Widow’s Walk

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I was sitting in the guidance office at Franklin High School, talking with a sturdy gray-haired woman named Ethel Graffino.

“Mary Toricelli,” she said. “Name doesn’t ring a bell. A lot of students passed through here in thirty-five years.”

“Class of 1989,” I said. “Used to date a boy named Roy Levesque.”

“Him I remember,” Mrs. Graffino said. “He was in here a lot.”

“Why?”

“Bad kid. Stole. Peddled dope. Cheated. Bullied any kids he could. I believe he dropped out without graduating.”

“We all cheated,” I said.

Mrs. Graffino smiled. “I know, but we’re still required to condemn it.”

“How about friends.”

“Roy’s? Or Mary’s?”

“Either.”

“I can give you class lists,” she said.

“Two years on either side?”

“‘Eighty-seven through ’ninety-one? Are you going to harass these people?”

“No. I’m just going to ask them pleasantly about Mary and Roy.”

“And you’re trying to clear Mary of a murder charge?”

“Yes.”

“And you are working for a law firm?”

“Yes. Cone Oakes.”

“Is there someone I could call?”

“Sure.” I gave her Rita Fiore’s number.

She said, “Excuse me,” called it and talked with Rita and hung up.

“I needed to be sure,” she said.

She got up and went around to her office door and spoke to the secretary. Then she came back and sat.

“It’ll only be a minute,” she said. “Computers, you know, they’ve revolutionized record-keeping.”

“I’m going to get one soon,” I said.

“They’re here to stay,” she said.

Her phone rang. She excused herself again and answered. While she talked I thought how schools always felt like schools when you went in them. Even full grown and far removed, when I went in one I felt the old hostility again. While Mrs. Graffino spoke on the phone, the secretary came in with several pages of printout and put them on Mrs. Graffino’s desk. She mouthed “thank you” to the secretary, pushed the printouts toward me, and nodded. I picked them up. Another list. About 1,200 names long. We never sleep.