Aspen Allegations - A Sutton Massachusetts Mystery

Chapter 18

The waitress swung by, a middle-aged woman with bobbed blonde hair. "Merlot for you, dear?"

"A cabernet today, thanks," I responded.

She nodded and was off. I leant back, relaxing after the long drive. The booths were comfortable enough, with ridged wooden backs. The music was set on "popular" today, and I smiled as Carley's "Call Me Maybe" came on. The wealth of parodies on YouTube were staggering, with my favorite being the Cookie Monster singing "Cookie Maybe." I found myself tempted to find it on my cell's YouTube to show to Anne, but I resisted.

In a moment the waitress had returned with my wine. Right behind her came Simone. Simone plunked into the booth beside me, smiling her welcome. "You would not believe the week I had," she greeted. "My whole family has suffered through the flu for the past month; I've had no energy. Today is the first day I was able to get in motion."

The waitress came by again, and we put in our orders. Our salads with ranch dressing showed up almost immediately, and Simone smiled in amusement as I pushed the croutons off to the side.

I shrugged. "I'm not that hungry right now, so I might as well eat the parts I really enjoy," I pointed out, taking a bite of the lettuce. I turned to Anne, who had put the magazine aside. "How are your students treating you?"

She shook her head, running a hand through her grey hair. "When I retired from teaching college in person, I thought the online courses would be a fun way to keep my fingers in the process," she sighed. "But the kids online are just as bad as the in-person students. In the spring there was that girl who was grumpy with my quizzes, so she took to the forums to openly discuss cheating on the tests. She tried to incite all of the other students to join in. I thought that was outrageous, but now I have a student who is even worse."

"Oh?" I asked, taking a sip of my wine. "What is this one doing?"

"She's an older woman, and she's having trouble understanding the material. I've been teaching this course for over ten years, and people have never had problems with the areas she's stuck on. I think she's just not carefully reading the chapter. She's gone to the dean twice now, both wanting him to force me to give her an A and also to get a full refund at the same time."

I shook my head. "Can't you drop her from the class?"

The corners of her mouth turned down. "No, I'm not allowed to drop someone simply for being obnoxious. I'm stuck with her. I fully expect, when the course finishes up in mid-December, that she will come back and agitate to get a better grade than whatever she earns."

"Maybe this will be a learning experience for her, that she can't bully her way through every course," I pointed out.

Anne sighed dejectedly. "She told the dean I was the meanest teacher she's ever had."

I looked over to Simone. "This sounds like a winning formula for her," I teased. "Each new teacher she runs into can be the new meanest teacher and she can always make that complaint. If teachers cave into her, not wanting to deal with the grief, she gets a string of As and maybe even some free classes as well."

Anne took another handful of popcorn. "Well, I don't care," she stated firmly. "This will be my last class, and then I won't have to deal with it any more. I can focus on my painting and my poetry."

We finished our salads, and the waitress brought over our main dishes. I had the salmon with asparagus, the same thing I'd gotten every month for the last two years of meetings. It was, as usual, fairly tasty.

Anne looked over at me. "So how are things going with your investigations? What was his name again?"

"John Dixon," I replied. "I'm still not sure about the drowning of his friend Eileen, back in 1968. Sometimes it seems as if it was suspicious. But then at other times it seems simply like a tragic accident, one that ripped apart a group of four close friends. Who knows, though. Maybe they would have separated as they left high school anyway and gone off on their own paths."