Schooled in Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

Gracie down or knocked her out first and then crammed in the eraser. The boxes hadn’t been disturbed, so I didn’t think there’d been much of a struggle–although the storeroom is a mess most of the time, so it would have been hard to tell. The bruising I’d seen on her face might have meant the killer had held her down.
    Brook said, “Maybe they’ll think it’s Francine. Maybe she finally got fed up with nobody listening to her peace overtures and turned to violence.”
    Luci said, “Remember that peace party she tried to have over the holidays last year? I heard she made this huge spread and decorated until she nearly died and nobody went.”
    “It was sad,” I said.
    “Did you go?” Brook asked.
    “I was out of the country.”
    Brook persisted. “Would you have gone?”
    “No,” I admitted. I didn’t go to a lot of faculty parties. This was where I worked. This wasn’t normally where I socialized.
    Morgan said, “I’ve never been able to figure out how anybody knew she went to all that trouble if nobody went to the party.”
    Brook said, “It can’t be nobody went. Someone must have gone, but I don’t know who.”
    Jourdan said, “They’re going to think one of our faction killed her.”
    Luci said, “They can’t think we did it. None of us are like that.”
    “Who would be more logical?” I asked.
    “But killing her wouldn’t gain anything,” Morgan said. “She was assistant head of the department, so her position would be vacant, but would somebody kill for such an unimportant position?”
    “I can’t imagine it,” Luci said.
    “It must have gained somebody something,” I said, “otherwise she wouldn’t be dead.”
    Brook said, “Spandrel would have only picked another suckup. Maybe they’re finally turning on each other. They have no morals. They’re worse than Nazis. They’d turn on each other in a heartbeat.”
    “You have evidence of this?” I asked. “They seem to pretty much stick together.”
    So did the non-suckup faction, for that matter, but I adjusted my comments to my audience.
    Jourdan said, “Not a one of them has ever broken ranks.”
    Brook asked, “Do I have evidence they have no morals, or that they’d turn on each other? Once you’ve stabbedsomeone in the back, what’s another one or two? What more logical step than to commit murder?”
    “Maybe she crossed one of them,” Morgan said. “Maybe she was a traitor to them.”
    “Again,” I said, “do we have any proof of that?”
    No one did.
    Jourdan said, “None of us would have done it. I mean, come on. Murder? Over this stuff?”
    Brook used the old cliché, “Wars have been fought for less.”
    “What’s going to happen tomorrow?” Luci asked. “It’s that stupid institute day. Maybe they’ll cancel it because of the death.”
    Brook said, “These asshole administrators are never going to call off school.”
    “What about Monday?” she asked. “I hope this is over by Monday. I’m not going to have to give up my planning period, am I? I have work to do.” This work during her planning time consisted mostly of making personal phone calls and surfing the Web, planning her next vacation, then erasing the evidence of her Internet searches. It would be like Luci to obsess about the part of an issue that affected her. Destruction of half the planet? Was it going to bother her schedule? If not, then it wasn’t a problem.
    “Grief counselors,” Brook Burdock said. “The school is going to be lousy with them. I’ve never seen such hypocritical nonsense in my life.”
    Morgan said, “At least the lazy-ass social workers will have something to do.”
    All public schools in Illinois now had, by law, crisis teams. Each teacher had to have a copy of the district’s “crisis plan” that had to be attached visibly to some part of their classroom. I don’t know one teacher who has read it or one teacher for whom it has made a difference. Certainly the administratorsall feel more