I was out of breath as often happened when I rambled.
Virgil drained his beer then sucked his lips in tight. “We’re withholding one thing. I’m going out on a limb here telling you. But what the heck, I don’t think this is what’s going to be the gotcha.” I moved forward on my seat. “There were papers scattered over and around the victim’s body and throughout the office. Pages and pages of yellow computer paper, eight and a half by eleven sheets, some with typed text, some with diagrams and pictures. They were crinkled up as if someone had thrown them around in anger.”
I thought immediately of Rachel’s thesis. The campus store sold reams of very inexpensive yellow paper that most students used for drafts of their reports that no teacher would see. Once they edited their papers and were ready to submit, they printed on a good white bond paper. I knew Rachel’s thesis was still in the yellow paper stage, though she’d had a series of oral presentations on her data.
“Don’t tell me,” I whispered. I leaned over, put my face in my hands and partly over my ears, and pressed my body farther into the couch, but I could still hear Virgil as plain as day.
“The name at the tops of the pages was R. Wheeler and the pages were bleeding with red pencil corrections and nasty comments.” Virgil shook his head slightly. “It doesn’t look good for your friend.”
I rubbed my eyes and breathed out loudly.
“Can I ask one more question, Virgil? If it’s out of line, just tell me, but doesn’t it look as though Rachel is being framed, that someone wants you to think Rachel killed her teacher? Everyone knows he’s given her a hard time for years, and especially right now, about her thesis.”
Virgil nodded. “I know what you’re thinking. And you have a point. Who leaves the murder weapon and evidence of anger at the scene, practically shouting out ‘me, me.’ But, with the janitor seeing her there, she’s the best we have right now. And sometimes a smart guy will frame himself, so the police will say what you’re saying. We’re looking at all of this, believe me, Sophie.”
He fell just short of saying, “We’re not that dumb,” and I admired his restraint.
I was out of ideas.
“Thanks again for coming by, Virgil. If there’s anything I can do. I mean, I can vouch for Rachel.” The offer sounded silly even to me but Virgil nodded politely.
“The best thing you can do is just sit back and let us do our job.”
“Easy for you to say.”
I was glad we could end with both of us smiling.
Almost.
“Archie will be in tomorrow,” he said, gathering up his jacket and tie. He handed me Archibald McConnell’s card. “Why don’t you give him a call and you guys pick a good time.”
I raised my eyebrows in a huge question mark.
“He needs to interview you. It wouldn’t look good on the report if I did it.”
I didn’t know whether to be devastated or deliriously happy that Rachel wasn’t the only suspect. I should have realized that sooner or later, the police would get to me on their list of people to interview.
“My, you’d think I was a suspect.”
Virgil smiled, broadly this time, enough for the dimple on his chin to show at last. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
We parted with a high five.
I’d just turned down my cool lavender sheets and placed a glass of iced herbal tea on my night table when the phone rang. I thought a new record had already been set for the greatest number of calls in one night.
I picked up and heard Rachel’s wispy voice.
“I’m home now, but it was awful, Dr. Knowles. You’d think I was some big-time criminal. Our neighbors were waiting for me in front of my house, and I even saw some people standing watching on the curbs all along the way.”
Probably an exaggeration on Rachel’s part, but, on the other hand, in a town as small as Henley, there wasn’t much to keep the citizenry entertained. A police drama was just what everyone needed on a hot Friday night.
I felt so bad for Rachel. I could barely understand her through her sobs.
“We need to talk,” I told her. It came out sounding not unlike the intro to a breakup.
I wanted desperately to talk to Rachel now that I had more facts—alleged facts—to work with. But not at this hour, not after this day.
“Yeah, for sure, Dr. Knowles. And without my mother and all my aunts and uncles around.”
Where could we go? I realized that meeting on campus was not a good idea. Certainly not Rachel’s home either. Here? Bruce would be by—too soon, I realized, looking at the clock. Ariana and her class would arrive at noon for at least a couple of hours. I’d have to call Ariana in the morning to let her know that I wouldn’t be here, but she could still use my house. I hated to change the venue on her on such short notice.
The ideal spot for a private meeting would be a place at the edge of town, sparsely populated, with no crowded Starbucks in sight.
“Can you meet me around noon?”
“Uh-huh.”
I had the feeling Rachel would have agreed to anything at that moment. “Can you get to the MAstar facility, out at the airfield?”
“Where Mr. Granville and Mrs. Bartholomew work? Sure.”
I was reminded how long Rachel had been part of the Henley family; she knew more than just our class schedules. “Are you okay right now?” I asked her.
“Yeah, everyone’s asleep, thank God. One of my aunts has this lawyer friend and he came by. He says it doesn’t look good for me.”
“He said that?”
“Not exactly, but I could tell that’s what he’s thinking.”
“Let’s start out positive about this, okay, Rachel?”
“I’ll try, Dr. Knowles.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that Detective Virgil Mitchell, Henley PD, said exactly what her aunt’s lawyer friend had said.
CHAPTER 6
I went to bed with a headache. My organic jade mist tea, a present from Ariana, smelled more like bitter almonds. The power of suggestion: Cyanide was more familiar to me than the poison Virgil mentioned in connection with Keith’s murder. I’d read somewhere that cyanide had an almond smell, but that not everyone had the gene to detect the odor. Apparently I was one of those lucky ones who possessed the gene, and could smell cyanide even when there was none within miles.
I woke up with the same headache, but the aroma filling the room had changed to that of dark French roast. I sniffed again. Ah, cinnamon buns, too. The pleasant odors and the rattling sounds in my kitchen told me that Bruce had arrived. Or that Keith’s killer had come to do me in, too, after serving me my favorite breakfast in bed. I turned over and put my pillow over my head. I was so beat I didn’t care who was in my house.
Sniff.
The aroma of coffee wouldn’t quit. I lifted myself from my cocoon and shambled into the kitchen.
Bruce was ready with a steaming mug of coffee. “Here’s a little something to get you started,” he said, kissing my cheek. “It must have been a tough night for you.”
“You could say that.”
“Breakfast awaits in the main dining area.” He took a little bow, waiter-like.
Maybe life was worth living after all. I accepted the mug, making a huge effort to smile in gratitude. In a couple of hours I wouldn’t want to get near anything that sent a hot vapor bath to my face, but as a wake-up beverage, I’d take rich, hot coffee in any season.
I squinted. Why did Bruce look so much better than I did, even after he’d pulled his fifth all-nighter in a row? But then, I was a pushover for stubble. I ran my finger along his cheek and gave him a weak smile.
Bruce was a marvel, the way he got off a twelve-hour shift at nine in the morning, chipper and ready to start the day. He’d finally crash around two or three in the afternoon and be all set to leave for work again by eight in the evening. Then, during his seven days off, he’d snap back to a normal sleeping pattern. Granted he was often able to nap during the night on the cot in his MAstar trailer bedroom but there was that phone—the crew called it the Bat Phone—on the wall that could go off at any moment, a klaxon sound summoning them to an emergency. Flight nurse Gil Bartholomew, Hal’s wife, compared the sound to that of a tack hammer working directly on her skull.
“I was hoping the smell would wake you up,” Bruce said. “I hate to eat alone, especially in your kitchen.” He took a step back and scrutinized my face. “Did you get any sleep at all, Soph?”
“Probably as much as you did.”
He made a gesture meant to mimic a maitre d’ toward the patio doors, next to which my old white farm table was set for two. More coffee, lightly scrambled eggs, juice, and cinnamon buns from a nearby bakery. My headache faded at the sight.
I’d met Bruce in Boston five years ago at the wedding of his cousin, who married a college friend of mine. We still didn’t know for sure if Sean and Karina had put us at the same table on purpose, but it hardly mattered anymore. We’d moved from two hours of talk at the big round favorladen table to two more hours at a late-night coffee shop.
I loved hearing about the odd jobs Bruce had worked—like flying helicopter tours over the Grand Canyon and transporting CEOs through the air to golf matches. He’d let me go on and on about how mathematics was a subject of study in its own right, and not simply a tool for science, as some of our upper floor Franklin Hall faculty thought.
Over the years I’d gotten to like Bruce’s frequent movie references and he tolerated my birthday theories. At the time it was important to me that he didn’t laugh when I told him he was destined to be a pilot since his birthday, June 4, was the anniversary of the demonstration of the first hot air balloon.
We were very well suited to each other and by now I’d forgotten life before Bruce.
This morning I was the one with the trauma story. Bruce had had a quiet, fogged-in night at MAstar. No patients needing transportation from one facility to another, and no accidents.
“None that we could get to, anyway,” Bruce told me.
“I thought you had some new guidance system that let you fly lower than before.”
“You do listen,” he said, playing with my fingers for a moment. “The limit used to be a little more than eleven hundred feet, now it’s three hundred sixty, but that’s not zero, oh mathematician.”
You’d think a mathematician would have a better concept of where three hundred and sixty feet up was located, but I had a hard time visualizing it, other than picturing a thirty-six-story building, which required a mental journey to Boston or Providence, Rhode Island. The tallest structure in Henley, Massachusetts was its combination courthouse and city hall, a whole six stories high.
I filled Bruce in on Virgil’s visit and Rachel’s second call. I was still smarting from how much evidence pointed to her, and still red-faced at how I’d kept shooting the messenger, Bruce’s best friend.
“Did Virgil tell you how I was a basket case last night?” I asked.
Bruce bit into the center of his bun, the best part, where most of the gooey sugar was concentrated. I often stole that part from him. He shrugged his shoulders. The stall spoke volumes. I had to wait until he swallowed to hear his answer.
“Virge deals with a lot of people in critical situations; he’s seen a lot of different responses, all legitimate.”
I laughed, only slightly annoyed to be lumped in with “a lot of people.” “Did you learn that in your ‘How To Deal With Trauma Victims’ class?”
He took another bite of pastry, hard to do when you’re laughing. “Mmaypbe,” he said.
“Seriously, Bruce, I don’t know who could have killed Keith, but I know it wasn’t Rachel Wheeler. I’m wracking my brain”—I shook my fork at him and a tiny bit of egg fell onto the table—“but not to
come up
with suspects. To eliminate them. The whole population of Franklin Hall could have done it, plus the entire membership of the faculty senate.”
“Even you, huh?”
“Yes.” I chose to ignore the attempt at derailment, but his comment did remind me that I had to call Virgil’s partner to schedule an interview. “Did I tell you that Keith tried to change the bylaws for choosing a faculty member for the Aurelius Henley Distinguished Professor Award?”
“Uh-huh,” Bruce said, but that didn’t stop me.
“Do you think that’s fair? Keith wants to change the requirements from ‘twenty-five years of service’ to ‘twenty-five continuous years of service.’ He only suggested it to eliminate Fran Emerson. My department head,” I added, making it sound like a personal slight.
“She’s been there almost thirty years but she took maternity leave twice,” Bruce said.
I gave a vigorous nod and took a mouthful of perfect eggs, not dropping a morsel. “I could go on—not only a bunch of students, but even Dean Underwood has her beefs with Keith over a number of things.” I paused. “
Had
her beefs. I’m telling you, Rachel’s alleged motive, that Keith was giving her a hard time with her thesis—hardly even stands out in that crowd of suspects. Keith alienated almost everyone.” I took another breath and evaluated my conclusion. “Sorry, that’s a terrible thing to say about a dead colleague.”
Bruce reached for my hand and let me wallow in guilt for a few moments. He knew me well.
“Maybe it’s like
Murder on the Orient Express
,” he said, holding his fork like a dagger. “You know, the movie where it ends up that everyone did it.” I turned away as he mimicked stabbing motions with the fork.
“You’re not helping.” Not quite true. Both the awesome breakfast and the objectivity Bruce brought to the table helped a lot.
After Bruce left, I had about an hour to get dressed, prepare the house for Ariana’s beading group, call Archie at the police station, and get to the Henley airfield where MAstar’s base station was located and where Rachel would meet me at noon. The downside of sleeping in—the day flew by.
To make up for skipping the beading class, I set out my most prized snack, peanut butter-filled pretzels, for the more-loyal-than-me crafters and their instructor. I arranged a plate of number-shaped sugar cookies that a flunking commuter student had baked for me. The cookies were doing double duty as bribe offerings, it seemed. It hadn’t worked for the student, who flunked anyway, but there was no law that said I couldn’t give the treats another try. In a gesture toward good health, I poured out a bowl of baby carrots, and in a fit of overly cautious behavior, I tossed a bag of hickory-smoked almonds into the garbage, convinced that they had a bitter smell.