by Ada Madison
Could they have killed Mayor Graves? But why, if the contract had already been awarded?
I leaned into Kira, whispering, “Did you tell me that Edward gave the waste contract to Thomas?”
The question, out of context to say the least, shook Kira awake. She gave me a confused look. “They hadn’t closed the deal yet. Edward just gave them a verbal last week.”
Was this an aha moment? A suspect I hadn’t thought of? “Thanks,” I said to Kira.
“Why—”
“We’ll talk later,” I said, cutting her off and giving her hand a squeeze.
I hoped Kira would forget the issue by the time the service was over. If it would only begin. Now I was eager to leave to pursue my new line of inquiry. Monty had popped up on my suspect list because he wanted to have the contract, probably getting a kickback. But why not Stewart himself? Or themselves, if there were really brothers involved. I felt handicapped that I had no clue who the owners of the offending company were, but I liked the idea that the murderer might be someone completely disconnected from Henley College.
I wondered if Virgil was up to speed on the contract dispute. Surely, the HPD would go through all of the mayor’s outstanding negotiations, but what if the waste management issue was at the bottom of their stack?
The question was whether I should tell Virgil also of what Monty had spilled out about Chris’s confrontation with the mayor on Saturday night, minutes before he was stabbed. Perhaps Chris had already confessed. If not, would I be getting her into more trouble than her emails did?
Rushing out to call Virgil with both bits of news was an option I considered seriously, but howling feedback from the mic told me the service was about to start and my exit would be awkward. I couldn’t claim this was an emergency. In fact, the way things had been going lately, Virgil might already have released Chris Sizemore and brought in the Stewart Brothers.
I wished I could have said that the speeches in honor of the mayor were better than his own at the Henley graduation. In both cases, however, the words hardly seemed to matter, except to those most affected. For the most part, the prayers and hail-fellow commentary seemed part of just another day in the life of the attendees.
Acutely aware of Kira at my side, I was ready to intervene if she acted out in any way. But she seemed to evolve before my eyes, sitting up straighter and straighter through the eulogies, frowning in concentration as if trying to put everything in perspective (this might simply have been my projected wish for her), and respectfully bowing her head at the appropriate times.
As I predicted, the reception line in the assembly hall was about as long as the famous rope around the earth in the problem I gave my middle school classes every year. To my relief, Kira questioned the wisdom of standing for an hour simply to shake the hands of Nora and Cody and be summarily rushed away.
“If you don’t mind, Dr. Knowles, I think I’m ready to leave,” she said. “I contributed to the flowers the kids at campaign headquarters sent and I signed the card. That’s probably enough.”
I heartily approved of her choices and was proud of my student. I took Kira’s behavior as a sign that she’d come to terms with the fact of Nora Graves as Edward’s legitimate wife and herself as a useful sounding board for him. I hoped today ushered in a return to reality for Kira.
And for me, too, as I had a moment of truth that I should be following her example. Here Bruce would have sung a line from a musical, something like, “If you’re a teacher, by your students you’ll be taught.” My own condolences were represented by the hefty wreath sent by the college, and that was the only appropriate response for me. I was embarrassed that I’d ever considered trying to insert myself personally into Nora Graves’s life for the purpose of interrogating her or her son, and relieved that I hadn’t had a chance to follow through.
It wasn’t lost on me that this was far from the end of it for Nora and Cody. There would be a funeral, of course, and an undetermined amount of time before the mayor’s case was resolved. As far as their returning to a normal life, I guessed it was too far off to contemplate.
“It was a nice service,” I said, testing my theory that Kira had crossed a threshold.
She nodded. “I’m glad we did this. Thanks for coming with me, Dr. Knowles.”
“No problem. Too bad we couldn’t get through the line.”
“I’m not disappointed. I’m glad I was part of the mayor’s life. I learned a lot, but that’s over now. In fact, I have a lot to do. I’m going to start packing up today.” Kira gave me a big smile. “It’s time I got off campus, don’t you think?” A sheepish look took shape on her face. “I didn’t want to tell you, but my place at MIT has been ready for a couple of weeks.”
I held back on the yelps of joy, but gave my star student a big hug.
We parted ways when Kira went left toward the Clara Barton dorm and beyond and I went right toward the side gate to Ben Franklin Hall.
Things were looking up. I was good with Elysse Hutchins and thrilled that Kira Gilmore was on her way to adulthood.
Thanks to Kira’s epiphany and our abbreviated time at city hall, I had nearly an hour before my lunch date with Principal Richardson. I figured I should practice calling him Doug, just in case he reverted to the form he’d used on the phone, like the deceased Ed before him.
On the way to my office I was aware of every vehicle rolling up and down Main Street, on a meaningless search for a silver SUV, possibly with a pile of red bricks on the passenger seat. I was frustrated that I couldn’t focus on the beautiful, sunny weather, or the new spring blossoms on the colorful median strip. I couldn’t seem to shake off the feeling that I was being stalked.
It was too early to call Ariana in San Diego—besides, I hadn’t heard from her in a couple of days and took that as a sign that her social life had picked up. I knew I’d have a full report soon enough. I hesitated to call Bruce, who’d gotten off work at nine this morning. Chances were good that he’d still be napping. A text message would be unintrusive, however. I gave it a try.
“U up?” I texted as I walked. In the swing of things, since the street was crowded with others from the memorial service, nearly all of them with buds or phones at their ears or thumbs working rhythmically.
A minute later, my cell rang, Bruce calling me back. As great as it was to hear his voice, he was no help in distracting me from the brick-throwing incident.
“There are more silver SUVs than you’d think in Henley,” Bruce said, sounding despondent.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“I got a few winks in. It’s especially hard to trace a car not knowing the make and model. But Virgil has guys working on it.”
“How?” I asked, giving in to Bruce’s choice of topic. I imagined young Officers Nolan and Coyne traipsing around the city knocking on the doors of all silver SUV owners. I hoped they didn’t mention Professor Sophie Knowles as the cause of the inconvenience.
“They’ll generate a list and then see if any of them has been linked to a crime, or maybe try to match it with campus people. I don’t know exactly, but I’m sure they’ve done this before.”
“The people in that car might not even have been the ones to throw the brick, Bruce. The SUV might not even have been silver. As I understand it, Bill Lawrence saw the vehicle briefly as he was flying out the door himself. The car could have been pale blue or gray or who knows what color.”
“I think they allow for that in their search. I told Virge about the note Elysse got under her door, too, and they’re trying to put it all together. It can’t hurt, Sophie. I’m surprised Virge hasn’t called you about it, but I guess he’s busy bringing in the big education gun.”
“What gun?”
“Oh, I figured you knew.”
I wanted to scream, I don’t know anything until it’s practically all over. “What gun, Bruce?”
“Collins. The superintendent? They picked him up early this morning on a tip from someone. Anonymous, of course.�
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I stopped short, nearly getting rear-ended by the family of four walking behind me. “Superintendent Patrick Collins has been arrested?” The littlest child in the group, apparently the one with the sharpest ears, gave me a funny look. I attempted a comforting smile, in case she was worried.
“Yeah. You didn’t know?” Bruce’s rub-it-in routine, which ordinarily I’d enjoy. But not today.
“What happened to Chris Sizemore? Has she been released?”
It didn’t sit right that I’d received most of my information on the principals in the case from Kira and Bruce, and now I was begging more information from Bruce when, after all, I was the one the mayor had reached out to. Good thing I wasn’t the pouty kind.
“I think Chris is still in custody,” Bruce said.
“They’re both being held? Chris and Collins?”
“Looks that way. Anyway, with all that, I’m glad Virge is willing to give some time to your brick. It’s not a trivial incident, and it wasn’t random, Sophie, especially with that note attached.”
“You’re right. And I should be glad the HPD is trying to find out who got in the middle of Elysse and me. I just want them to find the mayor’s killer and not be distracted by vandalism or petty—”
I stopped, a new thought bursting into my head. What if my brick incident was related to the murder? Not that I had a clue how that could be. But I couldn’t let go of the idea.
Suppose the person who stabbed Mayor Graves thought I was onto him. Never mind why she or he would, since I certainly had done nothing but think up a list of suspects and motives. And talked a lot to Virgil. Maybe that was it. The killer assumed I was working with the police and might be instrumental in his capture. I tried to picture the same person who viciously stabbed a man now resorting to tossing a brick through my patio door, then figuring out where Elysse lived and slipping a note under her door.
It didn’t make a lot of sense, especially if the very large, rather clumsy Superintendent Collins was the culprit, even if he was on my short list of suspects. But not much else made sense either.
“Soph?” Bruce asked, as in, Are you still there?
“I’m here,” I said. “Approaching campus.”
It was too soon to mention this latest brainstorm to Bruce. I needed more information on why Superintendent Collins was taken into custody, or invited for an interview, or whatever category he fit in.
I reminded Bruce about my lunch with the Zeeman Academy principal. “We’ll be in broad daylight at the Inn,” I told him. “No need for a bodyguard.”
“That’s what I like to hear. You busy for dinner?”
“I’m expecting my handsome boyfriend. I’ll even cook his favorite pasta primavera for him.”
“He’ll be there at six.”
I entered Franklin Hall through the side entrance in time to wave to two other faculty members who were boarding the elevator to take them to the biology floor. I’d noticed them at the memorial service and figured they were getting in a bit of work before lunch as I was.
I was dismayed to realize how relieved I was not to be alone in the building. I should have been comforted by the fact that the police had detained not one, but two suspects in the mayor’s murder. It was safer than ever on the mean streets outside the police station. Still, I hurried down the hall to my office, entered, and quickly shut the door behind me.
More than ever, I wanted to call Virgil. The list of things to tell him was growing by the minute. There was Chris’s meeting with the mayor in Admin the night he was murdered, the Stewart Brothers waste company benefitting from his death through a lucrative contract, and the newly forming connection in my mind between my brick incident and the murder.
It should have been easy for me to arrange a sit-down with Virgil and run all these things by him in a give-and-take. I’d order pizza and share my theories; he’d lay out for me the current status of the case. I longed for Virgil to explain to me why he told me he had evidence against Principal Richardson, but had picked up Chris Sizemore and Superintendent Collins. Had this been a conspiracy of three committing murder? The idea was unappealing.
Clearly, I was missing a key piece of the puzzle. Together, Virgil and I could solve the mystery of who stabbed Mayor Graves on the Henley College campus. If only I were a cop.
I doubted that my dream scenario would work, since I didn’t have a badge, but I decided to call Virgil anyway. Maybe I could wrangle a few tidbits from him.
I punched in his number and was disappointed that my call went to his voice mail. I stumbled through a message about having some new information on the mayor’s murder case, and mentioned that I’d be free this afternoon and could stop by his office. I thought of inviting Virgil to dinner, but it had been a while since Bruce and I had some quality alone time together, not since our ill-fated ice cream stroll on Saturday night.
There was still about a half hour before I’d have to leave for the Inn at Henley and my tête-à-tête with Principal Richardson—my friend Doug. A little research was in order, but not as prep for that meeting. If I was going to talk about waste management with Virgil, I should know a little more about it than what day of the week to have my blue container at the curb for pickup. I booted up my computer and searched online for the W. Thomas Company.
Kira had it right—there was a lot of money in trash. The W. Thomas website listed more ways than I could have guessed for a waste management company to make money from your trash. You could rent a Dumpster, fill it, then pay to have it hauled away. You could order special pickups for things like spent fluorescent lightbulbs and batteries. You could order (that is, buy) a kit into which your special waste could be inserted before you paid to have it hauled away.
You could do all this for your private residence, for your office building, or for your multinational corporation. W. Thomas was ready to handle your medical syringes and your pesticides, your outdated heavy industrial equipment and your construction debris. All at reasonable rates, of course.
I noticed the value added by W. Thomas, which Kira had mentioned, offering an extra pickup the day after a major holiday, at little additional cost. Was that feature enough of a reason for the mayor not only to choose them, but to fire Monty when he disagreed with the choice?
I skipped over to the Stewart Brothers site and skimmed through the text and images. Now that I was fluent in waste vocabulary, I saw a slightly more obvious approach to green solutions for waste disposal, but nothing so significant that Monty Sizemore would be willing to lose his job over it. Both companies hauled away, bought, and sold anything the citizens of Henley no longer wanted.
I sat back. What had I expected to find in this search? A clue to the conflict between the mayor and Monty? I figured it had to be about money. I glanced once more at the Stewart Brothers page, open on my screen, as if I might spot a FAQ section listing the opportunities for kickbacks from the company who landed the contract for handling of the city’s refuse. I envisioned a table, with the names of the waste companies at the top and the short list of two advocates, Mayor Graves and Monty, along the side. The boxes would be filled with dollar amounts indicating how much payoff money was involved in each choice.
When had I starting using mathematics to support a pessimistic worldview?
As usual when I was in front of my computer, I thought of one more thing to look up. I searched on Google for the superintendent of schools to see what I could find out about Patrick Collins. I wondered if his website had been updated to include his current custodial state.
After learning that I was the 1253911th visitor to the site, I clicked on the home page of the school district. The most prominent text was a long letter from Collins, inviting the six thousand students now ending their school year to have a safe, happy summer. I read through data on the improvement in literacy rate over last year’s classes, the decrease in dropout rate, and the superintendent’s renewed commitment to the children of the community.
A thumbnail of Collins s
howed him at a desk with the American flag behind him; he was sitting straight, smiling formally. I tried to imagine him in an orange jumpsuit.
Collins’s bio read like a prose version of the standard resume of an educator’s career. He’d held many leadership positions in urban education, special education, and professional development organizations. The only personal note was that Collins spends his time between Henley and Chatham—a more affluent town on the Cape than I’d have thought a government employee could afford.
I was tempted to click around and read about the district’s student health services, the school calendar, the yearbook office, and the policy on bullying, but I couldn’t see any advantage as far as gaining insight into what might have gotten the superintendent picked up by the HPD.
I made one side trip to my favorite Internet news site and saw nothing yet about a possible arrest in the Graves murder case. It was always hard for me to leave the Internet, but it was time to go. At least I hadn’t bought a useless home storage product or an unneeded pair of sandals.
The quarter-hour chimes rang out from the clock tower. If I didn’t hurry I’d be late for my lunch date. I shut down my computer and dashed down the empty hallway and out to the parking lot, noticing every wastebasket and trash container inside and outside of Franklin Hall.
The Inn at Henley was no less elegant at lunchtime. I thought of the lunchroom at Zeeman Academy, with its Formica tables and old-model microwave, and wondered if two of its teachers, Rina Flores and Digital Dan Sachs, were responsible for my date today. I’d soon find out if the loyal employees, formerly also my friends, had rushed to warn their principal that they’d essentially incriminated him and themselves, admitting to the crime of fraud.
