Mummers' Curse

by Gillian Roberts

  What worried me was a growing sense that the voices didn’t belong to anyone Caroline could rationally address as boys, boys, boys. One was definitely familiar.

  As we neared the open door, Caroline gave me a quasi-military curt nod. Ready—aim—fire. From within the room, the quarrel burst out in fragments. “—spying on—he knew—real friend wouldn’t—money—”

  Caroline continued the quaint teacherly remonstrations she’d learned in a different era. “Boys, boys,” she crooned, “this is not—” She stopped herself for a moment of open-mouthed gaping at the sight of two definite non-boys. “Why, Mr. Devaney!” she said in a horrified whisper. “Mr. Devaney! I never imagined a teacher…”

  Vincent looked at her, shamefaced as a kindergartner whose toilet training had failed. “Miss Finney,” he said, “I, we—so sorry. Didn’t realize we must have been so…”

  “Caroline and I heard you,” I began. I tried to sort it out, to sift retroactively through the barrage of words and get a handle on what was happening. Was Vincent under attack? Should I call the police? “Are you…is everything under control?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Thanks. Lot of noise, nothing. Little…disagreement. We’ll be fine. Quiet and fine.”

  I looked away, troubled and embarrassed for his sake. In the far range of my peripheral vision, out of the classroom door, I saw Renata Field at the top of the stairs, gesticulating to someone below. She seemed to feel my eyes on her, because she turned around, glared at me, raised her chin, and moved back in the direction of my room.

  I’d deal with her later, when I figured out how. Meantime, I studied the second man in Vincent’s classroom. I had seen him before, and I hadn’t liked him that time, either. I watched him pace around tables dotted with beakers and sinks and lined with high stools. Had I dated him? Worked with him? I came up blank, so I tried remembering from another angle. Vincent definitely knew him, perhaps too well. I must have met him through Vincent.

  He clicked into place. At the club the evening I visited. Stitching large mother-of-pearl sequins onto miles of iridescent silky stuff, annoyed by my presence, although I was impressed at how steady his hand was—he threaded his needle with ease—despite having worked his way through a cooler holding a twelve-pack of beer. And then he’d been part of the group that went to the diner to help me with the phantom article, although I never knew why, since he continued to be uncooperative.

  He’d been named for a South Philly singer. Not Mario Lanza. More rock ’n’ roll. Bobby? Frankie? Chubby Checker? Fabian, that was it. Fabian Somebody worked with brick, and Vincent said he was a popular member of the club, but he was sullen around me.

  I tried to remember what I’d heard between them, and the words spying, lying, loyalty, and money came back. An interesting and incendiary combination, but why here, why now?

  This wasn’t a student outbreak, but a disgraceful adult dispute. As long as these men weren’t going to destroy each other or school property, we had no business here. “Excuse me,” Caroline said. “I will no longer interfere with your…with you.” She turned her back, ramrod straight, and marched away.

  I waved adieu, lamely, and joined her. She shook her head, looked at me, and whispered. “A teacher. Imagine.” As we walked toward the wide staircase, their voices rose again, as if our appearance had been nothing more to them than a long held breath.

  Renata was at my classroom door, idling away her hour.

  I glared in her direction. That should have been enough.

  “Who can work with this noise?” she asked. “Is Mr. Devaney shouting?”

  “Of course not,” Caroline Finney snapped. “A teacher wouldn’t carry on that way!” It was the only time I’ve ever heard her lie.

  Renata disappeared into my room.

  From down the hall came a furious shout. “Everybody knows!” I couldn’t tell which man had said it, since anger distorted the voice.

  Caroline shook her head wearily again, and we parted at the front door.

  I crossed into the Square, passing a don’t-drink-and-dress lesson: a man in a fur-trimmed satin Eagles jacket, a leather hat with earflaps, a tissue in one hand, a cigar in the other, and unbuckled high galoshes on his feet.

  He was almost the only other person in the park, so I had my choice of benches. I sat unwrapping a leftover chicken leg from last night’s take-out, replaying the angry snippets I’d just heard.

  I tried to enjoy the bleak beauty of my surroundings, the colorless tree limbs that pushed against the hard bright sky with not so much as a leaf bud for ease, the dark, frozen earth below.

  A gray squirrel was the only softness on the landscape. He hovered nearby, checking me out, and I felt guilty I wasn’t eating anything he’d like. On the other hand, he wasn’t sharing his cache of nuts with me, either.

  Then Vincent Devaney, a muffler covering half his face, walked toward me. Alone. I wondered what had become of his sparring mate. I hoped nothing fatal.

  He paused as he approached and cleared his throat. “Could I?” He gestured at the bench.

  I nodded apprehensively. I didn’t know this man nearly as well as I’d thought I had.

  “I don’t want you getting the wrong impression,” he said. “I didn’t want to involve anybody, trust me, but the police keep hassling me. I had to.”

  I was skeptical. He had involved me before anybody hassled him. Involving people came naturally to him. So did skirting the truth.

  “It’s illegal to withhold relevant information, isn’t it?” he asked rhetorically. “Barbs said she was telling if I didn’t, but then it wouldn’t be as legitimate sounding. I mean, I’m the one who knows him. I’m the one in the club with him.”

  “I’m lost, Vincent,” I said softly.

  “Fabian wanted to be Captain. He really wanted it. You know, wear the biggest cape, be up for a special award. So did Jimmy Pat.”

  “So did you, I understand.”

  I saw a brief flash of that ready anger in his eyes, then he lowered his lids, took a deep breath, and ignored what I’d said. “It means you’re the best, not by City Hall judges, but by your friends, the other members. It means you wear the best suit and you develop your own style. The papers write about Captains.”

  “You’re saying Fabian killed Jimmy to get that position?”

  Vincent shook his head. “I’m saying that because of the competition being so out in the open, Jimmy Pat paid a whole lot of attention to Fabian, noticing what he probably wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. And that’s how come Jimmy found out about the missing money.”

  I offered Vincent the chicken leg, despite my having taken a bite out of it. He shook his head. I waited. After a silence, words poured out as if he’d turned a faucet. “It was gone, you see, and nobody knew why or how. All we knew was, we couldn’t pay our bills. Somebody—Jimmy Pat was sure it was Fabian—was skimming from the till. You understand how horrible that was? You work all year to raise the money—everybody gives what they can. Nickels and dimes and raffles and door-to-door collections and bake sales and Atlantic City trips. All year. For one of our own—our treasurer, no less—to rob us! I mean the club, it’s like family, where you belong. And suddenly, Fabian’s saying we didn’t raise enough, we couldn’t pay for supplies—you know how much ostrich feathers cost? We were dead.”

  He grew contemplative. “I don’t know,” he said after a pause, “Jimmy thought it was a setup. That Fabian took the money so he could ‘find’ it and save the day and be a hero.”

  “And be voted Captain?”

  He nodded. “Only before Fabian could pull it off, Jimmy Pat caught on that the money—lots of it—was missing, and he figured out who took it, and confronted Fabian. That’s what I told the cops yesterday. That’s why Fabian threw a fit today.”

  He stood up. “Any questions?” He sounded like a teacher again, winding up an important lecture.

  “Anybody else know about Jimmy Pat’s suspicions?”

  Vincent shrugged. �
��It never got to the whole group, if that’s what you mean. Jimmy was waiting until the new year.”

  “Did Fabian return the money?”

  He shook his head. “Denied Jimmy’s accusations, then, of course, he couldn’t do anything, because it’d be an admission.”

  “Then how did the club get the money? You were in the parade, after all.”

  “Miller and Kovaks mortgaged their houses, that’s how. Prize money would have helped pay them back, but hell, by the time we got to the judges’ stand, everybody was so shaken up…Most we could hope for was a pity vote, and they don’t have that category yet.”

  “What would have happened afterward—if Jimmy had lived?”

  “Who knows? It wasn’t a closed chapter, is all I know. Still isn’t, just all muddled up.”

  “Last question. Why didn’t you tell the police right away?”

  “They didn’t ask. Besides, he’s my friend, we grew up together. Like brothers, all of us are. You don’t want to think wrong of your brothers. And in the end, there’s no proof. A dead man’s word, that’s all. So I thought, let the police follow other leads, more logical leads, right?”

  I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t particularly like this new Vincent.

  Vincent put his muffler back up over the bottom half of his face. “Gotta go,” he said, through the scarf.

  “Wait—one more question.”

  He pushed the muffler down. “You said that was the last one.”

  “I lied, I guess. You told me you were looking for Dolores at the parade.”

  “I was.”

  “Then why’d you tell Dolores you were with me?”

  He bit at his upper lip and looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Why?” I asked again.

  “She stood me up.” His voice was constricted. “I didn’t want her to think it mattered. That I even remembered about her. I mean, she didn’t say she was sorry for not meeting me, so I played the same game. To save face.”

  Seemed to me there was entirely too much focus on face in this group. When they weren’t hiding their faces behind masks, they were saving them. “Okay,” I said. “That’s it.”

  He pulled the muffler back up, covering his face although the day did not require extreme protection. “Gotta go to the library,” he said, and he hurried on.

  I sat worrying about Fabian and the missing money, and about Vincent and his lies. Fabian had a powerful motive, but I’d heard about it from Vincent, who’d wanted the same position, who had every reason to lie. I wondered how much the police knew. They were being very cautious about making a move. At the moment, there was a call out for home videos that might have captured the Fancy Club and Jimmy Pat at various points on the route. The hope was to see something otherwise ignored, but so far, nothing had turned up except hours of jumpy and blurred amateur footage.

  So Vincent could point the finger at another member of his club, suggesting that status and money had been the motives. Meantime, there didn’t seem any way to prove or disprove the allegations—or even that there had been allegations.

  Fabian could have committed the murder. Any of them could have strutted close enough to Jimmy Pat to shoot him low, hitting his stomach, before dancing away. Or, for all I know, have ducked into the frame suit for a call of nature, and heard nature call “murder.”

  That left the issue of the gun and its disposal, now that I knew it hadn’t been the one in my purse. Of course, he—whichever he or she it was—could have left the parade later in order to chuck the murder weapon. I assumed the police had searched the multitude of trash baskets along the route.

  Vincent, now at the far corner of the Square, looked innocuous and familiar, but I didn’t trust him anymore. He wore a mask and disguise even when in street clothes.

  A shadow fell on me, and the temperature dropped along with the light level. I looked up and saw the man from the corner, he of the satin jacket and leather earflaps, deliberately, resolutely approaching, one hand holding his cigar, the other half-extended in my direction.

  I stood so abruptly, the remains of my chicken leg and my container of juice fell to the ground. I started to retrieve them, then decided that being a litterer beat being a corpse, and I stood up again and backed off.

  “Wait!” he called out. “Hey! Don’t be scared. You’re Amanda Pepper, the teacher from across the street, right?”

  “Why?” I eyed him from ten feet away. Unfortunately, from that position, I could also eye my pocketbook where I’d left it on the bench.

  “I’ve been waiting to talk with you. I didn’t want to intrude while you were teaching, or talking with that man.”

  “Are you a parent?”

  He nodded.

  “Whose?” I asked.

  “Oh, you mean of somebody there?” He tilted his head toward the school. “No. Lookit—no need to be afraid of me. I’m with B.L.T. & G.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The law firm. Benthelwaite, LaVonne—”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that…”

  “I know.” He looked sympathetic. “The world today, who can tell? I don’t blame you a bit. My wife’s the same way about strangers, and I say, good. Better safe than sorry.”

  “What is this about, then?” I moved closer to grab my bag. “What would a law firm want with me? I hope I’ve been named in somebody’s will.”

  He cleared his throat. I dove, as unobtrusively as I could, for my possessions and in mid-swoop, he spoke.

  “I thought you should see this,” he said.

  I turned toward him. He offered me a letter, and automatically, I took it.

  “I thought you should see that,” he said again, “so that you would be legally and properly informed that you are being sued by Phillipa and Thomas Field for excessive and unfair treatment of their daughter Renata, which has caused her and her parents grievous mental anguish and created insurmountable impediments to her future plans.”

  Sued? Me? Renata?

  She’d been leaning over the railing at the stairs, signaling this man. Renata had let him know where I was.

  That’s why she’d been disappointed that I wouldn’t be in my room during lunch. Not because of her desire for my company, but because she’d wanted to witness my being served the papers. I looked up now, and there she was, peering white-faced out of my classroom window.

  No, surely there was another explanation. I’d lost my sense of humor. Nobody takes a teacher to court for a deservedly lousy grade.

  “You’re kidding, right? You aren’t really a lawyer, are you?”

  “Never said I was one. I’m with B.L.T. & G.”

  “You’re an actor, am I right? One of those people you hire to pull funny stunts and practical jokes.”

  “No and no again,” he said. The temperature dropped into a frozen, bleak hell. “Not an actor. Not a funny stunt. Real. A process server, you’d call me. Not a joke. You’re in trouble, lady. Not a joke at all.”

  Thirteen

  THE FRONT DOOR OPENED AND A WEARY-LOOKING C.K. ENTERED.

  “Sued!” I said by way of greeting. “I’m being sued over a grade! Sued!” As if repetition neutralized the word.

  I sat facing the fire, finding no serenity in its flames.

  “You’re kidding, right?” He checked my expression, then shook his head, went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and poured himself a glass of wine. “Want something?” he called out. “Who’s suin’?”

  “Renata’s parents! And I’ve bent over backwards for her, given her a way to pass when she doesn’t deserve even that!”

  “Wine?” he asked.

  I thought he was giving me permission to whine, for which I was grateful. I wanted to complain on an operatic scale, and endlessly. I explained the shameful ridiculousness of the situation in minute detail.

  The legal papers said I had not sufficiently or adequately clarified my grading system, causing Renata to fail to meet arbitrary classroom standards. With no
regard to her future, I had penalized her. It appeared she had been absent the first day of the semester and had apparently not heard my introductory speech on grading.

  As if any school in the known universe considers cheating, plagiarizing, and goofing off acceptable.

  Mackenzie patiently listened and handed me a glass of wine.

  “Sued! Me!” I waved the papers I’d been served. “It’ll cost a fortune to defend myself, and I don’t even know against what. Will the school back me? What do I do?”

  “Talk to a lawyer,” Mackenzie said. “Immediately. Do we know anybody who handles that kind of law?”

  “Sleaze law?” His words translated into the dusty whoosh of money fluttering out of my hands. How many billable hours and minutes and seconds left on ray Doomsday clock? “These things drag on for years.” I’d read Bleak House, where the lawsuit dragged on until there was not a penny left in the till.

  Nothing had changed since Dickens’s time, except that I was starting out penniless and lawyers’ fees were even higher.

  “I had an interestin’ day, too,” Mackenzie said. “If you’re done, that is.”

  Done? Not at all, and I resented any attempt to hurry the process. Besides, I felt incapable of responding to anybody else’s news or problems until I was well and truly done. I was being sued for doing my job! “Don’t you care?” I asked. It was not a question, but a charge.

  He refuted it. “Of course.” I was stressing him out, melting his speech, so that I became a soft vowel that dissolved into the words around it. “It’s a frivolous suit,” he went on, in a torrent of sinuous syllables, “brought by mean-spirited, ignorant people who haven’t a clue about the purpose of education, and it’ll burn time, money, and emotions and wind up nowhere, and I’m sorry for the waste of your talents and energy this’ll cost.”

  I must admit, I was impressed, weak with gratitude. I had a soul mate who took my woes to heart.