A Little Class on Murder (11 page)

“Of course, we are,” Burke said quietly.

“But I was too late.”

Sue broke the shocked silence. “Too late?”

Norden’s mane of white hair quivered as he nodded and the tears coursed down his cheeks. “Bloody, bloody water. She cut her wrists and sat in the bathtub and all her blood ran out.”

The phone rang. “I’ll get it.” Annie smiled at Max, immersed in papers on the couch. She swept the books from her lap onto the coffee table and popped up.

“Hello.”

“Have you found Charlotte’s murderer yet?” the crackly voice demanded.

“Miss Dora, it was suicide. The police are quite certain. Her apartment doors were locked and bolted on the inside. And the knife had only her fingerprints. A steak knife. Very sharp.” An unwelcome vision arose. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to accept. But it truly was suicide.”

“Hounded to her death. Same thing as murder. I want to know who caused it.”

“Perhaps you’d better talk to Max.” Annie held out the receiver, mouthed, “Your client,” and escaped back to her chair.

“Of course, Miss Dora, I’m working very hard on it.” It was his most charming and persuasive voice.

Annie stared pensively at her notepad, then wrote, “Mary Roberts Rinehart’s novels often associated death with water: Loon Lake in
The Wall
, the playhouse pool in
The Great Mistake
, and, of course, the pool in
The Swimming Pool
, her
last full-length novel.” Another unwelcome image arose: an older woman, a bathtub, and rose red water. She shivered.

“Certainly I intend to talk to all the faculty members. And Brad Kelly, of course. Yes, as soon as possible.” He sounded a little less charming. “I
am
working on it. In fact, I’ve made some progress.”

Almost without volition (the Golden Age writers were so fond of automatic writing), Annie scrawled down the list of faculty who were members of the committee privy to personnel information:

1. Victor Garrison

2. Malcolm Moss

3. Josh Norden (but he cried)

4. Sue Tarrant

5. R.T. Burke

As she studied the names, faces came to mind: Garrison’s plump cheeks, Moss’s perpetual half-smile, Norden’s befuddled blue eyes, Tarrant’s too-bright makeup, Burke’s hawklike face.

“Of course, I’ll report to you as soon as I discover anything concrete.” Then Max glared at the receiver. He turned to Annie. “She hung up.”

“Miss Dora is not one to waste her time in common civility.”

Max replaced the receiver. “You don’t like her very much.”

“Perceptive of you,” Annie remarked.

He shoved a hand through his thick blond hair. “I’m not sure I like her much either.” He dropped back onto the couch.

Annie pushed up from her chair, clutching her list, and joined him. “That’s all right. I’m glad you’re going to investigate it for her.”

He looked at her inquiringly. “That’s a switch.”

Annie squirmed. It wasn’t really true that she was stiff-necked and would never admit to making a mistake. After all, the circumstances had changed. “I’ve been thinking about it. Charlotte Porter—she was such a
nice
person. Like somebody’s favorite aunt. Like Miss Silver. Why would anyone
humiliate her that way? Whoever it was has to be a rat and deserves a little trouble.”

“I agree,” Max said firmly.

Annie waggled the list. “So it’s one of these? Which one, Max?”

He took the list. “It’s not that simple, Annie.”

“But these are the people on the committee. That’s what Burke said at the meeting. No one else knew. It has to be one of them.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. While you were in the faculty meeting, I talked to the department secretary, Emily Everett.”

They exchanged understanding glances. It was painful even to see someone as obese as Emily.

“Unlovely and unhappy,” Annie murmured.

“Very unhappy. She wouldn’t talk about the article in
The Crier
, kept mumbling, ‘Awful. Awful. I don’t want to think about it.’ And this was before we knew about Charlotte Porter’s suicide, remember. So I told her I was doing a study on efficiency for the trustees. That got her attention. I told her that her office was considered one of the best run on the campus and I needed some insight on how she arranged everything. She kind of forgot about
The Crier
for a while. People love to talk about themselves and their work, even if they despise it.” A look of supreme satisfaction. “I had her explain the filing system.”

“The filing system?” Shades of Poirot’s Miss Lemon, creator of a filing system beside which all other filing systems faded into insignificance. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Annie, my sweet, if I have learned one thing from my arduous labors for Confidential Commissions, it is that the world today is inundated with files, records, pieces of paper. Really, criminals didn’t know how great they had it fifty years ago. In green or beige filing cabinets or, increasingly, on little black disks, across this great land there repose mounds of records on each and every one of us. I have become expert in unearthing information. But,” and a look of great guile slid across his regular features, “I do not reveal this skill. So, I
talked to Emily. About the office. How long she’d been there. What she did on a typical day. The immense number of responsibilities upon her bowed shoulders. How—”

“Max, I am truly impressed at this evidence of your devotion to your career. But, back to the point, what did Emily know?”

He looked at Annie with suddenly troubled eyes. “It’s funny you should put it like that. Because I’m certain she knows something. I’m not sure what. We were getting along great. She told me all about the color coding of the folders, the use of tabs, the dead files, the arrangement of the filing cabinets. She even took me on a tour of the office and pointed out the locked closet that held the personnel files. So far, so good. No hesitation on her part. Then, as I stood there looking at that locked door, I thought about keys. And I asked her. She stared at that door like she’d never seen it before. I swear her face turned green. And yet, she didn’t hesitate at all when I asked who had keys. In fact, she seemed to relax. So maybe she turns green every afternoon about four. I don’t know.”

“Does the master key open that file closet?”

He looked crestfallen. “How did you know about the master keys?”

“As an adjunct faculty member I was offered the choice of receiving—for a fifty-dollar deposit—a master key, which would open my office, my classroom, the faculty lounge, and all other locked doors, such as the main office, the supply closet, et cetera, or individual keys, at no cost, for each door I would have occasion to unlock.”

He eyed her curiously. “What did you choose?”

“Individual keys, of course. Why should I make that kind of deposit?”

Max rolled his eyes heavenward.

“I will not drive you to the poorhouse,” she retorted righteously.

“Just bananas,” he murmured.

Ignoring that comment, Annie reached across him to retrieve a pen from the side table. Her hand poised over her
notepad, she asked, “So, does the master key open the closet with the personnel files?”

“Yes.”

“Who has master keys?”

He took the pen and pad and added to her list:

6. Kurt Diggs

7. Frank Crandall

And, after a moment’s thought:

8. Charlotte Porter.

Annie shook her head. “Crazy. Why should she?”

Max shrugged. “Who knows? The world’s crazy. Anything can happen. Or maybe somebody stole her key.”

“Hmm. So anybody on the faculty could have nosed around in those files at some off hour. And of course, Emily has access to those files, too.”

“During office hours. She made that
very
clear. Only faculty are allowed to possess master keys. Emily uses a key which hangs in the supply closet.”

“And Burke might well have noticed if she spent time browsing through confidential faculty personnel folders. So, we can scratch Emily,” Annie concluded.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Max still looked troubled. “I’d swear she knows something. Maybe she saw someone at that closet and since it was a faculty member didn’t think much about it, but now she’s wondering …. I’ll talk to her again tomorrow.”

Annie tapped the sheet. “Obviously, Brad Kelly’s highly placed source is on this list.” She sighed. “Seven, not counting Charlotte Porter. You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“Already done it.” He tried to look modest and failed miserably.

Annie was impressed, until he handed her a handful of mimeographed sheets and a blue-backed booklet (state-of-the-art desktop publishing). Each sheet was captioned
CURRICULUM VITAE
, followed by the name of a faculty member. Annie raised an eyebrow.

“In academese, vitae equals résumé,” Max explained. “Has a delicious ring, doesn’t it?”

She glanced at the sheets, then opened the blue-backed booklet. The title page read:

Annual Report of Faculty Activities, Achievements, Innovations, Publications, Courses Taught, Organization Memberships, Offices Held, Academic Papers Presented, Research Undertaken, Workshops Sponsored.

Below this introductory paean was the list of faculty, their academic ranks, and dates of original appointment.

Annie flipped through the thick (forty-six pages) booklet, which included faculty members’ participation in seminars and workshops, speeches given, meetings attended, committee assignments, field trips, courses taught, and papers written (the title of one caught her eye, “The Use of Indefinite Articles in Print Advertising”). She tossed the book back to him. “So what?”

He pointed at the copies of the curricula vitae, topped by R.T. Burke’s résumé. “I’ve got the skeletons of their lives right there.” He sounded just a little defensive. “Plus I’ve added some additional personal information from the College News Service.”

The vitae were in alphabetic order.

Annie skimmed Burke’s résumé first.

Born in Sandy Springs, Georgia, April 6, 1925, he’d enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army in June 1942, and been part of the First Army offensive through Hurtgen Forest, a campaign that suffered more than fifty percent casualties. He was awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and Oak Leaf with Cluster, and received an honorable discharge in 1946. He earned a B.A. in journalism in 1950 from Chastain College, and worked as a reporter for several Southern newspapers from 1950 to 1963. He joined the New Orleans
bureau of Associated Press in 1963, and assumed directorship of the journalism department at Chastain College in August 1988. He was the recipient of numerous awards for outstanding reporting, including coverage of Hurricane Donna in 1960, a forty-two-fatality fire at Maury County Jail in Columbia, Tennessee June 26, 1977, and a 1986 series on corruption of law enforcement officials involved in a Florida drug ring. He married Beryl Aarons in 1954, was widowed in 1983, and had no children. He is an accomplished rock climber, scuba diver, and spelunker.

“Vigorous,” she observed and flipped to the next sheet.

Frank Crandall came across as much less active, much more cerebral:

Born March 6, 1957, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Crandall received a B.A. in journalism from the University of Kentucky in 1978, and an M.A. from the University of Texas in 1979. After two years with a Kansas City advertising agency, he completed a Ph.D. in communications at Northwestern in 1984, and joined the Chastain faculty in August 1984 as an assistant professor on tenure track. His publications ran two pages. He served as sponsor of two student clubs and was a member of several committees. Annie yawned and skipped to the personal data. Married, no children. President of the Chastain Wildlife Photography Club, the Audubon Society, and local chapter of Ducks Unlimited.

Her eyes glinted when she saw the third sheet. “Professor Kurt Diggs.” She waggled the sheet at Max. “I’ll bet this doesn’t tell the half of it. It would take a plain brown wrapper for this jerk.”

Max raised an eyebrow. “He really made an impression on you.”

Annie recounted the road-hogging Corvette and Diggs’s suggestive look at the faculty meeting.

“Thinks he’s a stud, believe me. Macho man with hairy chest, sunglasses, skin-tight Levi’s. Has leer, will travel.”

Her husband grinned. “Not, in short, your idea of a swell fellow.”

“Jerk,” she summarized succinctly, scanning the vitae.

Diggs was born February 19, 1951, in Flint, Michigan, and had a B.A. in communications from the University of Michigan, 1972. He worked as a news writer for a Grand Rapids ABC affiliate, 1972-75, and did his M.A. at the University of North Carolina in 1977. He joined the news staff of an NBC affiliate in Chastain in 1977, and Chastain College as assistant professor in 1978. He was granted tenure and promotion to associate professor in 1983. He worked part-time in the news department of a local station. He listed no publications, but had presented two papers at the annual TV Video News Workshop and participated in a local news forum at a meeting of the International Radio and Television Society, Inc. in New York. Two children. No wife listed by the News Service. Divorced? In addition to professional and educational memberships, he was an officer of the Chastain Sports Car Rally.

“And chief honcho of the Good Old Boy Society.”

Max spread an arm behind her on the couch. “Can’t wait to meet the guy.”

Annie looked at the next vitae. “From one extreme to the other.” Professor Victor Garrison. Smooth as butter and with a résumé to match.

Garrison was born October 9, 1952, in Long Beach, California. He had a B.A. in journalism from the University of California at Los Angeles, 1973, and an M.A., 1974, ditto. Then followed two years as a general news reporter on a Long Beach daily, three years as political reporter for the
Los Angeles Times
, and a Ph.D. in communications from Rutgers. He joined the faculty at Chastain in 1982 as assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor, and was granted tenure in 1986.

He listed three pages of publications, ranging from “Politics and Journalism, a Symbiotic Relationship” to “The Political Reporter, Crony or Adversary?”