I’d learned a long time ago how rank-conscious the dean was. Name-dropping was always a good bet for gaining the upper hand.
She pushed back the sleeve of her pale linen jacket, her idea of casual Sunday attire, and looked at her watch. Could it be that she had a life? I doubted it. I’d often thought that the reason she and Keith got along so well was that he didn’t have one either. They were each other’s nonlife.
“Very well, then. I’ll see you in my office right after President Aldridge’s all-faculty meeting in the morning.”
“President Aldridge also called for each department to hold a meeting after the all-hands assembly.” I was almost huffy this time.
The dean let out a long, annoyed breath. “Of course you’ll follow that directive. But, for now”-in a most unusual gesture, she took hold of my elbow and ushered me to a spot in the stacks, farther from the students-“you are to return to me the boxes of material you took from Dr. Appleton’s office immediately.”
“What are you-”
The dean’s “don’t you dare deny it” look cut me off. She stomped off in her sensible pumps.
“See you then,” I said to her back, then flapped away in my sandals.
CHAPTER 14
I’d had no time to dwell on the boxes except to think about hiring a PI to locate them for me. My phone rang as I was on my way to my temporary conference table at the back of the library. I clicked my phone on and used hand signals to tell Casey to meet me there in five minutes.
When did my life become so complicated? On Friday, when Keith Appleton was murdered, I remembered.
Bruce was calling me from the other end of the library. I’d seen Gil leave the building and Bruce wander off to the periodical rack, maybe to slip in copies of Rotor magazine as a recruiting device.
“I heard the dean call you ‘Sophie.’ That couldn’t have been good,” my perceptive boyfriend said.
I growled. “She wants the boxes back.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Bruce!” The volume was low but the tone was a shout.
“Kidding. Want me to help? I can call Virge.”
“You can’t call Virge.”
“Because you’re a thief? You know I love a good heist movie. The Score, The Thomas Crown Affair-”
“Bruce!”
“Go take care of your students. Let me see what I can do, okay? Do you need your car for an hour or so?”
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“You can take my car, but you can’t call Virge,” I repeated. “And I didn’t do a heist.”
I had one more chance with the Triad. Casey was the Queen of Bling, with a different set of shiny, tinkling baubles every day. While I couldn’t even stand to wear a watch on hot days, Casey decorated her wrists, ears, neck, toes, fingers and patches of bare skin with jewels and decals no matter what the weather.
It was tough to search out her small face with today’s distraction, a matching beaded set of earrings, necklace, and bracelet, in shades of red and purple. I was tempted to ask if she’d made them herself, and if so, had she bought the beads at Ariana’s shop, but that would have compounded the distraction.
I decided to try a new tactic with the third interview of the day, not counting the dean’s with me, and start with the elephant in the room.
“Casey, I felt you had more to say yesterday, when we were chatting outside Franklin Hall. Is there something you want to tell me?”
“We were at the party for Dr. Bartholomew, like everybody else, then we went to the dorm,” she said.
Not again. I sent a soft, compassionate breath her way. “Casey, I know Pam can be a little intimidating-”
“I don’t have anything more to say, Dr. Knowles. Can we just get to my grade for the class? Please?”
Casey’s “please” was a drawn out plea. That and her eyes, on the verge of tears, got to me. Time to move on. I knew these girls were hiding something, but when push came to shove, I couldn’t beat up on this child.
Casey was not doing well in applied statistics. To keep her scholarship she needed at least a B in each class. In my class she was hovering around C, plus one day, minus the next. I told her the kind of research paper she’d have to do to bring her grade up, and that she’d need to take an exam.
In my experience, there were two kinds of test takers, those who preferred oral exams and those who dreaded them. I gave Casey her choice.
“Oh, my God, I love orals,” Casey said. “I get all clutched up when I have to write and I can’t explain myself because the questions are too… too…”
“Too specific?”
She nodded. “Like Dr. Appleton’s. Like, with true/false it’s do or die”-she clamped her hand over her mouth-“I didn’t mean it that way.”
I patted her other hand, the one with six inches of thin multicolor spangles. “I know you didn’t mean it. You had that extended organic chem class with Dr. Appleton this summer, right?”
“I like that. ‘Extended.’ Actually it was makeup, since we did so badly this spring.”
“Do you know yet how that will be wrapped up?”
“Uh-huh, that new teacher, Ms. Bronson, is taking over now as far as working out our grades.”
“I’m glad it’s taken care of. What grade do you have going in?”
A simple query, to show my interest, not meant to be a trick question. I was past trying to dupe the girls into giving me information I could use to clear Rachel. And I’d decided some time ago that getting to the truth of who killed Keith Appleton was more important even than a single student. I needed to follow the evidence and the logic of the murder, no matter where it led.
I was taken aback to watch Casey stumbling over my simple question and looking as rattled as if she had one million dollars riding on her answer. She ran both hands through her unruly curls. “Uh… an A,” she mumbled.
That was a surprise. But why mumble an A when it might be the first one you’ve had in a long time? Maybe I’d heard wrong.
“Did you say an A?”
“I have an A going in,” she said, not much more clearly.
“Good for you. I thought you were struggling with that class.”
“I, uh, was, but I, uh, pulled it up.”
I looked across the table at Casey. She hadn’t been this flustered even yesterday while she was lying to me. She fidgeted in her chair, looked up to the ceiling and down to the table, glanced back over her shoulder toward the lobby, and then repeated the sequence. My guess was that she wished she could beam Pam and Liz over here to bail her out. Pam and Liz, on their part, were inching closer to us as it became increasingly obvious, even from a distance, that Casey was in distress.
Casey’s behavior threw me back to being in Keith’s office a few days before his death.
Keith is working on his laptop, updating his organic chemistry grade sheet. He’s in a hurry to finish up and print out the sheet to take to his class. “Look at this.” He spins his computer in my direction and shows me the screen. “Not one student even close to a B,” he says. I look. Sure enough, no grade above a C and most below it. I know he wants me to commiserate about the pathetic abilities of Henley chemistry majors. I don’t comment. He turns the laptop back and pecks away at his keyboard. He shakes his head. “Dumb sophomores,” he says. “Dumb juniors. Dumb every student at this dumb college.”
Now a picture started to take shape, and it wasn’t pretty. I saw Casey and her friends poisoning Keith-the details weren’t clear-and changing their grades on his laptop. I tried to chase away the picture. Of all the motives I could think of, this was one of the weakest. I imagined every college in cities and towns across the country losing a few teachers every year if this practice became popular.