Murder is Academic (10 page)

*

It was early for me, near eight in the morning, when I pulled into the Onondaga Falls Police Department lot and parked. If Der was surprised to see me at the door of his office, he hid it with a scowl on his face.

“I’ve got important information for you about the murder and your prime suspect, Orin Withers.” I grabbed the chair in front of his desk and sat down. Mary, the officer at the front desk and the person responsible for letting me into Der’s office, entered and handed me a cup of coffee.

“Where’s mine?” asked Der.

She drew her eyebrows together in a look my mother used when we kids did something wrong.

“You’ve been such a grump today, I think you deserve to get your own coffee. Besides, the pot’s empty. Unless you’d care to make more for the office.” She turned her face away from Der and winked at me as she left.

Der kept his eyes on his desk and swept a big hand through his hair.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got some information for you too. We found the shovel.” When his eyes met mine, I saw a bit of a twinkle in them, but I also noticed the dark circles beneath them.

I took pity on him and shoved the coffee cup across the desk. “I’ve had too much caffeine today already.”

The announcement about the shovel trumped my news, but then it’s hard to get the best of Der.

“You go first,” he said.

“Orin Withers has a girlfriend and has had for the past several months. He used his recent interest in fishing as a cover so his wife wouldn’t know what he was up to. Obviously, he was out at the lake with the girlfriend. She was with him when he and the president met there. And she’s his alibi for the time of the murder, but he can’t use her or his wife will kill him.” The last sentence spilled from my mouth before I could consider the inappropriateness of it.

“I already know that. Mrs. Withers called me last night and told me the whole story. She knew all along that Orin was playing around with someone.”

“Margo told you?” I was shocked. “How did she find out?”

“He always brought fish home after his fishing trips.” Der looked at me as if the logic of this statement was obvious.

“But if you’re fishing, you’d catch a few. Why wouldn’t he bring home fish?”

“Halibut, cod, scrod? Seafood from a fresh water lake? Even Margo didn’t fall for that one. And I don’t think Margo plans to ‘kill him’ as you suggested. I think she intends to divorce him.”

It would be more in keeping with her style to hold onto him so she could make his life a living hell for the next twenty or so years. I shared my thoughts with Der, whose brief encounter with Margo was enough to convince him of the accuracy of my prediction.

“Your turn,” I said.

“My men located the shovel in the shed behind the biological and physical sciences building. It had blood and hair on it. I assume they’ll be a match to Talbot’s. So far no fingerprints. It’s been wiped clean.”

Not very clean, if there’s still blood and hair on it.

“If I can track down who has the keys to that shed, we’ve got some great leads.” He sounded excited.

I tried to stifle my laughter with a cough. I didn’t fool Der who squinted his eyes at me and set his lips in that oh so familiar thin hard line that said he was getting exasperated with me.

“Sorry to cut short your anticipation of cornering the killer, but I’d bet that there must be about fifty or so keys out for that door, just like any other door at the college.”

“I thought there were careful records kept of who has the keys to each door on campus.”

“You’re right, of course. Check with central maintenance for the key records. They’re all recorded there, but I’ll bet you a bottle of brandy few keys are ever returned. They just keep making more keys for the same doors and issuing them to anyone who will pay the two dollars to register for one.”

He threw up his hands. “Why bother having rules about keys then?”

“If we didn’t have rules, then everyone would take advantage.”

“But they are now.”

“Oh, not really. Some of us return our keys when we’re through with them.” I got up from my chair. “Listen, I know you have work to do. If there’s any way a lowly amateur can help in this investigation, just holler.” I didn’t have the heart to look back at him because I was certain he had his head down on the desk.
Sleeping or weeping?

Chapter 9

I was cooling off on my deck with Annie. She and I had taken the canoe out for a short practice run, and we both were dripping with sweat. The Guy thing still bothered me, and I thought some physical exercise would take the
edge off my emotional angst. I was now too exhausted to think or worry. I had all I could do to breathe.

Der drove into my driveway.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

With a sheepish grin on his face, he handed me a paper bag with something heavy in it.

“Here’s your bottle of brandy. You were right, of course. There are forty-six people on campus with keys to the shed where we found the shovel. Maintenance keeps great records, but they don’t make much of an effort to get back the keys. The college might as well just leave all the doors open if everyone has a key to every door.”

“Want to make it double or nothing? I’ll bet I can tell you what they said when you asked why they don’t go after those keys”

He dropped into one of the deck chairs. “Fine. It’s just another bottle of brandy.”

I checked out the bags under his eyes. This case is getting to him, I thought. He’s not sleeping well, and I’m being bitchy with him. I almost took pity on him again and withdrew the bet, but I decided he wouldn’t think much of me if I backed down out of sympathy for his well-being. And we knew each other well enough he could read that in me immediately.

I smiled a bitchy kind of smile. “They informed you their job was to keep records on the keys, not police who still had them out. They further suggested you check with the Office for Campus Security to find out why the keys were not returned when they were no longer used. When you contacted that office, they told you they did not have the personnel to track down everyone who has a key checked out to every door. They also recommended you ask general maintenance why they allowed people to sign for keys and not return them. And around and around.”

Der shook his head.

“Look on the bright side. You only need to check the alibis of the forty-six people who have keys to the shed. Some of them probably date back to the early part of the last century and are dead by now. That should narrow your list.”

“It’s not funny, Laura. I’ll bring you the other bottle of brandy when I come over Saturday night for the cookout. Lover boy will be there, right?”

The look on my face must have convinced him it was a question he should not have asked, so he turned and headed for his car. I didn’t stop him.

Annie had remained quiet through Der’s visit. Now she wiggled around in her deck chair, chewed on the bow of her glasses and picked at her nails.

“What is it?” I asked.

She began to explore the contents of her backpack as if she were looking for her gumption.

“You can’t hide in there. You obviously have something you want to say. So say it.”

“I’ve something I should have told you…” she said.

“That’s not a real popular line with me today.”

“Actually, I should have told Der when he was here too because he’ll find out when he begins to go over that key list for the shed on campus. I have a key to the shed.”

“What on earth for?”

“When I get a shipment of clay for my classes, I stash it there until I can distribute it to the students. They transfer it to their individual lockers in the pottery lab at the beginning of the semester. No pottery classes this summer, so I haven’t used the key since last semester.”

“Der is hardly going to suspect you of doing in Talbot. We’ve been through all that. Unless you’re keeping something else from me.”

“I remembered yesterday I ought to check the shed to make certain there was enough room to store the clay arriving the middle of August, so I went to my office to get the shed key. I keep it in the top drawer of my desk.”

“And it was missing, right?” Sometimes I can demonstrate the sleuthing abilities of a Miss Marple, but usually I’m just a lucky guesser. Like now.

“Yes, of course it was gone. I forgot I had loaned it out the other day. With the president’s death and all, it slipped my mind that I gave the key to someone.”

I was getting impatient. “Who?”

“I gave it to Nancy, Dr. Pruitt’s secretary. She said the key from Pruitt’s department office was missing.”

Much as I longed to pin something on Nancy, I found it difficult to imagine her wielding a shovel as a death weapon. Could she have been an unwitting accomplice? All of these questions buzzing around in my hormone befuddled mind could be checked out, and they gave me one perfect excuse for abandoning work on my manuscript for the day.

“Come on, Annie. Let’s save your hide. We’ll pay a little visit to Nancy. You can ask for your key back.”

*

It was hot as Annie and I drove onto campus and pulled into the faculty parking lot alongside the Environmental Earth Sciences Department. The rush of refrigerated air inside reminded me President Talbot once held this department in some esteem.

Nancy rose from her desk and walked over to the door of Rudolf Pruitt’s office as if to run interference between him and us.

She heaved a sigh of impatience. “Dr. Pruitt is very busy just now.”

“It’s really you we want to see, Nancy,” I said. Out came her plump tongue to lick her coral lipsticked mouth.

“Me?’

“Yes. I stopped by to get my shed key back. I need to get in to check it,” Annie said.

“I understand the police were in there yesterday rummaging around. Did they find anything?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t know.” Nancy stiffened, her tongue moving back and forth across her lower lip. “They didn’t say anything to me.”

“Doesn’t this department have a key to that storage shed? So why did you need to borrow one from Annie? Or wasn’t a key to the shed included in the engorged budget Talbot gave you a while back?”

“We do have one, of course, but it disappeared.” Nancy pointed to a hook on the wall behind her desk. The hook was empty.

“So who told you to borrow a key from Annie, or did you think of that idea yourself?”

“I told her to borrow it.” Rudolf stood in his office doorway. “What’s the problem, Dr. Murphy? Playing snoop, as usual?”

“Just curious, I guess, what with the police searching the campus for clues to the president’s murder. It’s funny that one of the places they should look would be a storage shed to which you have lost the key, that’s all.” I merrily waved goodbye. Dr. Pruitt’s face began to turn red. We left before his anger set the office ablaze.

“That was all too short,” I said to Annie. We climbed back into my car and began sweating.

“Damn! I forgot to get my key off Nancy.” Annie jumped out of the car and ran back into the building. When she returned, she was grinning, but once in the car she broke out in a bark of laughter.

“I guess they didn’t expect me to return. I caught them comforting each other in his desk chair. Pruitt’s face seems to turn red anytime he experiences heightened emotion.” Annie waved the key in the air.

Annie’s key incident further convinced me it was unlikely the list of those having a key to the storage shed would prove useful in Der’s investigation of Talbot’s murder. It simply served as an example of what everyone did on campus when they needed a key to some room—they either borrowed a key from someone who had one or they went to maintenance and filled out the appropriate papers to get one made.

Nancy couldn’t keep watch on the one in her office when she left her desk to take dictation from Pruitt, and I rather suspected he did a lot of “dictating” to her. Unless the person who took it was stupid enough to return it to the office while someone was watching, the lost key was a dead end.

I looked at my watch and realized most of the morning was gone. My mind drifted off to wondering about Guy and last night. What was going on with us, I wondered. The heat radiating off the seats and dash of the car brought me back to the present.

“You’ve been stopped at this stop sign for about five minutes and nothing’s coming from either direction.”

“Nothing’s coming. Yet. Actually, I was thinking about my manuscript. I should get back to it.”

“Well, that’s half the truth. I think you’re also wondering if Guy will call or come by tonight and, if he doesn’t, should you call him.” I didn’t respond to her insightful remarks. We sat in the car and roasted in the heat.

“Anything coming yet?” Annie asked.

Some women, I thought, will play it smart and let him call. The best advice says let
him
make the first move, but most of us ignore what’s good for us, and contact him. It’s like women asking for directions. Not a problem. We want to know where we’re going and how to get there. I figured calling him was just getting relationship directions.

Since we’re now coming up on noon, what the hell, I’ll just go out to the bridge site and join him in lunch.
I put the car in gear. I could tell Annie was tired of waiting, and I had to admit that if my hands got any sweatier I wouldn’t be able to grip the wheel.