4 The Killing Bee (8 page)

"Hold on to that wheel. You ready?"

"Come on, who?" Laura said.

"Susie and Elena."

Laura gave an explosive sigh and sat back again. "Oh, brilliant."

"Hey, why not?"

Andrea wasn't too joyful either. "Bad enough the cops are after Laura. Now you want them hounding all our other friends, too?"

"Hey, Susie and Elena may be our friends, but I always liked Laura best."

Andrea took her eye off the road and threw me a sharp look, almost running into the black Buick in front of her. "Jake, this isn't funny. Laura didn't kill Meckel, and neither did Susie or Elena. Get real."

"They do have motives. We can't let ourselves be blinded by misguided loyalty."

"Look, there's no way Susie or Elena could have done it, or Barry either for that matter," Laura said. "None of them was out of each other's sight for more than a minute."

"Their time line isn't quite that clear," I said. "Susie and her two daughters got to the library at seven-fifteen. Susie could have slipped out and done the deed."

Andrea said, "But—"

I interrupted her. "And Elena says she went to her classroom for a few minutes. But maybe it was a little longer than t
hat, and maybe she went to Meckel's office, not her classroom.

This time it was Laura who said, "But
—"

I interrupted again. "And if we can think up a motive for Barry, he's a possible too. Maybe he didn't really go to the bathroom."

"But none of them had much of a window of opportunity," Andrea said.

"More like an infinitesimal crack," said Laura.

"You gotta remember, passions were running real high," I said. "It wouldn't have taken them long to get into a knockdown, drag-out fight with Meckel. Especially if Susie or Elena had just found out their kids were getting excluded from the gifted program."

"I still think
the Robinsons make much better suspects," said Andrea.

"That's because you don't care about them as much," I said.

"What Robinsons? What are you talking about?" asked Laura.

I was still filling Laura in on the Family Robinson when we arrived home and Latree, Charizard, and Adam immediately raced outside to greet us. Before we even made it out of the
minivan, we were smothered in embraces.

It was a big day for this hugging stuff. I picked up both my kids at once, thereby ensuring a week's worth of back pa
in, while Laura held Adam. Meanwhile Judy Demarest stood and watched from the front door.

"How was jail, Daddy?" Latree asked.

"Not too bad," I replied, burying my nose in his hair. I love the way my sons smell.

"Did you catch the murderer yet?" his little brother queried.

"I'm working on it."

"I hope you catch him before Saturday, because there's a
Pokémon tournament at the mall."

I laughed. Charizard looked hurt. "What's funny?"

"Nothing, honey. I'm just glad to be home."

"Did you really break into the principal's office?" Latree asked, wide eyed.

"Sort of. Actually, I just
walked
in."

"Did you find the skateboard?"

"What skateboard?"

"The one you were looking for," Charizard piped in.

Where do kids come up with this stuff? I gave them my condescending grown-up voice. "No, you don't understand. I was looking for
evidence."

"We
know
that, Dad," Latree said impatiently. "But Mommy said something about the Robinsons, so we thought you were looking for Mark's skateboard."

"Mark?"

"Yeah, their kid. He's really big. He's in fifth grade," Charizard said. "Mr. Meckel constipated his skateboard."

"You mean
confixated,"
Latree corrected him.

"Whatever. Mark was, like, yelling and stuff at lunch. About how mad he was 'cause Mr. Meckel stole it."

"He used some really bad words," Latree added sanctimoniously.

"When was this?"

"Last week. Thursday or Friday."

Curiouser and curiouser. "Why didn't you tell me before?"

"We didn't think about it till we heard Mommy talking about the Robinsons," Latree said, and added reproachfully, "If you'd tell us more about your investigating, then we could help you more."

"So did you fin
d the skateboard or not?" Charizard demanded.

"Not."

"It wasn't there?" Latree asked, excited.

"I don't think so."

"Then maybe me and Adam are right!"

"About what?"

"We think Mark stole it back."

Charizard cut in, "Don't forget me, I think so too!"

"But then Mr. Meckel caught Mark," Latree went on. "So Mark killed him."

"Or else Mark's
dad killed him," Charizard suggested.

"Or his mom," said Latree.

"Or his grandma, or his great grandma," Charizard added enthusiastically. "Or his great great grandma. Or his great great great—"

"I doubt it was his great great great grandma," I said.

But some of these other folks were definitely worth considering. My kids were turning into peewee Sherlock Holmeses.

I went up to Andrea, interrupting her chat with Judy. "Honey, I have an errand to run. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Andrea grabbed my arm. "What kind of errand?"

"I'm going to see the Robinsons. I promise, I'll be careful."

"I can't believe you broke into the school last night," she said. "You could've been killed."

"It just happened. I didn't mean to do it
—"

"We should get a cell phone, so you can call me next time something like this happens. Or you can call the police."

Andrea had a point. But I've made it a personal goal to avoid having a cell phone for as long as possible. I hate the darn things. So I nodded vaguely and said to Andrea, "I'll see you, honey," and started off.

Judy called after me, "Hey, wait, I just ordered pizza."

"Save me some."

"You can't go, I was counting on you
for my big page-one scoop. That’s my babysitting fee."

"You want a scoop, just ask my kids. They know
more than I do," I told her, and jumped back in the minivan.

It was getting on toward seven as I drove to the Robinsons' house. The West Side was pretty quiet. Most folks were inside, chowing down. Every once in a while, though, I'd come across kids shooting hoops or playing hopscotch. And when I got to the Robinsons' house,
there was a kid riding a skateboard on their driveway. But he couldn't be Mark Robinson, because Mark was only in fifth grade. This guy had to be a high school freshman or even older. He was tall and stocky.

"Hi," I said, giving him a false smile.

He stopped his skateboard and eyed me warily. He had thick eyebrows, his eyes were set close together, and he looked like he spent a lot of his life being unhappy.

"You a friend of Mark's?" I asked.

His sullen expression didn't change. "I
am
Mark."

Man, this kid would be ready for the NBA by the time he hit tenth grade. Come to think of it, he was already big enough to knock off Meckel with one well-aimed spelling bee trophy.

"I'm Jake Burns," I said. "You know, Latree and Charizard's dad."

Mark stood and waited, bushy eyebrows knit tight, like he was wondering why this grown-u
p was bothering him.

"My kids tel
l me you're a really good skateboarder. I used to be pretty good myself," I lied.

Mark had had enough of my blathering. He started to skateboard up the driveway away from me.

I felt sleazy interrogating an eleven-year-old, even if he did look more like sixteen, but I couldn't see any way around it. "I hear Mr. Meckel confiscated your skateboard," I called out.

Mark was so surprised, he fell off the board. It came rolling down the driveway toward me. I picked it up and held it out to him.

But Mark wasn't coming anywhere near me. "That's none of your business," he said from the top of the driveway as he dusted himself off. He looked worriedly over his shoulder, back toward his house.

"How'd you get it back?" I asked.

"He gave it to me."

"When?"

"Look, I don't want to get in any more trouble," he said, his voice turning plaintive.

"When?" I repeated.

He hesitated. "Friday afternoon."

"You're lying."

"No, I'm not, I swear. I went in his office and told him I was sorry for skateboarding on school property, and he gave it back."

"Mark!"
a woman's voice shouted. It was Sylvia, coming out the side door of the house wearing an apron and carrying a wooden spatula. But she didn't look like a Happy Housewife, she looked furious. "What the hell is going on out here?"

"We're just talking," Mark said.

Sylvia came storming down the driveway straight at me. I involuntarily stepped back away from her, and my foot landed on something squishy. Hopefully it wasn't dog poop. "Why are you bothering my son?" she snapped.

"Did you know M
r. Meckel confiscated his skateboard?"

She looked from me to Mark. "So what?"

"You sure you want to talk about this in front of the kid?"

"I don't want to talk about it
ever."

"How'd Mark get his skateboard back?"

"That’s none of your business," she said, sounding remarkably like her son.

"I can't help wondering if this skateboard had something to do with Meckel's death."

My words hung in the twilight air like poison gas. I was watching both Sylvia and Mark. Finally Sylvia was able to speak. "Get off my property," she said.

"You want me to go to the cops with this?"

"Don't you dare threaten me with cops. I'll tell them you're harassing my son."

"Sylvia
—"

"I hear they threw you in jail last night. You want me to give them something new to bust you on?"

I could just imagine Little Napoleon licking his chops if I gave him an excuse to revoke my bail. "For your own sake, Sylvia, don't you want to get to the bottom of this?"

She advanced on me. "I want you gone!" she screamed, and raised her spatula high like she was about to whack me with it.

For a moment I got an image of Sylvia in Sam Meckel's office, holding that trophy up and getting ready to bring it down on his head.

Then the moment was over. Sylvia bent down, picked up the skateboard, and stalked back inside her house, pulling Mark along by the side of his collar.

After they were out of sight, I got back into the minivan. Then I sniffed the air and confirmed my worst suspicions.

It was dog poop, alright.

8

I opened all of the minivan's windows to get some fresh air and looked across the street toward the school. In the darkening light I saw that hundreds of flowers had been placed along the sidewalk leading up to the front door. There were a lot of lit candles, too. It was a moving sight. There had been a memorial ceremony at the school while I was in jail. According to Andrea, several hundred children had come to the ceremony. The media had come from as far away as New York City.

As I watched, a car drove up. A little gi
rl and her father got out. She was crying, and he held her hand. She put several flowers—dandelions, it looked like—on the sidewalk. Then the two of them stood there a while.

I drove around the corner, got out of the minivan, and scraped off my shoe. Then I plotted my next move. I was eager to have my first real meal after a day of jail food. I wanted to catch a few Z's, too; I hadn't slept at all last night But first I drove to Ms. Helquist's house. Maybe she'd know if Mark had been skating around
the truth with his skateboard story.

I walked past a bed of daffodils and knocked on her front door. Her house lights were on, but there was no answer. Maybe she was out back getting in a last bit of gardening before it got too dark. I went around the front of the house, headed up her driveway
—

And saw a strange
thing. Or thought I did. It happened so fast and the light was so faded that I wasn't sure. But for a split second, it sure looked like I was seeing a sudden flash of white hair—Ms. Helquist’s— disappearing through the bushes. When I called her name, though, she didn't answer. And when I tiptoed through the tulips in her backyard searching for her, I came up empty.

Was old Ms. Helquist running from me? But why?

"I guess she figured you wanted to talk about the murder, and she wasn't in the mood," Andrea suggested as we lay in bed together that night.

"Because she has something to hide?"

"Or because she's just plain tired of talking about it. It was late. And didn't you say the cops woke her up early this morning to ask questions?"

"I still think there'
s something fishy here. Ms. Helquist is the world's most pathologically punctilious employee. So why does she suddenly decide to take a day off on the one day her boss gets murdered?"

Andrea was trying to scratch her back, but not doing a very efficient job of it. I helped her out for a while and listened to her sigh with satisfaction. But then the sighing stopped on a dime. "Hey, honey," she said, "does Elena have tenure?"

"Why the
non sequitir?"

"I was just thinking
... if Henry ever told me he was opposing tenure, I'd want to strangle him."

I blinked. "Who ma
kes the tenure decisions in elementary schools—the principal?"

"Basically, yes." She sighed deeply, but not with satisfaction this time. "I feel like a traitor, but maybe we should look into Elena and Susie after all. And Barry, too. We owe it to Laura."

"Sounds good," I said. "Let’s see how many friends we can alienate."

The next morning, two days after Sam Meckel's fatal encounter with the spelling bee trophy, High Rock Elementary School was officially open for business once again. At the breakfast table, Charizard and Latree were totally unenthused about going back to school.

"What if the murderer comes back?" Latree said as he downed a spoonful of Rice Krispies.

"He won't," I said in my deepest, most authoritative voice, intended to portray utter certainty.

Charizard looked at me, a milk mustache on his solemn face. "Why not?"

How many "why" questions does the average child ask his parents? I'm thinking at least thirty per day, beginning at about age two and a half. By that estimate, now that Charizard was five and a half, the number of "why" questions he'd asked me had reached a total of approximately thirty-three thousand.

"He just won't," I replied. "He didn't mean to kill Mr. Meckel, anyway."

Latree pointed his finger at me like it was a gun. "What if he comes into school with a machine gun this time and shoots everybody, like at Columbine?"

Oh, Lord. Every
year around the Columbine anniversary, the TV news stations while away the odd hours replaying horrific videotapes of dead children, and every year we religiously turn off the TV whenever that stuff comes on. It's way too disturbing. In general, we don't let our kids watch most news programs, because they present such a warped, inaccurate perspective of the world. But evidently some TV pollution had slipped past our defenses.

Andrea was already off at her community college, teaching her eight a.m. class, so this little piece of parenting was up to me.

"Latree," I said, "and Charizard, too. Listen to me. Nobody will hurt you today. I promise."

"What if we get run over by a car?" Charizard asked brightly. Sometimes he likes contradicting me just for the fun of it. "Or what if a big man steps on our shoes by mistake. Or the teacher yells at us, and hurts our feelings."

"Okay, somebody might hurt you," I admitted. "But nobody will kill you. On purpose, anyway."

"But they might kill you, Dad," Latree said gravely. "Right?"

"Of course not."

"If I was the killer,
I'd
kill you," said Latree. "Because you're such a great detective, and you're gonna find out who he is."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. Look, I was safe and sound the
other times I caught the murderers, right? And I'll be safe and sound this time."

"Yeah, because you're really fast," said Charizard. "And tricky. Like, if somebody tries to shoot at you, you can just duck,
like Rapidash." Rapidash was another fire Pokémon. "And then the bullet hits the wall, and then you jump at them like Rhyhorn, using a ram attack—"

"Exactly. Now en
ough already. Finish your breakfast." I picked up Latree's latest find, one of the old Wizard of Oz novels, and handed it to him. "Here. Read a book."

Latree was so surp
rised I was asking him to read—usually I'm bugging him to
stop
reading—that he picked up the book without further comment. Meanwhile Charizard began treating me to obscure details about psychic Pokémon, and that was the end of our heavy discussion, thank God. Talking to kids about death makes me uncomfortable. I've never quite figured out how to pull it off.

Then again, I've never figured out how to talk to
myself
about death.

As the kids ate, I thought about the murder for a while. Then I headed into the other room and called Laura. "Good morning," I said. "You taking Adam into school today?"

"I don't know. Maybe later. I can't decide if it would be good for him or not."

Good question.

"I feel so guilty putting him through all this," Laura said. "Even though it's not really my fault."

As I listened, I felt a wave of guilt that I had ever doubted Laura's innocence. I'd make it up to her, though. By God, I was going to get Laura and Adam out of the purgatory they were in.

"Anyway," Laura continued, "for now we're gonna stay home and hang out and play Monopoly."

"Sounds like fun. Can I talk to him for a minute?"

I explained what I wanted, and she hesitated. "I'm not sure if I want to get Adam involved," she finally said. "It might be too hard on him."

"I'll be as gentle as I can. But I could use his help."

Laura fretted for a while, then put Adam on the phone. "Hi," he said nervously.

"Adam, I have a question for you. Remember when your mom dropped you off at the library on Tuesday?"

"Yeah."

"And then she left to go see Mr. Meckel and smoke a cigarette, right? And then Susie came, with her two girls."

Adam was silent, listening.

"My question is, after Susie came, did she leave again? Did she leave you and Christine and Megan alone for a while?"

"I was playing Civilization," Adam finally said. "On the computer. I don't know if she left."

"You sure you can't remember?"

"I'm sorry. It’s a really complicated game. I wasn't thinking about anything else." He paused for a moment, then asked, "Do you think maybe Susie killed Mr. Meckel?"

I couldn't think of an evasive answer that would be good enough to fool Adam, so I said, "Maybe. But I don't think so. Listen, don't tell Christine or Megan. They might get upset."

"Yeah," said Adam. "They would."

I said good-bye and hung up. I was dying to ask Christi
ne and Megan about their mother’s activities on Tuesday. But was there any graceful way of doing that?

A few minutes later, after Latree and I had our usual tug of war getting him to put down his book and tie his shoes, I drove the boys to school. We talked
Pokémon the whole way, analyzing their relative fighting ability. I guess it was the kids' way of dealing with the violence that had entered our lives.

When we got to the school, the kids looked out at the flowers and candles and got quiet all of a sudden.

After a moment, Latree said, "Daddy, did Mr. Meckel have kids?"

"I think so, yes. Two teenagers."

"Oh." Then he and Charizard got out of the car.

"I love you, Latree. And you, Charizard."

"Don't forget, Daddy. Duck like Rapidash," Charizard said, and the two of them headed up the sidewalk toward the school.

I sat there and watched them go. The street in front of the school was pretty crowded. A lot of parents had driven their children to school today instead of putting them on the bus.

Several cars up, I spotted Susie Powell dropping off her two daughters. They looked tentative this morning, just like my kids.

Eight-year-old Christine was taking her six-year
-old sister Megan by the hand and leading her into the school. Susie was watching them from her car.

I got out of my own car and walked up to Susie, leaning in her window. "Hi."

"Aauh!" she yelped, almost jumping out of her seat belt. Then she settled down with a nervous laugh. "You scared me."

"Sorry, didn't mean to. How are your girls doing?"

"Okay, I guess. Megan's a little freaked out."

"She's lucky to have such a sweet big sister." I watched Christine holding open the door for Megan. Both of them had long coltlike legs and light brown ponytails. I knew Christine reasonably well; she was in the after-school chess club I'd led the previous semester. She was alert and shiny eyed, one of only two girls in the chess club, and the only child in the whole school who had ever beaten Latree at chess. She'd actually beaten him twice.

Megan, on the other hand, I didn't know much about. I gathered she wasn't as high achieving as her older sister. Whenever Susie talked about the need for programs for gifted students, she didn't bring up Megan like she did Christine.

I hoped Megan's self-esteem wouldn't suffer as she rose through
the educational system. I kind of identified with her. I mean, I'm no dim bulb myself, but compared to my brilliant, Einstein-like older brother, I was always in shadow. It wasn't until I hit my thirties that I began to realize how bright I actually was.

Susie brought me back to the present. She looked up at me and said eagerly, "So what were you doing breaking into Meckel'
s office? I asked Andrea yesterday, but she wouldn't say."

"That's because I hadn't told her yet." Actually,
I'd asked Andrea to keep everyone in the dark, including our friends.
Especially
our friends.

I checked out Susie's right arm, draped over the steering wheel. It looked pretty well toned, and I knew she worked out at the gym a lot. I tried to picture that arm swinging a trophy at Meckel
—and a heavy flashlight at my skull.

"Did you find anything that might help Laura?"

Susie's baby blues looked open and honest. She was a good-looking woman, not Hollywood gorgeous but clean-cut Missouri farm-girl pretty. She even had freckles on the tip of her nose. She seemed guileless, but I knew that couldn't be true—no woman is ever guileless.

Though I suppose that
’s true of men, too. And I could use some guile of my own right now. I wanted to sneak up sideways on Susie and interrogate her without her knowing it.

"I did find out some stuff," I
said. "But I'm not sure if it’ll help Laura or hurt her."

"That sounds bad. What did you find out?"

"It turns out Adam didn't meet the criteria for the gifted program."

I eyed her closely, but all I saw was confusion. "What criteria are you talking about?"

Was she just playing dumb? "Meckel called me up and told me about it," I fibbed. "I assumed he called you, too."

"No, he didn't."

"Well, he decided to base entrance into the gifted program on Terra Nova scores."

"You're kidding me."