Death at Charity's Point (23 page)

“Thanks,” I said.

“You take care,” he said to Spender.

“See you later,” said the bald-headed boy.

I picked up an empty chair, twirled it around, and straddled it backwards.

Spender grinned at me. “So. Changed your mind.”

“Right,” I said. “Let’s talk.”

“Start with this,” he said, thrusting one of his pamphlets at me.

I glanced at it. This one, too, featured a big red swastika on the cover. Part of a series, no doubt. I put it on the table between us, swastika side down.

“I’d like to talk, first,” I said. “About the conspiracy.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re trying to put me on, right?”

“Wrong. I just want to make sure I understand. About the threat from the left. I want to understand your point of view. About the pinkos, the Jews, the liberal politicians, the anti-nuke crowd, the radical blacks. All the enemies of America. The ones who’ll cause our defeat.”

“They’re weakening our country’s moral fiber,” said Spender, a note of caution in his voice. “Yes. Those that aren’t actively conspiring against us.”

“And for our survival,” I said, “these enemies have to be dealt with. It’s a simple matter of ends justifying the means. Right?”

“You’ve got it. You do dig this stuff, don’t you?”

“Yes. Harvey didn’t, though, did he?”

“Willard?” Spender curled his lip in what I think he intended to be a sneer. “He was an enemy. Yeah.” He stopped, glanced around, then leaned toward me. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Friend of Harvey Willard. And George Gresham.”

“Figures.” He started to stand up. I reached across the table and gripped his wrist. Hard. “You better sit,” I said. He remained motionless, half standing, just long enough to indicate that his decision to sit was the product of his own free will. Then, sneer still intact, he let himself fall back into his chair.

“So what do you want from me?” he said.

“Where were you the night before last?”

“You a cop or something?”

“More or less. Answer my question.”

“I don’t have to.”

“Absolutely right. You don’t have to. Not now. I just thought I’d make it easier for you. It’s up to you.”

He stared at me, then nodded. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Where you were the night Harvey Willard died.”

Spender rubbed his hand across his bald head, as if he were testing it to see if he needed to shave. Then he grinned. “I was in the infirmary.”

“The infirmary. Were you sick?”

He laughed. “I had a boil on my ass. Want to see?”

I pushed myself away from the table. “You want to play that way, sonny, it’s all right with me.”

“Wait,” he said. I remained standing and looked down at him. “Please,” he said. I sat.

“I really did have a boil on my ass. They lanced it and I had hot packs and a shot. That’s where I was.”

I nodded. “That’s easy enough to check on. What about your friends?”

“Why are you asking me this stuff? What about Willard, anyway?”

“He’s dead, you know.”

“Everyone knows that. Got run over hitchhiking or something.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Where were your friends the night you were in the infirmary?”

The sneer threatened to return, but Cap Spender maneuvered his mouth into something like a smile. “I don’t have
that
much control over them.” His hand played with the pamphlet on the table. “Not yet, anyway.”

He struck me, then, as just a pitiful, lonely kid, with a sad face and a bald head and a boil on his ass, and not to be taken seriously. I touched his shoulder as I stood. “Well, thanks for your time,” I said. “I’ll call the infirmary, you know.”

He shrugged.

I reached down and took the pamphlet from the table.
When the Cities Burn
was its title. I thought of Win Gresham—or whoever it was in the photo Florence had shown me. Armageddon.

“Take it,” said Cap Spender.

I tucked it into my jacket pocket.

He touched his forefinger to his eyebrow, a little salute. His mouth couldn’t decide whether to smile or sneer. “See you later,” he said.

Alexander Binh was leaving the Administration Building as I was entering it. “Nice day, Mr. Binh,” I said to him as we passed. His mouth smiled and he nodded his head.

The door to Bartley Elliott’s office was open when I got there. I put my head in and said, “May I come in?”

He was alone at his desk, his tie loosened and his jacket thrown over the back of one of the straight-backed chairs against the wall. He waved me in.

I sat across from him. “Rough times,” I said.

He shook his head. “You don’t know the half of it. Not the half. The trustees are getting nervous. The police are hanging around, asking questions. Parents are calling.” He coughed and cleared his throat loudly several times. “Two deaths in less than a month, Mr. Coyne. Two
strange
deaths. Two fine people. Dead. And I don’t understand any of it. You just can’t expect to run an independent school, you can’t attract students, you can’t raise funds, you can’t keep quality staff, when you have people dying. Violently. Mysteriously.”

It was a lengthy speech for the Headmaster. He slumped back in his chair.

“I can imagine,” I murmured.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” he sighed. “I feel badly on account of George and Harvey. As a human being, I feel very badly. But as the headmaster of this institution, I have other considerations as well.”

“It would be to everyone’s advantage to have these mysteries cleared up,” I offered quietly.

“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. It would.”

I leaned forward. “That’s what
I
would like to do. That is my goal.”

“It is.” He peered at me. “It is?”

“Yes. Oh, I know, the police say George’s death was suicide. They say Harvey was murdered by somebody who picked him up hitchhiking. But I don’t believe either of those things, and I’ll bet you don’t, either.”

He spread his hands. “I just don’t know. Certainly, George…”

“I know. I agree. That’s what I mean. Suicide just doesn’t make sense.” I dropped my voice. “I’ll tell you what I think, Mr. Elliott. I think that George didn’t kill himself at all. I think somebody killed him. Threw him off the top of that big cliff by the ocean. And what’s more, I think that the same person killed Harvey. And for the same reason.”

“What reason?” Elliott’s eyes were wide.

I sat back. “I’m not sure. I have some theories. I have no proof. But you can help me.”

“Me? How?”

“Two ways, actually. First, I’d like you to check something for me. At the infirmary.”

“The infirmary?”

“Yes. Just find out if the Spender boy was there the night Harvey was killed.”

“Oh, do you think…?”

I held up both of my hands. “I don’t know. Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s just something I’d like to check out.”

Elliott looked at me for a moment, then nodded. He picked up the phone, dialed three numbers, waited, then said, “Norma? Bartley Elliott here…. Yes, sad for us all. Reason I’m calling is this. Do you remember if young Spender—Calvin Spender—was admitted to the infirmary last Monday?” Elliott glanced at me and arched his eyebrows, indicating that he was exercising patience with Norma, who I gathered was the school nurse. “I don’t know what his complaint might have been, but… well, wait a minute, then.”

He covered the telephone with the palm of his hand and spoke to me. “Do you have any idea why he might have gone to the infirmary?”

I pointed to where I was sitting. “Boil on his ass.”

“Oh,” said Elliott, nodding vigorously. He glanced at the telephone he was holding, jiggled his brows for an instant, then spoke into it. “A, a boil, Norma. On his buttocks… Oh, yes, right. A skin eruption. To be sure. An abscess, I suppose. Could you check on that, please?”

He looked at me. “She doesn’t remember. Checking her log.”

His eyes darted back to the phone he was still holding to his face. “I see. No, not Friday, Norma. Monday. Yes. It’s the day I’m interested in, not Mr. Spender’s… condition.” Elliott’s eyes darted toward me. When he saw me watching him, his gaze quickly shifted to the ceiling. “You’re quite sure, then. No, of course not, Norma. Your records are always impeccable. You’ve been a tremendous help. As you always are. And I’m sorry to bother you. Yes, I do know how busy things can be there…. Yes. I appreciate it. I appreciate
you
, Norma.”

He hung up the phone, sighed, and stared at me. “He wasn’t there Monday. Friday he was there, spent the night. Abscess, as you said. But not Monday. Norma was definite about that. Norma is usually definite about such things.”

I nodded. “Okay. Thanks. Now, the other thing…”

“Well, what does it mean? Is it important? That Spender wasn’t at the infirmary?”

“I don’t know. He lied to me. I don’t know why he lied to me.”

“But you obviously think…”

“I hope I’m not being obvious, Mr. Elliott. Because none of it’s very obvious to me. I’m not keeping anything from you. Cap Spender and Harvey Willard had a fistfight a while ago, as I’m sure you know. That’s all.”

His shoulders slumped. “Okay. What else was it that you wanted from me?”

“I’d like to see your personnel files.”

“Oh. I can’t allow that.”

“Yes, I know. They’re confidential and all.” I glanced at a four-drawer, green file cabinet in the corner of his office, and at a smaller two-drawer one pushed up beside it.”

“Is that them?”

“Well, yes. The large one contains the records of the students, the smaller the staff. But, really…”

“Those are just students presently enrolled?”

“Oh, yes. It contains all of their school records right up from kindergarten. Test results. References and recommendations and forms from when they applied here. Medical records. Everything. We keep all of that material in one place.” He paused. “Under lock and key,” he added pointedly.

“I understand. And your staff files?”

“Can you tell me what you’re looking for? Perhaps I can help you?” He compressed his lips and widened his eyes at me.

I could only shrug. “I don’t know what I’m looking for. But…”

“But you’ll know it when you see it?”

“Something like that, I guess. I need to see the files.”

“Surely you understand, Mr. Coyne.” Elliott frowned.

“It may be important. Crucial, Mr. Elliott.”

“I understand. But I can’t just…”

“You know the police can subpoena them.”

“Even so…”

“That could be a mess.”

He looked at me.

“Okay,” I sighed. “You can’t give me permission to look through your files. Fair enough. You shouldn’t have to take responsibility for that. I understand. Perhaps, however, there’s something you have to do somewhere else on campus for half an hour or so. I can wait in your office for you to return.”

He stared at me for a moment, then turned his head to look out the window.

“Mr. Elliott…?”

“Actually,” he said slowly, “there
is
something. It’s—let’s see, it’s ten after five now. I will need to be gone until, oh, say quarter of six. Yes. It’ll take at least that long. I certainly couldn’t be back before then. I trust you can make yourself comfortable in my office until then. I do have some magazines you can read.”

“And your files—they’re locked, of course. Very secure, safe.”

“Oh, of course. Securely locked. The keys, they’re in the top drawer of my desk—yes, very secure.” He pushed himself back from his desk and stood up. He hunched his shoulders into his jacket and moved toward the door. “You make yourself comfortable, Mr. Coyne. I’ll just close the door, here, and be back in half an hour or so.”

The door clicked behind him.

I didn’t move, at first. I smoked a Winston and stared at the green steel cabinets. Then I reluctantly stubbed out the butt and slid open the top drawer of Bartley Elliott’s desk.

The two keys were there, where he said they’d be.

When Elliott returned, he found me sitting in the same place I had been when he left. I was smoking a Winston and flipping through his copy of
The Modern Administrator and the Independent School.
Fascinating stuff.

He closed the door behind him with a sigh. “Hope you made yourself at home, Mr. Coyne.”

“Yes. Yes, I did. Thank you.”

“Sorry to waste your time like that, running off in the middle of our interview. I know how busy you must be.”

Elliott’s eyebrows and mouth twitched violently, as if he were fighting the urge to sneeze.

“Not a waste at all,” I said. “On the contrary.”

“Good. That’s good.”

We shook hands and I walked out of his office. I kept the radio in my car turned off during the ride home. I had a lot of thinking to do.

I stopped for a Whopper, small fries, and strawberry shake at the Burger King down the street from my apartment. When I came out with the bag in my hand, I remembered I had some stuff to pick up at the dry cleaner’s. It was located just down the street.

The girl who worked there, Molly, was a high school drop-out with a baby at home. She lived with her mother in one of the projects. She had received a little too much help with her algebra from one of her mother’s boyfriends one night, hence the child, which she insisted on having and keeping. Her mother worked nights, Molly worked days, and between them they managed, although I didn’t like the dull bruises around Molly’s cheeks and jaw I sometimes saw, which her makeup failed to hide.

I had offered her legal services when the owner of the dry cleaning shop told me of her plight. I told her about her options, the legal aspects of abortion, the possibility of prosecuting her child’s father, child support payments, welfare, alternative ways of earning her high school diploma.

There she was, sixteen, pregnant, handing out clean suits to people for eight hours a day, six days a week, shaking her head, smiling, and saying, “No. No thank you. I can manage.”

So I made it a point to patronize the place regularly. I stopped in weekly. I took better care of my clothes because of Molly than I otherwise would have.

“How’s the kid, Molly?” I asked as I entered the tiny shop.

“Oh, he’s terrific, Mr. Coyne. Two big teeth. Right on the bottom.” Molly smiled beautifully. I hoped she’d continue to smile as the years passed. If she did, she’d have defied all the statistics.