Death by Dissertation (5 page)

Her big eyes got bigger, and she leaned against the wall to steady herself. “Oh, no!” she said, the fear raw in her voice. “Who?”

“Charlie.” I reached out, just in case, to catch the cascade of books I was anticipating, but Maggie kept a tight grip on them.

She stared at me. “Oh, no,” she said again, her voice slightly steadier. “Just yesterday he was joking about someone murdering Julian Whitelock.” She caught her breath. “Was Charlie murdered?”

“Yeah. Someone bashed him on the head with that stupid statue.”

“I can’t believe it.” She wagged her head back and forth in disbelief. “Who would murder him?”

“Murder! Who’s been murdered?” a voice demanded harshly from behind me. I turned to see Azalea Westover a few feet away. Her short, compact body was nicely proportioned, and her blonde hair curled around an attractive, cherubic face. The look of angelic innocence was spoiled, however, by Azalea’s very prominent teeth, which were large enough to keep her lips from meeting except when she talked.

I remembered a remark of Charlie’s about Azalea. “Just take a look at her,” he had said, “and you can get an idea of what would happen if Bugs Bunny left his condoms at home when he screwed Shirley Temple.”

Cruel, yes, but also accurate—vintage Harper. Charlie had been known for quick and caustic remarks, which were always funny to those who were not their targets.

“Well, who’s dead? What happened?” Azalea repeated her query, and I realized I had been standing there, staring at the woman like a dimwit.

I finally found my tongue. “It’s Charlie Harper, Azalea. I found him in the grad lounge this morning when I got here.”

She drew herself up to her full five-five and tried to frown—although, with her pearly whites, it was difficult. “Well, Andy, what happened? How do you know it was murder?”

Breathing deeply to control my temper, I responded through clenched teeth, “Someone hit him on the back of the head. I don’t imagine he did that to himself.”

Azalea smiled, offering an impressive display. “Well, well, the little bastard finally bought it, huh? I always thought he’d get what he deserved.”

I wanted to slap her and, in fact, came close to it for poor Charlie’s sake, but I didn’t want to have to answer an assault charge, no matter how justified.

“My goodness, woman,” Maggie sputtered, “I didn’t think even you could be such a coldhearted bitch!”

Well, our Azalea retreated a step on that one, while I resisted breaking into a cheer. Maggie was the one graduate student Azalea appeared to be afraid of, because Maggie’s dad was reportedly next in line to be Dean of Humanities. Azalea, political little soul that she was, tried her best to stay on Maggie’s good side.

Azalea, without any comment, turned and walked back the way she had come, toward the department office. No doubt to get on the hotline to Putney Puterbaugh, who would probably live up to his nickname, “Pooter,” and fart around, getting in everybody’s way, causing mass confusion, as usual. McLendon, one; Westover, diddly-squat.

Maggie stared after Azalea with a look of intense distaste. “I’d love to pull every one of that bitch’s teeth with rusty pliers.” She spat out the words. “She must have forty of them.”

I groaned as I thought of something. “Rob doesn’t know about this yet. I wonder whether I ought to call him, or if the police would get me if I did.” Maggie shrugged, unconcerned about the niceties of police protocol. “There’s not a whole lot they can do, I guess. After all, it’s natural to spread the news.” She headed for the office. “Let’s go see what Azalea’s stirring up, and maybe we can use one of the phones there without having to wage battle over it.”

Wage battle put it succinctly,
I thought. Normally Azalea refused to let students use the phones in the history department office, unless it was on behalf of one of the professors.

I followed Maggie down the hall. The more I thought about the situation, the more uneasy I became. The consequences of Charlie’s murder were beginning to sink in. Until the murder was solved, we’d all be weighing one another’s words and actions, looking for something suspicious. Campus security officers occasionally found transients in the library, but they didn’t often prove violent. It was possible, I supposed, that some stranger had murdered Charlie. His bitchiness could goad someone, mentally unstable in the first place, into an attack—I could imagine that quite easily. But I hadn’t spent countless hours reading mysteries for nothing. The killer had to be someone we all knew.

My mind flashed on the thought of Whitelock as the murderer. Surely even he wouldn’t kill a graduate student just because he had been ridiculed in front of other students.

Maybe Azalea had done it,
I thought maliciously. She hadn’t shed any tears over the news, and I considered her capable of just about anything.

Uttering an old Irish blessing against goblins, I entered the office at Maggie’s heels.

As soon as I walked in, I was the center of attention. Azalea’s junior coworkers, Lindy Carter and Thelma Williams, both in their early twenties, were saucer-eyed with excitement. They surrounded me, edging Maggie out of the way. I backed up into the corner and plopped down on the couch with Lindy on one side and Thelma on the other.

Both Lindy and Thelma were fond of me, because I had this strange habit of treating them like real people. Amazingly enough, they seemed to appreciate it. Azalea sat behind her desk, trying to set herself apart from her coworkers’ vulgar curiosity, but I was willing to bet that her ears were standing at attention to catch every tidbit possible. She wanted the information as badly as they did, but she didn’t want to ask me for any more details and risk another howitzer blow from Maggie.

Selena walked in then, and a jittery Thelma broke the news to her before I could stop her. The Ice Queen’s eyes narrowed for a moment while I watched her. I thought she would pretend not to be interested, but then she, too, urged me to tell what I knew.

I couldn’t avoid telling them what I had discovered, so I tried to make it as clinical and dispassionate as possible, for their benefit as well as my own. I kept my speculations about the murder weapon to myself, because I didn’t want to blab everything before the police got going on the case. I was also trying to keep the image of Charlie’s body from reappearing so clearly in my mind. In the midst of my description, a voice boomed out from behind me.

“What the hell is going on here this morning? Some idiots in a police car nearly ran me down when I crossed the street in front of the library.”

Without even turning in the direction of the doorway, I identified the speaker, both by the volume of the words and by the tart diction of their delivery. Whitelock had arrived—loaded for bear, as my mother would say, just like always.

Since the women seemed speechless, I found the task of breaking the news once more my responsibility. I stood up and took a few steps toward the professor. At six-three, I towered over the man, who was at least a foot shorter than I. Did I mention that Whitelock didn’t much like me?

His patrician features were pinched in fury. He ran a hand in agitation through a thick mane of white hair. “Well?” he demanded. “Answer me, Carpenter.” “Well, sir,” I replied, frowning, “I’m afraid something pretty bad has happened. Charlie Harper was murdered in the grad lounge last night.”

The color drained so quickly from Whitelock’s face, I thought he was going to faint.

Chapter Five

I stuck out an arm to catch Whitelock, just in case, but he held himself to stiff attention after a moment of weakness. Selena moved forward to offer support, but he brushed her away also.

I decided not to bother shielding his sensibilities from the truth. “I found Charlie dead in the grad lounge this morning, sir. Somebody bashed his head in.”

Ignoring the gasp that came from either Lindy or Thelma, I concentrated on watching Whitelock’s face. This time, I thought I detected the twitch of a nerve under his left eye, but he let nothing show.

He turned to Azalea. “Should any person in an official capacity wish to speak to me, I shall be in my office, Miss Westover.” He then marched out.

Cool was one word for it. Though, if my advisor heard similar news about me, I hoped she might at least have the decency to express public regret at my passing. From behind me, I heard a snort of disgust. Such was Maggie’s comment on Whitelock’s behavior.

Azalea had busied herself with her word processor, and Lindy and Thelma had disappeared, no doubt to spread the news. I watched Selena hurry out after Whitelock.
Good luck playing the ministering angel!
I thought. Shaking my head, I returned to the couch, where Maggie had made herself comfortable, to ask her whether she still thought I should call Rob. Before I could speak, we heard a commotion at the door.

Imagine a skinny, pear-shaped being with matchstick legs and a mop of fuzzy gray hair atop a face that belongs to a perpetually bewildered chipmunk. Putney Puterbaugh, august chair of the history department, had arrived. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, Judy Collins started singing “Send in the Clowns.” When life didn’t come with a soundtrack, I supplied my own.

Footer, as we called him not so affectionately, got hysterical easily, which made you wonder why the rest of the faculty voted him in to the job as department chair. Maybe they thought he could do the least amount of damage as an administrator. Which just showed how practical-minded most of them were.

I groaned, and Maggie, trying not to laugh, poked me in the ribs.

“Andy, Andy, Andy,” Footer gabbled at me, Azalea holding on to his arm and trying to slow him down. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, what are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

I groaned again in my head as I stood up and tried to reassure the poor guy. “Dr. Puterbaugh”—thank goodness Footer hadn’t rolled off my tongue—“please try to calm down. The campus police have the situation under control, and I’m sure they’ll get to the bottom of this before long.”

Footer moaned, and Azalea went into the brown-nosing Nightingale routine that she did so well.

“There, there, Professor Puterbaugh,” she soothed. “Why don’t you come to your office, and I’ll fix you a pot of your favorite herbal tea. That will help you feel better. Just come with me.” She gritted her teeth and started towing.

Footer stopped dithering, thankfully, and allowed Azalea to drag him out of the room. I sank down on the couch with Maggie. One look at her face, and I burst out laughing. Unable to restrain herself any longer, she started howling too. Then, realizing that this was not the most politic time to be caught laughing madly, we both shut up.

“Lord,” Maggie whispered to me, “that poor man is such a fool.”

“Yeah, they should call it the ‘Footer Principle’ instead,” I responded, then almost started laughing again.

Maggie gave me another poke in the ribs, because Azalea was glaring at us from the doorway. I shut up, but I glared right back, daring her to say anything. She then decided to ignore us and marched over to her desk.

Maggie rolled her eyes at me and picked up one of her books to thumb through. I needed to stay until the campus police wanted me, and Maggie wasn’t about to miss anything, so we remained on the couch.

A tall, slender black woman in uniform then walked in the door, looked around, and headed straight for me. “Officer Williams,” she informed me. “Are you Andy Carpenter?” she asked, consulting the notebook in her hand.

I stood up. “Yes, I am, Officer.” My stomach started a gymnastics routine.

“Relax for a minute,” she responded. “I need to stay with you until Lieutenant Herrera, the investigating officer, gets here.” She gave me a keen look. “I suppose it’s too late to ask whether you’ve been talking about what you saw.” The dismay on my face gave her the answer she had obviously expected.

Though I could tell she was irritated, Officer Williams nevertheless grinned. “That’s the way it happens, sometimes.” She shrugged and asked to see my driver’s license and student ID.

As she copied some information from them, I realized that the police would check to see whether I had any kind of criminal record. Lovely thought. There weren’t any blots on my escutcheon that I could remember, so I didn’t worry about it.

The officer returned my license and ID, and I subsided gratefully onto the couch, suitably chastened. Good grief, as many mysteries as I’d read, I knew better than to go blabbing my mouth to everyone, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to be the center of attention. At least, I comforted myself, I hadn’t said a word to anyone about my observations of what looked like the murder weapon. Except to Maggie, that is. And I couldn’t possibly suspect her!

Officer Williams, with dispatch, collected the names and addresses of Maggie, Azalea, Lindy, and Thelma. Then she stood silently beside the couch, her presence ensuring that no one talked about anything, much less the murder.

I thought about what I had noticed in the half hour or so since I had found the body. Whitelock’s reaction to the news of Charlie’s death had been unusual. Under normal circumstances the man vented his emotions the way rabbits gave birth. Why, despite the shock of the situation, had Whitelock been nearly speechless on this occasion? What was he hiding? Something was strange, and I had an uneasy feeling that things were going to get stranger.

In about a half hour, Quigley—or was it Porter?—stuck his head in the door and gave a sign to Officer Williams, and she ushered me into the hall.

I followed the two of them to one of the smaller seminar rooms that the campus police had commandeered. Officer Williams disappeared as I entered the room, and a handsome, dark-haired man in a slightly rumpled suit, his tie loose, stood and motioned me to take a seat across from him.

In clipped tones, he introduced himself as Lieutenant Rafael Herrera of the university police department. Mid-thirties, I judged, and a little tired right then, but still he managed to give me a thorough inspection. Was it my imagination, or had the air conditioning failed yet again in this room?