Stork Raving Mad

by Donna Andrews

Chapter 21

  “Finally,” I muttered, as I reached the top of the stairs. I stood there until my breathing slowed down a bit. These days, Hansel and Gretel didn’t leave me much room to draw a deep breath. Then I headed toward our bedroom.

  Of course, before I got there, I had to pass the door to the nursery. Since Mother hadn’t gone home in a huff after talking to Michael, I assumed he had approved her plans. Surprising that she hadn’t tried to tell me about them out in the barn. Perhaps she was too busy playing hostess and dancing.

  Or maybe I should check on what she’d been doing.

  The door was open and I heard a radio softly playing country music, interrupted occasionally by a gentle tapping noise. I took a deep breath, stepped inside, and looked around.

  It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Not yet, anyway. The walls had been painted a soft bluish-lavender, and Randall, on an eight-foot ladder, was applying a foot-deep wallpaper border with a twining leaf pattern along the top. One of Randall’s cousins was assembling the second of two matching cribs. The first stood already assembled, its white painted wood gleaming, its mattress already covered with a lavender sheet. The lavender walls matched the sheets so exactly that I knew Mother had given someone down at the hardware store fits perfecting the paint color match.

  “If you’re looking for your mother, she just left,” Randall said, from atop his ladder. “Brought us some plates from the buffet.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “I was hoping to sneak a peek without her around.”

  “Not too bad, is it?”

  “No, it’s lovely,” I said. “Though unnecessary. Even if either of the kids inherits Mother’s decorating gene, it’ll be a few years before they’re old enough to appreciate elegant nursery design.”

  “And by the time they are, they’ll have knocked the dickens out of it and it won’t be quite so elegant,” Randall said with a chuckle. “Hope you don’t mind that we took the job.”

  “You needed the money,” I said. “That’s the one thing that keeps me from putting my foot down and telling her to send all this expensive stuff back. We don’t need it, but Mother can afford it, and if it’s helping keep local businesses going, I can live with it.”

  Randall nodded. He still looked troubled. He glanced over at his cousin.

  “Hobart,” he said. “You mind if I talk to Mrs. Waterston in private for a moment?”

  “Sure thing, Randall. I’ll go get some more pie.” Hobart nodded to me and shuffled out the door.

  Randall followed him to the door and shut it. I sighed and looked around for someplace to sit, or at least something I could lean against. Randall seemed to guess my intent and fetched a stool with soft green upholstery.

  “Here,” he said. “We haven’t assembled the matching rocker yet, but this is better than nothing.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “What’s up, Randall?”

  “Got something I want to run by you,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “It’s about the library.”

  “I told you before, we’re just not ready to do the library,” I said. “Actually, we’re ready, but our bank account isn’t. When we can swing it, we’ll definitely give you first crack at bidding on it.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I know you’re not ready to do the whole library yet, but I thought maybe I’d work up a plan for how you could do it in stages. Get a plan in place, and maybe I could start keeping my eyes out for good deals on the supplies. And yeah, I was hoping if I could come up with a good price, maybe you’d be willing to start the first stage. I could use the work. Work from a client who actually pays, that is.”

  “I can understand that,” I said. “We probably won’t be ready to go forward until we find out about Michael’s tenure.”

  “Which isn’t all that long, right?” Randall said. “That’s what I was figuring. So anyway, while your mother was showing her plans to Michael earlier today, I slipped down to the library with my camera and my tape measure. Figured I’d take a few measurements, a few photos. Get what I needed to do some sketches and estimates. Only when I went into the library, she was there.”

  “She? You mean Dr. Wright?”

  “The dead lady, whatever her name was.”

  “But she wasn’t dead then, was she?”

  “How should I know?” he said, with an exaggerated shrug. “She had her head down on the desk. I walked in, looked around, saw her, and said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but do you mind if I take a few measurements of the room?’ ”

  “And did she answer?”

  Randall shook his head.

  “I figured she must be fast asleep, so I said, ‘Sorry to disturb you’—real soft like—and headed back for the door. I was almost out of the room when that other jerk showed up. Blanco.”

  I noticed that with Blanco gone, he didn’t pretend to mispronounce the name.

  “Dr. Blanco was in the library?” I asked. I winced at the eager sound of my own voice. Even though I’d mellowed toward him, I hadn’t grown so fond that I would object to having him turn out to be a suspect.

  “No, he was banging on one of the French doors to the sunroom and yelling, ‘Jean! Jean! I need to talk to you!’ I stood there, because I figured if he woke her up, maybe I could do my measuring after all. But she didn’t move, and after he’d banged and shouted a couple of times, he said, ‘We need to talk. Call my cell phone.’ And then he went away. And I figured maybe I should too.”

  He paused. I waited. On the radio, the last few bars of a twangy, upbeat song gave way to the opening chords of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” and I realized he’d said all he was going to say.

  “You should tell the chief,” I said.

  “I wasn’t going to,” he said, “because I knew anyone who’d been near the library would look suspicious. But then I realized that if anyone did see me going to the library, it would look even more suspicious if I didn’t tell. And then I thought about that jerk Blanco.”

  “What about him?”

  “He was trying to get in to talk to her, but he went away without succeeding,” he said. “I can vouch for that. And a little while ago I overheard a couple of students talking. Sounded as if they were pretty relieved that the Wright woman was dead, and one of them said the only thing that would make it better would be if the chief arrested Blanco. They were joking about telling the chief they’d seen him sneaking into the library. At least I hope they were joking.”

  I winced. The chief was going to have a hard enough time sorting this one out without having to deal with a bunch of the students deliberately giving false evidence.

  “They’d better be joking,” I said. “Would you recognize them if you saw them?”

  “ ’Fraid not,” he said. “They were coming in from the barn, all muffled up in coats and such. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I can’t let them frame the guy. Even if he’s a jerk, that doesn’t make him a murderer. Hell, even before I heard them, I was starting to feel bad about not telling the chief.”

  “Tell him what you saw, then,” I said. “And what you heard. He needs to know. And it’s safer for you, too. What if they find your fingerprints in the library?”

  “As much work as we’ve done for you over the past few years, I wouldn’t be surprised to find my fingerprints anywhere in the house,” he said.

  “What if you accidentally touched something that wasn’t here last time you were?” I said. “Tell the chief.”

  “Yeah, I guess I should,” he said. “Much as I’d like to see the jerk in trouble, I want it to be for something he deserves, like screwing up this whole heating plant thing for the past month. Not something he didn’t do.”

  He turned away and did something with his tools for a few moments, then strode to the door and opened it.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Going to see the chief now. Hobart!”

  In a second or two his cousin ambled back in holding a plate with a half-eaten slice of apple pie.<
br />
  “You keep on with that,” Randall said, pointing to the crib. “I’ll be back in a while.”

  Hobart nodded amiably, still chewing, and returned to the crib. Randall strode out.

  I followed him out into the hall. I peeled off at the bathroom, though, for another pit stop. As I was reaching for the doorknob, the door flew open and Kathy stepped out.

  “You’re out of toilet paper in the bathroom,” she said.

  “The students never replace the rolls,” I said. “There should be some under the sink.”

  She shook her head.

  “Then check the linen closet.” I led the way, and pulled open the door. “There should be plenty of—oh!”

  Our linen closet was larger than usual, but still a tight fit for the body curled up on its floor. Batman and Robin began wriggling, apparently reacting to my shock. Then the body shook slightly, and I realized it—she—was sobbing.

  “Alice?” Kathy said. “Is that you?”

  The body made a strangled noise that I couldn’t decipher. Apparently Kathy could.

  “What are you doing in there, anyway?” Kathy said. “Come out this instant!”

  The body uncurled and crawled out of the closet, revealing the redheaded Alice.

  “I’m sorry,” Alice said. “It’s just that I need to be alone when I’m upset, and there’s just nowhere else to be alone in this house.”

  “You’re telling me,” I said. “Why are you so upset?”

  She sniffled slightly for a few moments, as if trying to decide whether to confide in us or not. Then she burst into tears again.

  “They’re going to arrest me,” she said. As well as crying, she was quite literally wringing her hands. I stared at them in fascination, since I couldn’t recall ever seeing anyone actually do that in real life before.

  “Why should they?” I asked as I stared at her writhing fingers. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing!” she exclaimed. “But they’re going to find my fingerprints on the statue. The one of the lady hippo goddess.”

  “Tawaret,” I said.

  “You mean the murder weapon?” Kathy asked.

  Alice nodded. I suppressed the urge to tell her to relax, that Tawaret wasn’t the murder weapon after all.

  “Why will your fingerprints be on it?” I asked instead.

  “I took it to the library,” she said. “Remember? You came downstairs carrying it and handed to me and told me to put it on a shelf in the library. You do remember, don’t you?”

  She’d stopped wringing her hands and was now torturing one long, trailing lock of her red hair. If she kept on like that she’d be bald by morning.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I remember.” Actually, I didn’t specifically remember her—I’d been relieved that Kathy had used her name so I didn’t have to think of it. But I did remember handing off Tawaret to a student. I had a vague recollection of the hippo goddess floating off beneath a cloud of red hair, so it probably was her. “Okay, your fingerprints will be on it, but so will mine, and Rose Noire’s, and who knows how many other curious people who picked it up to look at it.”

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to pick it up,” she said, with a shudder. “And—”

  She broke off and jammed the end of the hair lock in her mouth.

  “Stop that,” I said, slapping her hand slightly. She looked startled and pulled the hair out.

  “Yeah, ease off on the hair, Alice,” Kathy said. “Bronwyn doesn’t need a bald understudy.”

  “Oh, you’re Bronwyn’s understudy?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Of course, you wouldn’t know that since Bron hasn’t missed a single damned rehearsal yet. If she broke a leg, she’d talk Ramon into letting her do the play in a wheelchair.”

  “You never know,” I said. If Bronwyn turned out to be the killer, Ramon would need Alice. Then again, if Ramon also got arrested . . .

  “So your fingerprints are on the statue,” I said aloud. “That’s easily explained. Why would the chief jump to the conclusion that you killed her?”

  “Because everyone knew how much I hated her,” the girl said, burying her face in her hands. “I got the part of Ophelia in the studio production of Hamlet last fall, and she took it away from me.”

  “Took it away from you? I didn’t realize she had any influence over casting department shows.”

  “She doesn’t,” Kathy said. “But you can’t appear in a show if you’re on academic probation.”

  “And she flunked me,” Alice said. “The witch. Claimed I didn’t turn in a paper on time, and it’s a lie. She lost it—maybe deliberately. But of course, I can’t prove that.”

  “How sure are you that you turned in the paper?” I asked.

  “Positive,” she said. “I even turned it in a week early. As soon as the cast list went up on Friday and I knew I’d be doing Ophelia, I wanted to clear out everything else so I could just concentrate on the play.”

  “Very commendable,” I said. I suspected the not unearned reputation drama students had for disorganization stemmed at least partly from the long hours they put in on shows. That and their belief that organization was boring and uncreative.

  “So I spent the whole weekend in the library working on my paper for Dr. Wright.” Her hands were still now, clasped in front of her, and she held her head high. She was acting, I realized. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean she was lying, only that she’d probably told this story many times.

  “Monday morning, as soon as I finished typing it, I went down to Dunsany Hall to put it in her box,” she went on. “And I ran into her there. It was before six, but she was already there, drinking tea and staring at something on the bulletin board. She said, ‘You’re up uncharacteristically early’—I guess she noticed I didn’t always get there by nine, when the class started.”

  “Nine’s early for drama department people,” I said. I’d come to hate the semesters when Michael’s schedule called for him to teach a morning class.

  “I told her I wasn’t up early, I’d stayed up late finishing my paper, and she smirked and said, ‘You pulled an all-nighter for nothing, then—it’s not due till next week.’ So I told her I knew that, but that I was about to be very busy with rehearsals for Hamlet, and I wanted to get it done before that happened. You’d think she’d be glad someone was being responsible.”

  “She wasn’t?”

  “No,” the girl said. She had gone back to hand-wringing. “She just stood there holding my paper with her thumb and forefinger, like she thought it might have cooties or something. And she didn’t say anything—not ‘Thank you’ or ‘Good morning’ or even ‘Go away and leave me alone.’ It was kind of awkward. So I offered her a chocolate macaroon—I’d stopped by Geraldine’s on the way to get some for my breakfast—and she acted as if I’d tried to hand her a chocolate-covered worm. She snapped, ‘No!’ and reared back like she was going to lecture me. I wasn’t sure what I’d done wrong, so I just said ‘Sorry!’ and ran away as fast as I could. I still don’t know what I did to upset her. You’d think I’d tried to poison her or something.”

  “Actually, you did try to poison her,” Kathy said. “Though she should have known it was quite unintentional. She was diabetic.”

  Chapter 22

  Luckily Kathy was so focused on comforting Alice that she didn’t see my jaw drop when she revealed her knowledge of Dr. Wright’s medical history.

  “Diabetic?” Alice said. “Oh no, I had no idea.”

  “Yes,” Kathy said. “And much as I adore Geraldine’s cookies, they’re definitely not something a diabetic should be eating.”

  “Did a lot of people know this?” I asked Kathy.

  “Hardly anyone,” she said. “I only know because I caught her shooting up in her office one time. I knocked before I went in, but apparently she didn’t hear me so I went on in to leave some papers in her in-basket, and she was sitting there with her skirt hiked up, injecting herself in the
thigh.”

  There would be a needle mark on the body, I realized. Had Dad spotted it? Was that why he’d told Horace to be on the lookout for insulin? And would there be some way of telling the fatal needle mark from any Dr. Wright had recently made herself?

  “What did she do when you interrupted her?” I asked.

  “Chewed me out something wicked for trespassing,” Kathy said. “And I did knock. Then she showed me the insulin bottle—as if I’d really think she was doing smack or something—and told me that her medical history was her own business and if this got out in the department, she’d know who was responsible.”

  “So you never told anyone?” I asked.

  “Not till now,” Kathy said. “And I was living in fear that someone else would find out and leak it and she’d blame me. But I guess she’s beyond caring about her privacy now, and beyond retaliating against me for spilling the beans.”

  I nodded. I ached to tell poor Alice that she could relax, that her fingerprints on Tawaret weren’t going to be as incriminating as she thought—but the chief wouldn’t like it if I spilled the real story of Dr. Wright’s death.

  And the chief would probably want to know that one of his suspects was aware of Dr. Wright’s diabetes.

  “Wow,” Alice said. “I didn’t realize. No wonder she snapped at me.”

  “But she didn’t have to be so rude,” I said. “She could have just said ‘No, thank you.’ ”

  “Yeah, but what if she loves cookies and can’t eat them, and there I was, waving them under her nose,” Alice said. “When you come down to it, I was torturing her.”

  “That may be,” I said. “But you can’t just go around losing people’s papers when they annoy you.”

  “Except she did, all the time,” Kathy said. “That’s one of the reasons she hated me so much. She was doing this to students all the time—to drama students, that is. That’s why we started this thing where people who were afraid she’d do it to them would give their papers to her in front of me. So they’d have a witness.”

  “Stupid me,” Alice said. “I should have done that. I thought turning it in a week early would be safe.”