Death Comes Knocking (The Thea Kozak Mystery Series, Book 10)

by Kate Flora

  “Just so we’re clear, you didn’t spot similar issues with his students in the other two groups?”

  “No. But this is the weakest group.” She halted and sighed again. “I think you know where we’re going with this.”

  “You think he’s involved somehow and you want us to be the ones to uncover it?”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t think the school’s computer system has been hacked?”

  Dr. Kingsley answered this one. “No. We don’t.”

  “And why can’t you do this yourselves? I understand the delicacy required if Dr. Kingsley is concerned about the school labeling some of its students as cheaters, possibly even discovering one is a hacker. Why do you have the same hesitation challenging Jesper DiSantis if you believe he gave the test questions to his students?”

  Another exchange of looks. “I’m afraid we’ve gotten you here without the full story,” Dr. Kingsley said. “Yes, we suspect it was Jesper who dispersed the information. And yes, we want you, EDGE Consulting, to discover that this is the case. Because, as you probably know, nepotism is not uncommon in hiring situations in independent schools. In this case, Jesper is the nephew of the chairman of our board. We were pressured to hire him even though we had doubts about his qualifications. Now we also have doubts about his honesty. But we can’t go forward without concrete evidence. Evidence that your computer expert, LaDonna Marquis, is perfectly situated to provide.”

  “So I’m just window-dressing?”

  “No.” She gave a decisive nod. “May I speak frankly?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re here to lend the imprimatur of EDGE Consulting to the situation when we’re ready to take this to the trustees. You’re also here to help us craft an updated honor code, and to speak to all of our assembled students about the importance of honor codes and the risks of violating them. About the long-term effects of cheating in college and in their future employment. These kids, as is common with high school students, think only in the short term—this paper, this test, this summer. We’re trying to get them to take the long view. To take some responsibility for their futures.”

  Almost noon. Lunch time. And MOC was getting restless. I was getting annoyed. No, I already was annoyed that they had brought me here to make what I considered an important speech and failed to give me advance warning. I tried to channel my partner, Suzanne, who is all about handling clients with kid gloves and keeping them happy. When I come in, it is usually to bring my big guns and shoot troubles. Sometimes there is collateral damage. I hoped LaDonna and I would get out of here without having to use our guns.

  I smiled. “Sounds like a good plan, though I can’t promise much of a speech. I’m not the world’s best extemporaneous speaker.”

  Dr. Kingsley smiled back. “You know your stuff, and you know your audience. You’ll be fine.”

  Returning to the matter of DiSantis and test scores, I asked, “So, is Bascomb in on this and able to direct LaDonna, or is she supposed to find this on her own?”

  “On her own. We hope.”

  LaDonna was good. If she hadn’t already figured this out, she would soon.

  “But Bascomb knows?”

  Leora answered this. “We believe he does. He’s kind of timid. He doesn’t like conflict. Likes to stay in the background and play with his machines.”

  “And when am I giving this speech to your student body?”

  “This afternoon. We’ll be having lunch soon, right after we have you go over our draft honor code, then you’ll have an hour of prep time—we’ve reserved you a nice quiet office—and then we’re having our assembly,” Dr. Kingsley said.

  Is it flattering or merely misguided when your client has more faith in your abilities than you do? I might be about to find out. I can advise. I can help with important documents like crisis plans and honor codes, and I can assist a school in a crisis. Making speeches? Not so much. But I did know this stuff, and if I really was going to have a quiet hour to prepare, it should be fine. One thing was clear: this school definitely wanted to get its money’s worth.

  “All right,” I agreed. “Now, your honor code?”

  Dr. Kingsley produced some papers and gave copies to me and to Leora. I shared some of the samples I’d brought, and we were off to the races. As we bent over our papers, I hoped that in another part of the forest, LaDonna was worming her way through the computer system, or Jesper’s computer, and finding the digital trail or the smoking gun, or lack thereof. Whatever computer experts called their discoveries.

  I had one question that I’d failed to ask earlier. I didn’t know if it made any difference, but I had to know. “Backing up for a sec. The students who got the exam questions. Male? Female? Or both?”

  There was that exchange of glances again, and Leora Simms said, “All three were female.”

  “And the student who left?”

  “Female as well.”

  Thirteen

  The founders of Exeter and Andover had it right when they defined character as including both goodness and knowledge, saying, “Goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous.” Nationally, we were in the midst of a crisis of character in many arenas. Students in the pressure cooker of high school facing the challenge of getting into a good college were reported to be cheating on a shocking scale. It was important for schools to develop honor codes and educate their students about the impact of violating those codes. Lately it was looking like there should be honor codes for the parents, as well. Sadly, schools didn’t have much control over them.

  I was glad to be sitting with two smart women working on a code for the school that recognized it wasn’t enough to be smart. It was important, as well, to be cognizant of every person’s obligations of citizenship and service. With the teaching of civics on the decline, it became a challenge for every school to find ways to convey to their students—and enforce—the message that good character was an important part of their education. Honor codes might begin at home, but increasingly they were necessary for schools to protect themselves against cheating and plagiarism when it happened. When every student and his or her parents were required to read the honor code and sign a form, affirming that it had been read and agreed to, enforcing the rules got easier.

  That was pretty much what I said to Dr. Kingsley and Dean Simms as we got underway. Then I climbed off my soapbox and we dug into their draft, adding what needed to be included to make it a strong and effective code for their student population. More important, perhaps, was how to best explain the concepts to students in a way that helped them apply it to their everyday lives.

  “You might say that the credo many of our students arrive with is that they have to do whatever is necessary to get ahead,” Dr. Kingsley said, “without anyone ever asking what that means. Plus, often they have a chip on their shoulders because they’ve been shortchanged in school, so they know they’re behind. It can make them feel angry and stupid and that anger can cloud their judgment.”

  She sighed in frustration. “So while we’re trying to give them the tools for academic success, they have life skills learned from doing whatever they have to to survive. Life skills that say if they need to cheat to get ahead, cheating is okay.”

  “Right,” Simms said. “They’re about survival and getting by, and then even as we’re piling on the work, trying to get them ready for an academic year, we’re telling them they have to follow a bunch of rules that may feel foreign. May even strike them as unfair if they’ve seen a lot of cheating without consequences at the schools they’ve attended.”

  “What we absolutely can’t do,” Dr. Kingsley said, “is have our faculty helping them cheat. It underscores the message that cheating is okay. It normalizes it.”

  It looked like I was going to give my extemporaneous speech to an audience that would be cynical about my message. Statistics show that between fifty and ninety percent of students engage in some form of cheating or plag
iarism. Damned discouraging. But that didn’t mean educators should just fold their tents and steal away.

  Honor code editing done and the draft given to Dr. Kingsley’s assistant to type, we adjourned to lunch in Dr. Kingsley’s office. It was a beautiful office with a view out over a broad body of water. I could see several species of birds, including large and small herons.

  Dr. Kingsley checked her messages. “LaDonna says she can’t join us for lunch, so I’ll have a sandwich sent to her. Maryland crab, of course.”

  “Of course,” I agreed. Every place that has crab believes their crab is the best, but I wasn’t about to engage in ‘my crab is better than your crab’ contest. I thought all crab was delicious.

  Spotting binoculars on the windowsill, I said, “If I had this office, I’d never get anything done,” I said. “I’d just become a birdwatcher.”

  “Why I sit with my back to the window, Thea. Chesapeake Bay. There’s a wildlife refuge nearby. The view is lovely, though, isn’t it?”

  Lunch was lovely, too. A crab salad with mango and avocado and some amazing warm bread. “This is delicious,” I said.

  “We are fortunate to have an excellent cook,” Dr. Kingsley said. “And we praise her to the skies so she’ll stay. She even makes special dishes for homesick students. And Thursday night is fried chicken and biscuits.”

  “You’re lucky,” I said. “No. The students are lucky. Speaking of students, are the students in this summer program all from Maryland?”

  “Mostly. Our funding for the program is from the state and from a handful of nonprofits. We’re one of the few such programs in the country, though, so we do get students from other areas if they are lucky enough to hear about us.”

  Something EDGE could help with. “Do you want to expand the program? Are you looking to attract more students?”

  Leora took this one. “This summer is our trial run,” she said. “If it goes well, we’ll be looking to expand. If we go that way, we’ll be looking for your help.”

  We watched a group of students walk past the window. They looked happy and carefree, as students should in the summer, and both women smiled as they watched the noisy, jostling group go by. We were all thinking the same thing—ah, to be young again, when summers meant you didn’t have to work. These kids did have to work, though. And still looked happy. It was a beautiful place to spend the summer.

  Then Dr. Kingsley and Dean Simms went back to work, and I hunkered down in a small office to work on a speech. I’d been there all of five minutes when there was a sharp knock on the door and LaDonna called, “Thea. Open up. We need to talk.”

  I knew what we needed to talk about. It had been hanging in the air since we arrived this morning.

  I called “Come in,” and she dashed in, shutting the door quickly behind her like she was being chased.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Hardly. They do know they’re going to have to fire his ass, don’t they?”

  “They do. They’re just using us to do the dirty work and provide the proof they need in order to justify his dismissal to the board. Turns out he’s the board chairman’s nephew.”

  “Ah. Spare me from nepotism. We see enough of that in politics.”

  “We see enough of that everywhere. Did you get some lunch?”

  She smiled. “Yummy crab sandwich and homemade potato chips and a great big gooey brownie.”

  “Other than that?”

  “Other than that, Jesper DiSantis seems to be a rather clumsy fellow. He not only set up a fake account through his school-issued computer, an account he accessed from the library to send the test questions to certain favored students, he had been carrying on a very romantic set of chats with each of the three girls in question. Well. There were four. The fourth seems to have dropped off his radar.”

  “As we suspected.” I sighed. “The fourth one left the program.”

  “Right. What we might not have anticipated is that all three girls are aware of the others, and they’re playing him like a fiddle. So they’re not off the hook, cheating-wise, because there are emails in which they are asking him for those test questions.”

  “So he’s dumb and they’re both manipulative and naïve?”

  “Something like that. Well, I’d say two of the girls are more sophisticated, and the third plays at playing along but actually imagines herself in love with him. In short, an ugly mess he, as the adult here, is almost entirely responsible for.”

  She settled back in her chair with a grin and said, “So how’s the speech on cheating and the honor code coming?”

  “Slowly but surely, despite getting blindsided. What do you have to give our employers so they can move ahead with solving their cheating problem?”

  She waved the papers she was holding. “Bunch of stuff I printed out, here. But I think it will help if I write up an explanation of how I followed the trail of information and traced it to the particular computers. I’ll throw in lots of big words and computer terminology so they’ll feel like they are getting their money’s worth.”

  There was another desk in my little office, so LaDonna settled in to write while I worked on my speech.

  After a while, she paused in her typing and said, “Pity we don’t need to stay overnight, it’s so pretty here. I’m not looking forward to going back to the city.”

  “You should come to Maine and visit us. We have a big house with a guest room.”

  “You should be careful with invitations like that. Everyone wants to come to Maine in the summer.”

  “Then I should tell you about the mysterious murders across the street. That might be a deterrent.”

  “Murders? Plural? Seriously?”

  “It’s my fate, LaDonna. I’m like Jessica Fletcher. Everywhere I go, somebody dies.” I joked about it not because it was funny but because joking was part of keeping it at bay. When I got home, the decrepit cottage and worrying about Charity would all come rushing back. I hoped the crime scene vehicles would be gone and my street would be quiet and empty again. I hoped I had no further visits from Malcolm Kinsman. I doubted that I’d seen the last of him, but if he showed up in Maine, I planned to make him Andre’s problem.

  “More like somebody dies and then you go,” she said. “That’s what you get for being Jane Wayne.”

  I was sure I’d never used that expression with her, though I did sometimes think it to myself. “Jane Wayne?” I said.

  “Well, sure. The tall, fearless troubleshooter who rides into town and shuts those bad guys down.”

  “I am planning to reform,” I said.

  “I’ve heard you say that before.”

  I patted the basketball. “Reforming. This kid is going to take all my energy.”

  She pantomimed shock. “You’d leave all these poor schools in the lurch? Leave them to wallow in cheating and drugs and campus scandal?”

  “That’s the plan. I have had my fill of dead bodies.”

  She shook her head. “Never happen. You were born to rescue people.”

  “How about you take a turn? I am going to devote myself to diapers and onesies.”

  She shook her head again. “In your dreams. Little MOC is going to be tucked into a baby carrier and the two of you will set off to right the wrongs of the world.” She grinned. “I hope MOC is a girl. Mock Kozak, girl detective. Or will be she be Mock Lemieux? Nah. That doesn’t sound right.”

  We really hadn’t figured out what the kid’s name would be, but Claudine Lemieux was a fine name. Better than Claudine Kozak. So were Mason or Oliver. The brat, who I am convinced can read my thoughts, kicked me.

  I went back to my speech and LaDonna to her report. It was quiet in the room except for the tapping of keys until she said, “Did you locate a printer we can use?”

  I hadn’t. “Try hitting ‘print’ and see what happens. There’s probably a network. I saw a printer outside Dr. Kingsley’s office.”

  She shrugged and did. I followed shortly after with the text o
f my speech. Moments later, there was knock on the door, and Dr. Kingsley’s very efficient assistant was there with a handful of papers.

  “Got them just in time,” she breathed. “Kiara, one of the girls mentioned in your report, is helping out in the office today. That would have been a heck of a mess.”

  “Sorry.” LaDonna ducked her head like a chastened twelve-year-old.

  We took our papers, and she left.

  I scanned my speech. LaDonna scanned her report. Then we gathered our things and went to Dr. Kingsley’s office. Leora Simms was with her, and both women looked stricken.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “It’s Jesper,” Dr. Kingsley said. “Security says he left campus half an hour ago and he had one of our students with him. Her roommate says she packed her things and left without an explanation.”

  “Is she over eighteen?” I asked.

  Leora shook her head.

  “So that gives us some leverage,” I said. “Has anyone tried calling him?”

  “We have,” Dr. Kingsley said. “He didn’t answer.”

  “Give me his phone number,” I said. “And you’d better get in touch with his uncle. Your board member. Maybe he has some sway. At this point, things can still be worked out, but if he doesn’t come back, admit what he’s done, and get himself quietly fired, he’s ruined his chances of ever getting another teaching job. Possibly any good job.”

  Okay. Yes, I can be a weasel sometimes. As an employer, I get as annoyed as anyone when I hire someone with a checkered past because former employers fudge their references. But right now, our goal was getting him—and the student—back here, using whatever promises we had to make. The man was obviously a self-centered idiot with no impulse control. Running away with a student did harm not only to himself and the girl’s future, but to the future of the program, and it was an important program. After the girl was safely back and the immediate situation dealt with, they could let him go under any conditions they chose.