I walked in not knowing quite what to expect. The massive oak desk and straight-backed leather chairs I remembered were gone, replaced by an acrylic or glass desk that looked like a drafting table and a rounded, armless love seat in pale orange with matching chairs. A stack of three large pillows upholstered in a bright geometric print suggested some lucky visitors got to sit on the floor. During my years at SEHS, Mr. Iselin, a tall, spare man with a Hitler-type mustache, had been principal. He knew all the students by name and always addressed us as “Miss Terhune” or “Mr. Parker,” but with an inflection that made the titles more snide than respectful. When I entered, Mr. Kornhiser came around his desk and held out his hand. He was the anti-Iselin: short, with thinning blond hair pulled back into a stubby ponytail, and wearing a turquoise and pink Hawaiian shirt. He could’ve been any age between forty and sixty, judging by the crinkles around his eyes and the gray threading through his hair.
“Grace—I can call you Grace, can’t I?—I want to welcome you to St. Elizabeth High and thank you for helping with our fund-raiser.” He pumped my hand.
“I’m happy to do it, Mr.—”
He held up a hand. “Ah-ah. Merle. Call me Merle.”
“Okay. If you’ll just tell me where—”
“Actually, Grace, I was hoping we could chat for a few minutes. About the incident Saturday night.” He motioned to one of the orange chairs and I sank into it gingerly. He dropped gracefully to one of the pillows and crossed his legs.
I had to look down at him to converse and it felt very weird.
“It makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it?” He grinned, revealing a gap between his front teeth. “I like to play with our cultural notions of power. In most meetings, the grand poobah sits at the head of the table, or behind a desk, while the lesser minions sit along the wall. I consider myself a servant of this school and our students so I sit here.” He patted the pillow.
I made no response. What could I say? Very democratic of you? I like your pillow? What kind of drugs do you take with your corn flakes and OJ?
After a long moment of silence, he continued, “It was very servant-minded of you to volunteer your time Saturday night to chaperone our field trip. Really. I, personally, appreciate it. And I’m more sorry than I can say that the evening ended on such a negative note. You didn’t happen to observe anything, did you, that would clear up what happened?”
He sat back, seemingly relaxed, bracing himself with his hands behind him, but his eyes watched my face carefully. I decided he was probably in his fifties and worried about school liability just like any other administrator in his position would be. The “I’ll sit at your feet approach” wasn’t going to cut much ice with a jury if the McCullerses sued him.
“Not really,” I said. “What have the students told you? Did any of them have a grudge against Braden?”
“A grudge?” He blinked his eyes rapidly several times. “You’re not implying that one of our students could have intentionally harmed Braden? It must have been an accident. Or maybe someone else was in the house. Tourists.”
I gave the man an A plus for grasping at straws. “I don’t think it gets much more intentional than smothering someone with a pillow,” I said. Merle was living in la-la land if he thought the police could hang the murder on a random tourist from Topeka, visiting Rothmere hours after it closed, who decided on the spur of the moment to toss Braden down the stairs and then finished the job with a pillow in the hospital.
“Braden McCullers was a good kid,” he said. “A real servant-leader. Captain of the football team, a GPA that got him accepted to MIT, homecoming king, state-level debater. I can’t imagine any of the students had a beef with him.”
“Have you asked?”
“No. The police have been interviewing the field trip students all day,” he admitted, “creating a lot of negative energy in the school.”
I thought it was probably Braden’s death that was bumming the students out, not the police investigation. “Did the McCullers family say anything to you about when the funeral would be?” I asked, standing. “I’d like to go.”
Merle reached a hand up to me and I took it reluctantly, helping him to his feet. His knees crackled. “I explained to them how Braden’s friends, all of us at SEHS, need closure, but they said they preferred to say their good-byes privately. They wouldn’t even authorize a memorial service.”
He sounded personally affronted. It was a little strange, but maybe the McCullers family couldn’t face Braden’s friends and classmates right now; the sight of all the seniors going on to graduation, college, marriage might remind them too painfully of milestones their son would never reach.