Page 9

CHAPTER 9

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he’s a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And while ye may, go marry;

For having lost but once your prime,

You may forever tarry.

—Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”

WHITNEY

Early Friday evening, at the peak of the dinner rush, two salty sous chefs working side by side in a bustling restaurant kitchen decided to turn their knives on each other. Fortunately, their attempts at disembowelment were promptly thwarted by a quick-thinking dishwasher and a hostess, though both sous chefs ended up needing minor surgery and dozens of stitches. As a result of the mutual attempted homicides, Collin was stuck at work late on Friday, leaving me to spend the evening with only the cats, my copies of Dr. Finster’s books, and my unanswered questions.

I was eager to dive into Finster’s debut novel, but my curiosity about Terry Thorne demanded satisfaction first. Though Carole Brown seemed to have eventually accepted that Irving had likely killed Rosie then himself, she’d told me that, when she’d discovered the bodies, her first thought was that Terry had something to do with their deaths. Could Carole’s initial instincts have been right?

I’d brought the records from Dr. Finster’s filing cabinet home, and decided to spend the evening perusing them. I wanted to get all of my ducks in a row, assuming there were even ducks to line up. I might have been putting far too much weight on that stray bullet, making wild assumptions. After all, both of the former Ridgetop teachers seemed to believe that Irving Finster could have taken Rosie’s life, then his own. They’d actually known the headmaster and his wife. Who was I to second-guess them? Even so, I wanted to perform my own analysis, reach my own conclusions. After all, their relationships with the Finsters could have biased them. As an uninterested person, maybe I could be more objective, see things more clearly.

After spending a few minutes playing with the cats, I sat down and started on the student discipline records, going right for the one with Terry Thorne’s name on it.

The file was organized by date, with the oldest disciplinary reports in the front and the more recent ones at the back. The file contained no less than twenty-two incident reports accumulated over the four years Terry spent at Ridgetop Prep. The early reports addressed minor infractions committed in Terry’s freshman year. Reading a fashion magazine during mandatory study hours. Popping off to a teacher after being told to fasten the second button on her shirt as required by the school’s dress code. Intentionally and repeatedly dropping her pencil on the floor to disrupt a math test.

As I made my way through the file, the reports involved incidents of increasing concern. A catfight erupted between Terry and her roommate during her sophomore year. Each said the other started it. Terry claimed the other girl was jealous of her talents. The other girl claimed Terry had borrowed her Duran Duran cassette tape without permission and, when the girl called her out on it, Terry yanked the tape out of the case, leaving it in a tangled puddle on the floor. Terry wasn’t hurt in the altercation, but the other girl ended up with scratches on her face requiring a trip to the infirmary for antiseptic ointment.

Irving assigned the girls new roommates, but Terry was soon back at it again. The new roommate reported that Terry had replaced her talcum powder with baking flour, forcing the girl to have to take a second shower after using the adulterated product and making her late for her first class of the day. Terry claimed it was a harmless prank and said the girl needed to get a sense of humor. The girl later reported that Terry had repeatedly unplugged her alarm clock, again making her late for class when she overslept. Terry denied unplugging the device.

Again, students were shuffled, and a third roommate was assigned to Terry. This roommate reported that Terry had intentionally spilled a drink on a blouse the girl had refused to let Terry borrow, and that Terry had stolen some of her makeup and jewelry, as well. Terry said the spill was an accident, and that the girl had agreed to let her borrow the other items and had made the theft report in an attempt to get Terry in trouble. Once more, she alleged that the girl had wrongfully accused her out of jealousy.

Terry’s final roommate said she’d woken several nights to find Terry standing over her while she slept. Justifiably, the girl was creeped out by this odd and intimidating behavior. After that, Terry was given a room of her own, essentially rewarded for her bad behavior. After all, who wouldn’t want more closet space and a room all to herself?

Without a roommate to torment her junior year, Terry took to attacking girls she found alone in common areas. She shoved a girl who was washing her face at one of the sinks in the communal bathroom. The poor girl chipped a tooth on the faucet. Terry claimed she’d tripped and had never intended to hurt the girl, but it was clear from Finster’s notes that he found her excuse specious.

As headmaster, Irving Finster served as the proverbial judge, jury, and executioner. At the bottom of each report, a determination was set forth. For Terry’s various offenses, he’d sentenced her to after-school detention, in-school suspension, prohibited her from attending a school dance, and grounded her to her room for several weekends. None of the punishments he’d doled out resulted in better behavior on her part.

Her parents were called time and time again, and eventually agreed to cut off her discretionary allowance, all to no avail. Nothing seemed to work. The reports continued, and included destruction of school property for a fire she’d set in the woods one night. The fire department had to be called to extinguish the flames, and as a result an acre of woods was decimated. Terry claimed that the fire was an accident, that she’d forgotten to take a flashlight when she went for a nature walk, that night had set in quickly, and that she’d been forced to use matches to light her way. Matches were prohibited on school property for safety reasons, so her purported excuse only got her in more trouble.

Why Terry hadn’t been permanently expelled from the school was beyond me. Carole Brown had been correct when she said the girl wasn’t right. Terry was a menace with obvious sociopathic tendencies. No wonder she’d been given the nickname Terror.

Terry’s penultimate disciplinary report was dated January 13, 1982. Dwight Nabors, the maintenance director, had been summoned to the school at 3:00 a.m. to restore power to the girls’ dorm when a fuse had blown overnight. He caught Terry sneaking out of her room. She claimed to be in need of the facilities, but she had been heading in the opposite direction of the bathroom. Nabors had promptly marched her to the dorm mother’s quarters.

In the pocket of Terry’s robe, the dorm mother found a metal protractor and a pointy metal compass, the type with a pencil on the other end that was used to draw circles in geometry class. Terry claimed that she must have been sleepwalking when she’d exited her room and that she didn’t realize the tools had been in her pocket. As Terry had completed her geometry class sophomore year, the items were unnecessary for her current stud ies and were confiscated. Though not directly noted in the report, it was clear the compass was seized because it would have made an excellent improvised weapon. Being flat and thin, the protractor could have been inserted between a door and its frame to slide the latch open on a locked door. I’d noticed the ill-fitting doors and flimsy locks when Loflin had taken us on the tour of the dorm.

Had Terry planned to sneak into one of the rooms and stab a classmate with the protractor? With the pointed shaft being so thin, it would have been easy to shove it between someone’s ribs and send it straight into their heart. Yikes! I wondered if Terry’s run-in with Dwight Nabors was the reason he’d suddenly left his job at the school and withdrew his children. Maybe he feared Terry would come after him or his kids for turning her in.

The final disciplinary report was dated a week later, and detailed the event Carole Brown had described to me, when Terry had somehow materialized at the Finsters’ kitchen table. For trespassing in the headmaster’s house, she was prohibited from going on the senior trip to the Opryland USA amusement park in Nashville. Like Ridgetop Prep, the theme park was now defunct. It closed back in 1997, when I was just a kid. I couldn’t recall ever visiting the park, but my parents had a photo of me sitting atop a shiny black horse on the carousel when I was a toddler, so there was proof I’d gone to the park at least once before its demise.

Eager to learn what had become of the problematic teen, I turned from Terry’s disciplinary file to my laptop. First, I searched the social media platforms. Though I found several profiles with the same name, the account holders’ ages and appearances told me they weren’t the Terry Thorne I was looking for. Thankfully, I had one big clue. Carole had told me where Terry had gone upon graduation. Hollywood.

Right away, I found Terry’s name listed on the Internet Movie Database, or IMDb, site. Per the info contained therein, two years after Terry graduated from Ridgetop Prep, she’d landed a recurring guest role on a family sitcom called Sock Hop that was set in the 1950s. The producers hoped to capitalize on the popularity of the sitcoms Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley by setting the show in the same era.

Though Terry was around twenty years old by then, she played a high school sophomore named Irene on whom one of the main characters, a boy named Skippy, had a hopeless crush. A promotional image featured the extended cast, including a smiling Terry Thorne wearing a poodle skirt and saddle shoes, her hair pulled up in a perky ponytail. With the big smile on her face and her head tilted just so, she couldn’t have looked sweeter or more innocent. But I knew better. She was guilty of terrorizing her fellow students and the faculty at Ridgetop Prep, if nothing else. And I had serious doubts that she was guilty of nothing else.

The dates on the site indicated that the show ran from 1984 to 1987. Fickle TV audiences seemed to have tired of shows set in the ’50s, and Sock Hop lasted only three seasons. What’s more, according to a plot summary I found online, Terry’s character had been written off the show halfway through the first season. Ironically, her character had been sent off to a boarding school.

Los Angeles County did not allow online property searches by name, so, without hopping on a plane and making a trip to the LA courthouse to search the deed records, I was unable to determine whether Terry still lived in Hollywood. While the home addresses for many other celebrities had been posted in various places on the internet, fans doxing the actors and singers they admired, no home address was noted for Terry Thorne. I continued to play around online, having to dig deeper and deeper to try to find anything relevant.

Eventually, I came across an obscure message board created by a fan of Sock Hop, which had amassed a small cult following. The fans discussed plot points, dissecting each storyline and snippet of dialogue, commenting on their favorite scenes. They shared fan fiction that carried the characters’ stories out beyond the time frame covered in the sitcom. They even delved into the actors’ personal lives, speculating on the status of their relationships and chatting about where their careers had taken them. The boy who played Skippy, it seems, had been predicted to become the next breakout action hero. He’d played a jock in the sitcom but, despite his well-defined muscles and chiseled jawline, had spent his post– Sock Hop years playing comedic sidekicks in a long list of primetime series. He could’ve done a whole lot worse.

The fans hypothesized what might have become of actress Terry Thorne. Early posts said they’d heard she left the show to pursue stage acting on Broadway. Others said she’d gotten pregnant and decided that motherhood was enough for her, leaving show biz altogether and requesting that her character Irene be written off the show. Could it be true? Had Terry left show business to start a family? I knew little about the girl but, in light of what Carole Brown had told me and what I’d read in her disciplinary records, I simply couldn’t imagine Terry as a loving mother.

The longer Terry had failed to resurface in television or movies, or on a stage, the wilder the conjecture became. One person thought she’d moved to Paris and was acting in foreign films. Another said they’d seen her performing a striptease in a men’s club in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Yet another claimed she’d died in a helicopter crash off the coast of Hawaii, but that her death hadn’t been picked up by the media because her body had never been found. Of course, that didn’t explain why the media hadn’t at least reported the helicopter’s disappearance with her on board.

Despite my best efforts, I could find nothing else on Terry Thorne. It was as if she had disappeared into thin air, like a ghost. Could she have died? I searched for obituaries and death notices in her name, but found none. I wondered if, like Carole Tiller, Terry had gotten married and changed her name. Unfortunately, under Tennessee law, marriage and divorce records were confidential for fifty years, accessible only by the parties to the marriage or divorce, close relatives, the lawyers for such people, court staff, and law enforcement. She’d been an unmarried minor fifty years ago and, if she’d tied the knot in Tennessee since, that information wasn’t yet public record.

Out of ideas for learning more about Terry, I set her thick file aside and moved on. Like Terry, a sophomore named Elijah Clemson had been a repeat offender. Per his reports, during the year and a half he’d attended Ridgetop Preparatory Academy, he’d been caught skipping class on multiple occasions, smoking cigarettes, and keying a teacher’s car after the teacher had reprimanded him for failing to turn in homework assignments. The fact that he’d scratched the paint on a vehicle had me wondering if he might also be the person who’d scratched the message about Mr. Noy and Mrs. Finster on the bathroom stall. He’d also been caught swimming in the pond several times, which was against the rules. I could see why. If a student went under, it might be difficult to find them in the water. They could easily drown and not be noticed. His academic performance was as poor as his behavior. Other than physical education, where he excelled and had earned A-pluses, he was failing most of his classes.

Unlike Terry, Elijah Clemson had been expelled from Ridgetop in early February of 1982, his sophomore year, after he’d been found with “items prohibited on school property.” Hmm. Most of Irving Finster’s reports were specific and detailed. The fact that this one was so vague seemed strange. Had the prohibited item been tobacco? Drugs? A weapon of some sort? What else might be prohibited at a boarding school and why hadn’t Irving Finster noted it in this report? And why did the last name Clemson sound familiar?

The only question I could answer was the last one. It dawned on me why the name sounded familiar. A student named Susanna Clemson had been listed in the program for The Music Man . When I’d met Carole at the community center to show her the costumes, she’d exclaimed over Susanna’s performance, saying she’d perfectly played her role as a pick-a-little lady. Carole mentioned that she’d stood next to Susanna’s brother in the prayer circle, and that he’d held her hand tight. I couldn’t recall her mentioning his first name though. Clemson wasn’t a common last name, but it wasn’t an especially rare one, either.

To determine whether Susanna and Elijah were related, I consulted the master roster of students I’d seen among the headmaster’s files. Sure enough, Susanna and Elijah shared the same parents and the same home address in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, which sat a four-hour drive away, mostly west and a little to the north.

In addition to the files from the filing cabinet in the headmaster’s office, I’d also rescued the yearbooks from the library for the years during which Irving Finster had served as headmaster. I found the Clemson kids’ photos in the 1982 yearbook, the last one issued for Ridgetop Prep. Although Elijah had been expelled, the yearbook must have already been in production when he left the institution. His photo was included. Though he wore the standard blue uniform jacket and white button-down shirt, along with the school’s signature blue-and-green-striped bow tie, he wore a nasty scowl rather than a smile. His reddish-brown hair was a mess, as if it had been lovingly tousled, but I suspected he’d simply neglected to comb it, unconcerned how he might appear in his school portrait. A thick scar arced across the top of his left cheekbone. Had he taken a right hook to the face? No fights were documented in his disciplinary record. If he’d acquired the scar in a fistfight, the headmaster had failed to note it. Along with the scar, a smattering of freckles decorated his cheeks and nose. Susanna sported the same reddish-brown hair as her older brother, but hers hung in cute curls to her chin. Rather than a scowl, she wore a smile. She might share her hair color and last name with her brother, but she didn’t appear to share his sour attitude.

Elijah had been on campus to see his sister’s performance the night the Finsters perished. He’d proven himself to be vengeful when he’d keyed the teacher’s car. I wondered whether he’d attempted to get retribution against the headmaster for expelling him. Still, even though he was a possible suspect, I didn’t consider him a probable one. None of his documented offenses had been violent, and surely his parents must have kept a close eye on him that evening. They’d know he was persona non grata on campus, walking a thin line.

I type Elijah’s name into my browser and hit the enter key. The search returned results similar to the ones I’d gotten when I’d searched Terry’s name. Though there were several references to men named Elijah Clemson and social media accounts in that name, none appeared to relate to the particular Elijah Clemson I was looking for. I set his file aside, too.

There were disciplinary files for two dozen other students, but their infractions were minor, nonviolent, and evidenced immaturity rather than malice. Most learned their lessons after serving detention, and didn’t become recidivists.

Dwight Nabors’ sudden departure from Ridgetop Prep had me curious, so I decided to take a look at the staff files I’d removed from Irving’s filing cabinet, too. At the front of Nabors’ file was his resignation letter, dated February 21, 1982. Though it was typed, he’d signed his name in pen. The letter was short and included no details.

Dear Dr. Finster,

I hereby resign my position as Chief of Groundskeeping and Maintenance effective immediately. I wish you and your wife all the best.

Sincerely,

Dwight Nabors

While the letter offered no reason for his resignation, the “Dear” and his well wishes implied that he and the Finsters had ended on good terms. Hmm. Could the sentiments have been veiled sarcasm that only Irving Finster would discern? Without more details about the relationship between the men, I couldn’t know. Finster had given Nabors stellar annual performance reviews prior to his resignation. Finster noted that Nabors “always goes the extra mile in his work,” “is reliable and resourceful,” and “ensures that his crew performs quality work,” all while “managing a very limited budget.”

My mind went back again to the rumor scratched on the stall door from the boys’ bathroom. Given what I read in the performance reviews, I suspected that the graffiti had been addressed after Nabors’ departure or he would have ensured that the etching was eradicated with sandpaper before it was painted over.

If Nabors was truly reliable and went the extra mile, why did he suddenly leave rather than giving advance notice or waiting to resign at the end of the school year, when Irving Finster would have had more time to find a suitable replacement? It was a mystery, one that could possibly be tied to the Finsters’ demise.

With the 1981–1982 academic year being Carole Tiller’s first year at Ridgetop, she had only a single performance review, from January of 1982. Irving had described her as “cheerful,” “patient,” and “a team player who gets along well with the other staff.” His classroom observation indicated she was “very encouraging to the students and an excellent role model, who brings positivity and enthusiasm to her classes.”

Rosie’s reviews were similarly exemplary. If there had been a secret animosity or conflict between the spouses, I figured it might have reared its ugly head there. But such was not the case. Or maybe Irving didn’t want to document his feelings about his wife in official school records. In her review for their first year at Ridgetop, he’d praised her for bringing staff and students together from the choir, dance, art, music, and theater departments to put on the school’s first ever interdisciplinary musical theater performance. Evidently, they’d continued the practice through the school’s final year.

Kito Noy received a rave review, as well. Irving lauded him for “giving each music student multiple opportunities to perform for the public by arranging events in Nashville.” A quartet of students had played at an art show. A trio had entertained diners at a fancy charity fundraiser dinner. Seven violinists from Ridgetop had fiddled with the Grand Ole Opry at one of their shows. He’d even taken some of the students down to the South Broadway or SoBro area where they’d busked for tips, earning themselves some spending money. Kito was also praised for working with faculty from the other departments to put on the musical theater shows. Again, I wondered if I could take the words at face value, or whether there might be some undetected venom dripping from them.

I ran a quick search to see what Kito Noy might be up to now, only to discover his obituary. He had died from heart disease in San Jose, California, two decades earlier at the age of sixty-three. I wondered when he had moved west. Had he relocated to California immediately after his stint at Ridgetop, maybe to get some distance between himself and the school? I wouldn’t be able to ask him. I supposed I could try to track down the wife or children noted as survivors in his obituary, but unless I found some serious clues pointing his direction, I saw no good reason to bother them. I wouldn’t appreciate some stranger interrogating me about a departed loved one, implying he could be a killer when he was no longer around to defend himself.

I returned to the staff performance reviews. A mediocre and obviously lazy history teacher was encouraged to “bring creative ways of learning” to his classroom rather than relying so heavily on films and mere textbook reading. The physical education teacher was asked to “temper his tone” and “be less demanding on the students,” who’d complained he was a veritable drill sergeant. My mind went back to Elijah Clemson, how he’d excelled in phys ed. It’s odd a troublemaker would do well in a class with an overbearing instructor, isn’t it? Seemed to me a student like Elijah would rebel against a domineering teacher, but, then again, I knew next to nothing about child psychology.

To my surprise, Adam Joule’s reviews were short and spare, and used lackluster phrases like “adequately executes his duties” and “a competent teacher.” If not for the fact that Irving had gushed over Rosie in her reviews, I’d think he’d been unenthusiastic only to prevent an accusation of nepotism. Joule and Irving Finster went way back, after all, to their own teen years at Ridgetop. Finster gave Joule kudos in one review, however, for procuring funds from a donor to build the observatory. Other than that, the reviews could best be described as average. Maybe it was because the two men were friends that Irving didn’t feel the need for lengthy accolades.

Joule wasn’t the only teacher to receive average reviews, of course. Most of them did, in fact, which wasn’t really a surprise. After all, the majority of people in any line of work will be average at it, perfectly competent but not exceptional. Besides, Irving seemed to impose fairly high standards for an outstanding review. The ones who’d received excellent feedback had earned it by doing far more than what was expected, sacrificing their personal time on evenings and weekends or chipping in to help with projects that benefitted the school in general rather than their particular department only. Many of these teachers were young and ambitious, wanting to prove themselves. No doubt they also had more time and energy than the middle-aged teachers, who might have families to care for. The younger teachers were also probably more idealistic about what they and their students could achieve. The more experienced teachers were undoubtedly more realistic, and had developed a rhythm and routine that was effective, yet allowed them a life to enjoy outside the classroom. Nothing wrong with that.

While the information in the files hadn’t provided me with any big surprises, they’d put Terry Thorne, Elijah Clemson, and Dwight Nabors on my radar. The loudest blip at the moment was being emitted from Terry. Carole Brown had told me that Terry was the first person who’d come to her mind when she learned the Finsters had been harmed. Terry’s extensive discipline file, which included physical attacks, said she was capable of violence. I simply couldn’t fathom why Irving hadn’t expelled the girl. Could she have had some dirt on him? Known something that might ruin him, and have threatened to reveal it if he booted her out of Ridgetop? I had no way of knowing. All I could do was speculate.