The business over, people started getting up from the chairs and heading for the buffet table. The mood remained subdued.
“Can everyone wait just a minute?” I asked. “I think we should talk about the investigation into Keith’s murder.”
Heads turned in my direction, toward the back. Eyebrows went up, hands reaching for cookies stopped midair, but I was the most surprised person in the room.
I hadn’t exactly planned it, though in the back of my mind this sort of meeting was the ideal forum to make progress on the investigation. Ariana would have said my subconscious mind knew all along that I would do this, this way. Bruce would have asked what had brought on such rashness. I didn’t want to dwell on what I knew the dean would think.
“What are you saying?” Robert asked, incredulously. “That we do our own investigating?”
“We’re teachers, not cops,” Hal said.
“How would we go about it?” Judith asked.
“I don’t have a plan,” I admitted, addressing Judith, who might be an ally. “But it seems to me we should do more than sit around and wait for the police, who at the moment have nothing solid.”
“There’s a rumor going around that Ms. Wheeler is their key suspect,” Robert said.
“That’s just what it is. A rumor,” I said. “Who here really believes that Rachel Wheeler, who gives over and above what her job requires to make sure classes and labs in this building run smoothly, who believes she’s a killer?”
“How would we know? I don’t know any killers,” Hal said.
Why was Hal resisting? Maybe there was truth to the rumor that he and Rachel had crossed the teacher/student line. Or were still crossing it. What if Keith found out and threatened to tell Gil her fears were well-founded? Taking on Gil would have been a formidable task for Hal. Easier to eliminate Keith.
I hated the way I was thinking. It was the product of a frustrated mind the logical powers of which had hit the wall.
“I don’t see the harm,” Judith said, stirring sugar into a glass of lemonade that was already too sweet for my lemon zinger taste. “Why don’t we just brainstorm for a while? Who knows? We might come up with something.”
Bless you, Judith.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” Fran said.
“It’ll be useless,” Robert said.
“We’re the ones who knew Keith best,” I said. “Surely we can spare a few minutes to think about whether we saw anything unusual in the days before he died. Someone in the building who didn’t belong, maybe, or someone doing something out of character.”
“We’ve been through this with the police,” Robert said.
“This is different. We’re his friends,” Judith said, joining the ranks of one, me, who made up his cadre of friends.
Besides the young woman he was seeing, of course. I still couldn’t get my head around that. Keith on a date. With a woman. With someone he thought enough about to mention her to Elteen. I hadn’t abandoned the possibility that he’d made the woman up out of whole cloth so that Elteen wouldn’t keep trying to set him up with a nice girl in Chicago. When did I become so cynical?
“We could start with who would have a really strong reason to want Keith dead.”
“You’re kidding,” Robert said. “You mean like that he kept me from getting full health care benefits because I took a lighter load the term my daughter was born?”
“That was an administrative decision,” I said. “Keith was only one vote on the faculty senate.”
“The deciding vote,” Robert said.
I’d forgotten that. It was harder to justify Keith’s vote in this case as beneficial to the college, unless it was to prevent faculty from sloughing off just because they had families. If so, I’d have to call it cold.
I looked at Fran, who was biting her lip. Probably dying to mention the change in bylaws that would have denied her the award she deserved for distinguished service.
“Let’s face it,” Hal said. “We’d have a hard time thinking of someone who didn’t have a gripe against him.”
How well I knew.
A loud noise interrupted us. The sound of Lucy’s chair as she pushed it back across the tile and dashed out of the room. I didn’t get a look at her face as she uttered a raspy “ ‘Scuse me, please,” but I doubted she was smiling.
Thanks to support from Judith, my faculty friends indulged me in telling me how they’d spent the day on Friday. Of course not for an alibi, I told them, just to see if something useful surfaced.
Nothing did.
“Too bad Lucy left,” Fran said.
“She’s new. She’s probably whacked out by all this,” Judith said.
I snapped to. Or she’s the girlfriend, I thought. Bonnie, Annie, Lucy might all sound the same to elderly ears. And Lucy’s last name was Bronson. Both Bs, two syllables. Close enough.
Lucy could be the name of Keith’s girlfriend.
Or his killer.
CHAPTER 17
I passed on joining the Ben Franklin faculty for lunch downtown. I felt I’d gotten all the information I could out of the group-that is, none-and I’d put off my meeting with the dean long enough. If I wanted to have lunch with anyone other than Bruce, it was Lucy Bronson. I made a note to make that happen.
Like a good employee, I headed for the boss’s office. After one stop and one phone call, that is.
The stop: I’d brought with me the manila envelope with the journal article I’d finished on Friday night before things fell apart. I stepped into the business office, two doors down from the assembly hall, said hello to Joey behind the desk, and slipped the envelope containing my twenty-first peer-reviewed research paper into the outgoing mail slot. Now I could say truthfully that I had more than twenty publications on my resume, should it come up. I wouldn’t mention the hundreds of puzzles and brainteasers.
The phone calclass="underline" I settled on a bench along the path between Franklin Hall and Dickinson Library. The heat from the concrete quickly penetrated my thin cotton dress and I shifted around to put more fabric between me and the cooking seat. I pulled out my cell and punched in Elteen’s number in Chicago, where it was mid-morning. I wasn’t proud of what I was about to do, but extraordinary circumstances, etc., as Winston Churchill, or someone of that ilk, once said.
“Well, hello again,” Elteen said when she learned who was calling.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “But I wonder if you could help with a little task.”
“Anything I can do, surely,” she said.
“It’s about the young woman Keith was seeing. Lucy, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, yes, I couldn’t think of her name, but yes, Lucy Brownson, something like that. What about her?”
“Aha” nearly slipped from my lips.
“Would it be all right if I gave her your address in case she wants to send a card to express her sympathy?” I looked up to the searing sun and hoped its rays wouldn’t turn into lightning bolts, set to chastise a sinner.
“Oh surely. Do you have my address?”
“I do have it, but I didn’t want to give it out without consulting you.”
After a few more utterances from Elteen about how very sweet and thoughtful I was, I was nearly in tears and finally hung up the phone and hung my head in shame.
“She should be back any minute,” Courtney said as I approached her desk. We both knew who “she” was. Courtney’s long, red hair was pulled back tight off her face, her short skirt dangerously close to the dean’s limit. She had a tall glass of lemon zinger iced tea ready for me. “Just in case,” she said.
I thanked her and gave her a hug.
“Oh, one little thing, Courtney. Lucy Bronson had to leave the meeting early and I’d like to get in touch with her. My faculty directory is in my office in Franklin.” I swung my arm in the direction of the faraway building, such a tough journey on a day like this. “Can you give me her numbers?”