4 The Killing Bee (3 page)

3

If anybody could cut a sweetheart deal for Laura it was Malcolm Dove, the three-hundred-pound chess
-playing lawyer who represented me the time I was accused of murder. So after I got the kids home, fed them a snack, and sent them out to play croquet in our backyard, hoping to distract them with a normal-seeming activity, I called Malcolm and asked him to take the case. I informed him I'd pay his fee if Laura couldn't afford it.

And that seemed likely. She was still recovering financially from her husband's death, to say nothing of his stock trades. Her parents were both dead too, and her younger sister was an impoverished member of some misbegotten New Age commune in Arizona. That left Andrea and me as Laura's safety net. The restaurant where she waitressed, at the Golf and Polo Club, was where the Saratoga elite meet to eat; but I seriously doubted her lunch tips would cover a high
-priced lawyer's nut.

I could cover it
, though. I was rich—by my standards, at least. I had three hundred grand socked away in mutual funds.

I should probably explain where all that cash came from, and why I was free to take care of the boys on a Tuesday morning instead of trudging off to so
me j.o.b. somewhere. What happened was, I got the loot two years ago with one stroke of a Hollywood pen.

It still amazed me sometimes, how a project that took me only five weeks to write could have such a huge impact on my life. The project in question was a screenplay called
The Gas That Ate San Francisco
, about poisonous gas seeping out of the ground after an earthquake and threatening to wipe out the entire Bay Area.

As you can probably tell from this description, it was not exactly an A movie. More like a double Z. But it sure was lucrative. The
Gas
movie put an end to my almost two decades of doing the starving artist thing, writing poignant, socially meaningful screenplays that never got produced and
avant garde
stage plays that did get produced—off off Broadway, for audiences of about four people, including myself.

You'd think that after selling a screenplay for a million bucks
—which is what I got, before the agents, managers, producers, lawyers, IRS, and other bloodsuckers whittled it down to 300 K—my career would have taken off. And it almost did.

But somewhere alo
ng the way, a strange thing happened. I mysteriously misplaced my urge to write. I thought about churning out another hack screenplay, but I never quite got around to it.

The truth was this: even though the gas movie was a big hit, especially overseas, I never really
liked
it much. But on the other hand, I couldn't quite motivate myself to write any of the artsy-fartsy, hopelessly uncommercial stuff I used to write.

I guess you could call it writer's block. But that makes it sound like I was unhappy, and I wasn't. In fact, the last two years had been
the best years of my life. I enjoyed being an at-home dad. I also enjoyed having lots of time to play handball at the Y and chess at Malcolm Dove's Monday night chess club, as well as pursue my latest hobby: renovating two houses that I bought as HUD foreclosures, and then renting them out.

Okay, every once
in a while at three in the morning I'd wake up and wonder what was the purpose of my existence here on this earth. But everybody does that sometimes, right?

After I hung up with Malcolm, I was all set to call Andrea and let her know about the morning's excitement when Charizard ran in, crying.

"Daddy," he squalled, "Adam keeps hitting my ball in the bushes. It's not fair."

I rolled my eyes. "Look, give the kid a break. He's having a tough day."

Charizard mulled that over. "You mean 'cause his mom got arrested?"

"Yeah, that would kind of bum you out a little, don't you think?"

Charizard looked worried. "But they'd never arrest
my
mom, right? 'Cause she wouldn't kill anybody."

"True."

"Hey, maybe Adam's mom didn't do it. Maybe a robber killed Mr. Meckel. Or a mean space alien."

I tried not to smile. "It
’s possible."

He gazed at me earnestly. "Daddy? You'll find the real killer, right? Just like you did the other times?"

I sighed. I guess I'd known all along, ever since I first stumbled on Sam Meckel's body, that it would come to this. I'd be expected to work some magic. But the truth was, I'm really no magician; and anyway, I didn't think there was any magic to be worked here. I felt pretty sure the cops already had the real killer. I mean, I was very fond of Laura, but all the evidence certainly pointed straight at her.

"Daddy?" Charizard said again.

I sighed. "Sure," I said. "I'll take the case."

He clapped his hands. "Goodie! I'll go tell Adam you're gonna save his mom."

Charizard's confidence was touching. Too bad I didn't share it. As he ran back outside, I picked up the phone again to call Andrea. Then I hesitated.

Of all the possible days to get Andrea upset, this was the worst. She needed to do a good job today in front of her department head. If I informed her about her best friend's incarceration for homicide, she might screw up her classes
—and her tenure chances.

So I held off on calling her. Instead I called the other gifted and talented parents
—or to put it more accurately, the other parents of gifted and talented kids. Sometimes we tend to forget the distinction.

Susie Powell was the first parent I got through to. "I figured you'd be calling me," she said as soon as she heard my hello. "So you're gonna help Laura with this?"

"I'm gonna try."

"That
’s really great. 'Cause there's no way Laura could've killed Meckel, don't you think?"

I was pretty sure that was uncertainty I detected in Susie's voice. "I agree," I said, even though I felt uncertain too. Then I proceeded to ask Susie about this morning.

But she wasn't much help. Try though she might, she couldn't recall any evil strangers lurking in the school hallways when she came in that morning. Nor had she heard anything suspicious. She couldn't think of anybody who hated Meckel—"or not enough to kill him, anyway."

"When did you get to school?" I asked.

"Early, like seven-fifteen, seven-twenty. The front door was unlocked."

"What about Meckel's door?"

"It was closed. I went past there to the library. Adam was in there already, hanging out, but I didn't see Laura."

Maybe because Laura was in Meckel's office. "What about Elena and Barry. Were they there?"

"They showed up with their kids a few minutes later, I'm not sure exactly when."

"Who showed up first?"

"Barry did, with Justin. Then he went off to the bathroom for maybe half a minute, and Elena came in with Luce."

"And Elena stayed with you?"

"She dropped off Luce and went to her classroom to do something for a couple minutes. Then she came back." Susie paused. "Look, you don't think we're suspects, do you? It would've been, like, impossible for one of us to kill Meckel without the others knowing."

"Just dotting i's and crossing t
’s," I said. I didn't really take Susie, Barry, and Elena seriously as murder suspects—or should I say, I didn't want to take them seriously.

Next I got through to Elena. According to her, she and Luce had arrived in the library only moments before Barry returned from the bathroom; and Susie was already there. T
hen Elena went off to her classroom, which was next door to the library, for two or three minutes.

Elena's story was essentially the same as Susie's, except more colorful and with Spanish thrown in. Her key word was
loco
—Meckel was loco, his killer was loco, this whole loco thing was loco. Sometimes I wondered how a free spirit like Elena managed to survive in a buttoned-down institution like High Rock Elementary School.

My third call was to Barry at the Saratoga Trust
Bank, where he was some sort of factotum. "You going into your Miss Marple mode again?" he kidded me.

I prefer to think of myself as the Sam Spade type, but I let it go. "I'm wondering if you might have seen anything this morning."

"I'm afraid not. Sorry."

"You hear anything?"

"No . . ." Barry said, but I noticed a tiny split second of hesitation, so I tried again.

"You sure?"

"Well . . ."

"Just tell me. I promise I won't repeat it to anyone i
f it’s something irrelevant."

He sighed, then finally took the plunge. "Okay, you know how the loo is just down the hall from the principal's office?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I was in t
here this morning doing my business, and I thought I heard somebody yelling."

Uh-oh
. "Was it Laura?"

"I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it
was
a woman, though."

Oh, Lord have mercy.

Theoretically the woman could have been Elena. Instead of going into her own classroom like she claimed, maybe she went to Meckel's office. But it seemed unlikely. There wasn't much time for her to do the dastardly deed and then slip back to the library.

I thought back to how Elena, Susie, and Barry had acted this morning, when I first came into the library and saw them. They ha
d all been a little manic, raising their fists and talking revolution . . . but they had all acted basically normal. Not like they had just committed murder.

No, the only person who had acted suspicious was Laura. And now there was an eyewitness
—or rather, an earwitness.

"It didn't sound, like, physical," Barry continued, apologetic, "or I would've gone in there. I thought it was just two people having an argument."

"Did you hear anything they were saying?"

"Not really. I mean, I was making noise too, you know, peeing and washing my hands and all that." He sighed. "I didn't want
to tell the cops, because… you know."

"Yeah."

"Poor Laura."

"Poor Laura," I agreed. I thanked him dispiritedly and hung up.

Then I just sat there. I didn't even have the energy to call Andrea, though by now her last class was over. What could I do? Laura's goose was clearly cooked—

The phone rang. It was Malcolm. I heard choppiness on the line; he must be calling from his car. "I just talked to your p
al Laura on the phone. I'm meeting her at the jail in five minutes. She wants you there, too. Can you make it?"

"I'd love to, but I'm taking care of the kids."

Malcolm snorted.
"Kids?
What kind of hard-boiled private dick
are
you?"

"Call me soft-boiled," I said, then: "I have to go, the doorbell just rang."

I answered it. Judy Demarest, the third member of Andrea and Laura's Thursday-night bowling trio, stood on the front steps. Forty years old, with an angular face and alert eyes, Judy was a lean, no-nonsense newspaperman—or at least that's what she wanted you to think.

"Is it true?" Judy asked, her forehead scrunched up with worry. "Did Laura really kill the principal?"

"Are you asking as her friend or as editor of the
Daily Saratogian?"

"What do you think?" she said, offended.

"I think you're hereby baby-sitting three children for the next hour." I started past her toward my car.

"Hey, wait a minute," she began
—

But then Adam came out the door behind us and yelled frantically, "Mr. Burns, I can't find my Game Boy. I think I left it in the library!"

"It’s okay, we'll get it tomorrow."

"But I want it
now."
His eyes were watering from the injustice of it all. How could God take away both his mom
and
his Game Boy in one day?

"I promise I'll get it tomorrow. Judy, give them some lunch," I said, and took off before either of them could protest further.

The Saratoga Spring
s City Jail, where drunks, pickpockets, murderers and other malcontents are held until their arraignments, is located in the basement of city hall, at the windowless end of the police station. Having once spent an endless night there myself, I can attest to its barbarism. The stench of every bodily fluid known to man permeates the place, and the din of busted toilets, hallucinating inmates, and vindictive cops is constant. The cells are four feet by six feet, and less than six feet high. Maybe that wasn't quite so bad a century ago, when the jail was built and people were shorter; but for a modern six-footer like myself, the claustrophobia was overwhelming. Especially with some nutcase in the next cell over chanting "Hare Krishna" all night long. I didn't even like that chant when George Harrison did it.

Fortunately my meeting with Laura and Malcolm wasn't held in the jail itself. When I got there, they had just been escorted to a small room down the hall. Bowles, the young crewcut cop, was posted outside.