The Skeleton Takes a Bow (A Family Skeleton Mystery) (13 page)

M
adison was still at rehearsal, and I’d promised her a ride home, but I didn’t want to go home only to have to turn around again and come back an hour later. Nor did I want to hang out in my classroom, where I might see—or hear—Mr. Neal and Ms. Zale again. Instead I went to see how the play was shaping up.

I paused as I stepped inside the auditorium. Normally I sit way in the back during a rehearsal so as not to disrupt anything, but I just didn’t like the idea of sitting so close to where a murder had taken place. So I went about halfway down the aisle before sliding into a row of seats.

My timing was good. I recognized the scene being enacted onstage as the conversation between Polonius and Ophelia that comes just before the first appearance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I resisted the impulse to pull out my phone so I could video the kids, even though it went against my maternal instincts.

Once Polonius and Ophelia finished their discussion of Hamlet’s inexplicable behavior, Becca the director called a halt and started to give the actors in that scene notes about their performances. I was impressed by her technique, which had the proper ratio of positive to negative comments.

She was working with Ophelia as Adam McDaniel the elder came down the center aisle of the auditorium, and when he saw me, he raised his eyebrows at an empty seat beside me. I nodded for him to join me.

“You’re just in time,” I said quietly. “Madison and Tristan will be making their entrance in the next scene.”

“Wonderful. How are you doing with your classes?”

“Pretty well. Mr. Chedworth left things really well organized for me, which makes it easy.”

“Nothing gets past Chedworth.”

It looked as if the actors were about to get started again, so we quieted down. Unfortunately, a young man I didn’t recognize picked that moment to come traipsing through the auditorium, talking on his cell phone. Since he bore a striking resemblance to McDaniel as well as to Tristan, I felt safe in assuming that he was Adam Jr., still living up to his jerky reputation.

Becca turned to glare at him, but before she could say anything, McDaniel gestured sharply at his son and said, “Hang up right now!”

The boy gave him a look of annoyed disbelief, but said a few words and obeyed. Then he slung himself into a chair on the opposite side of the aisle from us, making his displeasure plain, and immediately switched to texting. McDaniel mouthed, “Sorry!” at Becca, who nodded curtly and got her actors started again.

“Teenagers,” McDaniel whispered to me, and I nodded sympathetically. Tristan seemed nice enough and McDaniel himself was perfectly pleasant, so maybe Adam Jr. took after his mother. I glanced at the ring finger on McDaniel’s left hand. It was bare.

Before I could speculate further, Madison came onstage, and while her appearance was brief and light on dialogue, I thought it was arguably the best rendition of Guildenstern I’d ever seen. Admittedly, I might have been biased.

The scene was a long one, and Becca stopped the actors about halfway through to work on blocking, which McDaniel took as permission for us to continue our conversation. “The play seems to be going well.”

“Don’t say that,” I said in mock horror. “Actors are notoriously superstitious. You might jinx them.”

He chuckled. “I suppose Shakespeare is old hat to you in your line of work.”

“Only as a fan. My specialty is contemporary American literature, but mostly I teach writing.”

That led to a discussion of the College Board’s recent decision to make the essay portion of the SAT optional, which carried us through until the kids continued with their scene.

Madison once again gave a remarkable interpretation of Guildenstern, though I was willing to admit that Tristan made a fair to middling Rosencrantz, too.

At the end of the scene, Becca had more notes, so McDaniel and I went back to our conversation.

“Is Madison’s father in academia, too?” he asked, and I knew he’d checked out my bare finger, too.

“Yes, but he’s not in the picture.”

He nodded and did not seem displeased.

“So how did you get into pharmaceuticals?” I asked.

“By accident. I started out majoring in biology, but when I looked at the job prospects, switched to business. It turned out to be just the background I needed. And I can work anywhere, which is a big plus. The boys and I really needed a change of scenery after my wife and I split up, which is how we ended up here.”

Interesting how he’d smoothly managed to both ask about my marital status and establish his own.

I said, “So you don’t have to travel?”

“Not much. There are plenty of nearby hospitals, clinics, and doctors to deal with.” He went on a little too long about how great it was to meet people, sell miracle drugs that would save the world, and enjoy perks like bonuses and vacations when he exceeded his quota, which he did frequently. He must have sensed that he was losing me, because he dialed it back and added, “Of course, there are downsides, too. Every time I go to a party, people have to ask if I have any free samples. Just joking, of course, but still, it gets old.”

“The one I always get is, ‘You teach at a college? You must be really smart.’”

“But you are really smart,” he said with a winning smile.

“Now, don’t you start.”

We chuckled companionably until there was a loud snort of derision from Adam Jr., who was apparently unimpressed by our playful banter.

McDaniel shot him an angry look, but fortunately the actors onstage began to run through the scene again, from the beginning, so we were suitably distracted. After that, Becca let everybody go and, after telling me how nice it had been to talk to me, McDaniel went to collect his younger, more polite son. I called out to Madison that I’d meet her at our car and headed for the parking lot.

A
few minutes later, Madison banged impatiently on the passenger-side window of my minivan and I unlocked the door for her.

“Great rehearsal.”

She grunted, and I wondered if she was still upset with Sid and me. “Did you get—”

She waved the bowling bag at me. “He’s right here.”

“Good.” I started the car and began driving.

“So do I get to know what you were doing now or not?”

Okay, she was still peeved. I opened my mouth to answer just as Sid mumbled something from inside the bag. “Unzip the bag, will you? Then we can explain.”

Looking slightly mollified, she did so.

“I have never been so embarrassed in my entire lack of life,” Sid said. “Except for that time I was hiding in the armoire when Deborah brought a date home, and she didn’t know I was there, and—”

“Ahem!” I said.

That reminded Sid that Deborah might not appreciate him sharing her past exploits with Madison, so he switched to, “And they started kissing. Just kissing.”

“Oh, that’s convincing,” Madison said. “Just as well you’re only a prop in
Hamlet
with those kind of acting chops.”

“Anyway,” Sid said, “this was nearly as embarrassing as that.”

“
What
was nearly that embarrassing?” Madison wanted to know.

I said, “Okay, this is more than a little uncomfortable to talk about, but yesterday Sid heard something that led him to believe that one of the male teachers at PHS was having—” I mentally ran down a list of euphemisms. “Was having an affair with of one of the students.”

“Well, that’s what it sounded like!” Sid said.

“What did they say?” Madison asked.

“Never mind,” I said. I didn’t have any euphemisms handy for that. “Anyway, we knew what teacher it was, but Sid didn’t see the student. We couldn’t go to Mr. Dahlgren without more information, so we set it up so we could see who it was who met Mr.—Who met the male teacher. And it turned out not to be a student after all. It was another teacher.”

“Who?”

“I’d rather not say. They’re both unmarried adults, so it’s really none of our business, though they really shouldn’t be doing anything like that on school property. I hope being interrupted teaches them a lesson.”

“Come on, Georgia, it wasn’t that kinky,” Sid said. “Compared to some of the Web pages I’ve seen, this was tame.”

“Sid!” I said. “I cannot unhear it when you say things like that.”

“Georgia, are you saying you didn’t know there was—gasp—naughty stuff on the Internet?” He and Madison both started snickering.

“Laugh it up, and I’ll start telling you more than you want to know about my sex life.”

“What sex life?” Sid said. “You haven’t had a date in months.”

“I have a child—obviously I have had sex at least once. Plus I had a long labor. Want to hear about that?”

In unison, they put their hands over their ears—well, just the one hand in Sid’s case—and started loudly singing, “We can’t hear you. La la la la!”

I let them keep it up for a few minutes, though I knew Sid could have heard me fine with only one ear hole covered. Finally they got tired of it, for which I was grateful. I love them both, but neither of them are famed for their singing voices.

“Anyway,” I continued, “since both parties are single adults, I don’t think their activities have anything to do with our murder. Why would they care if they were found out? Embarrassed, perhaps, and maybe they’d get in trouble for indulging themselves on school grounds, but I don’t think that would be worth killing for.”

“If it had been two guys, that might have made a motive,” Sid said speculatively.

“Please,” Madison said. “What is this, the nineteen hundreds? Nobody cares about gay teachers.”

“Some people aren’t as modern in their thinking as you are,” I said, but I was proud of her, and of Pennycross, too. We had lived in towns where people would have had problems with it, and I was glad PHS didn’t have those kinds of hang-ups.

Sid said, “What if one of them has a jealous boyfriend or girlfriend?”

“Sounds iffy,” I said, “but I can check around with the other teachers and see what I find out.”

“Or I can check their Facebook pages, see whether they’ve got relationships listed.”

“Or you could ask me,” Madison said, “since I spend every day at PHS.”

“I don’t want to name names, sweetie. I’m afraid it’ll be awkward for you.”

“Yeah,” Sid said. “You don’t want to know which of your teachers are doing the nasty with each other.”

“Sid!” I said, but it was too late. Madison had caught the essential clue.

“So it’s one of my teachers?” Madison said. “Or more? Do I have both of them for classes?”

“I’m not saying,” I repeated. “Sid, keep your mandible shut.”

He did so, but Madison wasn’t giving up that easily.

“Okay, you guys wouldn’t tell me anything last night, and last night you only knew who the guy was, so that means he’s definitely one of my teachers. Right?”

Neither Sid nor I responded.

“I have three guy teachers. One is gay, and one is married, so that leaves Mr. Neal.” She looked at us for confirmation, but I kept my face as blank as I could. Fortunately Sid has a permanent poker face.

“If it was Mr. Neal, then the woman was probably Ms. Zale.”

“How did you know that?” Sid said. His face was made for poker, but not his mouth.

“It’s no secret. They’ve been seeing each other for a while. They don’t do PDAs in front of us or anything, but everybody in the school knows. One guy swears he saw them last Halloween, going at it in vampire costumes, and Samantha saw Ms. Zale buying his-and-her elf suits before Christmas. What were they dressed up as this time?”

So much for protecting my innocent child. “I’m not telling you. Yes, it was them, but I don’t want details of this particular encounter getting out because then they’d suspect me of spreading rumors.”

“I wouldn’t tell anybody,” Madison said. Then she said, “On second thought, don’t tell me. It would be tough to keep it to myself if it was anything really juicy.”

“Anyway, if everybody at school knows about their affair, I think we can safely take them off the suspects list,” I said as we drove into our driveway. I was almost hoping that one of them would contradict me, because if the two teachers were out of the running, then we were back to square one. Again.

A
fter that, I was not at my most cheerful that night. I grumped my way through dinner and cleanup, enough so that Madison retreated to her room. I was so low that I pulled out the vacuum cleaner—I hate vacuuming, but I figured it couldn’t make me any more miserable than I already was. It didn’t, except that when I’d finished the living room, I remembered that I still had homework assignments to grade, and that did the job.

I briefly considered just going to bed and playing hooky the next day, and only the knowledge of how much havoc that would wreak on the week’s schedule convinced me otherwise. So I brewed a pot of coffee and went to work, but had only made it through the first half by midnight. The coffee was long gone, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I’ve always been a good catnapper, so I set an alarm on my computer then moved to the couch for a half hour’s nap.

I woke up with Sid gently shaking my arm. “Time to get up, Georgia.”

I’d been dreaming of a handsome adjunct I’d dated once, and to see Sid’s bony countenance was kind of a letdown. Then I realized it was daylight. “Coccyx! My alarm didn’t go off,” I said, pushing off the afghan I didn’t even remember putting on.

“You never went upstairs to set it.”

“No, the one on my computer. I was only going to sleep a little while.”

“Oh, I turned that off.”

“Sid! I was supposed to finish grading last night!” I grabbed the pile of papers next to the computer, but realized that the one on top had a score written on it. So did the next, and the next. They’d all been graded. “What the—?”

“I hope you don’t mind. I figured you needed the rest. Did I do okay?”

“You did great. A lot better than I would have, considering how beat I was last night,” I said, flipping through one of them. “Thanks, Sid. I owe you.”

He looked pleased. “You better go wake Madison. I’ll get breakfast ready.”

“You don’t have to do that.” It didn’t seem fair when he couldn’t eat any himself, but he was already rattling around in the kitchen before I got upstairs.

I still wasn’t at my best—I’d only had six hours of sleep, after all—but I was infinitely better off than I would have been without his help. So I decided to pretend the previous day’s investigative debacle hadn’t happened and to refocus on what the Sechrest Foundation was up to. Since I still couldn’t find a single adjunct who’d met with them, I thought I’d check with Yo and see if she knew of any grad students who had.

We’d exchanged phone numbers over our lunch a few weeks back, so I texted her and asked her to meet me at the same place for lunch. She sent back a warm and gracious acceptance of my request, consisting of:

’K

I already had a table at Hamburger Haven when Yo arrived, and we started by getting our food and then prepping same.

“So what’s up?” Yo asked. “Another skeleton to examine?”

“No, one skeleton is plenty for me,” which was truer than she knew. “I was wondering what you decided to do about the letter from the Sechrest Foundation.”

“After our talk? Nothing.”

“What about the other students you know who got that letter? Did any of them go meet the people?”

“Not after I spread the word that the offer smelled rank.”

“Coccyx!”

“Say what?”

I didn’t even bother to make up an explanation. “It’s just that I was hoping to talk to somebody who’d met with them.”

“Why for?”

“It’s kind of complicated.”

She raised one pierced eyebrow.

“A friend of mine may be involved with them, but he won’t tell me what’s going on.” I didn’t really think Charles had done whatever it was that was being done, but ‘involved’ was a fuzzy enough word that I was being truthful. More or less.

“And you’re going to get all up in your friend’s business to try to save him from himself.”

“Sounds kind of stupid, but that’s basically it.”

“Stupid,” she agreed, “but my kind of stupid. If I knew anything, I’d share, but I’ve got nothing.”

I thought,
Coccyx!
, but at least I didn’t say it out loud.

As we started in on our burgers, an idea popped up. I considered it for a good ten minutes before saying, “I don’t suppose you’d be willing—”

“To what? Call them and see what I can find out? Maybe meet with them?”

“You did say it was your kind of stupid.”

“Maybe I’d be stupid for my friends, but your friend? He’s not mine. What’s in it for me?”

“If I’m wrong, and the foundation really can help you pay for a conference or two, then that’s a win. If I’m right, you’ve helped a really nice guy.”

She didn’t look convinced.

“Then how about this? You’re going to be applying for jobs and postdoctoral fellowships soon, right? Here on the east coast?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been an adjunct at colleges for fifteen years, and maybe I’m not in your department, but I bet I can wrangle connections in almost any college you’ll be looking at.”

“So? Can an adjunct get me a job? A real one, not the stuff you have to put up with.”

“If any adjunct could do that, he or she sure wouldn’t give it to you. What an adjunct can do is get you dirt. Which profs are good to work with and which ones claim your hard work as their own? Which ones treat you like a human being and which ones don’t? Which ones should you avoid being alone with in a lab? Other profs won’t tell you that, and other grad students might have their own axes to grind. We adjuncts have nothing to lose, and we love to talk. Access to insider information like that ought to be worth a few hours of your time.”

She thought it over for a minute, then nodded. “I’ve probably still got that letter in my bag, so I’ll give them a call. Can I assume that you’re going to want to listen in?”

“If you don’t mind.”

She started rummaging around in the black-and-white-checked backpack she carried. In a surprisingly short time, given the amount of stuff crammed into the bag, she pulled out the letter. Then she pulled out her cell phone and made the call.

“Good afternoon,” she said, “this is Yolanda Jacobs. I received a note with an invitation to call to speak with Ethan Frisenda.”

I blinked. Had I not been watching, I never would have believed those cultured tones and scrupulously polite phrases would have come out of the Yo I’d come to know and kind of like.

She went on with her side of the conversation. “Wonderful. Your offer of funding for conference attendance most definitely caught my attention, and I’d love to know more. . . . Certainly. Getting together in person would make it much more pleasant. When and where should we meet? . . . Yes, I believe I know where that is. . . . Five o’clock? Perfect. I look forward to it. Thank you very much for your time.” She hung up and said, “Eager beavers. We’re meeting today. Five o’clock at the Pennycross Hilton.”

“Wow. You give good phone.”

“Whatever.”

“You’re not going to meet him in a hotel room, are you?”

“Do I look like a complete moron? No, we’re meeting in the bar in the lobby.”

“Good.” I hesitated. “Look, I don’t really think that this is dangerous or anything, but—”

“But you want to play Mata Hari and spy on the meeting. Yeah, I expected that, and as ideas go, it doesn’t suck.” Since I thought my actually appearing with her would blow the gaff, we made plans for me to get to the bar half an hour before she did and watch while pretending not to know her. “After the meet, we leave separately and intersect at Bertucci’s downtown. I’ll tell you what I’ve found out, and you can buy me dinner. Deal?”

“Deal.” I just hoped, for the sake of my wallet, that Yo would be a cheap date.

Once Yo and I went our separate ways, I called Deborah at work and asked if she’d take care of Madison’s dinner while I went to an unexpected dinner meeting. Then I texted both Madison and Sid, so they’d know the real story, and fended off Sid’s entreaties that I stop by the house and pick him up to take along as backup. After that, I even had time to do some of my real work.

As arranged, I got to the Pennycross Hilton at four thirty, a half hour before Yo was due to meet the mysterious Ethan Frisenda. The Hilton is only nominally in Pennycross—it’s way out of town along the highway, and in my suspicious frame of mind, I wondered if it had been chosen as a meeting place to facilitate a fast getaway. Of course, it also had the advantage of being so far from McQuaid that there probably wouldn’t be anyone else from the college there.

The bar was in the middle of the lobby, and I picked a table in the center so I’d be able to keep an eye on Yo and the man she was meeting, no matter where they sat. I was hoping I could set up my laptop and pretend to work without having to buy an overpriced drink. Unfortunately, the waitress was either bored or conscientious, because she brought me a complimentary bowl of snack mix right after I sat down, and asked what she could get for me. I bowed to the inevitable and ordered a Coke, figuring I could nurse it for as long as I needed to.

The bar had been empty when I arrived, but three parties arrived before Yo. Since one was a woman alone with her laptop, and the second was two men talking earnestly, I was betting on the third, a man on his own. He looked older than I was, maybe in his mid-forties, and was wearing a classic academic outfit—gray slacks, tweedy jacket with patches on the elbows, and button-down shirt without a tie. He put a notepad and an iPad on the table in front of him and watched the door expectantly. When Yo arrived at five on the dot, he stood and waved at her.

After her impressive phone manners, I wasn’t as surprised as I might have been otherwise to see that she was dressed much more conservatively than I usually saw her, in creased black slacks, a silver-gray shell, and a trim charcoal blazer. The muted colors left her hair as the only pop of color, and it was styled more neatly than I’d ever seen it.

Yo joined the man at the table, which fortunately was in my line of sight so I didn’t have to try to switch seats inconspicuously. I wasn’t quite as happy with the acoustics in the bar, which were all echo even without the music playing, but at least I could watch them. In fact, as soon as they started talking, I held up my phone, pretending to check messages, so I could snap several pictures of the two of them.

They ordered drinks and spoke for a little over forty-five minutes. Just from the body language, I’d have said that if it had been a job interview I was spying on, it wasn’t a slam dunk but that Yo had definitely scored a second interview. They parted with a handshake and professional smiles, and Yo left without even looking in my direction. Her companion stayed only long enough to pay the check, then he started for the door, also not looking at me.

I’d already paid my tab and packed away my laptop so I was right behind him, hoping he’d get into a showy car of some description, but it was just a silver sedan in a parking lot half-filled with silver sedans. There were no parking decals, company names, or even bumper stickers. I did snap a blurry photo of his license plate, though I had no idea of how I could use it to track him down.

He turned out of the parking lot and, as I watched, headed for the highway, so presumably he didn’t live in Pennycross. I went the other direction to meet Yo at the restaurant, immensely curious to hear what she had to say.

By the time I got to Bertucci’s, Yo had fluffed her hair up enough that she looked like herself again. She’d already grabbed a table and was looking at the menu when I sat down opposite her.

“Food ordering first, question asking after,” she said.

“Fair enough.” I’d been there enough times that I didn’t need to look at the menu, and the waitress took our order right away.

“So what happened?” I prompted.

“It was weird. I mean, this was supposed to be some sort of grant to fund me going to a conference, right? So I’d have thought he’d want to know all about my research. And he asked about it, but I could tell he didn’t care. Didn’t bother to take any notes, and it’s kind of obscure, you know.”

“What did he want to know about?”

“My standardized test scores.”

“You mean your GREs?” I asked. Most grad schools required applicants to submit scores from Graduate Record Examinations—GREs—as part of the admission process.

“Those, and he wanted to know about my SAT, too. I mean, who even thinks about SATs once you’re in college, let alone grad school? Unless you’re one of those losers who brags about hitting ninetieth percentile because you haven’t done anything worthwhile since.”

“So you didn’t remember your numbers?”

She grinned. “Sure I remember. I rocked that thing. Ninety-third percentile.”

“Was he impressed?”

“He definitely wrote that part down, I can tell you that.”

“And that was it?”

“No, he asked about my plans, whether I had anything lined up post grad school, stuff like that. He made some kind-of-but-not-really jokes about student loans and how rough they are, and how hard it is to pay off the debt load.”

“Sounds as if he was trying to see how hungry you are.”

Appropriately enough, our salads and rolls arrived, and we took a few minutes to appreciate them before Yo said, “I got that same feeling.”

“What did he say about the grant?”

“He made some noises about putting my name up to the committee and how he’d get back to me within a week if I was still in the running. Oh, and he gave me his business card.” She fished it out of her pocket and handed it to me.

Ethan Frisenda, Sandra Sechrest Foundation.
There was no street address, just a phone number and e-mail address.

“I asked him who Sandra Sechrest was, and he claimed she was some rich woman who’d left all this money for educational grants. It was BS. I Googled her on my phone while I was waiting for you, and found nada. What kind of rich woman doesn’t show up on Google?”

“An imaginary one.”

“That’s what I thought. I Googled Frisenda, too, and got nothing. So if he calls back, I’m not returning the call. I don’t trust him. He smelled off, and I’m a big believer in trusting my instincts. We’re still set for the info network thing, right? Even if I don’t talk to the guy again?”