The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “So he put it in for you only, huh?”

  “Stop looking amused,” she told him.

  “Just grinning to hide the sting, Les. He obviously shimmied up warmer to you. And I always thought I was pretty good with kids.”

  “We haven’t established it was Cunningham who put this in.”

  “Who else?” Click inquired.

  Sapperfield’s obit had of course been entered in the newsheet services, but with the minimum detail. Natives of the twenty-first century had learned to value their own privacy and respect other people’s. Not even the fuller notice to be entered in Owlsfane Garber’s school bulletin newscom Monday morning would include the fireflies’ names, nor Cunningham’s, nor the investigating officers’, unless they themselves cleared their identities for inclusion.

  And the tiplist had been keyed for Lestrade specifically, not for any polly who tabbed Sapperfield’s name. Not even Click.

  “It could have been his mother,” said the policewoman. “Or his father. Baez lives in the Nineteen Sixties. They had some computers then. Or their house manager, M. Whitworth.”

  “It could have been.” Click sounded as if he was humoring her. “None of them would have wanted to include their kid’s name in this little bonus.” He riffled the printout through a few centimeters of air.

  “We don’t know that Cunningham hated Sapperfield. Not any worse than the student body in general seems to have hated him.” Lestrade took the list back and looked it over again. “We can guess it’s someone’s suspicions. A witness to the fact would have kept it down to one name, maybe two if the light was bad. It’s not likely all four of these people look that much alike.”

  “Want me to run ’em through a comcheck?” he offered.

  “No, go back to Narcine. I was planning to program my afternoon around the Sapperfield case anyway.”

  Chapter 7

  She settled back down in her cubicle with the printout, her notecom, and a fresh mug of coffee.

  Wallace Dutois, family name Epstein, was Cunningham’s “Big D.” She doublechecked that with her notecom. Even if you had a photocopy memory, you kept the habit of checking your notes and databanks. M. Dutois had hated M. Sapperfield for calling him by his disliked family name. But Sheryl Hawthorne had hated Sapperfield for the same reason, and her name was not on the list. Maybe Big D had harbored other grievances against the dead prof.

  Elfreda Swanneck (family name Rockefeller) and Carolyn Tintorelli (family name Hopkins) turned out to be a couple of Sapperfield’s fellow teachers. Tintorelli was twenty-seven years old and taught art—technique, history, appreciation, correspondences, and application to perceptive persuasions. Like ninety or ninety-five percent of all fulltime teachers below college level, she was a registered reality perceiver.

  Swanneck was one of the five to ten percent registered as fantasy perceivers. Probing beyond the Owlsfane Garber and Names and Prints databases to Central Fiduciary would probably reveal that her family fortune was blasted and she had taken employment rather than sink to the slums. Fanciers tended to perceive teaching as relatively respectable, even genteel. They could persuade themselves they were Molding Young Minds. In a sense, they were. There was always a limited number of openings for staff fanciers in primary and middle schools, especially richblood institutions like Owlsfane Garber. Swanneck was fifty-eight and listed as teaching needlecraft and early medieval history. In practice, her chief function would be drifting from homeroom to homeroom and co-chairing seminar discussions on the all-important midschool topic, Do I Want To Be a Realizer Or a Fancier When I Grow Up? Without staff fanciers, students would have to get all their impressions of the grownup fancy class from occasional community resource volunteers and from society as they glimpsed it. Unless they had a fancy-class parent or two. Like Cunningham Roberts Cunningham. Their little realizer.

  At a school like Owlsfane Garber, a good percentage of students must have plenty of personal experience with fancy-class parents, relatives, and adult friends of the family. Maybe Sapperfield had found snide little ways to make Swanneck feel superfluous as well as impoverished.

  Lestrade hyphenated the syllables, put it together with Swanneck’s first name and official subject areas, and guessed her perceptional world was likely Anglo-Saxon Britain. If she lived on the cusp of 1066, and if something had made her see Sapperfield as a Norman enemy ...

  Both Swanneck and Tintorelli had been on the staff long enough to have the voiceprint open sesame, and their names checked with Click’s tenure printout. Paolo Pinesweep (family name O’Reilly) was on the Owlsfane Garber payroll as plant manager (building engineer, custodian, janitor, maintenance expert, whatever term he preferred). Since that included keeping up the aquanatorium, terrarium, and solar greenhouse, he needed degrees in gardening and ecosystems as well as high-proficiency marks in architectural maintenance skills and electronics. He had them all, plus a bachelor’s in natural powerpaks. He was thirty-one and listed as being in his third year at Owlsfane Garber, which meant he was either a thinking machine or a slick scholar to have copped all his degrees by twenty-eight. That kind tended to ambition. Lestrade was surprised he had spent more than two years at any midschool, even a lush “Middle College.” He didn’t have tenure, but because of possible emergencies in the organic systems, he had the Sanjack open sesame. Naturally, he was a registered reality perceiver. His position was the kind closed to fanciers except by extraordinary certification.

  The way the names were listed might tell Lestrade something about her anonymous informant: Dutois and Swanneck by both first and final names, Swanneck with an M., Tintorelli and Pinesweep by emmed final name only. That suggested a student, someone who thought of most grownups as “M. Whatevers.” Swanneck could be one of the types who believed in making free with their first names to people of all ages and degrees of acquaintance. Either that or the informant held an extreme Realizers’ Burden attitude toward all fanciers. Or it could go the other way—the informant might first-name Swanneck in emotional kinship, straight-em the two reality perceivers more in shyness than respectful equality.

  Or maybe the informer just happened to know two first names and not the other two. But that didn’t argue much insight into why Tintorelli and Pinesweep might have hated Sapperfield.

  “It wasn’t Cunningham,” she whispered to herself. “He wouldn’t have tried to cover his slip about Big D last night and then finger Dutois today. Not Cunningham. Besides, he would have emmed him, too.”

  Who else, then? Someone who had found out early about Sapperfield’s death and Lestrade’s connection with the case. Maybe her partner had been left out of the tip through forgetfulness, accident, or a gap in communications. Someone who knew something about personalities and relationships at Owlsfane Garber Middle College but not about Sapperfield’s social life (if any) outside the school—but the death site pointed to a killer who would have had business being in the school, and the informer should see as well as the pollies that school enemies were the logical starters. Finally, someone who probably glimpsed the situation from a student’s-eye view, either direct or through a student informant.

  She blanked her screen and entered a private temp-record list of possible informers, starting with the adults in Cunningham’s immediate family group:

  * * * *

  MARY ROBERTS EXECUTRIX

  WOODSTOCK CUNNINGHAM BAEZ

  DILLY W. WHITWORTH

  * * * *

  They could have school gossip from Cunningham, and they would have strong motivation to direct investigation elsewhere.

  She doubted the school princeps would have taken time from his busy weekend to tab into her police databank from a terminal in the Rockies. Besides, a head teacher would list all his suspects alike, final names only or first and final both. But to be complete she added him:

  * * * *

  NELHYBEL CAGE

  * * * *<
br />
  She thought a moment and added Cunningham’s friend “Badger”:

  * * * *

  RON BADDERLEY

  * * * *

  Who else might Cunningham have phoned the news to between last night and this noon? She added the names of both classmates he had let slip out last night, even though she doubted a midschool kid would think subtly enough to smokescreen his own name in a tiplist:

  * * * *

  SHERYL SCARBOROUGH HAWTHORNE

  WALLACE EPSTEIN DUTOIS

  * * * *

  Cunningham would have a lot more buddies, and either he or they could have spread the news around, but Lestrade had no way as yet of checking their names from the school enrollment list.

  She tabbed for a printout and blanked the screen copy as soon as she had the paper. She frowned at the seven names for a moment and was about to start running them through a broadsweep databank check for connections when she paused, opened the non-library book she had found in Sapperfield’s apartment, and penciled the owner’s name onto her list:

  * * * *

  MANDRA LOTUS

  * * * *

  “I wonder why we didn’t find books from anybody else’s personal library?” she muttered. Sapperfield must have been the type to borrow volumes and never return them. “Maybe all his other acquaintances got wise.”

  Mandra Lotus (family name Wang) proved to be an eighth-grade, or “post-graduate,” student at Owlsfane Garber, and an older cousin of Sheryl Hawthorne. Lestrade’s afternoon of data scanning produced no other relationships she had not learned about already through other channels. The dead man’s nearest relatives were cousins as distant in geography as genealogy, and if he had had any close connections outside school, the data stats did not reveal them.

  Chapter 8

  Sunday coincided with one of Lestrade’s days off that week. Usually days off meant precious hours to crack her chronic job depression—cut out for a nature sanctuary or some fully costumed and stageset realizers’ theater, occasionally (during bad weather) play homekeeper and houseclean her three rooms, then turn her small fireplace on to about point-seven and sit in front of it with cocoa and a good book or lap showscreen.

  Today she sat and tapped her fingers on the book with the bookplate of Mandra Lotus.

  Potential evidence? No more so than anything else in Sapperfield’s apartment. Everything connected with a murder victim could be tagged as possible evidence, but at some point in the streamlining, simplification, and general budget-deflating that followed the Decade of Reform, guidelines had gotten laid down that only bric-a-brac from the actual scene of death should be tagged, unless there were strong and obvious grounds to look elsewhere as well or unless an underground network seemed to be involved. The guidelines had tightened through the century until the modern ideal was to investigate with as little upset as possible to people’s everyday privacy. Al Everymind had summed it up in his commentary on the crucial midcentury Supreme Court decisions: “We finally learned that, except when the perpetrator looks likely to strike again, it’s better to let guilt go unpunished than risk tangling up the lives of innocent suspects.”

  Many a frustrated polly, Lestrade among them, had thrown darts into that quotation card where it was tacked up for the purpose on a corkite board in the squad backroom. But with no mourners ready to pump special investigation funds into the police budget, and no reason—beyond the fact that it had happened in a midschool—to give Sapperfield’s death more than minimum expense of workhours and money, this copy of Mara, Daughter of the Nile might be worth more as entry token than potential evidence.

  Lestrade looked up the address on her homescreen and set out. Mandra Lotus, daughter of Arthur Wang Greene and Abigail Hefner Greene, lived with her family at 213 McCarthy Way on the north side, in a house signposted “The Greene Bungalow.” Two acres of yard surrounded it, with a light-fountain in front. Not quite so nobby a neighborhood as Novoposhni Restates, but hardly the slums.

  The door had both chime button and functional brass knocker. A few moments after Lestrade knocked, it opened inward ten centimeters to catch on an optimistic guard chain. Nobody but fanciers had trusted or bothered with doorchains for at least fifty years.

  “M. Greene?” said the policewoman. “I’m Sergeant Lestrade, Regional Police.”

  “Do you have any identification?”

  Lestrade held up her notecom with I.D. laminated on the back. The homekeeper studied it and unchained the door. Maybe five years younger than Lestrade, she wore long, artificially grayed hair in a bun, a front-buttoning white tunic, and a beige skirt that hung halfway to her ankles.

  “Sergeant Lestrade? My husband is out, but can I help you? I’m Mrs. Greene.” She emphasized the “Mrs.” She went on, “Is anything wrong? It’s not Art, is it? Oh, God, nothing’s happened to Art?”

  “Not that I know of, Mrs. Greene. I just stopped to return something of your daughter’s. Is she in?”

  “Ginny or Mandra?”

  “Mandra.”

  “She isn’t in trouble, is she?”

  “Not with us, M.,” Lestrade reassured her, turning the “M.” into a “ma’am.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Greene glanced toward the bagged book under Lestrade’s elbow. “Well, you can give it to me. I’ll see she gets it.”

  “I’d rather give it back to her myself, ma’am. Not speaking as a polly, just as someone returning a lost item.” Lestrade grinned and sucked a whiff of anise-flavored air through her pipe. “I’ve driven out quite a little distance. It’d feel like a letdown not to finish the good deed in person, if she’s around.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course. I see.” Mrs. Greene turned and shouted, “Mandra!” at the back of the house, then turned back to her visitor and said, “Can I offer you a cup of coffee, Sergeant? Mandra may be a few minutes.”

  “Coffee would be fine, ma’am.” Even with all her experience, Lestrade still felt a little social awkwardness with fanciers so deeply immersed in the past as to keep the old, gender-differentiated forms of address and follow the custom of changing final name to match that of the spouse, which practice had been obsolete since the Reform eliminated marriage as a civil institution, leaving it strictly to religious option, and substituting civil permits to propagate. Even in more than fifteen years of police work, you didn’t meet that many misters and missuses, and this afternoon Lestrade didn’t have the shell of official business that could excuse a certain amount of brusqueness.

  She followed Mrs. Greene into a plain beige living room where the only thing out of place was a spotless ivory-colored pillow which the homekeeper promptly puffed up and balanced at the end of the couch. “Please excuse the mess,” she apologized. Turning to the stairs, she called, “Mandra!” once more. Then, back to her visitor, “You men have no idea what it’s like to be a mother. Oh, don’t misunderstand, Sergeant—I’m not blaming you. You don’t know how lucky you are. No, please don’t look at my kitchen, it’s in a terrible state. You men simply have no idea. I’ll bring your coffee out to you. Cream and sugar?”

  “Black with honey.”

  “Honey?” Mrs. Greene’s note of surprise bordered on disapproval.

  “Sugar will be fine. Black with sugar.” Lestrade’s hostess might perceive all sweeteners as sugar. The policewoman sat carefully on the smooth couch, watched the stairs, and breathed freer when Mrs. Greene bustled on to the kitchen.

  Even after looking at her police ID, quite a few fantasy perceivers saw Lestrade as a man. That was no problem. It could be an advantage. But people who had gone back to being Mr., Mrs., Miss, and sometimes even Master usually insisted on some forgotten code of etiquette that left other people dancing on thin realglass with them. Mrs. Abigail Greene could be living in any world from the 1950s back to whenever it was that “Mrs.” first became the exclusive mark of a married woman. That covered a lot of favorite fancy-clas
s eras, but most fanciers idealized their history enough to enjoy modern freedoms as well as modern conveniences.

  Mandra’s choice of another final name than “Greene” was probably sufficient to mark her as a young rebel in her mother’s world.

  Mrs. Greene was still in the kitchen when the girl finally appeared on the stairs, calling, “All right, Mom, what’s ...” Halfway down, she looked at Lestrade and halted before descending the rest of the stairs in silence.

  “M. Lotus? Miss?” Lestrade was in some doubt, not only about which title the daughter preferred, but about whether this was the thirteen-year-old Mandra or her sixteen-year-old sister.

  “M., please. ...” The girl acted like a scared puppy. “Did you—you didn’t come just to see me?”

  “To return this.” Lestrade handed her the book in its brown plastifilm bag. “Actually, I could’ve left it with your mother, but I hoped to see you pleased at getting it back.”

  Mandra slid it out far enough to see what it was. “Thank you. Are you—Thank you for giving it straight to—” She slid it back into the bag as Mrs. Greene returned with porcelain coffee things on a silver tray.

  “Good. You decided to hear your mother’s voice.” Mrs. Greene set the tray on the coffee table and sat on the couch. “One lump or two, Sergeant? Well, Mandra, have you thanked Sergeant Lestrade for bringing it back to you, whatever it is?”

  “Yes, Mother, I thanked her.” Mandra’s look of anxious guilt might be nothing more than common jitters in the presence of police. But Lestrade didn’t get much chance to study it.

  Pausing with sugar tongs poised, Mrs. Greene repeated, “Her?” and squinted hard at the visitor. “Sergeant Lestrade, are you a woman?”

  “That’s right. Rosemary Lestrade.” Having kept her voice casual, the policewoman held out her hand for the coffee mug.

  Mrs. Greene stood, carrying it out of reach, and frowned down. “Why did you lead me to believe you were a man?”