Stork Raving Mad (19 page)

“He’s probably working on a bogus theory of the crime,” Grandfather said.

“Bogus?”

“I can’t imagine why anyone would have killed that Wright woman!” he exclaimed.

“Of course not,” I said, in my most soothing tones. I was about to utter some noble platitudes about how utterly unthinkable murder was to any civilized being when he went on.

“Not with that Blanco fellow around and equally available to anyone who felt like improving the tone of the neighborhood. Do you suppose whoever did it could have made a mistake and knocked off the wrong professor?”

I eyed him suspiciously. My first thought was that Dad had spilled the beans to Grandfather on his poison-in-the-tea theory. After all, even a crazed killer would probably notice whether the person he was coshing on the head was a man or a woman. Poison, though, could easily go astray and be given to the wrong person. So if Grandfather was suggesting Dr. Wright had been killed by mistake . . .

“Do you mean you think whoever hit her over the head did it by mistake while trying to kill Dr. Blanco?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Why not?”

“They don’t look that much alike,” I said. “Different genders, to start with.”

“I don’t mean to imply that the killer couldn’t tell them apart.” He frowned as if I were being deliberately obtuse. “But what if the killer rushed in, hoping to get the drop on Blanco,
and realized, too late, that he was about to slay the wrong person? He might just go ahead with it. What else could he do if she’d already seen him about to kill her?”

“I can think of plenty of things short of murder!”

“Such as?” My grandfather crossed his arms and lowered his brows, as if he’d just issued an impossible challenge.

“He could have shouted, ‘Look out! It’s right behind you! Have you ever seen a rat that big?’ Or stopped, and laughed, and said, ‘Haha! Fooled you!’ Or if he was a drama student, like ninety percent of the suspects, he could always stop in his tracks, look stern, and say, ‘No, no. That won’t work for this scene. What’s my motivation?’ Or—”

“Yes, you can think of a lot of other things the killer
could
have done, but none of them sounds as logical as my theory,” Grandfather said. He began trying to take off his coat. “He knew if he let Dr. Wright live she’d cast suspicion on him when he eventually succeeded in killing Blanco, so he said to himself, ‘What the hell—in for a penny, in for a pound.’ ”

“All of which would be worth considering if Dr. Wright were such a pleasant, likable person that no one could imagine anyone wanting to kill her. But unfortunately for your theory, most of the people around here hate her a lot more than Blanco.”

“How can that be?” he said. “Damn—help me off with this thing.”

Apparently venting was doing the trick.

“Most of them haven’t the faintest idea who Blanco is,” I said as I held the coat for him.

“That could be, I suppose,” he said. “But still—if my theory is right, Blanco’s next. Should we warn him?”

“If you truly think he was the intended victim, maybe you should.”

“You don’t think it might be more interesting to give the killer a sporting chance?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think killers deserve any kind of a chance. What do you have against Dr. Blanco, anyway?”

My grandfather frowned, and at first I didn’t think he was going to answer. Then he harrumphed.

“Blasted busybody’s the one standing between me and my building,” he said finally.

“Your building?”

“Been trying to donate a new building to the biology department,” he said.

“They probably don’t want a new building,” I said.

“Their facilities are completely antiquated, not to mention way too small for them. Why wouldn’t they want a new building?”

“Because this is Virginia, remember?” I said. “Who wants convenience when they can have history? The biology building is the third oldest on campus and was used as a military hospital during the Civil War. Plus it’s barely large enough for all the tenured professors to have tiny, cramped offices, which means all the rest of the faculty have to be farmed out to even more cramped offices in other, less convenient buildings, thus making everyone’s rank in the hierarchy blatantly apparent. I could think of a few more reasons, but those should be enough.”

“Hmph,” my grandfather said. “Maybe that blasted Blanco is trying to lead me on, then.”

“Lead you on how?”

“Well, according to him, the biology department would love to have a new building but there’s some kind of complicated financial arrangement he wants me to go through to get it done, and it just doesn’t make sense. Instead of just handing them a check, he wants me to put the money in some kind of trust fund that will disburse the money to the college in a different tax year. Sounds overly complicated. Makes me wonder if he’s up to something.”

I pondered this for a few moments.

“Have you tried talking to an accountant about it?” I said. “Or a tax attorney? The college has a whole lot of foundations and funds and things designed to make sure that they and their donors get maximum advantage from every dollar donated.”

“My foundation’s got a small army of accountants and tax lawyers,” he said. “And they don’t like it either. The way they read the documents, I’d have no guarantee of how the money is used—they could use it for general operating expenses or to fund some project that’s an environmental menace. Hell, until we get some kind of proof that this Caerphilly Philanthropic Foundation really is affiliated with the college, we’d have no proof Blanco wasn’t using it to fund a trip to the Caymans. So if you asked Blanco, he’d probably say it’s my people holding up the transaction. Which is nonsense. No one’s going to give the college that kind of money without appropriate due diligence. He’s the roadblock.”

“It might not be his fault,” I said. “Did you read the editorial The Fa—the college president wrote in the last alumni bulletin?”

“I’m not a Caephilly alumnus, dammit!”

“Sorry,” I said. “Anyway, it was all about what a pain it was when people gave money with so many restrictions that the college could in theory have millions in endowments and not have enough cash to pay the light bill. The Face is big on non-restricted donations. Maybe Blanco’s just trying to please his boss.”

“Hmph!” my grandfather said. “Then he should grow a backbone.”

With that he strode off. But toward the kitchen, not out the front door, so apparently venting to me had cooled his temper some.

“Come on out to the barn,” he called over his shoulder. “Your mother’s doing a buffet out there before the dress rehearsal.”

A buffet in our barn? Trust Mother to treat a murder investigation as yet another social occasion. She probably knew exactly what wines went with forensics and interrogation. Or was the rehearsal the reason for the festivity?

If Grandfather had waited a few seconds I could have asked him to send someone back to the house with a plate for me.

I could always wait until someone came back to the house.

My stomach rumbled.

I rummaged through the racks until I found the loosely cut coat I’d been wearing this winter, and then through the baskets until I found a hat, scarf, and gloves that at least looked
like mine. I caught sight of myself in the hall mirror. Did I look more like an arctic explorer or an overcoat-clad walrus?

I deferred the question and headed for the back door.

But I couldn’t help thinking about Grandfather’s diatribe. Was Blanco really trying to keep him from giving the college the money for a building? I doubted it. More likely, Blanco was trying to get Grandfather’s money for the college with as few strings as possible attached.

Unless he was scrambling to cover up something worse. Like the college really not having enough money to pay its bills. Or its payroll. What if the whole problem with Randall Shiffley’s check was not Blanco’s inconsiderateness or inefficiency but his desperate attempts to juggle until he could find enough money to cover the check? If that was the case—

I didn’t want to think about it right now. I shoved the door open and stepped onto the back stoop.

Outside it was getting dark already. The sun hadn’t quite set, but it was hidden behind thick clouds. The air was cold, but with no wind at least it was a bearable cold.

I picked my way carefully down the back steps and paused to look around. To my left, I could see the lighted windows of the library. Inside, Horace was methodically picking his way through a section of the students’ belongings. Poor Horace was in for a long night.

The table where Dr. Wright had been killed wasn’t visible from this angle, but much of the library was. Should I point this out to Chief Burke? Ask if he’d interrogated the students, particularly any smokers who’d used the backyard, to see if they’d seen anyone other than Dr. Wright in the library?

Probably not a good idea. He resented people interfering in his investigations. So far I’d managed not to set him off today. I decided to keep it that way.

I’d tell Horace and let him ask the chief.

For its first ten or fifteen feet, the path to the barn was lined on both sides with several dozen black plastic garbage bags, all tied at the top and neatly arranged. Someone had posted a “trash” sign to the left and a “recycling” sign to the right. Every week
the students were here we had more bags of both kinds. Maybe we could just get our trash company to leave a Dumpster for the next few weeks.

And maybe anyone who had been on trash-removal duty would also be a good candidate for interrogation about whether they’d seen anything suspicious in the library.

Ahead, light spilled out of the barn windows. A slight breeze rustled the trash bags and picked up a few stray leaves in the yard. I pulled my coat tighter and hiked to the barn.

I slid open the door a little way and the light and noise hit me.

“Come in and shut the door!” half a dozen voices sang out in unison.

“It’s Mrs. Waterston!” another voice called. “Open the door for her!”

The door flew aside so abruptly that it almost dragged me sideways with it.

“Meg!” Rose Noire was at my elbow, steering me inside. “What are you doing out here? I thought you were napping!”

“I was hungry,” I said.

“You could have called me,” she said. “I’d have brought you a plate.”

“And miss the party?” I said. “I’m fine. Point me toward the food.”

I let her take my hat, gloves, and scarf, but since the barn wasn’t actually heated, I hung onto my coat.

Across the room I could see a flock of students under Mother’s direction setting up several rows of folding chairs facing toward the far end, which I deduced was to be used as the stage
for the dress rehearsal. In the stage area, other students were arranging stacks of zucchini and other articles that I recognized as props for Señor Mendoza’s play. The stagehands looked a little flustered, though—Señor Mendoza and Bronwyn were standing on opposite ends of the stage, shouting what I deduced were contradictory sets of instructions. In the time it took me to reach the buffet tables, one poor young man carried a potted lemon tree back and forth between stage left and stage right four times before giving up, dropping the pot center stage and running over to clutch a couple of Mother’s folding chairs as if his life depended on deploying them.

I was relieved to see that Mother hadn’t actually called in caterers. The buffet was spread out on the four old picnic tables we used for outdoor family events during the summer. A mixed assortment of tablecloths covered them. Stacks of pizza boxes filled one entire table and the others held bowls of chips, salads, and other side dishes in quite an assortment of serving pieces. Back in our hometown of Yorktown, this would have meant that Mother had called upon her large extended family to contribute to the potluck event. But we were in Caerphilly, an hour away from the heartland of the Hollingsworth family. Had she dragged them all up here?

Some of them. I recognized the odd, handmade pottery dish in which Cousin Lacey always brought her corn pudding. I made sure to snag a couple of Aunt Bella’s lighter-than-air crescent rolls from her familiar wicker breadbasket. I avoided the cut-glass dish in which Great-Aunt Louella brought her famous pickles. The dish was emptier than usual, probably because the
students didn’t yet know that Louella’s pickle recipe contained enough jalapeno and habenero peppers to supply a Mexican restaurant for half a year. We’d be finding bitten-into pickles hidden in corners for weeks.

But some of the offerings looked more local. I spotted one of Mother’s friends from the historical society arranging gingerbread men on an antique plate. I was almost certain that the duck-shaped lemon congealed salad came from one of Dad’s bird-watching comrades. The tarts strewn with rose petals had to be from a garden-club member.

When I’d first moved to Caerphilly to be with Michael, I’d decided that one of its charms was that it was close enough to see my family whenever I wanted to, but far enough away that I didn’t have to see them all the time. Now, Rob and Rose Noire had moved to town, Mother and Dad had bought what they referred to as their vacation cottage nearby, and before long—

“What’s wrong?” Michael said, appearing at my other elbow.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m in awe. Look at all this food.”

“Lovely spread,” he said. “Here, let me carry your plate.”

I was about to protest that I could do it myself, but why should I? Having Michael hold my plate would be a lot easier, and after the kids were born, who knew how often he’d have the time or energy to be chivalrous?

“I’ll get you some hot chocolate,” Rose Noire said, and flitted off.

“I see Mother has won over Caerphilly, too,” I said as I speared a slice of Smithfield ham and deposited it on the plate.

“Won it over how?” Michael pointed to a platter. “Don’t you want some corn bread?”

“Yes,” I said. “I just don’t know if I have room for it. By won them over, I mean she’s got them all bringing her food.”

“Bringing
us
food,” Michael said. “I admit that your mother probably got the word out that with our kitchen off-limits we could use a potluck dinner. But most of this came from our friends, not your family. Minerva Burke brought the corn bread.”