Photo, Snap, Shot (12 page)

Distinctive. I filed away the image of Ella and her children as she drove past me, a cloud of dust rising from the wheels of her big Mercedes SUV.

We dropped off Tilly
after driving about twenty minutes to the southwestern suburb of Des Peres. Dutifully, she thanked me for the ride. I waited outside the neat, white-shingled two-story until she waved from behind the closed front door. I turned back east, backtracking.

Anya dozed as I drove. We were two feet inside the kitchen when she turned and said, “We have to go back. I forgot my backpack.”

I counted to ten. Ten times. I even counted to twenty twice as I let the dogs out. Mr. Gibbes and Gracie didn’t have to go. Bama must have let them out. I needed to remember to thank her.

I chided myself about us walking off without Anya’s backpack. I’d reminded her about her jacket, but the backpack had slipped my mind. “You left it at the golf course, didn’t you? Call them and see if they’re closed.”

She called the golf course only to discover it was closed. I thought about what Maggie said. I decided not to bail my child out.

Anya frowned. I could see her trying to figure out what to do. I willed myself not to butt in. She could handle this, and I knew I should let her. Besides, the hassle might, just might, make her a bit more careful about her things. Finally, she flipped open her cell phone and called Coach Bosch. After a quick give-and-take, she thrust the phone at me. “Coach Bosch’s going to tell you how to get to his house.”

Scrambling for a piece of scrap paper (and thinking how ironic it was that I, of all people, couldn’t lay hands on a piece of paper!), I took down directions from Coach Bosch. As I said goodbye, I realized we’d been close to his home at the golf course, but I now had easily forty-five minutes of driving ahead of me. The St. Louis area is one of the most geographically spread-out in the country.

I tried not to feel cranky, but I did. Anya protested coming with me. “Moo-oom. I’m tired. Why can’t I stay home and you go get my backpack? I need a nap!”

“Because I’m not the person who forgot my stuff. This was your responsibility,” I said as I hustled her and the dogs into the car.

Driving counter to the flow of rush-hour traffic, I poked along the highly trafficked Kirkwood, which becomes Lindbergh, which is also Highway 67 only for the sake of totally confusing out-of-towners. Anya held Mr. Gibbes on her lap and cranked back the passenger’s seat, which caused poor Gracie to hunker down in the back since there’s so little room in my BMW. Everyone was uncomfortable but my daughter, who quickly dropped off to sleep.

Coach Bosch’s house was a neat Cape Cod in a tiny subdivision directly north of the school. Clearly, the coach was a DIY type of guy. His was the only mailbox on the street that had been white wooden shingled to match his home. His plants were cropped as tidily as his own crew cut. I stood on his stoop and thought of the yard work I needed to get done and felt a fresh wave of irritation. My daughter needed to get her act together.

Coach Bosch answered the door, invited me inside, and retrieved the backpack, but not before he beckoned me to his mantelpiece to admire his recent 25 Years of Service gift from the Sports Boosters.

“Ella Walden dropped it by this morning. They officially gave it to me last week, but Patricia took it home right after the sports booster meeting. She put it in this case for me. Isn’t it something?”

If you get excited by a paving stone engraved with your name, it was pretty nifty. Didn’t do much for me, but then you couldn’t eat it, wear it, or glue it to a scrapbook page. (I reflected on what a pathetic creature I was that these three qualities determined “useful” and “useless” in my life.)

“Its twin is being laid outside of the new football stadium. The one that’s going to replace the old Busch Stadium. They’ll intersperse these with plain bricks to form the concourse. Isn’t this great?” Coach Bosch rubbed his hands together. I made low murmurs of appreciation. I owed him that. After all, the man rescued more than $452 worth of schoolbooks.

Anya slept through the entire exchange. She lifted her head when the garage door rose at home and sprinted past me into the house. I picked up my purse, and my daughter’s backpack, and went into my dirty kitchen. I started a load of laundry, let the dogs out, and fixed Anya a plate of meatloaf, veggies, and fruit.

___

Anya had been a colicky baby. Unlike infants who cry from four to six p.m., she’d screamed around the clock. Two weeks after she was born, she cried for forty-eight hours straight, only sleeping for forty-five minutes. The pediatrician, Dr. Lee, gave us phenobarbitol drops for her.

“One drop for baby and three drops for Mama,” he laughed.

“Won’t Anya get addicted?” George had asked. I was so exhausted that I could barely follow the conversation.

“As baby grows, her weight goes up and she gets less and less,” explained Dr. Lee. “It’s okay.”

On the way home, George joked, “I don’t hate you enough to make you a single parent.” It became one of those “catch phrases” you have as a couple, a sort of signal between you.

While we hadn’t been soul mates, we had loved each other. Maybe more importantly, we were committed to being good parents for Anya. While some might argue that the most important thing a man can do for his children is to love his wife, I was willing to settle for the kind of love two friends have, not two lovers.

Days like this, I missed him. I missed having a partner. Someone to vent to. Someone to take over when our pre-teen got on my last nerve and ground her heel down. That’s when my mind turned to Detweiler. Why did he have to be married? Why had fate brought him back into my life just when I was moving ahead without him?

I gave myself a stern slap, and a lecture not to be such a wimp. I got Anya started on her homework. She was sitting on the sofa, totally absorbed in a textbook, with both her feet tucked under Gracie’s large body. Mr. Gibbes slept at her elbow.

“Mom? I need help with my algebra.”

George? Oh, George? I shook my head. This was when I needed my husband. I couldn’t do math to save my neck. Dodie had forced me to work up a budget and to balance my checkbook, but I sweat copious amounts of blood each month doing so. I gritted my teeth.

“Sweetie, you are out of luck.”

“How about you drop me by Nicci’s house? Stevie is really good at this. He helped me over the weekend.”

Coffee and Crime, a get-together for mystery lovers, was scheduled at a nearby bookstore less then two blocks away from the Moores’. If we left now, I could be there on time.

“You need to check with Mrs. Moore.”

My daughter smiled at me. “Already did. Nicci and I texted each other.”

“Grab your stuff.”

I watched her walk into the Moores’ house, then I sped off toward the Barnes & Noble on Olive. I loved this book discussion group, although I was rarely able to attend. Unlike the CALA mothers’ book club, these people really discussed what they read. Local authors often came and talked about their creative processes. How odd it seemed to hear perfectly ordinary and harmless people natter on about the ways they chose, on paper, to do bodily harm. One memorable evening, the store was packed with middle-aged women in twin sets discussing the after-effects of various poisons with the sort of thorough interest that typically accompanies church rummage sales.

A mythical murder was the very thing for taking my mind off my bad mood and my futile snooping into Sissy Gilchrist’s death. I picked up a cup of gratis hot tea and pulled up a chair to listen in on a discussion already in progress. A chair scraped the floor beside me, and I turned to see Connie McMahan cradling a tall cup of coffee. To put it bluntly, she did not look good.

“Are you all right?”

She shook her head, paying extravagant attention to the cup between her hands.

I took the hint. We concentrated on the discussion. A sprinkling of laughter followed the guest author’s admission that she hoped her mother never read her manuscript. The sex scene was too realistic? (This made me put the book immediately on my “wish list.” What a sales pitch!)

The group broke up, leaving Connie and me huddled over empty cups.

“Connie? What’s up?”

“They’ve loosened the hounds of the hunt on him.” Her voice was full of emotion.

I got up and refilled her coffee cup.

She took it from me gratefully. “They’re all over Elliott.”

“They who?”

“Old St. Louis. Blaming him. Calling him a turncoat. Siccing their lawyers on him. This afternoon he went to play golf at the club, and one of the members took him aside. Told him he wasn’t welcome. Suggested he leave and not come back.”

“But why?”

“The Gilchrists. They say he’s ruined Sissy’s reputation.”

“You have to be kidding!”

“They say he’s sullied her good name. They say he’s the one who told the police she was sleeping around. They said he’s responsible for the halls being patrolled by police. That no one is safe at school, because of him! His lack of judgment. His failure of leadership. We’re getting anonymous letters. The Gilchrists have all their friends calling and canceling pledges to the development office.” She turned to me, her face stricken.

Right before she spilled her coffee, she said, “He’s ruined.”

Elliott McMahan was a
pompous so-and-so. When he shook your hand, he had an annoying habit of peering past you to see who he was going to greet next. He wrote long-winded letters in the school newsletter that rambled self-indulgently. He prided himself on his military bearing (back in Indiana we called it having a corn cob up your backside) and his liberal arts education. He didn’t really listen, although he preached the value of it. He would nod his head during a conversation and mutter, “Uh-huh,” and remain unengaged. Like my Nana would say, it was like talking to a brick wall. Once he learned I was Sheila’s daughter-in-law, he treated me with more courtesy and respect, once even remarking positively on my appearance.

Okay, all he said was, “You’re looking nice,” but it was a big moment for me.

Strangely enough, that compliment made me like him less, a whole lot less, because it signaled how Elliott ranked people by importance. All in all, the man was a terminal prig.

Even so, no one deserves to be hounded out of a job by an angry mob. Especially a job he’s done well. And sending out letters anonymously? That was really bush league. I’ve gotten myself in trouble many a time by speaking my mind, but I’d never stoop to write an anonymous missive. If you believe it, if you have evidence, why not sign your name?

Elliott deserved better. He deserved the right to face his accusers. That’s the American way.

For all Elliott’s snobbery, he managed to increase the number of scholarships CALA offered. As Connie had reminded me, he’d launched an outreach program to bring more minority students to the school. Before his tenure, this had been a pie-in-the-sky part of a long-range plan toward a more diverse student population. But Elliott had taken the task seriously.

I didn’t care for him as a person. The luckiest day of his life was the day he snagged Connie, a woman who had every quality he lacked: graciousness, sincerity, and humility. But I was mature enough to separate how I felt about Elliott (and his shortcomings) from my appreciation for the job he was doing. And although Connie said all of Old St. Louis was against him, I was confident he was being harassed by a small, vocal—but powerful—few.

The Gilchrists couldn’t make up their minds. First, they used their clout to get Sissy hired. Now, they used their power to castigate Elliott for his poor judgment. They had turned on the man who gave their daughter a chance! I couldn’t help but think about the signs you see in London tube stations: “Mind the gap.” The Gilchrists had fallen right into the gap, the crevasse between what they wanted and what they got. In that misstep, they’d taken no responsibility at all for their part in this fiasco.

With her death, Sissy had become the saint she could never be in life. Yes, Sissy was a victim twice over. Once of her own poor choices and once of a cold-hearted killer. But now Elliott McMahan, through no fault of his own, was being made a casualty as well.

___

I picked up Anya and thanked Jennifer for her hospitality. To my shock, Nicci’s mother gave me a warm hug. “Thank you for being so kind to me at the book club meeting.”

We made it home a half an hour after Anya’s day normally ended. “Time for bed, Anya-Banana,” I told her. She grumbled heartily and stomped off toward our bathroom. I checked my phone and found one message. Bama had called to tell me that Dodie’s tests were negative for breast cancer.

I took a long grateful breath of air.

As I snapped my phone shut, I heard Anya rustling around in her room next door. I could hear drawers being slammed as she searched for clothes to put out for the next school day. I opened my e-mail and sent a message to Maggie.

Dear Maggie: Will Coach Johnson be back at school tomorrow? K

Dear Kiki: No. He’s on leave. I wish I was. Maggie

Dear Maggie: How come? Anything new? K

Dear Kiki: Can you bring me a sack lunch tomorrow? Meet at 11:15 outside the Alumni Offices on the picnic tables? Can’t talk online. Maggie

I confirmed that I’d be there and took down her sandwich order. Things would have to be pretty tense for Maggie to want to talk over lunch. She usually used the noon respite for catching up on her paperwork.

As I sat staring at the screen, a message from CALA popped up.

Sure enough, Elliott McMahan indulged himself with a long and desultory attempt at the meaning of life in the wake of violent death. “Rest assured,” he concluded, “all proper safeguards are in place to keep our children from harm. This administration is cooperating with law enforcement officials to the fullest extent, leaving no quarter unexamined, and supporting all staff members as they are interviewed, in a right and appropriate examination of the crime that happened on our grounds. Meanwhile, the condolences of our entire student body, alumni, staff, parents, and friends of CALA go to the family of Ms. Sissy Gilchrist, a dedicated instructor whose presence is sorely missed. A memorial tribute is planned. Details to follow.”

Sorely
missed?

Wow, and I thought Elliott didn’t have a sense of humor.