Irregardless of Murder (Miss Prentice Cozy Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

conference period. Every teacher had one sometime during the day. It was our de facto break time, though a parent with a gripe or a question could lay claim to those precious fifty minutes by making an appointment at the office.
    As I tried to decide if I craved a cup of coffee enough to brave stares and questions in the teacher’s lounge, I remembered the note Hardy had delivered. It took a minute to find it and decode the school secretary’s unique shorthand.
    “O’Brien spk w/U conf.pd./Tch Lng.”
    Dennis O’Brien hadn’t forgotten me. He wanted to “spk”—speak?—with me. “Conf”—was that an f or a j? Conference period. “Tch Lng”—teacher’s lounge.
    As I threaded through the rowdy crush of adolescents, I smiled, remembering a meeting I had once had with Dennis O’Brien’s mother. His failing grade in my class was about to lose him his place on the basketball team. I was in my first year of teaching, and June O’Brien’s scowl was terrifying, but I was determined to stand up for myself in my first parent’s conference.
    I needn’t have worried. Once his mother learned that he’d only turned in about half his homework and saw the proof for herself in the grade book, Dennis’s fate was sealed. After that, Dennis was, if not a model student, at least an adequate one.
    The subject of my stroll down memory lane stood as I entered the teacher’s lounge and shook my hand, adult to adult. His well-pressed suit, crisp shirt, and tastefully striped tie, all selected by his wife Dorothy, gave him an air of authority.
    “I appreciate this, Miss Prentice,” he said and indicated a seat at one of the flimsy plastic tables. When he sat, his knees lifted the table, and I was momentarily reminded of the time Alice in Wonderland outgrew her house.
    “Why don’t we get some coffee and take it to my classroom? It’s empty now and it’ll be quieter there,” I added, but I had other reasons. The lounge had been filling up with other faculty who were even more nakedly curious than my students.
    “Good idea,” Dennis agreed, and we left just in time to pass Gerard Berghauser. As the door closed behind us, I heard a whisper, “Who’s that she’s with?” Drat the man! He would most assuredly tell them.
    “I was just remembering the time you were kicked off the basketball team, Dennis,” I said as we climbed the steps to my room.
    “Oh, gee, I’d forgotten that. Boy, was my mom mad after she talked to you. I’d been lying to her, you see, and she couldn’t abide that.”
    “I hated to get you in trouble.”
    “Hey, it was the best thing that could’ve happened,” he assured me, opening the door of my room. “It was kind of a relief to get found out.”
    “And you made it back on the team.”
    “Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” He grinned, and I knew he was thinking about those three tall trophies in the case downstairs. We took two seats in the front row.
    He coughed. “Look, Miss Prentice, we need to . . . ”
    He reached in his pocket for his notebook and dropped his pen. I was given a close-up view of the top of his large head as he fumbled on the floor. At these close quarters, I noticed for the first time he had some gray hair coming in. More, in fact, than I had.
    “Youth’s a stuff ’twill not endure,” as Shakespeare said, or, “Go figure,” to quote Lily Burns. No one had ever seen a gray hair on her head, thanks to the miracle of modern chemistry.
    The pen retrieved, Dennis began again, “We need to go over a few things about last night.”
    “I’ll be glad to, but please—I mean, people tell me the paper said—”
    He sighed. “Okay, okay. Here’s what I can tell you: We have reason to believe—” he spoke slowly and evenly, as though repeating a memorized speech, “that the vic—that Marguerite’s death was not accidental.”
    “You mean—suicide?”
    “I don’t mean any more than I just said, Miss Prentice. Just know that we’re doing all we can to get this