An Educated Death (21 page)

The people waiting for me at the long mahogany table didn't look very cheerful, either. Behind each of their cordial greetings I heard a plea for help. I introduced Lisa, a formality since she'd gotten there first and introduced herself, then took the voice-activated tape recorder out of my briefcase and set it on the table.

Arleigh groaned. "Do you have to do that?"

"I always do. It helps me remember for later and it helps keep things on track. So, what's the story?"

"Denzel will tell you," Yanita said, inclining her elegant head in his direction. He gave her an aggrieved look. "Well, you're the only one who knows the whole story," she told him. "We've got to start somewhere. Emmett is supposed to be here. I don't know what can be keeping him."

Denzel stared at the tape recorder with unveiled hostility. "I'm not saying this for any record. Not even for you, Thea."

"Okay." I reached out and snapped it off. "Now talk."

We were interrupted by the arrival of the King School's lawyer. I'd forgotten to suggest including him but obviously Yanita and Arleigh were way ahead of me. "Sorry I'm late," he said as he hurried across the room. "Ran into a judge who liked the sound of her own voice. Total waste of time, too. Lecturing my client about social responsibility is like trying to box train a cockroach." He shrugged. "Maybe it made her feel better."

Emmett Hampton was one of Boston's senior black attorneys. A small, trim man with graying hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a very expensive suit, he was known for his keen mind and his facile wit but his principal asset was his voice, a rich, deep rumble that he could play like an instrument. Because of its financial situation, his services to King were voluntary. The school couldn't have had a better volunteer.

He settled into his chair, wiped his glasses, and said, "I don't suppose you have any coffee around here?"

"I was sort of hoping for sandwiches, myself," I said.

"You're never going to learn to eat on a schedule like regular folks, are you?" Arleigh said. "But we anticipated that. We've got soup."

"Soup?" Emmett made a face.

Arleigh gave him a scathing look. "Soup and sandwiches. This isn't the Ritz, you know."

Emmett leaned back in his chair and fixed his sharp eyes on Denzel. "We're waiting."

His story, in brief, was that an attractive young black woman had come up to him after a talk, voiced support for what the King School was trying to do, described herself as an education graduate between jobs, and inquired about openings at the school. He had invited her to join some people he was meeting for drinks. They had all had drinks and dinner, enjoyed a lively conversation, and she had left after shaking his hand. He had urged her to contact Yanita if she was serious about a teaching position. Her story was that he had lured her back to his room after dinner on the pretext of giving her further information about the school and that once she was in his room, he had tried to force her to have sex with him. She had obtained a lawyer and, though no suit had been filed, they were pressuring the school for money to keep the incident quiet.

"The thing is," Denzel said, "that there was no incident. LaVonne was an attractive woman but I don't force myself on people. She was never even in my room."

"LaVonne?" I said, realizing it was the first time he'd used her name. "LaVonne what?"

"Rawlins," he said.

"Did any of the other people at dinner see you shake hands and see her leave?"

Denzel stared at the table top. "You'd better be answering her, my man," Arleigh Davis said. "If you won't even tell
us
the truth, we can't help you."

He raised his eyes. "Everyone else had left."

"And you're telling us the truth when you say you didn't ask her back to your room?" Arleigh Davis said. She was the only one of us who could ask him that question. Head of the school's board of trustees, Arleigh was forthright, sensible, and wise. She'd chosen Denzel knowing his faults as well as his virtues and hoped through prayers, diligence, and a shared sense of purpose to keep him on the higher ground. So far, through a combination of luck and discipline, he'd rewarded her faith. She leaned toward him now, her turbaned head jutting from her large body, her bright earrings jangling. "Well?"

He spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. "I'll admit I wanted to take her back to the room. But I didn't!"

"Did you ask her? After she'd approached you about a job?" Arleigh said fiercely. "We need to know."

He shook his head. "I came awfully close. I did tell her I was very attracted to her...."

"Fool!" Arleigh said.

"Oh, Arleigh, can't you lay off!?" he said. "Don't you think I know what a fool I was? Sure I wanted to do all those things but the fact is that I didn't touch her, I didn't kiss her, I didn't ask her upstairs. Maybe if I had she wouldn't be doing this."

Arleigh put the palms of her hands together and looked piously toward the ceiling. "The power of the almighty cock, amen!" she said.

"Did she let you know, in any overt way, that she'd welcome such an invitation?" I asked.

"You could say that. She put her hand on my thigh and her chest was practically in my dinner."

"What did you do when she put her hand on your thigh?"

Denzel gave me his mega-watt smile, the one that made it so easy to understand why a woman would put her hand on his thigh. "I returned it to her lap and suggested it was not a good idea to do that in a public place, especially as we hardly knew each other."

"Was that while your friends were still at the table?" He nodded. "Do you think any of them noticed?"

"Malcolm did, I'm sure, because he raised his eyebrows at me and shook his head. Then he sent his girlfriend off to the ladies' room with this girl. Maybe to talk some sense into her. I don't know."

"But we could ask him?"

"Sure. Or you could ask his girlfriend. Woman friend? Her name is Janet Beecham. I can get you a phone and address."

"You're going to have to get me a lot of phone numbers and addresses," I said.

"So what do we do now, Thea?" Yanita said. "Do we respond to her lawyer's letter?"

I wondered why they even needed me, if they had Emmett. I looked at him.

"You first," he said.

His deference made me nervous, but I've never been one to sit on my hands, so I waded in. "Emmett may disagree with me, and it's really his call, but I wouldn't answer that letter at all. At least not until you see farther indications of their intent. Then I'd suggest a brief and dignified response expressing shock at this attempt to slander Denzel and concern about this poor troubled woman. What do you think, Emmett?"

"That's about right. I'd want to draft the letter, of course."

Everyone nodded and we moved on to discussing what other actions to take. We agreed that I would get my staff to interview everyone who was at the table and collect their versions of the evening. Denzel was going to rack his brain to recall as much as he could about the girl and we were going to try to do some background checking. I wasn't too hopeful, since all we had was her name and address and where she'd gone to college, but Denzel thought, if he tried, that he could remember where she said she'd worked, and if he couldn't, maybe Janet Beecham could, since the two of them had done a lot of talking.

Just at the point when I thought I might faint from hunger, they wheeled in a cart and served food. It really was soup and sandwiches, and the sandwiches had real filling, not just a thin layer of meat and a whisper of lettuce, and the soup was rich and hearty. Perfect for a cold night. I tried to approach it without showing my desperation but Arleigh dug in without hesitation. "This is a life-saver, Yanita," she said. "You were clever to think of it. I'm going out Christmas shopping now and I'll be able to stay out much longer since I won't get hungry."

"Mine's mostly done," Yanita said, "except for the wrapping. I get exhausted wrapping presents. Toward the end they get no ribbons and sometimes even no tags. I just scribble people's names on the wrapping. How about you, Thea? You done? I'm not even going to ask Denzel. I'll bet his momma does it all for him." It was clear that the two women he worked with were very annoyed with Denzel.

"You be wrong, bitch! And I don't want you talkin' 'bout my momma," Denzel said, and lapsed into an extended rant imitating some of the more challenging inner-city speech of the King Students. I only got about one word out of three but Yanita, Arleigh, and Emmett were almost falling out of their chairs. I sat and drank my coffee, feeling very out of it and very, very white. I didn't venture to suggest that they were dissing this honky. Each of them had put up with plenty of feeling out of the mainstream themselves.

Arleigh left to do her shopping, Emmett went back to his office, and Denzel went to make some phone calls. Lisa and I stayed behind with Yanita, working on a list of information that I wanted. "What do you think, Thea?" Yanita said. "Is he really just an innocent man?" she said.

"That's not a term I'd ever use in connection with Denzel, but I think he's telling what my little sister used to call a 'most truth.' He probably couldn't help flirting a little but I believe he resisted her invitations and I'm sure he didn't take her back to his room." She nodded. She might be irritated with him for not using his common sense, but she believed him, too. He was too committed to the King School's mission to jeopardize it for an evening of pleasure.

Lisa nodded. "It will be interesting to see what we learn about LaVonne Rawlins." She stifled a yawn. "Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I'm on the case." She was actually eager to get to work, I could see.

There was something I had to get clear before things went any further. "You know that this isn't our usual sort of work—investigating a sexual harassment case outside the school environment. I'm not sure how much help we can be. If this becomes public, we can advise you on damage control and we've done enough personnel stuff so that if we can get the names of any schools where she's worked, Lisa's very good at talking with administrators and we can probably get some information about her. But if all you can come up with is a name and address, it may take a private detective to dig up information. We don't claim to be detectives and we don't want to be. I wouldn't even suggest trying that unless they become more insistent about their demands. Do you know Janet Beecham?"

Yanita smiled. "We uppity black women trying to make it in the academic world tend to stick together. Janet and I go back a long time. I introduced her to Malcolm. Were you wondering if she'd cooperate?"

Yanita was a petite, quiet woman but from the first I'd been impressed with her. She'd come to EDGE Consulting looking for a job when we fired an incompetent employee. Even though I'd really wanted to hire her, I'd sent her to the King School to be assistant headmistress because they'd needed her far more than I did. When I suggested sending her to King, she had briefly taken offense and thought I was giving her the run-around, based, it turned out, on a series of unpleasant experiences at other job interviews. Once she understood that I was trying to give her a better opportunity, she'd eagerly gone off to meet with Arleigh and Denzel and they'd grabbed her.

"Will she?"

"You can count on it."

"How are things going, anyway? Are you still happy here?" I asked.

"Very," she said. "Every day is a challenge but I feel like I'm doing something worth doing. Not many people can say that."

I felt a twinge of envy. I liked my job, but there were times when I wondered if I shouldn't be considering alternative careers, especially when I'd been running too hard and too fast to meet deadlines. I didn't want to still be doing this when I was fifty. I wouldn't have the energy. On the other hand, there wasn't anything else I wanted to do. In the back of my mind, Andre's wild brown-haired girls might dance, but their ma and pa had a bit of dancing to do ourselves before anything so serious could be considered.

For now, at least, I'd stay put and see where life took me. Right now, life was taking me in Arleigh's footsteps. Off to finish my Christmas shopping. I said good-bye to Yanita, got in my car, and headed north on 128 toward the mall and home.

I like going to the mall during the Christmas season about as much as I like stitches without anesthetic. I'd done most of my shopping in San Francisco at a wonderful shop that carries Italian and Portuguese pottery. Feeling a bit like Mrs. Rockefeller, I'd sailed in with my list, bought beautiful platters and cups and bowls, laid down my credit card, and had everything packed and shipped. But there were a few people I couldn't give pottery to, like my dad and Andre and my brother Michael's awful wife, Sonia.

There aren't many people in this world that I seriously dislike, but in that category, Sonia is right up there at the top. She's mean and chronically dissatisfied and lazy and her influence on Michael, who already had tendencies toward being unpleasant, has not been salutary. The two of them have a relationship that is based on seeing who can make the other more miserable, a challenge since both of them are so good at it. Anyway, I knew I couldn't give Sonia pottery and while my first choice was a hair shirt and a case of itching powder, I was trying to be a good doobie and get into the generous spirit of the season.

One of the remaining legacies of a childhood spent trying to be the "good kid" is that I still fall into the trap of trying to please people who can't be pleased. A friend of mine describes herself as a "recovering good girl." It's an idea I can really relate to. Knowing that it was an exercise in futility, I nonetheless threw myself into the overlit, overcrowded, noisy mall, despite a looming headache and a weary body, to find the perfect present for Sonia. Along the way I managed to acquire an armload of stuff. An expensive, conservative tie and beautiful Ralph Lauren sweater for my father, a gorgeous Italian wool shawl for my mother, a pair of nifty lightweight snowshoes, a polar fleece pullover and a baseball glove—not the easiest thing to find in December—for Andre. I bought myself a glove, too, figuring he'd need someone to play catch with.