Death by Dissertation (30 page)

But I wasn’t ready to let her in on the secret. “Gosh, Bella, you’re right,” I said in my most innocent voice. “I wonder what Charlie meant by those clues?” Before I thought about it, I had looked up at Bruce again, and he winked. He was a lot more sensitive to what went on around him than Bella had ever been. Thank God he kept her out of serious trouble, I thought, and for once, I sympathized with our dear mayor.

“Well, Andy,” Bella said, staring at me, “what about you? I know you’ve been playing detective, too. What have you found out?”

I couldn’t resist. I leaned forward, thrusting my face toward hers, and she leant down to me, her eyes sparkling.

“Well, for example,” I said, trying to seem studiedly nonchalant, “did you know that Margaret Wilford is Anthony Logan’s daughter?”

Bella snorted in disgust. “Lord, Andy, if that’s the best you can do, you’d better give up and call in the Hardy Boys.” She grinned sourly at me. “Of course I knew that!” Her tone inferred that I was a moron and that everyone except me had known about the relationship.

“Well, Bella,” I said, not realizing how loud my voice had become, “I can’t say anything much right now, but Rob and I have uncovered some evidence that Charlie left—”

“Evidence!” Bella squealed in delight, interrupting me.

As my cousin Ernie would say, I’d let my big mouth overload my skinny butt; I realized it as soon as the words were out.

“What kind of evidence?” she asked. “Are you going to turn it over to the police?”

I should have just picked up a heavy book and pounded myself over the head. Most of the fourth floor had heard Bella, I was sure. I should have known better. Why did I say such things to a person with no subtlety? But, she was an American historian, after all. We Europeanists were more sophisticated.

“Hush!” I hissed at her. “Do you want the whole university to hear you?”

She looked properly abashed, but she was still excited. Bruce coughed suspiciously behind me.

I got up, deciding to get away from the two of them before I wound up deeper in trouble. I turned off the light in my carrel and said, “Look, you guys, I’ve got things to do. I think the less said about this right now, the better. After all, the police wouldn’t like it if they knew I had spilled anything to you.”

“Sure, Andy.” Bruce spoke for the first time since telling me hello. “Come on, Bella.” His voice was, for once, stern, though he did sound like he was trying not to laugh. Bella frowned at him, but she went without arguing.

I stood there and watched them disappear through the stacks. Then I went to the elevator and punched the DOWN button, with no particular destination in mind. As I waited for the elevator, I heard someone move, from somewhere behind me. A hand or a knee, perhaps, had come in contact with the edge of one of the sets of metal shelves, and there was a faint pinging sound.

Curious, a little uneasy and not sure why, I abandoned the elevator and walked between the carrels on my left and the stacks on the right. Had someone been eavesdropping? Most of the history graduate students had carrels on the fourth floor, and it could have been any one of them, or some nosy bystander. Bella and I had offered some entertaining tidbits to the person who had been listening.

As I moved through the stacks, I glanced casually to my right, trying to catch whoever it was. The floor was quiet. When I reached the fourth range of shelves, there was suddenly a flash of movement. In the dim light shining down through the stacks, I caught a glimpse of blond hair.

I ran back toward the elevator, but whoever had been there, eavesdropping in the stacks, had gone, possibly by the stairs or another elevator at the other end of the floor. I thought about who it might have been. Blond hair meant practically everybody involved in the case, and that wasn’t much help.

On a hunch, I went upstairs to the history department office. I wasn’t sure what I hoped to see, but I began walking down the hall. I could at least get some idea of who was on the fifth floor, because the eavesdropper could easily have come up.

As I turned the corner, I saw Azalea ahead of me, just coming out of the department office. Margaret was with her. Since they didn’t appear to have noticed me, I trailed them casually.

They stopped at Wilda’s office. After knocking, Azalea opened the door, and she and Margaret walked in.

I scurried quickly down the hall and was almost in front of the door before I realized that it was open wide enough for me to see inside, and the occupants of Wilda’s office were able to see me as I skidded to an ungainly stop outside the door. Trying to appear innocent, I smiled at the four women in the office, as their blonde heads turned almost as one in my direction.

Her face blank, Margaret closed the door quietly in my face, as Wilda, Azalea, and Selena turned their backs.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I stood there in the hall for a moment and called myself twenty-seven kinds of stupid. One of the women in that room was probably a double murderer. I was convinced of it now. And, in my usual graceless way, I had advertised my presence at the most inopportune time. I was willing to bet also that one of them had been down on the fourth floor, listening in on my conversation with Bella and Bruce. The fourth floor was where much of the library’s history collections were shelved. The eavesdropper could have been any one of them, even Azalea, who often read history, particularly books by faculty members.

But that conversation would probably alarm only one of them unduly. I just couldn’t believe that this was a conspiracy by the four of them. Three of them were innocent, I thought, innocent at least of the two murders, and maybe those three didn’t realize that the fourth was the culprit.

I decided to move away from Wilda’s office door before one of them came out and found me still there. I lumbered down to the history office, lost in thought, and almost ran into Dan Erickson.

We both mumbled “sorry” to each other. I stopped, but Dan brushed on by me and rounded the corner. Actually I was relieved, because after our conversation that morning, I didn’t feel up to talking to him again for a while. I hoped he had already contacted Herrera. If he hadn't by the next day, I’d have to tell the lieutenant myself what Dan had told me.

It might be a moot point by then, anyway, if what I suspected about the two murders was true. I went on into the office and smiled casually at Thelma, who winked at me once again. Her small act of espionage had clearly cheered her up—or perhaps it was the fact that Azalea was not in the office.

I picked up one of the phones and punched in my home number, anxious to talk things over with Maggie and Rob. My phone rang and rang, but no one answered. I disconnected, then asked Thelma for the department’s list of home numbers. I found Rob’s and dialed it. After four rings, the answering machine picked up. My stomach did a couple of flip-flops as I listened to Charlie’s voice prompt me to leave a message. Rob obviously hadn’t thought about the answering machine the past few days.

“Rob, it’s me,” I mumbled, trying to keep my voice from Thelma’s eager ears. “I’m on campus, and I’ve found out a lot of things we need to talk about. I think I’ve got it figured out, so you and Maggie come on over as quickly as possible. I’ll be in my carrel.”

Once again I disconnected, then I punched in Maggie’s home number. When the answering machine picked up, Maggie’s voice invited me to leave a message. I repeated the message I had left for Rob, then hung up.

Thelma was staring at me unashamedly, but I didn’t want to stick around and face any questions. I bade her goodbye, then escaped out into the hall.

From the periphery of my vision, I caught a flash of movement, as if someone had just ducked out of sight around the corner. I stood still, listening. Muted sounds of conversation came from an office nearby, and the fluorescent lights hummed faintly above me. I couldn’t hear any footsteps.

I shrugged off my vague feeling of disquiet. Hearing Charlie’s voice on the answering machine had unsettled me to the point that I was imagining things.

I turned and walked the other way down the hall, toward Ruth McClain’s office. I thought the time had come to take her into my confidence and ask what she knew about Margaret’s dissertation.

The door of Ruth’s office was closed, but the lights were on. I started to knock, but then I heard voices and realized she must be talking to someone. I checked my watch, then peered at the small typed card taped on the door. This was during her regular office hours. I’d have to wait until whoever was with her finished.

I leaned against the wall beside her door and tried to let my restless mind slow down the turmoil of thoughts. I had to concentrate and think through all this information rationally.

Philip Dunbar’s dissertation seemed to be the key to the whole problem. I found it hard to believe that all existing copies of it had been in his car when he was killed. I was convinced that he must have had another copy somewhere.

Then, when he had died so tragically, an opportunist had seized the chance to take possession of what could be a valuable property. If Dunbar’s dissertation had been of the quality of his article, then the full-length work would have been valuable indeed. The article demonstrated his abilities both as a scholar and as a writer. Not only would an outstanding dissertation, published as a book, bring its possessor an excellent reputation in the competitive world of academia, but it could bring money from the popular market as well. Dunbar’s writing style was lively and interesting, and I could see easily where his work would appeal to an audience larger than that of the scholarly community. Writers like Barbara Tuchman, with fewer historical credentials than Dunbar would have possessed, had hit the best-seller list with works of history that were both scholarly and entertaining. Finally, with the academic job market so difficult to crack, some persons might be willing to commit murder to get ahead.

Stealing the dead man’s scholarly efforts, therefore, could pay off handsomely for the person cool enough to gamble on it—and patient enough to wait an appropriate length of time. Was Margaret cool enough and patient enough to fit the scenario I had sketched out? She would have had to do something about her writing style, however. But maybe she had written her dissertation that way on purpose, to mask her theft.

She certainly seemed cool enough, I thought, based on that conversation earlier in Ruth’s office. She hadn’t seemed the least bit grieved over Whitelock’s death, had actually sounded pleased that Ruth was so much easier to work with. But if Margaret had been having kinky sex with Whitelock, no wonder she was happy to have him out of the way.

That would certainly explain why Whitelock was willing to let one of his students plagiarize the efforts of another of his students. Briefly I wondered whether Charlie’s main motive in blackmailing Whitelock had been to get his hands on Dunbar’s dissertation. I was convinced that Charlie had figured out that someone had the missing dissertation, and his attempts to put pressure on Whitelock might have been directed toward obtaining the dissertation for himself.

Charlie had miscalculated badly, however, because whoever had the dissertation and planned to use it had murdered to keep it. Once Charlie was out the picture, though, Whitelock must have panicked, and the killer decided to take him out of the picture, as well, counting on the fact that the whole dissertation angle seemed so unlikely that no one would ever figure it out.

I smiled grimly as I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. The killer had reckoned without my nosiness and my loyalty to Rob. I don’t know whether the killer had had any idea that Rob could shape up in the police view as such a good suspect, but Rob had two hidden assets, as it had turned out—Maggie and me.

Rather pleased with this picture of Andy Carpenter as Nemesis, I entertained myself with the mental picture of the newspaper headlines. “Brilliant amateur leads police to murderer” sounded pretty good.

Then I brought myself back to earth. This was not the time to indulge my adolescent fancy of being a famous amateur detective. There were still a number of loose ends to tie up before I could call the case solved, and I wasn’t going to settle anything by fantasizing.

I glanced at my watch. Almost two o’clock. I hoped Maggie and Rob would get my message soon. I wanted to talk to them after I talked to Ruth. I stared at her door, willing whichever gabby student was with her to finish up so I could have my turn.

My attempts at mental telepathy came to naught, so I settled back against the wall once more and contemplated some of those loose ends.

What, for example, was Anthony Logan’s connection, if any, to the murders? Granted, I now knew that he was Margaret’s father, but I couldn’t figure out whether that was supposed to mean anything. I made myself slow down, and I concentrated on recalling that long conversation Logan and I had had the day Rob and I discovered Whitelock’s murder.

Logan had taken some pains to tell me stories to Whitelock’s discredit. That tale about the young woman, sent to Europe by her parents to get her away from Whitelock, was a good example.

What if Logan had been talking about his own daughter? That would certainly explain the bitterness he had seemed to feel toward Whitelock. The story would also strengthen Margaret’s connection to Whitelock. Maybe she had had an affair with him years ago, when she was an undergraduate. Then she returned to the university as a graduate student and ended up working with her former lover. They resumed the relationship at some point, and Margaret had plenty of blackmail material to force Whitelock to go along with her plans to use Dunbar’s work as her own.

Whitelock would have had to cooperate. He could have exposed Margaret, but that would have destroyed him, as well. So he had to support the whole thing.

But what if Whitelock had panicked after Charlie’s murder? Margaret had killed Charlie because he was threatening exposure, and with him out of the way, she might have figured that Whitelock would be more easily controlled. But maybe Charlie’s murder had backfired, made Whitelock more nervous, more anxious to confess and take whatever the consequences might have been. That could have prompted Margaret to murder him.