Killing Mr. Griffin

by Lois Duncan

  “You don’t have a choice. Just park somewhere. If you turn around now and drive out again it will catch his attention for sure.”

  “Here’s a space,” Betsy said. “Is he still behind us?”

  “No, he’s pulling on past. I think you’re right, he’s going to park.”

  “Oh, thank god!” She pulled the car carefully into the empty parking place and turned off the ignition. “Let’s get out and go!”

  “First we’ve got to get rid of our fingerprints.”

  “That will take forever!”

  “No it won’t. We haven’t touched much. Don’t get panicky.” David ran the edge of his shirt swiftly around the circle of the steering wheel and along the window ledges. Then he wiped off the key. “Anything else?”

  “No, nothing. Let’s get going.”

  Using their clothing as a shield between their hands and the metal handles of the doors, they opened the doors and got out of the car. The police car was parked two rows over and several spaces to the north. The driver had just climbed out and was crossing the lot in the direction of the airport.

  “We’ll have to walk right by him,” Betsy whispered.

  “That’s okay,” David told her. “If he recognized the car he’d have done something by now. He’s just another guy stopping to pick up somebody.” He took her arm. “Walk slowly, keep your eyes on my face, and keep talking. He won’t even notice us.”

  “What can I talk about? My mind’s gone blank.”

  “About school. About the game the other night. It doesn’t matter, just talk. And for Christ’s sake, smile!”

  Amazingly, she did—the bright, full, cheerleader smile that was her trademark. It lit up her face as though she had pressed a light switch.

  “It was the most exciting game!” she said breathlessly. “You can’t imagine how close it was! Right up until the last two minutes we were neck and neck. Then, Jeff got the ball, and he went charging down the floor and—”

  “Afternoon, Miss Cline,” the policeman said pleasantly as he passed them.

  CHAPTER 13

  The story was on the six o’clock news, and Mr. McConnell brought it up at dinner.

  “On television this evening they were telling about a Del Norte teacher who’s been reported missing.”

  “Missing?” Mrs. McConnell repeated. “Missing, how? Do you mean he’s simply disappeared?”

  “That’s about the size of it. He taught his classes yesterday and then never was seen again. His name’s Brian Griffin. Sue, don’t you have a class with him?”

  “Yes,” Susan said faintly. “English, first period.”

  “They gave his description—forty-one years old, medium height and weight, dark hair, a mustache. The car he drives is missing also, a dark green Chevy.”

  “I wish my teachers would disappear,” Craig said enviously. “Sue gets all the luck.”

  “Don’t joke about something like this, Craig,” his mother said. “Think how you would feel if it were Dad. Personally, I can’t imagine anything more horrible than to have something like this occur to someone in your family. The waiting, the uncertainty, all the terrible possibilities that would float through your mind would be enough to drive the soundest person totally insane.”

  “He’s married, too,” Mr. McConnell said. “They said his wife is offering a twenty thousand–dollar reward for any information leading to his location.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” Alex said. “Boy, I sure wish I knew where he was. Think, Kev—twenty thousand dollars! We’d be rich!”

  “What would you do with it?” Kevin asked. “I’d buy an iPhone. And I’d take us all to Disneyland for a month.”

  “I’d buy a Harley-Davidson,” Craig said.

  “You most certainly would not!” Mrs. McConnell exclaimed. “Those things are death machines! And anyway, you couldn’t get a license at your age.” And they were off on another subject with Brian Griffin forgotten.

  I am not going to think about him, Susan told herself desperately. I will make my mind think about other things.

  So she tried her best to contribute to the dinner-table conversation and found herself noticing small things that she had never appreciated before—the kindness behind her father’s teasing; the warmth in her mother’s smile; the endearing earnestness with which the twins cut their meat, sawing each slice into careful squares and then shoveling three or four of them into their mouths at once; the bones and angles of Craig’s face, emerging suddenly from the soft roundness of childhood.

  I love them so much, Susan thought. How could I ever have imagined that I didn’t?

  And with the thought came a sense of loss as though she had moved a million miles beyond this family and were seeing them in memory, reaching back toward them yet unable to touch them.

  I am not Susan anymore, she thought. I am not the person they know as their daughter and their sister. I am a stranger who has lived through things they cannot even imagine and who has changed into someone foreign to them all. They look at me and call me “Sue,” and I speak back to them, and they never guess how far away from them I am and how much I miss them.

  When dinner was over Susan cleared the table and helped Craig load the dishwasher. The twins, whose job it was to wash the pans, stood at the sink and fought over who would do the broiler, and Mr. McConnell went into the den and turned on the television. Mrs. McConnell plugged in the coffeemaker and got out two cups.

  “Would you like some tonight, Sue?”

  “No, thank you,” Susan said.

  The doorbell rang.

  “You might as well get it, honey,” her mother said. “It will probably be David.”

  “She can’t go out till she’s done her part of the kitchen!” Craig objected. “She got out of it last night because she was sick, but it’s not fair two nights in a row.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Susan told him. “I don’t feel like going out.”

  “Then what’s he coming over for?”

  But it was not David who stood at the door when Susan went to open it, but a middle-aged woman in a brown coat.

  “I’m looking for Susan McConnell,” she said. “Is this the right house?”

  “Yes,” Susan said, bewildered.

  “I’m Mrs. Griffin.”

  For a moment Susan could not bring herself to move. She stood frozen, staring into the unfamiliar face.

  “Who is it, Sue?” her mother called from the kitchen.

  When Susan did not answer, Mrs. McConnell came into the hallway.

  “Hello. Can I help you?”

  “I’m Mrs. Griffin,” the woman said again. “Cathy Griffin. I’d like to talk with Susan.”

  “Mrs. Griffin? The wife of Sue’s teacher?” Mrs. McConnell came quickly over to her. “Where are your manners, Sue? Can’t you invite your guest inside? Please come in, Mrs. Griffin. We just heard the distressing news about your husband and areso concerned. Is there anything new since the report on the evening news?”

  “No, nothing,” the woman said. She stepped through the door into the hallway, and Susan saw that her first impression had been incorrect and Cathy Griffin was no older than her late twenties. It was the strained look of her face that had made her appear older.

  “Come, sit down,” Susan’s mother said. “Let me take your coat. Can I get you some coffee? My husband and I were just going to have some.”

  “No, thank you.” Under the coat the woman was wearing navy-blue pants and a pink maternity blouse with a white collar. She looked very tired. “I just wanted to talk with your daughter a few minutes. According to the police, she was the last person to see my husband yesterday, and she told them some things that I just can’t accept.”

  “Sue was the last to see him?” Mrs. McConnell turned to Susan in surprise. “You didn’t tell us that.”

  “Didn’t I?” Susan said. “I thought I did.”

  “Of course you didn’t.” Her mother gestured the other woman toward a chair. “Ple
ase, sit down. I’m sure Sue wants to help in any way she can. Let me get my husband; he’ll want to help too, if possible. We all do.” She raised her voice. “Ed? Come out here, dear. Mr. Griffin’s wife is here to talk with Sue.”

  Mr. McConnell came in from the den, and introductions were made, and the twins and Craig came in, bright-faced and curious, and were also introduced and were then sent back to the kitchen. I cannot go through with this, Susan thought, and yet somehow she found herself seated on the sofa between her parents with Mrs. Griffin directly across from her, and she was saying, “Yes, I had a conference with him after school. I did see him then.”

  “What did you talk about?” Cathy Griffin asked her. “Your ‘Song for Ophelia’?”

  The question was so far from what she had expected that Susan stopped, disconcerted. “Yes—he did mention that. How did you know?”

  “He told me about it at breakfast. He said your song was an exceptionally good one, that you were a sensitive young writer.”

  “He did?”

  “What song?” Mrs. McConnell asked. “I’m afraid you’ve left us behind here. Did you write a song, Sue?”

  “Not with music,” Susan said. “It was more of a poem. It was to be the last song Ophelia sang before her death. We all had to do it. It was an assignment.”

  “Brian isn’t an easy teacher,” Cathy Griffin said. “He’s demanding of his students—too demanding, I sometimes think. He feels he has such a short time with them, he wants to bring them just as far as he can before they’re out of his hands. He’s a dedicated teacher, and he gets very excited about his better students. He considers Susan one of his ‘good ones.’”

  “That’s a fine compliment,” Mr. McConnell said. “I’m sure it must mean a lot to Sue to hear that.”

  “It’s because of that—because she has been special to him—I couldn’t believe—” She turned her gaze from the senior McConnells to Susan herself, directing the question to her. “Why did you lie to the police about what Brian did when he left school?”

  There was a moment of stunned silence.

  Then Susan said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Of course you know. You made up several things about that interview. You told the police that Brian was jumpy, that he kept glancing at his watch and hardly paid any attention to what he was talking about. I know that’s not true. Brian took his conferences with students very seriously. He made notes ahead of time of the things he wanted to discuss with them. He cared—he cared deeply about such things. He would not have acted the way you said he did.”

  “He did,” Susan said. “He kept looking at his watch.”

  “What would you say if I told you Brian wasn’t wearing a watch?”

  “He was,” Susan said. “He always wore a watch.” She paused. “Didn’t he?”

  “Usually, yes. But day before yesterday it broke. The crystal fell out. It’s at home on his bureau right now, waiting for me to take it to be repaired.”

  Oh my god, Susan thought. Panic began to rise within her, pushing its way up from her stomach into her throat with a cold, sour pressure. She swallowed hard.

  “Maybe he borrowed a watch from somebody, just for the day.”

  “Why would he do that? There are clocks all over the school. Every room has one. Besides, Brian never borrows things. He doesn’t believe in it. ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be,’ he says. He says it all the time. Do you know what that’s from?”

  “Hamlet.” She could have told her the act, the scene, the line.

  “Why did you make that up about the watch, Susan?”

  “I didn’t,” Susan said. “I thought he was wearing one. He acted as though he was. He kept—he kept—”

  She groped for words. “He kept looking—at his wrist—the way somebody does who is used to wearing a watch and is worried about what time it is. I mean, people like that, even if they’re not wearing their watches, they’re so in the habit of looking at the wrists, they keep on doing it.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Mr. McConnell said quietly. “What I’d like to know, Mrs. Griffin, is why is it so important that your husband was or wasn’t wearing a watch during his conference with our daughter? It seems like a very insignificant thing.”

  “It might be,” Cathy Griffin said, “except that it points out the fact that Susan isn’t telling the whole and complete truth. There’s no reason for her to say that Brian looked at his watch if he didn’t. Why would someone invent such a statement? There has to be a reason. Why did you say it, Susan?”

  “Because I thought it was true.”

  “Why did you say there was a woman waiting for Brian out in his car?”

  “Because there was.”

  “No, there wasn’t. That’s another lie—a total lie!” Cathy’s eyes were blazing. In an instant the pale, drawn face was alive with anger. “You made that up! Why?”

  “I didn’t make anything up,” Susan said. “There was a woman. Young. Blond. Very pretty. She was sitting in the front seat—not in the driver’s seat, in the other one.”

  “How did you come to see this woman, Sue?” her father asked.

  “Mr. Griffin and I were talking, and we walked out together into the parking lot. We stood by his car and talked a little longer, and then I turned and started home. And then—” Frantically she fished backward in her mind for Mark’s words. “And then—something about the way he’d been acting made me look back, and he was getting into his car. And the woman was there!”

  “You hadn’t seen her the whole time you were standing beside the car talking to Brian?” Cathy Griffin asked.

  “No. I wasn’t looking inside the car. I didn’t notice.”

  “And with this woman—sitting there waiting for him, Brian still had you walk with him to the lot, had you stand right there next to the car and continue the conversation you were having inside, the conversation he had hardly paid any attention to because he was so busy looking at the watch he wasn’t wearing?”

  “Yes,” Susan said. “Yes, he did.”

  “Could you describe this woman in more detail?”

  “I already said she was blond and young.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “A green blouse,” Susan said desperately. “And a suede jacket. And pants—brown pants.”

  “You could see the pants even though she was seated inside the car?”

  “When Mr. Griffin opened the car door to get in on the driver’s side, I could see across.”

  “On your way across the parking lot, glancing back over your shoulder, you could see into the car and across the seat and notice and remember every detail of this strange woman’s clothing?”

  “Mrs. Griffin,” Susan’s father said, “if Sue says she saw this woman, then she saw her. There is no reason for her to tell you this if it isn’t true.”

  “That’s the whole point,” Cathy Griffin said. “There must be a reason. There has to be one for Susan to have told the police all these things. Unless she’s some sort of compulsive liar and doesn’t know the difference between truth and falsehoods, unless she lies all the time about everything and it’s just part of her makeup—”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Mrs. McConnell said. There was a note of anger in her normally gentle voice. “Susan does not lie.”

  “How can you be so certain about that?”

  “Because she’s our daughter,” Mrs. McConnell said. “We have lived with Sue for sixteen years and we know her. When you know and love somebody you’re aware of her faults as well as her good points, and if Susan were inclined to fabricate stories we would certainly have discovered it by now.”

  “I feel the same way exactly about my husband,” Cathy Griffin said. “I know him, and he did not leave the school with some beautiful woman and forget to come home. Something else happened to Brian, something I can’t even begin to imagine, but Susan can. Susan knows what it is, or she wouldn’t be trying so hard to mislead us.”

  “Are
you implying that our daughter did something to your husband?” Mr. McConnell asked incredulously.

  “Not by herself. Or maybe not at all. Maybe she just knows something about someone else who did. Maybe she saw something.”

  “Did you see something, Sue?” her father asked.

  “No, of course not! I didn’t see anything I haven’t already told you about!” Susan felt herself growing close to hysteria. “I saw a woman—a blond woman—in Mr. Griffin’s car. I didn’t see anything else or anybody else—just that.”

  “If my daughter says—” Mr. McConnell began.

  The doorbell rang. There was the sound of footsteps, of the door opening, and then Craig’s voice, “Oh, hi. Sue, it’s David!”

  “It is?” Susan half-rose, then forced herself to sink back again. She struggled to keep the relief that surged through her from flooding her voice. “Dave? I’m here—here in the living room!”

  “This is David Ruggles, a friend of Sue’s.” Mrs. McConnell made automatic introductions. “Dave, this is Mrs. Griffin. Oh—I didn’t see—you have a friend with you?”

  “Mark Kinney,” David said.

  Thank god! Susan could have thrown her arms around both of them in gratitude for their interruption of the interview. She could see David stiffen slightly as he realized who the woman in the armchair was, but he held himself in check, smiling and extending his hand.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Mrs. Griffin.”

  Mark did not show recognition of any kind. His face was bland and expressionless as he acknowledged the introduction with a nod.

  “I’m sorry,” David said. “I didn’t know you had company. Mark and I were just out riding around, and we thought maybe Sue would like to get a soda or something.”

  “I’d love to,” Susan said. Anywhere, anything, to leave this room and the pressure of the confrontation. She was on her feet in an instant.

  Her mother reached out quickly and laid a restraining hand on her arm.

  “Mrs. Griffin may have more things to ask you, dear.”

  “I don’t have anything more,” Cathy Griffin said quietly. “I know Susan’s eager to go out with her friends. Are you boys in my husband’s class also?”