The Skeleton Takes a Bow (A Family Skeleton Mystery) (10 page)

M
y classroom—or rather, Mr. Chedworth’s classroom—was occupied when I got to PHS, so I stayed out in the hall until the bell rang. Then I played salmon-swimming-upstream as the students flowed outward. Madison was one of the students caught in the tide, but we only had time for a quick wave before she was carried away.

The teacher in charge of the classroom was a substitute brought in to keep the kids quiet—he had no experience in teaching the SAT. Despite my earlier concerns, since Madison was a freshman and wouldn’t take the PSAT until fall of her junior year and then the SAT the following spring, it really wouldn’t do her any harm to have the study hall. The two classes I was teaching, however, were juniors and they would be taking the SAT in May, so it was considerably more important that they be ready.

I made nice with the substitute, then got myself settled in. Since I’ve never had a permanent classroom in any of the colleges where I’ve taught, I’m used to getting myself ready to teach in just a few minutes. So when the bell rang to start the class, I was ready and raring to go.

The students in the class, however, seemed to be neither. Fortunately, years of teaching sections of a required course had left me uncommonly prepared for the situation. I have a standard first-day-of-class wake-up speech committed to memory and only had to change the particulars to match. So after I introduced myself, took attendance, and explained that I’d be taking over for Mr. Chedworth—which they already knew—I said, “The SAT is a joke.”

As usual, the students looked confused.

“It’s an arbitrary test and its predictive validity—” I stopped, remembering this was high school, not college. “And the only thing it predicts with any accuracy is how well a student does during the first year of college. Not if you ultimately do well, not if you graduate, nothing vital. Just how you do your first year. So yeah, it’s a joke.”

I definitely had their attention.

“But taking the SAT is required for a large percentage of the colleges to which you’ll be applying. That’s not because college admissions people are stupid—they know the limitations of the SAT as well as anybody. They use it because it’s a way to differentiate between the vast number of students applying each year. When you realize that each of you will be applying to six or more colleges, you can see why admissions people need something to help them figure out their best candidates. And what they’ve got is the SAT.

“So if you want to maximize your chances of getting into the college you’re dying to attend, then you’re going to want to get the best score you can on this test. And I’m here to help you do that.

“You know I’m not here long term and I get paid no matter what. That means the only one who will pay the price if you fall asleep during this class is you.” I clapped my hands together to simulate enthusiasm. “So let’s get started!”

It worked as well as it usually did, which is to say that I got about seventy-five percent of the class ready to do the work. As for the rest, they were welcome to nap as long as they didn’t snore and disrupt the class.

Mr. Chedworth had prepared a seating chart, which I appreciated mightily. After years of adjunct life I’m good at memorizing student names quickly, but a cheat sheet never hurts. Since the kids were two years older than Madison, I didn’t recognize many of the names, but a couple were familiar from Madison’s stories about Drama Club, including Fortinbras, Laertes, and the boy playing Rosencrantz to Madison’s Guildenstern.

The period went by quickly, again thanks to Mr. Chedworth. He had the students in fairly good shape already—about all I’d need to do to make sure they were ready was to lecture on test-taking strategies and administer a few more practice tests.

The second class went pretty much the same, except that it included the student playing Hamlet. I wasn’t sure if he was perpetually emo or was using the Method to prepare for his rendition of the melancholy Dane. Whatever it was, it was certainly drawing the attention of several of the female students.

I wasn’t overly surprised when Ms. Rad happened to wander by after the class was over—she took her role as acting department chair seriously.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“Pretty well. They seem invested in the process, which is good.”

“SAT prep is an elective, so nobody is in the class if they’re not college bound. Other than a couple whose parents want them to be college bound, of course.”

“I’ve seen a few of those pushy parents on college campuses, too. They expect college instructors to call them with their kids’ grades—they don’t realize our students are presumed to be adults.”

“That’s nothing compared to what we get around here. You’ll see on parent-teacher conference night.”

“I will?”

“Of course. Mr. Dahlgren mentioned it at the meeting yesterday?”

“I didn’t think that applied to me. I mean, I’m only part-time and I’ll only have taught a few classes by then. Plus I’ll be meeting with Madison’s teachers.”

“Don’t worry about that—you can catch up with Madison’s teachers any workday. But parents will want to meet you.”

“But—”

She was looking at me, somehow implying I wasn’t taking my teaching job seriously. Which I wasn’t exactly, given that I had another reason to be hanging around the school, but I still owed it to PHS to give it my best shot.

I swallowed a sigh and said, “Of course I’ll be there.”

She offered to explain the procedure for the evening, and though I’d intended to walk around a little and see what I could snoop into, I couldn’t very well turn her down. Afterward we walked out to the parking lot together.

Since Madison didn’t have rehearsal or choral ensemble that day, I’d told her that she could pile her bike into the backseat and catch a ride home with me, but she’d told me she wanted the exercise and was already gone. I’d wondered if she was still disgruntled about my taking her to task about her biology grade, and soon got the answer. By the time I got home, she’d already grabbed Byron and retreated into her room with the door closed and her music turned up louder than usual. Definitely disgruntled.

I had several options. I could try to jolly her out of it, but that wouldn’t be supportive of her feelings. I could patiently explain my reasoning to her once again, but that might undermine my parental authority. Or I could wait her out—she was a teenager and sooner or later she’d want food. I went with that one.

At least she’d helped Sid regroup before secluding herself, and he’d gone up to his attic.

I knocked at the door.

“It’s open,” he yelled down, and I climbed up to find him at his computer playing Facebook games.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

“Who were you expecting?”

I could just tell that if he’d had eyes, he’d have rolled them. So he was in a mood, too. But since I didn’t have to be supportive of his feelings, I had no parental authority to exert, and I sure as sacrum couldn’t wait for him to get hungry, I was free to snark back at him. “Okay, then. I was going to tell you what I found out about Robert Irwin, but I can see you’re in the middle of a game.” I started back down the stairs.

“Stop, stop, stop!” He managed to get ahead of me, probably because he wasn’t afraid of bruising or even capable of it, and blocked the door. “Please, Georgia, come have a seat and visit. I’m dying to hear about your day. Or I would be, if I hadn’t already . . . you know.”

“If you’re sure I’m not interrupting . . .”

“I’ve always got time for you.” He smiled winningly, which is harder than one might think for somebody who smiles 24-7. “Please, have a seat. Would you like me to go get you a cold drink? A snack?”

I was tempted, but I decided I had let him squirm enough. “No, thanks, but I would like to chat.”

“Then pull up a chair and spill.”

I did so. “You know the first body the police found, the one we thought was our murder victim at first?”

“The woman who died of an overdose? Yeah.”

“When I went to her funeral, a couple of people were saying they were surprised her ex-boyfriend wasn’t there—they’d been broken up for a while, but it was pretty serious for a long time.”

“So?”

“So her ex-boyfriend was Robert Irwin.”

“Oh, my sternum! So you think he—I mean, maybe she—” Sid scratched his skull, though I was quite certain it couldn’t itch. “I don’t know what this means.”

“I don’t either,” I admitted. “But remember how I told Deborah that having two bodies found in one week in Pennycross was just a coincidence? Now I’m thinking that maybe it wasn’t a coincidence at all. Maybe the deaths are linked.”

“But how? And how did you find out?”

“I had a hunch yesterday, but—”

“You realized this yesterday and didn’t tell me?”

“First off, I wasn’t sure. Second, with you and Madison going after each other hammer and tongs, and not exactly showing me any love, I kind of got distracted.”

“Fair point.”

“So why didn’t you tell me that Irwin had been an adjunct? Was it not in the information you found?”

“Of course it was, but it was years ago,” he protested, “and I couldn’t find any link between those years and anybody at PHS.”

“Okay, that makes sense. Anyway, I had this hunch yesterday, and then I talked to Charles today to confirm it.” I recounted the conversation and added the little I’d learned from Sara.

Sid said, “I know Charles is a quiet kind of guy, but that was sort of a mild reaction to finding out that a guy he knows has gone missing, wasn’t it?”

“A bit. I think he disliked Irwin a lot, so either he was just being too reserved to say ‘I hope the guy is dead’ or he feels guilty for not realizing it before.”

“Maybe, or . . .”

“Or what?”

Sid looked at me, eye sockets wider than usual, which was impossible but pure Sid. “Georgia, how well do you know Charles?”

“I’ve been friends with him for years. You know that.”

“Yeah, but I just had an awful thought. What if the McQuaid gossip queen was right and he really was dating Patty Craft?”

“He never said one word about them dating.”

“Did he tell you they weren’t?”

“Not explicitly, but he said they weren’t close until she got ill, and he hasn’t been acting like a bereaved boyfriend.”

“Okay, so they weren’t dating, but he did do a lot for her, right? He must have cared for her.”

“He’s a very loyal friend.”

“So what if he blamed Irwin for Patty Craft’s death? I mean, the louse dumped her after she was diagnosed, which is pretty low. And suppose Charles saw Irwin while he was driving around town looking for a place to live once he moved to Pennycross? Might he have wanted to avenge her?”

“You think Charles killed Irwin?”

“You said yourself that he said he’d have cut him if he’d been at that woman’s funeral.”

“Cut him dead, not cut him with a knife. Besides, why would Charles and the guy have gone to PHS? And how would they have gotten in?”

“No ideas on the why, but from what you’ve said, Charles is pretty good at getting into places where he shouldn’t.”

Sid was one of the few people I’d told about Charles’s unusual living arrangements. Of course Charles must be good at sneaking into buildings. How else would he have managed to squat in colleges all through New England?

“No, wait,” I said. “Patty Craft’s body wasn’t found until the day after Irwin went missing, so Charles couldn’t have known she was dead and wouldn’t have had a motive.”

Sid paused, but not for long. “The police seem to think it was a fifty-fifty chance that the death was suicide instead of an accident, right? And she wasn’t found immediately after she died, was she?”

“That’s what Deborah got from her pal on the force.”

“So maybe it was suicide, and Charles found the body and a suicide note. But, not wanting his friend’s memory besmirched, he took the note. So there he is, feeling hurt and angry that his friend has killed herself, and he sees the man he blames. For all we know, Irwin could have been mentioned in the note!”

“By that reasoning, your theoretical note could have blamed George W. Bush!”

“But Bush wasn’t murdered that very day. Irwin was.”

“Okay, fine. Even if your murder-in-retribution-for-causing-suicide idea is right—which I’m not saying I think it is—doing something like that doesn’t fit Charles at all. Maybe he’d destroy a suicide note, but he wouldn’t leave his friend’s body alone like that without at least calling in an anonymous tip. It would be . . . unseemly.”

“‘Unseemly’? That’s your defense of the guy? That he wouldn’t do anything unseemly?”

“Fine, then. You heard the killer’s voice. Did he sound anything like Charles?”

“I didn’t hear him that well,” Sid said.

I just looked at him.

“Okay, no, he didn’t sound like Charles, but he didn’t sound enough unlike him to rule him out. Who knows what Charles sounds like when he’s angry?”

“Then who did Charles call to help him hide the body?”

“No idea. That should be the first line of investigation.”

“We are not investigating Charles!”

“You’re that sure he didn’t kill Irwin?”

“Yes.” But I usually try to be honest with Sid, and I had to say, “Okay, not one hundred percent sure. I suppose anybody could be a killer under the right circumstances. And I can see him confronting Irwin if he really thought he’d caused Patty Craft to commit suicide, but I don’t see him murdering the guy.”

Sid snapped his finger bones. “I’ve got it! What if Patty Craft was murdered, too?”

“Oh, come on, Sid. You can’t have Charles killing Irwin to avenge Patty if he killed Patty himself!”

“But what if Irwin killed her?”

“Now you’ve lost me.”

“If Patty Craft’s death was fuzzy enough that the police can’t be sure it was suicide or accident, then how can they be sure it wasn’t murder? Irwin could have played games with her meds so that she took more than she intended to—”

“Wait, wait. Why would Irwin want to kill her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he has a hot new girlfriend he’s planning to bring to Pennycross with him, and he didn’t want his old girlfriend hanging around like the ghost at the feast. Maybe he just didn’t like her anymore. What about life insurance? He could still be her beneficiary.” He casually waved any objections away. “Whatever the reason, if he killed Patty and Charles found out, Charles could have confronted him over that and had it escalate to murder. At which point he decided he didn’t want to go to jail because he’d have to wear those tacky orange jumpsuits, so he hid the body. It could be in any of the college buildings where he’s squatted over the years.”