An Educated Death (17 page)

"I've spoken with Josh," I said. "But so far, we have no reason to think it was anything but an accident."

She gave me a grateful smile.

"I'm trying to get the best picture I can of what sort of person Laney Taggert was. You probably knew her better than anyone so your impressions are very important. I know it won't be easy for you to talk about her but I hope you'll try."

Her smile drooped a little. "I'm happy to cooperate and everything, but how will I know what you want to know?"

"Would it be easier if I asked you questions?"

"I think so. One thing I don't understand," Merri said quietly, "why do you have to know about Laney to figure out about the rules and stuff?"

"That's a good question," I told her. "I guess I didn't explain it well enough. It's not just rules per se, but all the things Bucksport does to keep track of people. Contacts with dorm parents, advisors, things like that, that tell us whether we know the students well enough or whether people can fall through the cracks." I watched her closely as I talked. She didn't look so merry anymore.

She nodded vigorously. "If Laney fell through a crack, it was because she wanted to." Then she clapped a hand over her mouth.

I definitely wanted to know more but I decided to work around to it gradually. "How long were you and Laney friends?"

"Ever since she came to Bucksport. We were both new kids. I started here last year when my parents moved to Sedgwick and she'd just transferred here so Laney and I were sort of natural to become friends. Sometimes it's not easy to make friends at a new place so I was especially glad to meet Laney and she was just as glad to meet me. At least, I think she was." She fingered the silver button covers on her white shirt. The shirt was big enough to have covered about three of her. "You could never be quite sure with Laney."

"You mean you couldn't really tell if she liked you?"

Merri wiggled uncomfortably. "I'm sure she liked me. We were friends. I just don't know if she liked me as much"—she hesitated—"as I liked her. I mean, you never knew exactly where you stood with Laney. She wasn't in the habit of telling the truth... no... that's not quite what I mean... Laney was..." She paused, reluctant to go on. Finally she said, "She was a manipulator of the truth. I think she got so in the habit of lying... mostly to her mother... if you ever met her mother, you'd understand... anyway, so she lied habitually about things even when she didn't need to. So it was like I knew she was my friend but then sometimes I couldn't be so sure, you know what I mean? There were people who didn't like her. You've probably already heard that. Unfortunately, one of them was her roommate but then Genny's so damned stiff she doesn't like anybody who can't produce a pedigree going back to the Mayflower and whose family isn't rolling in money. Besides, Genny is a plodder and Laney was quick. Genny was so jealous she couldn't appreciate the fun things about Laney. No. Wait. I'm doing this all wrong!" she said. "You're going to get a totally negative impression of her."

She picked up her pack, dug through it, and handed me a picture. It showed Merri and Laney, identically dressed in black-and-white striped tops and tights and little black pleated skirts, holding up clumps of each other's hair as mustaches. "That's before I cut my hair," she said. "Laney was funny and crazy and she was a great friend. Very understanding. She could hear what I wasn't saying as well as what I was."

She held out her hand and I gave her back the picture. "Not that Laney was all sweetness and light." She lowered her voice and said in hushed tones. "She had a dark side, too."

"You make her sound like Darth Vader."

She nodded vigorously. "Well, it was kind of like that. I mean, sometimes I really worried about her. She scared me."

"What sorts of things would she do that scared you?"

"Breaking the rules. I mean, you know that people sometimes say that rules were made to be broken? Well, Laney really believed that. She had a sort of desperate compulsion to break rules. Mostly little things like going out after curfew or skipping gym or not doing her work and getting her teachers to excuse her. But she aspired to bigger things."

"Such as?"

Merri hesitated. "I'm not really sure I should tell you."

"You need to, if I'm going to understand her."

She studied her hands. "I guess you're right, only it seems sort of like I'm betraying her, saying bad things about her when she's not here to defend herself, you know what I mean?"

I nodded. "A very wise policeman once told me that the dead have no right to privacy and I guess I believe that. At least I believe that's true in cases where the death is unexplained—"

"But you said it was an accident!" she interrupted.

"It probably was, Merri, but you know, don't you, that some of the students here are worried that it was suicide? You worried about that a little yourself, didn't you?" She nodded. "We need to reassure them and part of the process is being sure ourselves that Laney didn't have some reason to consider suicide. When we started talking, you seemed relieved that her death was an accident. You must have had some reason to believe it might not be."

"Laney was pregnant."

"She told you that?"

Merri nodded. "That's why she was coming home with me for the weekend. She was going to get an abortion."

"Was she upset about the pregnancy? Is that why you worry that she might have considered suicide?"

"She needed money. For the abortion. She didn't dare ask her parents, not even her father, and he dotes on her. That had her very worried. And she was afraid of the procedure. She hated doctors and nurses and medical people generally."

"How was she planning to arrange this abortion?"

"Oh, it was all arranged," Merri said. "She'd called and made an appointment. We were going to tell my mom we wanted to go into the city shopping. She lets us do that. We go in and out on the train. She drops us off and then we call her when we're ready to be picked up. The hardest part was when she had to go to court. She had to cut school for that."

"Go to court?"

"Of course." The word "dummy" was implied in her tone. "You don't think a sixteen-year-old can just waltz in and have an abortion, do you? She had to get a judge to rule that she was old enough to consent on her own without telling her parents. That upset her so much she was up all night throwing up, the night before and the night after."

"Was she staying at your house?"

"Can't do that during the school week." There was that implied "dummy" again. "She was in the dorm."

What were her dorm parents doing, I wondered, while this child was being violently ill? And what about her roommate?

"You weren't worried about complications or bleeding or Laney being incapacitated in some way?" It seemed very sad to me that these two young girls had been so innocent and unrealistic that they'd assumed they could incorporate an abortion into a day's shopping trip, despite the level of competence and ingenuity they'd shown in navigating the procedural hurdles. Where were all the grown-ups who were supposed to be paying attention?

"They said she'd be fine. Just to bring a friend," Merri said defensively.

"Who was the baby's father? Did she tell you?"

"No. That's one of those things I was telling you about. I mean, Laney wanting to break the rules. You know she had this boyfriend, Josh? Have you met him? He's gorgeous! Well, she was cheating on him. She also had another boyfriend. Someone more grown-up, but she wouldn't tell me who he was. All she ever said was that if people knew who he was it would really tip the campus on its ear."

"You have no idea who it was?"

She shook her head. "None. Laney was having too much fun being mysterious about it. Well, I mean I did wonder if it might not be that new maintenance guy. The one who's kind of good-looking if you like them semievolved? I mean, there's probably nothing to it, but once I referred to him as Neanderthal and she had a fit." She shrugged. "I don't know if that was political correctness or improper interest. You never knew what she was going to get mad at. Anyway, Laney hung out around there a lot and I saw them talking together a few times. She and Josh had a fight about it. You could ask him what he thinks."

"As far as you know, Josh and this mystery man were the only two she'd slept with?"

Merri squirmed in her chair and made a face. "I don't know," she said. "She didn't tell me." She bent down and started putting on her boots. "I'm not particularly comfortable talking about sex. All I can say is that I wouldn't rule out the possibility there were several men." She said it with a tone of finality. She'd said all she was going to. But I wasn't finished.

"Do you know whether she tried to get money for the abortion from Josh or this other guy?"

"Why would she try to get it from Josh? It wasn't his." She started fidgeting with the fringe on her scarf.

"She told you it wasn't his?"

Merri stared at me coldly. "It wasn't."

"Would she have asked him if she was desperate?" She didn't answer. Maybe this wasn't my day. First Curt had clammed up and now Merri was doing the same thing. Maybe it was my breath, but I didn't think so. What I thought was that there were things people didn't want me to know, maybe about Laney, maybe about themselves. This was delicate and I wasn't going to get anywhere by badgering people. I changed the subject. "Who did Laney confide in, besides you?"

"She wasn't much of a confider. Like I said, she liked having secrets."

"No one on the faculty?"

"Well, there was Mr. Drucker, he was her adviser, but she'd sort of gone off him. He lectured her too much. He was big on reforming her and Laney wasn't about to be reformed. Maybe Russ Hamlin? He directed her in a couple plays and I know she hung out down at the theater at lot. But I don't know if she talked to him. She never said much about him. You could usually tell who she was interested in by how much she said, or didn't say, about them."

"What about her dorm parents?"

"The ice queen and the dolt? You've got to be kidding. Mrs. Donahue is everything Laney ever loathed in a grown-up. And Bill is just Kathy's yes-man. They want everyone to be nice little boys and girls and talk in well-modulated voices and wear clothes that match. No sex, no skin, no sleaze." She giggled. "It's too bad Laney's dead. Her imitation of Kathy Donahue was to die for. I don't know how she did it but she'd sit there and carefully arrange the folds of an imaginary skirt, pick pills off her sweater, put on this sweet, blank look, and start saying sweet, dopey things in this soft, little-girl voice."

She broke off as something occurred to her. "Josh has it on videotape. Make him show it to you. She does Kathy, and Genny, and Ellie Drucker—" There was a crash in the next office and Merri jumped. "I'm pretty nervous these days, I guess. I've been talking to Carol Frank, she's one of the school counselors. She's good, too. Laney liked her, and Laney didn't like too many people."

I made a note to put Carol Frank on my list. Then I asked her about the Friday Laney had died. "Dean Perlin says that you and Laney were arguing after gym on Friday. What were you arguing about?"

"We weren't arguing," Merri said, "she was just in a bad mood because she didn't feel well. Being pregnant made her sick all the time. I told her it wasn't my fault and not to take it out on me."

"Merri, she told me you said that you and Laney were arguing and that when Laney didn't show up, you thought it was because she was sulking."

"I never said that."

"When Laney didn't show up, you went to her room to look for her?"

"Yeah. Genny was there. She said Laney had taken a bag with her earlier and she assumed that Laney had gone to meet me. I went back to the circle and Laney wasn't there so I gave up and left."

"Even though you knew Laney was counting on you to help her get an abortion the next day? Weren't you worried?"

"That was her problem, wasn't it? I figured she'd show up later. We were going to meet a bunch of kids at the movies. I expected she'd show up then, but she didn't. Josh was there and he was upset when she didn't show. She'd told him she was going to be there. I spent most of the movie calming him down."

She shoved a stray lock of hair out of her face. "Look. Okay, so maybe I was a little mad at her for what she was doing to Josh. He didn't deserve it. So I told her that after gym and she said it was none of my business and wasn't it really that I wanted Josh for myself. I said I was just concerned about treating people fairly." There was a tearful note in her voice and the dark eyes were moist.

"She said Fair, schmair, if I thought life was fair I was just a sucker. I said I'd rather be a sucker than a manipulative, two-timing bitch. She just gave me this odd look and said wasn't she lucky to have such a good, supportive friend, that she was really learning who meant what they said and who didn't, and she was sick of people trying to manipulate her feelings to get what they wanted from her. She said if this pregnancy business had taught her anything, it was that you couldn't trust anyone. Then she ran out of the locker room." She shrugged. "But I figured she'd get over it. She'd been weird all day. Sort of hysterical. Like she was high on something, you know."

"Did Laney use drugs?"

"I don't know. She never said she did. I never saw her doing them and she never offered me any. But she hung out with the theater crowd and they do a lot of drugs. So maybe."

I circled back to the question she'd ducked earlier. "When I referred to Laney's death as an accident, you were relieved. What did you think had happened? From all you've said, it doesn't sound like Laney was very upset or depressed about her condition. It sounds like she was handling it. Is there something you haven't told me?"

"Not really," she said, her dark eyes fixed on my face. "I was afraid maybe she'd tried to get money from the baby's father and he killed her. Or that Josh killed her. He's got a wicked temper and he's hit her before. But I guess she wasn't killed, was she?" She shoved her arms into her coat and pulled on her boots.