The Cereal Murders

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Quickly,” I rasped, gesturing helplessly, “cut her—” I choked.

  The older man limped forward and gaped at the contents of the open closet. “God help us,” I heard him say.

  Voices clamored at the kitchen door. What’s going on? Is everything all right?

  “No, no, don’t come in,” I yelled at two startled students who rushed into the room. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, they stood motionless, staring at the closet.

  “Keep everybody out,” I ordered Julian tersely.

  He nodded and pivoted toward the kitchen entrance, where he motioned to the students to leave. Then he stationed himself at the door, where he spoke in low murmurs to the people there.

  The voice of the older man broke as he asked me to get a knife. I groped for one in a drawer and handed it to him. At the door, Julian watched my every move. I think the sight of my face scared him.

  Once the gray-haired man was at the top of a stepladder he’d pulled from the first closet, he said brusquely, “Have the boy go back to his classroom. I’ll need your help.”

  Julian nodded and left. Together, the man and I grasped Miss Ferrell’s tiny body and lowered her to the floor. I could not look at her grotesquely frozen grimace again.

  The teacher told me to call the police. He choked slightly and coughed, then asked me to find a teacher who could pick up the answer sheets from his room. Yes, the one he and Julian had left when they heard my shouts. He would wait with the body. I did not need to see medals to know this was a war veteran. His impassive tone and the grief in his eyes said all too clearly that he had seen death before.

  There was no phone in the kitchen. My head pounded. The kitchen door fanned me as it closed, and a sudden sweat chilled my skin. When I arrived in the hall, there was the beginning of distant scuffling from the classrooms. The clock in the hall said five to eleven; the SATs were almost over. Dizziness swept over me. Should I make some kind of announcement? Should I tell the students to stay? That the police would be here soon, and they would all be questioned? I walked quickly to the phone in the hallway.

  I pressed 911. I identified myself and where I was, then said something along the lines of, “I’ve just found a body. I think it’s Miss Suzanne Ferrell, a teacher here.” There was a whirring in my ears, like being inside a wind tunnel.

  “Are you there?” The operator’s voice sounded impossibly distant.

  “Yes, yes,” I said.

  “Don’t let anybody leave that school. Nobody. I’ll put in a call to get a team up there right away.”

  Groping for words within my mental fog, I hung up and stumbled to the P—Z classroom. I tersely told Julian to announce to his class and the others’ that after their booklets were collected, they must wait.

  “If they ask, you know, because they heard me screaming, don’t … tell them anything else,” I said hesitantly.

  Julian turned back to his class, his face tight with worry. Sweat now covered my skin like a mold. The pounding in my head intensified agonizingly. I walked in slow motion back to the kitchen door.

  “The police are on their way,” I told the gray-haired man. Down on one knee, he had stationed himself next to the body. An unfolded white napkin shrouded Miss Ferrell’s face. The teacher acknowledged my announcement with a grim nod, but said nothing.

  The room felt oppressive. I could not stay there next to Suzanne Ferrell’s corpse. In a daze, I went back out to the foyer. I found paper and pen in my supplies bag to make signs for the doors. Gripping the pencil was difficult. My shaking hand wrote, Do not leave until the police say you can. The room looked like the abandoned set of a surrealistic foreign film: What was all the debris, where did these bits of fruit come from, why were boxes of mine up on the tables? I grabbed a corner of one table to steady myself.

  The recollection washed back, horrid, filthy. I saw my hand opening that door, saw a body swaying heavily in a bright orange and pink dress, saw a grotesque purple face that in no way resembled the perky French teacher. My fingers had blanched the darkening skin when they touched her. Her body had been strung up like the snake in Arch’s locker. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  The police arrived in a blur. I glanced at my watch: 11:45. The sky through the foyer’s windows had begun to drop millions of snowflakes. An extremely tight-lipped Tom Schulz strode in. He was all business as the homicide team bustled around him, taking orders, falling into the grueling routine brought on by sudden death. They took the kids in the classrooms one by one. I knew the drill. Name. Address. When did you arrive, what did you see, and do you know anyone with a grudge against Miss Ferrell?

  And of course the question that pressed in on my brain, caused throbbing at my temples, was the inevitable corollary: Who hated both Keith Andrews and Miss Suzanne Ferrell?

  I sat on one of the benches and numbly answered Schulz’s questions. When did I arrive? Who else was in the school at that time? Who had access to the kitchen this morning? Pain still knocked dully at the back of my brain, but I also felt relief. This horror was now in the hands of the police. In the kitchen, their team would be painstakingly processing the scene: taking photographs, making notes, sprinkling black graphite fingerprint powder everywhere. Julian came through a doorway, crossed the room, and slumped down next to me. “Ninety-eight percent of the people who were here can be eliminated,” I heard Tom Schulz say to a member of his team. Julian and I were mute while the other seniors, finally dismissed, somberly filed past. I could feel the students’ eyes on me. I didn’t look up. All I could hear was my heartbeat.

  When the lobby was again empty, Schulz sat down on the bench next to Julian and me. He said that Julian and his friend Neil had been the first to arrive that morning after the gray-haired faculty member, whose name was George Henley. Henley, it appeared, had found the outer doors unlocked upon his arrival shortly before 8:00. He had been given a set of keys by Headmaster Perkins, and had assumed Miss Ferrell, who was assigned to help him set up that morning, was “around somewhere,” because the door to her classroom was open, although the light was off. No, the unlocked doors had not puzzled him because of the headmaster’s much-touted belief in the “environment of trust.”

  “What we’re looking for,” Schulz said wearily, “is how this could relate to the Andrews murder. Know anyone who had problems with this woman? Someone who maybe disliked Keith too?”

  I repeated what I had already told him about Egon Schlichtmaier and the supposed romantic link with Suzanne Ferrell. He asked if we had seen any exchange between them—we hadn’t. Or between her and anyone else.

  “This took place at the school. Because of what’s already happened here, we need to look at the school first,” Schulz insisted. “Is there anything else?”

  A number of people, I told him numbly, might have resented Miss Ferrell. Why? Schulz wanted to know. Because of their own highly emotional agenda concerning grades, recommendations, the college issue. She was the college advisor, after all. And there were things she might have known. From what I had learned about the school in the past couple of weeks, the place seemed a veritable repository for secrets.

  “Jesus Christ,” Schulz muttered under his breath. “When does anyone around here have time to learn? What about this headmaster? Any animosity there?”

  “None that I know of,” I said, and turned to Julian, who opened his hands and shook his head dumbly.

  “We’ll talk to him.” Schulz looked at me. I could see the strain of this second murder in a week in his bloodshot eyes and haggard face. “She’s been dead about six hours. Our surveillance guy can verify when you left your house, so you’re not a suspect.”

  “For once,” I said dryly. I felt no relief.

  “Either one of you feel okay to drive?” Schulz asked.

  Neil Mansfield of the bumper-stickered VW was long gone. Julian said, “Let me take Goldy home in her van.” His face was bone-white. “Will you call us later?” he asked Schulz.

  Schulz gently touched the side of Julian�
��s head. “Tonight.”

  Snowflakes powdered the smooth lanes made by the CAT. Snow continued to swirl. The pumpkins edging the drive were now mounds of white, their leering faces long ago obscured. Julian edged the van around State Highway 203’s winding curves. I wondered how I would tell Arch about Miss Ferrell’s murder. After a long stretch of silence, I asked Julian how the tests went; he gave a noncommittal shrug.

  “Know what I feel like doing?” he said abruptly.

  “What?”

  “I need to swim. I haven’t been near a pool in two weeks. Probably sounds crazy, I know.” He fell silent, concentrating on the increasingly treacherous road. Then he said, “This stuff at the school is getting to me. I can’t go back and sit in that house. Do you mind?” He gave me a quick sidelong glance. “You probably don’t feel like cooking.”

  “You got that right. A swim sounds good.”

  We parked in front of the house. With the heavy snow, it was hard to tell if anyone sat in one of the cars lining our street. Schulz’s surveillance cop had to be there, I told myself. Had to.

  Once inside, I gratefully stripped off the caterer’s uniform and quickly slipped into jeans and a turtleneck. We gathered swimsuits and towels. There was a message on the machine from Marla: Could we come by for an early dinner? She had finally located Pamela Samuelson. Pamela Samuelson? Marla’s taped voice reminded me: “You know, that teacher out at Elk Park Prep who was involved in some kind of brouhaha with the headmaster. She really wants to see you.” Marla added cryptically, “It’s urgent.”

  I dialed Marla’s number. The private nurse said her charge was taking a nap. Don’t disturb her, I told the nurse. Just tell her when she wakes that we’ll be there at five.

  We switched to the Rover because of the roads. As we drove to the rec center, my heart felt like a knob of granite. Or maybe it wasn’t my heart that felt that way, but some unexpressed emotion that had solidified inside my rib cage. Was it fear? Anger? Sadness? All of the above.

  I wanted to cry but could not. Not yet. I wanted to know if Arch was all right, but I reassured myself that of course he was. After all, he was in Keystone with his father, miles away from these ugly events. Just keep going, some inner voice said. Of course, that was what I had always done. But the rock in my chest remained.

  At the pool Julian dived in at once, landing with an explosive crack that sprayed water everywhere. He plowed down his lap lane like a man possessed. I eased myself with infinite care into the water, then moved like a person drugged to the lane to Julian’s left. Closing my eyes, I allowed my arms to wheel into a slow crawl. Warm water washed over me. Twice I started to think about the events of the morning and accidentally inhaled water. I sputtered and changed to a backstroke, while in the next lane Julian repeatedly lapped me. After I had done a halting, uneven set of about twenty laps, I stopped Julian as he was about to do one of his rolling turns off the concrete wall. I was taking a shower, I told him. He said he was almost finished.

  I shampooed my hair four times. The pine-scented shower gel would dry it out to straw, but I didn’t care. The sharp, woodsy scent brought back memories of boarding school with its comforting routines: history class, field hockey, wearing pearls to dinner and gloves to church. Too bad Elk Park Prep was not nearly so safe a place.

  Waiting for Julian in the lobby of the rec center, I stood at the window, watching the snow. It drifted down like bits of ash from a distant fire. I suddenly realized that I was famished. Julian came out shaking droplets from his hair, and we drove in silence to Marla’s house in the country club area.

  Marla greeted us with a shriek of happiness. Her leg was in a thick plaster cast that already bore a number of colorful inscriptions.

  “I thought you might be along,” she said to Julian, “so I ordered you a grilled Gruyère sandwich along with our cheeseburgers. There’ll be jalapeno-fried onions and red-cabbage coleslaw too,” she added hopefully. Embarrassed to be so attended to, especially by someone in a cast, Julian flushed and mumbled thanks.

  “Come on, then.” Marla hobbled forward. “Goldy’s been bugging me to find this person since last week.” Over her shoulder she said to Julian, “You may know her already.”

  Pamela Samuelson, former teacher at Elk Park Prep, sat perched at the edge of a muted green and blue striped couch in Marla’s living room. A generous fire blazed inside a fireplace edged with bright green and white Italian tiles.

  “Oh, Miss Samuelson,” Julian said in a surprised tone. “Eleventh-grade American history.”

  “Hello, Julian.” Pamela’s hair had the look and texture of a much-used Brillo pad, and the fire reflected in her thick glasses. She was about fifty years old and slightly doughy, despite Marla’s introduction of her as “one of the regulars” at the athletic club. “Yes,” she said with a touch of irony, “eleventh-grade American history.”

  “Pam’s selling real estate now,” Marla interjected with genuine sympathy. Realtors were not Marla’s favorite people. “She got shafted out at that school.”

  I said, “Shafted?”

  Pamela Samuelson threaded and unthreaded her plump fingers. She said, “One hates to hang out dirty laundry. But when I heard about Suzanne, and Marla phoned me—”

  “You’ve heard already?” I exclaimed. Why was I surprised? My years in Aspen Meadow had certainly taught me the terrifying efficiency of the local grapevine.

  “Oh, yes,” Pamela said. She touched her wiry hairdo. “The fall SATs. First Saturday in November.”

  I glanced at Julian. He shrugged. I said, “Please, can you tell me more about the school? I hate to say it, but … dirty laundry may help us figure a few things out.”

  “Well. This was what I was telling Marla. I don’t know if it’s relevant.” She fell silent and looked down at her hands.

  “Please,” I said again.

  She remained silent. Julian got up and added a log to the fire. Marla studied her cast, which she had propped up on a green and white ottoman. I heard my stomach growl.

  “Before I was dismissed,” Pamela said at last, “I gave a final exam in American history. The essay question was, Discuss American foreign policy from the Civil War to the present.” Her eyes narrowed behind the thick lenses. “It was the question I myself had had on a preparatory school American history exam. But several Elk Park Prep students complained. Not to me, mind you,” she said bitterly, “to Headmaster Perkins. Perkins gave me hell, said he hadn’t had such a challenging question in a test until graduate school.”

  I said, “Uh-oh.”

  “I said, ‘Where’d you go to graduate school, the University of the South Sandwich Islands?’ And oh, that wasn’t the worst of it,” she continued sourly. “It was soccer season, don’t you know. The weekend before exams, Brad Marensky performed brilliantly as goalie down in Colorado Springs. But he hadn’t studied for his history exam, and on this essay question he unfortunately left out both World Wars.”

  Julian said, “Oops.”

  Pamela Samuelson turned a face contorted with sudden fury toward Julian. “Oops? Oops?” she cried. When Julian drew back in shock, she seemed to will herself to be calm. “Well. So I flunked him. Flat F.”

  No one said oops.

  “When the honor roll came out at the end of the year,” Pamela went on, “there was Brad Marensky. He could not have gotten there with an F, I can assure you.” She spread her hands in a gesture of incomprehension. “Impossible. I demanded a meeting with Perkins. His secretary told me the Marenskys had protested Brad’s grade. Before the meeting I checked the master transcript kept in a file in Perkins’ office along with old grade books. The F history grade had been changed to a B. When I confronted Perkins, he wasn’t even defensive. Smooth as silk, he says he gave Brad Marensky credit for the soccer game. I said, ‘You have a pretty screwed up idea of academic integrity.’”

  Not to mention American foreign policy.

  “Perkins told me I was welcome to seek employment elsewhere, in fact, that h
e already had a superb replacement for me in mind. I know it was some young German man that a friend of his at C.U. was pressuring him to hire. I’d heard that from the secretary too.” Pamela hissed in disgust. “The article in the Post about the lower SAT scores at Elk Park Prep made me feel better for a little while, but it didn’t make me happy. I’m still trying to sell five-thousand-square-foot homes during the worst real estate recession in a decade.”

  I murmured sympathetically. Marla rolled her eyes at me.

  “Suzanne Ferrell was my friend,” Pamela said with a large, unhappy exhalation of air. “My first thought was, She wouldn’t cave in to them.”

  “Them who?” demanded Marla.

  “The ones who think education is just grades, class rank, where you go to college.” Pamela Samuelson’s voice was thin with anger. “It’s so destructive!”

  The high peal of the doorbell cut through her fury. Marla started to lift her cast from the ottoman, but Julian stopped her.

  “I’ll get it,” he said. When he returned, Marla smilingly handed the goodies she had ordered all around. Pamela Samuelson announced hesitantly that she couldn’t stay, and left, still radiating resentment. Clearly, the disgruntled teacher had said all she was going to on the subject of the headmaster, Egon Schlichtmaier, and the altered grades. Marla sweetly asked Julian to retrieve a miniature Sara Lee chocolate cake from one of her capacious freezers. I sliced and we each delved into large, cold pieces.

  “Let me tell you what I think the problem is,” Marla said matter-of-factly, delicately licking her fingers of chocolate crumbs. “It’s like a family thing.”

  “How?” I asked.

  She shifted her cast on the ottoman to make herself more comfortable and eyed the last piece of cake. “Who are the people you most resent? The people closest to you. My sister got an MG from my parents when she graduated from college. I thought, If I don’t get a car of equal or better value, I’m going to hate my sister forever and my parents too. Did I resent all the other girls my age who might have been out in Oshkosh or Seattle or Miami getting new cars? No. I resented the people close to me. They had the power to give me the car or deny it, I figured, reasonably or unreasonably.” She reached for the piece of cake and bit into it with a contented mmm-mmm.