Something was missing in my theory. I played with the murderous picture in my head, running a blackboard eraser back and forth across it but it wouldn’t disappear.
Out of the blue, Woody Conroy with his barrel of mops and brooms, invaded the scene that was taking over my vision. I heard Woody mention how he’d hung Keith’s Fellow award that morning. Pam entered the picture and I heard her tell me how she and her friends hadn’t seen Keith all day on Friday. Then Casey’s or Liz’s voice joined in, talking about the Fellow award on the wall.
Someone was lying. Either Woody put that award up the day before, or the girls had been in Keith’s office the morning he was murdered. How else could they have seen the award on the wall?
I left the scene, with the imaginary Woody and Pam and Liz and Casey arguing about who was telling the truth. My chips were on Woody.
My mind reentered the interrogation corner of the Emily Dickinson Library.
“Casey, did you change your grade?”
Casey lifted her head from the cushion of her arms on the table. Her blond hair was wet from tears that had started when the subject of organic chemistry came up. Her face was streaked with poorly applied eye makeup. She opened her mouth but no words came out.
Pam and Liz had reached us by now. Liz began stroking Casey’s back. Pam’s arms were folded across her flat chest.
“We can explain,” Pam said.
“I’m all ears.”
“Let’s go somewhere else,” Liz said. “This whole place is creeping me out.” She wrapped her arms across her thin body as if she were freezing. Or at a crime scene.
“I can’t stand this campus one more minute either,” Casey said, in a low scream, pointing toward Franklin Hall. She’d pulled herself together enough to stand up. “Can we go to, like, a coffee shop downtown?”
“I have my car,” Pam said, before I could respond. She looked at me. “Unless you’re afraid to ride with us?”
“Of course not,” I said.
How foolish was this? Was I now the same obstacle to Casey’s college funding that Keith had been? I refused to believe these young women would harm me.
Still, I hoped Bruce wouldn’t travel too far out of range of my cell.
We sat at a round table in Back to the Grind, only a few blocks from campus, an easy walk in better weather. The place wasn’t air-conditioned, but a large fan kept the room bearable. The ride over had been silent except for the sounds of an old AC/DC album in Pam’s CD player.
Now with various levels of caffeine drinks in front of us, it was still silent. Until Casey started to tear up again.
Pam put her hand on Casey’s arm and the waterworks stopped. “We just wanted to help Casey out,” Pam said.
“So you two were happy with your Cs and Ds?” I asked, addressing Pam and Liz.
“We just thought, while we were there, you know, we might as well up ours a notch, too,” Liz said.
I rolled my eyes, shook my head, and otherwise showed my extreme disapproval.
“Oh, come on. How many students does Dr. Appleton really flunk in the long run?” Pam asked in an updated version of “pshaw.” “Not that many when it comes to final grades. He likes to scare us is all. I’d have come out fine one way or the other.”
“I knew I could make it up,” Liz said. “Honestly, a C or D here or there isn’t going to ruin my life. But Casey would have had to leave school.”
“And that was worth your teacher’s life?”
The girls turned to me, eyes all wide, mouths open.
I heard the beginnings of sentences.
“Oh, no…”
“We didn’t really…”
“How could you think…”?
Their protests were intermingled; I couldn’t tell who was saying what.
Pam and Liz each held one of Casey’s hands. All were in tears when the next round began.
“He was already dead.”
“I wanted to just leave.” This, I was sure, was from Casey.
“We went there to help Casey try to negotiate.”
“We started to knock, but the door just pushed open.”
“I didn’t want to go through with it.” Casey again.
“I’ve been a wreck.” And again.
“It was a stupid thing to do, but he was dead. And there was his computer screen-”
“With all our grades.”
Eventually, the girls started from the beginning, when they’d headed up to the fourth floor around two thirty on Friday. They took turns describing the crime scene, with their professor on the floor behind his desk. It was like hearing Rachel all over again and I realized they didn’t match the profile of a killer any more than Rachel did. Assuming I’d know one when I saw one.
“We really are disgusted with ourselves,” Liz said.
“You should be,” I said. “But I’m glad you’re telling the truth now.”
“What should we do?” Pam asked, surprising me. I’d have expected her to exact a promise from me to not breathe a word.
“You should go to the police,” I said, all virtuous.
“Aren’t you working with the cops?” Liz asked.
Uh-oh. Virtue was about to fly out the open window next to our table.
“Yes, I am,” I said, mentally reserving the fact that the cops didn’t know it. “And I have a couple of questions if you don’t mind-”
“Oh, my God. Can we help?” Casey said, while Liz and Pam gave me an “anything you like” look.
I took a notebook out of my purse, as befitted one helping out the Henley PD.
“Let’s start with your arriving at Dr. Appleton’s office, about two thirty you said?”
“Uh-huh. After the party. His car was still on campus, so we knew he was in and we thought if we all went up together we might be able to make him see reason.”
An intimidating group, but I doubted Keith would have been fazed by three of his students. I envisioned his standing up behind his desk and flicking them out the door.
“You all stayed to help me clean up, so it was after that?”
“We wanted to make sure you were gone,” Casey said.
Pam shot her a look. The old Pam was back. “We didn’t want anyone interrupting us,” she said.
I got it.
“About Dr. Appleton’s office. I know it won’t be pleasant, but if you can go back in your minds and tell me if you saw anything out of the ordinary?”
The girls closed their eyes, séance style, and at that moment I felt they were putty in my hands. I wasn’t proud of the rush I got. Was this how Archie felt when I was cowering before him yesterday afternoon? If I didn’t get my promotion, was I too old to sign up for the police academy? Questions for another time.
“It was a mess,” Pam said. “And, you know, Dr. Appleton always kept everything in order.”
“A real neat freak,” Liz said.
“Was there any food around?”
The girls looked at each other and nodded.
“There was a paper plate with cake outside the door,” Pam said. “I think I saw Rachel make up a plate for him.”
“And a can of soda,” Liz said. “Some kind of cola, I think.”
“We were going to pick it up and take it in, but we decided not to move it, in case that’s where he wanted it,” Casey said.
“You know, like, maybe he was trashing it,” Liz added.
I tried to process this factoid and insert it into my mental timeline. Rachel took the cake upstairs and left it outside Keith’s door at about one forty-five. The girls saw it there at two thirty, but Woody saw it on the chair in Keith’s office at four. And, of course, the police didn’t see it all because Woody tossed it to protect Keith’s reputation as a neat freak.
I was already juggling all the visitors to Keith’s postmurder office. The killer was there before Rachel and the girls arrived, but someone else was there between the girls’ visit and Woody’s discovery. It had to have been the killer coming back to plant evidence against Rachel. Would a killer risk two trips? I wondered if all crime scenes were as busy as this one.