Till the End of Tom Read online

  Officer Edwards was visibly impressed by my headmaster’s knowledge. Of course, he had no way of knowing that the lore of rich folk was all the man stored in his brain. Except, of course, for nonstop speculation as to how any of this information might affect him. Now, I could almost read the thoughts lurching from one to another of his synapses, all of them lugging the same dire message.

  One of the Severins had been badly hurt. He might not live. Therefore, the school staircase was in for a Big-time Lawsuit. And then—I could almost hear him pulling the thought through the narrow corridor of “How does this affect me?” until he reached the stuff of Havermeyerian nightmares: The school would close down. After all, what parent would keep a child in a school this unsafe? My headmaster’s face gave in to gravity, every part of it sagging, even his eyebrows.

  Lost. Lost. The words nearly keened themselves, and ghostly echoes bounced off the marble staircase. Lost, lost. The man, the prestige, the child, the tuition, the endowment, the school.

  WHEN THE OFFICER and technicians were all gone, and classes were about to resume—not a prospect I relished—I returned to the auditorium. The music teacher, Veronica Wenda, a woman who always looked shocked at where her melodic dreams had led her, gamely poised her two hands in the position of a conductor, and said, “And next, ‘Tea for Two,’ which was such a hit in No, No, Nanette.”

  The students were beyond hooting and hissing. They were nearly as comatose as Mr. Severin had been. Lunch followed by Havermeyer followed by Operetta’s Greatest Hits combined with Indian summer had just about done them in.

  I caught Veronica’s attention and whispered that it would be all right for students to return to their scheduled classes now. She nearly wept with relief.

  After several more minutes of predictable delaying tactics and honest questions such as which class were they to go to, I shepherded my flock out and up to my classroom. The odds were heavily stacked against accomplishing anything resembling teaching, but if we could simply keep the peace until the day ended, I’d consider it a win.

  My thoughts about Steinbeck, so dramatically interrupted by Tomas Severin, had concerned East of Eden, which the seniors had been reading and enjoying, despite their usual objections to long books. We’d had a fine and thoughtful discussion based on a quote from the novel:

  “. . . I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.”

  I thought of that quote now, and the animated and heated debate we’d had about the meaning of evil, of what shaped a man and determined his kindness or malevolence. I’d been thinking about those words when I stumbled over Tomas Severin. Now, the words and idea belonged to him, and I considered the rest of the quote, which suggests that a person should choose his course of action so that his dying “brings no pleasure to the world.”

  May it be so, I said of the stranger.

  We had moved on in class to another discussion based on the inequities between the Cain and Abel-like sons, and I’d assigned a nature-nurture essay, due today.

  The official question had been whether people were born programmed to be the “good son,” whether who you became was a matter of luck and life events, or whether roles were assigned within the family and then became the person’s personality. Or, of course, all of the above.

  I’d have thought they would try to use the morning’s events as an excuse to talk about anything but the assignment. I would have understood. But the Steinbeck novel had hit a lot of hot buttons, which shouldn’t have surprised me given that we were a school designed for young adults who couldn’t function satisfactorily in the larger school system. These were kids who’d been in trouble in some way, hadn’t performed as desired, children who were not fulfilling their parents’ dreams and ambitions. They were more than ready to air their not very buried sense of being treated unfairly, or of being assigned—or thinking they were—the role as the family goof-off or worse, the bad child. I wondered if they ever had a chance to talk about this at home. Maybe their papers would speak for them—if their parents read their work.

  We talked through the remainder of the period, I collected their papers, and the day was done.

  I didn’t see it until then, until I went to the window for a literal breather before I set out for my second job at the PI firm. That’s when I spotted a Styrofoam cup, the sort used for take-out coffee, on the sill.

  An innocuous object, yes. Except that there was no logical reason for that cup to be in my classroom.

  I had unlocked my office door that morning onto a room free of any take-out cups. I hadn’t brought any in with me, nor had any student broken the rules and come to class with food or drink.

  That brought us to the point where we all trooped downstairs—every single teacher and student—for the god-awful assembly.

  And then the return to the classroom, en masse, and not a one of us carrying coffee that time, either.

  And yet, there it was on my windowsill.

  Only one person I knew of had been upstairs while I was not, and he was in the hospital now, fighting for his life.

  I looked at the cup, afraid to lift it, although Styrofoam didn’t seem the sort of material that would hold fingerprints. There wasn’t much left inside—an inch or so. I bent over and sniffed. Not coffee. It had a faintly flowery scent, and it was pale. Herbal tea.

  Tomas Severin, drinking tea in my classroom. I imagined him coming upstairs, checking his watch as no one was here, then coming into my room because it was the closest to the staircase. I pictured him looking out my window at the square.

  Biding his time, or on the lookout for someone?

  And then—something interrupted him and made him forget his tea, leave it behind.

  A lot of information from a take-out cup except how a man got from drinking from it to lying, near death, at the bottom of the stairs and why he was here in the first place.

  * * *

  Two

  * * *

  * * *

  I started out for the offices of Ozzie Bright, PI, walking slowly, as if weights were attached to my feet. I considered driving, but it was only a few blocks away and parking was next to impossible. Of the two difficulties—moving my body or being unable to get rid of my car—moving was less infuriating, so I trudged on. “Loooong day,” I said when I entered the upstairs offices. Ozzie nodded agreement, as if I’d been commenting about his day, not mine. He was one of the least communicative of men, and, surprisingly for an investigator, one of the least curious. Naturally, he didn’t ask for clarification.

  Happily, Mackenzie was still there. We’re both moonlighting here, theoretically a team, working together. However, since my after-school free hours are mostly the hours he’s in grad school, we wind up working together—separately. I was glad today was an exception so that I could tell him what had happened.

  He listened dutifully, showing his first real interest when he heard that Owen Edwards had been one of the officers. He asked about him, said he’d give him a call, and then he listened some more.

  “Fell down backward—headfirst,” I said, touching the back of my skull as illustration.

  One of Mackenzie’s eyebrows raised.

  “What?”

  “Odd way to fall. I mean you can’t have been starting down the stairs and tripped, and you can’t have simply not been paying attention—or it isn’t likely.”

  “His cheek was—something had happened to it.” I hated remembering how crumpled he’d looked on that side of his face. “You think he could have rolled? Bruised the back and front of his head? It’s a huge staircase.”

  “Guess anything’s possible, but to break a cheekbone would take pretty serious direct force, wouldn’t you think?”

  “A separate injury? Before the fall?�
�

  He winked, and smiled and said, “That isn’t my job anymore.” Then he got up and poured himself Ozzie-coffee, a brew unto itself. He held up his cup and mimed an offer to pour me some, but I’d rather lick highway tar, not that I could tell one from the other.

  “He was in my room. Do you think he came to see me?”

  “Why do you say that?” Mackenzie resettled at his desk. It was a mess of clipped stacks of paper and one loose sheet he’d been working on when I interrupted.

  “There was a Styrofoam cup on my windowsill, a take-out cup with what smelled like herbal tea in it. Hibiscus, maybe—a flowery smell. Nobody else could have put it there.”

  “Really?”

  “Why the surprise? We were in assembly, nobody was upstairs and—”

  “Didn’t mean that. Meant two things: the position in which he fell, and the broken cheekbone. A fatal injury—”

  “He’s unconscious, not dead.”

  Mackenzie nodded. “An’ we’re hopin’ he pulls out of it completely and soon. But my experience is that an immediate coma like that . . .” He shrugged again. “Something’s seriously hurt in there.” His focus or attention drifted into a private space elsewhere.

  “And?”

  “He looked to be normally fit?”

  I thought about the well-tailored suit, the carefully polished soft leather shoes, and tried to remember the body within them. “Trim. Looked like he consciously stayed in shape, yes.”

  “What would it take for somebody to rush him when he’s at the top of that staircase? Why wasn’t he more alert? Why couldn’t he fend the person off—or move to a safer place?”

  “Especially when nobody’s there.”

  McKenzie raised one eyebrow again. “Maybe.”

  “And the take-out tea? You think the man was drugged?”

  “Manda, this is pure speculation. Impure speculation, in fact. And not my job or yours. He’ll wake up and say what happened. Meanwhile, I’ve got actual work to do. The kind that pays bills.”

  “The cleaning people,” I said. “That cup.”

  “You didn’t throw it out?”

  I shook my head. “My wastebasket’s mesh, and it would have leaked. I was too lazy to go dump the tea somewhere. I knew the cleaning people would take care of it.”

  He tilted his head. “Maybe you want to call the school? Just in case it’s relevant. Tell them not to—”

  “The janitors don’t answer the phones. I’d get the message machine.” I checked the time. “Havermeyer and Mrs. Wiggins are gone by now, too.”

  Mackenzie wasn’t interested. He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “That isn’t what I do these days.” His new mantra.

  “See you later,” I said without further explanation. “I hope I’m in time.” I’d think of the race back to school as much-needed aerobic exercise.

  He knew precisely where I was going and why, and while he didn’t wave me on or encourage me, he didn’t try to stop me, either. I took it as a definite maybe and left the office before Ozzie with his slow reaction time could even ask why.

  I half wished somebody would have cried halt before I bolted through the streets, my briefcase flapping across my side, knowing with each step, with each startled and annoyed pedestrian who moved aside for me, that I was in pursuit of a quarter-filled Styrofoam cup of cold tea.

  At least the weather was with me, the air almost warm, but managing as well to have an edgy whisper of winter lurking around the corner. It felt the way crisp new-crop apples taste, sharp and winey-delicious, and each breeze suggested that I enjoy it while I could, because its days were numbered.

  Enjoyment did not mean galloping clumsily the way I was. It did not mean sweating and gasping for breath at the back door of the school, the door for which I, along with the rest of the faculty, had a key, and it did not include racing to the front staircase and up it, gasping.

  I nearly crashed into Ms. Liddy Moffat, custodian. Ms. Moffat takes her role of caretaker—of the school and of the earth— seriously, and seriously takes care, with a proprietary concern for both. Ms. Moffat also has core convictions about waste, meaning what is allowed to be discarded and what is not. She is fond of reclaiming objects she declares “misplaced.” The fourth morning of my first year at Philly Prep I’d found a note on my desk. It said: Rejected. Too nice to be trash. Somebody else could read it. Sincerely, Ms. Liddy Moffat. The note sat atop a Xeroxed copy of a poem by Wordsworth. “Waste not, want not,” she wrote another time. Those words sat underneath a mostly-used-up lipstick tube someone had chucked. “Anybody in this school ever hear about recycling?” read a series of messages accompanying empty cola cans.

  I have nothing but admiration and respect for Ms. Liddy Moffat, a woman who loves her work and excels at it. At the moment, however, I dreaded her efficiency and eagle eye. Even she didn’t save Styrofoam cups.

  “Whoa!” she shouted, “Nobody allowed in this school after—” she squinted, stepped back, and said, “Miss Pepper! Sorry. I thought you—”

  “Ms. Moffat,” I said, catching my breath. “Have you cleaned there yet?” I gestured to the right, to my room.

  She sucked in her bottom lip and looked down at her feet, shod in red high-top sneakers. “Meant to, but I’m behind schedule. That chemistry lab, whew! No offense, but some kids are pigs. Not to mention the mess from this afternoon.”

  “The man’s fall?”

  She nodded. “Scuff marks and blood! Look at that! Just look at that!”

  To my relief, she was pointing not at blood, but at scuff marks, souvenirs of Tom Severin’s finely polished shoes, on the landing, just in front of her red sneakers. “How does a man make marks in a place like that?” she asked, rhetorically. She seemed equally appalled by the mess and its unrecyclable nature.

  “So you haven’t gotten to my room yet—that’s great! I left something.”

  “You shouldn’t have worried. You know I never throw things out by accident. I’m a careful—”

  “Anybody would throw this out. Even you.”

  “Real trash and you want it back?”

  Explaining why I coveted a Styrofoam cup with the remnants of somebody’s tea would take too much time and ultimately not sound that much saner, so I smiled my gratitude and knew I’d given her “this-place-is-crazy” material to discuss with the rest of the maintenance crew.

  The cup was still on the windowsill. I contemplated it, wondering what I should do next and how stupid I was going to feel when it turned out to contain nothing more than cold tea made of flowers.

  But I have felt stupid enough times to not worry that much about feeling that way again, so I carefully covered the cup with a piece of paper, put a rubber band around it, and then just in case forensics could retrieve fingerprints from Styrofoam—and in case the prints were relevant to anything—I wrapped yet another piece of paper around it, and carried it to my car where it fit, with a little jiggling, in the cup holder.

  I drove to headquarters filled with a sense of purpose that dissipated the moment I spoke with an actual human being who in no way shared my excitement over my find. I explained myself, the cup, my reason for bringing it in, then I reexplained, and then explained one more time. One of the principles of teaching is making your point three times. First, you mention the idea you’re about to present, then you say your piece, and finally, you sum up what you’ve said.

  That doesn’t always hammer home the message in the classroom, either, so I’d seen his brain-dead-but-breathing expression before. “Honestly,” I said, “I’m not a crank. If you get this to Owen Edwards—he was there this morning—and tell him I found it in my classroom, he’ll understand.”

  The red-haired officer was passionately disinterested. “Let’s see,” he said. “You’re reporting a cup you found.” He had a checklist of categories of crime, and he read it through for a second time, his lips forming each item as he noted it. It named theft, aggravated assault, vehicle theft and the like, but obv
iously didn’t have an entry for “cup, found.” “You with Town Watch?” he asked. “Is that it? This is a littering offense?”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Am I not supposed to do this?”

  “Well, in fact, we have people—trained professionals, that is—who examine the crime scene and decide what’s important and what isn’t.”

  “It was an accident scene. They examined it. My classroom wasn’t part of where the accident happened.”

  There was no indication that I was making sense to this man.

  The officer sighed and I had time to reconsider the situation: Slightly disheveled citizen brings in old tea because maybe it’s a clue in what has been declared an accidental fall down the stairs, which makes the concept of clue irrelevant.

  I was lucky to have had all that practice at looking foolish.

  “See,” the cop said, “most people, they find something they think’s important, a knife, a gun, mostly—they call the cops. Then we know how to handle it.”

  “It would have seemed a waste of money to have them come all the way to the school when I was on my way home and could drop this off.”

  He nodded wearily. “But the crime scene—you’ve messed with it now. You’ve moved evidence.”

  “It wasn’t a crime scene—it was my classroom, and about fifty kids were in and out of it before I spotted the cup.” I took a deep breath and tried one last time. “Owen Edwards was there. Philly Prep. You could check. Tomas Severin fell down the staircase. He’s in a coma.”

  “Severin?” He scratched his ear.

  “Right. Today. Two o’clock, thereabouts. There’s got to be a report—there were investigators and detectives, and—”

  “I didn’t hear about any school crime today . . . Damn kids get their hands on guns and—”

  “It wasn’t that kind of thing—”