Schooled In Lies (9 page)

Sunny Abou, receptionist, was on the phone when I went back inside. She covered the receiver with her hand and gave me a quizzical half-smile.

“Sorry, but I left me keys in Gerald’s office. I can see you’re busy so I’ll just pop in and get them.” I started down the hall. Sunny looked uncertain and stood up to stop me before whoever she was talking to on the phone commanded her attention and she absently waved me on.

Gerald’s office door was closed but unlocked. I walked in and pulled it shut behind me. I put my ear to the door and could hear Sunny still talking on the phone. I quickly went over to his desk and looked through a thin stack of papers in a steel wire tray. No message. I looked in the metal wastebasket by his desk but found nothing except receipts for gas and coffee, an apple core, a newspaper, an empty Pepsi can, and four pink telephone message slips all from someone named Clair Easton wanting him to call her about her account. On a whim, I grabbed one of the pink slips and stuffed it in my pocket. Next, I turned my attention to his laptop. The top was open and I could see he was still logged into his e-mail. I skimmed through his inbox but didn’t see anything unusual until I got to an e-mail marked urgent with the name Clair Easton in the subject line. I opened it. The message was from one of Gerald’s coworkers questioning him about some inaccuracies with Clair Easton’s account.

I skimmed through the rest of the messages and found nothing else of interest unless you counted the numerous e-mails he was getting from someone with the address [email protected]. I resisted the urge to open one and tried his trash folder instead. Bingo. Five messages down from the top I found one with “You Will Pay For What You Did”
in the subject line. I opened it and saw that it was the same message repeated over and over all the way down the page. The e-mail address the message had come from was [email protected]. I grabbed a pen and wrote down the e-mail address just as I heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. I pulled out my keys and was at the door as Sunny, the receptionist, opened it. I shook the keys in front of her face.

“Found them. They were hiding under Gerald’s desk and I had a hell of a time spotting them.” I brushed past her on my way down the hall. I looked back and saw Sunny looking into Gerald’s office with a frown on her face. I ran down the steps and back to my car.

I still had more than an hour to kill before I had to be back at work and had yet to eat lunch. I was sitting at a red light, trying to decide what my taste buds were in the mood for, when I happened to look to my right and spied a man through the window of a shop called the Coffee Break Café. It looked like Carl. But it couldn’t be Carl because it was the middle of the day on a Tuesday and Carl should be half an hour away at work in Columbus. I parked and went in to get a better look to see if it was indeed Carl, the man who’d been blowing me off for the past several days claiming to be busy at work.

The coffee shop was cute and cozy and about as big as my apartment. There were only four other people in the café besides the person behind the counter. Two of them were women sitting separately as they drank their coffees and read. The other two people, a black man and a white woman, were sitting together, laughing and talking more like two old friends instead of ex-spouses. It was Carl and Vanessa.

Carl looked up as I approached the table and gave me a deer caught in the headlights look, while Vanessa, who turned to see what he was looking at, sighed heavily and rolled her eyes like a pissy teenaged girl.

“Well, this is a surprise,” I told them as I sat down at the small table next to Vanessa. The table was really only meant for two people, so Vanessa was squeezed up against the window when I sat down, giving her a real reason to be pissy.

“I hear congratulations are in order. When are you due?” I looked at her stomach, then at Carl who was silently sipping his coffee and staring straight ahead.

“February,” she said simply and started gathering her stuff together.

“How’s Audrey doing? Is she still in the hospital?” I continued undeterred by the awkwardness of the situation.

I could tell my friendliness was more irritating to Vanessa than if I’d come charging into the café, making a scene, and calling her names. As for Carl, he just looked grim, like he’d resigned himself to his fate. Vanessa stood up and squeezed past me.

“She’s fine and back at home.” She turned to Carl. “Thanks for the coffee, babe. I’ll give you a call later.” She tossed me a shit-eating grin and headed out of the café.

“You don’t have time for me, but you have time to come here in the middle of your workday to have coffee with the woman who walked out on your marriage when her daddy dangled money in her face?”

I sucked my teeth in disgust, which must have pissed him off because he slammed his cup down on the table and leaned forward angrily.

“She called me Friday. She was really upset and asked if I could meet her to talk. All we did was talk. She just needed a shoulder to cry on,” he said loudly causing one of the other women in the café to turn and stare at us.

“Hmm, a shoulder to cry on. Well that sounds to me like a job for her
current
husband, not her
ex
-husband. You’re not married to her anymore, remember?”

He sighed heavily. “Her husband is the problem. He doesn’t want this baby and it’s tearing her apart. She just needs someone to talk to.”

She sure as hell didn’t look too broken up the last couple of times I’d seen her. And why in the world couldn’t she talk to her best bud, Audrey Grant, if she was in so much distress?

“No. She and her husband need to be talking or going to counseling or something. You’re a lawyer not a therapist. And if you ask me, it’s poetic justice,” I said, not so subtly referring to the fact that Vanessa had had an abortion not long after she split with Carl, a baby that could have been his, even though she’d been sleeping with two other men at the time. A child Carl would have welcomed. How ironic it was that she was now pregnant, again, by a man who didn’t want a baby.

“Well, I didn’t ask you and I’m seeing a side of you that I’m not liking much,” he said in disgust. “You shouldn’t take so much pleasure in Vanessa’s problems. I didn’t know you were like this,” he spat out at me before I had a chance to respond. I stared at him in shocked silence, willing the tears not to come. How dare he say that to me?

“And I didn’t know what a big fool you were.” I was so angry I could barely get the words out. “Vanessa must have spent all that money her daddy left her and is just lining up another sucker to take care of her and her baby in case her husband bounces. I cannot believe you’re stupid enough to fall for her shit. And if you don’t like this side of me.” I stood up and turned around, “then you can
kiss
this side of me.” I smacked my ass and stormed out of the café.

I was still furious with Carl when I arrived back at class an hour later. Even a lunch consisting of a double portion of hot fudge cake hadn’t lifted my foul mood. I was on the first floor, getting ready to head up the steps to my classroom, when I spotted Audrey Grant about to head into the room where the summer day camp program was held. She must be there to pick up her kids. I called out to her and she turned and gave me a tight smile when she saw it was me. She still looked a little tired and her black sundress emphasized her paleness but she still looked better than she had in the hospital.

“My oldest daughter, Cassidy, turned five this summer. She starts kindergarten this fall and I thought it would be a good idea to get her used to being around other kids besides her brothers and sisters. Plus, I really needed the break.”

“It’s a great program. She’ll have lots of fun.”

Just then a slightly chubby little girl with long curly blonde hair and big blue eyes dressed in denim shorts and a pink Barney tank top ran up and grabbed Audrey’s hand tugging her towards the day camp room.

“Come see my picture, Mommy,” she said, lisping excitedly. Her two front teeth were missing and she sounded precious, though I wondered how cute I’d think it was if I had to listen to her all day long.

“You’re being rude, Cassidy. Say hi to Kendra.” Audrey tousled her daughter’s curls affectionately. Cassidy stared up at me shyly and started sucking her finger. I knew all of Audrey’s kid’s names started with C. She’d shown us all pictures of them at the first reunion meeting.

“Hi, Cassidy. That’s a pretty name.” The little girl just ignored me and started pulling on her mother’s hand again.

“Mommy is talking right now, sweetie. Go on back into the classroom and I’ll be there in a minute, okay.” Audrey gave her daughter a gentle nudge in the right direction. Cassidy poked her bottom lip out and then ran back the way she came.

“She’s adorable,” I commented and could tell Audrey was pleased.

“I’m not supposed to pick her up for two more hours. She was really scared when I was in the hospital all weekend,” she said, expressing the kind of guilt that only a mother can feel. “I thought I’d come get her early so we can get some ice cream, just the two of us.”

“So did you ever figure out about the alcohol?” I asked.

“It’s still a mystery to me. All I drink is Diet Coke. But if you ask my husband, I’m just a big liar,” she said bitterly. “I don’t know. I’m honestly beginning to wonder if maybe I did have a drink and just don’t remember.” She shrugged

“I think someone is behind them. I think someone spiked something you drank with alcohol, tampered with Dennis’s vacuum, set Gerald’s kitchen curtains on fire, tried to run down Charisse, and put baby oil at the top of the cafeteria steps so Ms. Flack would fall.”

“You know, there was a weird message on my cell phone’s voice mail when I checked it on Saturday. I just thought it was a prank call or a wrong number. Are you telling me everyone else got the same message?”

“Can I hear it?” I asked, ignoring her question. I wasn’t exactly ready to admit how I knew about the other messages. But she shook her head.

“Sorry, I erased it. I didn’t take it seriously.” The sound of children’s laughter caused her to turn and look over at the door to the day camp classroom, and I knew I was losing her interest.

“What do you think about the missing money?” I asked and she swung back round to face me.

“Oh, that’s easy. I didn’t want to say anything at the meeting in front of everyone, but I’d bet anything that Julian used that money to help out some friend in need. Julian was like that. He probably borrowed the money and then died before he had a chance to replace it.”

“Any idea who the friend could have been?”

“Only one I know who’s needed money in the last year is Gerald. He got into some trouble on his last job over some missing money and I heard he was told to either resign and make restitution or be prosecuted for theft. Julian may have given the money to Gerald to help him out. But Gerald would never admit it.”

I guess I wasn’t surprised that Julian would help out a friend financially, even when the money wasn’t his to give. However, though Julian wasn’t quite as bad as the rest of his friends in high school, I certainly wouldn’t have thought he was so generous. He must have changed in the decade before his death.

“Kendra,” Audrey said tentatively making me look up. “I really want to apologize to you for the way I treated you senior year. I was desperate to get my hands on that test because if I failed science, I wouldn’t have graduated. I thought I had a job lined up. But it didn’t work out. I’m so sorry for what happened. I’m a different person now than I was back then.”

I was too stunned to speak and just nodded my head. Cassidy ran back out of the classroom and grabbed her mother’s hand.

“Come
on
, Mommy,” she whined, pulling Audrey towards the classroom. This time Audrey allowed herself to be pulled and waved good-bye to me over her shoulder.

Later that evening, I was at Kingford College in the computer lab at Floyd Library typing up my paper on the Montessori Method. After I printed my paper, which was a five-page monument to my ability to bullshit, I pulled up an Internet browser and logged into my e-mail account. For the hell of it I typed, “I know who you are,
”
and sent it to the vengence1986 e-mail address. I was bluffing and wanted to see if I’d get a response. I’d been thinking about the e-mail address ever since I saw the message in Gerald’s trash folder. Nineteen Eighty-Six was the year we’d all graduated but it was the reference to vengeance that really had me worried. Was someone seeking revenge for something that happened in 1986? Was it something that someone on the 1986 reunion committee had done? The round table gang had been the cause of many bad high school memories. But what in the world had Ms. Flack or Cherisse done?