Schooled in Murder

by Zubro, Mark Richard

  “Yes. I don’t know him well.”

  “You know anything about the threatening notes Pinyon received?”

  “First I heard of them.”

  I said, “There was a rumor mentioned last night that Spandrel was going to resign as head of the department.”

  “I’ve heard no such thing. Can you imagine the fights?”

  I could. I said, “Do you have any notion of how Carl Pinyon could have gotten the information about who had gone to out-of-district seminars? He had information going back thirty years.”

  “Didn’t he think people would ask that question? That’s kind of bold.”

  “If he’s being protected by Graniento, Spandrel, Bochka, and Towne, he’d have nothing to fear.”

  “I don’t know where he got it.”

  She put the car back in gear and began to drive back to school.

  I said, “Do you want me to scoot down in the seat so I won’t be seen?”

  “It’s not funny. People have died.”

  I said, “Or I could get out a block or two before we get to school.”

  “We may have to do that.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Fear. Danger. Everything. Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No. No. No. I’m trying to help.” She was near tears. “Just believe me. You need eyes in the back of your head.”

  Two blocks from school she pulled to the side of the road. I looked at her. She was shaking.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. I wish I could do more.”

  “Are you afraid someone is going to try and kill you?” “No. Don’t be absurd.” She looked at me. “They wouldn’t.”

  “Spandrel, Graniento, Towne, and Bochka?” “Anyone. I think we’d all better be very careful.” “Do you want me to get out here?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I would.

  She looked at me. She looked at the road, the sun, the sky, the grass, the houses, and then me again. She said, “This is madness.” She drove to her parking spot and let me out.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She said, “Be careful.” As my hand was on the door, she said, “Don’t worry about missing the first seminar. I’ve fixed it. You were meeting with one of the LD teachers about an emergency staffing for a kid.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I didn’t care about the seminar. I hurried to the library. Meg was behind a stack of books she was beginning to catalogue.

  I said, “She told me to beware of Graniento, Bochka, Spandrel, and Towne.”

  “Good advice.”

  “But she wouldn’t tell me to beware of what.”

  “Everything. You should talk to Ludwig Schaven. I saw him earlier. He was in tears.”

  “He wasn’t last night.”

  “He was upset this morning and claiming that no one would listen to him. You might be the perfect person for him to unburden himself to.”

  20

  I didn’t see Schaven anywhere. I waited for Carl Pinyon outside the gradebook seminar. When he came out, I said, “Can I talk to you for a few minutes?”

  He looked uncomfortable.

  I said, “It might help with what you guys were asking me about last night.”

  He nodded.

  We slipped into my classroom.

  I said, “I’m curious to know where you got your figures about who went to which seminars going all that far back.”

  “How will that help you find out information from the police–and find the killer, for that matter?”

  “Maybe someone thought you uncovered something shady in their going to conferences–fraud in submitting travel vouchers, illegal or improper or unethical activity of some kind. Maybe your information was the motive for murder. Cheating on travel vouchers, depending on the amount of money, could be a serious problem for someone.”

  “I can’t tell you where I got it.”

  I said, “Maybe Eberson and Higden had knowledge that you had. You’re not worried that you could be next?”

  And if he wasn’t, maybe I could get the idea planted in his head, get it to fester, and thus get more information out of him. It was worth a try.

  “No one kills over that kind of stuff, do they?” He sounded uncertain.

  I said, “You couldn’t have asked all the people involved. Some of them are retired and even if you got in touch with them, they would be suspicious and unlikely to answer. From that long ago, a few could even be dead. I’d have heard if you were asking those kinds of questions of people currently on the staff. The information has to have come from their files. Everybody has to submit paperwork when they take a trip somewhere, and a copy is kept in their permanent file. Either the people with legitimate access did all the work for you, or you went through all those files yourself. That would have taken a lot of work for one person. My guess is it would have taken hours and hours for several of you. No one is allowed into the personnel files except administrators.”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong. You should be concentrating on who’s been stealing stuff from other teachers. People always accuse the progressives of being spies for the administration. Well, the other faction has been stealing things from our classrooms.”

  This was not a new accusation either.

  I said, “That is not a union issue.”

  “And who went where on what conference is a union issue?”

  “Not really.”

  “But you’re asking about it. If you ask about one, you should ask about the other.”

  Pinyon was short and stout. The way someone who has stopped working out once he got married would look after about three years of continuing to eat at the rate and in the quantities he did when he exercised.

  I said, “Remember, you guys came to me yesterday.”

  “To find out what happened to Gracie–and now Peter, I guess. That means someone from that ancient faction must have been angry enough to kill.”

  “They’d be angry at whoever got that information. Maybe you’re next. Did Peter and Gracie help you get it?”

  “Ah … no.”

  If a teenager had spoken with that hesitation and look away, I would have said he lied.

  I switched to a different track of questions. “Did Peter have enemies?”

  “No. He was a real friendly guy. He was always ready to go out and party. He was great. Knew all the best places for drink specials. He knew how to throw a party. I don’t guess anybody would be really angry with him.”

  “Maybe he made an anti-Semitic remark in front of someone who didn’t like it.”

  “Hey, he didn’t mean those things. He was just trying to be funny.”

  “Were other people laughing?”

  “Sure.”

  “No one stood up and said, ´Stop that, I find it offensive’?”

  “He was just being funny. He made comments about all ethnic groups. Arabs, Jews. Everybody. He’s got free-speech rights.”

  The good old First Amendment defense reared its head. I said, “Because he has First Amendment rights doesn’t put him above criticism. It doesn’t mean somebody else isn’t offended. I assume you also think the offended person has free-speech rights to say they are offended? Did you hear him make those kinds of remarks?”

  “I guess. Sure.”

  “And it didn’t offend you?”

  “Everybody was laughing. It was a joke. Look, I’m not here to be criticized by you.”

  I said, “Did he fight with anyone in the young teachers’ faction?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Was he always that overbearingly friendly with everyone?”

  “Sure.”

  There had to be people besides Benson and the old guard who found him offensive. If Benson was annoyed, maybe others in his faction were, too.

  21

  I hustled to the second seminar and arrived on time. It was a group-dynamic seminar presented by s
omeone who lectured the entire time. So much for her belief in group work. At least it wasn’t another one of those ninnies with their multicolored Post-it notes, replacing product with process. Yes, yes, paying attention to process is vital, and you need to do the basics every time, but when process-is-the-product becomes a style of work, nothing ever gets done. At least she didn’t pitch the fifty-third revision of our mission statement at us. Mission statement for schoolteachers–let’s think about that, it’s a tough one: to teach children? You might think that, but that would be wrong. Or at least, that simple statement doesn’t involve enough process to justify some ninny’s five-thousand-dollar fee for a seminar. I stayed awake throughout. I considered that a triumph. Mostly I stewed and brooded about factions and murder. Not so good.

  Tammy Choate, the head of the GLSEN chapter at the school, found me as we were breaking for lunch. GLSEN is the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network and does wonderful work with gay and lesbian teenagers. She and I had traded off duties running the group for a couple of years until she took it over completely. It was a relief for me to have one less responsibility.

  She motioned me into an empty classroom. Tammy was an out lesbian, a slender attractive woman in her early forties. During the month before school ended during her first year, a student, who was a spy for the religious right, attended one of the GLSEN meetings. Tammy had mentioned the importance of safe sex. She hadn’t asked if anyone was having sex or suggested that they do or do not engage in intimate activity, just that safe sex was important. She’d been warned about talking to kids inappropriately. A few parents had gone nuts. Bochka, the notorious school board president, had led the charge to get her fired. Tammy chose to take a warning letter in her file rather than fight. She was grateful for the job I’d done of stepping in and helping her out. She taught French to freshmen and sophomores.

  She said, “You’ve heard all the rumors about Gracie and Mabel? That they’re lesbians.”

  “Yeah. Do you know if it’s true?”

  She took a deep breath. “It’s true,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s going to come out, and there’s going to be a scandal. And it might reflect on the GLSEN teen group. Or me. I don’t know if I can go through a fight.”

  “How would them being lesbians affect the group or you?”

  “Anything that makes us look bad can have a negative effect.”

  “But the kids aren’t involved.”

  “It can hurt.”

  “Are you sure the rumor is true?”

  “Yes, they used my apartment in the city for their trysts.”

  Well, there was confirmation in trumps and spades.

  “You mean they stayed overnight.”

  “They couldn’t stay overnight. They were both married. A lot of those supposed shopping trips and dinner and drinks at trendy north side bars?”

  I nodded.

  “Not happening.”

  “Did you go out with them?”

  “A few times. They were fun to go drinking with. Mabel could be hysterically funny.”

  I tried to put this delicately, “You were never invited to join them?”

  “In the bedroom? No. I have a lover. You’ve met Bernice.” I vaguely remembered a heavy-set woman.

  I said, “You weren’t worried about drinking with the head of the department?”

  “She wasn’t head of my department.”

  “How’d this all get started?”

  “I was on some stupid cross-curricular committee with them. We’d go to lunch together. We had great times. We started going out in the evening. Sometimes it was just a girls’ night out. Sometimes others would join us, most often Peter Higden, sometimes Ludwig Schaven and Basil Milovec, maybe a few others.”

  “Were Higden, Schaven, and Milovec in on the sexual activity?”

  “We all stopped at my place, but Schaven and Milovec were never there without me being there.”

  “You sure?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe they went back when it was only supposed to be Eberson and Spandrel.”

  “I can’t imagine Schaven. He’s very involved with his kids. He wouldn’t have the time.”

  “He had time to go drinking.”

  “That was once in a while.”

  “You left Higden out of the list of who was there when you weren’t.”

  “Spandrel and Eberson would laugh about him. He said he enjoyed doing it with two women. Should I be telling you this? I’m so worried.”

  We’d always trusted each other. I said, “It might help catch the killer.”

  “Oh right. Well, I’m not sure how this would, but Spandrel and Eberson said Higden wasn’t as good as something hand-held. That he wasn’t very …” She lowered her voice. “Big.”

  “Oh,” I said. More information than I needed, but I wasn’t going to stop her either.

  “And,” her voice got even lower, “not just small, but really small, and that he wasn’t very good. He got done in minutes–sometimes seconds. The three of us would laugh about it. Is that terrible?”

  “I don’t think so. For Peter, maybe–not for you. Has Spandrel tried to talk to you at all today?”

  “I tried to find her, but she’s been in meetings all morning.”

  “You were buddies with that faction,” I said. “What did they say about the old guard in the English department?”

  “They never said anything about you. That might have been because they know we’ve worked together with the gay kids.”

  I asked, “Did they ever talk about why they were so desperate to impose their views on the rest of us?”

  “Not really. Mostly we were out partying and having a good time. They’d make fun of the people in the other faction sometimes.”

  “Spandrel would make fun of other staff members in front of teachers in the department?”

  “I know she isn’t supposed to, but she would sometimes. ” She shook her head and said, “As long as none of this comes down on the kids or me.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” I said.

  She ran her hands through her clipped-short hair. “Two friends of mine are dead. It’s just so awful.” She sniffed and gulped. “And I’m a little scared. What if the deaths had something to do with them being together? Could Spandrel be in danger? Could Spandrel be …”

  “A killer?”

  “She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.”

  “She might have been afraid of Eberson or Higden or you telling.”

  “I never would. They never had. None of us would. Why be afraid now?”

  Good questions to which I had no answers.

  22

  I hurried to the library to find Meg. When I walked in, Scott was sitting behind the circulation desk. I smiled. We hugged briefly. He asked, “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  Meg strode in. She said, “Let’s blow this dump.”

  On institute days teachers had an hour for lunch.

  We picked up Georgette in the office and left. Meg drove.

  I filled them in on what I’d learned.

  When I finished, Meg told us what she found out. “I have a confirmation on the lesbian affair angle as well.”

  Scott said, “I don’t get it. Who cares if they’re lesbians?”

  I said, “They were both married.”

  “To guys?” Scott asked.

  “Yep.”

  Scott said, “Maybe the husbands were pissed off.” “One or both,” Georgette added.

  Meg said, “My sources say neither spouse knew about the infidelity. Medium-reliable on the source.”

  Meg had a classification system for her sources, from unreliable to medium to very reliable.

  We stopped at the Pancake Palace on LaGrange Road.

  Georgette asked, “Is somebody saying that one of them would break into the school, or sneak into the school, and kill his wife’s lover or his wife?”

  “It could happen,” Meg said, “although it doesn’t strike me as pro
bable.”

  I said, “Having tawdry affairs is way up there on the gossip meter, but I’m not sure it adds up to murder. Although if either husband knew …” I shrugged. “That could change things.”

  Scott said, “Isn’t this all kind of sordid? This school district is like Peyton Place on speed.”

  I said, “You’ve heard my stories over the years. Obviously murder is out of the ordinary, but tawdry affairs, sure.” Plus, I’d been in on union meetings where I heard about adults behaving in ways that most people would find extremely odd.

  Meg said, “If Peter Higden was doing three-ways with them, it’s a connection. It’s sexual. It’s got passion. It’s just not clear if that is the connection that led to murder.”

  “Do we tell the cops?” Georgette asked.

  Scott said, “Not until we talk to our lawyer. And remember, we don’t have the word of any of the individuals involved. We only have secondhand knowledge.”

  “They used Choate’s apartment,” I said. “She wasn’t part of it.”

  “Said she wasn’t,” Scott said. “Trust no one.”

  “Why would she tell me if she had something to hide?”

  Scott said, “I think we need to be completely suspicious.”

  I nodded, then said, “Pinyon getting that information about teacher travel is suspicious.”

  Meg said, “The deaths came immediately after that.”

  Scott said, “Killing turkeys causes winter,” the catchphrase he and I used to summon logic police to counter remarks such as “That hurricane hit because you are sinners.” Proximity does not mean causation, a concept the religious right and far too many other people find difficult to master.

  Meg smiled, “I get the idea, but something caused them, and we can’t find anything logical–to us. Something has to be logical to the killer.”

  Georgette said, “None of the secretaries know who got into the files. It has to be an administrator. I don’t suppose the police would take fingerprints in the storage room.”

  Meg said, “Probably not on what we’ve got so far.”

  I asked Georgette, “Who was fixing grades?”

  She ticked the points off on her fingers. “Spandrel, the head of the department, changed answers on the kids’ standardized tests. Graniento, our beloved principal, fixed grades for athletes and to keep the graduation rates up. I have copies of everything from before they started messing with the computers and each subsequent day.”