“I know, but he won’t listen to us. Pop,” he starts to say, and I think I know what he’s going to ask, “do you think Mom would go talk to him?”
Okay, I didn’t know what he was going to ask, but I understand.
My wife smiles most of the time and still giggles like she did when she was a girl. Some people think this means she’s easy to push around, but they don’t think that for long. “Of course. Or I could talk to Spratlin right now.”
David thinks his mother would be better but doesn’t want to say so, so he says, “I don’t want you to have to close the store early.”
“Who said anything about closing the store? He’s coming this way.”
“What?” David jerks around and looks through the window to see Spratlin crossing the street.
Professor Spratlin is a tall, thin man, and more of his bones show than with most people. He’s got an Adam’s apple that makes you believe that it was him who ate something he shouldn’t have, not Adam. And like I said before, he fidgets. Never had I seen him when his hands weren’t reaching into his pockets to come out with nothing and when his feet weren’t moving around as if he needs to use the restroom that we don’t let customers use because of what drunken college students can do to a restroom.
Before Spratlin can get into the store, David is halfway to the back room. “You talk to him, Pop. I’m afraid of what I might say.”
Why he thinks he’d say anything worse than what I’m thinking, I don’t know, but he’s gone before I can argue with him, and Spratlin opens the door.
I nod at him to say hello. Spratlin nods back and reaches for a shopping basket, which I know he’s going to bang into two or three shelves before he gets what he needs. Only he must be even more nervous than usual because I hear five thumps before he puts the basket on the counter in front of me. Of course, he knows David is my son, and even if he didn’t see David hide in the back room, he must be wondering if I know what he’s done.
I pick up the carton of milk as if I don’t already know the price and say, “How are you today?”
He takes a second to answer. “Well, it’s been a disturbing day.” He nods, shuffles his feet, and nods some more.
I punch in the price of the milk, then pick up the frozen chicken dinner. “David told me about what happened.”
“I trust he explained why I had to take that action.”
“He tried,” I say, “but he doesn’t really understand it himself. He told me you found out that somebody had cheated, but nobody would say who it was.”
“That’s correct,” he says, nodding.
“What he didn’t tell me was how you knew somebody cheated if you didn’t see it.”
He fidgets faster, and I know he doesn’t want to talk about it, but since I’ve still got his chicken dinner, he can’t leave. So he says, “Does it matter how I knew?”
I don’t answer him, but I don’t ring up his chicken dinner, either.
“It wasn’t hard to determine,” he says. “Two students handed in papers with the exact same answers to every problem.”
“You mean they got the same problems right and the same ones wrong?”
“Actually, both of them answered every problem correctly.”
I punch in the price of the chicken dinner and reach for a frozen lasagna. “How do you know they didn’t know the right answers?”
“From their previous history. Neither of them had participated in class discussions, both had done poorly on the midterm, and both had handed in poor term papers. It doesn’t seem reasonable that either of them would suddenly grasp the material.”
“Then I can understand why you think those two students cheated. What I don’t understand is why you are making the whole class pay for their wrongdoing.”
“Since the two students in question refused to confess, I prevailed upon the other students to tell me what they knew. None of them would.”
“How would they know?”
“Somebody must know. I cannot conceive of a way those two students could have cheated to that extent without another student witnessing it.”
“Were you there when they took the test?”
“Of course. I was in the front of the class, and my assistant was in the back. Admittedly Jordan was tired that morning from staying up to study for his own exams, but I’ve been teaching long enough to know the importance of staying alert.”
“But neither of you saw how they did it?”
“Obviously, the cheaters were resourceful enough to hide their actions from me. Still, there were twenty other students in that classroom, and I can’t believe that none of them saw anything. It’s just not possible.” For a few seconds he stops fidgeting and holds his mouth tight.
Now I understand. The cheating made him mad, but what really got to him was not being able to figure out how they did it. So he decided the whole class must be in on it, and he was going to punish them all. I ring up the lasagna and pick up a frozen Salisbury steak. “You say you’ve been a teacher a long time?”
“Over twenty years.”
“Then you must know the ways kids cheat. I haven’t taken a test other than my driving test since I left high school, but I remember. One way is to copy off another student’s paper. You would have seen that, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course, but the two students weren’t sitting anywhere near each other, and besides, one copying from the other wouldn’t explain how the first one got every problem right.”
“Then there’s writing the answers on a hand or a leg or on a piece of paper.”
“Neither of those are nearly as easy as they sound, especially not when the students are being watched. I’d have noticed the contortions if they had something written on their persons, and I don’t allow them to carry anything other than two pencils and the exam into the testing room, which limits their ability to hide a crib sheet.”
“There’s hiding the answers in the classroom before the test.”
“I don’t give the exam in our regular classroom, and I didn’t announce which room we’d be using until that morning. Besides, those possibilities imply that they knew what was going to be on the test. We covered a great deal of material—they didn’t know what I was going to ask.”
“What if they stole the test paper beforehand?”
“I didn’t make up the exam until the day before.” Then, not letting me ask my next question, he says, “Nobody could have hacked into my computer to get the test, either. My system is completely secure.”
From the way I’ve heard computer science majors talk in the store, I bet it wasn’t as protected as he thought, but it would probably have taken more than one night to get the test. I think of something else, too, but don’t bother to ask him about it when he’s so sure of himself.
Spratlin looks as if he’s sorry as he says, “Up until I graded the tests last night, I wouldn’t have thought there was any method of cheating I hadn’t seen.” He looks down at the frozen Salisbury steak, which isn’t going to be frozen much longer if I keep him there.
I ring it up and try to go slow while I ring up his loaf of bread, package of cheese slices, and jar of mayonnaise. I don’t know what else I can say to convince him, but I don’t want him to leave while David still has a 0 on his test. It’s while I’m holding that jar of mayonnaise, which is the smallest size jar of mayonnaise that I sell, that I think of something.
I say, “You know, you would be surprised to learn how much I know about the people who shop here, just from what they buy.”
His fidgeting gets worse, then better, then worse, as he tries to figure out why I’m changing the subject. “Is that so?”
“It is so,” I say. “Take what you’ve got here. Three frozen dinners, all different. That shows me that you don’t cook very much and you eat alone.”
“The cooking is obvious, but how do you know I don’t have a wife who likes frozen dinners?”
“Because there’s three, not two, and they’re different kinds.”
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Before he can argue that his imaginary wife has a hard time making up her mind, I say, “And this mayonnaise. To buy such a small jar means that you’re the only one who uses it. My uncle who lived alone bought small jars like this because a big jar would spoil before he finished it.” My uncle also was on a low-fat diet, but I don’t want to spoil my own argument. “Students come here, too, and if I were a betting man, I would bet that I could tell you things about them that you don’t know.”
He realizes where I’m going, but he keeps listening. “Like what?”
“Give me the names of some of your students, and I’ll tell you. Maybe the ones in the class with David.”
He’s got a little smile, and I think that even though he flunked everybody because he was mad, he knows it wasn’t a good thing to do, which means that I might be able to talk him out of it. He names three names, but luck isn’t with me, because I don’t recognize any of them. Then he names Leigh, a girl I do know. “There’s one thing that Leigh buys, but not when my son is here. She won’t buy it if there’s anybody else she knows, either.”
“Oh?”
I nod solemnly. “Every week she comes in and buys a soap opera magazine.”
He laughs and tells me Leigh is studying literature, which is why she keeps the soap opera magazines a secret. Then he names more names.
I tell him that Leo must be diabetic from what he buys, and Jim has jock itch, which I could tell as much from how he walks as from what he buys. I know his assistant Jordan, too, from the Stridex and science fiction magazines he buys. One time last week he must have finally gotten lucky because he bought men’s protections for the first time all semester. Tiffany works too hard, so she gets sick a lot and buys cough medicine, but Cindy must be a hypochondriac because nobody could need all the medicines she buys. I even tell him that I’m worried that Mary Ann is one of those who makes herself throw up because she buys so much junk food and stays so skinny. Spratlin looks concerned, and I wonder if he’s going to try to help her.
Then finally he names Chris, a boy David knows, and from the way he hesitates, Chris must be one of the students he thinks cheated.
“Chris must go to parties more than he goes to class,” I say. “He buys beer and pretzels and then has to come in for coffee before class to wake himself up. Since your class is a morning class, he must have missed it many times.”
Spratlin nods, which shows I’m not telling him anything new, but the next part he doesn’t know.
I say, “One thing about Chris. He’s smarter than he acts. Every semester, a week or two before exams, he quits going to parties. He comes by at night to get Coca-Cola and coffee, and he doesn’t smell like beer. When he comes by in the morning, even though he looks tired, he doesn’t look as if he’s suffering from the night before. That’s when he hits the books and learns what he should have been learning all semester.”
Spratlin stops fidgeting, and I know he’s thinking that maybe he made a mistake.
“Last week, Chris came in and bought two big bottles of Coke and said he was pulling an all-nighter to study. I was working that night because David was studying, too. In fact, he was studying for your exam.” I finally finish ringing up Spratlin’s things and put them in a bag to give him a chance to think.
Finally he says, “What about Deborah? Does she come in here?”
“Sometimes,” I say, knowing that she must be the other one who cheated. “She doesn’t talk much to me, not since I told her she has to pay with money, not a debit card. Since then she always pays with big bills, and I don’t think she likes the way I check her bills. Not that I’ve ever had a problem with her money, but you can’t be too careful. She came in that same night as Chris, but I guess she didn’t need to study. Maybe she was going to pull an all-nighter, but not with books. She bought a box of men’s protections.” In case Spratlin doesn’t know what I mean, I say, “Condoms.”
“I see.” Spratlin hands me money and reaches for his bag. “This has been quite illuminating, but I should be going.”
I know I’ve convinced Spratlin that Chris may be honest, but he thinks Deborah isn’t, so he won’t change his mind because he still doesn’t know how she cheated without someone seeing it. I decide it’s time for David to join us. “David,” I call.
David comes out. “Did you call me, Pop?”
“Professor Spratlin and I have a couple of questions for you.”
Actually, Spratlin wants to go, but now that I’ve said that, he can’t do anything except fidget. “It’s about one of your classmates.”
“I don’t know who cheated,” he says, and he glares at both of us. “And I wouldn’t tell if I did.”
“I know, it’s against the code to rat on another student, even if it means you get a 0 on an exam.”
“That attitude is common among subgroups, usually known as honor among thieves,” Spratlin says, as if he’s teaching a class. “Actually, professional criminals have no compunctions about turning in a fellow criminal if it’s expedient.”
Before David can argue about that, I say, “But since I’m not asking who cheated, it doesn’t matter. What I want to ask is whether or not your classmate Deborah has a boyfriend?”
David looks at Spratlin, who looks at him, and I know they’re both wondering why I care about Deborah’s boyfriends.
David says, “She says she’s dating some rich guy up at Yale, and she wanted to go to school up North to be near him, but her father made her come here. I think she came here because she couldn’t get into anyplace else with her grades, but her dad is an alum and has pull here.”
“Is her boyfriend visiting?”
“I don’t think so. All she’s been talking about is the trip to Paris their parents are giving them for graduation, and how they’re going to meet at the Eiffel Tower, and how romantic it’s going to be. Only I don’t think she’s going to graduate now.” He glares at Spratlin again, who looks down at his shuffling feet.
“Deborah is a pretty girl, isn’t she?” I say.
“If you like that type,” David says, as if I don’t know how much he likes blondes and as if I haven’t seen him watching her. Maybe Deborah’s blonde hair comes from a bottle, but it looks good.
“So Deborah, who doesn’t get good grades and whose boyfriend is in Connecticut, buys condoms. Of course, she could have been getting ready for her trip, but most people don’t pack the night before an exam.” Then I ask, “What about Jordan? Does he have a girlfriend?”
“Jordan?” David laughs. “No way.”
Spratlin is catching on. Now I ask him about what I thought of before but didn’t ask. “Professor Spratlin, you said nobody could have stolen the test because you only wrote it out the day before. Did you make copies for the students yourself?”
“No,” he says. “My assistant Jordan made the copies.” Then he nods slowly.
There’s no need for me to say more. Spratlin knows what I know, that even an honest assistant might be tempted by a pretty girl when he doesn’t have a girlfriend of his own. The only question is what Spratlin is going to do about it.
After a minute, Spratlin says, “David, I’m scheduling a meeting for the students in your class tomorrow afternoon. It’s going to be posted, but I’d appreciate it if you’d spread the word.”
“Yes, sir,” David says with a grin.
Spratlin starts to leave but turns back to say, “By the way, you got a 95 on the exam.”
So David wears his cap and gown and his new class ring to graduate Cum Laude, and since we don’t tell his mother beforehand, I get to hear her squeal and giggle when it’s announced. Then I get to explain to our relatives that this means David has graduated with honors, which is an honor for me.
Chris graduates, too, but not with honors. As for Deborah, her name is in the program, which was printed early, but when it’s her turn to get a diploma, they skip over her. I think her boyfriend is going to be lonely in Paris.
When we’re standing around after the
ceremony to take pictures of David and his diploma, Spratlin comes by to shake my hand and tell me how much he appreciates the psychology lesson. I tell him that maybe engineering is good for engineers and agriculture is good for farmers, but psychology is good for everyone. I say this in a loud voice, so other students and parents and professors can hear it. Spratlin smiles, and when he walks away, he isn’t fidgeting so much.
TONI L. P. KELNER has been living in Massachusetts for a few years now, but her heart belongs in North Carolina, where she grew up and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her mystery series, which features computer programmer Laura Fleming, takes place in Byerly, North Carolina, which, Kelner says, if it existed, would be located near Hickory and have its own exit off NC 321. Two of Kelner’s short stories have been nominated for an Agatha, a Macavity, and an Anthony between them.
Copyright 1997 by Toni L. P. Kelner. First printed in Murderous Intent, Fall 1997. Reprinted with permission of the author.
A Pyrrhic Mystery
Sarah R. Shaber
“Cecil Petty is dead,” the voice on the other end of the phone line crowed. Is that great or what?”
“That is good news,” Simon said. He was out of bed by now, drawing up his bedroom window shades, staring at the house across the street where Petty had lived for years.
“Do you think his daughter will move in, or will she sell the house?”
Simon’s caller was Mack Smith, a realtor who lived a couple of streets over, hence his obsession with the future of Petty’s house. He once told Simon that he started each day reading the obituaries, scanning for desirable addresses.
In Simon’s historic neighborhood residents were known by their homes as much as by their names. Mack owned a stucco mission home that would be ugly if it wasn’t so unusual. Simon lived in a Craftsman bungalow.
Petty’s cottage, the Hawthorne from the 1918 Sears mail-order catalog, was easily worth $400,000 today. Not bad appreciation for a one-bathroom shingled home that had arrived at its narrow lot in numbered pieces after a cross-country journey by rail.
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