Page 16

CHAPTER 16

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head;

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip, the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

—Walt Whitman, “Oh Captain! My Captain!”

WHITNEY

I woke Wednesday morning feeling refreshed. Had I not followed Terry the evening before, caught her illegally buying a gun, and witnessed her being taken into custody, I might have been too frightened to sleep, wondering if and when she might come after me for accusing her of murdering Ridgetop Prep’s headmaster and his wife. But knowing she was behind bars, and was likely to remain there for a very long time, I slept like a baby. Of course, much of my rest was likely due to the crash a person experiences after an adrenaline rush. When Terry had held the scissor blade to my throat, my adrenal glands had jumped into action, pumping their contents into my system at warp speed.

Possession of the rifle was Terry’s third felony offense. I wondered how many years in prison she’d get this time. I wondered if she’d think of me while she was sitting in her cell, plotting revenge upon her release. I hoped she’d been given such a long sentence that she’d be too old and feeble to remember me or attack me when she got out of the joint. I also wondered who’d get her Mazda Miata. That was one cute car, or at least it had been before the fender was dented. If the police department seized it and auctioned it off, maybe I should make a bid. My SUV was a good vehicle, but it was utilitarian. A convertible would be a lot of fun to tool around town in.

My mind returned to the death investigation. Terry’s comment about her parents having the board of trustees in their pocket got me wondering. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If Terry was such a monster, it was possible her parents were the same, right? Could they have been angry their daughter didn’t get the lead role in The Music Man ? Might they have killed Rosie and Irving Finster in retribution? They might have chosen that very night to kill the Finsters so they could prevent the show from going on without their daughter in the spotlight.

Whether Terry’s parents had passed monster genes on to their daughter was something I’d never be able to verify. When I tried to identify them online to track them down, I found obituaries for both of them. Terry was listed as their only child and was identified by her maiden name, Terry Thorne. Both had died around a decade ago, when they were in their early seventies. Mr. Thorne had died first, of a heart attack. Mrs. Thorne had died of a heart attack two years later. Maybe they weren’t monsters, and raising one had taken a serious toll on their health.

Their obituaries said little about them, other than giving their dates and places of birth and death, and stating their occupations. Mr. Thorne had worked in finance. Mrs. Thorne had modeled for magazines. I gazed at Mrs. Thorne’s picture. That’s where Terry got her good looks.

No other relatives were noted in the obituaries.

Unable to discern anything about Terry’s parents online, I decided to see if I could get some information from the trustees. I retrieved the file that contained the minutes for meetings of the board of trustees, and read them at the breakfast bar over coffee and a bagel smeared with creamy peanut butter as the three cats crunched their freshly poured kibble on the floor nearby.

I read over the quarterly board minutes, starting with the earliest so that I could get a sense of how things had progressed. The early minutes evidenced a honeymoon phase, when Finster could do no wrong and the board members were happy with their decision to hire him. After the first six months, however, a board member named Frank McMahon seemed to have second thoughts. He noted that Dr. Finster had spent little time courting a potential new donor who’d attended the school’s holiday fundraiser in early December. Instead, he’d spent too much time listening to the deep-sea fishing adventures of a wealthy blowhard whose money was already in the bag.

The first reference to Terry Thorne was in those same minutes, though the secretary noted that, for the student’s privacy, the name would be withheld. Dr. Finster noted that his efforts to discipline a particularly unruly female student had been ineffective. The student’s parents were major donors. He had spoken with them multiple times about the behavior, and encouraged them to take her to counseling. The parents had agreed, but the student had refused to go. The board discussed the matter, suggested Dr. Finster exercise patience with the student, and give her time to mature. Sheesh. Terry still hadn’t matured forty years later.

At this same meeting, Dr. Finster mentioned that Dwight Nabors, chief of maintenance and groundskeeping, had requested funding for a new compact tractor with a mower attachment. The motor on the old riding lawnmower had broken repeatedly, costing money and downtime. The small tractor would be useful not only for mowing the extensive grounds, but for landscaping projects as well. As the school’s policies and procedures required board approval for any purchase over one thousand dollars, Dr. Finster had brought the matter to the board. They’d denied the funding request, stating they would entertain a request for a replacement mower only, not an upgrade to the compact tractor.

The “unruly female student” was mentioned again at the next two board meetings. Dr. Finster raised the issue of her inability to get along with her roommates and other students, and the repeated disruptions she caused in class. He noted the various punishments he’d attempted, such as grounding her to her room on weekends and requiring her to eat at a table alone in the dining hall. Again, the punishments were unsuccessful. He wanted to expel her, and asked for the board to support the expulsion.

Trustee Frank McMahon suggested that the headmaster’s methods of isolating the student might have exacerbated the problem. McMahon also noted that Finster was close to exceeding the budgeted amount for various line items in the annual budget, and that board approval was required before incurring any overage. Nabors had revised his request, now asking for only a basic riding lawnmower. His request was denied, as it would have exceeded the budget for maintenance equipment. Trustee Corinne Saxon suggested that Dr. Finster spend more time focusing on fundraising and less on extracurricular opportunities for the children. As contentious as the meetings sounded in the minutes, I could only imagine how uncomfortable they had been in real life.

In the minutes for the next quarter’s meeting, Dr. Finster insisted Terry Thorne be mentioned by name in the minutes. My guess was he realized he might need a paper trail of his attempts to reason with the board. They didn’t have to deal with Terry on a daily basis, and only saw that she came with an enormous endowment attached. Again, they suggested he try other methods of discipline. Trustee McMahon suggested for the first time that, perhaps, Dr. Finster didn’t have the necessary qualities to make an effective headmaster, though he had “many other fine qualities.” Trustee Saxon suggested Dr. Finster attend a training course in management of educational institutions offered by the Tennessee Department of Education. The board approved an overage in the staff training budget line item so that Dr. Finster could attend the weeklong course.

Terry Thorne and her parents attended the June 11, 1981, board of trustees meeting. Dr. Finster reiterated his desire to expel the student for her repeated and aggressive acts toward the other students. He raised the issue of the school’s potential legal liability if a violent student were permitted to remain on campus. The minutes indicated that Terry expressed remorse by reading a prepared statement in which she also pleaded to be allowed to attend Ridgetop Preparatory Academy for her final year of high school and graduate with the students she’d shared her life with the past three years. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at that meeting.

But while Terry might have expressed remorse, whether she’d actually felt any was up for debate. I’d bet dollars to donuts the answer to that question was a big, fat NO. Her parents also pleaded her case, and offered a fifty-thousand-dollar donation in addition to the usual tuition, room, and boarding fees. The amount was significant, to be sure, but was it worth the headaches to the teachers, and the discomfort and fear to Terry’s fellow students? Was it worth the two lives it might have cost?

I googled to see how much that fifty grand would be in today’s dollars. A dollar in 1981 would be the equivalent of around three and a half dollars now. That made the Thornes’ fifty-thousand-dollar donation worth a hundred seventy-five thousand in today’s dollars. Once again, the board saw only green, and strongly encouraged Irving to let Terry stay on. After all, it was only one more year…

The pattern of the dates indicated that board meetings were held quarterly on the second Thursday of the month in the school’s conference room. The last minutes in the file were from the meeting held on Thursday, December 10, 1981. Though the meeting on which the board voted whether to fire Dr. Finster had been held on Thursday, March 11, 1982, the minutes for that meeting were not in the file. In light of the fact that Irving Finster had died the very next day, before minutes could be prepared and circulated, it made sense. Still, I had to wonder what those minutes would contain. Who were the five board members who voted to retain Dr. Finster as headmaster, and who were the four who voted to oust him?

In light of what I’d read in the previous notes, I suspected Trustee Corinne Saxon would have voted to keep him, but to require him to attend more training, specifically in fundraising. Trustee Frank McMahon would surely have been the first to raise his hand in favor of booting Irving out the gate, telling the headmaster not to let it hit him in the ass on his way out.

After I read the minutes, it dawned on me how similar the actions of the board of trustees were to the city council in Irving Finster’s second book. The mayor had been a stand-in for the headmaster, and the councilmembers had been stand-ins for the trustees, hadn’t they? I was pretty certain I could even identify which of the trustees Irving had used as a template for each city councilmember, though he had been careful to change names, ages, sexes, appearances, and mannerisms so that the board members wouldn’t recognize themselves if they read The Solution .

I wondered if any of the board members were still alive. If so, I’d love to speak with them, get their opinion on things.

I googled their names one by one, and one by one I found their obituaries. Per the information contained therein, all had been major donors not only to Ridgetop Preparatory Academy, but also to a variety of charities, including nonprofits that helped refugees settle safely in new homes and provided underprivileged children a chance to attend classes and performances in the arts, as well as animal welfare groups, an issue that was especially near and dear to my heart. Who wouldn’t want to help rescue sweet kitties like Sawdust?

When I searched for Frank McMahon, though, I found that he wasn’t only alive, he was also still practicing law in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which sat only an hour’s drive up Interstate 65. The proximity probably explained why he’d sent his children to Ridgetop Prep. The man had to be in his late seventies or early eighties, close to Adam Joule’s age. I was surprised he hadn’t retired already, to enjoy his golden years free of responsibility.

I decided to call his office, see if he’d agree to meet with me. I dialed the number.

“Sorry,” said the receptionist, “he’s not in the office yet.”

“May I make an appointment?”

“Are you in need of legal services? He offers a free thirty-minute initial consultation.”

I wasn’t in need of legal services, exactly, but a murder is a legal matter, right? A criminal legal matter, and his website indicated he handled civil personal injury cases, which wasn’t exactly on point, but isn’t a murder the ultimate personal injury? I decided it was close enough. “Yes. I’d like an appointment.”

She scheduled me to meet with McMahon on Monday of the following week at four in the afternoon. I couldn’t wait to hear what happened at the March 11, 1982, meeting of Ridgetop’s board of trustees. But for now, I was off to customize the closets of the future residences at Ridgetop.

Mid-September was becoming late September, and the weather was gorgeous, the tiniest hint of fall in the air. Collin and I spent the weekend outdoors. He convinced me to go for a run with him around Radnor Lake. While my carpentry work had made me strong, it hadn’t made me fast. I didn’t have nearly the speed Collin had, so he ran ahead and backtracked several times to meet up with me. He ran to eliminate the stress of his job. I found my stress level going down with each step, too, at least until I could run no more. Then I bent down, hands on my knees, and feared I might keel over.

We slowed to a walk, and Collin filled me in on the latest news involving Terry Thorne. She was being held without bail, not only because this was her third felony offense, but because she was also considered a flight risk. She’d recently used the settlement from her second divorce to buy a vacation home in Miquelon.

I’d never heard of the place. “Where is it?”

“It’s an island off the coast of Newfoundland.”

“It’s part of Canada, then?”

“Not exactly. Canadians can travel there without a passport, but it’s technically some sort of French outpost. It has its own government, though. The residents speak French, and the currency is euros, not Canadian dollars.”

I wondered if Terry spoke French. I also wondered why she would buy a property on that island rather than one in a warmer place, like the Caribbean.

Collin speculated about her motives. “The U.S. has no extradition treaty with Miquelon. That could have been the draw. She might have been planning ahead. She and her current husband are in the middle of a nasty divorce. He doesn’t think she’ll abide by the restraining order if she’s released. He fears for his safety.”

For good reason.

“Terry’s not talking,” Collin said, “but we suspect she bought the rifle to get revenge on her husband, not you.”

“She might change her mind if she finds out I’m the one who called the cops on her.”

“We’re doing our best to keep your name out of it.”

“Good.” Criminals had been known to orchestrate crimes, including killings, from prison. Terry had known who to call to get a black-market gun. She might know who to call to order a hit man. I hoped her phone conversations were being monitored.

Saturday evening, Collin and I drove out west of the city to the Natchez Trace Parkway, a road built on a former Native American trading route that was also used by early settlers and Colonial troops. It was much darker out in the rural area than it was in the city. We pulled into an empty parking lot at the trailhead that led to Jackson Falls. No one was hiking this late at night, so we had the place to ourselves.

As Collin set up his telescope, I asked him what celestial event he’d taken me out there to see.

He peered through the eyepiece. “Neptune is in opposition.”

“To what?”

“The sun. Earth is between them. That means Neptune is at its closest to Earth, and we’ll be able to see it well because the sun highlights it.” He made a minor adjustment and stepped back. “Take a look.”

I eased over and gazed through the eyepiece. I could see a faint, small, bluish-green sphere. “It’s a pretty color.” Not quite as pretty a shade of blue as Sawdust’s eyes and the marble I kept in my tool belt, but pretty nonetheless.

With Collin in a good mood, doing something he enjoyed, I figured it was a good time to tell him about my appointment with Frank McMahon on Monday.

He turned from the telescope to me. “Is he another suspect?”

“No,” I said, though I supposed he could become one, depending on how our meeting went. “I want to question him about the board meeting where they voted on whether to terminate Dr. Finster. He’d be able to tell me how Irving looked that night, how he reacted to nearly losing his job.” Finster’s mindset was a big piece of this puzzle. Had he been upset enough about the board’s wavering faith in him to end it all? Or had he weathered the setback?

Collin moved aside to give me another look through the telescope. Seeing celestial bodies that were massive, yet so far away they looked tiny, made me feel small myself. The universe was so vast. But while stargazing made me feel small, it made my problems feel small, too. I wondered if Adam Joule had that same sense when he’d gazed at the heavens from the observatory he’d established at Ridgetop Prep. I also wondered whether Irving might have benefitted from a peek through a telescope after that fateful board meeting, whether peering into space would have made his problems seem smaller, too, helped him keep things in perspective. Sadly, it was much too late for that.

When I arrived at Frank McMahon’s office Monday afternoon, his receptionist directed me to take a seat. Frank was a partner with two other attorneys. The firm employed five associate attorneys, as well, and worked out of a wing in a three-story bank building in downtown Bowling Green. But while the firm might be small, the settlements and judgments they’d earned for their clients were not. Framed news clippings in the lobby detailed their courtroom successes. “Local Firm Gets Four Million for Victim of Hit and Run.” “Judge Awards Coal Miners Sixty-Seven Million in Black Lung Lawsuit.” “Slip and Fall on Ice Yields Grandmother a Cool Quarter Million . ”

Personal injury attorneys often got a bad rap, accused of being ambulance chasers. But without the threat of legal liability, businesses and employers might be lackadaisical about the safety of their customers, workers, and the general public. People might do things that endangered their neighbors, like fail to remove a dead tree that could fall over onto an adjoining property. I could see both sides of the matter and had no bias against the man, even though he had seemed biased against Dr. Finster. As I sat waiting, I wondered why that had been the case.

After a few minutes, McMahon’s assistant came to fetch me. “Ms. Flynn?”

I stood. “That’s me.”

“Come on back.”

I followed her past the reception desk and down a hall to a large corner office with plate-glass windows overlooking the tree-lined parking lot at the back of the building. Far off in the distance, I could see a rolling hill covered in the bluegrass Kentucky was famous for. Kentucky was also famous for bourbon, of course. I’d always wanted to complete the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, which consisted of forty-six distilleries spread throughout the state, not only to sample the bourbon, but also to enjoy the beautiful Kentucky countryside and some of its state parks. If I planned to get pregnant in the not-too-distant future, the time to make the rounds on the trail was now. I’d suggest the trip to Collin. Maybe we could go once I finished helping my uncle at the boarding school and remodeling the Victorian. It would be spring by then, the perfect time for a getaway.

McMahon’s assistant introduced me from his doorway. “Whitney Flynn to see you.”

McMahon stood from his high-backed rolling chair. He was a stocky man, with ruddy pale skin, thin gray hair, and a barely perceptible limp that spoke of arthritis as he came around to shake my hand. “Nice to meet you, Whitney. Call me Frank.”

I took a seat as he rounded the back of his desk. Once he’d settled into his chair again, he ran his gaze over me, as if looking for evidence of injury. “What can I help you with?”

“I’m a carpenter. I’m working out at the old Ridgetop Prep school property.”

“You are?” His voice went high in surprise. “What’s going on out there?”

“It’s being turned into a retirement community. The developer is a former Ridgetop student.”

“You don’t say.” He sat back, fingers steepled on his round belly. “That’s got to be quite a big undertaking. That place was in sorry shape back when I served on the board.” He leaned forward. “So, whatcha got? On-the-job injury?”

I had nearly been beaned by a brick that had fallen from the second floor of the girls’ dorm one day, but had avoided injury by a yard or so. “No, I’m not here about an injury. I’d like to talk to you about what happened to Dr. and Mrs. Finster.”

He raised his palms. “Why? Isn’t that all water under the bridge by now?”

“It is,” I said. “But my cousin and I plan to remodel the former headmaster’s house. I found some evidence I believe might indicate that the Finsters were killed by a third party.”

“What evidence?”

“Sorry. I can’t share it.”

He frowned. “Did you take the evidence to the sheriff’s department? They’re the ones who looked into the matter.”

“I did. It wasn’t substantial enough for them to make the case active again. The detective said if I found additional evidence, he might reconsider.” Shifting focus, I asked, “How did you end up on the school’s board of trustees?”

“Because I’d sent all three of my children to Ridgetop,” he said. “The school’s right down the road, easy to get to from here. It had a reputation as a top-notch institution. At least it had at one time. The chairperson, a woman named Corinne Saxon, asked me to serve. She figured my legal background would be a good asset to the board, and I like to help out, so I agreed.” He shrugged. “Wasn’t much of a time commitment. It was mostly just giving some guidance to the headmaster and the faculty.”

I nodded to let him know I understood. “I read over the minutes for the board of trustees’ meetings—up to the March 11, 1982, meeting, anyway. Those minutes weren’t in Dr. Finster’s files. Can you tell me what happened that night?”

“It’s been a long time,” McMahon said, “but I’ll do my best.” He looked up for a moment, as if getting his thoughts in order, before returning his focus to me. “I’d served on the board for a year or two when the man who’d been headmaster before Irving Finster decided to call it quits. He’d been coasting until retirement and, truth be told, we’d let him. Didn’t seem to be any good reason to rock the boat, you know? Anyway, we posted the position and got a bunch of applications. Finster’s stood out because he’d attended Ridgetop and his name was familiar to several of the board members. They’d read his first book. It hit the bestseller lists, seemed everyone was reading it. Everyone but me, anyway. I’ve never been much into spy fiction or thrillers. Not any sort of fiction, really. Give me a good biography or a book about history and I’m a happy camper.”

History and biographies could be interesting but, in my opinion, the guy was sorely missing out if he didn’t read fiction, especially Finster’s first book, A Dark Day for Justice . Collin had read it on my recommendation, and he found it just as unputdownable as I did.

“The school was having some problems,” McMahon said. “Lots, in fact. They’d started with the former headmaster, who’d neglected to deal with them.”

Although Dr. Joule had given me some information in this regard, I figured it couldn’t hurt to get McMahon’s take on things. “What kind of problems?”

“For starters,” he said, “Ridgetop was losing good teachers to a new boarding school in Jackson. Once one or two jumped ship, a bunch more followed after them. Hard to fault them for it. The new school paid better. Ridgetop’s facilities were outdated and in dire need of repair, too. The previous headmaster had let things go. This new school had fantastic facilities. Seemed everything they offered was better. Dorms with private rooms and elevators and televisions, gourmet food, prettier grounds, even a swimming pool.”

My mind went to Elijah Clemson, how he’d been caught swimming in the pond at Ridgetop. He’d have probably enjoyed a pool.

“But you know what the biggest problem was?”

I shook my head.

He held out a hand and rubbed his thumb over his fingertips in the symbol for money. “You know how it is. All of the problems could be solved with more money. The board thought hiring someone famous would encourage contributions. It might have, if the famous person had good people skills. Irving was an introvert. Couldn’t carry a conversation in a bucket. Donations actually decreased by twenty percent during his first two years as headmaster. Things continued to go downhill from there.”

“How so?”

“Dr. Finster wanted to expel a student named Terry Thorne. She’d been doing all kinds of crazy stuff, scaring the other students half to death. Teachers, too. He came to us about it because her parents were the school’s largest benefactors. Losing Terry would mean losing their financial support. We told him to keep her at the school. Ridgetop needed the money. In hindsight, that was a huge mistake.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, as if trying to wash away his guilt. “Eventually, we realized things weren’t working out. Several of us called for a vote on removing Dr. Finster. I voted to oust him, though I felt bad about it. The board bore some of the blame. We put too much responsibility on him. We should’ve taken the former headmaster to task for letting things decline, and we should have done more fundraising ourselves. We hired Irving because he was a famous author, then we got angry that he was spending time on his books after he was hired. He essentially had two jobs, headmaster and author, and he was working himself to death.”

“Sounds like he had a lot on his plate.”

“Too much,” McMahon said. “Some of the teachers were gunning for Finster to be removed, too. They said the guy was too soft, that he should have expelled Terry Thorne without seeking the board’s approval. The headmaster technically had the authority to expel any student on his own, regardless of whether the student’s family were benefactors, but he knew expelling Terry would have big consequences on the school’s bottom line. He didn’t want to make such a critical decision alone, or at least not without the board’s blessing.”

Finster’s actions certainly seemed reasonable to me. “Which teachers wanted Dr. Finster to be removed?”

He flung a hand. “I don’t remember their names after all these years. Not all of them anyway. Dr. Joule was one of them, though. I remember him because he came right out and said we should put him in the job if we got rid of Finster. He seemed envious of the guy, if you ask me. Downplayed Finster’s accomplishments, poked fun at how serious the guy was. But I don’t mean to make Dr. Joule sound all bad. A little professional jealousy is only natural, and Joule helped me out personally. I appreciated that.”

“How did he help you?”

“My son decided during his freshman year at Ridgetop that he wanted to be a sci-fi writer when he grew up. Dr. Finster read some of my son’s work, told him he showed a lot of natural talent, and encouraged him to study English in college. Thank goodness Dr. Joule talked some sense into him and convinced him to get an aerospace engineering degree. My son went to work for NASA in Houston, got himself a real job, and writes sci-fi on the side. He sells books at comic conventions, goes dressed as his character. It’s the biggest bunch of nonsense you’d ever read, but people seem to love it. He’s got a quarter-million followers on TikTok.”

“That’s remarkable.”

“I suppose so, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

I tried not to be too offended by the guy. Like the Finsters, he was raised in a different era, where a man’s primary purpose was to take care of his family, and he was expected to make any sacrifice necessary to ensure their welfare. That meant focusing on more practical pursuits than fiction writing, taking a job with a guaranteed paycheck even if it meant giving up on a dream.

McMahon released a long breath. “If I had it to do over again, I’d fight harder for Dr. Joule to get the headmaster position. I think he’d have done a better job than Irving Finster.”

“Dr. Joule had submitted an application?”

“Yes, and an impressive one at that. He spent his summers working at a lab at Vanderbilt. He was cited on all sorts of scientific papers. Landed a grant to build an observatory on campus, too. He might’ve been able to raise the funds the school needed. But, unbeknownst to me, the school had taken a turn since my first child had attended a decade earlier. Rather than a general education, the school had shifted its focus to the arts. Not officially, of course, but a greater percentage of the student body was signing up for theater and dance classes, music, creative writing, that kind of thing. More teachers who taught those types of classes had been hired to fill the demand. That’s another reason why we lost some of the faculty. The instructors for subjects like history and science and math felt like second-class citizens, that few of the students had interest in their subjects and the leadership was too heavily arts focused.”

“I wonder if Dr. Joule ever felt that way.”

“He sure did. He brought the issue up to the board more than once. He wasn’t exactly polite about it, either. He was livid he hadn’t been promoted to headmaster, even threatened to quit. We begged him to stay. It was difficult to find teachers in his fields, especially ones who’d be willing to teach at a boarding school in the middle of nowhere.”

Interesting. I wondered if McMahon knew why Dwight Nabors had resigned suddenly. “I learned that the man in charge of maintenance and groundskeeping resigned in February of 1982 without giving advance notice. Do you know anything about that?”

“I don’t recall any of the particulars,” McMahon said, “but I do remember that he’d made multiple requests for new equipment and the board kept turning him down, telling him to make do with what he had. There simply wasn’t enough money. By that point, I think we knew we were fighting a losing battle, even if none of us was willing to openly acknowledge it yet. But after Dr. Finster… well, after he did what he did, we had no choice but to face facts. The school was in a hopeless downward spiral, and the likelihood of setting things right was just about nil. The best thing we could do for everyone involved was try to wrap things up as quickly and smoothly as possible.”

“So, you think Dr. Finster killed his wife and himself?”

“No question. He was blindsided by the vote of no confidence, even though he wasn’t removed. He tore us a new one, truth be told. Said he felt betrayed, that he had inherited a mess, which was true, and that we had given him horrible guidance and made poor decisions, which was also true. He said he should’ve expelled Terry Thorne without bothering to consult us. If he had, at least one major problem would have been solved. We let him vent, for a few minutes at least. Then Corinne Saxon suggested he head back to his house to cool down before he said something he’d regret. He took a few deep breaths, calmed down, and said he’d devise a plan for moving forward. He tossed out the possibility of promoting Dr. Joule to assistant headmaster, and assigning Joule the fundraising duties since he seemed much better suited for it. He even suggested he’d take a cut in salary to fund higher pay for Joule. He said he’d been pondering this possibility already. Then he walked out the door. That was the last time I saw him. It bothered me a lot, for a while, but eventually I realized that I’m not responsible for the actions of someone else, for how they react. It was his decision to do what he did.”

I thanked McMahon for his time, shook his hand again, and left. Nothing he’d said made me add him to my list of suspects. I was nearly out of leads at that point. It was a long shot, but I figured I should talk to Dwight Nabors. If nothing else, he could confirm he’d resigned out of frustration over the funding for his department. But maybe, just maybe, he’d tell me something I could act on.