Death on a School Board (Book 5 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 2

  The minutes ticked by. The “audience,” currently witness to nothing but a closed door and an empty row of tables, grew ever noisier. I noticed the sweaty upper lip of the cameraman, who was supposed to be broadcasting this live for the local cable network. Sylvia had insisted that no commentators be allowed to speak and that every minute of the board meeting be shown without interruption. I smiled at the thought of channel surfers catching sight of the crescent-shaped table and its seven empty seats. This could prove to be their highest-rated broadcast to date.

  Some fifteen minutes past the scheduled start time, the door opened. All seven members emerged, followed by the strange young man, who was now staring at the floor. Everyone seemed tight-lipped and red-faced. This time, at least. Sylvia was carrying her own water glass.

  “It’s pretty obvious they were having quite the fight in there,” Lauren whispered to me. “I’d have liked to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have. You’d’ve spent the entire time frantically trying to escape Sylvia’s web.” I gave Sylvia a smile as she glared down at Mom and me.

  “The meeting will now come to order,” Sylvia said, rapping her gavel on the desk with so much venom that several members of the standing-room-only crowd that flanked us flinched.

  “Does anyone…” Sylvia’s face looked flushed and her voice sounded strained. She patted her chest and cleared her throat. “Excuse me.” She took another drink of water. “Does anyone on the board have an announcement they’d like to make?”

  She looked at the faces of the board members to both sides of her, letting her eyes linger on my father.

  Nobody spoke, and my father grimly shook his head. “Well, then… I guess…I guess I have no choice…”

  Sylvia’s voice faded with each word, and her face was damp with perspiration. She stopped and clutched her throat. “Can’t…breathe.”

  My heart started to pound. I felt Lauren and my mother stiffen, and the audience in the room was absolutely silent, attention riveted to the strange scene playing out before us. Could this be yet another one of the Latin-loving drama queen’s acts?

  “Sylvia, are you all right?” my father asked, rushing to her side.

  She struggled to her feet, as if intending to leave the room once again. She scanned the faces of her fellow board members and murmured, “Et tu, Brute?”

  My father caught her as she collapsed.

  Chapter 2

  Is There a Mathematician in the House?

  Dad, still supporting Sylvia Greene, eased her to the floor behind the table and chairs. He checked for signs of breathing, then began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  The stunned silence was broken as Carol Barr leapt to her feet. “Somebody, help!” She scanned the audience. “Is anyone here a doctor?” When nobody spoke up or rushed to the front, she cried in a shrill voice, “There has got to be someone here more qualified than Charlie Peterson. He’s just a mathematics professor, for crying out loud!”

  My dad gave her a look, but kept working on Sylvia. The elderly attendant who’d carried Sylvia’s coat rushed to the fallen board president and instantly started sobbing and wailing so loudly that the school superintendent took it upon himself to practically carry her down the hall.

  The various murmurings of the audience—most in agreement that somebody needed to do something—were soon deafening. At least sixty people in the room cried simultaneously, “I’ll call nine-one-one.” They were all dialing 911 at once. It felt as though we were trapped in some sort of surreal wireless-phone commercial.

  “Busy signal,” someone shouted from behind me.

  “Just one of you call!” Lauren stomped her foot in frustration, then pointed at the nearest person, a fortyish man in an ill-fitting suit. For just an instant a proud smile flashed across his features, until he realized the solemn task he’d been appointed; then he furrowed his brow and dialed.

  “Where’s security?” someone directly behind me asked. “There’s got to be someone here who’s certified to do what that mathematician is doing to her up there.”

  Kent Graham suddenly turned his attention to the camera that was still focused directly on the dais and all of the flustered school board members. “Cut the cameras! There could be children watching!”

  At the sight of the muscular Kent Graham charging at him, the cameraman gasped and flipped a switch. “I was just trying to do my job,” he said, flinching as if he expected Kent to tackle him.

  Kent soon had his hands full as a couple of reporters and photographers rushed to the podium. A flash went off every couple of seconds. Stuart darted upstage to help Kent, trying to get between the cameras and Sylvia, all the while urging the photographers to “show some common decency.”

  Meanwhile, Michelle Lacy had knelt beside Sylvia and kept patting the fallen woman’s hand. My father said something to her that I couldn’t catch, and Michelle nodded and began CPR compressions on Sylvia’s chest. Watching her, I felt a pang of guilt at my long-held assumption that, because she was such an elegant-looking woman, she would be the last one to roll up her sleeves and do physical work.

  Beside her, the comparatively dumpy-looking Carol Barr had given up on finding a doctor in the room. She now was simply looking down at Sylvia’s face and saying, “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod…”

  Meanwhile, Stuart Ackleman deserted his attempts to waylay the newsmen and grabbed the microphone. He began urging everyone to “remain calm,” which seemed to incite the crowd even further. He pointed at the doors in the back of the room. “Tonight’s board meeting is hereby adjourned. Everyone needs to leave the room in an orderly fashion.”

  Stuart cleared his phlegmy voice and waited. Nobody moved. The problem was that, of all the board members, Stuart was the least able to command authority. He was short, elderly, slightly pudgy, and bald with a bad comb-over. The color in his cheeks was rising, and he gestured with both hands. “You! In the back row. Everybody out. Give the woman some privacy. Clear the way for the paramedics.”

  For our part, I knew Mom would never leave with Dad in the process of administering CPR. Nor would I leave without the two of them. Lauren, in turn, was no doubt going to wait here until her husband—Police, Sergeant Tommy Newton—arrived.

  Though many people did leave, more stayed, taking a sideways stance to the stage, as if this were less egregious than to flat out stare at her.

  A man with a scarecrow build in a security guard’s uniform finally bolted through the side door nearest the dais. “The paramedics will be here any minute,” he said, and promptly took over for my father at the artificial respiration. My father reluctantly got up, his face flushed.

  As the security man had promised, sirens could already be heard in the distance by the time I followed my mom onto the dais, where she gave my father a hug. My mind was in a daze.

  Sylvia’s last words, “Et tu, Brute?” troubled me. I wondered if her words meant that she believed she’d been poisoned. If so, wouldn’t my father have ingested some poison himself when he�d put his mouth over hers to try to restore her breathing?

  “I don’t know if she’s going to make it,” my father whispered to my mom. “Good Lord. This is just…” He let his voice fade away, his face ashen and damp with perspiration. Two medics rushed into the room with a gurney and took over the CPR. Their presence made the severity of the situation all the more obvious.

  The bookish young man who’d been in the private meeting with Dad and the other board members had slowly made his way to the back of the auditorium. Keeping his head down, he pushed his way out the door and left without a second glance. I had a strong urge to rush after him, not only because I was so curious about his role in Sylvia’s ad hoc meeting, but also because of his skulking exit.

  The large audience soon dwindled to just a few lookie-loos, plus the reporters. I felt like an albatross, or a vulture, even, waiting around and doing nothing during the paramedics’ fight to save Sylvia’s life. I ke
pt expecting her to bolt upright and slap one of them, but she wasn’t moving a muscle. We watched in silence as, finally, the paramedics put Sylvia onto the gurney and wheeled her out of the room.

  “Charlie,” Stuart Ackleman said quietly, trying to square his rounded shoulders while he looked up into my father’s eyes. “Things look bad. Carol, Michelle, and I are going to go on ahead to the emergency room. We’ll keep you posted as to the latest news on Sylvia’s condition.”

  “We’re heading there, too,” Kent said, indicating he meant himself and Gillian. Kent was Stuart’s prototypical opposite—a broad-shouldered, agile, middle-aged man, and football coach of the Carlton High School team.

  “We don’t all need to go,” Stuart objected.

  “Fine,” Kent said, running a hand over his thick, wavy, graying brown hair. “Then Gillian and I will go and you can set up a phone tree.”

  “I thought up the idea of going to the hospital first,” Stuart protested under his breath so that the nearby reporters couldn’t overhear. He reminded us of their presence with a jerk of his head. “It’s going to look real bad if some go and some don’t. We either all go, or we all stay away.”

  “Then it’s settled.” Kent used a teasing tone of voice that set my teeth on edge. “We’ll all go.”

  With my father still immobilized by his shock, the five other board members started to collect their things.

  “Hold it right there!” the security officer called gruffly. Until that moment, he’d been occupied at keeping the host of reporters away from the dais. The board members stopped and looked at him. For my part, his words had made me want to raise my hands, as if he were the sheriff in an old western and had me in his sights. “The nine-one-one dispatcher told me she had to send the police, just in case anything looked suspicious. All you folks had better stay put.”

  “You’re just a security guard,” Kent scoffed, “one step up from a janitor. You’ve got no authority over us.” He started toward the door and said to Gillian, “Let’s go.”

  I winced, half expecting the guard to pull out his gun and show Kent that he did have the authority, but he merely glared and made no move to stop Kent.

  “Let me just get my things,” Gillian answered, averting her eyes as if embarrassed by Kent’s classless retort.

  “Leave your possessions exactly where they are till the police get here,” the guard said, stepping toward her.

  “But my purse is here,” Gillian objected. “I have to take that with me.”

  He hitched up his belt on his nonexistent hips. “I’ll keep an eye on everything, lady. That’s my job.” He shot another glare in Kent’s direction. “I’ll have the police bring your things if they decide to interview you at the hospital.”

  “Us? Be interviewed by the police? Don’t be silly,” Gillian immediately replied, looking at Kent, her lone political ally, now that Sylvia was down and out. “Sylvia just…fainted. Mark my words. She’s going to outlive all of us.”

  Which would make it difficult to “mark” her words, since we’d all be dead, but there was no sense quibbling. She started to reach for her purse, but the security man said firmly, “Leave it.”

  Gillian narrowed her eyes at him, whirled on her heel, and called, “Let’s go, Kent,” over her shoulder. She turned back and said, “Charlie? You don’t want to be the only board member not going to the hospital. Wouldn’t be wise, politically. Whose car do you want to ride in?”

  I realized then that the cars, as with all other matters, had been divided into the typical two factions: Carol, Michelle, and Stuart in one car, Kent and Gillian in the other. I couldn’t help but grit my teeth at the audacity of turning such a tragic event into yet more political posturing. I honestly didn’t understand how Gillian and I could have so much in common and yet hold such diametrically opposed opinions. We lived at far ends of the same subdivision of Sherwood Forest and were not only roughly the same age, but our sons were in the same class in school. The boys didn’t like each other either, so apparently this would prove to be generational. The muscles in Dad’s jaw were working and I knew he was moments away from exploding.

  “Ride with me, Dad. We’ll drop Mom off on the way.”

  “Fine,” Dad answered testily. “So much for people bonding in the face of adversity.”

  We followed the others out without another word.

  Actually, knowing Sergeant Newton’s mind-set so well, I suspected that the security man had been correct. We should stay here, in case Sylvia’s collapse struck the police as being “suspicious,” which it certainly seemed to be to me. And yet, I was too anxious to get out of the building to voice my concerns.

  The night air was now chilly. Dad was shaking, and I didn’t want him to drive in this state. We hesitated outside my father’s car, my father patting his pockets. “My keys are in my jacket, which is still on the back of my chair.”

  “I’ve got mine,” Mom said, reaching into her purse. I held out my hand. “I’ll drive, Mom.”

  “Your father will drive,” she said firmly, as if I were too young to drive at night.

  “But I think—”

  “Your father will drive,” she repeated in her do-as-I-say-or-I-unleash-the-hounds voice. Grudgingly, I got into the backseat. Ironic that, after having experienced motherhood myself for a dozen years now, I still was expected to fill the role of dutiful daughter during such an intense situation.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Mom said the moment we got into our car, nervously running her hands through her short hair.

  “Linda, I’m dropping you off at the house on the way home,” Dad said as we pulled out of the parking lot. “You, too, Molly.”

  “No, I’m going with you.” Remembering who currently wielded the hammer of power within our trio, I added, “Mom wants me to be with you, don’t you, Mom?”

  “That’s right, Charlie. Considering everything that happened tonight, you’re not being left alone with those people. Not without a reliable witness.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” At least she trusted me as a witness, if not a driver. Meanwhile, Dad’s driving was fine, though a tad overcautious.

  After dropping Mom off, we were the last ones to arrive in the waiting area of the emergency room. The five other board members were sitting on the brown, naugahyde furniture, their relative positions once again determined by political factions: Gillian and Kent on one side of the small room, Michelle, Carol, and Stuart on the other. Appropriately, the only two remaining seats were along a third wall of the room. Dad and I could remain neutral.

  Gillian rose and gave my father a smile. “I’ve already taken coffee orders from everyone. What would you like, Charlie?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing, thanks.”

  She reclaimed her seat, somewhat dejectedly. Everyone except Gillian, and now Dad and me, was sipping steaming liquid from small Styrofoam cups.

  “Sylvia’s with the doctors by now, I assume,” Dad asked.

  Kent nodded. “No word yet.”

  Michelle stretched her long legs. “This waiting room could use some work.”

  “Work?” I repeated, not catching her drift.

  “Redecorating. That’s what I do for a living.”

  “You design waiting rooms?”

  “No, I’m an interior decorator. In my real life, when I’m not working on the school board, that is.”

  “Ah.” I nodded. I might have guessed. I had another acquaintance who reminded me of Michelle—attractive and always impeccably dressed—who was also an interior designer. Come to think of it, I had yet to meet a shabby-looking interior designer. If I ever did, I’d make it a point to hire her. She would probably understand and appreciate my lifestyle.

  Gillian started pacing and eventually stood beside Dad and me. In a hushed voice, she said, “Why do you suppose Sylvia’s last words were, ‘Et tu; Brute?’ You… don’t think it’s possible that she was poisoned, do you?”

  So it wasn’t just me who suspected poison, I
immediately thought, feeling a small measure of vindication.

  “No,” Carol answered firmly on our behalf from across the room. “She wasn’t drinking anything except the water, which we were all drinking. No,” Carol repeated, and shook her head in emphasis. “She had to have had a heart attack, is all.”

  “Is it common for heart attack victims to clutch their throats and say that they can’t breathe?” I asked quietly.

  “Yes,” my father answered.

  “Molly,” Carol said, “please keep your questions to yourself. You’re not helping.”

  I looked at her, a little surprised that she even knew my name. Perhaps the fact that she was clearly the oldest woman in the room had caused her to act so patronizing toward me—or rather “matronizing“—but I bristled anyway. “I know I’m not helping. None of us are. That’s why this is called a waiting room as opposed to a helping room. I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”

  “Carol told you,” Stuart answered pointedly. “She had a heart attack.”

  Gillian leveled her gaze at Stuart. “Weren’t you a doctor once? Why didn’t you try to help her?”

  “No, I’m not a medical doctor. I’m a PhD—a doctor of philosophy. Did you expect me to administer emergency Descartes discourses till she revived?”

  “Sorry,” Gillian said, holding my gaze for some reason. “My mistake.” I had seen her do that to another parent in a back-to-school meeting recently in our sons’ fifth-grade class when she’d disagreed with something the teacher had said. That seemed to be her method for trying to indicate that you were her secret ally. If so, one of us was reading signals incorrectly, for I felt no camaraderie with the woman, whereas Stuart Ackleman had always struck me as upstanding and honest.

  We shared several minutes of tense silence. At one point, a woman in the typical dull green shade of scrubs came in and shut the inner door, explaining, “A police officer called. He said no one from the press is allowed to talk to you before he gets here. We’re closing off this room to anyone but you, to be on the safe side.”