The Grim Steeper

by Amanda Cooper

  “Kimmy? No way would she kill anyone. I’ve known her two years, and that girl is a solid-gold sweetheart.”

  That had been said about murderous females before, Sophie thought. “There are the two love interests of the dean and his wife, then there is the registrar and his assistant, the basketball coach, and who knows who else.”

  “Sounds like a handful.”

  “Dana, can you get me in touch with Kimmy Gabrielson? I mean, I’ll bet you’re right, but I’m wondering what she may have noticed last night. She’s smart, she’s observant, she may know something or have seen something.”

  “Okay,” Dana said. “Why don’t I believe that’s all you want to ask her? I’ll give her a call this morning. Actually, she has some books that just came in from a special order for the book club, so I need her to come pick them up anyway.”

  “If I know when she’s coming in, I can just happen to be at the store and I’ll take it from there.”

  “I’ll send you a text. Here’s Cissy.”

  They greeted each other, and talked a bit about the shocking end of Sophie’s evening, and what Cissy had pried out of Wally. “Cissy, I am a bit concerned. Your grandmother has told me, Laverne and Nana to come over to Belle Époque at ten, and said she has something to do. Have you talked to her yet today? Do you know what that’s about?”

  Cissy sighed. “No, I don’t have a clue.”

  “Can you visit and be there when we come over?”

  There was silence for a moment, then a long, drawn-out martyred sigh. “Okay, I guess I can. I was going to get a manicure but I’ll put it off for now, even though it messes up my whole day.”

  “Good,” Sophie said, refusing to be drawn in by her oh-woe-is-me attitude. “See you there.”

  Laverne was in Nana’s second-floor tiny kitchen having a cup of tea with her friend and business partner when Sophie descended.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” Laverne said, getting up and hugging her goddaughter. “Finding the dean.”

  “I’m okay,” Sophie said, her voice muffled against Laverne’s hand-knit sweater, inhaling her White Shoulders and baby powder scent. “Laverne, can we talk about last night?” she said, once her godmother released her and sat back down. Sophie sat on the third chair at the tiny table in her grandmother’s small, pale-blue-painted dining area, drawing her knees up, heels on the edge of the seat.

  “Sure, honey. I suppose you want to know if I saw or heard anything?”

  “Well, from both of you,” she said, gathering her grandmother into her gaze. “The dean and his wife and party were inside, too, and I wasn’t. So were the Board of Governors members and some others. Did you notice anything odd, or any interaction? Before the dean’s outburst about the tea, I mean?”

  Nana and Laverne traded glances, as they often did.

  “There was one thing,” Laverne said. “But it wasn’t the dean, it was his wife. She snuck off into the kitchen and got out her phone. She was whispering into it. I, uh . . . happened to be near the door and heard her tell someone that he—or she—only had a short time to ‘get it done’ before it was too late. She saw me and stopped, gave me a dirty look—not exactly dirty, but frigid—so I left her alone.”

  “The person only had a short time to ‘get it done’ before it was too late,” Sophie repeated.

  “That could mean anything,” Nana said.

  “Or it could mean she was talking to the dean’s killer,” Sophie said.

  Someone hammered on the door downstairs and Sophie leaped up, almost fell because one foot was asleep, and sprinted down the stairs. It was Cissy at their side door, and she looked red-faced and cross. “Sophie, Grandma is having a fit. She told you all to be over there at ten.”

  Sophie ducked back in, looked up at the big clock over the stove. “It’s just ten now, for heaven’s sake.”

  But Cissy had whirled on her heel and had already stomped back across the lane to Belle Époque.

  Sophie returned to her grandmother’s kitchen. “It’s time. Madame Earnshaw has given us our marching orders, and if we know what’s best for us, we’ll mush.”

  Five minutes later they were all sitting around one table in the Belle Époque tearoom. Cissy was eying her nails with a frown; something was wrong, but Sophie didn’t have time to pry it out of her. Cissy usually needed someone to coax her to spill her troubles, a way to get extra attention, Sophie thought, and then she got mad at herself for being mean. She’d talk to her friend after.

  Mrs. Earnshaw was smirking and nodding, as she looked around the table at each one of them: Laverne, Nana, Cissy, Gilda and finally Sophie.

  “I got a secret, but I’m going to tell you all before I tell the police. Everyone thinks I’m a nutty old lady, but I’m not. See, I know who killed the dean. It was—”

  Chapter 13

  A crash outside made them all jump, and Sophie raced out the door and peered down the lane toward the street. Three police officers stared at two cars that were crunched together. One man climbed out of the front car and circled to look at his bumper as he hollered his displeasure at the other driver, who had rammed into the back of him. A nice-looking fellow in his thirties got out of his dark blue Beamer sports car and approached the irate driver of the front car.

  Sophie slunk along, hoping the police wouldn’t notice her getting closer. One officer was taking notes and strolled over to the cars as Wally, who was still working the scene of the murder, approached the two men.

  “You jerk, what the hell were you doing? Talking on your iPhone, or something? Didn’t see a car stopped?” the man in front yelled.

  Sophie eyed the two men and realized with a start that she recognized the one from the Beamer. It was Paul Wechsler, who was the systems engineer at Cruickshank, and who had been lingering about the previous evening, but had accosted the dean as he was leaving. And who was one of the other potential grade alterers. And the dean’s wife’s boyfriend!

  She definitely needed to talk to him!

  “Dude, I’m sorry,” he said, hands splayed out in a placating, pleading gesture. “Look, I’m in trouble, too, because this is my girlfriend’s car and she’s going to freak out. Can we just . . . I mean, there’s not much damage, right?”

  “Not much damage?” The first man hopped and punched the air. “Look at it . . . just look at it! My bumper is dragging. I’m going to—”

  “Relax, fellas,” Wally said, approaching the two men. “We can settle this. Why were you stopped here anyway?” he asked the first man.

  “I heard about this on the news,” he said, waving his hand toward Auntie Rose’s, “and wanted . . . none of your business anyway!”

  “It has become my business with a crash investigation to come. What’s your name, sir?”

  “That’s none of your business, either. Why don’t you ask him?” he said, jabbing his finger toward the other man.

  “Your name?”

  He gave it—Sophie couldn’t hear what it was—and Wally wrote it down. “Okay, so you were rubbernecking, stopped in the middle of a public thoroughfare,” he said. He turned toward the other guy. “What’s your name, sir?”

  “I don’t want any trouble,” Wechsler said, backing away. “Look,” he said, to the other driver. “Can’t we go somewhere and talk about this? I can’t report . . . I mean . . .”

  Wally’s gaze sharpened. “What’s your name?” he said to the Beamer driver.

  “Wechsler,” the guy said. “Paul Wechsler. I’m late for work, so maybe we can—”

  “No way,” the front guy said. “We’re going to settle this right here and now. The cops are here, I’ve got proof, it’s your fault. You’re the one who ran into me.”

  This was all very interesting, given her conversation with Julia that morning. Jeanette Asquith had been whispering on the phone to someone last night
to get it done or they’d run out of time. Was it Paul Wechsler she was talking to? Even though he was right there, she wouldn’t risk being seen talking to him, especially not if they were plotting to kill her husband, but they could both talk on the phone without issue. Was that why he had been speaking with the dean, to maybe make an appointment to speak with him later? And had he come back this morning to visit the scene of the crime as assailants, according to the old saying, apparently did? Was he afraid he’d left some clue behind?

  Wally took the guy in front aside and began questioning him, so Sophie sidled up to Paul Wechsler, who was bent over his front bumper, examining it. She would never get another opportunity to get this particular guy alone.

  “Hey, are you okay? Do you need a coffee or anything?” she said.

  “What?”

  “You look like you’re shaken up. Can I get you anything?”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “You look familiar,” she said, eyeing him. “Oh, I know! You work at the college, right? With computers.”

  “Yeah,” he said, straightening.

  He was nice looking but in a serious, bespectacled way, not someone she would have thought of as a cougar’s boy toy. “You were here last night, weren’t you? I saw you talking to the dean. Did he have you looking into this grading problem I’ve heard about?”

  “What do you know about that?” he asked, his eyes narrowing, dark brows drawn low. He had a nice mouth and a strong jawline, with a bristle of dark hairs along it; a good-looking guy in a very serious way.

  “Oh, everyone’s heard about it. The whole town is buzzing. Word is that it’s a real mess. Hundreds of grades changed,” she said.

  “Not hundreds,” he demurred.

  “But more than the one, right? I mean, it only stands to reason there must have been more than just one.”

  “Why do you say that?” he said, looking a little alarmed.

  Wally was eying her, and she knew she only had a few more moments with Wechsler before Wally came to ask him about the accident. She met the fellow’s gaze. “There is no reason why just one grade would be changed. Did you tell the dean that last night, when you spoke to him?”

  He compressed his lips. “I wanted the dean to know the bottom line. I was trying to help him, for God’s sake! He was set on announcing who did it this morning, but he was taking a real chance because there was no way of knowing the exact person based on the computer information. When I scanned the data I found a pattern of alterations, and they all occurred in two specific areas except for one anomaly that—”

  “Mr. Wechsler, if I could speak with you now? I need your license and registration. Now, you say you’ve borrowed this car?” Wally gave Sophie a stern look.

  Drat! The guy was on the verge of telling her important information. Maybe she could accost him later.

  When Wechsler moved back to the car to get the registration out of the glove box, Wally muttered to Sophie, “You need to back off.” He pointed to the tearoom.

  She looked over her shoulder. The others were crowded at the window of Belle Époque. She was torn; Thelma’s bombshell reverberated in her head. What did the woman mean? Did she actually know who did it? In that case it was a waste of time to investigate further. But on the other hand, when had Mrs. Earnshaw ever been right about anything?

  But she couldn’t go against what Wally, as an officer of the law, was saying. “Okay, I’ll go. But Wally, this guy was at the tea stroll last night, and he spoke to the dean,” she muttered. “I wanted you to know that. I have to wonder why he was driving by here this morning.”

  “I already recognized the name. Paul Wechsler has been summoned in to talk to Detective Morris. We do know what we’re doing, you know, and don’t always depend on citizen involvement to solve murders.”

  As she slowly walked away, she heard Paul say, as he handed over his information, “I’m borrowing this car while mine is in the shop. It’s registered to Mrs. J. Asquith, a . . . a friend.”

  The others crowded around when she reentered Belle Époque, all except Mrs. Earnshaw, who sat stiffly at the table, her mouth primmed in a straight line, with purse-string wrinkles tightened into deep grooves.

  As she led the ladies back to the table, Sophie explained what had happened. “What I don’t get, though, is why Paul Wechsler was driving down this street, distracted enough that he didn’t notice a car stopped in front of him.”

  “He would have heard about the dean’s death,” Nana said.

  “And it would spook anyone to know that someone they spoke to the night before was dead,” Laverne added.

  “He did hear about it; the police have already asked him to come in and talk to them.” She considered his troubled expression. “Okay, so say he’s not guilty . . . he’d especially be upset if he gave the dean information last night that caused the man to speak with someone, and let them know he was going to announce their name this morning as the grade-altering culprit.”

  “Is Wally okay?” Cissy said, her voice small.

  “Why wouldn’t he be all right?” Sophie asked her friend.

  “We kind of had a big fight yesterday, before he went to work,” she murmured.

  Sophie felt her heart constrict. As annoying as Cissy could be, she was still a good and loyal friend, and deserved empathy at the very least. “But he came back and slept at your place, didn’t he? I mean, he told you about the murder.”

  Cissy cast a worried expression over her shoulder at her grandmother, and whispered, “Yeah, but he was grumpy and sarcastic and only slept an hour before he left this morning without a word.”

  Sophie put her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “Let’s talk after we figure out what we’re doing about all of this. Come over and we’ll talk up in my apartment.”

  Cissy brightened. “Okay.”

  They all returned to Thelma, who needed to be coaxed to repeat her assertion. Cissy did this best. She threaded her arm through her grandmother’s and laid her head on her shoulder. “Come on, Grandma, we want to know. Who do you think did it?”

  “It’s not who I think did it, it’s who really did it.” She patted her granddaughter’s hand and sat up straighter, glancing around the circle of expectant faces.

  “So who did it?” Nana asked. Her tone was serious, but she winked at Sophie.

  Even a broken clock was right twice a day, her Nana had been known to say, so Sophie listened carefully. Maybe Thelma would have some insight, after all.

  “Well, this is what I saw with my own eyes. I saw that Asian fellow, you know, the one who works for the college.”

  Sophie thought for a second. “Vince Nomuro, the registrar?”

  “I guess. Anyways, he asked me if I had green tea, and I told him I wouldn’t keep something that went green, no matter what folks say about Belle Époque.”

  Laverne snickered. Sophie thought of correcting her about green tea, but what was the point? “And . . . ?”

  “And he went away with that group. But then he came back later.”

  “Later? How much later?” Sophie asked.

  “How about just before I told Gilda to get her butt downstairs and take the garbage out?”

  Gilda shrieked and leaped to her feet, her boney fingers thrust through her hair. “You didn’t tell me that, Thelma. That you saw someone? Why would you do that, send me out when there was a stranger sniffing around?”

  “I figured you’d see him if he was up to no good.”

  “But you didn’t tell me!”

  “Because then you wouldn’t have gone out, stupid!”

  Gilda harrumphed and retreated to the kitchen, where she banged around some pots and pans.

  “Anyhoo, I saw him, that fella, bending over your hedge. I’ll bet he was checking to make sure that fellow that he killed was good and dead.”

  “How do you kn
ow it was him?” Sophie asked.

  “He was wearing that stupid hat, a tweed one. Looked like he shoulda been on a golf course, or driving a fancy sports car. I call it an Andy Capp, because of the cartoon, you know.”

  Sophie was stunned; Mrs. Earnshaw had seen Vince Nomuro that close to Sophie finding the body? It seemed a clear indictment. Sophie went out, spoke to Wally—the two drivers were in a squad car now, presumably giving their stories of the accident to another officer—and had him call in for the detective to come out to question Thelma about her sighting. He told them Detective Morris was on her way.

  She hoped it was the answer, and that the crime would be solved swiftly. It all tied in, in a way; the registrar was one of the few people who could have changed Mac’s grade, and if the dean was about to expose him as the culprit, then he certainly had motive, though it seemed weak. It would tie up both crimes, then, and let Jason off the hook.

  She tried to ignore a niggling doubt in her brain, though. If the dean was about to expose Vince as the culprit in the grade change scandal, then why had he taken the time to warn Jason to update his resume? She couldn’t assume Thelma was right about anything, so she’d keep looking into it. Otherwise, Jason was as much in danger as ever.

  Cissy trailed her back to her apartment upstairs from the tearoom after they got Mrs. Earnshaw settled talking to Detective Morris in the kitchen of Belle Époque. Nana and Laverne were taking inventory in the tearoom kitchen, since they couldn’t open, and then Sophie was going to help Laverne thoroughly clean the carpets in the tearoom. Unless Laverne succeeded in getting her to leave the task to her and get on with investigating, as she kept saying.

  Cissy slumped down in one of the powder-blue overstuffed chairs in Sophie’s small living room. She stared at the teapots on the floating wall shelves and yawned. “I didn’t sleep at all last night, what with the fight with Wally, and then hearing about the murder, and waiting up for him later.”

  “What did you guys fight about?” Sophie asked as she brought in a tray with tea and some scones, with a pot of maple cream she wanted to taste. Cissy picked at one nail, frowning down at it and splaying her hand out, examining her ragged manicure. The girl never let anything go, one of her faults. She’d whine about the missed manicure for days.