“Get that into a temporary-effect pill and you’ll make a fortune. So Sapperfield was enough of a fancier that he saw them, too?”’
“I doubt it. I’m not sure which species they really are. At one time or another I’ve seen all the species catalogued for our ’natorium—identified them by their pictures—so either they take turns being my mermaids or it’s a few individuals from each species. The biggest one at Owlsfane Garber is no longer than my hand. That’s another trouble with teaching in a midschool. We don’t keep any large specimens, dangerous or not. At a good marina, now ...” He smacked his lips. “They tell me they’re all porpoises and dolphins.”
“Mmm. And how do you know Sapperfield liked to slip in alone to bother the mermaids?”
“They told me.” Jones shrugged. “Don’t ask me to explain it. I hear them talking. Could be like my old psych coach told me: the words are really coming from my own mind. Maybe I heard someone mention it about Sapperfield in gossip, it went into my subconscious and comes back through the mermaids. They tell me he always has to wear the life jacket because if he gets too close they’ll gang up to pull him in and pay him back. Maybe it’s all just from my own mind.”
“But in everything else you’re a reality perceiver.”
“Definitely.”
Click pressed his right sole comfortably against the smooth, cool back of the desktop computer terminal. “Sapperfield knew about this one little fantasy quirk, did he? I understand he was handy with computer snooping.”
Jones made a shrugging kind of gesture with his spread palms. “He could have known. So what? I don’t broadcast it, but I don’t secretize it, either. It doesn’t affect this job one way or the other, and if it did, I’m planning to get out of here any term now, anyway. It’ll be a sterling advantage when I get where I’m going.”
“Which is?”
Jones rubbed his hands. “Aqua ballet. Water choreography for big screen and little screen, live shows, the works. So you see, Sapperfield couldn’t have hurt my chances. At most, he was nothing but a minor annoyance to me. At that, one I almost never saw.”
“But your mermaids hated him. They wanted to drag him in.”
“I told you, to all legal intents and purposes I’m a registered realizer. No, a school of angelfish and sea horses couldn’t have dragged him and tabbed the button on him. I sympathized with them, yes. But in the final readout they’re M. Pinesweep’s responsibility, not mine.” Jones got up and went to the desk. “Hate to break Confession Hour, padre polly, but it’s time to get ready for my tadpoles.”
“Right. Be out of here in twenty seconds,” Click said, making no move to get up. “Just fill me in on your movements Friday afternoon and evening. Doesn’t matter right now if you can verify them or not.”
“Ah.” Jones shut his eyes. “Let’s see. I left the building about fourteen fifteen or fourteen thirty. The room profs would still have been in their study halls and seminars. Including Sapperfield. I drove home, slicked up, ate at Christopher’s, and spent the rest of the night club-hopping. Don’t ask me to remember which clubs in which order. Yes, I could have slipped back into Owlsfane Garber. I didn’t, but I could have.”
“Mm-hmm.” Click patted his pocket, shutting off the tapebox.
“If you’re going to fingerprint me, better do it fast.” Jones started tapping computer keys.
“Maybe later. If we have to get official. Meanwhile, nice chatting with you, stick around town, and all that.” Click glanced around. Half the boys seemed already on their way out, carrying their footwear and straightening their tunics on the way. “Well, I’ll be following them along any minute now, just slip out between waves.” The policeman started swinging his legs down, but stopped on hearing Jones give a short whistle. “Something?”
“Excused absence. Cunny. Cleared by Princeps Cage on the parents’ and Doc Gentle’s recommendations.”
“Cunny. Cunningham R. Cunningham?”
“Form of clearance shows he’s in school today but indisposed for swimming. Sounds like what M. Rivers gets with some of her senior girls. Hey, was that the kid who found the body?”
“I heard somewhere you had a terrific grapevine here. Guess it’s got its holes, hey?” Click loved the chance to be cryptic.
“Word is that for now the tadpole’s identity stops with parents, pollies, and Princeps Cage. And maybe Doc Gentle?”
“And maybe your little mermaids.”
Jones tapped his nails on the comscreen. “I expect they’ll know it by tomorrow. Things get around. Like who gets called to Cage’s cage this evening. And who can’t face swimming class today. Like you said, a terrific grapevine.”
“I wonder if M. Rivers had any sudden excused absences this morning,” Click remarked.
“Hmm. Yes, it could have been a girl. From some of the stories ...” Jones broke off and looked back up at Click. “Oh, no, you don’t, M. Polly. You’re not going to watch me groping at a riddle when you already know the answer.”
“Privcom Rule of 1999,” Click said, turning to go. “Well, that looks like the last of them. Time for me to file out before your tadpoles arrive.”
Chapter 19
Dutois, Swanneck, Tintorelli, and Pinesweep. The policewoman ran their names through her brain as she proceeded down the hall. Why concentrate on those four rather than on, say, Rivers, Fermi, Cage, and Badger Badderley? Or Adagio, Hawthorne, Mandra Lotus, and ...
Because she had an anonymous tiplist naming Dutois, Swanneck, Tintorelli, and Pinesweep. It might have come from someone who was just guessing. Or from the murderer, sidetracking her down false trails. (But why her in particular? Why not her partner as well? Or why not key the list to the police in general?) Possibly from someone indulging an old grudge. But a grudge against four individuals, one of them a student? Maybe, if the tipster was a student. A student could easily develop grudges against three profs and a fellow student.
No, two profs, a fellow student, and the maintenance engineer. Thinking back over her own school years, Lestrade could remember maintenance personnel only as vague presences who had little to do with students. Of course, she had not gone to a school like this one until college. No aquanatoriums, greenhouses, or terrariums in her almas, nothing that required maintenance engineers with degrees in ecosystems. In her generation and economic bracket, they had been custodians or building keepers, and as far as she knew they had done most of their work after school hours. M. Pinesweep came on the job at eleven hundred. Not impossible that he might have closer contacts with the student body.
And then, she remembered Darcy ... what was Darcy’s final name? That little quip with all the golden curls, from Clare Booth Luce Primeschool. The custodian, poor old M.—Astroturf?—was the big bogybog of Darcy’s nightmares, or so she claimed. Midschoolers were still young enough for bogybogs, especially midschoolers with fancier tendencies.
Cunningham planned on being a realizer. But he was smart enough to figure out that the maintenance engineer would be a logical suspect. And if Wally “Big D” Dutois was responsible for his being in the school plant Friday night, on a bet or dare or whatever, then (let’s look at all this objectively) Cunningham had grounds for a grudge against him.
No, Lestrade told herself firmly, you gave your junior the go-ahead to question Dutois on his own. Let him handle it. We can both pick up on Big D later, if things point that way.
Besides, Cunningham had already told them that Dutois hated Sapperfield for using his family name—and then tried to cover his slip. Sticking Big D on the tiplist—if it was Cunningham’s work—showed either a shocking aboutface for a ten-year-old’s loyalties or a level of duplicity Lestrade could not reconcile with her impression of him.
And why would Cunningham carry a grudge against a gentle soul like Swanneck? Well, when this interview with Tintorelli was done, the policewoman might have half an hour to put her surface b
rain into idle and let the old subcon toss ideas at it. Maybe even find an unoccupied grove to stretch out and put her feet up.
Tintorelli was monitoring an individual study class, two dozen cubicles in four rows of six, with elbow space between. The subject was art, but the students were of mixed ages and studying mixed divisions. Some sat flashing slides on their screens, here the Mona Lisa, there a composite of early-century comic strip styles. Others practiced drawing with lines of colored light, and a few had their screens tuned to question and answer print programs. Two or three cubicles were unoccupied, but most of the screens were lit with something, and they smacked Lestrade’s vision with a full overview when she walked in at the back of the room.
Moog filled the air, supposedly good music to paint by and to create a quiet mood. Maybe it also helped cover the sound of her entrance. Only half a dozen kids twisted around to look. They quickly twisted back again as their prof, who had been moving among the cubicles, threaded to her visitor. She did not increase her pace by much, just chose a direct route and cut the pauses, but Lestrade noticed she shot quelling glances at most of the students she passed. A strict disciplinarian.
Reaching Lestrade, she began in an undertone, “M. Couldn’t it have waited until my own time?”
“Probably. But if we set up a supplemental interview after school hours, it’ll be at my convenience.”
“Supplemental interview? How long is this going to take?”
“Not long, M. Tintorelli, if we can lean down on it right away.”
Tintorelli looked back across the room at the clock, her glance making a few inquisitive scholars snap back to their screens. “This session ends in seven and a half minutes. Then there are five minutes between sessions. Can you wait for seven and a half minutes?”
“I’m paid by the hour. But eager scholars might be able to crowd up for better earfuls in the between-sessions bash.”
“All right. Let’s go out in the doorway.”
Since Lestrade was standing just inside the door, they had only a few steps to go. Tintorelli closed the door, stationing herself where she had a good view of the students, and they of her, through the plastiglass. She folded her arms and drummed right fingertips on left elbow.
“What did you have against the late M. Sapperfield?” said Lestrade.
The art prof gratified her by looking surprised. “Aren’t you going to ask me where I was when it happened?”
“If you like.”
“I spent the evening on a double date with M.’s Euclid, Adagio, and Goldtone—our math prof, vocal coach, and band director. We left together at about sixteen hundred, took M. Goldtone’s car to the Willowsoul Art Galleries, spent an hour there, ate at Shalizar Curry House, then went to the opera—Verdmont’s Fall of Pisa, with sets by Holly Sendak. Then to my place for coffee and converse until about oh three hundred hours. The connections, interconnections, correspondences between art, mathematics, and music—” Her arms started to unfold as if in a grand gesture.
“M.’s Euclid, Adagio, and Goldtone. Willowsoul, Shalizar, and The Fall of Pisa,” Lestrade repeated, tabbing it on her notecom. “Good. What did you have against M. Sapperfield?”
Tintorelli’s arms clapped back together. For a moment Lestrade wondered if she had mistaken honest unzipping for an attempt to stall.
“I had a lot against him,” the art prof said at last. “So did everyone here. Even the few who claim not to have any personal grievances never had anything good to say about him. He enjoyed being hated. Making trouble was his favorite art form. This year he spread rumors about M. Euclid and me until we didn’t feel safe to go out alone together. That’s why we were with Allegra and Johnphilip last Friday. Not that we dislike their company—”
“You’re sure M. Sapperfield was primarily responsible for the rumors?”
“We traced them to him. ‘The morals of the fancy class,’ that’s his own special trademark phrase.”
“Hardly original to him,” Lestrade pointed out drily.
“It is—was—here at Garber, as far as anybody else using it. I’ve never heard anybody else ever use it here, anyway, since I’ve been on the faculty. And his nerve in making so much about Pascal’s age—as if I’d thrown him over for an even older man! As if I’d ever puffed my cheeks at Sapperfield, let alone told him he was too old for me.” Tintorelli’s fingertips dug into the flesh below her short sleeves. “But that’s nothing. We have two staff fanciers, M. Ibraham and Dame Elfreda. M. Ibraham is a total computer illiterate. He can’t even see the screens, to him they’re blank white slabs of marble. Well, last year a place opened up for a staff fancier at Waterview College. It would have been perfect for M. Ibraham. M. Robotnik, the princeps’ aide, put a printout application in his box. Sapperfield replaced it with one he’d had printed out—with the deadline date altered. So M. Ibraham got his application in late and missed out.”
“How do you know it was M. Sapperfield’s work?”
“He had the tacks to ‘apologize’ to M. Ibraham afterward, pretending we needed him more than Waterview did.”
The incident sounded holey to Lestrade, but she contented herself with tabbing Ibraham’s name into her notecom. “What about Dame Elfreda? Did M. Sapperfield play the same trick on her?”
“Dame Elfreda can read computer screens. She sees them as notices tacked up on scrolls or placards. She can even press for a printout when she wants one badly enough, although she protests that it’s alchemy and black magic. She wasn’t interested in the Waterview position anyway. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he had tried doing the same thing to her, yes. He’s the one who got M. Cage booted upstairs from the band room to the princeps’ office.”
“Had that much influence, did he?”
“I couldn’t tell you all the wiggles. It happened the year before I came. There was a new graduate—Dixieland, that was her name, I think—fresh from the conservatory and looking for a job. I think—Well, I won’t say, but Sapperfield spoke to three or four somebodies who knew somebodies on the Board, tabbed a lot of programs at second or third hand, and it ended with M. Cage promoted to a position he didn’t want so that the band director’s job was open for M. Dixieland. She lasted exactly one term. No matter what went on between them before ... well ... She couldn’t take M. Sapperfield’s little jokes. Slipping in and mixing up music on the stands, even hiding the piano part right before a concert, keying into the director’s computer and sabotaging march formation diagrams, the occasional wad of gum in a school instrument ...”
“That sounds more like a vendetta against one particular director.”
“Well, it wasn’t. We’ve had two more directors between M. Dixieland and M. Goldtone, and he’s done it to every one of them. I think he did it to M. Cage, and M. Cage lasted it out until Sapperfield got him made princeps for spite.”
“What about M. Adagio?”
Tintorelli shrugged. “Nothing so far. At least, she doesn’t complain. He seems to let the vocal coaches more or less alone. Maybe he hated his own band director. Probably with cause, he must have been a real brat. And he’s had a vendetta with the species ever since.”
Lestrade thought back over Sapperfield’s receipts for donations to looney-fringe charities. Hadn’t there been a “Foundation to Stamp Out Saxophones” among them?
The art prof was glaring through the window, rapping a fingernail on the plastiglass. “Are you nearly finished, M.? I don’t permit them to start shutting down before thirty seconds to the bell, and some of them are taking advantage of my absence.”
“By all means, keep them to their discipline. You’ve been very helpful.”
“But I shouldn’t leave town. Thank you, M.”
Lestrade watched her stride through the door and snap her class back to studies for the last couple of minutes.
Pollies usually met some resistance to their investigations, but this was gro
wing ridiculous. As a trail of red herrings, the anonymous tiplist began to look superfluous. You’d think they’d be eager to find out who did it, Lestrade mused, so they could give honor where honor’s due, with a medal and a champagne-party sendoff to the pen or asylum.
So far, the only one who seemed ready to mourn the late M. Sapperfield was Cunningham. And possibly Dame Elfreda Swanneck.
Chapter 20
Usually, Cunningham could zick through twenty problems an hour in math study, and M. Euclid said he’d be through the junior program and ready for the supplementary or even the senior program by the end of his sophomore year. Today he didn’t even get through nine problems.
Maybe there’d be other kids in detent tonight. He’d never been called to the princeps’ sanctum before, but he’d had outer-room detention sometimes, and seen other kids take the Long Walk. One of them came back looking stark white, and one of them—a big kid, too, a senior or postgrad—came back crying, and one of them hadn’t come back before Cunningham finished his own detent and left, but that one was back in school next day. The buzz was that two or three kids got called to the sanctum every week, and sooner or later they all came out again. By dinnertime tonight, it’d be all over.
* * * *
A grove was a little cubby room big enough for three or four kids to sprawl out comfortably. A lot more could fit in if you squeezed (but you never squeezed unless you wanted to fuss the profs, monitors, and M. Pinesweep). Owlsfane Garber had fifteen groves spread around the building in groups of three bunched around a vending machine area. Their comscreens were hooked together so you could stop by any vending area and see which groves were free all over school and who had already tabbed which ones for when. That was why kids almost always tabbed in code and changed their codes a lot.
When Cunningham got to the Alpine Groves, the nearest group to the math study lab, and checked the screen, there wasn’t any “Holmes and Watson,” so at first he thought M. Poe had just been teasing him, to get back for his rudeness in homeroom. Or maybe he couldn’t handle tabbing a comscreen, after all. So should Cunningham try to make Phex, or what? Then he saw that Grove B in the Oakview Group was coded to “H&W” for this session.
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 38
