by Donn Taylor
On one side, the kitchen opened into a utility room containing a washer, dryer, and built-in shelf of the kind used for folding clothes. The only anomaly was a commercial-sized roll of brown wrapping paper on one end of the shelf.
The other side of the kitchen opened into a large living room, the nearest corner of which held a small dining table with four chairs. But it was the rest of the room that held us in momentary shock. In one corner stood a huge flat-screen television. Speakers were mounted overhead in each corner of the room. A small table beside the TV held a slick-looking DVD player/recorder and a top-of-the-line stereo with an iPod in the dock. A nearby set of shelves contained a hundred or more DVDs and CDs.
“Wow!” Mara gazed at the profusion of equipment. “There’s no doubt what she thought was important.”
The sheer number of electronic gadgets raised questions in my mind, but I said nothing.
We checked the titles on the DVD/CD shelves. All of the movies were hits from the last fifteen years. The music disks also looked recent, though I renewed my qualification as a dinosaur by not recognizing most of the musicians’ names. When it comes to popular culture, I can’t even remember if the magic dragon was named Puff or Snap.
A car stopped outside and a car door slammed. My pulse pounded a drumroll in my head. I had to check on the car, but it took all my self-discipline to stand back from the windows where I couldn’t be seen from outside.
The occasion was the changing of the guard, and the new arrival was another cop. The old one stayed while the new one made a check of the premises. We retreated to the kitchen while he mounted the porch and made sure the front door was locked. I pressed the button on the back door to activate the spring lock. I hoped he wouldn’t find the jimmy marks on the doorjamb.
When the new cop left the porch and circled toward the back, we eased up toward the front. The house seemed suddenly colder. We listened closely for the cop to fiddle with the back door, but heard nothing. Presently his voice sounded from the front. I should have known he’d stay outside the yellow tape. I’d been anxious for nothing.
We peeped out the window and saw the old guard drive away. The new one got in his car and launched into a take-out breakfast with coffee. I envied him the breakfast and the security of his position. History professors don’t make good burglars.
Mara kept lookout while I searched the study. That was easy, for it held only a writing desk, one straight chair, and a small throw rug. Beneath the desk, exposed ends of computer cables suggested that the police had taken Laila’s computer.
The neatness of Laila’s kitchen did not extend to the desk. It contained mostly bills thrown haphazardly into drawers. Some were marked paid, others not. I looked for checkbooks and bank statements, but the police must have taken those.
I relieved Mara on lookout duty while she searched the master bedroom. The cop outside had finished his breakfast and busied himself with sitting and looking bored. In the silent house, my private musicians changed to something dreamy with a lot of strings—a nocturne by Borodin, I think.
“You need to see this.” Mara’s subdued voice registered surprise. “I wouldn’t have believed it.”
I followed her into the bedroom. A queen-sized bed lay unmade, half-covered by the folds of a heavy, quilted comforter. One feather pillow bore the imprint of a head while the other contained none. Outer and inner garments lay scattered across floor, bed, and dresser as if Laila had dropped everything wherever she happened to take it off. The quantity of clothing indicated at least three days since the last pickup. The bedroom’s contrast with the impeccable kitchen could not have been greater.
“You haven’t seen anything yet.” Mara gestured toward a walk-in closet. “Look here.”
On one side hung the everyday garments Laila wore on campus. They weren’t slovenly, but they’d obviously come off the rack in discount stores. In contrast, the opposite rack sported the latest fashions of a quality not found in Overton City. Few of these were daytime apparel. Most were evening wear—cocktail dresses for after five, evening gowns for later on. Our faculty had never seen her in any of those.
So where did she wear them? Around the house for her own pleasure? Or did she head out of town on weekends?
Similarly, the floor beneath that rack held a proliferation of shoes—not enough to rival Imelda Marcos, but more than six ordinary faculty members could use.
“What do you make of it?” I asked.
Gazing in wonder, Mara ticked off her observations on her fingers. “A house of her own, HDTV with wireless surround sound, and a wardrobe that would have made Jacqueline Kennedy proud. How could she afford all that on a teacher’s salary?”
“The short answer is that she couldn’t,” I said. “But a lot of our people have outside money—extra jobs or family sources. The question is where hers came from.”
Mara nodded and beckoned me into the bathroom.
It looked like a high school athletic team had showered and left without cleaning up. Used towels hung from the shower curtain rod, and some had been flung on the floor. A washcloth lay half-wadded and half-draped on the edge of the tub.
“I suppose we ought to look under these,” Mara said. Before I had time to answer, she began picking up towels. She put them back as they were, so I saw no reason to stop her. She lifted the washcloth and gasped.
Hidden beneath it lay a key, the kind of key used to open safe-deposit boxes. It bore the arabic numeral 34, but no mark to identify the bank it came from.
“Leave it there and put the washcloth somewhere else,” I said. “We have to leave that one to the police.”
She frowned, but complied. “I want to see the study,” she said.
I led her there, forgetting for the moment that we needed to keep an eye on the police guard.
She stopped at the door and surveyed the room, then asked, “What’s that by the rug?”
A tiny bit of white contrasted with the dark area rug and hardwood floor. I couldn’t see how I’d missed it. She turned back one corner of the rug, revealing two scraps of off-white stationery. She picked them up and showed them to me. Each bore fragments of words written with blue ink in bold script. One scrap said “y husband.” The other said “ter leave h.”
She tried to fit the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle, but they did not fit. The words were not contiguous, nor could we tell which came before the other. We lifted all corners of the rug but found no other scraps of paper.
Another car approached outside. Again we heard a car door slam, followed by a voice that sounded like Staggart’s. My heart banged around in my chest, and that hot brick found its way back into my stomach. Mara held up the scraps of paper, silently asking for instruction.
“Drop them on the floor in plain sight,” I whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”
She complied, and we hurried to the back door. Footsteps sounded on the front porch, and a key turned in the lock. We had no time to see if the coast was clear; we simply left the house as quickly as possible. I left the back door unlocked, as we’d found it, and deliberately left the back gate open. I didn’t know what the burglar before us had done inside the house, so the police needed to know someone had been there.
“What now?” Mara asked as we cleared the alley.
“We go jogging,” I said. “Follow me. But first take off those surgical gloves. They’re not standard equipment for runners.”
We both pocketed the gloves, and I led her by a circuitous route to my house. My aging Honda Civic stood in the driveway, and we stopped beside it to catch our breath.
“Where are we?” she asked between gasps.
“That’s my house,” I said, also breathing heavily.
She gave me a hard look. “I’m not going in there.”
“Neither am I,” I said.
She looked doubtful. “Then what’s next on the schedule?”
“First we get in this car and find some breakfast. After that we commit another burglary.”
CHAPTER 10
Mara balked at the idea of breakfast. “We were seen together last night,” she said. “If we have breakfast together, people will draw the wrong conclusion.”
“We can’t do two burglaries on an empty stomach,” I said, “but we won’t be seen. We’ll do takeout from a donut shop.”
That quieted her objections, but she watched me with suspicious eyes as we climbed into my car. She did not fasten her seat belt until I fastened mine. I respected her reticence but thought she carried it a bit too far. My Honda has a stick shift, and it would take an acrobatic contortionist to reach across that apparatus to impose on a passenger.
We got our takeout at a drive-through: coffee for both of us, three glazed donuts for me, three chocolate-covered for her.
“There’s something I want you to see,” I said as we pulled out of the drive-through.
She looked doubtful but said nothing.
I drove us eastward across the Overton River valley and up the line of hills on the other side. The river, by the way, isn’t much more than a respectable creek. It straggles northward through Overton City before turning to flow into the Missouri somewhere up in Nebraska or Iowa. Strange geography. Thirty miles to our west, another river flows south into the Arkansas.
On the eastern range of hills, I circled into a public park and stopped facing the best view of the valley. When I cut the ignition, Mara released her seat belt and sat with her back to the door, watching me warily.
“The view is that way,” I said, pointing toward the front windshield. “We can enjoy it while we eat.” I took care not to release my seat belt while I dealt out the breakfast.
She threw a glance in the direction I’d pointed and looked back at me. Then the suspicion on her face changed to surprise, and she turned back to devour the view.
It was worth devouring. The Overton River isn’t much, but its valley is magnificent—flat and a mile wide with dramatic two-hundred-foot ranges of steep hills on either side. On the brink of the hill facing us, the windows of Overton University’s red-brick buildings reflected the morning sun.
Mara gazed in silence for several minutes, entranced. My personal musicians furnished appropriate music: sustained strings behind a cello melody.
Finally, Mara turned back to me, her face full of wonder. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “I’ve never been up here before.”
“Good burglars earn the right to enjoy beautiful views,” I said. “We can savor it while we eat.”
We did exactly that, wasting no time with words. I finished first, having made a head start while she gazed.
When she took the last bite of her chocolate donut, I decided to share a confidence. “There’s something I’ve wished for,” I said, pointing back across the valley. “That open spot to the left of the university buildings is where they’ll build the new fine-arts center, three stories high. The original architect’s drawing capped it by a steeple with a cross on top. It would have been the most dominant feature on the whole ridgeline, announcing to the entire valley what Overton Grace College was about.”
“You said ‘would have been.’” Her expression was grave. “What happened?”
“You’ve heard about The Crisis and the paid consultant. He convinced the administration our denominational heritage would turn students away. So no new crosses will be built, and the old ones came off the entries to the campus.”
“And they hired a Wiccan to teach comparative religions,” she mused.
“We could have been, literally, the biblical ‘city set on a hill,’” I said. “That isn’t going to happen, but it’s still nice to dream about.”
“I’m outside of that tradition now,” she said, her words coming deliberately, “but I can understand your disappointment.”
My historian’s curiosity got the better of me then. “I don’t understand your tradition,” I said. “Can you give me the short course?”
I guess I expected a personal testimony, but what I got was a classroom lecture. The early sunlight struck blue sparks from her eyes, but neither that nor the chocolate smudge beside her mouth made her any less the lecturing professor.
“Wicca is a modern reconstruction of an ancient earth religion,” she said. “It concerns itself with living fully in this life, right now. Wiccans regard the earth as divine, and they try to live in harmony with it. Divinity divides into god and goddess, and Wiccans worship one or both.”
She paused, so I asked, “Do you belong to a coven?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No. I’m a solitary. I do my own thing.”
“What about ethics?” I asked.
Her gaze held mine, but her eyes again became a fortress. “The ethical guidelines of Wicca are the Wiccan Rede—‘An it harm none, do as ye will’—and the Threefold Law, that whatever you do in the world comes back to you three times. Do something bad, and three bad things come back to you.”
“That sounds nice,” I said, “but where do the harm and the bad come from? What’s the source of badness?”
She looked away. “Let’s get back to business. If we’re going to work together, I need to know something about the people we’re investigating. I don’t really know anyone on campus.”
If I wanted her willing participation, I had to take time to share information. “The only suspects we know of are the ones Dean-Dean named on Thursday: Bob Harkins in chemistry, Gifford Jessel in philosophy, Brenda Kirsch in physical ed, and Luther Pappas, the janitor.”
“Let’s start with Jessel,” she said. “You said his mother lives in the nursing home.”
It occurred to me that I didn’t know much about my fellow faculty members, but I told what I did know. “Jessel holds a Ph.D. from the state university. He’s been here eight or nine years. Soon after he came, his mother had to go into the nursing home. He visits her several times a week. He’s around forty years old, a bachelor. I’ve never heard of any romantic interest. He’s not popular with the administration because he’s hardheaded about academic standards, but students keep taking his classes because he challenges them. He hangs pretty much to himself. That’s about all I know.”
“It’s a good start. Bob Harkins?”
“A different story. Married, late thirties, looks young for his age. Ph.D. in chemistry from a prestigious school in the East. Solid worker with students on research, fine record getting them into jobs or graduate study. He had a promising research project a few years ago, one he thought would make him rich. He says it got stolen, he doesn’t know how, and someone back East patented it. He’s been pretty glum since then. Bob stays out of campus politics. He’s a good family man with two daughters about junior high age. He spends his spare time at home, so far as I know. If you saw his family, you’d think the fifties had made a comeback.”
“Another straight arrow.” She sounded disappointed. “Brenda Kirsch?”
“I know less about her. Master’s degree in physical education from somewhere out of state. She’s been here ten or eleven years. Began as instructor and coach of women’s athletic teams, worked her way up to director of women’s athletics with the rank of associate professor. She doesn’t coach now, just teaches and conducts exercise classes.”
Mara arched her eyebrows. “You haven’t given any personal information about her.”
“I don’t know much. She’s in her late thirties, I guess. Not married. My wife, Faith, and I saw her occasionally in restaurants in town. Always with a man, but never the same one.”
“What kind of men?”
“I never noticed.” I thought a moment. “Well, I remember Faith saying they were all big men and looked like athletes. I didn’t pay much attention. I’ve never heard any talk about her.”
Mara took a deep breath. “All right. How about the janitor?”
“He’s been here nine or ten years. We speak in p
assing. I know nothing about him.”
She looked out across the valley again. “And you know nothing to connect Laila with any of these?”
“Nothing.”
She made a face. “So all we have is three respectable professors and one complete blank. Not one motive among them, unless Laila stole Professor Harkins’s research project.”
“That’s why we’re starting with her: to find a connection to that or anything else. And don’t forget those scraps of paper . . . the fragments ter leave h and y husband. They must mean something.”
We dumped our trash in a litter barrel and headed back to the campus.
Mara stared out the window, then turned and said, “We found a lot of things in Laila’s house that she couldn’t afford, but did you notice that she didn’t have the one thing you’d expect to find?”
“What’s that?” We crossed the river and climbed the campus hill.
“Books.” She paused. “The only books she had were cookbooks. Most teachers I know have more books than picnics have ants.”
“What do you make of it?” I’d noticed the same thing, but wanted her interpretation.
“It means her interests lay elsewhere. Let’s hope that ‘elsewhere’ will tell us why someone killed her.” She let that sink in, then showed a wry smile. “Where’s our next burglary?”
“Laila’s office. We’re still trying to find connections.”
She looked at me in alarm. “There’s only one way in or out of her office. What happens if we’re caught?”
I showed a grin that belied the near-panic in my heart. “We exchange our business suits for the latest fashion in jailhouse coveralls.”
CHAPTER 11
The second burglary didn’t happen. At least, not the way we’d planned.
“The science center ought to be deserted on Saturday morning,” I said as we parked in front of it. Few cars and no people were in sight.
On the campus circle, the grass had turned gray and the elm trees stood bare in the November chill. Snows would fall soon, and the bleakness of winter would prevail. Even now the sunlight showed a cold, silvery cast, and the wind’s sharp edge cut at ears and noses.
