Murder in the French Teacher's Garden

by Andrew Culver

  Howie was drinking some huge blue concoction and he clearly needed to unload.

  “Listen, Pauline, I’m sorry – I know you’ve had your problems with Jim, and he wasn’t always a good sport about that competition, but I’ve been friends with him for twenty years, since way back in our Texas days, and I’m the reason he moved out here. I’d been telling him for years to come out to California and he finally did, and when I got fired from St. Ignatius I was so damn mad, and he kept talking to me about that damn competition, and that night he just convinced me to let him into the school. You know, I still have my keys and everything. I’ve never gone into the school or done anything crazy, Pauline, I wouldn’t do that, I’m not a criminal. I may have overreacted in the classroom, but trust me, other teachers have done the same, and listen, that night he asked me to let him in. He said he needed to take some cuttings of some of your plants, because he confessed to me that you’re just a better gardener than he is, and he needed to look at your garden and see how you did everything, and he just wanted to get some cuttings. He said he didn’t need a ride back home, which I didn’t understand, I thought maybe his wife was going to pick him up or something. That’s all I did, I swear, and I didn’t know I was sending him to his death. Were you there? Did you confront him? Did something happen?”

  “I left before all of this happened, Howie. I have no idea who was there. He did not mention meeting anyone?”

  “No, but he was on his phone texting someone and he seemed really calm and chatty like he always was, Pauline, and I’m just devastated, because I’ve lost a friend and I feel responsible, because I know in my heart he shouldn’t have been in there, and it was wrong, and as a former colleague and friend to you it was wrong.”

  “Okay, Howie, you can relax. I am willing to let bygones be bygones. What matters is that I find out who kill him, because you understand that everyone think I did it, and the diocese does not care if there is no evidence, you see? I haven’t been charged, have I? Am I in prison now, awaiting a jury of my peers? I think not. But the mob does not care. They see a pairson who they see as an outsider, and they want fresh blood, like jackals, Howie.”

  “I know, and that’s the same thing that happened to me, Pauline. The parents didn’t want to hear the whole story, and the administration couldn’t afford to lose any tuition money. Parents were going to stand outside the school with signs and everything, and before I knew it I had my last check and that was it. My teaching career was over.”

  “But you hit that boy, no?”

  “Pauline, you have no idea how he provoked me. Remember, you and I grew up in the Catholic schools when they could hit you. I know you were in, where was it, Algeria? But it must have been the same.”

  “Yes. They hit everyone in the Catholic schools in France at that time. The nuns, they are frustrated and angry, and they take out all their rage on the students.”

  “Well, I know it’s not an excuse, but the school should’ve done something about that kid. He got in fights, he insulted the teachers, he cheated, he sold pot on campus, but since his parents were big donors, they looked the other way. Finally, you know, I just lost my temper.”

  He took a sip of his big blue beverage. “I just don’t know why someone would go in there and kill Jim, if it wasn’t you. Pauline, you’re the only who could’ve done it. But I believe you.”

  “Thank you. It is very strange,” she said, taking a small sip of her mai tai. “This is a very weird drink. Not entirely unpleasant.”

  “Have you thought about people who might have had something against him? Do the police have any leads?”

  “They don’t have anything,” I said. “We know the detective who’s in charge of the case – he’s a family friend. It’s basically an unsolved murder, and they don’t have enough evidence to investigate anyone.”

  “But who had the motive, if it wasn’t you?” he asked Pauline.

  “It turns out that plenty of people did. I don’t know if you are aware, but your friend made a few enemies in town, Howie. We speak to parents of his students, former students themselves, former colleagues, and the list could probably go on and on. It seems he was a bit like a bull in a china shop in this town. He could not walk down the street without making someone angry. Including myself.”

  “Have you ruled out everyone?”

  “We’ve spoken to everyone we could track down,” I said. “Everyone has an alibi. I don’t know who would have even known he was there that night.”

  “Well, he must have been meeting someone,” Howie said. “Someone who was supposed to give him a ride home.”

  “And then they killed him instead,” Pauline mused. “It does not make sense.”

  “Howie,” I said, “I don’t think I know your story. How did you end up moving out here?”

  “Another Texan came out here. Friend of mine named Jack Ryder, a big rancher. He had a vacation home out here for years, on Lake Arrowhead, and eventually retired here. He was an even closer friend of Jim’s, knew him from ranching.”

  Pauline and I looked at each other. Maybe not a suspect, but a guy we needed to talk to.

  A COUPLE of days later Pedro stopped me on campus as he was sweeping up the quad after school.

  “Thomas, I’ve been thinking a lot, man. Listen, it seems like that dude Screbbles just died out of nowhere, right? No suspects have come forward. No fingerprints. No proof that anyone actually killed him. I don’t think anyone was actually here that night. I mean, I thought I heard voices, but it might not have been from the garden. I mean, now that I think about it, it could’ve been from the houses on that side, or even the street. And since they haven’t found a single suspect, listen to this. You might think I’m crazy, but this is a real phenomenon. That night there were five UFO sightings from Lake Arrowhead up to Big Bear. FIVE. And throughout the years there have been multiple incidents around the world, and in these mountains, of UFOs not only messing with livestock, but messing with people too. A year ago this one dude in Big Bear was found dead outside his house from nothing. The cops couldn’t even find a cause of death. He had gone outside to look at a light in the sky and his whole family saw it too. They followed him out there and they saw a huge black triangle in the sky. This thing was as big as the Phoenix Lights, have you heard of that?”

  “The what?”

  “The Phoenix Lights. That was in 1997. This is the verified truth, Thomas. Not even a conspiracy theory. Thousands of people in Phoenix saw a craft that was something like a mile long, and just cruised over the city of Phoenix. The police, the governor, airplane pilots, everybody saw this thing. And it happened several times over the course of a couple nights. Sometimes the lights would come on and off, and move around, and then they would return to this massive triangle shape in the sky. But anyway, this thing that happened in Big Bear, it basically killed this dude. And his whole family and the neighbors saw it. And that happened to another guy a couple months ago in Lake Arrowhead where a guy was found dead from basically nothing, except he had weird bruises on his head and his body. And there were the same sightings that night, and a couple people had dogs who were found dead, but with missing organs. And you’ve heard of the cattle mutilations, right?”

  “Yeah, I’ve definitely heard of those. The same thing, right? Missing organs and stuff?”

  “Missing organs with surgical precision and no blood. And no footsteps, no possibility that anyone was near the cow. These cows will get spooked if anyone comes near them, you know? And this stuff is happening in the middle of a field. Sometimes these things have been dropped from a great height, and no one knows what happened. Let me ask you: did they even do a coroner’s autopsy on Jim Screbbles?”

  “Actually, no. Dave Roberts told me they didn’t.”

  “Exactly.” He stared at me. “Makes you wonder why not.”

  “Well…yeah. They really should have.”

  Now I was just depressed. This was not what I needed. Aliens murdering Jim Screbbles would help
no one. You could not prosecute an alien. The parents calling for Pauline to get fired would not be appeased by this theory.

  Out of desperation, though, I did go to Bear’s bookstore to see what he and his group would have to say. I remembered some UFO conversation one of the times I’d been browsing there, and I remember it being long and full of wild accounts of sightings by hunters, fishermen and hikers. He was there sorting books from a stack of boxes. This was the part of his job that I still didn’t understand. Periodically someone would bring in a bookshelf’s worth of old books for store credit and he would go through them with some mystical power to know which ones he could use and which ones he couldn’t. Did he feel the book and get some transmission from the bookstore gods telling him whether it would sell or not? I don’t know. He didn’t consult his computer or any kind of database, and it took him less than three seconds to decide which pile he would put it in. The guy who was trying to trade in the books was browsing while his fate was being decided by this aging hippie and his indecipherable trade-in system.

  “Tom, how’s it going?” said Bear without looking up. “Still working on your mystery?”

  “I am, as a matter of fact. I’m kind of at the end of my rope, actually,” I said, sitting near the desk in one of the overstuffed old chairs that had been there forever.

  “You’re out of leads?”

  “Well,” I laughed, “there’s one thing. It’s stupid, but I have nothing better to do, so I just came to see if you know anything about this.”

  “Tom, you’ve come to the right place, because I am familiar with all forms of stupid, useless, and pointless trivia, arcana, and addenda,” he said, throwing a book on one of his three piles.

  “Do you have any books on local UFO sightings?”

  He looked up. “You’re not going to find it in the UFO section – Julia argues with me all the time about this, but I think this one belongs in the local section because it’s written by Doug Feldman, who lives in Riverside, and it’s basically a listing of every UFO sighting in the Inland Empire going back to the 19th century. And there have been a lot.”

  “Great, thanks.”

  “So you think aliens did it now? Yeah, I’d say you’re scratching the bottom of the barrel, Tom.”

  “Yeah, Bear, I’m desperate,” I said, walking to the local section. “You heard of any stories of cattle or pet mutilations around here? Or people dying mysteriously with weird bruises after UFO sightings?”

  He thought. “Yeah. I hear the stories. There are the UFO people who come in here all the time telling me about them. Personally I’m more interested in conspiracies that are happening right under our noses, like the fact that our city council is allowing Nestle to take the water right out of the ground and sell it back to us in plastic bottles, which end up in the landfill.”

  “You’re not a believer, then?” I asked, picking up the UFO book and thumbing through it.

  “Well, I did see lights in the sky a few years ago, and I know it wasn’t Venus, or airplanes, or helicopters or anything. These things were attached to a very large black triangle. But then again, it could be something out of China Lake or Edwards. They’re working on stuff up there that we can’t even imagine. But then again, I prefer my conspiracy theories rooted in reality, for instance the fact that our congress is giving the military a black budget to develop machines that are designed to kill poor people in other countries.”

  “I think I’ll buy this anyway,” I said. “Might be good reading.”

  “Good call,” he said. “I support your decision. Read it, make up your own mind. You know what? The little green guys could be out there. But if a guy drops dead at your school there’s probably a very human explanation for it. Might take you awhile to dig it up, but I’ll bet you a lot that it’s there.”

  7

  It was Easter Break. Katie’s family was flying everyone to a friend’s house in Mexico where we would spend the week at some kind of cliffside estate. I was looking forward to getting out of town after what felt like a long first half of the semester. I was probably exhausted from the usual grading, lesson-planning and teaching, and also from the mental exertion of worrying about not only my pregnant wife but my colleague, who was not a murderer but was about to lose her job anyway.

  The flight took us to Guadalajara, and the friends were there to meet us with their personal drivers in a couple of large vans, and we drove about two hours through farm land and hilly terrain, past banana and mango plantations until we got to the coast, where we drove through several villages on our way to what I was told was a private community. I was picturing the kind of community my grandparents lived in down in Florida, with streets full of cookie cutter homes surrounding a boring putting green and a community pool. This was something entirely different. Apparently some time in the seventies an Italian architect had designed and built his dream home on a hill on his estate, which consisted of about 1000 acres of beachfront land in a desolate stretch of coast. Then he had kept building houses, with the help of rich investors, until there were now something like fifty houses tucked away in coves and hills and valleys. As we passed them I noticed that they all looked like structures you’d see in Dr. Seuss books – wild, colorful, artsy, and European.

  When we got to the house the servants unloaded our stuff and we were greeted at the door with trays full of margaritas. I grabbed one and followed the guy who’d taken our bags. He led us into a yard that overlooked the coast. There was a massive infinity pool down several flights of long stairs. Katie and I stood, unable to believe what we were seeing.

  “It’s like a hotel,” she said. “This feels like a really expensive hotel.”

  Our bungalow was separated from the main building, and then as I looked around I noticed that there were several buildings and I couldn’t really tell where the house was. There was a huge bar and kitchen and dining table outside, under a giant thatched roof. There was another two-story building that seemed to have a master bedroom on the second floor, and the first floor had doors that were wide open, with couches, statues and works of art on the walls. There were lawns stretching on and on, and little groves of trees, and immaculate beds of tropical, magenta-colored flowers.

  We put our stuff down in the room and lay on the bed, exhausted. A ceiling fan twirled above us. The air outside was incredibly hot but here, inside, it was cool and luscious. From our bed we could see the ocean.

  “We will never live in a place like this,” I said. “We could never afford it. Never. I don’t know if I should be happy or sad right now.”

  “Just be happy, babe,” Katie said. “We’re in paradise. Just relax, slow down, drink that margarita, put on your suit, and get ready to go to the pool. Because that’s where we’re spending the whole week.”

  “How do your parents even know these people? I don’t even remember their names.”

  “Rick and Belinda Carr. They know them from church, and they own one of the ski resorts in Big Bear. I think they own one in Mammoth too.”

  “They live in Big Bear?”

  “Yeah, and I think my dad said they have another house in Mammoth, and obviously this one, and maybe even one in Canada.”

  “How much do you even pay for a house like this? I can’t imagine.”

  “Rick built it himself. I mean, he had an architect do it.”

  We put our suits on and went down to the pool, where we floated in inner tubes and gazed at the sea while the servants brought us fresh margaritas, quesadillas, grilled shrimp, and chips and salsa. Katie was able to relax immediately and begin enjoying herself but for me the shock was too violent. I thought too much about the weirdness of the change, the beauty of the place, the wealth of these people, my own poverty, the unfairness that I couldn’t live here forever, the fact that my regular life was ruined now that I couldn’t live here all the time. I’d been teaching Hamlet too much, maybe. After a month of discussing the melancholy Dane with your students every day, it’s probably impossible to just go o
n vacation and enjoy yourself.

  I got in the rhythm quickly – we would wake up and wander over to the kitchen where the cooks would make us omelets, huevos rancheros or whatever we wanted, sit around and drink coffee, and then drift down to the pool where we’d sit and put on suntan lotion in between dips in the pool. At one point we went to a polo game at a polo field in the community, and I realized that everyone who lived here was European – a lot of Italians, French, and Spanish, with a few Brits. These were very, very wealthy people. I didn’t know anyone with this kind of money. I hadn’t known these people were out there. They dressed differently, and leisure was their full-time occupation. I didn’t know how they had all this money.

  I had forgotten about the mystery that I was supposed to be solving until someone asked me how it was going. I think it was one of Katie’s sisters; it was at dinner one night when we were all having margaritas and they were serving grilled corn and asparagus with salad that had fresh-caught prawns in it, and the main dish was carnitas, the stewed pork that was crisp and moist and seemed to fall apart the second it touched your tongue.

  “Well, I think I’ve reached a dead end,” I told the group. “I can’t tell who killed Jim Screbbles, unless a ghost came along and whacked him on the head with a spade and disappeared. It sounds like a lot of people didn’t like him, but I don’t think any of them actually killed the guy.”

  “Wait, Screbbles?” said Rick Carr, who had been pretty quiet unless he was talking business with Katie’s parents.

  “Yeah, a guy named Jim Screbbles died at my school…”

  “We know Jim!” Belinda cried. “He and Judy came to the marriage retreat. We were so sad to hear that he died!”

  “They came to that retreat, Rick?” Katie’s mom asked.

  “Yes. They’ve been several times.”

  “What retreat?” I asked.

  “We do a marriage retreat weekend up in Big Bear,” Belinda said. “It’s for Christian couples who need to refocus on their relationship through Christ. So we get couples who are struggling to make Christ a stronger part of their marriage. A lot of couple come to us when they’re struggling or need a boost.”