Schooled in Murder Read Free Page A

normally go to this storage room?”
    He said, “To get supplies.”
    “And have you gotten supplies from there in the past?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you might want to say that.”
    “What about Steven?” he asked.
    “What’s wrong with a friend tagging along?”
    Benson said, “Won’t it sound odd?”
    “Not as odd as a dead body in the storage closet.”
    “How can you be so calm?” Benson asked.
    “I’m not dead,” I said.
    Frecking said, “She had a chalk eraser crammed in her mouth. Like someone was trying to shut her up permanently.”
    Both of them were pale. Benson said, “I’ve only seen dead bodies at wakes and funerals of distant relatives. This is spooky.”
    Benson reached out a hand to the wall. “I think I’m going to be sick.” He bent over. Frecking helped him to the nearest washroom. When they were a quarter of the way down the hall, I began to hear distant sirens. Benson was bent over nearly double as they staggered though the washroom door. As it closed, I heard one or both of them puking.

3
     
    Everybody showed up, the helpful and the unhelpful. Amando Graniento, our fourth principal in three years, rushed about like a head with its chicken cut off. In moments less fraught with crisis, he was useful for making grave pronouncements about arcane academic minutiae. He’d been a professor at Governors State University for fifteen years before deigning to take a principalship. I heard the most appalling rumor from someone I trusted who had been on the principal interview/selection committee that had picked Graniento. When asked what he would do with a parent who was out of control, Graniento had said, “I will never say no to a parent.” The man was out of his mind. He tended to wear clothes that he thought were trendy. Mostly, he looked like a poster child for hideously clashing colors.
    The heart of the interdepartmental conflict had been Spandrel and Graniento’s doing. Sure, there were other causes. With the change in the retirement rules for teachers in Illinois, there had been a rash of old teachers leaving and thus an influx of new teachers with a lot of new ideas and no ties to the old guard. But Spandrel and Graniento had throwngasoline on the fire not just once but time after time. They seemed to thrive on the constant fighting. I always got the impression that the superintendent and head of the school board were cheering them on as well.
    The other members of the department, still at school, had been told to wait in the Learning Center. I saw Mabel Spandrel at a distance. She sniffled constantly and wiped her nose. She looked as if tears would flow any second.
    Our superintendent, Riva Towne, arrived. She nodded gravely at everyone, huddled with police, and spoke to the other school board members who showed up. At every opportunity she had lectured people that the school district should be run in a more businesslike manner. I knew for a fact she’d been an elementary teacher in Newton, Iowa, for fifteen years before becoming a school administrator. Her experience in the business world was absolutely zero. Victoria Abbot, the assistant superintendent, entered with her. She looked sick and worried.
    The River’s Edge police, protectors of the suburb in which Grover Cleveland High School existed, mucked about.
    I returned to my room. Two local detectives I didn’t know questioned me. Frank Rohde, my friend on the department, had been promoted to assistant police chief last year. The other cops I knew on the department dealt mostly with juvenile crimes. Since I often worked with behaviorally disturbed kids, I knew some of the cops. But these two were homicide detectives I didn’t know. The older cop was Michah Gault. The other, Earl Vulmea, looked young enough to be one of the kids in my classes. I described my movements from when I first stepped out of the meeting to when I discovered the corpse. I mentioned Benson and Frecking. I didn’t mention what they were doing. Let