Death Dangles a Participle (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series) (7 page)

Mrs. Shea struggled to sit forward in the deep leatherette seat. “She told you what the problem was! She left it at her grandmother’s in Syracuse!”

I was ready for that. “But it was already late before the Christmas break. When she explained the problem, I told her it would be due the day we got back. I’m afraid I can’t keep making allowances for just one student. Remember what it said on the paper I sent home in September.”

“Paper?” Kevin Shea, owner and proprietor of Shea’s Quality Sporting Goods, glared accusingly at his daughter, who responded with an expression of innocent confusion. “I didn’t get a paper. Did we get a paper?” he asked his wife, who shrugged. “We didn’t get any paper. Anyways, that’s not what we’re here for. Are you gonna change the grade for my little girl or not?”

The telephone rang.

Principal Berghauser stared at it for a split second, then answered. “Olive, I’m in a meeting here—what? Who?” One side of his animated moustache started to twitch, and he blinked several times and sighed. “This is a shock. Let me think.” He tapped his index finger on the desk. “Well, have them sent down here and tell . . . ” He looked up at us, frowning. “That is, all the, um, business can be conducted, um, privately, in here. Good.” He hung up.

The Shea family and I watched this intriguing exchange with rapt interest.

Berghauser chose to ignore the implicit questions in our stares. He briskly slapped both hands on his desktop, swiveled a smile around the room and said, “Now. Where were we?”

By the time I left the principal’s office, I was sick at both heart and stomach. Mr. Berghauser, apparently in a hurry, had once more superseded my authority and changed the girl’s grade to passing, calling it amnesty and giving her a lecture about future consequences.

For all the good it would do. Serendipity was well aware of the hefty discount Shea’s Quality Sporting Goods gave our phys ed department and knew that as long as the high school received a steady supply of low-priced pigskin and bargain kneepads, she could jolly well do as she pleased. I watched the principal’s stern words ricochet off her multiply-pierced ears and into the nearby wastepaper basket.

By the time they left, all three Sheas wore sly, triumphant expressions and were pointedly ignoring me.

The queasy feeling followed me into the restroom. The face that looked back from the mirror had an injured, defeated expression
.
“I used to like my job,” I told the face and splashed it with cool water.

The class bell rang, and the thunder of three hundred sneakers shook the hallway.

Two girls pushed through the restroom door. “But how did you know? I mean, the—”

Their animated conversation broke off abruptly when they saw me. Meekly, each one sought the sanctuary of a stall.

I blotted my face with a damp paper towel; there was no use leaving just yet. On occasion, the high school hallways markedly resembled the streets of Pamplona at bull-running time. Wisdo
m
dictated waiting until the crowds thinned a little.

The door slammed open. “Brenda!” It was diminutive Micki Davenport, panting. “You won’t believe it! It’s just so cool!”

“What?” Brenda and her companion responded in unison from behind their respective doors.

Micki spared me only a cursory glance. “There’s police out there! In the hall!” She pointed, as though her friends could see through the thick stall doors. “They’re taking away some guys in handcuffs!”

I didn’t wait to hear more, but snatched up my things and left. The hall was emptying fast into the large study hall. I followed the stream of curious traffic to where people were lined up three deep at the second floor windows that overlooked the school parking lot. Somebody had managed to wrest several of them wide open, and frigid winter air was filling the large room.

Just this once, I pulled rank, squirming my way to a windowsill in time to see J.T. and Dustin Rousseau being led to a police car, their hands cuffed behind them.

“What’d ya climb this time?” someone yelled.

Hearty laughter followed, but the brothers weren’t responding with their usual swaggering bravado. J.T. looked up, and though he was some distance away, I was sure I saw an expression of pure fear in his eyes.

He said something to his brother, who nudged him crossly before the officers separated them. A police officer laid a hand on the top of his head and guided it inside the squad car.

The police cars sped away, leaving me trembling with anger. Whatever the Rousseau boys’ transgression was, they hadn’t deserved this public humiliation!

“Has anyone called their father?” I asked of the crowd of snickering adolescents. They just snickered some more.

“That’s enough,” I said firmly. “Kenny, you and Damien lower these windows. The rest of you get to your classes. I believe there’s a study hall scheduled in here this period.” I received a grateful look from the presiding teacher, who had just entered and was clearly bewildered by the fuss.

I swept out of the room and stalked down the hallway to the principal’s office. The windowed door clattered as I closed it hard. I was about to walk past the secretary’s desk and into Berghauser’s office when Olive stopped me with one word.

“Don’t!” She spoke, as she always did, with her eyes on the computer screen and her hands flying across the keyboard.

I pointed in the vague direction of the parking lot. “But the Rousseau brothers—”

“I’m telling you, you’re taking your life in your hands if you go in there right now. He’s in one of his swivets.” She stopped typing and turned toward me, allowing her chained reading glasses to slide from her nose. “It’s bad, Amelia. I don’t know details, but it’s bad.” She frowned, and her long, narrow face seemed to lengthen.

I felt shaken. Olive never paused in her work like this for anything. “Has someone called their father?”

She replaced the glasses and turned back to her keyboard. “All taken care of. He’s meeting them at the police station. There’s nothing else anybody can do.”

“We’ll see about that,” I muttered as I left.

I was late to my next class.

“Don’t worry, Miss Pr—Mrs. D,” Hardy Patchke piped as I stepped through the door. “We’re doing tomorrow’s assignment.” He pointed to the page numbers I had posted on the board earlier in the day.

Sure enough, aside from the three who abruptly left their lounging posts at the window and resumed their seats upon my arrival, most of the students were leaning over their books, pencils in hand.

Would wonders never cease?

I was much calmer by the time my afternoon free period rolled around as I slipped down to the cafeteria and the pay telephone on the wall. Gil answered on the first ring.

I spoke without preamble. “You’re the newsman in the family. What do you know about the Rousseau brothers?”

“It’s bad, honey. Really bad.”

“So I keep being told, but what kind of bad? Did they climb the Macdonough Monument this time? Put detergent in the college fountain again? What kind of stupid prank rated those poor boys being dragged out of school in handcuffs?”

I was warming to my subject, becoming more outraged by the word.

“Are you aware of how infuriating it is to be told to calm down?”

Gil spoke slowly. “No, but I’ll file it away for future reference.” I could hear the amusement in his voice. His good nature, as usual, began to drain away my irritation.

“I’m sorry. You have no idea the spectacle that took place today.” I glanced at my watch. “What’s more, I’ll be late to my seventh period class if I don’t hang up right now. Quick—tell me something, anything—”

Gil broke into my harangue. “It’s murder.”

“What?”

“Remember that body found on the lake?”

“Yes, of course.” The coverage of that event by Gil’s newspaper had been a bit too sensational for my taste.

“It’s about that. I’ll tell you all about it at home tonight. Now go on, get to your class. I love you!”

I was really, really late to my next class, because I threw up in the ladies restroom. Upset though I was about the Rousseau brothers, I had no idea it would affect me like this. Fortunately, I recognized the warning signs just in time. It was a brief bout, easily handled, and it was surprising how much better I felt when it was over. Furthermore, I made it to freshman English just before total chaos broke out.

“You hear about the Routheaus, Mrs. Dickenthen? They whacked a guy fithing out on the lake,” one of my students said in greeting. The clarity of his sibilant s’s was hampered somewhat by a set of braces in the school colors.

The high school grapevine seemed far more efficient than any of Gil’s journalistic sources. I tried to divert attention to matters academic.

“Get your syntax straight, Frank. Who was fishing, the victim or the perpetrator?”

“The guy. Dead guy,” Frank amended. “They thot ’im, then drownded him, then thtuck hith head through a hole in the eythe.”

I almost corrected him—
drowned
, not
drownded
—but the subject was simply beyond the bounds of civil discussion.

“He froze right into the ice,” another student put in, eyes glittering. “At least, his head did.”

“That’s enough
.
There’s work to do.” I was talking as much to myself as to the students. “Let’s open our books to page one hundred fifty-three.”

Even Edgar Allen Poe was preferable to this real-life horror.

Vern had spent a lot of time with the Rousseau brothers lately and I wanted to talk to him about the situation, so immediately after school, I stopped by LaBombard Taxi. It shared a small strip mall with a pizza restaurant and an auto parts store, about twenty minutes’ walking distance from the high school.

Vern’s battered red Honda was sitting in the side parking lot. I checked my watch. If memory served, he had another half-hour to work.

It had been a cold and windy walk. I perched hesitantly on a bench in front of the large storefront window and shivered. I hadn’t bundled up enough this morning. My cheeks stung. A brisk breeze, courtesy of the nearby Saranac River, went right through my coat. I was not enjoying myself.

There was a knock on the big window from the inside. Mrs. Fleur LaBombard grinned at me through it. She opened the office door. “Come in,” she said, gesturing, “no use freezin’ to death.”

“Thanks so much, Mrs. LaBombard.”

“Call me Fleur.” The inside was blessedly warm, almost stifling. “You’re here for the boy, I bet.” She indicated a plastic-covered settee. “Sit,” she ordered, “help yourself to coffee. He’ll be finish’ pretty soon.”

I declined the offer of refreshment, but expressed my gratitude for the shelter and asked after her husband, Marcel.

“He don’t feel too good these days,” Fleur said.

“Oh, dear. Has he caught the flu?” There was a certain irony in my question, since Mr. LaBombard favored spraying his taxi with antiseptic spray after each fare.

She shrugged. “Nope, just don’t feel good. Kind of blue, can’t make himself to get out of the bed, except go to the john. I tell him, get back to work, keep busy, that’ll snap you out of it, but he don’t listen.”

It sounded serious. “Has he seen a doctor?”

“For what? He’s got no temperature, no sore throat, nothing.”

“Well, tell him I hope he feels better soon.”

“He better. Right now, we only got one driver, besides Vern there. If business picks up any, we’ll be in a pickle.”

She resumed her seat at her desk and shook a long, filtered cigarette from its pack. “You mind?” she asked, pointing the cigarette at a two-foot-high plastic tower with a well-filled ashtray at the bottom. “I got this thing, works real good. Bought it over to Chuck Nathan’s.” The florist carried a wide variety of gift items and gadgets on the side. “It’s kind of cool. Sucks up the smoke, sort of.” She held her cigarette poised, waiting for my response.

I nodded my permission. I’d never developed the smoking habit, but before she quit last year, Lily Burns had never been without a cigarette in her well-manicured hand. If I hadn’t developed a tolerance by now, I never would.

Smiling graciously at me, Fleur bent her head over a lighter shaped like the Champlain monument. I watched with interest. She bent the diminutive Samuel de Champlain back from his pedestal, flicked the base with her thumb and a flame shot up. Soon the tip of the cigarette glowed almost as brightly as her fluorescent hair. She inhaled with apparent enjoyment.

I tried to settle into the stiff sofa. It made a rubbery creaking noise every time I moved. Reluctantly, I turned my attention to the smells in the room: a mix of long-forgotten cigarettes, over-brewed coffee, and Lysol.

Lysol was by way of being a theme with the LaBombards. Taxi #1, driven by Fleur’s husband, always smelled of it. The car Vern drove, #2, reminded one only slightly less of a chem lab.

I swallowed uncomfortably. Just thinking of this subject was setting my stomach on edge.

I moved my gaze around the room. One side of the room was occupied by two vending machines, one for soft drinks and one for snacks, on either side of a large trash container. Behind Fleur’s desk were four metal lockers, standing side by side, prominently hand-lettered: “Fleur,” “Marcel,” “Vern” and “Sub.” The last, I assumed, was short for substitute. Two of the lockers had dome-topped metal lunchboxes perched on top.

A coffeemaker on a folding commercial table faced the vending machines, and above it on the wall were several framed and faded school pictures of the LaBombard children, now mostly grown. There were six in all, if I remembered rightly, most of them good students and most of them married by now. I had taught all but one of them myself.

I took a deep breath of the smoky, chemical-laden air and decided to watch Fleur work. Her job, I came to realize, involved long periods of boredom, which she passed by reading well-worn magazines, punctuated by telephone calls and static-filled discussions with the two-man taxi fleet over the walkie-talkie system. The messages came in brief spurts and, among the cryptic professional terms, were pretty easy to decipher.