“That’s not how it works. We don’t have a pecking order like that.” Not exactly, that is. I wasn’t keen on reciting the bylaws’ definitions for the various faculty rankings on a college campus, from adjuncts who taught one or two classes only, to instructors who were full-time but without significant credentials or seniority, all the way to full professors.
Archie flipped through pages of his notebook, back from where he started with me. “Weren’t you both in the running for full professor, coming up this fall?”
“Well, sort of, but there’s no law that says we can’t both be appointed. As I said, we submit articles to different journals; we both have plenty of students signing up for our classes.” I held my hands palms up, then quickly folded them on my lap again. There was no point in waving my DNA around in front of this man.
Neither did I want to share with this canny, knowledgeable detective that I’d set myself the goal of attaining full professorship for this year. I was on the young side of the demographic for the title, but I hoped my work supported it. Archie didn’t need to know that Keith had two years in age on me and one in seniority.
I looked around the bare room, catching my reflection in a window on the side wall. Haggard would have been a good descriptor. Sagging eyelids, hair frizzed beyond belief, disheveled shirt. I wanted to leave and head for the nearest shower.
Where was Virgil? Where was Bruce, best friend to Virgil? Why was I stuck with this know-it-all young partner who was interrogating, not interviewing? I’d been expecting to answer questions about Rachel, or Pam, or Liz, or Casey, or Fran, or Lucy, or Hal. Even Dean Underwood. I thought I’d been sent here to help. Now I had to face the reality that Virgil had not been joking when he’d implied I was in the pool of murder suspects.
I was getting hotter and hotter and hoped I wouldn’t pass out. I felt sure only guilty people passed out in situations like this.
Archie finished his flipping for the moment.
“Yeah, back to the promotions to full professor. There are perks with this, huh?”
“A small raise usually. We already have tenure. Mostly it’s the status, I guess.” I stopped. I should be answering with the smallest possible number of words. I’d read that somewhere. Or seen it on television.
“Usually you expect these announcements early in the fall term?”
Why was he harping on this? What made him think he knew anything about college faculty operations in the first place?
“That’s right.” Archie waited me out, and I added, “With four slots open in math and science, we were both very likely to get the promotion.”
“When was the last time you saw Dr. Appleton?”
From left field, but not a problem. I thought back.
“Outside the dean’s office on Thursday, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“It was on Thursday.”
“Was there a reason you were there, outside the dean’s office?”
Uh-oh. “She’d sent for me.”
“Because?”
I let out a heavy sigh. “Nothing that important. She wanted to talk to me about noisy parties… that is… seminars in our building.”
“Had she received a complaint?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Did she say who’d made the complaint?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Did you have any guesses?”
“No.” I’d crossed my fingers by now.
“And you saw Dr. Appleton where?”
I gritted my teeth. “Coming out of the dean’s office.” “But you didn’t assume he was the one who’d made the complaint about your noisy parties?”
“They weren’t…” I paused and took a breath. “No.”
“Because?”
“Well, she’d already sent for me long before he would have been in her office.”
A victory, but a small, short one.
“You’re close to your assistant, Ms. Wheeler?” Archie asked, a knowing look in his eyes.
“It’s not like we go to movies together or anything, but yes, I consider her a friend.”
“And yesterday, can you tell me what your interaction with Ms. Wheeler was?”
“I had a class in the morning that she had set up, and then she came at the end to take it down, before the party.”
Archie checked his notes. “That would be the party for Dr. Bartholomew. And that was an actual party, not a seminar.”
Smart aleck cop. “Yes.”
“I’m curious. What’s involved in setting up for a math class? Don’t you usually just use a blackboard?”
I heard the hint of a jocular air, but no way was I letting down my guard. By now my lips were like chalk, dry enough to make a scratching sound on that blackboard he brought up.
“I’m in charge of a program to make students more comfortable with everyday math, giving them problemsolving skills especially. It’s a hands-on way of teaching math. We use a lot of manipulatives.”
“You mean blocks and balls, that kind of thing?”
I smiled and tried to strike a tone between informative and condescending. “These days we use videos, online graphing calculators, interactive websites, that kind of thing.”
“It’s not the math I remember.”
“It’s not your father’s math class,” I said, with immediate regret.
He laughed. I sighed with relief.
“Thanks for coming in, Sophie. You can go now.”
“I can?”
He nodded and gave me a genuine smile for the first time. “Thanks for your cooperation. Sorry to put you through this, but you know I had to.”
Not really, but I knew I should count my blessings and split immediately. So, why didn’t I?
“Do you have any leads in the case?” I asked, astonished that I hadn’t dashed for the safety of my car already. I took one more stab at shifting police attention from Rachel. “I’d be happy to share with you what I’ve observed about Dr. Appleton’s dealings with the students, the other faculty-”
“We’ll let you know if we need you,” Archie said, back to his serious cop tone.
I left without another word.
I replayed the entire interrogation over in my head a number of times on the way home. It seemed clear to me that Archie and/or Virgil had interviewed Dean Underwood before they got to me. I could think of no other way that Archie would have known to quiz me on promotions and on the summons to her office. I wondered what their approach to the dean had been, antagonistic or deferential. Was she an informant or a suspect? After all, if it weren’t for Keith’s support of the change to a coeducational institution, Dean Underwood might have been able to keep her ladies’ academy fantasy.
In my mind, everyone was a suspect, except Rachel and me.
The clock on my dashboard, not the most accurate, read five twenty-five. I’d hoped to have enough time before Ariana arrived with herbs and lotions to get a decent start on Keith’s files. I wasn’t completely satisfied that the police had eliminated me from their list. I counted on something concrete to point to the actual murderer.
I turned into my driveway, pressing the garage door opener from a few yards away. The door rolled up and I headed in, between my treadmill and my workbench.
The treadmill was in its place, if forlorn for lack of use this summer.
The workbench was empty.
CHAPTER 11
It took some time for me to fully accept that my garage had been burglarized and my plan for a big breakthrough had been thwarted.
My gardening tools were in place, hanging from a pegboard; my fire extinguisher and two wooden ladders, one long, one short, were in their usual spots against a wall. Small items on racks here and there seemed unmoved. Besides the boxes, the only things that appeared to be missing were the shopping bags with clothing and odds and ends I’d been collecting for the charity pickup. My guess was that the thief assumed the bags were part of my haul from the campus, if indeed that was what this was all about.