The Feline Affair (An Incident Series Novelette) (3 page)

He had risen to his feet, clearly eager to be
off. “Not necessary. I’ll get to it later today and let you know
what I find.”

“Uh, thanks,” I said to his back. The door
closed behind him. I had been about to suggest that he borrow one
of the cameras from the TTE lab (researchers used them to collect
footage of various historical sites, like Dealey Plaza in 1963
Dallas and fifteenth-century Machu Picchu, so there was a whole
assortment of them). Well, I was too busy to spend much time on the
matter anyway. I needed to make sure the caterer had everything in
hand for tonight’s fundraiser, and after that there was a stack of
conference reimbursement paperwork on my desk waiting to be
filed.

Before I could attend to either matter, my
phone beeped. It was Helen, texting back to say that she wasn’t
quite ready for a public release of the Shakespeare news. She
wanted a chance to go through the footage her team had taken to
select the best bits. I texted back a second congratulations and
instructions on what I would need for the press release once she
was ready. The delay was probably all for the best, given how Mrs.
Butterworth was likely to react to the news.

Helen’s message reminded me of the new bet
Dr. Mooney and Dr. Rojas had going. While on hold on the phone with
the caterer, I did a quick Internet search. The question—did
Schrödinger own a cat?—had sparked my interest. I figured that Drs.
Mooney and Rojas, having a time-travel machine at their disposal,
might be making the issue more complicated than it needed to be.
Surely someone had wondered about the cat in the seventy-six years
since Schrödinger had come up with his
Gedankenexperiment
.

Twenty minutes later, long after I had
wrapped up my call with the caterer, I was still searching for the
answer. I had found out from Encyclopaedia Britannica and other
online sites that Schrödinger had been Austrian, not German like I
had assumed, that his full name was Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander
Schrödinger, and that he had won the 1933 Nobel Prize for physics
work I had no hope of understanding.

There was, however, no information to be
found about whether he had owned an actual living, breathing
cat.

Since that was the extent of my interest in
the problem, I rolled up my sleeves, pushed my glasses farther up
my nose, and proceeded to tackle the stack of paperwork.

The following day around half past noon I was on my
way back to Hypatia House, having eaten my bag lunch by the lake,
when I caught sight of Chief Kirkland. He was sitting at a shady,
out-of-the-way bench near the biology building, his laptop open on
the table in front of him. He was scowling at the screen. He looked
up distractedly as I approached. “Ah, hello, Ms. Olsen.”

“Any news on our fridge phantom?”

“I’ve hit a small snag. Last night, as
planned I mounted the wireless camera. It’s on the top shelf across
from the fridge.”

I immediately knew what he meant. The biology
department kept extra paper plates and napkins and such there.

“As an incentive I placed a plastic container
with a quinoa salad in the fridge, near the front,” he went on.

“Quinoa salad? You should grab a meal at the
Faculty Club. I think it’d be to your liking. So what
happened?”

“There’s a problem. Because of the camera
angle, it only shows the person opening the fridge, not what they
take out of it. Here, look.”

He slid over, and I took a seat next to him.
Live footage streamed on the laptop. “We’re just in range of the
camera’s wireless here on this bench,” he explained. The hallways
in the science departments tended to be on the quiet side—graduate
students usually congregated at their desks or in front of lab
whiteboards—so the feed was less than lively. We watched together
as a lone grad student ambled over to the fridge, pulled out
something, and left. Like Chief Kirkland had said, it was
impossible to tell what the student was carrying. Her back was to
the camera the whole time.

“I’m used to dealing with outdoor public
safety problems, not indoor ones,” Chief Kirkland said a touch
defensively, as if feeling foolish about the poor placement of the
camera. I remembered hearing that he had come to us from the state
park system.

“What you have here is a Schrödinger-like
problem,” I said.

He gave me an understandably puzzled look. “A
what
kind of problem?”

“Your quinoa salad may still be inside the
fridge. Or not. You won’t know until you look.” I considered asking
him if he had a pet but decided that would probably violate his
edict of not mixing work and private life. “Never mind. Can’t you
move the camera inside the fridge for a nice frontal view?”

“Cleverly disguised inside an empty juice
carton? I might have to, but if I go in there now I’ll be seen, and
that may tip off our thief.”

“I’m on it,” I said, jumping to my feet.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ll just make a quick stop at my office to
pick up a couple of blank forms.”

“What kind of forms?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Still not following.”

“That way, if anyone asks why I’m in the
biology building, I’ll have an excuse. I can say I need Dr.
Oshiro’s signature. Where do you want me to move the camera?”

“Uh, are you sure you don’t mind
helping?”

“One of the items stolen was a cheese and
cracker spread I put together for a departmental meeting.”

“In that case, how about on or under the
table to the left of the fridge?” He pointed to the video feed.
“That one with the coffeemaker on it.”

“All right, table it is.”

“Ms. Olsen, wait. Has Dean Sunder decided on
a course of action when I catch the person?”

“He said best to wait to hear who it is
before deciding what to do about it.”

“Well, let’s get a name, then.”

Some ten minutes later I made my way into the
biology building, the forms in hand. The fridge was at the far end
of the first-floor hallway. I waited out of sight until a postdoc I
had met once or twice finished warming up his lunch in the
microwave. I didn’t think it was the quinoa salad, but having never
prepared quinoa, I had no idea if one needed to warm it up or not.
After the postdoc’s office door had closed behind him, I
double-checked that the hallway was indeed empty and then casually
headed to the fridge area. I peeked inside the fridge and spotted
what I thought was Chief Kirkland’s quinoa salad, still
undisturbed.

The camera was on the very top of the supply
shelf, wedged under some flat boxes destined for recycling. Placing
the forms aside, I reached for it. The camera was, I discovered,
quite heavy, at least by TTE lab standards. Since our
time-traveling researchers needed to obtain footage without
disturbing History, their cameras were often no larger than a
button. But this one would do.

I squatted by the table holding the
coffeemaker. There were extra coffee filters and paper cups stored
underneath it. I wedged the camera between an unopened box of
coffee filters and the fridge, then added some stacks of paper cups
on top so they covered everything but the lens, feeling very
secret-agent-ish while doing it. I made sure there were plenty of
the paper cups next to the coffeemaker so that no one would need to
reach underneath. If anyone took a closer look, they would spot the
camera, but I hoped the culprit wouldn’t bother looking down when
the fridge, with all the inviting food inside it, beckoned.

I heard voices nearing down the hallway, so I
gave Chief Kirkland a discreet wave, picked up the forms, and
turned to go.

Dr. Ann Oshiro, biology professor and
departmental chair, was standing there balancing a stack of
textbooks in her arms. “Julia, hello. Did you need anything?”

Whoever she had been talking to had gone off
down one of the side corridors. I couldn’t very well use my cover
story about wanting her signature—the forms in my hand were blank
and she wouldn’t, quite rightly, want to sign them. Nor could I
tell her that I had come over to move the camera, for
it suddenly occurred to me why Chief Kirkland had not wanted
me to mention the camera plan to anyone in the biology building.
Dr. Oshiro belonged in the category of senior professors who had
their own offices. She could be the fridge phantom herself. She’d
been at St. Sunniva for years, and the phantom was a recent
phenomenon, but you never knew. I said the first thing that came
into my mind. “Uh, I was just taking a look around. The Student
Advocate Office has some concerns about the number of students
sharing the grad offices and labs.”

“Well, we can’t deny that there’s somewhat of
an overcrowding problem. Let me know if they need me to take any
action, though I don’t know what I can do short of staggering the
grad students so half of them work daytime hours and half nighttime
hours.”

I decided she wasn’t serious about that
proposal and rescued one of the textbooks, which had been
threatening to tumble off the stack she had just set down on the
coffeemaker table. She reached for a cup.

I couldn’t very well hover by her side to see
what she did after filling the coffee cup, so I did the only thing
I could—I left, promising to let her know if the Student Advocate
Office came up with any ideas. Now, of course, I would actually
have to stop by the Advocate Office to see if they
did
have
any suggestions for easing the grad student situation in the
building.

“Well?” I demanded, nearing Chief Kirkland’s
bench again.

“Well, what?”

“Did Dr. Oshiro take the quinoa?”

I leaned over his shoulder for a closer look
at the video stream on his laptop just in time to see Dr. Oshiro
leaving. She had managed to balance the textbooks in one arm,
supported by her chin, and was carrying the coffee cup in the
other.

That was a positive development. I hadn’t
thought Dr. Oshiro was the thief, but it was nice to have it
confirmed. I said as much, and Chief Kirkland pointed out that
while Dr. Oshiro hadn’t taken anything from the fridge today, it
didn’t mean she wouldn’t do it
tomorrow
, and it was my turn
to feel foolish.

“On the other hand, there’s no reason to
suspect her in particular,” Chief Kirkland continued. “How many
full-time professors, visiting professors, and postdocs are in the
building?”

“I’ll have to get back to you with an exact
list. Biology has all of the first floor. Counting the genetics
department upstairs and paleontology in the basement, probably
about thirty or so. What happens now?”

“Now? I watch and wait. That part does not
happen quickly.”

“Oh.”

“Not to mention that if the thief makes off
with something other than my quinoa salad, we won’t know it until
the victim reports their food missing.”

“Oh,” I said again.

“Solving crime is not a fast process,” he
pointed out.

“I guess not.”

“In any case, I’ll let you know what I
discover,” he said, as if dismissing me. Well, that was a bit rude,
especially after I had gone out of my way to help him. He must have
picked up on my reaction because he added, “I assume you have
better things to do, Ms. Olsen, than sit here with me keeping an
eye on things. Besides, this looks like it might take several days.
I plan on having one of my officers take over. Then I can
fast-forward through the footage at the end of the week.”

“All right, keep me—that is, the dean’s
office—updated.”

“Will do.”

Later that afternoon I checked on Drs. Mooney and
Rojas on my way back from helping set up for a Tuesday afternoon
chemistry department seminar. The two were still carrying out their
debate, now in the TTE lab. For every argument one raised, the
other, as befitting an academic, had a counterargument.

“I believe he
did
have a cat,” Dr.
Mooney had just said. “Of all the imaginary animals you could put
in an imaginary box in a thought experiment, a cat is not the first
one that comes to mind. A fish in a small tank would be simpler,
and it wouldn’t require the vial of poison, just a hammer to smash
its tank. The fact that Schrödinger chose a cat indicates that he
had a cat.”

Dr. Rojas disagreed. “A person fond of cats
wouldn’t place a cat in danger—even in a theoretical sense. I would
know. Lane and I have three in our house. We’ve had to put screens
on all our windows and doors. One already spends too much time
worrying about them.”

“Maybe he didn’t like his cat,” I said.

“Ah, hello, Julia. I didn’t hear you come
in,” Dr. Mooney said. The two professors were on their feet by one
of the lab’s printers, which was busy spitting out two copies of an
article of some kind. “Yes, maybe he didn’t like his cat. Like I
said, Schrödinger could have suggested a simpler setup, perhaps one
not involving an animal at all. A bottle of wine, say, that the
hammer could break. It might have even made more sense, as one
could argue the cat itself counts as an observer of the events
inside the box.”