Page 18 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Road Kill

rather than a teacher. But Foster Kerr, responding to the malaise in
the institution created by Ross Ewidge’s demise, had scheduled a
general assembly of all students in the auditorium Tuesday afternoon.
The funeral would have taken place that morning, and it did seem
wise to give the students a similar sort of ceremonial closure to the
life of one of their instructors. Kerr picked me, as the person most
likely to judge what would be appropriate, to plan and organize the
memorial.
It had been a long day, and I hadn’t much to look forward to now
that this new assignment had been pinned on me. As I wearily
navigated the frozen rapids of River Road on my homeward
commute, Labelle Gramercy was not uppermost in my mind. Had I
known what that budding amazon was up to, my weekend would not
have passed as calmly as it did.

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Tributes by student leaders and academic colleagues, display of a
plaque to be mounted on the Wall of Honor, announcement of a
scholarship fund—all had the desired effect: by the end of the
memorial most of the students were bored and fidgeting, all signs of
trauma erased. Between introductions (which I delivered as somberly
as possible to set the proper tone) I sat on a hard wooden chair to
one side of the lectern and studied audience reaction.
The lights were not dimmed in the hall; this wasn’t, after all, an
entertainment presented under sufficient cover of darkness to permit
non-serious behavior in the back rows. So I ultimately spotted
Labelle Gramercy. She was not paying particular attention to the
speeches, I noticed. Instead, she was methodically scanning the seats,
stopping at intervals to gaze intently at some other student. At first I
thought she was trying to get away with communicating non-verbally
with a classmate, but I couldn’t see anyone else looking her way.
When it was over I intercepted her outside the lobby. “Good
afternoon, Miss Gramercy,” I said, acting as if the encounter were by
chance. “What did you think of the program?”
She hefted her book bag easily over one shoulder. The assembly
had taken up the last period of the day, and students were streaming
past us, eager to leave the grounds.

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