Murder is Academic (3 page)

“President Talbot was not well liked. The faculty found him insensitive to classroom issues since he had little experience teaching. And as for students, well, he’s backed the tuition hike for the college for the last four years, not a popular move with them or their parents.” I took a quick breath.

“Who had most reason to want this guy dead?” Der asked.

“Take a look at the members of his cabinet, his vice presidents. He just recently fired the VP for Student Affairs. Some fiscal mismanagement issue, I hear.”

“Anyone else in the cabinet?”

I held up a finger as I swallowed another sip of coffee. “Uh, I don’t mean to mislead. I mean, no one liked him much.”

“I’ve got to get to work.” Guy stood and reached for his motorcycle helmet.

“How about dinner tonight? Everyone.” I produced my best hostess smile.

Der looked surprised, but pleased at being included.

“We can continue our discussion. I’ll fill you in on more campus intrigue that might be helpful.” My smile broadened. A working dinner.

As Guy turned to go out the door, he hesitated, walked back into the kitchen, grabbed me about the waist, and pressed his mouth to mine. I couldn’t help myself. I giggled like a teenager.

Through the window, I saw Guy encounter Frank coming up the drive, carrying several canoe paddles.

“Quick, Annie. Hide the donuts. Frank’s here for our canoe practice.” She shoved them into the fridge just as Frank opened the kitchen door.

Outside, Guy straddled the bike, rocked it up off the kickstand, punched the starter and rumbled off. I waved like a silly school girl from the kitchen window. Der watched me with something like skepticism in his eyes, while Frank, peering into my face, looked puzzled.

“Isn’t that the guy from last night?” Frank’s confusion turned to disgust as he reached out and wiped a piece of donut crumb from my face. “If you’re not going to take this thing seriously, we can forget it.”

“Sorry, Frank, but today’s not a good day. I need to get into town. I’ve got a bit of snooping to do. We can practice this afternoon if you like. Or better yet, Annie will paddle with you now.”

Before she could protest, Frank grabbed her arm and the two of them headed down the path to the water.

“I thought you didn’t like male chauvinists.” Der was still seated at the table, coffee mug in front of him. I knew he wasn’t referring to Frank. “For myself, I find him kind of interesting.”

“What do you mean, ‘interesting?’”

“Most men treat you like they’re slipping past a sleeping tiger. He acts as if you’re as harmless as a pussycat. I like that in a chap.”

Der arose from the table, gave me a peck on the cheek and left, promising to return that evening.

“Chicken,” I said to his retreating back.

Annie slammed back into the house and headed for the storage room off the kitchen.

“Flotation vests. And Der’s no chicken.” She grabbed the vests off a hook and ran back toward the door.

“No, not him. I mean I think I’ll cook chicken for tonight. I can cook it on the barbecue grill. That should be simple enough.”

“You’d better make a trip to the store. You never have anything edible in your fridge.”

“No problem. I’ll stop on my way back from campus. I want to hear what the faculty and administration are saying about the murder anyway. I’m sure there’ll be an announcement soon about an interim appointment for president. I’m dying to know who it’ll be.”

Annie looked at me and rolled her eyes. “One dead body around here is enough.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Chapter 3

The Upstate College campus sat on a hill overlooking the town of Onondaga Falls. In the summer, while the town sweltered in the valley mugginess, mountain breezes blew across the wooded campus center. After parking my car in the faculty lot, I began the trek to my office. Students and faculty stood or sat in small gatherings beneath the large maple trees in the center of campus. I strode past the groups and caught snatches of conversations about the president’s death. Most of my colleagues seemed to think someone killed the president because of some real or imagined academic malfeasance, making each one of us a prime suspect.

My office, which I seldom frequented in the summer months, was located on the second floor on the afternoon sun side of one of the classroom buildings. Faculty offices were stifling because each one contained only a small window sealed in preparation for the arrival of air conditioning. We’d been waiting for twenty years. Many faculty members, me included, broke the seals to open their windows only to find that the lack of screens let in a swarm of insects, but little cool air.

I swatted flies in my tiny space and started to create a list in my head of everyone who disliked President Talbot. Too long. Who liked him? Jeanette Longs, his administrative assistant, came to mind first. Jeanette and I became friends years ago when we attended League of Women Voters meetings together. While I slept late and worked at home in the afternoon yesterday, the state crime lab must have been all over President Talbot’s office, creating chaos in Jeanette’s usually orderly space. How insensitive of me to sit here sweating and chasing insects when I could be taking Jeanette to lunch. It would give her a break from the snooping eyes of the investigators, and provide her a sympathetic audience for sharing events in the president’s office the day of his death. I turned off my computer, took aim at a fly, missed and left.

I peeked into the president’s suite and saw Der talking with Jeanette about Talbot’s schedule the day of the murder. Two uniformed police examined the contents of Talbot’s file drawers. Jeanette appeared her usual calm and organized self, sharing the president’s appointment book with Der while she kept an eye on the officers thumbing through the files

“Please try to keep everything in order.” She turned her attention back to Der. “You will see that they don’t lose anything, won’t you?” Her voice quavered. She was either tired or tense. Either way, I arrived just in time to rescue her. When I tried to enter the office, an officer stopped me, but I caught Der’s eye.

“Let her in. She’s my academic private eye,” Der said.

“Nice of you.” I nodded to Der and gave Jeanette a hug, then asked her how she was holding up. She gave me a weak smile.

When I told her I was here to take her to lunch, Jeanette retrieved her handbag out of her desk drawer and the two of us headed toward the door. Der grabbed my arm as I was leaving. “Try not to pump the poor woman dry. She’s been though a lot in the past two days.” That was sensitive of him.

“And I may need to ask her more questions.” That was more like him. I knew that gentle exterior hid the sharp detective underneath.

“You know, he wasn’t well liked on campus, but President Talbot was very good to me. With my husband so ill and at home, I needed to take off time, sometimes on short notice, and President Talbot never made a fuss about it.” She took a tiny sip of her drink.

We sat in the back of The Purple Eggplant away from the customers lining up at the counter to place their orders. Most of the patrons took away their food, so we had the booth area to ourselves. Jeanette played with the sandwich on her plate while I wolfed down a large pastrami on rye with an extra-large helping of coleslaw. I told myself I was in training and needed the fuel for paddling.

“For example, the day he was, well, you know, the other day, I let him know that I had to leave early to pick up a prescription for Carl. He said, ‘no problem,’ that he had two meetings across campus with some of the people in science and he didn’t need me for anything. I left around three.”

“So you don’t know if he made it to his meetings with the science people? Who was he supposed to meet with?” I finished the last of my coleslaw and looked across the table at Jeanette’s uneaten food.

“He set up a meeting with Rudolf Walter Pruitt, Chair of Earth Sciences for three-thirty. Just before I left for home, I stepped into his office to say goodbye. He was standing at the window. He looked as if he were deep in thought. I called to him not to forget his appointment with Dr. Pruitt. He seemed distracted, but thanked me and said good bye.” She dropped her fork and looked at me with concern in her eyes. “Oh dear. With all the confusion yesterday and this morning I just plain forgot to tell Detective Pasquis that I left early.”

“Don’t worry about it. He or one of his team will be able to confirm or deny Talbot’s presence at those meetings. I’ll tell him we talked and you forgot about leaving early.”

“Oh, thanks. I don’t want to appear uncooperative or as if I’m hiding anything.”

I touched her hand. “Don’t be absurd. With your husband’s illness and your work schedule, you have a lot on your mind. Do you want that?” I pointed to her dill pickle. She waved it away. “Who was the other person in science he was meeting with?”

“I don’t know. It was set up at the last minute through his private phone line. I didn’t take the request. He put it on the appointment calendar himself.”

“Is that usual?”

“Oh, yes. Some people on campus and off have his private number and call him directly for appointments. He’ll usually tell me the time and the person’s name after the phone call. I must have been out of the office after he took the call, and he merely wrote in “science”. I would have asked him the name if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with Carl’s new medication and leaving early.”

“So the second meeting wasn’t put on the calendar until that day?”

“That’s right. Until sometime after he came back from golfing, his calendar included only Dr. Pruitt.” Jeanette’s eyes filled up and she extracted a hanky from her purse, blew into it, then looked at her watch. “Oh, look at the time. I’d better get back.”

I dropped Jeanette at the college and drove down the hill into Onondaga Falls only supermarket. When I arrived home with the groceries, Annie was already on the back deck drawing in her sketchbook. A stack of cookbooks lay on the table beside her.

“Thinking of switching departments, are you? Leaving art and moving to the hospitality program?” I nodded my head toward the books.

“No. I thought you could use all the help you can get.”

“Ha, ha. Now help me make a salad, and I’ll start the chicken in a marinade.”

“What’s the scoop around campus about the murder? I was too busy in the studio today to bother talking with anyone.” She tossed her sketchbook on the table, and we entered the kitchen.

“Let’s wait until everyone is here, and we can exchange information. That way I don’t have to repeat my story.”

At that moment, I heard the motorcycle pull up, followed by the sound of a car turning into the drive.

Guy and Der entered the house together. To my great relief they seemed to be getting along well. Their topic of conversation was not the murder, but rather motorcycles.

“I had a Harley when I was in college, then I got too busy with the job. And, well, no time for riding now.” Der screwed his mouth up in a look of regret.

“Always time to ride. You’ve got to make it for yourself. Tell you what. When this murder thing gets resolved, let’s take a trip to Syracuse to the Harley dealer there. I might just consider trading mine for one. Or at least looking at the Valkyries put out by Honda.”

“They’re bonding.” I was delighted. Hmm. I’d just discovered something important about men; testosterone levels can be reduced in the human male by substituting one sexy lust object for another, in this case, motorcycles for women.

“How about a topic in which we all can participate?” I did not want to be left out.

“Oh, right.” Guy held up two bottles of wine. “Red or white?”

I gave a loud sigh of frustration. “Not wine. Murder.”

“Yuck,” said Annie, “not before dinner.”

We ate first, had both red and white with the chicken, and the food was wonderful. Well, it was passable. By the time I ran to the convenience store to buy the propane I forgot for the grill, we were all so starved that we would have considered any food, even Twinkies, gourmet. Actually, I don’t mind Twinkies, although I prefer Devil Dogs. The chocolate, you know. I rushed everyone through the meal so that we could get to dessert, dessert being what Der knew about Talbot’s murder.

“I spent most of my afternoon at the country club, talking with the three guys Talbot played with the morning of the murder. I thought I might find out something that would give a spin on the rest of his day. My investigators informed me that his schedule in the late afternoon was vague.” Der looked troubled.

I nodded in agreement. “Just that meeting with Pruitt and someone else in science.”

We all moved out to the deck to enjoy the sunset over the lake.

“I guess we’ll have to talk with the entire science faculty to see with whom he met,” Der said. “By the way, I haven’t had a chance to interview Pruitt yet, but the team member who talked with him briefly said he seemed quite broken up over Talbot’s death.”

I almost spit coffee out my nose. “He was no fan of the president. Anything from Talbot’s golf buddies?”

“They were all from the state, his political cronies. Their conversation concerned the upcoming elections in the fall and the proposed public boat launch on the lake just north of those fancy condos. The state is proposing a cooperative program between the college and the State Conservation Department to collect data on water quality and the impact of the launch on fish and plant life in the lake. I guess Talbot did well with state officials. This cooperative venture should be a real plum for the college.”