Murder on a Girls' Night Out (12 page)

“Dick’s different,” I said. “A gentleman.”

“Jackson and Fly McCorkle are good friends,” Henry said. “I see them at the Skoot sometimes, having a beer together.”

“They’re related some way,” I said.

“Well, old Richard, Senior, is pouring a fortune into his son’s campaign. It’ll probably pay off.” Fred
reached for another wafer. Fortunately, Richardena came to the door just then and announced that dinner was served. I swear she did it with a British accent.

The food was as fantastic as Richardena had promised. Fred, who usually scrapes off anything sprinkled on food with an expression that lets you know what he thinks of it, dived into the basiled lemon chicken as if he were starving. The stuffed tomatoes and the tiny peas with mushrooms disappeared from his plate with a speed I hadn’t known he possessed. I actually looked to see if he was chewing.

Debbie had brought out her best china and silver for the occasion. In the center of the table were three exotic pink lilies arranged in one of those stark Japanese styles where the lines are supposed to represent heaven and earth or some such thing. On my list of things to do since my retirement was to join a garden club. So far I hadn’t gotten around to it, but I could appreciate the elegance of the centerpiece. I reached over and touched one of the flowers.

“Henry did it,” Debbie said. Why was I not surprised?

Richardena glided in to pour more wine. She is a tiny woman and the voluminous white apron should have overwhelmed her. Instead, it gave her a dignity I had never seen before. We were her guests, her job was to make us comfortable, and by the look of concentration on her face, come hell or high water, she was going to do it. She topped each glass, but when she got to me and remembered I couldn’t drink alcohol, she leaned down and whispered, “I got some Diet Pepsi in the refrigerator, you want it.”

“No, thank you,” I whispered back. “Maybe later.”

“Later’s coffee,” she said.

“I’m fine with my water.”

She nodded and disappeared back into the kitchen.

“Are you sure that’s Richardena?” I asked. The sound of glass breaking and “Shit!” from the kitchen answered that it was.

“Excuse me,” Henry said, and went to see what had happened.

“Tonight’s a practice,” Debbie explained. “Someday Henry wants to have a very special catering service for small dinner parties. Very elegant. All the hostess will have to do is invite the guests. And Richardena wants to help him, so y’all are sort of guinea pigs. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Suits me.” Fred was mopping up chicken gravy with an angel biscuit. The best that could be said about this was that he was using his fork, not his fingers.

“Aren’t there a few problems to be addressed first?” God, sometimes I sound exactly like an old aunt. A bitchy old aunt with pins to stick in balloons. But things were moving too fast here.

“I said someday, Aunt Pat. Not tomorrow. We know there are problems.” Debbie sipped her wine. “This is good, isn’t it, Uncle Fred?”

Henry reappeared, smiling. “Just an empty bottle.”

I looked at this handsome young man and realized that I knew very little about him. He was extremely smart and talented. I knew that. He certainly had an extraordinary ability to charm women. In a few days he seemed to have captivated both Debbie and Richardena, and if Fay and May were up, they would probably be drooling over him. But who was he, really? A short-order cook with a police record who was a good talker? Or a decent man who had made some mistakes and who, with a little help, would overcome them and have a rich, productive life? At this point I really didn’t know, but since it was my niece who seemed determined to do the helping, I
decided I’d better find out some more about Mr. Henry Lamont. And I knew right where to start.

Richardena removed our empty plates and returned with the dessert. “Roulage!” she announced happily. “With real whipped cream.”

“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Fred said. Quite unconcerned that he was a guest at a fairly formal dinner party, he reached down, undid his belt and unbuttoned the waistband of his pants. “Ahhh.” He sighed happily.

F
red slept like a baby that night. I think his esophageal reflux didn’t bother him, because there has to be some space at the top for the food to reflux into. And Fred was, as our aunt Ida used to say, stuffed to the gills. He didn’t even snore, probably for the same reason. I kept waking up, though, to see if he was breathing. When the alarm went off at 6:45, I was tired, headachy, and my eyes were scratchy. I tried to go back to sleep, but it was a lost cause. While Fred was in the shower, I got up, put the coffee on and downed a couple of aspirin.

The sun was reddish orange and the sky was hazy. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning? Red sky at night, sailor’s delight? I thought that was right. Mary Alice laughs at me for still remembering things that way. But I know how many days there are in each month and when
i
goes before
e
. She’s always having to ask me.

“Gonna storm later today,” Fred said, coming into the breakfast room and looking out the window.

“Red sky at morning,” I said, pleased.

“On the weather channel, they said it’s our first cold front this year. It does look funny, though.”

I poured coffee and cut up a banana into two bowls of low-fat granola. Last night’s chocolate roulage with the real whipped cream’s sludge was busily clogging our arteries, but there was no use giving it additional help. I reached into the refrigerator for the skim milk and saw a can of Dairy Whip. You would have thought Henry had hung the moon by whipping cream. Probably neither Richardena nor Debbie had ever seen it done before.

“You want me to fix you a lunch?” I asked.

“I’m eating out.”

“Get vegetables,” I said. “Steamed ones.”

“Are you going to the Skoot ’n’ Boot today?”

“God forbid.”

As soon as Fred left, I pulled on some jeans and walked Woofer. The air was heavy with the moisture the approaching storm was pulling up from the Gulf, and my head still ached, so I cut the walk short. A couple of dog biscuits placated Woofer, bless his sweet heart.

I took a long, hot shower, and when I got out, my phone-message light was blinking. It was a little early for Mary Alice, but that’s who it was. Why had I not told her Henry Lamont was staying at Debbie’s and that we were having supper there? She and Bill had taken the pumpkins by and there they were, Debbie and Henry, snug as squirrels in a nest, and fortunately, there was some roulage left but that was all, and she really didn’t appreciate it, Patricia Anne…The time had run out on the tape.

I went into the kitchen, took another aspirin and sat down with the paper and another cup of coffee. During
the next hour, Mary Alice called twice more. I ignored her.

Robert Alexander High School was built in the early seventies when, for some reason, architects all over the United States decided kids spent too much time daydreaming out of class windows, so they did away with them. They also did away with the inside walls to encourage team teaching and self-discipline. Movable bookshelves defined classrooms, and students were encouraged to have a lot of group activities. The floors were carpeted in bright colors and there was no intercom blaring, no bells ringing to tell you when to change class. Soft music was piped into the library, from which each “pod” was entered. The result was a strange madness among the inmates. Many students as well as teachers couldn’t take the closed-in feeling of no windows and had to be transferred. Others were frustrated by the loose organization and did nothing, or took their frustration out on the other students or teachers.

In most of the schools constructed in this style, walls were soon built to divide classrooms again, and windows appeared for students to dream out of. But not at Robert Alexander. Any money the school board had on hand had to go to maintain old schools. Alexander was a new one, a state-of-the-art one. What were we complaining about?

And some of us weren’t complaining. After a year or two of getting used to being without windows and bells, we began to love it. Kids couldn’t roam the halls because there were no halls. The group activities and team teaching became a reality. The biggest problem was that after lunch, we all tended to go to sleep. Given what I’ve seen in most schools, teachers pray for such a problem.

I pulled into the visitors’ parking lot, a strange feeling. It was the first time I had been back since school started, and I had mixed emotions. There was so much about teaching I had loved, and this school was one of them. A creek, fed by a spring, ran by the side of the practice field. What appeared to be a biology class with dip nets was down there wading around. I waved and they waved back. It was nice to have so much land dedicated to a city school. On the other hand, from inside you couldn’t see the creek and the trees because there were no windows. Go figure.

A sign on the door said that all visitors should report to the office, that no firearms were allowed on school grounds and that anyone selling drugs within a half mile of the school was breaking a state law and would be subject to immediate and terrible punishment. They wished. At least at this school there was no need for armed guards or metal detectors at the door. I walked in, and it was like I had never left. The turquoise carpeting, the buff walls, the bright posters, but most of all the smell. Every school smells exactly alike, a combination of chalk, books, sweat, lunch cooking and Lysol. It doesn’t matter if the school has carpeting and central heat or wooden floors and a potbellied stove. The smell is the same.

The office is to the left of the entrance. Here, there was a wall, the top half glass. You could see what was going on in there, but you couldn’t hear. Mavis Redfield and Lois Aderholt, the registrar and the secretary, respectively, were both hard at work. A student was signing the checkout list and another was waiting. I didn’t know either of them. A glance into the principal’s office told me Will Burnham was either roaming the building or at a meeting. Or selling real estate. His second job was a not-so-well-kept secret. Will was a potbellied man
in his late fifties, gregarious and fair in his dealings with both teachers and students. He had been the perfect choice for Alexander High, rolling with the punches, his main weapon in the battle for discipline simply the fact that he liked everyone. It went a long way. No one wanted to disappoint him.

Mavis, who would never see sixty again, looked up, saw me and squealed, “Patricia Anne!” I had talked to her since my retirement and we had discussed getting together for lunch, but we hadn’t. Mavis is one of my favorite people, one of the few I know who changes the color of her hair as much as Mary Alice does. Today it was so black it had a navy sheen to it. She and Lois both came over and hugged me and we caught up on children and grandchildren. Both of them particularly wanted to know about Haley. They had gone through Tom’s death and Haley’s depression with me. The staff at a school becomes an extended family. I felt guilty because I had not seen them since my retirement party.

“I hope you’re here for lunch,” Mavis said. “Chicken day.”

After the dinner at Debbie’s, I thought I wouldn’t want to eat for days, but I could smell the chicken frying and I actually felt some hunger pangs.

“Sure,” I said. “How long?”

The phone rang and Lois went to answer it.

“In a half hour?” Mavis asked. “I’m trying to get this damn computer to total the attendance right. It says ninety-nine thousand, nine-ninety-nine children are here today. Can you believe that?”

“Telephone, Mavis,” Lois said.

Mavis rolled her eyes. “God, let it not be something about a computer.”

“It’s Will.”

“Tell him I said hey,” I said.

Mavis nodded and went to the phone. I already had my story planned out; I told Lois I had been asked to write a couple of recommendations for students for college and needed to look at their permanent records. Just as I had hoped, it didn’t occur to her that October is not the usual time for recs.

“Sure,” she said. “You know where they are.”

I sailed through the door to the file room for all the world as if I had legitimate business there. The students’ scholastic records and test scores have been computerized, but the old files are still kept in old-fashioned manila envelopes in old-fashioned cabinets and filed under the date of graduation. What year would Henry be under? 1984? 1985?

The 1985 file was the top one in a cabinet, one I couldn’t reach. This was familiar territory, though. I knew where the little foldout ladder was kept under the counter that still held an old mimeograph machine, the kind that turned out tests printed in pale purple ink that the kids complained they couldn’t read. I pulled the ladder out, climbed up and looked through the class of 1985’s lives.

It’s scary when you see how much personal information is in old school files, information that hasn’t made it to the computer. Each year in our school system, until some group questioned the procedure and threatened to take the system to court if it wasn’t stopped, teachers were required to jot down their personal assessment of a student. Actually write it into his permanent record. Most teachers, like me, covered their asses with remarks like “Very capable” or “Could work harder.” But some actually wrote paragraphs complaining that Mary couldn’t keep her hands off the boys or Johnny probably stole money. It was amazing, some of the things they wrote.

I don’t know what I thought I was going to find in Henry’s files. I had always made it a habit not to read personal remarks about a student, preferring to make up my own mind. The night before, though, I realized I was basing my opinion of Henry on the fact that he was a pleasant boy and a talented writer. Given all that had happened and the fact that he seemed to be moving in on my family, I needed to know more.

I found his manila folder in the 1985 drawer and took it out. It was a thick one, going all the way back to kindergarten. I spread it out on the mimeograph machine and began to read.

Henry Alistair Lamont (I’ll bet not many people knew about the “Alistair”) could read when he got to kindergarten, his teacher noted. His mother attended conferences; his father did not. His father was an insurance executive, his mother a housewife. No siblings. His I.Q. was 145. Recommended for enrichment program.

Lois came in, got a package of Xerox paper from under the counter and wanted to know if I was finding what I wanted.

I nodded, and she left. Henry Alistair Lamont had brought a snake into the classroom in the second grade. Much commotion, though he had tried to show the teacher the snake’s eyes because they indicated it wasn’t poisonous. In fifth grade he won the school spelling bee and came in second in the county. Below that notation, his teacher, a Mrs. Cochran, had written “Father passed,” a good Southern euphemism. The next year he was removed from the enrichment program because of poor grades, and the next year he was listed at a new address with a guardian, an aunt, Miss Elaine Denny. No mention was made of his mother.

Apparently Miss Denny did something right. Henry’s grades improved dramatically, as did his achievement
test scores. In high school he was on the debate team, was a National Merit Finalist, and blew the top off the SAT. All this and “Most Popular” in the yearbook. Here was the Henry I knew.

I closed the file, relieved and ashamed that I had had any doubts. Henry was one of those people blessed with charisma and the luck to have a relative as caring as his aunt must have been. I was surprised I had never heard him mention her. I opened the folder and looked at the aunt’s address: 7192 Highland Avenue. Why did that sound familiar?

I went into the office and got the phone book off Mavis’s desk. Surely not. But there it was, in bold: Nachman, Deborah T., Attorney, 7192 Highland Avenue. Henry had come home.

I closed the book, put the file back into the cabinet and wondered what it meant. I’ve never been much of a believer in coincidences, probably because I’ve seen my sister arrange so many. Granted, they happened, but this one was a humdinger.

“You ready to eat, Pat?” Mavis stuck her head around the door. I put the notes I had jotted on the back of my telephone bill in my purse and headed for the lunchroom and chicken fried in so much oil that when you bit into it, little bubbles of one hundred percent polyunsaturated grease exploded against your chin. God, it was good.

It was good to see everybody at the teachers’ table, too. Will Burnham came in and said he had been to a meeting down at the Board of Education. He probably hadn’t, or he wouldn’t have felt the need to explain, but nobody minded. Except maybe Chesley Maddox, the vice principal, who was patrolling the lunchroom and pointing accusing fingers at misbehaving students. And even he seemed to be enjoying himself. Would I rather
be here or at home with a sandwich watching
One Life to Live
? It was not the first time I had asked myself that question, and I still wasn’t sure of the answer. I left with Will’s hug and the assurance that all it would take would be a nod of my head and he would leave Rhoda and the family high and dry for a life of unbridled passion with me.

“Someday,” Mavis said, “he’s going to say that to the wrong woman and have a sexual harassment suit slapped on him.”

Will grinned. “I should live so long.”

I really did miss seeing them every day.

The sun had become totally obscured by high clouds while I was in the school. I turned on the car radio and heard the forecast for thunderstorms that night, some possibly severe. Stay tuned for possible warnings. The next night there would be a light frost. Time to take in the plants and pets, folks. I made a mental note to get Woofer a bag of cedar chips for his igloo. No ordinary doghouse for Woofer. I had found exactly what he needed at the dog show, a plastic igloo with thermal walls. Fred would have had a fit if he knew how much I paid for that thing, but I slept better knowing Woofer was comfortable. Probably more comfortable than we were.