4 The Killing Bee

by Matt Witten

  "I don't trust anybody that much. Not even my priest when I go to confession."

  "Do you think Melanie might’ve killed Meckel?"

  Elena sucked in her breath. "She certainly hated the hijo de puta." I didn't know what hijo de puta meant, but I doubted it was anything too favorable. "But then again, so did I. And believe it or not, I didn't touch him. So if you'll excuse me, I spent two hours cooking Ajiaco stew and I intend to eat it while it’s hot."

  Then she went back inside and shut the door in my face. But that was okay. It wasn't her I wanted to talk to now, it was Melanie Wilson.

  Melanie also lived in a recently renovated apartment, though hers was on the east side of town. She rented the bottom floor of a two-story house that was decorated in the traditional Saratoga style, with purple, white, and green paint and fancy Victorian trimmings.

  When Melanie answered my knock, she was decorated with some pretty fancy trimmings herself. Even in the relative darkness of the front hall, her golden earrings sparkled. She wore a shiny necklace with a ruby pendant that hung down to some serious cleavage. But she didn't have a wedding or engagement ring, I noted.

  Melanie was in her midtwenties. Her dress was tight, black and strapless, and seemed to hold on to her body by sheer magic. She wore high-heeled leather sandals.

  I felt a quick rush of sympathy for Sam Meckel. Now don't get me wrong. I'm a sensitive left-wing kind of guy, I've listened to Anita Hill's book about Clarence Thomas on audiotape, and I understand sexual harassment can be a devastating thing. I know sexual harassment is supposedly more about power than sex.

  But having said that, I'm still glad I don't have to work at close quarters, day in and day out, with any insanely sexy women. I'd find it stressful as hell. Sometimes I wonder how people do it.

  After all the domesticity I'd been part of, first at my own house and then at Elena's, it was kind of a shock to my system to find myself thrust back into the singles world. I couldn't help picturing myself dating this hot babe.

  Ah yes, to be free and single again. I wouldn't be here trying to bust Melanie for murder, which is rather a lousy way to start a relationship. I'd be picking her up for dinner. Then we'd hit a romantic movie… coffee at some classy artists' hangout… and then we'd come back to her place... I'd find out once and for all how that dress of hers managed to stay up—

  "Yes?" Melanie said a little petulantly, her hand on her hip, cutting off my reverie. She looked like she'd been expecting to find somebody else at the door, somebody much more interesting than me.

  "Ms. Wilson, my name is Jacob Burns." I was a little unnerved by my useless attraction to her, so I fought it by acting a little more formal than usual. "I'm looking into the murders of Sam Meckel and Hilda Helquist."

  "Yeah, you're, like, the guy the police arrested," said Melanie.

  "That’s me, alright." I gave what I hoped would be an infectious smile, but she wasn't infected. She just stood there, her eyes wary. They were bright blue and her cheekbones were high. I'd seen her at school, and I'd noticed she was good-looking. But not until tonight had I realized how lovely she truly was.

  "I'm kind of busy. What do you want?"

  "I understand Mr. Meckel was sexually harassing you," I said.

  Her mouth hung open in surprise, making her look even less intelligent than usual. The sad truth was that, despite her beauty, she didn't look all that bright. I don't know what it was, maybe something missing from her eyes. Or maybe I'm just eager to find fault with gorgeous blondes, trying to make them seem less perfect. They're so darned unattainable.

  "Where did you hear that?" Melanie asked.

  "I'd like to hear it from you."

  "You won't. Because it, like, never happened."

  "What are you afraid of?"

  "Nothing. This is so totally ridiculous."

  Maybe it was. Elena could have been misinformed, or simply lying. "Look, Sam Meckel was killed. Everything about his life is going to come out. Why don't you just tell me what went on, and I'll try to help you."

  "I don't have time for this tonight." With a toss of her thick yellow mane, she stepped back and started to shut the door.

  Feeling a little clichéd, I stuck my foot in the way. "Then I'm going to the police."

  "Just try it. I'll sue you for slander or libel or whatever they call it."

  "And if you're telling the truth, you'll win. But I don't think you are."

  Melanie stood there uncertainly, pouting her lips. "It's not fair," she said. "If people find out about this stupid thing, you know who's gonna get hurt. Me. Everybody will think I did something wrong, even though it was him."

  Hurray! We were almost there. I tried not to jump up and down with excitement. "Melanie," I said, oozing sympathy, "what did he do to you?"

  She gave me a scared, helpless-little-girl look. Whether it was a conscious ploy or an honest reaction, I wasn't sure. Even after ten years of marriage, women are still a mystery to me. "You promise you won't tell the police?"

  "I swear I'll do my best to avoid it."

  She shut her eyes for a second, like she was having a bad migraine. "Well, I guess you better come in," she said, not sounding too thrilled about the idea.

  She led the way into the living room and we both sat down. She was in a pink love seat, and I occupied a white armchair opposite. I could see into the dining room, where the table had been set for two. There were long white candles, red roses, and wineglasses much more elegant than the ones my wife and I had drunk out of earlier. Some guy was going to get awfully lucky tonight.

  Melanie crossed her legs at her ankles. I doubt she was trying to be provocative, but it turned me on anyway. I tried to find a part of her body that I could look at without getting horny. I focused on the little space between her eyebrows.

  She rubbed that space with her fingers, then launched into her story. "Yeah, Meckel harassed me, alright," she said. "It started out, he'd just give me these weird little winks whenever I went into his office for something. Then he'd come into my room after the kids were gone, when I was grading homework or whatever. He'd be, like, 'I know this is your first job, are you happy here, are you lonely, is there anything I can do to help you out...?' At first I thought maybe he was being sweet. But then he started making all these dumb jokes. Like, how I was probably giving the fifth-grade boys their very first erections."

  Melanie eyed me carefully to see how I reacted to this lascivious tidbit. I guess she wanted to know if I'd laugh at Meckel's crude humor. I tried to keep my mouth from twitching.

  "So I quit staying late at school," Melanie went on. "I graded the homework at home. But he would call me into his office whenever I had a free period. To discuss some student, he'd say. Yeah, right. I didn't know what to do." She kneaded her fingers together nervously. "This is my first teaching job. If he fired me and gave me a bad recommendation, I'd have trouble getting another job. I have all these huge loans to pay off... I mean, I went to college for six years. I don't wanna end up in McDonald's or someplace, like my sisters."

  I spoke up, to keep her monologue on track. "The situation must have gotten pretty bad, if it got you upset enough to file a complaint."

  "Yeah, well, he pretty much said if I didn't screw him, he wouldn't rehire me. So that’s when I filed."

  "What’s the process, anyway? Who did you file it with?"

  She checked her watch. "Look, I'm expecting company and I haven't finished making dinner. I don't have time to go into every stupid detail."

  "I'd like to be able to verify your story."

  Melanie recrossed her legs, but I was glad to see it didn't turn me on this time. One less distraction. I guess all this talk about harassment had kind of taken away the erotic edge. The whole thing was much more sordid than sexy, and my sympathy for Meckel had faded.

  "I never exactly filed it," Melanie said. "I just wrote something up and gave it to Meckel. I told him I'd file for real if he didn't stop."

  Something wasn't quit
e right about this. It took me a moment, but I got it. "Wait a minute. You threatened Meckel that you'd file a complaint against him?"

  "Well, yeah."

  "If he didn't rehire you?"

  Her hands played with her necklace. "No, no, it wasn't like that—"

  "Sure it was. You were blackmailing him."

  She stomped her foot on the rug. "Stop it. You're twisting everything around!" Then she regained control of herself and said, with a trace of a whine, "I just wanted him to stop bothering me, that’s all. It wasn't right. Why should I have to put up with that?"

  "You were pretty angry at him."

  "Yeah, I was furious. You're a man, you don't know how it feels."

  "Were you furious enough to hit him with a spelling bee trophy?"

  Melanie shook her head back and forth several times rapidly. "That wasn't me."

  Since I'd already played this scene with Elena, it wasn't hard to think up my next line. "What happened, he came on to you again? And you fought back?"

  But unlike Elena, Melanie had an alibi—or claimed she did. "I wasn't even there. I was with somebody."

  "Who?"

  "I can't tell you."

  "Then your alibi's worthless."

  "I don't care. I didn't kill him, and you can't prove it!"

  "Who was it, the same person who's coming over tonight?"

  Melanie opened her mouth to say something, but before any words came out, the front door of the house opened. Someone called out, "Hey, sweetie!"

  The voice was a surprise.

  It was a woman's voice.

  And when the woman came into view, that was a surprise too. It was Irene Topor, the school psychologist.

  Like Melanie, she was all dolled up. She didn't have Melanie's curves, but in her tight blue jeans and embroidered peasant shirt, she actually looked pretty cute. She'd done something to her hair, and it made her nose fit her face better. Instead of looking pointy, it looked . . . what’s the word . . . aquiline.

  Moving my eyes from Irene to Melanie and back, I couldn't resist a grin. This little twist brought my dating days back to me in a hurry. When I was in my early twenties, I had the nasty habit of falling in love with lesbians. I even lived with one for a couple of years before she "left me for another woman," to quote an old Woody Allen movie.

  I didn't go for gay women on purpose, it just seemed to sort of happen. And here it was happening again. Hadn't I learned anything in the past twenty years?

  I suddenly found myself very glad to be safely married and finished with the dating game.

  Irene stared at me, then at Melanie. "What’s he doing here?"

  I figured now wasn't the time for small talk. "Where were you on Tuesday morning at seven-thirty?" I asked.

  Irene gave Melanie a questioning look. Melanie gave her back a shrug as if to say, go ahead and tell him.

  But Irene said, "How should I know where I was? I was probably getting out of bed. Why?"

  "Were you alone?"

  Melanie broke in. "She was here, with me."

  Irene said, "Melanie—"

  "Look, we have to tell him. He thinks I killed Meckel."

  "He thinks what?" Irene said, raising her eyebrows as she turned to me. "God, what an idiot."

  "I've been called worse. Were you here that morning?"

  "I thought you were after the Robinsons."

  "Were you?"

  Irene glowered at me, then finally said, "Yeah, I was. So what?"

  "Does anybody else know you were here?"

  "No. We try to keep it secret, as you can imagine."

  "Only problem is, Melanie could use another backup for her alibi besides you. Lovers have been known to lie."

  "Melanie would never kill anybody, come on."

  I regarded the two of them. I wasn't completely sure Melanie and Irene really were together on Tuesday morning.

  But I was sure of something else. Even if these two women had nothing to do with the killings, I still had them by the short hairs. "Tell me about the Robinson family," I said to Irene.

  "I told you before, that’s privileged information."

  "And so's your sexual preferences. But if you don't answer all my questions, I'm gonna blow your privileged information right out of the water."

  Hatred and fear spilled into Irene's and Melanie's eyes. I felt like a heel using their private lives against them. I mean, I don't think somebody's sexuality has anything to do with whether they're a good teacher. But hey, we were talking murder here.

  "You can't do that," Melanie sputtered.

  "Sure I can. Why don't you go in the other room and finish making dinner while I chat with your friend." But Melanie didn't move, and Irene looked like she would keep resisting, so I kept on bullying. "Look, this isn't exactly San Francisco. You think the school district wants a gay psychologist working with the kiddies? You think the new principal will rehire a fifth-grade teacher who's a lesbian?"

  I know, I know, I was being brutal. But sometimes you catch more flies with vinegar than with honey.

  Melanie stood up. "You shit," she said. Then she left for the kitchen. Hopefully she wouldn't come back with a bread knife and stab me.

  Irene spent a few moments hurling more epithets at me, then finally sat down and bowed to the inevitable. It was time to talk turkey.

  "You were right about the skateboard," she told me grudgingly. "Meckel found out Mark snuck into his office and stole it back. So he called a meeting with me, Mark, and his parents. We were going to meet this week, on Tuesday."

  "So you could pressure them into putting Mark on Ritalin?"

  "I wouldn't say that. . . ."

  "What would you say?"

  "We wanted to make them realize the seriousness of the situation. Mark is flunking half of his tests at this point, and he's getting more and more unruly. Melanie will tell you, he just sits in class and pulls the other kids' hair. Now he's escalated to stealing. His parents need to start exercising more control."

  "By putting him on Ritalin."

  "If that’s what it takes, yes."

  "Who made the call to his parents, yourself or Meckel?"

  "I did."

  "Who did you talk to?"

  "The mother."

  "How did she react?"

  "Look, parents give all sorts of responses when their kids are in trouble. I don't take them too seriously. If s just heat-of-the-moment stuff."

  "I take it Sylvia wasn't too pleased."

  "No."

  "What did she say, exactly?" Irene didn't answer. This was like pulling teeth. I stood up and stepped toward her. "Damn it, I'm sick and tired of everybody stonewalling me. Doesn't it bother you just a teensy little bit that Sylvia Robinson may have committed murder—and you're, in effect, covering up for her?"

  Irene opened her mouth, and finally said, "Sylvia was pretty wacky on the phone. Screaming about conspiracies and we had it in for her son and all kinds of stuff. It scared me a little."

  I nodded. "Thank you. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

  "You're a prick."

  "Only when I have to be. Here's what I don't get. If Mark was in such big trouble, why wasn't he being held back?"

  "Honestly? Because none of the fifth-grade teachers wanted to deal with him next year. And neither did Meckel." She stood up and made like she was going to the kitchen. "If you're finished, I'd like to try and salvage what’s left of my night."

  I put up a hand to stop her. "One more thing. Susie Powell's kid, Megan. What did you think of Meckel's decision to hold her back?"

  "Nice kid. I felt bad for her. I was glad he changed his mind."

  I stared at her. "He did what?"

  "He talked to Susie. They agreed Megan would get private tutors this summer and then go on to second grade."

  "You sure about this?"

  "Meckel told me."

  But according to Barry, he heard Susie and Meckel having a screaming fight about Megan on Thursday afternoon. "When did they make this agreem
ent?"

  Irene scrunched up her face in thought. "I saw Susie in his office, let's see, last Friday."

  "You sure it wasn't Thursday?"

  "Actually, I saw her both days last week, Thursday and Friday. Those are my two days at High Rock."

  So Barry's story checked out. But evidently, after Thursday's screaming fight had come a rapprochement the very next day. That would seem to decrease Susie's motivation to kill the man.

  What about Irene Topor’s motivations? I stuck an I-feel-your-pain expression on my face. "That must have been really weird, having to work closely with Meckel when here he was, sexually harassing your girlfriend."

  "It was different, that's for sure."

  "Did he realize you were going out with her?"

  "No." Irene nailed me with her eyes. "Now I've told you everything. You better keep your end of the bargain and shut the hell up about me and Melanie."

  This woman was pretty intense. I wondered, if I threatened Irene's affair with the lovely Melanie, and her career as well, would she be angry enough to grab something and hit me with it?

  Could that be what happened in Sam Meckel's office that morning? And did Hilda Helquist somehow figure it out?

  14

  The next morning, Saturday, Latree and Charizard went to the birthday party of Justin Richardson, Barry and Ronnie's kid. My guess is, my sons just barely made the invite list. Latree and Justin weren't all that close, even though they were the same age and I was friendly with Justin's dad. Latree found Justin bossy. Latree can be kind of bossy himself, so they weren't the best match. The main time they had play dates together was when Andrea and I—or Justin's parents—were going out on a Saturday night and couldn't get a babysitter. Then whichever couple wasn't going out would take care of the other couple's kids.

  Given that the Richardsons did invite Latree, I was grateful they invited Charizard, too. Otherwise he'd have felt left out. I resolved to like Barry's wife Ronnie more, since I assumed she was the one who was in charge of the invitations. That’s the kind of detail work women always get stuck with.

  The party was being held at a laser tag place on South Broadway. If you've never played laser tag, I highly recommend you try it. The way it goes is this: you don a suit of armor and grab a large "laser machinegun." Then you fire away at your opponents with a "deadly" red light. You can kill six or seven people in a minute. It’s highly therapeutic.