The Body in the Bonfire (10 page)

Some boys took notes, including Sloane and Brian Perkins—Sloane for his erudite log, Brian because he wanted to avoid her eyes. What was the matter with the boy? He hadn't been able to look at her since his startled entry the day before. He sat apart from the others and was not involved in any of the banter. It was apparent he was as miserable as his friend Danny. Faith felt annoyed. She didn't know his parents, but she had a sudden vision of them: Oh, yes, Brian's at Mansfield this year. We thought it would be better for him. Better for them, more likely, and some notion of status. Aleford High School was one of the best in the state and outranked Mansfield academically. But it wasn't a private school—or
rather, an independent school. Patsy had told her this was their preferred appellation. It sounded so much more PC. Faith cracked the egg she was breaking for an omelette so viciously, it exploded. She was doing them one-handed now and promised by the end of the course everyone would be equally proficient.

“It's all in the wrist, Mrs. Fairchild,” said Zach Cohen as he grabbed an egg and neatly cracked it into the bowl with one hand. Another thing he'd picked up in the restaurant kitchen last summer.

“Cohen, you are such a brownnoser,” someone called above the general cries of derision that greeted his performance.

Faith just laughed. Patsy was right—she was having fun, and the kids—make that most of the kids—were great.

“Now, I've given you the recipe for spaghetti carbonara in your packet, and it's very easy to follow. When we get to pasta, I'll go over it with you, but it's one to remember when you think about eggs. All you need for it is a half a pound of bacon, a clove of garlic, three beaten eggs, and half a cup of Romano or Parmesan cheese. I like to mix the cheeses and use pancetta, an Italian bacon, but anything you have at hand is fine. Right now, half the group is going to practice making omelettes. I've brought all sorts of fillings: cheese, ham, a mixture of herbs. I'll show the other half how to make a kind of spaghetti pie, a pasta frittata, with
eggs and leftover pasta. We'll eat, and if there's time, we'll switch and make them again.”

“I assume we'll keep the same groups as yesterday?” Sloane asked.

Faith hadn't thought about it. “Yes, I suppose so, if that's all right with everybody.” No one objected.

“Okay, now wash your hands. You can't do that too much when you're cooking. Also clean all your work surfaces. You omelette guys should be all right on your own, but yell if you need help.” She pretended not to hear the muffled “helps” as she turned to walk the frittata group through this easy, satisfying recipe. She'd brought pesto, which she'd made and frozen last summer, to add to the pasta, in this case capellini. She'd chosen it as the “leftover” because of the speed with which it cooked.

“The eggs bind the pasta, and you can also bake this in the oven, instead of doing it on top of the stove the way we are today.”

Daryl was the one who turned the crusty mixture out of the pan onto a large plate, then slid it back in to cook on the other side. The kitchen was filled with the mouthwatering smells of olive oil, garlic, basil, and cheese. Soon they were in the other room, sitting down to sample the fruits of their labors.

“Never, never toss out your pasta dish from the night before. And if your date eats like a bird, be sure to get a doggie bag for that fettuccine,” Faith advised.

The guys laughed, and ate so fast, Faith realized they would just have time to repeat the exercise.

“Sorry, I forgot to pour the milk,” Sloane said, and a few glasses were quickly filled with plain or chocolate. John MacKenzie took a deep swallow—and choked, spewing milk across the table.

“That's not funny, MacKenzie!” one of the boys who'd been splattered said in outrage. But his words were immediately eclipsed by a duplication of MacKenzie's act by the other boys drinking the chocolate milk.

“What on earth…” Faith stood up, alarmed. It had all been going so well. No farting noises, but now milk was coming out of their noses!

“Taste it,” John said weakly, pushing the pitcher toward Faith. She poured some into her glass, took a sip, and gagged. It wasn't just sour; it was horribly salty. It was possibly the worst thing she'd ever tasted.

“Are we going to die?” asked Brian Perkins, clutching anxiously at her sleeve.

“No, no, of course not,” she said with a confidence she hoped she felt. She'd bought the milk yesterday at the Shop and Save with the rest of the provisions. They'd had some of it with their cookies. “Sour milk can't kill you. It just tastes vile.” The boys who had swallowed the disgusting drink were in the kitchen gulping water and trying to rinse the taste from their mouths. Faith followed them, looked in the refrigerator, and immediately noticed that the caps were off all the
gallon containers. She didn't have to pour more samples to confirm her suspicions. The bottles had been closed when she left. She looked on the counters and in all the cupboards, particularly the ones where she'd put things. Behind the flour she found a large, almost empty bottle of soy sauce with mushroom flavoring. She sighed in relief. She'd been about to call Poison Control to be sure. The bottle had been full—and unopened—yesterday. She held it up in front of the boys, some of whom were looking quite dreadful.

“Here's our culprit.” She tried her mother's old trick and stared into each boy's eyes intently. They were either awfully good or awfully innocent. Each met her unspoken challenge: Can you look me straight in the eye and say that you didn't do it?

But if it wasn't somebody in her class, who was it?

 

As she slipped across campus to Daryl's and Zach Cohen's dorm, Faith tried to feel reassured by Daryl's parting words: “Just some asshole. Don't worry about it.” Sloane had been the one who reminded them he hadn't poured the milk. Was this his idea of a joke? Neither he nor his groupies, which was how Faith thought of the two boys in the class who not only hung around with him but mimicked his dress and speech, had drunk any milk. But then they were more of a scotch and soda crowd. It was probably someone
who wasn't even in the class. Maybe some merry trickster who lived in Carleton House. Faith vowed to check every ingredient from now on.

Before she'd gone into Sloane's room, she'd checked Paul Boothe's, which was on the same floor. It was locked, as she'd assumed it would be. Mansfield's open-door policy would not apply to its on-campus staff, who needed whatever privacy they could get. She thought again about the way he manipulated his students by setting such high hurdles for entry to his classes, thereby increasing his hold over them. It was all one big ego trip for this type of teacher, and kids this age were so impressionable. It was the odd paradox of adolescence that rebellion was accompanied by total subservience to the Paul Boothes who strode across their stage.

She went into the dorm through the back door and up the stairs, taking a quick look at Daryl's room. No nooses. Just a neatly made bed. A bureau crowded with photographs, some stuck in the mirror—Mom and Dad, a bunch of kids standing in front of canoes, Daryl at the beach with a lovely young thing, and a lot of his dog—a caramel-colored mop of a mixture leaning toward spaniel. Music system, stacks of CDs, and a bookcase crammed full of all sorts of reading matter besides his texts. A carelessly tossed pair of pajamas on the desk chair completed the picture. No designer bedspread, just the school-is-sued blankets and plain muslin curtains. She
closed the door, but not before she saw the one thing that was unusual in Daryl Martin's room. You could clearly see lines on the floor—like skid marks at a fatal crash—made from pushing the bureau into position against the door each night.

It would take me a week to search Zach's room thoroughly, Faith thought in dismay as she opened the next door. It was like a teen Costco, a Costco that was getting its merchandise not by trucks but by what had fallen off them. Like Daryl and Sloane, Zach had a single. Unusual for a sophomore, she'd have thought. Daryl had told her that only seniors had singles, and, he added, “exceptional underclassmen such as myself.” Was Zach another “exceptional underclassman,” and how so? Certainly he looked different from the majority of the Mansfield student population, but there were a few others pushing it, too. Were they also segregated into singles for fear of contamination? Meanwhile, what was he doing with all this stuff, and where had he gotten it? This wasn't simply a case of overindulgent parents. Computers, printers, scanners, laptops, sound systems, electronic things that could have been nuclear warheads, so foreign were they to her, were piled all over the place. Stacks of CDs—Orbital, Prodigy, Juno Reactor—Zach was heavily into techno groups. She turned one of the cases over and read Prodigy's song titles—“Voodoo People,” “Firestarter,” “Breathe,” and “One Love.” She could identify with the last at least. There was lots of software:
StarCraft, Unreal, Diablo, Grand Theft Auto. No question about what Zach was doing with
his
free time.

She made her way across the room. The shades were down and she'd switched on the light when she came in. Clothes were strewn on the floor. She took a breath. Ah, that old familiar smell. The funk. It was there. What about room inspection? She laughed at herself. Would Zach care? This was a boy who had made a very abrupt turn, according to Daryl. Was it a turn to the left or right? The bookcase was crammed with computer manuals and magazines, a lot of sci-fi and, surprisingly, all the Harry Potters. No neo-Nazi stuff, or if he had it, it was hidden. And no yearbook.

A new Special Edition iMac sat on his desk. It was not on sleep, and Faith turned it on. The screen saver was a still from
The Matrix.
All his files were locked. She shut down. His unmade bed revealed nothing until she slid her hand under the pillow. There was something in the case, and that something was a very sharp switchblade. She left it; she had to, yet the thought of why he might need it was unsettling—defense or offense? His dresser drawers were filled with clean clothes—the boys did not have to do their own laundry—and what wasn't for school was black. The only picture in the room was a large poster of Albert Einstein thumb-tacked to the wall—another Mansfield no-no. Nothing affixed to the walls, except with proper
picture hangers. There was a dartboard on his closet door. The Harcourt wanted poster was pinned to it, one dart squarely between the eyes of the Russian on the snuffbox. Snuffed.

Gingerly, she opened the closet door. A tangle of shoes cluttered the floor and Zach's blazers were slipping off the hangers. No buttons missing. Nothing in the pockets. She sighed. She had to get back. Tom was with his father in town and she had to pick up Amy. She dragged the desk chair over to look on the top shelf—nothing noteworthy except for a piece of petrified pizza that might interest the Smithsonian. She was returning the chair when she bumped against one of the sound systems, nearly sending it toppling to the floor. She reached to put it back in place and stopped. The owner had written his name on the back in indelible marker. The proud owner: Danny Miller.

 

What to do? What to do?
What to do?
She had several choices, and as she drove toward the center of town, they played leapfrog in her mind. Talk to Pix? Talk to Danny? Talk to Tom? Talk to Pix and Danny together? Talk to Pix, Danny, and Tom together? Talk to no one? She was favoring the last option as she pulled into the nursery school parking lot and prepared for the wall of guilt that would fall upon her since her child was the last one to be picked up. Yes, for the moment, keep her mouth shut. Or better, talk to Daryl. He had
to have some idea of why Zach Cohen's room was crammed with consumer goods. What had Danny said to Pix about his prize possession? He'd loaned it to a kid he knew? But Zach obviously didn't need to borrow it—and how had Danny gotten to be such buddies with Zach in any case? Brian Perkins was a freshman, and upperclassmen didn't talk to freshmen, at least not in a way that would warm a mother's heart.

Amy was drowsily nibbling on the sandwich Faith had prepared for her lunch, and she greeted her mother with her usual slightly perplexed look. If Amy was at her friend Jeremy's house, this look would soon be accompanied by heartrending cries of “No, I don't want to go home!” Pix, the teachers, and Jeremy's mother, whose son exhibited the same behavior, had all told Faith this simply meant Amy wasn't “good at transitions.” Faith could identify with this and hoped her daughter would outgrow the crying part—or would at least sob in secret.

They waved good-bye to the teachers, who had told Faith it didn't matter they were staying late anyway so many times that she felt worse than ever, and got into the car. Amy promptly fell asleep and Faith faced another transition—lugging Amy up the back stairs, through the kitchen, and into bed. When this was accomplished, she felt like a nap herself. Between teaching, snooping, and all the other tasks of everyday life, she was exhausted. Instead, she
made herself a cup of coffee and waited for something else to happen.

 

The something else she was expecting was a call from Tom, or maybe he'd stop by after his lunch with his father. But the phone never rang. Finally, she called next door, and Rhoda Dawson, the church administrator, told Faith that the Reverend wasn't there and she hadn't heard from him. He'd cleared his afternoon, so she presumed he was still in town with his father. Faith presumed the same thing and hung up to wait. She wasn't sure whether it was a good sign or a bad sign that Tom was spending so much time with her father-in-law.

She went through her Mansfield plans for the next day. She wouldn't be able to do any more room searches—she wanted to case out John MacKenzie's—because she planned to speak to Mrs. Mallory about teaching a class or two. Mansfield classes met on Saturday mornings, and her hope was that the cook would take one or both of these. Project Term ended February 9, which was a little more than two weeks away. She had a great deal to cover in that time. And she had to schedule Zoë's Stroganoff class. Somehow, she had the feeling it was not uppermost in that lady's mind at the moment.