Sixteen

Branford Purell’s perplexing insistence on staying dead was not improving my day in any way, shape, or form. Luckily, Preston Burke was doing his very best to cheer me up, and had finished his task by 11:30. I stood back on the sidewalk in front of my house to admire his hardwork.

“You do nice work, Pres,” I said. “If it was painted, I’d never know there’d been any damage.”

“I could paint it, Aaron,” he countered. “Another two hundred, and I’ll scrape and paint the whole thing.”

I weighed the two hundred bucks against the mental image of me on a ladder in front of my house on the weekend as the weather turned colder, scraping the thin wood between window panes. It wasn’t even close.

“Go for it, Preston,” I said. He happily went off to Haberman’s Hardware for some sandpaper and paint.

The only thing to do now was have lunch. I was still trying desperately to lose that last nagging twenty pounds, so I went to Hallie’s Coffee House for a grilled chicken salad, which I brought home in the environmentally disastrous Styrofoam package that all New Jersey diners consider de rigeur.

You may have noticed that nowhere in that paragraph did I mention going out to investigate the stink bomb incidents. You are a remarkably astute reader.

The fact was, I couldn’t bring myself to de facto accuse little kids without a shred of evidence to back up my claims. I needed something, anything to hang a theory on, and I had absolutely nothing.

So I pondered, which is what I’m best at before two in the afternoon. I read Fax McCloskey’s latest missive, detailing with exhaustive thoroughness the Washington, D.C. Police Department’s examination of FBI files that had virtually nothing to do with Legs Gibson’s murder. But it was nice Fax continued to write. It made me feel part of the D.C. police family.

If I were nine or ten years old, and bought a stink bomb at the Kwik N’ EZ, why would I choose the girls’ locker room, the gym, and the boys’ room at school to try out my purchase? Well, two of those locales, at least, had a common overseer. A grudge against the gym teacher, of course (I suppose you have a better idea?). I headed for Buzbee to seek out Hester Van Biezbrook.

Hester, the prototype for all gym teachers, was roughly 400 years old, and could still put me through a cinderblock wall if the spirit moved her. She stood about six-foot-three, had triceps Arnold Schwarzenegger would find intimidating, and spoke in a voice high enough to qualify as a dog whistle. She was supervising a game of volleyball when I arrived, breathless from my two-and-a-half block walk.

“The stink bombs,” I managed.

“What about them?” she asked. Hester wasn’t much given to small talk, and since Leah had never so much as stepped out of line once in her class, she didn’t know me very well. The parents of the squeaky kids get the grease.

“Did somebody have a gripe against you? Some reason one of the kids would have wanted to get back at you that day?”

She regarded me with a look approaching pity. “You think that a fifth grader needs a reason to throw a stink bomb into a bathroom? Any ten-year-old boy worth a damn would throw it into the locker room just to watch the girls run.”

“Yeah, but that’s the point,” I countered. “He didn’t stick around to watch them run. He threw it and ran. Maybe he was trying to make a point about the school. And because this is your part of the school, maybe about you. What do you think, Hester?”

She thought about it. “There are tons of troublemakers in those classes,” she said thoughtfully. “I can’t single one out just because he pisses me off. And there wasn’t anybody who specifically had a gripe on those days. Nope, this was the nasal equivalent of joyriding, Mr. Tucker.” And before I could go on, she was off to dock one team of girls a point for spiking the volleyball, something I was impressed they could even do.

You’d have thought the whole stink bomb thing would have died down by now, anyway, but I’d seen an article in the Central Jersey Press Tribune detailing a meeting of the Buzbee PTO in which it was actually suggested that the girls’ locker room be padlocked while the girls were inside to prevent further incidents. It wasn’t until someone in the crowded meeting yelled the word “fire” that the padlock suggestion was tabled indefinitely.

I went home and caught the spectacle of Preston Burke carefully painting my bow window, which was quite a sight. With a very thin brush and a straight edge, he was avoiding any splash of paint on the window glass itself. I felt I was intruding on a private moment.

Inside, the answering machine was flashing, and there was a message from Stephanie. “I’m sorry about the scene with the boys and Lester,” she said. “If you want to re-interview them, I’ll set something up on the phone.”

I didn’t think Stephanie’s sons knew much of anything about the murder, although there were clearly undercurrents to this family that Carl Jung would find scary. And there was, now, a pretty tight deadline, and no reason to waste time. So I called her back and said I didn’t see a need for a new interview, that the waters had been muddied enough by the first one, and let it be known that if I never actually came into contact with Lester again, I wouldn’t weep into my pillow at night.

“He can be a trial,” she admitted. “I can’t wait until all this is over, and I can go back to having a life again.”

“I’ve never been involved in the death of a public figure before,” I told her. “How long do you think it’ll take before you can put this behind you?”

“It would be a big step if they found out who did it, so I did-n’t have to worry about being arrested every waking minute,” said Steph. It must be an awful bother to have to plan your day around being arraigned and making bail, and never knowing when such activities might be coming up.

“Who do you suspect?” I’d never actually asked.

“Tell you the truth,” Stephanie said, “I think the woman he was sleeping with did it herself. And knowing Louis in situations like that, I’m not entirely sure I blame her.”

I didn’t bother to tell her that the police had almost definitively eliminated Cherie Braxton as a suspect, for one thing because she lacked the upper body strength to get a kitchen knife through Legs’ rib cage and into his heart. Besides, she didn’t like Legs enough to kill him, from what I could tell.

“Well, I’m supposed to write about it by Monday,” I said, “and I haven’t a clue what I’m going to say.”

“Well, if you need any help, you know who to call,” she said, and we hung up.

By the time the kids got home, I’d exhausted all my best ways to procrastinate, Burke had quit for the day, and my children were mystified at my insistence on helping them with their homework, despite their not needing any help. Leah went so far as to retreat to her room, turn on the CD player, and close the door, all to keep out the guy who still does long division the old way. It’s hell being middle-aged.

Abby got home a little early, and I went upstairs to get dressed for the conference with my brain trust. She walked into the bedroom and started changing from her work clothes.

“Did Burke finish the window?” she asked. I told her about the fine job he’d done, and how we had devoted an extra couple hundred to the beautification of our front window. She nodded. “He’s still pretty creepy, though, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I’m starting to like him.”

“He’s not in love with you,” she pointed out.

“Well, it’s no wonder he’s crazy about you,” I said, embracing her. “You drive me wild, walking around in various states of undress.”

“Luckily, I don’t do that very often at the office,” she said. “Besides, I could probably drive you wild if I dressed like the Michelin Man.”

I considered that. “Wait. I’m picturing that. Wow. Yes, you could.”

She broke the clinch and put on a sweatshirt and sweatpants. “I’m just still a little concerned about Burke,” she said. Abby waited, but got no response. “Aaron, are you listening?”

“No, I’m picturing you dressed in tires.”

“It’s driving you wild, isn’t it?”

“Just as you knew it would, you tease,” I said.

“You’re a very scary person, Aaron,” she said. “Now, get dressed and go talk to the boys from Bloomfield.”

Spoil-sport.