Dempsey’s exact tenure. “That’s a long time,” I agreed. “So what do you know about the murder?”

“It had to happen during the last month of my last school year.” He shook his head in disgust. “Thirty years I’ve spent upholding the highest standards of education in this city, and now this. What was Miriam thinking? Doing this to me?”

It was time to quibble. “Ms. Jilton did not get killed just to annoy you,” I said. “She was the victim.”

The principal smirked. “As Yikes would say, victim-schmictim.”

I squinted. “What are you implying?”

“How should I know? Thirty-three years I’ve given this school system, and this is what I get for it? Cops, the school board, Superintendent Yikes, and now you? The Queen of Smut?” He waved for me to stand up. “Get out of here.”

“Out of where?” I asked.

“What!?” he snapped, and I explained my question.

“Are you throwing me out of the school, or just your office? Because I would like to talk to your faculty, if I may.”

“Absolutely! Whatever Yikes wants, Yikes gets! Don’t you know that? You really are good at playing dumb.”

***

Jodi Chen looked up from her desk. “How many years was he sacrificing before he kicked you out?”

“Thirty-three.”

“He’s gotten as high as thirty-nine with me,” Officer Poleski said from the doorway.

“That’s nothing,” Jodi said. “This morning he told me he’s put in forty-two.” She stood up. “And now you’ll want to talk to the faculty,” she said and led me toward the door.

We tried to skirt around Officer Poleski, but he held his ground. “I’ll show her around,” he said.

“Dr. Yates specifically requested I escort Ms. Hewitt,” she said. “I’m to personally introduce her to the teachers.”

“You got proof of that?”

“No. But you can call Dr. Yates to verify.”

The cop winced and stepped aside. And Jodi and I hastened out the door and down Corridor A.

“Thank you,” I whispered as soon as we were out of earshot.

“My pleasure.” She made a sharp left down Corridor D, and I tried to keep up. “Gabby Yates called me at home last night with the plan. She said you’d need a viable premise to get past Bruce Poleski.”

“I’m glad someone planned ahead.” I frowned as we passed the boys lavatory. “Because I sure didn’t.”

“Gabby is the Queen of Plan Ahead.” Jodi shot me a sideways glance. “Which can’t be nearly as much fun as being the Queen of Smut.”

We passed a classroom with an open door, where a teacher was giving a power point lecture. “High school certainly has changed since I was sixteen,” I said.

“But the faculty lounge hasn’t.” Jodi stopped short and pointed to the door on our left. “It’s still the Command Center of Bitch, Moan, and Gossip.” She checked her watch. “And it’s lunch hour. Your timing is perfect.”

She turned to leave, but I caught her elbow. “I thought you said you’d introduce me?”

“Trust me, Jessie Hewitt. You need no introduction.”

“Swell,” I said, but Jodi had already disappeared down Corridor—I looked for a sign—E.

I clutched my hall pass, knocked twice, and entered the Command Center of Bitch, Moan, and Gossip.

Chapter 13

All conversation ceased, and ten or so sets of eyes came to rest on me.

“I have my hall pass,” I said and jiggled the stupid thing.

“Well, whoop-dee-doo,” a woman with bright red hair responded.

I took in my surroundings. Whoop-dee-doo pretty much summed it up. The room was beige. The metal table everyone sat around was beige. The metal folding chairs everyone sat on were beige. The sandwiches everyone ate were beige.

I tried smiling. “I’m here about the teaching job,” I said. “I’m Jessie Hewitt.”

“We know who you are.” The redhead shoved her lunch aside. “What job?”

I related the story Gabby had concocted for me.

“Let me get this straight,” a youngish guy with glasses said. “Miriam gets dumped on your car, so Yikes offers you a job?”

“That’s right. Gabby—I mean, Superintendent Yates—and I hit it off right away. But I’m a bit nervous about teaching, so she suggested this visit.”

Blank stares.

I swallowed and pointed to an empty chair. “May I join you?”

No one said no, so I sat between the redhead and the guy in glasses.

“I can’t wait to start teaching.” I directed that particular lie to the redhead, and she frowned accordingly.

“And pigs fly,” she said.

I sighed dramatically and glanced around. “Is this story even remotely plausible?” I asked.

“It’s nonsense,” an older woman sitting across the table answered. “I’m Doris Carver, the English department chair.” She folded her arms and glared. “Yikes wouldn’t dare add new curriculum without my approval. Are you even certified?”

“Excuse me?”

“To teach.”

“Of course she’s not certified,” Ms. Redhead answered for me.

“Did your fiancé put you up to this?” the guy with the glasses asked. “He just left, you know?”

“Of course she knows,” Ms. Carver said.

“When’s the wedding?” a young woman at the far end of the table asked.

I cleared my throat and suggested we stick to the topic.

“Which is?” Ms. Carver asked.

“Miriam Jilton,” I said, and no one skipped a beat. I added that I was interested in identifying her killer, and no one skipped a beat about that either. The young woman at the end of the table reminded me I have a reputation for that sort of thing.

“Okay then. So what can you tell me?” I directed my question at Ms. Carver, the English department head, but the redhead next to me answered.

“Miriam was a great teacher,” she said.

Everyone nodded, except Ms. Carver.

“You don’t agree,” I asked her.

“She made her students write a lot.”

I scowled. “But isn’t that a good thing?”

“Students don’t like writing. Not everyone gets to be Adelé Nightingale. And,” she said ominously.

“And let me guess,” I said. “She made them read, too?”

“You want to hear this or not?”

I humbly admitted that I did want to hear.

“Miriam was having an affair.” Doris seemed happy to inform me. “With a married man.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she went out to lunch a lot. But never with anyone from school.”

I shook my head. “She went out to lunch, so she was having an affair?”

“I followed her one day,” Mr. Glasses volunteered.

“Isn’t that kind of—” I searched for a diplomatic way to say it.

“Nosy?” Ms. Carver helped me out. “Kind of like you?”

Mr. Glasses ignored her. “I didn’t recognize the guy,” he told me. “No one knows who he was.”

I looked around, and everyone shook their heads in ignorance.

Ms. Carver smirked. “So much for the Command Center of Bitch, Moan, and Gossip,” she said.

***

The bell clanged, and everyone jumped. Chairs were shuffled, lunches were cleared, and everyone made haste. I also rose to leave, but Mr. Glasses told me to stay put. Apparently a second group of faculty was due in any minute.

“Good luck.” He smiled kindly and disappeared out the door and into what sounded like a stampede of raging cattle from Kipp Jupiter’s ranch.

Despite the ruckus, I caught tidbits of conversation as the faculty traded places. Thus neither I, nor my purpose, needed any introduction as round two of the faculty took their places in the Command Center. Things went about the same. Most people were friendly, some were not, some even offered me part of their lunch.

Yadda, yadda, yadda—we got to know each other. I was crazy to actually like Dr. Yates, Miriam Jilton was a great teacher, everyone agreed she was having an affair, no one knew with whom, and last but not least, everyone inquired as to my wedding date.

I was beginning to think I was wasting my time, when it dawned on me the guy sitting beside me was a gym teacher. Unlike the other male teachers, he wore a polo shirt, no tie.

I dove in. “Were you the other chaperone on Saturday?” I asked, and he put his sandwich down.

“How do you know?”

“I know the person who called 911 was a gym teacher.” I gestured to his orange shirt with the purple CHS embroidered on the chest. “Sorry, but that shirt has gym teacher written all over it.”

Bless his heart, Mr. Polo Shirt laughed out loud. “Guilty as charged,” he said and held out his hand. “I’m Jason Bell. And yes. I’m the one who called the cops. But that doesn’t make me a killer.”

I assured Mr. Bell I knew that and asked what he could tell me about the dance.

“Jason’s already gone over it a million times.” That was the Ms. Cordial of this group, a Spanish teacher. “He was just doing his job. Cotillion duty is hard enough without this kind of harassment.”

“Would you shut up?” Jason said. I am happy to report he was speaking to the Spanish teacher. “No one’s harassing me, okay?” He turned to me. “Everything was normal. As normal as it gets at these things.”

“What’s normal?”

“The guys were trying to look cool, the girls were trying to look sexy. Standard cotillion stuff, right down to the couple hiding a six-pack under their table, which I confiscated.” He shrugged. “Nothing unusual.”

“Miriam Jilton was killed,” I said.

“Well, yeah. That was unusual.”

“So when did things start getting unusual?”

Jason gave it some thought. “When we were lining the couples up for the photographer. I was keeping an eye on the boys, and Miriam was on hairdo patrol with the girls. Everyone was out-of-control nervous.” He glanced around the table. “Trevor Ploof was threatening to puke.”

All the teachers groaned, and a math teacher informed me Trevor threatened to puke on a regular basis.

“Try having him in biology lab,” the black guy across from me said, and several people got up to trash the remains of their lunch.

Jason turned back to me. “That’s when Miriam got a phone call.”

I sat forward and asked what he had heard.

“Not much since I was busy with Trevor. But I distinctly remember Miriam saying, ‘She’s fine! Would you stop worrying?’” Jason shrugged again. “She must have raised her voice, because it caught my attention.”

“She said ‘She’s fine,’ not ‘I’m fine?’” I tilted my head. “Who was fine?”

“I have no idea. I was too busy getting Trevor to the boys lavatory. And that’s the last I saw of Miriam.”

“Alive,” the black guy corrected him.

“Alive,” Jason said and stared at the beige table.

***

Who was fine, I wondered as I meandered my way back to the office.

“Something wrong?” Officer Poleski asked, and I jumped ten feet in the air. He seemed happy to have startled me, but at least he held the office door open.

“Has anyone seen my friend Karen?” I asked as I entered.

Jodi informed me Karen and the janitor were down in the gym discussing the basketball court. “The floor needs re-varnishing over the summer, and Jack wanted Karen’s advice.” She addressed the cop. “Why don’t you go see how they’re doing?”

He was reluctant to leave, but Jodi persisted, and he finally got the hint.

She waved me to a chair. “What’s the news from the Command Center?” she asked.

I pointed to the principal’s closed door, but Jodi told me not to worry.