Wednesday morning
ARMED WITH HER WEAPON OF CHOICE, A LETHALLY SHARPENED Col-Erase blue pencil with a yellow eraser “helmet,” Rannie had spent the past two hours making headway on the Mengele manuscript.
Freelance—what a thrillingly medieval word it was. Her sole allegiance was to the job at hand. She’d sally forth and ultimately four hundred and forty pages of misplaced modifiers, typos, dangling clauses, garbled phrases would surrender before her.
Like Starbucks, the second floor of the Barnes & Noble store at Broadway and 82nd Street had become a post-layoff workplace of choice, specifically a table farthest from the escalators and children’s book area which, as colder weather approached, turned into an impromptu playgroup for Upper West Side toddlers and their mommies and nannies.
Fifty more pages of the manuscript were now neatly blue-penciled, she was pleased to see. And no use denying the morbid lure of Josef Mengele, chief physician at Auschwitz. Mengele had managed to flee Nazi Germany at war’s end and live out his days in Uruguay, his death unverified until 1978 when DNA testing revealed that a body interred for ten years was indeed that of Mengele.
The page she’d just finished proofing was in a chapter tracing the history of genetic altering.
The author, a professor of medical ethics at a Midwestern university, seemed a thorough-enough researcher—pages and pages of footnotes accompanied the manuscript. But in Rannie’s opinion he went overboard in an attempt to avoid sounding overly scholarly. Her guess was that he underestimated what a lay reader could absorb or would find interesting, which might explain his addiction to exclamation points. Rannie queried ones to delete and attached a Post-it that read: For me, the abundance of exclams unintentionally trivializes the info. I’d let the facts speak for themselves. Period.
She heard the shuffle of footsteps near her. An elderly lady with an armload of books was circling the tables with an eye out for an empty chair.
“Take my seat. I’m leaving,” Rannie offered. She scooped up her red barn jacket, brushed eraser lint off her trousers, and stashed her pencils in her jacket pocket. She was due at Chaps for a noontime staff meeting in the Annex.
“Nothing said here leaves this room,” Dottie Greenhouse, the director of Chapel School admissions, instructed her troops—the heads of Lower School, Middle School, and Upper School admissions as well as various secretaries. Everyone was carefully balancing paper plates with sandwiches on their laps and looking grave. “Mr. Tut’s death looked suspicious enough for an autopsy.”
“Autopsy!” Rannie practically gagged on her chicken salad. Until now that was a word she had only heard on TV or in movies.
“Come on, Rannie. Are you really that surprised?” said one of the secretaries.
Well, no, actually. And as she continued to think about it, there was a possible bright side to an autopsy: A coroner could pinpoint the time of death, which in turn might cross off Nate’s name from any list of suspects. He’d been home Monday evening by six-thirty, quarter to seven the latest.
“Mr. Marshall is waiting for the coroner’s report and, of course, keeping fingers crossed. As we all are.” Dottie held up hers, dutifully entwined, as if to prove the point. “The police are going over the tape from the new security cameras. It’s all most alarming. To the outside world, however, we must be on the same page. Simply tell people who call to ignore rumors. This is Chapel School! Murders don’t happen here! They’re considering withdrawing their application? So be it. Currently we have ten applicants for every spot in kindergarten, and a record number of kids are applying for ninth grade…. If a few drop out, it doesn’t matter.”
Sooner than expected, Rannie had her chance to play loyal foot soldier when a call came in from her downstairs neighbor, Melinda Lowe, whose son was scheduled for a tour at one o’clock.
“Um, Rannie, I hate to cancel last minute, but Noah called from school, complaining of a sore throat. Is it possible to reschedule?”
“Absolutely. Just let me get the book,” said Rannie, wondering whether Noah’s sudden ailment was a convenient excuse. “It’ll be better if Noah comes once things get back to normal.”
“Rannie—I hear there’s a police investigation. What’s the deal?”
“Please, Melinda, don’t tell me you’re listening to silly park bench gossip?” Rannie said in a chipper voice that sounded rehearsed even to her own ear. She reached for the appointment calendar, penciling in a new date for a tour and interview.
“Chaps is still our first choice, Rannie.” Melinda’s son was in eighth grade, his final year at City Prep, the school where Jem Marshall had been headmaster before coming to Chaps. According to Rannie’s neighbor, Jem walked on water—chlorinated H2O, to be exact—spearheading a capital drive that had provided an Olympicsize pool and a state-of-the-art arts center.
As Rannie returned the appointment book to her drawer, she noticed two large hands gripping the edge of her desk.
“Just what do you think you were doing last night?” the woman attached to the hands demanded in a quavering alto. Augusta Hollins stood glowering down at her, eyes dark as thunder clouds.
“You were following me! Why?” she said, her voice atremble.
“What?” Rannie blinked. She could feel a moronic smile pasted on her face, and her eyes were open way too wide, shades of Lucy once again caught in the act by Desi.
“Don’t bother denying it. I saw you sneaking down the street! There’s a serial killer in the neighborhood. Are you crazy? You scared me half to death!” Her hand slapped Rannie’s desk. Ms. Hollins appeared startled, as if her hand had acted with a will all its own.
Mrs. Mac was staring at them, her eyes magnified to huge proportion behind bifocal glasses. The fracas caused Dotty to pop her head out of her office door and Jem Marshall to turn and pause on the staircase, a police officer directly behind him. Everyone appeared to be waiting for Rannie’s answer.
“You must be mistaken,” was the feeble best Rannie could come up with.
Ms. Hollins clearly wasn’t buying it. She leaned in closer. “Just stay out of my business. You hear?”
Rannie nodded, eyes lowered, and nearly murmured, “Yes, ma’am.” How was it that all teachers learned to perfect the art of intimidation?
Ms. Hollins turned and strode up the stairs to her office, her long braid twitching angrily down the back of another shapeless jumper. Mrs. Mac pretended to be engrossed in her phone message book; Dotty had ducked back in her office. Neither Jem Marshall nor the cop were in sight any longer. Shamefaced—the public dressing-down was deserved! she couldn’t deny it—Rannie scooped up her belongings and fled.
Halfway home, it hit her. The Mengele manuscript. Her tote was under her desk. She had to go back.
Thankfully, no one remained in the reception area. The only people she saw were two cops coming downstairs carrying open cartons stuffed with files. Tut’s, no doubt. Tote in hand, Rannie had every intention of making a quick exit until the telephone log on Mrs. Mac’s desk caught her eye and beckoned. She waited until the Annex entryway door closed behind the cops. Then, furtively, she sidled over to Mrs. Mac’s desk, wondering what demon had taken possession of her and how long it intended to stay in residence. I’m not really doing anything wrong, she rationalized, flipping back pages to check Tut’s messages on Monday.
At two o’clock, there’d been a call from Eyesavers; his glasses were ready. Above that were earlier messages—David Ross’s secretary confirming a two-thirty appointment, a message from somebody at Williams, another from somebody at Stanford. Also one from a Dr. George Ginandes. That sent up a tiny flare. Dire news perhaps? Tests that had come back with unwelcome results?
“Excuse me.”
Rannie jumped.
Jem Marshall was standing beside her. Several typed letters were in his hand.
“I—I was checking about uh—tours. Mrs. Mac wasn’t here.”
“Yes, of course.” Jem Marshall had the grace to act as if he believed her. “Excuse me. I need to leave these for Mrs. Mac.”
Rannie moved aside. Leave this instant! March! her brain commanded. But her feet weren’t responding to the signal. Frozen, she watched Jem set down the letters for Mrs. Mac.
“Uh-oh, left off a signature,” he said. A ballpoint pen clicked open, and he bent over, his hand printing out his name in the same cramped, almost paralytic way Nate did.
“My son’s a lefty too!” Rannie said in a weirdly joyous tone as if this established some intense, special bond between them.
He turned and nodded, a puzzled smile on his face.
He thinks I’m insane. I am insane. At last whatever neurons needed to connect did. Rannie began walking toward the Great Hall. “Buh-bye!” she called behind her gaily.