The Upstaged Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

Fenway saw something black and rectangular on the top shelf of the closet, above the hanging rod, and walked over to the open closet. She looked more closely; it seemed to be the same type of crystal award that had been on display in The Guild’s office.

  “How did you lose the button?” Fenway said, turning around and looking directly in Amanda’s eyes.

  Amanda opened her mouth and closed it again.

  “Do we need to take you down to the station?”

  “No,” Amanda said. “It was Tuesday night. I found a text on Xavier’s phone from Jessica the night before. I worked that day, and right when I left, I told Jessica to stop seeing him.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She—uh—she laughed at me. She said I was just a little girl and Xavier wanted to be with a real woman.” Amanda’s voice became small. “She said she was teaching him lots of adult things, and I should—uh—just enjoy the things he was learning.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I threatened to tell the administration, and then I stormed out.”

  “And you lost the button in the office?”

  “I don’t know, but it was probably in the hall. Jessica ran after me and grabbed me—hard. She told me to think about what I was doing, and think about what I wanted. I thought she was threatening my trip to England!”

  “Well,” Fenway said, “it sounds like you could have lost the button then. How hard did she grab you?”

  “So hard she left bruises on my arm.”

  “Let me see.”

  Amanda unbuttoned two buttons on the oxford shirt—she had a tank top underneath—and slid the shoulder of the shirt down to her elbow. Fenway took a step closer and saw two finger-shaped bruises on the front of her bicep.

  “That’s from Jessica?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you fight back?”

  “No.”

  Fenway paused. “Are you sure?”

  Amanda raised her chin and stared at Fenway. “Sure I’m sure. I got the hell out of there. I didn’t even know if I still had a job.”

  Fenway stepped in front of the closet and looked up. “Amanda, what’s that on your top shelf?”

  “The top shelf?” Amanda looked at the open closet and her eyes widened. “Oh, I don’t—”

  “You don’t what?”

  Amanda bit her lip. “It’s an acting award I won in high school. I thought I had put it somewhere else, that’s all.”

  “Is that from the Western States Theater Association?”

  “You mean the West Coast Theater Educators?”

  “Yeah, sorry,” said Fenway.

  “Yes. I won it last year. Professor Cygnus won best director for Merchant at the same ceremony. That’s how I decided on Nidever. He called me a couple of days after I won and told me I’d be perfect for The Guild, and he was willing to make an exception for me.”

  “An exception?”

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a freshman. Everyone else is an upperclassman. He never let underclassmen be in his plays. He got me a special waiver for this—it’s a design-your-own-major.”

  “They let you design your own major at Nidever?”

  “They do.”

  “What’s your major called?”

  “Shakespeare Performance.”

  “What’ll you do with a major like that?”

  Amanda set her jaw. “Hopefully become artistic director of the rsc.”

  “By rsc, you mean the Royal Shakespeare Company? The one in London?”

  “Um, the one in Stratford-upon-Avon, you mean. Yes.”

  Fenway turned around to face Amanda. “They’ve never had an American artistic director, have they?”

  “They haven’t had a female artistic director, either, but that’s what I want to do.”

  “And you won this West Coast award last year.”

  “Right.”

  Fenway looked around the room. “Why don’t you have it displayed somewhere? On your shelf over there? Maybe even in The Guild office?”

  “I. uh….”

  “Well?”

  “I don’t have an answer for that. To be honest, I could have sworn I brought it to work to put in The Guild office next to the other Bardies.”

  Fenway searched Amanda’s face for signs of dishonesty, but found nothing. “Is it all in one piece?”

  “Is what all in one piece?” Amanda asked.

  “The award.”

  “What do you mean? Like, is it broken?”

  “Yes.”

  Amanda motioned to the top shelf. “Take a look if you want.” She sighed. “I was probably stupid to bring it to school, but I’m proud of it.”

  Fenway snapped on a glove and took two large evidence bags from her purse.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ll bag the award and the blouse and take them in as evidence.”

  Amanda’s jaw dropped open. “Evidence? Evidence for what?”

  Fenway reached up and pulled the award off the top shelf. “For our investigation.”

  “You can’t just take that award. It’s mine!” She set her jaw.

  “The dorm room isn’t your property,” McVie said, “it’s the university’s. We can search your room and take anything as evidence.”

  Fenway turned the award over in her hands. It was clean. The top edge of the award had some minor zigs and zags, but she couldn’t tell if there was a sliver of crystal missing or not. She suspected that this wasn’t the murder weapon, but if there were any microscopic traces of Jessica’s blood on the award, the lab would find it.

  “I’ll get a lawyer,” Amanda seethed, as Fenway placed the award in the bag then pulled the hanger with the Kendra Quinlan blouse off the rod and put it in the other bag.

  “Be my guest,” McVie said. “I’ll provide him the chain of custody records.”

  “Her,” Amanda said.

  “Her,” McVie said. “Whoever. This is by the book.”

  “We’ll see,” Amanda said.

  “We’ll run some tests,” Fenway said, “and if we don’t find evidence of a crime on the award or the blouse, we’ll get them back to you as soon as we can.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Amanda said.

  “Use it for method acting,” McVie said. “When you have to get angry on stage, just think of Coroner Stevenson pulling your award down from the shelf.”

  Fenway winced. Amanda’s mouth tightened as she narrowed her eyes at McVie. “I have an alibi.”

  “Xavier is your alibi,” McVie said, “and he has a reason to lie for you. He’s already lied to us.”

  “Why me and not him?”

  “Does he have a Kendra Quinlan blouse?” said McVie. “And a heavy hunk of crystal?” he added, taking the bagged award from Fenway and holding it up.

  Amanda was silent, staring right into McVie’s eyes. She broke from the stare and looked out the window.

  “Sorry to inconvenience you,” Fenway said. “Break a leg tonight.” She shut the closet door. “And, you know, don’t leave the area.”

  McVie secured the evidence in a lockbox in the back of his suv, and they walked to the administration building. Fenway saw McVie’s shoulders tighten and his jaw clench as they got closer to the building.

  “Everything okay?” Fenway asked.

  “I shouldn’t have let him have that forty-five minutes,” McVie said. “He’s probably shredding documents as we speak.”

  “We’ll see. Nothing we can do about it now.”

  They arrived in front of Dr. Pruitt’s office five minutes after two o’clock.

  “Hi, Belinda,” Fenway said to the secretary. “Is he ready for us?”

  Belinda gestured to a set of resin-and-steel chairs by the door.

  “Dr. Pruitt is finishing up a call,” she said, glancing up from her typing. “He’ll be with the two of you in a moment.”

  McVie folded his arms and stared at Pruitt’s closed office door. “He’s the one who asked us to meet him.”r />
  Fenway looked at McVie; it was uncharacteristic for him to lose his cool, especially before an interview. “Maybe we should do this another time,” Fenway said, putting her hand on McVie’s arm.

  “I’m sick of being jerked around by these entitled pricks,” McVie replied. “They think their money and the word president or chief on their business card makes it okay to get around the rules.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  McVie ignored her. “They think they don’t have to tell the police the truth. They think they can bend the rules and we’ll look the other way. And then when we do go the extra mile to gain some goodwill, they screw us over.”

  Fenway looked at Craig, appalled. “Wow—I didn’t expect that coming from you.”

  “What are they going to do, fire me?” McVie spat. “This Boy Scout is sick of it, Fenway. Dr. Pruitt better start giving us some damn answers, or I’ll drag him out of here in cuffs.” The lines of his brow were creased; his mouth was turned down at the corners; his jaw was clenched. Fenway’s gaze dropped to his hands; he made a fist, released it, made a fist again.

  “Listen,” she said, a steely tone in her voice, “you need to calm down, Craig. I don’t know if you’re second-guessing yourself, agreeing to meet here instead of walking back with him, but it won’t help if you go in there guns blazing. You won’t get Dr. Pruitt to answer you if—”

  McVie’s head snapped around to look at Fenway. “He doesn’t respond to us being nice, Fenway. We need to go in there mad as hell and put the hammer to him.”

  Fenway took a step back. “Okay, Craig. You’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have.”

  “Damn right,” McVie said under his breath.

  Fenway walked over to a table spread with magazines and looked through them. They were all print issues of The Blue Dolphin, the Nidever alumni magazine. Fenway spied a familiar face on the cover of one.

  “Cynthia Schimmelhorn,” she mumbled to herself, taking a seat. The statuesque woman she had met at the Nidever-hosted political dinner a few days before. In a cashmere sweater against a backdrop of trees, with the new Nidever engineering building slightly out of focus in the background, Schimmelhorn looked as elegant as she had in an evening gown. Fenway leafed through the magazine until she found the article on page 26. “Titan of Oil,” read the title.

  The article was little more than a puff piece, but Fenway read it with interest. It talked about her roots growing up with four brothers in a rich suburb of Los Angeles, being the only female student in the petroleum engineering major at Nidever University, but graduating at the top of her class in three years, then getting her mba from Stanford when she was barely old enough to drink.

  The article touched on her personal life, discussing her brief marriage to an oil executive, the birth of her daughter, Nerissa, the tough balance of ‘having it all’—raising her child while shuttling back and forth to South America, having to prove herself as a new Petrogrande executive, and then a single line of text referencing Nerissa’s suicide. Fenway heard a gasp and realized it was hers.

  “What?” McVie said.

  “I’m reading this bio on Cynthia Schimmelhorn. I didn’t know her daughter committed suicide.”

  McVie’s eyes widened a bit. “Oh. I didn’t know that either.”

  “That would explain her walking away when we brought up her daughter at the candidates’ dinner. Ugh.” Fenway shook her head. “Open mouth, insert foot.”

  Belinda cleared her throat. “Sheriff? Dr. Pruitt is ready to see you now.” She stood and opened the door behind her.

  Fenway followed the sheriff into Dr. Pruitt’s office. The university president sat behind the large mahogany desk, thoughtfully resting his chin in his hand, his two large bookcases towering imposingly behind him.

  Fenway looked at the bookcase on the left, noticing the knickknacks scattered among the leather-bound tomes: a crystal jaguar, about eight inches tall, next to Gulliver’s Travels and The Wealth of Nations. On a lower shelf, a signed baseball on a black granite stand stood beside several business hardbacks whose covers looked more worn and used, including Blue Ocean Strategy and Order Without Design.

  “I don’t make this decision lightly,” Dr. Pruitt began, indicating the two straight-backed chairs in front of his desk. As McVie took the chair on the left and Fenway settled into the one on the right, she could sense a speech about to rev up in Dr. Pruitt’s voice and immediately detached. Her eyes lost focus for a moment, and then she locked in on the other bookshelf behind Dr. Pruitt. She remembered the intriguing wire sculpture of the 1890s-style man-on-a-bicycle, as well as the photo of Dr. Pruitt with his wife. Next to it, a tiny beige-and-orange ceramic pot with a succulent—

  Oh no.

  It hadn’t been there two days before. And Fenway would have recognized that succulent right away. She sat up perfectly straight, her mind racing.

  “…and I know you think I haven’t been completely forthcoming,” Dr. Pruitt was saying. “So I’ve decided to—”

  Fenway stood up.

  “Drop your act, Pruitt,” she shouted. “Stop stalling. You’ll give us access to Cygnus now, or we’ll get a subpoena.”

  “Fenway—” McVie started.

  Fenway’s head snapped around to look at McVie as her finger flew in front of her mouth to shush him. Fenway looked at Dr. Pruitt, too, tapping her vertical finger against her lips a few times. He looked thoroughly confused.

  “You’ve given us one too many excuses on how important the great professor is, to your program, to your school. I’ll tell you something, Pruitt, your diploma isn’t worth shit when you’re in jail fighting an obstruction charge.”

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “Save it for the judge,” Fenway said. “Take us to Cygnus right now.”

  Fenway walked around the rear of the desk.

  “Hey,” Dr. Pruitt said, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’d like to know that myself,” said McVie.

  She stopped at the bookshelf and pointed at the succulent in the small ceramic pot. McVie’s eyes grew wide, then he too stood up and nodded.

  “Yep,” he said. “You’re right. Time to go, Dr. Pruitt. It’s an interview with Professor Cygnus, or else.”

  “I don’t have to go—”

  Fenway grabbed Dr. Pruitt’s elbow. His head spun to look at Fenway as she put her finger to her lips again.

  “Trust us,” Fenway whispered.

  McVie stepped to the office door and opened it.

  Dr. Pruitt, still with a skeptical look in his eyes, stood uncertainly, but walked out the door, followed closely by Fenway. The three of them stood in the foyer.

  “Dr. Pruitt?” Belinda asked. “Is everything all right?”

  “Certainly, certainly,” Dr. Pruitt said. “I’m taking our guests over to the DiFazio Theater.”

  “You have your three o’clock.”

  “I’ll be back in plenty of time,” Dr. Pruitt replied. To Fenway, he said under his breath, “You better have a good explanation for this.”

  They walked out of the main door into the chilly afternoon. The sun had given up shining through the clouds and the air was heavy and wet. Fenway pulled out her phone, opened a web browser, and went to the Desert Sands Spy Gear web site. They walked about fifty feet away from the building, through a grassy area, finally stopping next to a brick planter box.

  “Okay,” Dr. Pruitt said. “Do you want to tell me what this is about?”

  “Someone bugged your office,” Fenway said. She held up her phone and scrolled past an ad for night vision goggles—now with improved body heat sensors—and a pop-up for diversion safes, with a book, a hairbrush, and a soda can. The ceramic pot was the third listing on the page. She turned the screen to Dr. Pruitt. “This is the same beige-and-orange ceramic pot that’s in your office. You see how it’s really a hidden microphone and a transmitter?”

  Dr. Pruitt swallowed hard.

  “We found one just l
ike it in the office of the psychologist who was murdered a few days ago.”

  Dr. Pruitt’s face went ashen.

  “After Dr. Tassajera was murdered—beaten to death with a golf club, if you must know—we took a look at his financial records,” Fenway continued. “You’ll never guess what we found.”

  Dr. Pruitt was quiet.

  “We found he was billing clients who didn’t exist, and we also found he was making suspicious payments to an organization based in the Cayman Islands.”

  Dr. Pruitt opened his mouth but no words came out.

  “I wonder what we’d find in your bank accounts,” Fenway mused.

  “Probably not his personal accounts,” McVie put in. “Dr. Tassajera—in fact, everyone who we’ve found murdered so far—has had those strange payments from their business accounts.”

  “That’s right,” Fenway said, nodding. “I wonder if you’ve used the university’s accounts for that activity. Maybe you’ve been charging tuition for students who don’t exist.”

  “No,” Dr. Pruitt said, “you won’t find any anomalies in the university’s finances.”

  Fenway looked closely at Dr. Pruitt’s face. “It’s not the university’s finances, then.” She peered into his eyes and noticed a bead of sweat run from his temple. “But it’s something related to the university. What would that be?”

  “Maybe a scholarship fund,” McVie suggested.

  “Right.” Fenway nodded. “Maybe there are payments made to a bogus scholarship fund. Maybe with a balance of around twenty-seven million dollars.”

  Dr. Pruitt gasped.

  So it was the scholarship fund.

  “You know what would be perfect for this type of money laundering?” said McVie.

  “I’m racking my brain,” Fenway said, still looking in Dr. Pruitt’s face.

  “An organization based on campus that functions largely without oversight. That takes in large sums of money in donations, and has to pay large sums of money for travel expenses, lectures, or perhaps to consulting companies for script consulting, or business advice.”

  “I like the way you think,” said Fenway, a smile spreading across her face as she looked in Dr. Pruitt’s eyes.

  “You don’t have any proof,” said Dr. Pruitt. “You certainly don’t have the right to look in Nidever’s books. My lawyers are confident about that.”