The Cereal Murders

by Diane Mott Davidson

  I turned to Julian, who wordlessly slid the risen doughnuts into the heated oven. “Fifteen minutes,” he announced.

  “Know anything about that headmaster?” Frances persisted. She tapped her pen on the pad.

  “I know as much as you do,” I told her. “Why don’t you tell us about the story Keith Andrews was working on for your paper?”

  “We didn’t know what it was,” she protested, “although he had been working on it for some time, and he’d promised something big.” She tilted her Pepsi can back to drain the last few drops. “We were going to read it when he was done and then decide whether to run it or not. If it was a timely story. You know, truthful.”

  “You have such a good reputation for fact-checking,” I said with a lying smile.

  Without a shred of self-consciousness she tossed her can across the room into one of the two trash bags resting against my back door. Arch was supposed to take them out, but he was incapacitated.

  “Three points,” I said. “Except we recycle.” I retrieved the can and dropped it into the aluminum bin in the pantry. I hoped she would take the hint and decide it was time to wrap things up. But no.

  “How about the headmaster’s son? Macguire Perkins? He drove his father’s car through a guard rail on Highway 203 over the summer. Blood alcohol level 2.0.”

  I shrugged. “You know as much as I do.”

  Frances Markasian looked around my kitchen, her shallow black eyes impassive. The smell of the baking doughnuts was excruciating. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. “I understand some of the Elk Park Prep students and parents are pretty competitive. Would do anything to get into the right college.”

  I crossed my arms. “Yeah? Like what?”

  She tapped her mouth with her pen but gave no answer. “Keith Andrews was the valedictorian. Who was next in line?”

  Before I could answer, Arch came limping into the kitchen. I was thankful for the distraction. Julian asked Arch to join him out in the living room to make a sculpture out of the Three Musketeers.

  “Wow,” said Arch. “At nine-fifteen in the morning?”

  “We’re going to build a fire too. Is that all right? It is kind of cold.” When I gave him the go-ahead, he said, “Can you handle getting the doughnuts out of the oven?”

  “She’s an old pro at removing cookie sheets,” said Marla. “Besides, I think Ms. Markasian is almost done, isn’t she?”

  Frances Markasian closed her eyes and said, “Huh.” She rounded her back and stretched her arms out in front of her. Journalistic meditation. The buzzer went off and I took the doughnuts out. Julian had prepared a pan of melted butter and a mountain of cinnamon sugar, so I quickly dipped and rolled, dipped and rolled. I brought the first plate of plump, warm doughnuts over to the table and placed them in the sunlight, so that cinnamon sugar sparkled on the veil of melted butter. Marla delicately lifted one onto a plate and then took a huge bite.

  “Please have one,” I said to the reporter.

  She shook her head. Frances Markasian seemed to be unable to decide whether to share something with me. After a moment she put her pen and pad away in her enormous purse. “I’ll tell you like what parents will do. Last week we got a call at the paper saying we should run a story on how Stan and Rhoda Marensky had sent a full-length mink coat to the director of admissions at Williams.”

  I couldn’t help it. My mouth fell open.

  “Listen,” said Marla in her one-upsmanship voice. She reached for her second doughnut. “I wouldn’t spend a winter in Massachusetts if I had a mink house.”

  At that moment, yells erupted from the living room. Julian banged through the kitchen door. A cloud of smoke billowed in behind him.

  “Something’s wrong!” he shouted. “The flue’s open but the smoke won’t go up! I’ll help Arch out the front. You all need to get out!” His face was white with fear.

  “Out the front, hurry!” I yelled at Marla and Frances. We bolted.

  Julian and Arch were already halfway down the front walk by the time we three adults came hustling through the front door. Julian had Arch’s arm draped around his shoulder and the two were half skipping toward the street. Frances Markasian reached the sidewalk first. With frighteningly effortless ease she spun around and scooped her camera out of her big black bag. Then she hoisted it and took a picture of Marla, midair, grasping a freshly baked oat bran doughnut, as she slipped on the iced steps and broke her leg.

  14

  With sirens blaring and lights flashing, the fluorescent chartreuse AMFD trucks arrived in a matter of moments, proving the local adage that the fastest thing about our town was the fire department. One of my neighbors had seen the smoke billowing out of the window Julian had hastily opened, and she’d put in the call. Over the incessant buzz of the smoke alarm, I screamed to Julian to stay out in the street with Arch. A wad of fur hit my calves and was gone—Scout the cat making a streaking escape. Flames were consuming my home. But I refused to leave Marla’s side at the bottom of the front steps. Firemen clumped by us into the house. Marla clenched my hand and sobbed copiously. My schooling in Med Wives 101 adjudged it to be a broken right tibia. I shrieked for somebody to call an ambulance.

  The firefighters rapidly assessed the situation and put a ladder up to the roof. Minutes later, clad in schoolbus-yellow protective gear, the first fellow descended the ladder, holding a blackened piece of plywood and shaking his head. With a screaming siren, the ambulance arrived and carted Marla off to a Denver hospital. I hugged her carefully and promised to visit just as soon as the smoke cleared. She begged me to call her other friends so that everyone could know what had happened. Marla’s idea of hell is enduring pain alone.

  “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 rig
ht? 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 café 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’ café. 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 café’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 Háagen-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 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 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 stripped 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 need
ed 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 and 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.