I hadn’t even given Bruce the details of Rachel’s confession of sorts when I reported on my meeting with her at MAstar. And though I wished it with all my heart, I doubted that Rachel had offered up her story to the police.
Virgil said the medical examiner had placed the time of death between noon, based on Woody’s having seen Keith’s car at that time, and four, when Woody found him.
I was getting increasingly uncomfortable knowing more than the police did, thanks to Rachel’s reluctance to tell them the whole truth. The Big Three’s two thirty visit to Keith’s office didn’t shed any new light on the time of death, but it did give us information on the cake and the yellow sheets that were allegedly Rachel’s thesis.
If I really wanted a good night’s sleep, I should go to the police.
Now, a conscientious voice inside my head said.
You don’t have a car, said my bad girl voice, looking for any excuse.
Give yourself one more chance to put it all together, said my puzzle voice.
Two to one. I’d give myself that chance, at least until the dean cornered me tomorrow.
I sat at the counter in my kitchen with a reheated omelet. Not recommended.
I had to come up with a strategy. I could query the Ben Franklin faculty. And ask them what? If they’d followed the cake trail by any chance? If they’d followed the journey of the boxes by any chance?
For once I was looking forward to a faculty meeting. I’d had an email from Fran that all the departments of Franklin Hall would meet separately after the president’s address, as she’d requested.
When I was stuck like this, puzzling always helped me. I finished the crossword puzzle I’d been working on that was formerly in the shape of a beaker. I’d turned the grid into the shape of a teapot and now I sent it electronically via my laptop to my editor in Kansas City. It felt good to complete a task, if a relatively unimportant one. I liked it when my life was easy to figure out.
The sound of a motor caught my attention. Either Bruce or the box thief had opened my garage door. I almost wished it were the box thief, come to apologize and explain himself.
It could happen.
Not this time, but Bruce’s “Hey” was very welcome. I had to admit it felt a little creepy in my house today, knowing someone had intruded at least as far as my garage when I was out. The sooner I got to the bottom of the ill wind that had swept through Henley, the sooner I’d feel safe and grounded again.
“Have you slept at all today?” I asked my boyfriend.
Bruce shook his head. “I’ll get some tonight. There won’t be anything big at work, not two nights in a row. I’ll bet the most we’ll have to do is an IFT. A half hour and we’re back.”
I knew about interfacility transfers. When a patient needed equipment or care not available in the hospital he was in, MAstar could be called in to transport him to another. The Bat Phone summoned them for that mission also, I’d learned.
“You’re saying you can’t have two busy nights in a row at work. Is that a rule?”
“It’s statistics. Know anything about them?”
Cute. “I think you should at least try to nap.”
“Before or after I tell you what I learned from Virge?”
I jumped off the stool and grabbed Bruce’s arms. “Come here, you.”
Surprise, surprise, the Henley PD had been working on the same case I was, and they had their own ways of getting information. Without stealing material from crime scenes or browbeating young coeds. It might turn out that while I was busy doing the above, eliminating a lot of pesky paperwork, the Henley PD had actually culled facts to work with. Another approach to a murder investigation.
I had no problem buttering up my hungry boyfriend/ coconspirator to get the most out of him. I cooked up a fresh soufflé and served it to him with cinnamon toast.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Keeping me dangling like this,” I said, taking a seat across from him.
I loved Bruce’s disheveled off-duty look, when the dark hair on either side of his widow’s peak formed unruly arcs, the ends of which touched his eyebrows. It was what people called the “Dark Irish look,” though you’d have to go back a couple of generations to find Bruce’s Galway Bay roots.
“You’re the one who told me not to call Virge.”
I poured coffee for both of us. “I know I said that, but that was stupid,” I admitted.
“Mmm hmm,” he mumbled through a mouthful of toast. He knew better than to agree completely with a statement like that.
“I’m waiting,” I said. I’d set my laptop in front of me on the kitchen table, across from Bruce and his breakfast/ lunch/dinner combination, poor guy. I was ready to take notes. I tapped my fingers on the keyboard.
“I always get the greatest stories from Virge. Like, this teenager on a bicycle tried to rob four people along Henley Boulevard one day last week. First, he tried to hold up a couple and when they told him they had no money, he just rode away. Then he stops a jogger, and that guy didn’t carry his wallet, so the kid tries an old lady, and, well, I forget the rest, but I guess this was all within one block, so all the victims jumped on him and held him down while one called the police.”
“What a kick,” I said, with no kick in my voice.
“Okay, I’ve had my fun. Not that Virge told me anything top secret, but he was willing to share for whatever reason. Everyone down there wants this to be put to bed quickly, believe me. The commissioner’s phone is ringing off the hook.”
“Are you saying that he thinks I could help?”
“Not in so many words. But I think it would be a good idea if you went down and talked to them.”
“You mean tell them about the boxes and all. Didn’t you tell him today?”
“I don’t even know what the ‘all’ is, by the way,” Bruce said. I wasn’t shocked that Bruce was aware that I’d been holding back from him. He’d had a lot of experience with my moods, tone of voice, and signs of tension. “And no, I didn’t tell him about the boxes. That’s for you to do.”
“I don’t see the boxes as all that important anyway,” I said. “The crime scene people had already been through Keith’s office and taken whatever they wanted. Eventually Woody or some other faculty member would have cleaned out the rest of the stuff. Why not me?”
“I’ll buy that,” he said.
“I hope the dean does tomorrow.”
“It’s not as if you’re withholding evidence.”
“I might be.”
Bruce put his fork down. His heavy eyebrows moved closer together.
“Hit me with it.”
What kind of psychology training were medevac personnel given that Bruce was able to turn things around and I ended up spilling everything first?
I told Bruce about the parade of people who walked through the crime scene and even messed with it, as Woody did.
“Soph,” was all he said.
“I know, I know. I’ll go by tomorrow right after I see the dean, I promise. Now it’s definitely your turn.”
“Well, I’m glad to report that the cops are on target. They’re putting the murder at sometime after one o’clock, which fits with Rachel’s finding him already dead at quarter to two.”
Whew. The police figured it out on their own. I felt marginally better. All I needed to do was give them the curious timelines for the cake and the yellow sheets.
“Are the results in on the poison? Can they tell what it was that killed him?”
“Potassium chloride.”
“Like the label on the bottle on Keith’s desk.”
“Uh-huh. I actually saw the crime scene photo of the bottle. It was transparent, with a white label, and it was in solid form, a granular white powder. But it’s very soluble in water. I guess it’s common in a chem lab. We probably even have some in the supply trailer.”
I thought of Rachel’s missing key to the cabinet in the main chemistry lab. “So someone used Rachel’s key to get it out of the cabinet, melted it in water, and put it in a syringe?”