Clarissa nodded.
“I kind of liked the attention, too,” Hannah confessed. “He was this older, worldly, successful man. He had a career I could only dream about. He was powerful. I liked that. Plus he gave me the answer keys to quizzes when my grades started slipping,” she mumbled sheepishly.
Though Clarissa was surprised, she tried not to show it. She didn’t want her own reaction to distract Hannah. Right now the young woman was opening up to her, and the reporter didn’t want anything to jeopardize their line of communication.
“Fill in the blanks for me, Hannah. You and the dean had a relationship. He helped you with your schoolwork. But then your grades started slipping anyway. What was that all about?”
“A couple of times, one of my professors strayed from the syllabus,” Hannah explained. “Rather than use the old, standardized tests, he made up his own. Of course, the answer keys the dean gave me were useless then. So I got bad grades.”
“Ah, that makes sense. Then what happened?”
“I’m not proud of this, but I asked Dean Connor to change my grade in that course. I just…I figured maybe he could intervene on my behalf, you know? I mean, I made out with him and everything. I figured he owed me,” Hannah confessed, looking ashamed.
“But he refused?” Clarissa guessed.
Hannah nodded. “He told me it was my fault for messing up. He said he had already helped me too much. He was concerned about getting caught,” she explained. “He said he didn’t want to stick his neck out for me only to have it chopped off.”
“And then?” Clarissa urged.
“And then I lost my temper,” Hannah told her. “He tried to shoo me out of his office. He was acting like I was just another student…like he didn’t even know me. I felt used. I felt angry. So I started screaming at him in the hallway.”
A-ha! That made a lot of sense. The pieces of the puzzle were finally coming together.
“Did you talk to the dean again after that?” Clarissa asked.
“No. I blocked his number. I just wanted to be done with him.”
“I don’t blame you,” Clarissa said gently. “Hannah, the night he died, you were on campus.”
“Yes. I’m on campus a lot,” Hannah said, confirming what the other students had said. “Sometimes I just don’t have the energy to make the drive back here to Sugarcomb Lake, you know? Occasionally I even stay in the library until it closes and then sleep in my car.”
“So it’s just a coincidence that you were there the night the dean died,” Clarissa surmised.
“Yes. I was walking past the building he fell from.”
“Did you see or hear anything?”
“I heard a yell,” Hannah recalled.
“Could you tell if it was male or female?” Clarissa asked hopefully. She had assumed a witness had screamed upon seeing the dean fall. But so far, she had been unable to confirm or deny that suspicion.
“It was definitely male,” Hannah said with certainty. “It sounded like Dean Connor’s voice. In fact, I’m almost sure it was him. It sounded like he was out of breath, like he was struggling with somebody.”
“Thanks Hannah. You’ve been really helpful,” Clarissa said earnestly, barely resisting the urge to jump up and down and cheer. “I’ve taken up enough of your time. It sounds like you’re very busy, so I should let you go.”
“Uh huh, I have lots of schoolwork to catch up on,” Hannah agreed. Then she gave Clarissa a pleading look. “I’ve made some mistakes, but I didn’t have anything to do with Dean Connor’s death. My whole life could be ruined over this! Please, please find out who the real killer is!”
“I’ll do my best,” Clarissa vowed.
As a matter of fact, she’d just had a revelation.
Chapter 16
A couple witnesses had reported hearing a scream when Dean Connor fell. Clarissa had assumed a passerby had yelled out after seeing a body fall from the rooftop. But Hannah insisted the dean himself had been the one hollering.
That changed everything.
Miles Connor had been a pretty big guy. He hadn’t been overweight; he had just been very solid. Judging from the photos Clarissa had seen of him, he had to have been over six feet tall and at least two hundred pounds. He looked like he was in pretty good shape.
In theory, anyone could have pushed him off a rooftop if they had come up behind him. The element of surprise would have rendered him helpless, unable to put up a fight.
But now the evidence suggested there had been a fight.
There had been a fight, and Miles had lost.
Clarissa had a theory, but before she told anyone she needed to see the crime scene.
Once again, she was back on campus. Green City University was going to be sick of her soon! Or at least the drivers in the parking lot would be. Thankfully, there were fewer students around after dark. That meant less honking!
After she had parked her car – badly – Clarissa made the now-familiar walk to the scene of the crime. She could still faintly see the chalk outline of the dean’s body on the sidewalk. But that wasn’t what she was concerned with.
No, she wanted to see where he had fallen from.
Clarissa went inside the building and took the elevator to the top floor. She felt a twinge of guilt for not taking the stairs, but it was a long way up and she was lazy. Besides, she had to take a flight of stairs up to the roof – that was more than enough exercise for one night, right?
There was yellow police tape blocking the stairwell door, but Clarissa stepped around it.
It was okay. She wasn’t going to disturb anything. She only wanted to look around a little. She climbed the flight of stairs two at a time, eager to get to the roof. By the time she reached the top of the stairwell, she was huffing and puffing. It renewed her appreciation of elevators!
Unfortunately, the door that led out to the roof was locked.
Thankfully, Clarissa had her gigantic handbag full of goodies with her. In the past, her purse had been stuffed to the brim with snacks, makeup and magazines. Now, however, it contained all sorts of little goodies she had brewed up in her kitchen…and not the goodies of the food variety.
Clarissa couldn’t bake to save her life. But she was getting better at concocting potions.
Sometimes she still messed things up. The book of potions Matilda had given her was fairly straightforward, but Clarissa wasn’t the greatest at following instructions. A few minor mishaps had made her more mindful, though. When she actually measured the ingredients properly instead of guesstimating, good things happened.
Hurriedly, Clarissa rummaged through the bag of potions she stored in her purse.
She found the perfect one. It was a mix of ground peppermint leaves, rainwater and dried dragon fruit that had been left outside overnight to soak up the moon’s power. Clarissa opened the vial and carefully poured its contents over the doorknob. Then she crossed her fingers.
The doorknob immediately crystalized and turned to ice. But it wasn’t just any ice. No, this ice wasn’t ordinary at all. It was the coldest of the cold, the most brittle of brittle. In fact, Clarissa could even see frost rising up off of the doorknob.
She leaned in close and blew on it.
The abrupt change in temperature was all it took for the doorknob to fall to pieces. It crumbled, unable to withstand the frigid temperature coupled with Clarissa’s warm breath. Her plan had worked like a charm.
“Yes!” Clarissa whispered under her breath triumphantly. “I rock!”
Then she kicked open the knob-less door and ran out onto the roof.
There wasn’t much to see out there. In fact, it was just a whole lot of concrete and not much else. Clarissa didn’t know why Miles Connor would have been up there on the first place, unless he had gone out for a smoke or something.
Actually, the roof was a pretty great spot for stargazing, she noted.
Had a murder not taken place there, it would have been a rather romantic spot for a date.
/> Clarissa’s thoughts inevitably turned to Parker.
She couldn’t help but imagine them sitting up there on the roof, all alone and cuddled up to stay warm in the chilly night air. She made a mental note to ask Parker to take her stargazing some time. They could drive out to the countryside and admire the night sky. How perfect!
“Get a grip!” Clarissa told herself sternly when she realized how distracted she had allowed herself to become. “You’re here to investigate a murder, not to daydream about date night with your boyfriend!”
Slowly and methodically, Clarissa began to walk around the perimeter of the rooftop. She made sure not to get too close to the edge. The thought of tumbling to her death was terrifying. In fact, she couldn’t understand how anyone could not be afraid of heights!
Squinting in the darkness, Clarissa looked for the spot where the dean’s body had fallen. After a moment, she located it. She was up far too high to see the chalk outline on the sidewalk, but she was nonetheless confident that she had identified the right spot.
“So this is where he fell from,” she whispered to herself, walking over to investigate.
There was a white concrete barrier around the perimeter of the entire roof.
It was quite tall. It hit Clarissa just above her waist.
In addition to being decorative and rather lovely to look at, it was supposed to provide some measure of safety. In fact, it was intended to prevent tragedies exactly like that which had befallen the dean.
But Miles Connor’s death hadn’t been an accident.
It had been a murder.
There was no way the dean could have slipped and fallen from the rooftop. Not with the concrete barrier there to prevent such a tragic accident. And the experts agreed it didn’t look as though he had jumped. He had landed too far from the building for that scenario to be likely.
Clarissa sat down and stared at the protective barrier thoughtfully.
“That concrete wall would have been nearly waist-high on Miles Connor,” she said to herself, wishing Cat was there to listen to her think aloud. “It would have taken a hard shove from a strong person to send him over.”
She thought about that for a moment.
“There was a struggle. That means the dean wasn’t caught off guard. He was overpowered. I know for a fact I wouldn’t be able to push a six foot tall, two hundred pound man over that barrier. If I tried, he would probably grab onto me and take me right over with him…”
She thought back to Hannah Woods. She was a slight girl, short and thin. There was no way she had the upper body strength to overpower a man the size of Miles Connor. That meant there was no way she could have been the one who pushed him off the roof.
Furthermore, Hannah seemed credible. Her version of events made perfect sense, and her behavior seemed normal given the circumstances. Nothing about her had struck Clarissa as deceptive or suspicious.
What about the guidance counselor, Nancy Donoghue?
Nancy had certainly acted strangely!
She was taller and much heavier than Hannah. But it seemed just as unlikely that she could have overpowered the dean. Nancy was a plump, somewhat out of shape woman. She didn’t look like she worked out. And she had begun to wheeze after walking only a short distance.
It was doubtful she would have been able to throw Miles from the rooftop, especially when she would have had to lift him up over the concrete barrier. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Slowly, Clarissa nodded. That was it.
“The killer is a man!” Clarissa exclaimed triumphantly. “He’s a big, strong man!”
She was sure of it now. And that meant she could rule both Hannah and Nancy out as the killer. It also meant Daphne Connor hadn’t killed her husband. But it didn’t mean she was necessarily without blame.
That boyfriend of Daphne’s looked like he was very big and very strong. His muscles were so defined that he resembled a bodybuilder – he obviously spent a lot of time working out. He could definitely overpower a man with Miles Connor’s build.
“I’ve been focusing on the wrong suspects!” Clarissa laughed, smacking her forehead in frustration. “All this time, the real killer was right in front of me! It’s Daphne’s boyfriend. I mean, he had a motive and the means to kill Miles. It seems so obvious now!”
With a bounce in her step, Clarissa made her way down from the rooftop.
She felt very optimistic that she had basically already solved the case. Of course, she needed to verify a few details before she took her suspicions to the police. But that was just a formality, really, to make sure the cops would take her seriously.
On the main floor of the building, a wine and cheese reception of some sort was being held. Clarissa was surprised to see so many people there. They were all dressed up, too. It looked like some kind of big, fancy event where academic types could schmooze.
The reporter glanced down at her own attire and grimaced. She was dressed in one of her slob outfits. She hadn’t meant to leave the house in the rattiest pair of sweatpants she owned…it had just kind of happened.
She decided she had better sneak out of the reception area as quickly and discreetly as she could. She looked incredibly out of place next to all the dressed up, well-groomed professionals!
“Ooh, cheese!” she exclaimed as she walked past a table.
It was piled high with precisely cut cubes of brie, mozzarella and cheddar. She couldn’t help herself. She reached out and grabbed a couple pieces. They looked so delicious and cute with their toothpicks sticking out – how could she not indulge a bit?
“Excuse me,” a disapproving sounding man called out. “Do you have a ticket for tonight’s lecture? It’s a private event,” he added, his voice dripping with disdain.
“I was just leaving!” Clarissa assured him, red-faced.
She shoved the rest of the cheese in her mouth and went charging toward the door. She was well aware that people were staring – and most of them were looking pretty judgmental. Oh, the humiliation! She just wanted out of there!
She almost made it.
The door opened right as Clarissa got there. It swung toward her, hitting her squarely in the nose. Stunned, she took a step back. She was even more stunned when she saw who was standing there.
“Parker?” she gasped, her mouth still full of cheese. “What are you doing here?”
He looked effortlessly handsome, as usual. He was dressed in business attire. He was even wearing a tie! He looked really good, and very professional. He looked like he belonged there, amongst all the fancily dressed academics.
His eyebrows shot up. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting to see Clarissa.
“Did the door hit you?” he demanded, reaching for her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she insisted, waving him off. “What are you doing here?” she asked again.
“I’m giving a presentation on journalism in the age of social media,” he replied. “My father insisted I do it as a favor to a friend of his. What are you doing here?” Then he smirked. Lowering his voice, he said, “I shouldn’t even ask, should I? You’re here snooping around!”
“I am not snooping around,” Clarissa corrected him. “I am investigating!”
He grinned. “That’s what I meant.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I have to go get ready for my presentation. You’re welcome to sit in on it if you want to. But between you and me, it’s pretty boring.”
“I’ve got to go anyway,” Clarissa told him, well aware that everyone was still staring. “Bye!”
“Wait,” Parker said, catching her hand in his.
She turned back toward him. “Yes?”
“Do I get a kiss goodnight?” he asked hopefully.
She lit up. “Yes,” she told him, beaming.
Clarissa grimaced when she realized she probably smelled like cheese. But she doubted Parker was going to give her that sort of kiss, anyway. She turned her head, expecting a chaste, brief peck
on the cheek.
But that wasn’t what she got.
Instead, Parker learned down and planted one right on her lips.
There Clarissa was dressed like a slob and Parker didn’t even care. He wasn’t the least bit embarrassed to be seen with her – or to let people know she was his girlfriend. Instead, all he wanted was to kiss her. He didn’t even seem fazed that her breath smelled of cheddar and brie.
Before she walked out the door, Clarissa glanced over her shoulder.
All the snobs in fancy clothes were still staring at her, but they no longer looked judgmental and disapproving. In fact, most of the women appeared to be rather envious of her. It was no surprise – after all, Parker was very handsome.
Smiling to herself, Clarissa strutted out of the building with her head held high.
All in all, it had been a very good night.
And first thing tomorrow, she was going to catch a killer.
Chapter 17
Who said stalking was a bad thing?
Clarissa happened to think it was pretty useful. She also liked to call it sleuthing rather than stalking – it had a nicer, less psychotic ring to it. And thanks to Clarissa’s sleuthing, it wasn’t difficult to find out the name of Daphne’s boyfriend.
Social media was a dead end, since the widow only ever posted updates about her yappy toy poodle. It wasn’t surprising. Clarissa theorized that Daphne probably wanted to keep her affair under wraps. Of course she wouldn’t be dumb enough to post photos of him online!
But Clarissa wasn’t easily deterred.
What did she know about Daphne’s boyfriend? Well, not much. She had only had a quick glance at him through the windshield of his car. And unfortunately, it hadn’t occurred to her to take note of his license plate number.
When it came right down to it, Clarissa really only knew two things about the mystery man.
First, she knew he worked out. That much was obvious, even from a distance. He was buff!
The second thing Clarissa knew was that he drove a bright yellow sports car.
A Drop of Magic (A Sugarcomb Lake Cozy Mystery Book 3) Page 9
