Diane Davidson - The Cereal Murders

“Are you guys late! What are you doing wearing that weird thing? What’s going on? All you said was that there was a problem at the headmaster’s house. Does that mean we don’t have school on Monday?” This prospect seemed to please him.

“No, no,” I said. Weariness washed over me. We were home, finally, and all I wanted was for everyone to go to bed. I said, “Someone was hurt after the dinner.”

“Who?” Arch pulled his thin shoulders up to his ears and made a face.

“Was there an accident?”

“Not quite. Keith Andrews, a senior, died.” I did not say that it looked as if he’d been murdered. This was a mistake.

“Keith Andrews? The president of the French Club?” Arch looked at Julian, full of fear. “The guy you had that fight with? Man! You’re kidding!”

Julian closed his eyes and shrugged. A fight had not come up in the questioning. I raised my eyebrows at Julian; his facial expression stayed flat.

I said, “I’m sorry, Arch. Tom Schulz and the police are over at the school now – “

“Tom Schulz!” cried Arch. “So they – “

“Arch, buddy,” said Julian. “Chill. Nobody knows what happened. Really.”

Arch’s eyes traveled from Julian back to me. He said, ” A lot of people at school didn’t like Keith. I liked him, though. He didn’t drive around in a Porche or BMW, like he was so cool. You know, the way some of the older kids do. He was nice.”

Arch’s words hung in the air of my front hall. How easily he had put the boy’s life in past tense. Finally I said, “Well, hon, I’d rather not talk about it now, if that’s okay. So … you had a problem with a broken window?”

He reached into the front pocket of his sweatshirt and pulled the rock out. So much for fingerprints. But the rock was tennis-ball-size and jagged. It probably wouldn’t have held a print anyway.

“I’ll bet it was some kids from my old school. Trick or treat.” Arch sighed.

“When did this happen?”

“Oh, late. Right before Julian called.”

I took the rock from him. Did I have any clients who were angry? None that I could think of. In any event, I was too tired to think about it. “Church tomorrow,” I said I to Arch as I pocketed the stone and started toward the kitchen.

“But it’s been snowing!”

“Arch, I can’t take any more in one night.”

“Hey, guy,” said Julian, “if you come up with me now, I’ll let you show me that model you made from the Narnia book.”

“You mean the wardrobe with the fake back?”

“Whatever.”

And before I could say anything, the two boys were racing up the wooden steps. Arch let out a howl trying to beat Julian to the room they now shared. I looked around the hall and thought about the boxes of dishes waiting in my van to be washed. It was past midnight. They would keep.

I shrugged off the coat and looked at the thing in the pocket. It was a Neiman-Marcus credit card. The name on it was K. Andrews.

I swept up the glass shards underneath Arch’s broken window, taped a piece of cardboard over the hole, slumped into my room, and fell into bed. Fitful sleep came interspersed with nightmares. I awoke with a dull headache and the realization that the previous evening, had not been a bad dream.

There was no way Schulz could have left Elk Park Prep before midnight. Rather than wake him at home, I put in a call about the credit card to his voice mail at the Sheriff’s Department. Neiman-Marcus for an eighteen-year-old? But Arch had said Keith did not show off, at least materialistically. What had he said? Like he was so cool.

On my braided rug, Scout he cat turned his chin in ‘1 the air and dramatically flopped over on his back. I obediently scratched the long white fur of his stomach, light brown hair of his back, dark brown hair of his face. While Julian had inherited his Range Rover from the rich folks the two of us had worked for, my inheritance had been the feline. I felt content with my part of the unexpected beneficence. Scout was always full of affection when it was eating time. Perfect cat for a caterer.

Speaking of which, I had work to do. For me, cats were safer than credit cards. I had never even been inside Denver’s new Neiman-Marcus store, I reflected as I began to stretch through twenty minutes of yoga. In general, Dr. John Richard Korman’s child-support payments were late, incorrect, or nonexistent. My calendar shrieked with assignments for this busiest season for caterers, the stretch between Halloween and Christmas. During November and December people were social, hungry, and flush. This was my most profitable time of year. No matter what was going on out at Elk Park Prep, I had to earn enough money for our household to scrape through the first six months of the new year. Upscale department stores were definitely no longer a part of my lifestyle.

In the kitchen, Scout twined through my legs and I fed him before consulting the calendar. Unfortunately, my first job of the day was not even income-producing, although it was a tax write-off. In a moment of weakness I had agreed to prepare the refreshments to follow that morning’s ten o’clock service at the Episcopal church. This would be followed by a more profitable half-time meal of choucroute garnie for twelve Bronco fans at the Dawsons’ house. Trick of caterers: Always use the French name for food. People will not pay large sums for a menu of sausage and sauerkraut.

No rest for the weary, especially the catering weary, I thought as I hauled in yesterday’s crates of pans and plates and loaded them into my heavy-duty dishwasher. When I was done, I washed my hands and began to plan. I had to call Audrey Coopersmith and remind her that for the half-time meal she needed to wear a Bronco-orange T-shirt.

Despite the fact that she had worked late with me the night before, I knew Audrey would be up early this Sun-day morning. With the depression brought on by her divorce trauma, Audrey rarely slept past dawn. I knew, because I was one of the people she started phoning around six. In fact, in the past few months I had become something of a reluctant expert on the life of Audrey Coopersmith.

For the mother of a high school senior, Audrey was young: thirty-eight. Her house was full of books. Despite marrying and dropping out of college at twenty, she was self-educated and extraordinarily well read. Rather than take direct care of herself, she took in strays: extra kittens other people couldn’t give away, guinea pigs, hamsters, and rabbits left over at the end of the school year, stray dogs abandoned by families moving away. She also exercised fanatically at both the athletic club and the local recreation center.

But the shelves of books, the cadre of pets, the soft body that refused to become fit, had been no help, she had sadly announced at a meeting of Amour Anonymous, our support group for women who felt they were addicted to relationships. After two years of denial, Audrey Coopersmith had finally begun divorce proceedings against her husband of eighteen years. With a deviousness that had fooled no one but Audrey, Carl Coopersmith had been supporting another woman in Denver for the past fifteen years. This other woman had children by a previous marriage, but Carl had been hanging around for so long that the other woman’s kids called him Dad and the other woman’s neighbors all thought “Dad” was the other woman’s husband. Which, when it came to financial support, made for a very confusing situation for everyone but the lawyers. With delays, requests for documents, filing motions and countermotions, the legal beagles were having a field day.

Bottom line was, Carl “Dad” Coopersmith had cancelled Audrey’s cash card, credit cards, and provided a copious supply of lies about his salary and other accounts. The court order on permanent support for Audrey and their daughter, Heather, was supposed to come down any moment. But as was typical, it had been delayed three times. Two months ago Audrey had asked me for part-time work. She couldn’t earn too much, she told me, for that would undermine what she was asking from Carl.