Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

It took him a minute to comprehend fully what she was saying. Then, “Are you crazy? Have you completely lost your mind? I never hit on anyone in my life.”

It came to him that they were both speaking in italics. But how else could one talk about something as insane as this?

“Don’t deny it!” The woman’s mouth curled up, but in a sneer rather than a smile. “Vivi has told me all about it. How you keep her after class and fondle her, put your hands all over her, make obscene propositions to her. If I were a man, I’d shoot you. Or, if not that, turn you over to the police. Instead, because I don’t want my daughter traumatized by dirty publicity, I am merely going to report you to Miss Barclay and see that you lose your job.”

He leaned against the wall, unable to stand upright. “No!” he exploded. “It’s a lie, a terrible lie. I never touched your daughter! I never propositioned her. I’ve never spoken to her about anything but the philosophy class.”

“Some philosophy! The head of the school is going to be surprised to find out just what your philosophy is.”

“No! You can’t do this. It’s not true. None of it is true. I swear to you I’ve never touched your daughter.”

He would be fired instantly. Eugenia Barclay gave a talk at the beginning of every school year about what would happen to any male teacher who got too friendly with the girls. At his age, with that blight on his record, the only job he’d be able to find would be flipping hamburgers. “You’ve got to believe me,” he pleaded. “It simply isn’t true.”

She stared at him, saying nothing. He could feel perspiration forming on his forehead, and his palms were wet. His right hand trembled slightly as he brushed it across his forehead. “Believe me,” he whispered. “I am telling you the truth.”

She continued to stare at him, her eyes narrowing, while he grew more and more desperate. “I can’t believe Vivian would tell you something like that. Why, she’s the best student in that class. It doesn’t make any sense that she would tell lies about me.”

“All right,” the woman said finally. “I’ll make a deal with you. Obviously, I can’t leave Vivi in this school, and I can’t get the tuition back if I take her out. Another school will be just as expensive, if not more so.” She paused as though she expected him to make a suggestion, then she said, “Here’s what I’ll do. I won’t say a word to anyone, and neither will Vivi, if you’ll give me one hundred thousand dollars so I can enter her in another school.”

Now he was totally incapable of speaking.

“It’s only fair,” she continued. “You’ve ruined this school for her. I’m just a poor widow, trying to live on half of what my husband’s Social Security was, so I can’t afford anywhere else. Either you give me the money or I’m going straight to Miss Barclay. I probably should do that anyway, let her know what kind of teacher she hired.”

“Please,” he said, trying not to whimper. “I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Then hello, Miss Barclay; goodbye, Professor Penley.” For the first time she really smiled. “I’ll give you until tomorrow night at this time to get the money. I’ll be back here for it.”

She left the porch so quickly that he wasn’t aware of what she was doing until she was halfway down the front walk. He continued to lean against the wall, too weak to move.

When Miriam returned to the apartment, she found Vivian in the Bentley rocker, her feet propped on the Turkish hassock, poring over a book entitled The Age of Reason.

Miriam hated this apartment, as she had hated all the rented places in which they’d lived in the past few years. Nothing in the place matched anything else, the wallpaper peeled in places, and there was always something wrong with the plumbing. But neither she nor Vivi complained too much, because they both knew they would put up with these living arrangements until they made their second million. When they had first started their business, they said retirement would come with the first million. But a million dollars today wouldn’t last very long, even wisely invested, so two million was now the goal.

Vivi was so smart that it seemed a crime they weren’t taking in money faster. That thought brought a smile. A crime, indeed.

The girl looked up from her book:. “How’d it go?”

“Good news and bad news,” Miriam said.

“Damn it all, there shouldn’t be any bad news.” Vivi threw the book aside. “I did everything exactly right.”

“The good news is we’ll get a hundred large. The bad news is that it won’t be one-fifty. You see,” she felt she had to explain her sudden generosity, “the house, the section he lives in, it all made me think that he couldn’t get his hands on one-fifty, at least not in a hurry. So we’ll settle for a hundred.”

“That’ll make only four hundred for the whole year.”

“Well, the good news is that the IRS will never know about it. That’s the same as money in the bank.” She sat on the sunken-in sofa across from her daughter and shared the hassock. “Listen, Vivi, we’ve got to do some serious thinking. You’re twenty-five years old, almost twenty-six. You can’t keep convincing people that you’re a seventeen-year-old girl. We’ve got to find a different type of school.”

“Maybe an all-girl college instead of these la-de-da finishing schools,” Vivi said. “A college that has a professor I can have a good time with. Old Penley’s nothing but a nerd, straight from Dullsville. Bored the bejesus out of me.”

“Even so,” Miriam said, “one hundred thousand in three months isn’t bad. That’s a little over thirty-three thousand a month.”

“Chicken feed,” Vivi said. “CEo’s make a million or two a month, some of them even more.”

“Then why in hell aren’t you a CEO? You’re smart enough.”

“This is easier and more fun. Have you given any thought to where we’ll go next?”

“Of course. There’s a college prep in Virginia, Leescroft Hall, that charges a frightful tuition. Looks like a good prospect. I get Penley’s money Friday night. By Monday we should be packed up and out of here.”

“Could we please get a decent apartment? I’m tired of these crappy places.”

Miriam smiled. “When we get that second million we’ll also get all the luxuries we’ve been denying ourselves. Beautiful condos, expensive cars, furs, jewelry... say, maybe I can hit Penley up for that extra fifty after all. Tell him I’ll go to his wife as well as the school head. She was the one who came to the door when I rang the bell, and she looks like a real piece of work. So, Vivi, only a couple more schools and we’ll have our retirement fund.”

“Then what will we do for fun, amusement, and profit?”

Miriam smiled. “You’ll come up with something, just as you did our current little game.”

He didn’t move for the longest time, just kept leaning against the wall feeling weak and sick. It was like being kicked in the stomach at the same time as being hit in the head with a hammer. He couldn’t let her go to Eugenia Barclay. Barclay would fire him without letting him say so much as a word. And words wouldn’t matter anyway; she had made that point perfectly clear. No male teacher was to have anything whatsoever to do with the girls outside of class. “I’ll not have one spark of scandal catching into a flame at this school.”

With something like that on his record, he wouldn’t even be able to get a job teaching in a public high school.

One hundred thousand dollars! All of the money in the world to him. All of the money he had in the world. After all these years teaching, that was the amount he had saved and put into a CD. There was maybe as much as seven or eight thousand in a money market account, and his checking account was less than four hundred dollars. And, of course, Reva was totally dependent upon him; she had only what he gave her for household expenses and clothes.