Extra Credit (7 page)

I held my breath, hoping that Crawford wouldn’t capitulate, and he didn’t disappoint. “Thanks for understanding, Christine. It’s been a long week,” he said.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, then turned to me and hugged me tightly. “Thank you for coming,” she said.

Crawford and I walked back to the car, and I wondered if this would be the last time we would have to endure the company of the Stepkowskis. I thought of asking Crawford but then thought better of it. I looked out the window as we drove through the rolling hills of the cemetery, spotting a lone woman sitting on a hill beside a soaring stone statue of an archangel, her face obscured by a large black hat, her long blond hair cascading down her back, hair that you would see on a Barbie doll or a woman who was in a certain kind of “show biz,” for lack of a better term. She was tall and voluptuous, her curves not hidden by her black pants and gray shirt. She was leaning nonchalantly at the foot of the angel, Michael the archangel, if I had to guess, studying alternately her manicure and something in the distance. I turned my head to see what she was looking at, but it wasn’t necessary.

The only thing in the distance was Chick Stepkowski’s casket, all alone, waiting to be put in the ground.

Seven

I drove with Meaghan back to school on the Monday after the funeral, as she’d stayed with us on Sunday night. She was a bit more circumspect in her reaction to Chick’s death than her sister, whose only question to us as we put her cranky little ass back into her minivan was “Now do we get to keep the money?”

Crawford had slammed the door shut, but not before asking her which charity she’d like to donate it to, just to mess with her head. She had driven off in a purple rage, muttering undoubtedly about all the things she could do with five grand, starting with declaring her independence from the parental units in her life.

Crawford went back to work, investigating the untimely deaths of people he didn’t know, which was just the way he liked it. I returned to my slate of teaching, including the creative writing class, determining who had talent and who didn’t; I wasn’t expecting anything in the way of surprises, and that’s just the way I liked it.

I grabbed my messenger bag and made my way up to the fourth floor of my building, where I was met by Sister Mary and the woman she had brought by my office over a week earlier and about whom I had promptly forgotten. They were waiting by the door of the classroom, expectant looks on both their faces.

Mary was all piss and vinegar, just like always; the smell of her Jean Naté was particularly pungent today. “Alison, thank you for joining us,” she said, insinuating that I was late. I wasn’t. “This is Ms. Bannerman—”

The woman interjected, “Please. Call me Mary Lou.”

Mary didn’t seem to mind her interruption; God forbid I should jump in with any germane information, though. Her head might explode. “Mary Lou is the new student I told you about who would like to audit your creative writing class.”

“Audit?” I asked. That was the first I heard of that. It meant Mary Lou was using the creative writing course at St. Thomas as her own writing workshop. If she wanted to workshop her stuff with a bunch of kids, there was no one stopping her, but I wondered why a nattily turned-out woman who was closer to my age than that of the other students would choose our little university rather than a Gotham Writers’ Workshop class or even an online critique group.

She anticipated my question or saw the puzzled look on my face, because she had an answer for all of that. “My kids are in college, so I have a lot of free time on my hands, and my mother was a ‘Tommy.’” She smiled at some memory that she didn’t share. “I have a lot of fond memories of St. Thomas. The annual Visit with Santa in Memorial Hall, the Easter egg hunt on East Lawn … I love it here.”

This woman really knew her St. Thomas fun facts.

“And I’m writing a novel,” she proclaimed with so much joy it made my heart hurt.

“Great!” I returned in kind, noting that Mary was looking at me like if I made one false move—or didn’t respond in the way she thought was appropriate given the situation—she would devour me whole. “I’m thrilled that you’re in my class,” I said, channeling my inner Lee Strasberg. I motioned toward the classroom. “Please. Join us.”

Mary seemed satisfied by this incredible acting display and stomped off in her old-lady nun shoes, giving one backward glance that was both intimidating and hilarious at the same time. I stifled a giggle as I followed Mary Lou Bannerman, the next great American novelist, into the classroom. She took a seat right in the front row, just as I knew she would, and turned around to smile at the rest of the students, who wouldn’t have noticed if Chewbacca had entered, let alone a middle-aged dilettante who was the daughter of an alumna.

“Good morning, class,” I said. “This is Mrs. Bannerman—”

“Mary Lou,” she interjected.

“Mary Lou,” I said, “and she will be joining us for the semester. Let’s all give a warm welcome to Mary Lou.”

There was a mixture of “good morning, Mrs. Mary Lou,” and a bunch of other interesting non sequiturs, but that was as good as it was going to get. I got down to business.

Mary Lou was an apt pupil, just as I knew she would be; the older students usually are. I talked about our plan to generate a short story by the end of the following week, highlighting some of my favorites to give them guidance as they thought about their own. I asked a few students what they thought they would write about and got some interesting answers.

Mary Lou raised her hand. “So we
will
be doing novels at some point, right?” she asked.

“Well, we’ll start with short stories,” I said, “but if you find you have something there that can be turned into a longer work, feel free to keep going with your plot and characters.”

She jotted some notes down in a Vera Bradley notebook; her pen was a very expensive and very large Montblanc. She looked up at me expectantly.

“Would you like to share what you’ll be writing about?” I asked.

She nodded and turned toward the class. “I’ll be writing about my husband’s murder.”

Eight

I seemed to be the only person in the classroom who had any kind of reaction to Mary Lou’s topic, but I tried to remain impassive, muttering a noncommittal “ohhhh” in response to her statement. When I got back to my office, though, I threw every permutation of “Bannerman” and “murder” into Google and tried to find out who her husband was and how and why he had been murdered. I came up empty, which was even more of a surprise to me than the fact that she had lost her husband violently.

All kinds of possibilities existed for why her name didn’t lead to anything on Google. She had remarried. She had moved here from somewhere else. She was in the Witness Protection Program. Did I really care, though? That was the question. I guessed the details behind the event would be revealed through her novel and my curiosity would be satisfied eventually. Until then, better to keep my nose to the grindstone, keep Meaghan out of trouble, and try to reestablish equilibrium in my own life after the events surrounding Chick’s reappearance and death.

In response to Erin’s parting question to us—“Now do we get to keep the money?”—the answer was that we still weren’t sure. Crawford thought about putting it into each of their college accounts, while Christine thought we should just keep it handy in case of some unknown development, like someone else claimed it or it was impounded by some probate judge, neither of which seemed likely to us, but hey, I’m just the second wife. Nobody really listens to my opinion. Except when they do. We were all still a little uneasy about accepting the money, given that we weren’t sure of its origins. Why would someone who had so much money—two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the apartment alone—live in such dire conditions when he could obviously better his situation? It just didn’t make any sense.

I could tell that Crawford was torn up about it. Since we had missed the opportunity to have dinner at my favorite restaurant the night that Chick died, we’d decided to do it tonight. We were seated at a table by the window, the Hudson just a few feet away. I had a perfectly prepared martini and he was drinking a beer while we waited for a plate of oysters. “Did you talk to the detective who was at the funeral?” I asked. “That Minor guy?”

“That’s the first thing I did this morning.”

“And?”

“He said to keep it.”

I looked out the window. “So there’s your answer.”

“It just doesn’t feel right.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, “but there are worse things in the world than being told you have to keep ten grand.” I pulled a thick chunk of bread from the basket on the table and tore into it. “What happens to the two hundred and fifty thousand?”

“It goes to someone called a public administrator who will evaluate any claims on the money.”

“Who might claim it?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know, but I suspect once word gets out, a few people will materialize.”

“Like the brothers?”

“Maybe.”

“Christine?”

“Doubtful.” He looked in the breadbasket and saw that I had made short work of its contents; I handed him half of what was left on my plate. “Can we talk about something else?” he asked. “And don’t ask me about work.”

“So ask me about mine,” I said, polishing off my drink.

“How’s work?”

“The usual. Sister Mary hates me, the kids are bored already,” I started. “Oh, but I’ve got this lovely middle-aged lady in my creative writing class.”

“That’s great. Now you have someone your own age around to play with.”

I cocked my head to the side and gave him a look. “You think I’m middle-aged?”

“What would you call yourself?”

“An adult. With a bangin’ bod.”

“Who’s middle-aged,” he added. “Do the math. If you live until you’re—”

I put up my hand. “Stop right there. Let’s leave it at this: She’s a little bit older than I am.” I looked out the window again and muttered, “
You’re
middle-aged, but I am—”

“Middle-aged,” he repeated.

A drink magically appeared in front of me. “Do you ever want to sleep with me again?”

He raised an eyebrow questioningly. To him, that was a rhetorical question, but I meant business.

“Then stop referring to me as middle-aged.”

Our oysters came and we dug in, him dousing his with way too much hot sauce, and me making mine just the way I liked them with a lot of lemon and a little horseradish. We finished them up in record time, and he leaned back and rubbed his stomach.

“So,” he said. “Who’s the lady, and why is she taking your creative writing class?”

“She wants to write a novel.”

He sucked in some air; he knew how much I hated working with budding novelists. The buds usually never flowered into anything resembling a beautiful novel, let alone a decent grade. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m trying to have a new attitude about it. Maybe she’s the second coming of Virginia Woolf.”

“I hope she is, for your sake.” He signaled the server for another beer. “Any idea what the novel is going to be about?”

“Her husband’s murder,” I said and watched as he had the same reaction I’d had. “Funny thing is that I did a Web search on her name to see what came up, but there’s nothing. Zilch. Nada.” I eyed the bread on his plate. “You going to eat that?”

He responded by sticking the whole thing in his mouth.

“Maybe she has a different name than her husband did?” I wondered aloud.

“Maybe,” he said. “Did she say what happened?”

I shook my head. “Nope, and I didn’t ask.”

“But you’re curious.”

“Of course I’m curious,” I said. “Have we met?”

He held out his hand. “I don’t think we have.” We shook. “My name is Bobby Crawford, and I’m a middle-aged stiff.”

“Alison Bergeron. Adult with a bangin’ bod.”

He leaned over the table and gave me a very uncharacteristic public kiss. “Are you easy?”

“The easiest.”

“Then I think we’ll get along just fine.”

Nine

With everything that had gone on, I had almost forgotten my concerns about Mr. Super Senior and his relationship to Meaghan and a possible cheating scandal, or Meaghan’s close-to-failing grade in Forensic Psychology. Or maybe I was just employing selective memory, trying to forget that this situation hung over my little world like a black cloud. I hadn’t thought of it much until the Forensic Psych professor, Joanne Larkin, showed up in my office a few days later, a smile on her normally pinched and pained-looking face.

She poked her head in as if she were a flamingo taking a drink. “Alison?”

I stood. “Hi, Joanne.” I gestured toward one of the chairs across from my desk. “Please come in.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” she said. She plopped down in the chair, crossing her legs. It looked as if she would be staying a while. “I just had to stop by and tell you how well Meaghan is doing in my class. I’m thrilled with her turnaround.”

“Meaghan Crawford?” I asked. There had to be some mistake. The Meaghan she’d described a few weeks earlier was in danger of flunking the class, despite it being early in the semester, and the girl I had spoken to about this dire situation didn’t seem terribly concerned. To think that she had been able to execute some kind of miraculous 180, given the fact that she had missed almost a week of school after her uncle’s death, was a stretch. “Really?”

Joanne nodded vigorously, making the helmet of hair she usually sported move just the tiniest bit. “It’s truly amazing. She got a perfect score on her midterm.”

My stomach did a little flip. “She did?”

Joanne peered at me from behind the most unflattering glasses I had ever seen on a person; big and round with the outdated half-moon bifocal at the bottom of each, the top half making her eyes look the size of an owl’s. “You don’t seem happy, Alison.”

“I don’t?” I asked, wondering where she had gotten a sweater with three-dimensional jack-o’-lanterns sewn on it. That had clearly taken some investigation. It made the workmanship on the cat sweaters look like child’s play. “I am. Happy, that is. I’m thrilled. Her father and I will do a celebratory dance of joy tonight.”