the cops assume they were looking for supplies. I couldn’t imagine anybody committing murder, thenpassionately making out seconds later and several feet away. Perhaps my imagination is limited, but I couldn’t picture it. The cops had showed up before Benson and Frecking had returned from the washroom. I assumed they were being kept in another part of the building along with the other faculty members.
When I finished my statement, Gault, the older cop, shook his head. “You got any witnesses?”
“I assumed most everybody else was still in the English department meeting. I didn’t see anyone else. Mrs. Faherty, the woman I talked to on the phone, should remember, and my cell phone provider will have a record of the call, time, duration, and to whom. I have no idea where any custodians, secretaries, and teachers from all the other departments might have been.”
Gault said, “You got back to the meeting and only two custodians were there. How come you didn’t see the teachers, or they didn’t see you when they left the meeting?”
“A lot of people scatter to go home right after a meeting, and I was making a quiet phone call down a hallway where I could watch the rain. It’s not the exit to the teachers’ parking lot.”
“How well did you know Mrs. Eberson?” Gault asked.
“Not that well.”
“How’d you get along with her?” Gault was doing all the questioning.
“She was a colleague.”
“Talk with her much, go to lunch with her, have an affair?”
“No.” The woman rarely looked me in the eye. Faction hatred, homophobia, ignorance, lack of social skills? I never knew. Didn’t care much. Never asked.
“She taught next door to you.”
“I’d see her in the hall most days.”
“She have any enemies?”
Well, this was getting down to it. They’d find out eventually, if they hadn’t already.
I said, “The factions in the department fought.”
“Were you and her on the same sides?”
“I tried not to take sides.”
“Personal problems between you two?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why would there be?”
“What did you fight about?”
“In the department, the fights were about everything.”
“What’s everything?”
“Who was in charge. Who wasn’t in charge. Who wanted to be in charge. Who was qualified to be in charge. Who got to put out memos. Who was putting out memos. Who was taking notes at meetings. Who wasn’t taking notes. Who was supposed to be taking notes. Who was going on trips. Who was sucking up. Who wasn’t sucking up. Who was being helpful to whom. Who would be a traveling teacher. Who would have their own classroom. Old guard versus new. Dumb versus smart. New, rigidly enforced methodology and curriculum against old guard. If it breathed, it was worth fighting over.”
Earl Vulmea, the young cop, spoke up. “You guys are teachers? I thought teachers were supposed to be role models.”
“You been a cop long?” I asked him. “I just made detective.” “Teachers are human,” I said. “Who’d she fight with today?” Gault asked. “We had a faculty meeting. The factions fought. They always do.”
“Anybody in particular?”
I told him about the faculty meeting.
“You didn’t speak up?” Gault asked.
“Didn’t see the need.”
“You a coward?” Vulmea asked.
“Just being a role model.”
The cops stood up. Gault said, “Don’t leave.” They walked out.
I called my lover, Scott Carpenter. To my announcement of finding a dead body, he said, “Again.” Using the tone Rocky the Squirrel used when Bullwinkle J. Moose had done something ineptly stupid for the umpteenth time.
I said, “It wasn’t my fault.”
“What did I tell you about finding more dead bodies?”
“Something about lack of chocolate for an extended period of time.” I sighed. “I’ve got dead bodies plopping in my path, and you’re going for humor.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I filled him in on the horrors I was in the middle of.
“You
Amanda Young, Raymond Young Jr.