The Cereal Murders gbcm-3

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “What was that board?” I demanded of the one volunteer firefighter I recognized, a gray-haired real estate agent who had originally sold the house to John Richard and me.

  “You had something on top of your chimney.”

  “Well, yes, but… how did it get there?”

  “You have some gutter or roof work done? This your first use of the fireplace this season?”

  “It is not my first use of the fireplace this season, and the only work I’ve had done on the house recently was a security system I had put in this summer.” The blackened board lay propped against one of the tires of the AMFD truck. Two firemen stood in front of it, deep in conversation.

  “Look, Goldy, it could have been a lot worse. We had this same thing happen to a summerhouse over by the lake. Smoke pouring everywhere. Usually it means you put too much paper on the logs, the chimney needs to be swept, or some birds have built a nest. Anyway, our guys went up. First one took off a nest, sure enough. Then he looked down the chimney and fainted. Second guy looked down the chimney and fainted. I had smoke, flames, and two guys out cold on the roof. Had to call an ambulance for the firefighters. Turns out this burglar had tried to enter the house through the chimney, got stuck, died of asphyxiation. In the spring some birds built a nest. Then the owners came back and built a fire. Once our guys pulled out that nest, they looked down at a perfectly preserved skeleton.”

  I clenched my head with both hands. “Is this story supposed to reassure me?”

  He shrugged one shoulder and moved off to help his men reload their equipment. The emergency, as far as they were concerned, was over. Several neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk to see what was going on. I asked if anyone had seen a person or persons on my roof recently. All negative. Then I crossed over to the house of a young mother, the only person on our street who had a good view of my place. Her forehead furrowed as she fixed the shoelace of one child and then gave antibiotic to another. She was raising four children under the age of six, and whenever anyone stupidly asked if she worked, she threw a dirty diaper at them. She told me she’d been preoccupied ferrying her kids to the pediatrician – three, times in the last week – and no, she hadn’t seen anyone.

  Julian announced that he and Arch had decided they might as well go to school, was I going to be all right? I told them to go ahead. Frances Markasian stood on the sidewalk, snapping photos, as if the .fire were the biggest news event to hit Aspen Meadow this century. The crash of the Hindenburg had less photo coverage. She took a picture of me as I walked up to her.

  “I thought you promised not to do that.” My life was beginning to feel out of control.

  “Before, you weren’t news,” she said impassively. “Now you’re news. Any idea how this could have happened?”

  “Zero,” I mumbled. “Did you see that plywood board they took off the chimney?” She nodded. “Maybe some workmen left it over the summer. I wish you wouldn’t publish those pictures. People will think I burned something In my kitchen.

  “If something more exciting happens before Monday, no problem.” She shoved the camera into her bag and drew out a cigarette. No breakfast, diet cola with caffeine tabs, and now a smoke. I would give this woman ten years. She inhaled hungrily. “Listen, you were pretty discreet in there about the competition situation out at Elk Park Prep. So was I. But you’re wrong.”

  “Oh?” I said innocently. “How’s that?”

  “Well.” Fran blew a set of perfect smoke rings. “Parents seem to think we have an endless amount of newspaper space to run articles about their kids. First we did an article about Keith Andrews in September, at his request.” She tapped the cigarette, scattering ashes on her denim jacket. “Maybe you saw it: ‘First-place Andrews blends academics with activism.’ I mean, Keith helped us a lot during the summer covering the Mountain Rendezvous and the arts festival, so we figured we owed him the article when he asked. Anyway. We ran the piece and Stan Marensky called us, shrieking his head off. Said Keith Andrews had never marched in front of his store the way he claimed. Said the kid didn’t know a mink from an otter and couldn’t care less about the anti-fur movement. So we went back and asked Keith about it, and he confessed that he had used a wee bit of exaggeration, but that the profile was really going to help his Stanford application.” She exhaled another batch of white O’s.

  “If only you all would check facts before you print things,” I murmured.

  She flicked ashes. “Hey, what do you think we are, The New York Times? This was supposed to be a human interest thing. Then Hank Dawson shows up on our doorstep, waving a copy of the newspaper. He figures we should run a full-page profile on his daughter for our ‘Who’s Who’ section. When we say his daughter isn’t anybody special, Dawson yells he’s going to withdraw all of his cafe advertising. We say, well, he can buy a page of advertising for his daughter, and he stomps out. Then he cancels both his advertising and his subscription.”

  The “Who’s Who” page usually ran stories of veterinarians saving elk calves and national celebrities showing up at local Fourth of July celebrations. If we weren’t talking the Times, we weren’t exactly talking People, either.

  “Perhaps you should have run the profile…” I murmured.

  “Clearly, you don’t read the Mountain Journal” – she crushed the cigarette savagely beneath her toe – “because we did. In ‘Mountain Arts and Crafts’ there was an article on little Greer Dawson and the Bronco jewelry she was making to peddle at her parents’ cafe. Earrings dangling with miniature plastic orange footballs. Necklaces made of rows of teensy-weensy football helmets.” Frances groped in the bulging bag and brought out a packet of candy corn. Dessert. She offered me some; I declined. “Now, how many women do you think actually buy jewelry like that? That article proved every stupid stereotype people have of rural journalism. We got the cafe’s advertising back, but it was still a mistake because who comes in the next week? Audrey Coopersmith, whining that we should run an article on Heather and how her scientific know-how saved the ice cream social at the Mountain Rendezvous – “

  “How do you save an ice cream social?” She finished the candy corn and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Oh. You know, they have such a small power source in the homestead next to the park where the Rendezvous is held.” I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. “The freezer holding the Haagen-Dazs blew the fuses, and Heather Coopersmith saved the day by rewiring the whole thing… we are talking way boring. .We didn’t run an article for Audrey Coopersmith, and she cancelled her subscription. So what. I have to go. Sorry about your chimney.” And with that she climbed into her car and discarded the candy corn bag out the window. She lit up another cigarette, revved the engine, and chugged away.

  I picked up the bag from the street and went back I into the house. The smoke alarm had stopped its ear-splitting buzz. I opened all the windows. After the commotion, the place felt absurdly quiet; it smelled like a camping site. I jumped when the phone rang – Tom Schulz. I told him what had happened, ending with poor Marla.

  “How’d the board get over your chimney?” he wanted to know.

  “That was my question. Think I should get the security people to come back out here?”

  “I think you should move out of your house for a while. Go to Marla’s, maybe?” His voice was slow and serious.

  “No can do, sorry to say. Her cabinets would never I pass the county health inspector. Anyway, whoever is doing this seems to know I have a security system, so I’m safe except for pranks.”

  He asked where the boys were, and I told him.

  “Listen, Goldy, I don’t care about your system. I don’t want you in that place alone, especially at night.”

  I ignored this. “Thanks for the worry. Now, I’ve got a question for you. What was the story on the fuses at the headmaster’s house? I mean, when the fuses blew that night, that was the moment that Keith Andrews’ killer made his move, wasn’t it?”

  “There was a timer attached to one set of wires that had been strip
ped and coiled together. It was planned, sure, but you knew that, didn’t you?”

  I told him about the Rendezvous and Heather Coopersmith’s expert knowledge of wiring.

  “It’s a long shot,” he said, “but I’ll go question her again. What’s your take on that kid and her mother, anyway?”

  _”Oh, I don’t know.” My head ached, my finger throbbed, and I didn’t want to go into the details of Audrey’s bitterness, or how long it seemed to be lasting. “Audrey’s unhappy, you saw that. Did the headmaster’s place turn up anything else? I saw your guys out there sweeping the place after the snow melted.”

  “It did, as a matter of fact. Makes your discovery of the credit card in Rhoda Marensky’s coat somewhat more interesting. Out by the sled there was a gold pen with the name Marensky Furs.”

  “Oh, my God.” “Problem is, Stan Marensky says the pen could have come from anywhere, and Rhoda Marensky swears she didn’t leave her coat out at the headmaster’s house.”

  “Liar, liar, raccoon on fire. Mr. Perkins specifically told me she’d be so happy to get it back.”

  “Headmaster Perkins said the coat just appeared in his closet the day of the dinner and he called Rhoda, who then forgot to take it with her after the lights went out. But she had been missing it for a couple of weeks. She says.”

  “If that is true, then whoever is doing all this is a phenomenally elaborate planner.” I thought for a minute, and remembered only a glimpse of a fur-clad Stan Marensky whisking Rhoda out the headmaster’s front door after the lights had come back on and order had been restored. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on with the Marenskys, their store, or pens from their store. What I don’t understand is why me? Why a rock through my window, why ice on my steps, why a board over my chimney? I don’t know anything. I never even met Keith Andrews.”

  “I swear, I wish you’d come to my place for a while, Miss G. Or more than a while, if you’re still of a mind…”

  “Thank you, but I’m staying put.”

  “You’re in danger. I’m going to talk to the team here about setting up some surveillance – “

  I let out a deep breath.

  He said, “I’ll get back to you.”

  As usual, cooking cleared the head and calmed the nerves. I needed both. First I froze the doughnuts, which, miraculously, weren’t smoke-damaged. Then I set about planning cooking times for the priests’ luncheon on Friday, the Tattered Cover affair on Halloween night, and the SAT breakfast on Saturday morning. I called my supplier and ordered the freshest sole she could find, plus fresh fruit.

  The rest of that day and the next passed placidly enough. I picked Marla up from the hospital Thursday morning and took her back to her house. She didn’t want me to baby her. With all her money, Marla could pick anyone she wanted to take care of her; she had opted for a private nurse, arranged while she was still in the hospital. Arch’s ankle healed nicely and gave him the much-desired excuse from gym class. He announced brightly that he was resting so he’d be completely better for skiing over the weekend. Julian sprinkled road salt on the iced front steps before the supplier arrived with her crates of boxes. I tried to believe that the board-over-the-chimney person had not also been responsible for the ice hazard. But that was sure to be wishful thinking.

  Miss Ferrell called on Thursday afternoon and said she wanted to go over Julian’s list for colleges with me after the SATs on Saturday, instead of our planned chat beforehand. She had too much organizing to do before the tests began, and she wanted to give me her full attention. I wasn’t one of his parents, but she wanted to feel that some responsible adult was involved. “Julian can come too, if you like,” she added. But I said I would feel better if she and I could just have a little time together alone. After all, I was new at this.

  Friday morning brought gloomy clouds spitting snowflakes. Because his father was picking him up at three to go directly to Keystone, Arch busied himself packing up his ski gear before school. I washed crisp spinach leaves and poached sole fillets in white wine and broth. Then I chopped mountains of cranberries and pecans for the Sorry Cake. When I was putting the cake pans into the oven, Julian said he’d had an invitation to spend the night at a friend’s house; they would go to the bookstore talk arid the SAT testing together. But he was concerned – would I be all right alone? It was all I could do to keep from laughing. I told him if I could survive all those years with John Richard Korman, I could survive anything. Besides, with both boys gone, I knew just what guest to call.

  I gave the boys pumpkin muffins for breakfast and helped Arch lug his skis, boots, and poles out to the Range Rover. Saying good-bye to him before he went off with his father was always difficult; before a holiday, even Halloween, it was excruciating.

  At the last minute, Arch dashed upstairs to get his high-powered binoculars. “Almost forgot! I might be able to see the Andromeda galaxy once they turn out the night-skiing lights. You can see Andromeda in the winter, but never in the summer!” he hollered over his shoulder. When the boys were finally ready, I sent them off over their halfhearted protests with homemade popcorn balls and packets of candy corn to share with their friends. They took off in a mood of high good cheer. Halloween was not a school holiday, but the snow, the buttery scent of popcorn, and Arch’s cone sculpture of Three Musketeers bars made the two boys laugh giddily after a week ” that had been grueling for us all.

  Despite his upbeat mood as he drove off, Julian’s taut face and bitten nails told another story. During the past two weeks, he had spent hours at the kitchen table, studying financial aid forms and making lists of numbers. When he wasn’t doing homework, he pored over tomes on test-taking and SAT review. Along with the rest of his class, Julian had taken the PSATs his sophomore year and the SATs his junior year. But this third time was it, he told me, the big one, make or break, do or die. These were the scores the colleges looked at to make their decisions.

  I had tried to drill him a little bit Thursday night, using the SAT review, but it had not been a pleasant task. I mean, who made up these tests? For example, one analogy asked, handsome is to corpulent as beautiful is to …obese, ugly, attractive, or dead? Well, didn’t that depend on whether or not you thought corpulence is an attractive trait? I happened to think that it was, and argued to that effect. And when, I demanded, were you going to use the word epigrammatic in day-to-day conversation? Now, I am all for reading and vocabulary-building, but as our generation used to say, let’s get relevant. I told Julian he didn’t need to know that one. He sighed. What did me in, though, was “My friend is a philanthropist, therefore he … goes to church with his family, gives away his possessions, pays off his credit cards, or plays the glockenspiel.” Without hesitation I told Julian that he would payoff the credit cards, and maybe play the glockenspiel in the evening for the neighbors. Julian suggested I forget trying to test him, because the correct answer was “gives away his possessions.” I argued that if you pay a high rate of interest on credit cards, you hurt your family, which should be your first area of philanthropy. Julian quietly closed the big book. I immediately apologized. The smile he gave me was pinched and ironic. But the review session was over. When Julian had retired to his room, r morosely poured myself a Cointreau and zapped the kernels for the popcorn balls. So much for philanthropy beginning at home.

  On Halloween morning, with this spiritual thought still rocketing around in my head, I finished icing the Sorry Cake and took off for the church. A brief wash of snowflakes marked the end of the flurry. Wisps of cloud drifted upward from the near mountains. In the church parking lot sat only two cars: the secretary’s pale blue 1 Honda, and a gleaming new Jeep Wagoneer that I guessed belonged to the Marenskys – who else would have the license plate MINX? Nowhere in sight was Father Olson’s Mercedes 300E, a four-wheel-drive vehicle that he claimed he needed to visit parishioners in remote locations. Well, our priest was probably off having one of his favorite things, a hilltop experience.

  When I came through the chur
ch door with the first bowls of fruit, Brad Marensky almost mowed me down.

  Oh, I m sorry, he yelped, and grabbed a teetering bowl of orange slices from my hands. While he was getting control of the bowl, I took a good look at him. Of medium build, Brad was a younger, more handsome version of his father, Stan. There was the same curly hair, jet-black instead of salted with gray, the; same high-cheek boned and olive-toned handsome face, smooth rather than deeply lined with anxiety. He also had his father’s dark eyes. I imagined those eyes had elicited romantic interest from more than one girl at Elk Park Prep. In catching himself and the bowl, and then sidestepping me, Brad moved like an athlete. Even without the aid of the Mountain Journal’s sports section, Brad’s all-round prowess, and his father’s relentless drills, were well known. The mothers at the athletic club made a great joke of Stan Marensky’s famous screech, “Come on, Brad! Come on, Brad!” Sometimes the coaches had to shut Stan up; they couldn’t make themselves heard.

  “Gosh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to crash into you. Aren’t you… doesn’t Julian live at your…”

  “Yes,” I said simply. “Julian Teller lives with my son and me. And I know your parents.”

  He blushed. “Well, sorry about the” – he looked down at what he had rescued – “the fruit.” He seemed tongue-tied. He held the bowl awkwardly, as if he were not quite sure what to do with it. Come to think of it, what was he doing in church on Halloween morning, anyway? Could the seniors just skip classes whenever they wanted?

  “What about you? You okay?” I asked.

  His face turned an even deeper shade of red. Avoiding my eyes, he pivoted on his heel and carefully placed the bowl on the tile floor next to the baptismal font. He turned back to me, pressed his lips together, and lifted his chin. Brad Marensky was not all right, that much was clear.