A Little Class on Murder (21 page)

The first call Friday morning came at shortly after five.

Max thrashed wildly against the sheet and made a guttural noise in his throat which Annie understood to mean, “Tear that instrument out of the wall and fling it into the marsh.”

At five
A.M
., however, Annie’s little gray cells were not only colorless but nonfunctioning. She rolled groggily out of bed and stumbled into the living room to answer.

“My sweet, there is an exquisite stillness abroad at this early hour before dawn speaks.”

“Not quite still enough,” Annie retorted bitterly.

An instant’s pause, then a trill of forgiving laughter. “Why, Annie, I sprang from my couch with vigor and cheer. I was so sure you and dear Maxwell would be up and about and already keenly engaged in the hunt.”

Max appeared in the bedroom doorway, sleepily pawing at his eyes. He looked like Joe Hardy with a stubble of beard. Irresistible.

Annie began to wake up. Early mornings
could
be fun.

“Annie, my sweet?” her mother-in-law prodded gently.

Stifling a yawn, the distracted newlywed managed, “Hmm?”

A tiny sigh of dismay. “My dear, I
am
counting on you and Maxwell. Certainly, I believe the two of you have wit and sagacity enough to appreciate the importance of emotion in crime detection. Though, to tell the truth, your contributions
to this point haven’t—But, then, each must give according to his ability. Now, I’ve been thinking.”

Max scratched at his chin. “Anything wrong?”

Annie shook her head. “Yes, Laurel?”

“It’s clear to me”—Annie tucked the receiver under her chin and pantomimed turning on water, filling a pot. Max nodded and padded off to the kitchen—“dear Georgia is protecting that young professor.”

Frank Crandall. A man with a self-deprecating smile, tousled chestnut hair, and attractively knobby knees in loose-fitting, pleated khakis. The kind of man that women noticed and instinctively wanted to help.

“Surely he wouldn’t be rat enough to let her do that.” She was wide awake now and unconvinced.

“Annie, what a horrid thought! Professor Crandall is a
gentleman.
”

Annie arched a skeptical brow. Sure. But he was also running around on his wife and romantically involved with a student. Not exactly modes of behavior smiled upon by Miss Manners, kindly and understanding as she is, though such actions would come as no surprise to Miss Marple, conversant as she was with sexual peccadilloes in St. Mary Mead, ranging from those of the choirmaster to cottage weekenders.

“No, no, no,” Laurel continued, making a
tsk
of dismay at this evidence of Annie’s obtuseness. “Obviously, this is what transpired. Professor Crandall talked to Mr. Burke. You remember, Miss Dora’s friend”—Annie thought about that one and wisely translated ‘friend’ to ‘subordinate,’ ‘lackey,’ ‘serf,’ or ‘vassal’—“reported that Crandall said he had a very civil talk with Burke and left him in excellent health. Well, obviously, Georgia, in the manner of young women pining after a beloved yet proscribed from public contact, must have been following Mr. Crandall. Don’t you agree?”

Only the rich heavy aroma of brewing coffee gave Annie the strength to reply civilly. “Of course. No doubt about it. Georgia was following Crandall.” She looked anxiously toward the kitchen.

“Yes. She saw him leave the journalism office.” A pause. “I don’t know through which door. Oh, but I do, I do. He must
have departed through the main office door, because that is the door one normally enters and if he hadn’t departed as he entered, Georgia wouldn’t have seen him at all!”

Annie had a sudden vision of a maze and a white rat (in khaki pants) flashing this way and that.

“But, of course,” the husky voice continued thoughtfully, “if she didn’t see him come out, perhaps she crept into the main office because she was so concerned about the course of this interview and, hearing no sound, slipped closer and closer to the director’s open office door and then espied that dreadful sight …. ” A vexed sigh. “Dear me, it’s so complex. I do wish I could talk to that young woman. Oh, they’ve charged her with defacing the
Crier
office, too, with that rabbit blood. And I understand it’s only a matter of time before they tack on the bombing. But we’ll find out the truth before then. Poor, dear child. Such a mistake to try and hide things from the police, even to protect a loved one. Just like dear Judy Shepard.”

She paused expectantly.

It took Annie just an instant longer than it should have.

Laurel said with only a hint of triumph, “Oh, I thought you would remem—”

“Judy Shepard.
Episode of the Wandering Knife
. But she was trying to protect her brother, not her lover,” Annie objected.

“A parallel nonetheless. And it is a recurring pattern in Rinehart’s works, the efforts of women, young and old, to protect a loved one. Carol Spencer in
The Yellow Room
, Janice Garrison in
The
Haunted Lady—
”

“So Georgia Finney’s protecting Crandall,” Annie said agreeably, reaching out for the pink pottery mug, filled with Colombian coffee
not
decaffeinated and a generous dollop of milk. Whole milk. (Cream was better but Max had a thing about cholesterol. You’d think it was alive and swarmed.) She smiled her thanks and took a deep gulp and even Laurel’s husky voice buzzing in her ear suddenly had a mellow ring.

“—but the point is obvious, I think.”

“The point?” Another luscious, blood-warming gulp and another.

“Assuming Georgia to be innocent and, of course, Professor Crandall, the time for the murder to occur is limited. Very limited. Obviously, Georgia did not see anyone else enter or leave the office after Mr. Crandall’s departure—if she saw that—but I believe we can all imagine the various possibilities—or she would not assume he was the murderer.” Annie stopped trying to make sense of it. That way lay madness. “Which suggests to me that the murderer may have secreted himself—or herself—somewhere in the office
before
Professor Crandall engaged in his interview with Burke.”

Annie was tilting the nearly empty mug. She wasn’t sure whether it was the caffeine or Laurel’s nattering but, abruptly, she did see the point.

“Laurel, that’s brilliant.”

“Of course, my love. Sometimes I realize that one’s perceptions shine just like crystal. Don’t you—”

But Annie had no desire to discuss crystals, their attributes, properties, or miraculous qualities.

“Laurel, you just stay there and keep on thinking. That’s the ticket. And we’ll get back to you as soon as we’ve checked out some of these possibilities. Bye, now.”

She replaced the receiver and watched it warily for a moment, then, slowly, her shoulder muscles relaxed. Good. Laurel was no doubt basking in a glow of self-congratulation and might possibly be occupied for several more hours.

Annie hurried into the kitchen. Max was eating his oat bran sprinkled with extra wheat fiber. Was he trying to scour his intestines? She flipped up the bread box and tried to choose between a chocolate long john or a croissant, decided it was going to be a long day, and picked one of each.

Max raised an eyebrow at her selection, but sagely made no comment.

Annie poured fresh coffee for them, retrieved her pastries from the microwave, and spread honey liberally on her croissant. After all, she would need her strength. “Actually, Laurel may be onto something.”

When she’d finished recounting his mother’s hypothesis, Max said irritably, “Damsels in distress cause more damn trouble.”

Annie had fond memories of many wonderful books of that ilk by Kathleen Moore Knight, Mary Collins, Leslie Ford, Anne Maybury, Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels,
et al
. She focused an icy stare on Max. “That’s sexist! The problems are created when the authorities are shortsighted, stubborn, and/or incompetent.”

“What’s incompetent about arresting someone who’s caught trying to dump a murder weapon in the river?”

Annie finished her croissant and concentrated on her long john. It was indecent to expect her to contribute intelligently to any discussion until she’d finished her breakfast.

Displaying largeness of character, an altogether disgusting trait, Max chose to smile cheerfully at her. “Hungry? How about another long john?”

She would never admit she’d been thinking about it.

“No, thanks.” Clipped response. “Quite full.”

“Of course, you’re right.” Max did prefer peace in the family. “Laurel has made a very good point, although I’m not persuaded as to the innocence of Georgia Finney and/or Frank Crandall.”

Annie licked a vagrant swipe of chocolate from her thumb. “You think they might have done it together? Oh, come on, Max. What kind of creep do you think he is? Would he foist the weapon off on her?”

Max’s eyes gleamed. “Who’s sexist?” he demanded slyly. He didn’t press his advantage. “But Laurel’s absolutely right about one thing. There
was
very little time. That seems to me the critical point. We know that Frank Crandall saw Burke. He’s admitted that to the police. His appointment was at eleven-fifteen. How long did they talk? Five minutes? Crandall leaves and claims Burke was alive when he did so. Okay, the bomb explodes in Brad Kelly’s office at approximately eleven forty-one. You found Burke’s body at approximately eleven forty-four. Obviously, since Georgia was caught trying to get rid of the murder weapon, she had the weapon in hand and was out of the building before the bomb went off. Also, it makes sense to assume Burke was dead by at least eleven forty-one because he didn’t come out of his office when the blast occurred.”

Annie poured fresh coffee and began to sip. She was beginning to have that familiar khaki-clad-white-rat-in-a-maze sensation.

“So, let’s put the murder between eleven-twenty and eleven forty-one—” Max figured happily with a pencil stub on his napkin. Which was another good argument for paper as opposed to cloth napkins. “We have a period of about twenty-one minutes during which the murder must have occurred.”

“Who was in the building then? Who
could
have done it? That’s what we need to know,” Annie said eagerly.

She reached out for his pencil and spread open her own napkin, ignoring a spot of honey. Quickly, she drew a sketch of the first floor.

She tapped the outline of the editor’s office. “We know Brad Kelly and Emily Everett were in the building. We need to find out how long they’d been there when the bomb went off. Kelly says he went to the bathroom. When? Again, how
long? Was there time for him to have murdered Burke before Georgia found him dead, if that’s what happened? Was there time for Emily to have killed Burke and returned to the
Crier
office?”

“Why Kelly?” Max asked. “Why Emily?”

Annie shook her head impatiently. “I’m not worrying about motives here, I’m figuring out opportunity. We need to find out who was in the building from eleven-fifteen on. We know that all the faculty members had been in the building earlier in the morning, because Burke talked to them. But where were Garrison, Norden, Tarrant, Diggs, Moss, and Crandall during the critical time period? Let’s see, we don’t need to be concerned with any classes that were in session because Burke was alive when eleven o’clock classes started and dead before they finished. But we do need to check on the press area and, of course, the faculty upstairs.”

Max took the pencil and her napkin, flipped it over, and drew a layout of the second floor. “There’re the faculty offices. And look, they open onto a back corridor that leads to the stairs.”

“You know, this isn’t going to be so hard. It should be pretty easy to pick out the names of those who might have wanted Burke dead from among the people rounded up after the blast,” Annie suggested.

“Unless,” Max cautioned, “Georgia really did the deed. After all, isn’t it more likely for a murderer to flee than to remain near the scene of the crime?”

Annie had no strong feelings on that. Murderers, both fictional and real, had a long history of staying and an equally long history of fleeing.

“Maybe not. I’d think a faculty member might easily return upstairs to an office and take time to regain composure.”