“I’m not sure you ever learn anything, Claire.” He shot me a discouraged look. “To continue, I also discussed the letters with Cheryl Anne, who was properly ashamed of her conduct and bravely offered to turn in her crown. Once she stopped sniveling at the idea, she pointed out that neither she nor Thud could enter the lounge without being noticed.” He propped his feet on his desk, toppling a stack of folders, and crossed his arms. “That’s pretty much what I’ve learned in the last few days. May I assume you’ve been equally open, despite your innate tendencies to the contrary?”
“You may assume so, Peter. I was trying to help Miss Parchester,” I said, sighing. “I seemed to have mudaed things more so than usual, and I’m sorry. If you’re adamant, I will call Bernice Dort and tell her I won’t be available to substitute tomorrow. No matter how deafening the jackhammer, I’ll stay in the Book Depot and mind my own business. It needs minding, actually. I haven’t been in for a week; the mice have probably invited all their friends in to nosh the paperbacks.”
He rubbed his forehead, crossed his arms, rearranged the pile of folders, made noises under his breath, and generally allowed me time to suffer. I remained determinedly penitent. There were rumbles outside his office, cars coming and leaving, voices barking into telephones, lots of footsteps in the hall. All we needed were a few locker doors to be slammed, and we’d be in dear old Farberville High School between classes.
When I was about to exit with whatever dignity I could muster, he finally looked up and said, “You are convinced Emily Parchester is innocent. Despite your continual, maddening, eternally intrusive interference, I do value your opinion-if not your tactics. I suppose you might as well continue to substitute so that you can keep an eye on things in the lounge. You will, of course, report everything to me, without regard to your personal analysis of its value to the proper authorities.”
“Of course,” I murmured, somewhat disappointed I hadn’t been ordered back to the bookstore for the duration. the thought had appealed. “May I be permitted to make amends to you?”
“Of course.
I gave him a bright smile. “Would you like to go dancing with me tomorrow night?” I suppose I might have mentioned the five hundred or so teenagers who would accompany us, but it must have slipped my mind.
TEN
The events of the last week paled in the onslaught of the Homecoming madness. Most of the students wore some variation of red and gold in honor of the big day, and they chattered like starlings through the first two periods. The freshmen seemed to have either forgiven me for bumping off their principal or forgotten about it. No one paid any attention when I tried to quiet things down, so I settled for an aspirin and a long, solitary visit to the darkroom. Fourteen hours until the dance.
There were three bottles of aspirin beside the coffee pot in the lounge, standard equipment for such holidays. I gulped down another for luck, then slumped on the green-and-mauve, closed my eyes, and lulled myself with a pleasant reverie of books, bookracks, temperate bookbuyers, invoices, and quarterly tax estimates as yet uncomputed. The images evoked a quasi-religious rush of longing.
I kept my eyes closed as a few souls drifted in and out of the lounge, mission unknown. One was, I supposed, Evelyn’s student teacher on her hourly breakdown; another was apt to be a Fury. I really didn’t care. Now that Peter had asked for my help, I couldn’t rally the energy to sniff out clues or grill suspects. That was too unsettling to think about, so I sank further into the plaid to doze.
“Burned out already?” Evelyn said in my ear. “Most of us survive a few years before we seek greener pastures elsewhere.”
Yawning, I went into the lounge to get a cup of coffee. “I think it’s psychosomatic,” I called. “Anything to avoid chaperoning the dance tonight. The thought sends chills down my spine.”
“You’ll be in good company. Sherwood has the boys’ rest room, Miss Bagby and I have the front door, and Jerry has the back door, to keep the smokers contained. Paula has the concession stand during the game, but I imagine she’ll come with her beloved to ensure that he keeps his eyes on her and off the senior girls.”
The coffee almost sloshed out of my cup. “Are you implying that Paula will attend this unspeakable function-even though she isn’t required under penalty of death to do so?”
Evelyn laughed at my expression. “Paula’s sweetness and light on the surface, but she has a stainless-steel interior. When she got fed up with Sherwood, she told him off with the acumen of a professional hit man, and he was so stricken he made nary a wisecrack in Latin for almost two weeks. It was truly amazing, not to mention refreshing. To everyone’s regret, he finally recovered and is now much worse than before. I can count the Latinless sentences on one hand.”
I stared at the formica table, trying to recall a bit of conversation that had occurred at the fatal potluck. “What did Weiss say to Sherwood about a manuscript that provoked a menacing Latin riposte?” I said, wrinkling my nose. “
“
“But have the sophomores abandoned you?” I said in a futile attempt to divert the direction in which we were aimed. It didn’t work.
Evelyn raised an eyebrow at Sherwood. “Last night? I didn’t realize you two were getting all that cozy.” She raised the other eyebrow at me. “You didn’t mention anything when you called me to discuss the Miss Demeanor shenanigans.”
Sherwood’s eyebrows were up, so I raised mine, too, just to be companionable. “I asked Sherwood to unlock the building for me,” I admitted. “I wanted to look at jerry’s personnel file to see if I could find whatever Weiss was holding over him. Sherwood was kind enough to comply, and we did discuss motives in passing.”
“What did you find in Jerry’s file?” Evelyn asked, thawing to early spring if not out-and-out summer.
I ignored Sherwood’s glower. “I didn’t find anything at all. It was all quite innocent-recommendations, teacher certification, good grades through graduate school, academic awards, that sort of thing. I was wrong when I hypothesized that he didn’t have his degree. Degrees he has, and admirable ones.”
Upon this seemingly innocuous revelation, Sherwood choked and sputtered through a mouthful of coffee and Evelyn turned an unbecoming shade of white. Both of them goggled at me as if I’d mentioned the coach’s propensity for bestiality or the dismemberment of his first seven wives.
“What?” I said, unamused by their antics. “What’s wrong with good transcripts and warm letters from old coaches?”
“Graduate school,” croaked Evelyn.
“It’s where you go after undergraduate school,” I said. “I went to one myself, although I never got around to writing a dissertation. It’s not a topic for ‘
“Jerry is a coach,” Sherwood said, proving he too could croak. The pond was filling up; all we needed were lily pads.
“Jerry is indeed a coach, and probably a very good one,” I said as tolerantly as I could. “He also has a doctorate in English literature, which is more than I can say after my three years of tuition, research papers, and white wine from a jug.”
“A doctorate?” they croaked in unison. Lily pads couldn’t be too far in the future, along with dragonflys and cattails.
“There’s something you two aren’t telling me. Why don’t you calm down, sip some coffee, unstick your eyelids from your foreheads-and tell me what you find so incredible?”
They looked at each other, shook their heads, looked at me, shook their heads, and looked at each other again. I was on the verge of an acerbic comment on the now-predictable pattern, followed by a repetition of my question in one-syllable words, when Evelyn found her voice.
“Jerry is a high school football coach. He’s on the same salary scale as the rest of us, and it is determined by experience, continued professional training-and educational level. No school would ever hire a coach with a master’s degree, much less-” she gulped “-a doctorate, even if it were in physical education. He’d hardly warrant the top of the pay scale for two classes of general health, one drivers’ ed, and study hall. They hardly hire any teachers with graduate degrees, since there are plenty with bachelor’s floating around the market. So much cheaper that way.
Sherwood managed to find his voice, and it was laden with glee. “All Weiss had to do was call central admin and tell them about the degree, and our boy Jerry would find himself with his thumb out on the county line.
“Sherwood,” said Evelyn, “you do know you will not breathe one single word of this to anyone, don’t you? If you so much as drop a hint in ancient Etruscan, I will call a press conference about your situation with that editor.”
“The manuscript?” I prompted in a small voice, hoping they had forgotten my presence.
“
“It wasn’t?” I said.
Sherwood grimaced so intently that his goatee trembled. “It sure as hell wasn’t, Ms. Malloy. There was absolutely no basis for that slanderous allegation-everyone in my field uses the same reference texts and it’s conceivable that a few phrases might sound somewhat similar. Similar-not plagiarized.”
“An editor accused you of plagiarism, then returned your manuscript with a nasty letter?” I took a drink of coffee while I considered the implications. “Weiss found out, probably through Pius’s channel, and used it to make your life miserable and your career tenuous. You must have been furious.”
Evelyn gave me a sad smile. “Sherwood told me about the letter the day after it arrived, and Weiss alluded to it for the first time that same afternoon. Sherwood’s been frantic for weeks to learn how Weiss found out and what he intended to do, but it wasn’t a motive for murder. The allegation was slanderous; it would have caused some degree of difficulty with other editors and certainly made it more of a battle to get published, but it wasn’t life-and-death.”
“No wonder you despised Pitts,” I said to Sherwood.
His grimace eased. “I did. He was a despicable snitch, among his other qualities. He must have heard Jerry and Paula talking about the transcript and reported to Weiss, who simply sent for a copy. Holy Achilles, I wonder what Weiss had on the others..
“Something worthy of murder?” I said under my breath. The two must have heard me, for we all ended third period in a collective sigh.
At the end of the last period Caron informed me that I would have to drive her to the parade, since her ankle hurt and she wasn’t about To Hobble Anywhere. As always, Inez was there to some degree. We parked behind the bank, made it to the square without too much hobbling, and found a flower box on which to sit.
Both sides of the street were beginning to crowd with students, parents, whiny children, and babies asleep in strollers. The sky was clear; the sunshine warm. I had about six hours until the dance.
Bernice Dort appeared behind us, sans clipboard. “How’s your ankle?” she asked Caron. “I received a note that you were unable to participate in your physical education class, but one of the office monitors told me that you’d hurt yourself. I hope it’s nothing too serious to prevent your participation in the freshman intramural volleyball tournament next week?”
