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Authors: Mark Richard Zubro

BOOK: The Principal Cause of Death
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“Because you're a good guy with a conscience, and she said she was going to quit.”
“I guess. I was going to check in with Carolyn Blackburn to see if Jones told her anything or left a written record, although if he did, I assume she'd have said something to Fiona by now.”
“She'd have said something,” Meg agreed. “He must not have left a record, so Fiona is probably in the clear.”
“Or they haven't found it yet.”
Meg shrugged. “You still have to talk to Longfellow.”
I glanced at the clock. It would have to wait until after school.
I opened the door to my classroom and stopped. Three items lay on top of my desk that hadn't been there when I left. I drew a deep breath as I neared the desk and recognized the grayish lump in the middle, a dead rat, its head half severed and its entrails splattered from one corner of the desk to the other. Almost absently I pressed the button for the intercom as I walked the rest of the way to my desk.
In the middle of the gore on each side of the rat's head was a picture. The one on the left was a nude female centerfold. On the right was a male centerfold, with the genital section slashed to ribbons.
Georgette's voice came over the intercom. “Yes, Mr. Mason?”
“Has any one seen Dan Bluefield in school today?” I asked.
“Let me check.”
The intercom clicked off. I picked up the trashcan from next to the door. Using the spine of my teachers' manual, I nudged the mess from the center of my desk into the garbage. I covered it with several layers of paper.
I was furious. Any guilt I felt for beating up Bluefield was gone. There was no doubt in my mind about whom the rat and the nude pictures had come from.
Georgette's voice came over the intercom. “He's listed officially as absent. One of the kids here waiting to see Mrs. Dalrymple says he thinks he saw him early this morning lurking in the halls.”
At my request, she sent down Carolyn Blackburn. I showed her the debris. She lifted a hand to her mouth. “This is too horrific,” she whispered.
Carolyn agreed that this needed to be reported to the police. I passed up the temptation to dump the mess on Donna Dalrymple's desk. Before Carolyn left, I thanked her for backing me up against Dan Bluefield's claim.
She said, “Besides the fact that I don't believe you would molest a child, Dan made it tough to believe him when he only reported it the morning after.”
Last hour passed in a blur. I did ask if any of the students had seen Bluefield. They hadn't. I think I forgot to give them homework, and the kids were fairly stunned about that.
First thing after school I hunted for Marshall Longfellow while keeping a sharp lookout for Bluefield. Once again the elusive Mr. Longfellow proved difficult to find. I had Georgette page him on the intercom, and he still didn't respond.
None of the custodians had seen him for over two hours. We began a search. Carolyn Blackburn, currently doubling as school principal until a replacement could be found, joined the search.
I hunted through the oldest basement of the school, calling his name without getting a response. I explored every corner. The basement was directly underneath the old gym. From the door I could see the old coal furnaces, which had been converted to oil, then to natural gas, and then finally abandoned. They lurked like cold dinosaurs in dank dimness. Add a few shower stalls and this could be the locker room. I proceeded slowly through the room.
Cobwebs brushed against my face when I rounded the huge furnaces. The light became dimmer farther into the room. In one corner, steady drips of water fell from some of the old beams. I guessed I was beneath the shower room. The drips formed into a stream that flowed toward the back of the room. As I proceeded farther, more damp spots appeared on the floor and more drips added to the flowing water. I began to hear a rhythmic rumbling every fifteen seconds; there was a glow in the distance that wasn't made by the sparsely spaced twenty-watt bulbs in the ceiling. The rumbling grew louder. I sniffed the air and got the reek of raw sewage.
I turned a corner behind the last and largest of the furnaces. On a small platform raised above the dampness of the floor by plastic milk cartons was a twin bedframe with a bare, prison-thin mattress on top. On it lay Marshall Longfellow, sound asleep. Mounted on the wall ten feet from the bed was a vast array of gauges and switches along with a blizzard of wires connected to them and trailing off in every direction. The humming noise came from a large puddle just below the electric mess.
The inflowing water from the drips gathered here, but I soon realized the problem was greater than I thought. Every fifteen seconds, when the noise came, water burbled up from the middle of the pool of water. I watched this happen several times, and I realized that at every rumble
the water poured in; when the noise stopped, the water receded. But every cycle brought the dank pool an inch higher. It had already reached several of the wires, from which occasional sparks emanated.
I wasn't about to attempt disconnecting anything. The smell from the pool of water was ghastly. I guessed the sump pump was malfunctioning. I'd helped Scott replace the one in my basement, and he'd taken extra care to make sure it was connected right for just this reason. He'd told me some people connected the sump pump to the sewage system: unhealthy, and a violation of the building codes. If the pump backed up or otherwise malfunctioned, sewer water could pour into bathtubs, toilets, or sinks.
Avoiding the pool of water, I shook Longfellow awake. He snorted and snuffled for several seconds, then saw me and said, “I wasn't asleep. I'm wide awake.” He struggled to get up.
“Be careful where you step!” I warned him.
He looked at the floor and quickly moved his feet away from the dampness.
“You better do something before this starts some kind of fire,” I said.
“We got to get this water mopped up,” he said.
“Shouldn't we turn off this electricity first, or at least get the sump pump turned off?” I said.
“Oh yeah, right.” He scratched his head.
I moved back a step as the water surged closer. I had no intention of being electrocuted because some drunken fool couldn't find a switch.
“We've got to get to the circuit breakers,” he muttered. “We've got to cut the power before the water gets any higher.”
“Where is it?” I said.
As he pulled his befuddled self together, I hurried in the direction he indicated. After fumbling around in the dimness for five minutes, I found the control panel. None of the switches were labeled. They were all in the same position, which I presumed had to be on. Tentatively I flipped several
of them, not sure what part of the complex I was denying electricity to. If a switch didn't turn off any electricity here, I immediately flipped it back on.
Halfway through my random search, lights in the basement winked off. At first I thought I'd done it, but I hadn't flipped a switch just before the lights winked out. A howl of complaint came from where I'd last seen Longfellow. I stayed where I was and stopped flipping switches. I assumed if Longfellow didn't have a flashlight, then at least one of the other custodians would come hunting the reason for the power failure.
I listened to the dripping of water and the cursing of the custodian, neither of which seemed tremendously imaginative. A few minutes later a glow of light formed at the opposite end of the room. In five minutes the entire custodial staff stood around me and the control panel, flipping switches back and forth, trying by trial and error to see which switch controlled what. Longfellow joined us early on in the process. His years of expertise as head custodian led him to continually comment, “No, asshole, try another one.”
Finally, light restored, underlings dispatched, wires disconnected, and the threat of fire eliminated, I tapped Longfellow on the shoulder. “I need to talk to you,” I said.
He looked annoyed but followed me to a corner behind one of the grime- and soot-encrusted furnaces.
He said, “You're not going to tell about …” He cleared his throat. “About my needing to take a rest.”
“I need information,” I said. “You talk to me, tell me the truth, and I don't say anything.”
He nodded glum agreement.
I told him he'd been seen outside the principal's office on Monday night at the time of the murder.
“No,” he said.
“Carolyn Blackburn would love to know about your little nap,” I said.
His bloodshot eyes wouldn't meet mine. “I can't help it,” he said.
I asked him what he couldn't help.
“I need to calm my nerves,” he said. “It helps me relax. I'm not an alcoholic. I can say no. It just helps me. But Jones, that bastard, he wouldn't see it that way. He told me to stop drinking on the job. All last year I stopped. Just once or twice this year I took a sip.” Longfellow drew a sharp breath and turned his bleary eyes on me. “He caught me last Friday at noon. I was down here. No principal ever came down here before. He did. I've been here thirty years and him less than two and he was going to put me on probation, like some kid who doesn't even have a high-school diploma. He wanted to humiliate me in front of everyone. Said if I wanted to avoid that I could resign. He smirked at me. I know he's been looking for an excuse to get rid of me.”
“Why did you go down to his office Monday?” I asked.
“I had an appointment. I was a few minutes early. It was a short interview. He told me he wanted my resignation Tuesday morning. If he didn't get it, I would be fired at the next board meeting, which is tonight.”
“Did you fight with him, argue about it?” I asked.
“I tried, but he said he didn't want to hear it. He said it was real simple. I quit or I got fired. He hadn't told Carolyn Blackburn yet. He was giving me a chance to do the right thing. Pissant little snot. I'm glad he's dead.” He glanced at me quickly. “I didn't kill him. He was alive when I left him. You can't tell anyone this. You promised if I was honest you wouldn't tell.”
That wasn't exactly my promise, and the man was a hazard: A fire could have started. Or maybe I was over reacting to what I'd seen as a dangerous situation. When Frank Murphy came back, I could reassess my decision not to tell.
“Nobody's going to hire a sixty-eight-year-old drunk,” he whined. “You promised not to say anything.”
I told him I wouldn't. I asked if he'd seen anybody else. He hadn't. I had no way of telling who'd seen Jones last, Fiona or Longfellow. Or maybe there'd been a whole string of people to see Jones.
When I got back to my classroom, I found Scott sitting on top of my desk talking to Meg, who had been telling him about the day's progress. I told them both about Longfellow.
“So you're double in the clear,” Scott said.
“Yes, but I promised not to tell the police or the administration about either one of them.”
Meg said, “And each one of them claims to have left Jones alive … . You know Longfellow and Welman are close friends?”
I gave her a quizzical look.
She said, “They used to go out drinking every Friday night. A couple of years ago Welman got a scare about his liver, and he stopped drinking. I don't know how close they are now.”
Scott said, “Could the two of them have planned the murder?”
We discussed the issue further, but got nowhere. Meg went back to the library. I told Scott about the rat and the porno pictures.
“The kid's out to get you,” Scott said, “but we still can't prove anything.”
Reluctantly I agreed with him.
“Let's go to my place,” Scott suggested.
“I want to go to Jones's wake tonight,” I said.
“You sure that's a good idea? The family will be there. Someone might tell them you're under suspicion.”
“I doubt if the police go around to each family and announce who they think did it. The relatives wouldn't recognize me, anyway. I'm sure some of the faculty will be there. I'd like to try and talk to a few more, see who might have seen something. This running around school takes too damn long. With a lot of people in one place, maybe I can get more questions asked more quickly. We need to find out if anyone else was around, or if somebody else had a motive.”
“I wish Frank Murphy hadn't gone on vacation,” Scott said. “He might have some good suggestions about what to do about Bluefield. That kid has got to be stopped.”
On our way to the car, in the hallway outside the office we ran into Carolyn Blackburn. She didn't look happy to see us. We sat in her temporary quarters. I didn't make introductions; she and Scott had met several times before at various parties and functions.
“What's wrong?” I asked.
“Plenty. The police called. Bluefield's dad was down at the station with an attorney. He wants to press charges against you for attacking his kid. Fortunately, you've got a good reputation down there, and, it seems, some clout. I did what I could to put a stop to it, including telling them about the horrors we found on your desk, but I think the guy is going to try to get a judge to do something. He tried calling a few board members, but they told him to talk to me. That put an end to the nonsense from that end, but Mr. Bluefield is on a personal crusade to see you fired. I wish we could do something.”
We discussed the attacks on the house, the dead rat, and the porno pictures. We discussed my staying in the city at Scott's.
“This is so sick,” she said. “I think Scott is right. You two should stay at his place in the city for a while, at least until this blows over.”
“I keep swinging between fear and anger,” I said. “The
dead rat on my desk has me shook up more than I thought. Still, I'd rather stay at my place.”
Scott said, “Look, Tom, let's go eat something and talk it over some more. If you really want to stay at your place, we can try and work something out, okay? We'll get through this.”
“One odd thing about the police,” Carolyn said. “They didn't mention anything about molestation charges.”
“Dan only told Dalrymple, but not his dad. Curious,” I said. We examined the implications of that for a while, but came up with little.
Before we left Carolyn filled us in on the latest in the investigation. She said, “The police wouldn't tell me all of what they know, but they did say they have the fingerprint report back. Your prints, Tom, along with many others, were in the office.”
“I was there,” I said.
Carolyn added, “They didn't find any fingerprints on the knife. The killer wiped it clean.”
“Not a lot of help there,” I said.
“They told me a bit more. It's not good. They asked me about your disagreements with Jones. It's not a secret you and he fought, plus you've got a history of being antagonistic toward administrators.”
I started another protest, but Carolyn held up a hand to stop me. “I know it's part of being a good union rep to stand up to the bosses and not be pushed around. You've done a lot of good. I was a union rep when I was a teacher, so I understand. I tried to make the cops see that, too.”
“Are Johnson and Daniels going to question me again?” I asked.
“I don't think so. Not today, anyway.”
“Maybe I should talk to a lawyer,” I said.
Carolyn said, “Maybe you should.”
“Is it that bad?” Scott asked.
“It's not real good. They don't have anything to pin the murder on you specifically, but I think they're having trouble coming up with other suspects, and that nonsense
from Dan Bluefield didn't help.” She frowned and said, “I'm worried about Donna Dalrymple. Not the material she repeated from Dan, but that she believed it so readily. I find her reaction odd, to say the least.”
I filled Scott in on my conversation with Donna.
“What's going on between the two of them?” Scott asked.
“I'm not sure,” Carolyn said, “but I'd like to find out. What have you discovered in your questioning?”
“I'm surprised Daniels and Johnson haven't harassed me about that,” I said.
“I'm supposed to be warning you not to talk to people,” Carolyn said. “And you do need to be very discreet. Nosing around could cause trouble.”
I didn't break my several promises to keep people's stories quiet. I was still miffed about my treatment of the night before, and while I did trust Carolyn, I wasn't ready to take her any further into my confidence at this moment.
Scott asked, “We were planning on attending the wake. Do you think we'd have any problem with the family?”
Carolyn said, “I don't think so. They haven't released a lot of information to the press, although someone at the wake could recognize you and tell the family. It's not a tremendous secret that you're under suspicion.”
“The rumor is certainly around the faculty that I'm a major suspect,” I said.
“Be discreet,” Carolyn suggested again. “I wanted to give you the information and to tell you to take care. I suppose the police will probably be around to question you again. Try not to worry about it.”
I thanked her. As we walked down the hall to our cars I said, “They must have talked to the family. They usually look pretty closely at the wife in this kind of thing.”
“I heard she had a solid alibi,” Carolyn said. “She works at a day-care center and was there until six-thirty that night. She's in the clear. I know Jones didn't have any other close family around here. They were from Centerboro, in New York.”
As we said good-bye in the parking lot Carolyn said, “Be careful of Dan Bluefield. My guess is that you've got more to worry about from the boy and his dad than you do from the murder.”
We thanked her, and she left.
“I need to get away,” I said as Scott drove the Porsche out of the school parking lot.
Scott asked, “Why not call in sick tomorrow and forget all this?”
“I need to get away right now for a little while, but I'm not calling in sick. I'm not giving up until I clear myself in this murder investigation, and we've got to resolve this Bluefield thing.”
“Maybe there isn't a resolution,” Scott said. “Maybe it will just take time.”
We decided to eat at Cookies in Minooka, a quiet little town a mile or so off the interstate, about a half hour's drive from Joliet. At Cookies the food is good and the atmosphere is relaxed. We didn't say much to each other as we drove. We listened to a folk-music tape I'd compiled from several of my favorite albums. Two hours later I felt somewhat revived and ready to attend the wake.
The funeral home was on Front Street in Mokena, across from the fire station. They'd taken an old Victorian mansion, renovated it, and added rooms in back.
As I reached for the door handle of the Porsche, I noticed a person lurking in the shadows on the west side of the fire station. I tapped Scott on the shoulder. “I think that's Bluefield,” I said.
He looked where I pointed.
The shadow moved farther into the darkness. Scott said, “Are you sure?”
“No. Maybe we should check it out.” He agreed. We crossed the street and hunted through the shadows, but whoever it was had taken off.
Inside the funeral home twenty-five or thirty people milled around the viewing room. A few near the casket seemed to be the family. I spotted various faculty members
and several students. One of these detached herself from a small group and came over to us.
I recognized Sheila Tarelli. She'd been in my Senior Honors English class, the brightest kid I'd had in my classes in the past five years. She had a full scholarship to De Paul University, where she planned to major in theater. She wanted to be a playwright, actress, director, and producer. I had no doubt she would be someday.
She came over and smiled happily. We had become good friends over the year I'd had her in class. I introduced Scott. She gave him the same radiant smile and said, “The baseball player. Nice to meet you.” And then dropped the topic of Scott's profession. A few other people in the crowd had noted his presence, but so far, perhaps because of the funeral-home atmosphere, had yet to venture close.
We moved into a corner in the hallway, out of the way of many in the crowd, but where we could still see who entered. We talked about her college classes and several of the kids from class last year, most of whom I still remembered.
Suddenly she gave a little gasp and placed herself so that we were between her and the doorway.
“What?” I asked.
She whispered, “It's Mr. Younger. I don't want to see him. He's poison.”
“I thought you liked him,” I said. “You had all the major female roles in the plays your junior and senior years.”
“I'm taking one theater course now, and I've got a small part in the first production of the season, and in both places I've learned what an amateur he really is. He doesn't know anything about directing. Last year, especially, I thought his method of directing by tirade was totally childish. Now I know it is. I'm not saying that because I've graduated, I know everything. It's just—He was such an awful person. He puts you through hell. It should be hard work, but you should get some fun out of it. Plus, he hates me.”
“Why?” I asked.
She moved even closer, still keeping us between herself and Younger. “You can't tell anyone this,” she said, “but I caught him last year. He cheats on the account books for the plays. He's been skimming money from the production budgets. He orders props that never show up and keeps the money. Same with makeup, scenery, paint, everything.”
“How'd you find out?” I asked.
“I'm good at math and computers—quick—you know.”
I nodded. Last year she'd told me she'd been only several points from a perfect score on the math portion of her SAT.
She continued, “He gave me some orders to fill out and put into the computer. I didn't understand the program at first, and I called up the incorrect data. It was the past years' orders, and I thought maybe I could just tie last year's in with them. I noticed the prices and was struck by the discrepancy between last year and the years before. At first I thought it was just some mistake somebody made putting in the numbers into the computer. I checked the catalogue we order from. I thought I'd be doing him a favor by making the corrections. He got real mad when I told him about it. Told me to keep my snotty nose out of his business. He dared me to turn him in. Said no one would believe the word of a kid against a teacher. Besides, he had the computer disc with the proof.”
She shrugged. She told us about running into a friend of hers this past summer who had helped Younger the year before. The friend had told Sheila that she, too, had thought something funny was going on and had mentioned it to Younger. He'd threatened her the way he'd threatened Sheila.
“My friend wouldn't go with me to report him or anything,” Sheila explained. “She said she didn't want to be involved. There was nothing I could do.”
I sympathized with her and then told her about the problems I'd been having at school and how uncooperative
he'd been when I tried talking to him. “I'd like to use what you told me as leverage in getting him to talk.”
She got a wicked smile on her face. “The jerk was rotten to me. In fact, I don't care if you tell him you heard it from me. He can't hurt me. I hope you nail the scummy creep.”
We thanked her and wished her luck in her classes. She went back to her group. We hunted for Younger. I saw him up at the casket talking to the family. Several people reached out and touched Scott's arm and introduced themselves as we waited for Max in the back of the room.
As Max passed us, I leaned over and whispered in his ear. “We have to talk.”
He glared at me. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Let's talk about cheating on your ordering.”
Briefly his pink cheeks turned grayer than the corpse. I took his elbow, and we entered an unused viewing room. I introduced Scott.
Younger barely acknowledged the introduction. He said, “What do you mean by that rude remark? I've never done anything untoward in the theater department.”
“Our source says you did.”
“Lies.”
“Why don't we go check the records right now?” I said.
“Who told you this bullshit?” Younger demanded. “Was it that Sheila Tarelli? She's hated me for being honest with her. She doesn't have enough talent to make diaper commercials for illiterate natives in the Amazon.”
“Let's go check the records,” I said.
“You can't make me do anything,” Younger said. He turned toward the exit.
Scott moved swiftly to place himself between the theater teacher and the door.
Younger turned back to me. “You can't keep me here,” he said.
I grabbed a fistful of his shirtfront and pulled the five-foot-eight man to within an inch of my nose. “Listen, Max, unless you talk within two minutes, I'm taking an accusation
straight to the administration. We'll ask them to do a little audit of your books for the last five years.”

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