A Body In My Office (The Charles Bentley Mysteries Book 1)

by Glen Ebisch

  “Oh, yes, I dropped it. Of course, I’ll pay to have the glass replaced.”

  Ignoring him, Charles walked back to the desk and, with a graceful motion, swept up the heavy cricket trophy in one hand and threw it across the room. It bounced off the wall, taking a chunk out of the plaster.

  “You can’t ... ” Underwood said, then a glance at Charles’ face caused him to take a step back, and an expression of fear replaced his normal look of disdain.

  At that moment Charles could see himself with his hands wrapped around Underwood’s throat, cheerfully throttling the life out of him. The image was so real that for a second he imagined it was actually happening. He took a deep breath, struggling to regain self-control.

  “Be out of here when I get back,” he muttered. Turning on his heel, Charles left the room.

  Unaware of his surroundings, Charles rushed down the back stairs and out of the building into the parking lot. There he paced back and forth in front of his car until noticing that he still had his mail clutched in one hand. He opened his car door, threw the mail on the seat, and resumed pacing. He was still pacing several minutes later when he saw Greg Wasserman, his next door neighbour, who taught physics at the College, walking across the lot toward him.

  “How are you doing, Charles?” Wasserman asked with a brief nod, clearly anxious to be on his way.

  Although Charles had always considered Greg a bit of a cold fish, an opinion reinforced by the man’s tall skeletal body which made it seem as though looking into the abstract fundamentals of things had left him not needing physical nourishment, Charles found himself pouring out to Greg all the details of his trying morning. Greg listened, giving little indication of his point of view either way. When Charles was done, he nodded.

  “You know what you need to do?”

  Charles wondered whether he was going to be advised to sue Opal College or assassinate the Dean.

  “What should I do?”

  “Run.”

  “Run?”

  “That’s right. A half hour of running every day, and you’ll find yourself feeling physically and psychologically healthier. You’ll have more energy and not be overwhelmed by adversity. And now that you’re retired, you’ll have plenty of time for exercise.”

  “I don’t know,” Charles said, feeling nervous, as he always did, in the presence of an obvious fanatic.

  “Any history of heart problems? Any artificial hips or knees?”

  “No.”

  “Then how about we try running together for a few days until you get into the swing of it?”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you—”

  “Structure is as essential to a happy retirement as it is to everything else in life and nature. I’ll see you tomorrow in front of your house at seven o’clock.”

  With a nod, Wasserman marched off to his car. Not being an early riser, Charles wondered whether he could even see the road at such an early hour. He pictured himself running, flashlight in hand, trying to dodge potholes and curbs. The picture wasn’t a pretty one.

  He resumed pacing, trying to work up his rage in anticipation of returning to his office and tossing Underwood out of a window.

  “Charles?” a woman’s voice asked.

  He glanced up and saw Andrea Boyd, a woman now in her early thirties and the other Americanist, staring at him quizzically. When she had arrived at the college six years ago, Barbara and Charles had taken her under their wing, helping her adapt to New England and Opal College. Andrea was originally a west Texas girl with a mind given to clear and direct thinking. The only time Charles has seen her almost go catatonic was when a snake slithered out of the woodpile behind his house while they were gathering wood for the fireplace. She later explained that being bitten by a rattler as a young girl had given her a Texas sized phobia for snakes.

  “Is something wrong, Charles?” she asked, coming over to him. Despite being upset, he found himself admiring her slender waist and long legs.

  For the second time in ten minutes, he poured out his tale of woe.

  “I’d heard rumours about Underwood being brought in, but I didn’t know he was going to replace you.”

  “Yes, apparently I’ve reached a time in life when I’m easily expendable.”

  “You could get a lawyer and fight it on the grounds of age discrimination,” Andrea suggested with a determined sound in her voice.

  “Even if I won, my golden years would be filled with freshman composition. No, I think it’s time to face the inevitable.”

  “You could go back up there right now and have it out with Underwood. Even if he is taking your job, he should wait for a decent interval before taking your office.”

  Charles glanced up at his office window. “I think I’m going to do just that.”

  Andrea smiled. “And after that, why don’t we try to look at this as a new beginning? How about I take you out to dinner tonight to celebrate?”

  Charles shook his head. “I think I’d rather be alone tonight to think and get my bearings.”

  “Okay, we’ll do it sometime in the next few days,” she said, pushing back her shoulder length brown hair.

  Since Barbara’s death, his feelings for Andrea had been confused. When Barbara was alive, the two of them had clearly been substitute parents for Andrea. After all, she and his daughter Amy were almost the same age. Since Barbara’s death, however, he had found himself occasionally entertaining more romantic thoughts about Andrea, then immediately dismissing them as foolish. Only multi-millionaires and aging rock stars had girl-friends thirty years younger than themselves. Money and fame were the only substitutes for a wrinkle-free body. Yet the hope never entirely disappeared.

  Andrea smiled at him. “Maybe this earthquake in your life will bring something good. You might be motivated to begin a new relationship. After all, it has been three years since Barbara’s death.” She gave him an innocent glance, which indicated to Charles that she wasn’t volunteering herself.

  He shrugged, not fully trusting himself to speak about life after Barbara.

  Andrea touched his arm. “I know it’s hard. We’ll talk about it some other time.”

  He nodded and took a deep breath. “I’ll call you about that dinner.”

  “Do that,” she said, waving as she went over to her car and drove away.

  Charles returned to pacing. The way he saw it this situation could be resolved in three ways. He could return to his office, find it empty, write his letter of resignation, and leave with the box of knickknacks from his desk representing thirty-five years of teaching. He could return to his office, find Underwood still there, and beat the man to a pulp. Finally, he could return to his office, find Underwood still there, and apologize for his hostile behaviour.

  He was surprised to find that all his pacing, rather than stoking his anger, had actually served to dissipate it. If Underwood was there, and did not further provoke him, he knew he would probably apologize and leave. Slowly he walked across the parking lot, and trudged up the back stairs to his office. The door was closed. When he opened it, there was no sign of anyone in the room. He closed the door behind him and went inside.

  When he walked around his desk to use the computer, he saw the body on the floor. It was without a doubt Garrison Underwood. He was lying on his back with his head centred in a rapidly growing pool of blood. Charles knew that death was not always easy to ascertain and that Underwood might only be seriously hurt. But the wide-open eyes staring at the ceiling made him not hold out much hope. Next to Underwood’s head was the cricket trophy that Charles had thrown across the room. The murder weapon, no doubt covered with my fingerprints, Charles thought. His first panicky impulse was to run. Get away and let someone else be the first to find the body. But then a sort of fatalistic serenity came over him, and he walked from his office up the hall to the English Department office repeating, “Whatever is going to happen will happen.”

  He took a couple of steps into the department office. Sheila was b
ent over, staring at the computer keyboard as if attempting to interpret the letters of a foreign script. She finally looked up.

  “Can I help you, Professor Bentley?” she asked, smiling.

  “Yes. There’s a body in my office.”

  She stared at him blankly, her smile slowly faltering, much as someone would act if she’d just been told a joke but didn’t get the punch line. Charles decided that he clearly needed to provide more information.

  “A dead body.”

  “There’s a dead body in your office?” Sheila asked. Her lips twitched nervously as if she suddenly didn’t want to be in the same room with someone so clearly unhinged.

  “Yes. It’s the body of Garrison Underwood. It appears as though he’s been murdered.”

  “Professor Underwood. Murdered?”

  Charles nodded encouragingly as if she were a slow student about to finally come upon the correct answer. Sheila, however, refused to take the next practical step, so after waiting a moment, Charles threw aside the Socratic method.

  “Call the damned police,” he ordered.

  Chapter Three

  “Hello, I’m Lieutenant Joanna Thorndike, chief of detectives.”

  Charles wondered how many detectives there could be in a town the size of Opalsville that they needed a chief, but didn’t think she would appreciate his asking. They were standing in the English Department seminar room, which the police had requisitioned for conducting interviews. A full coffee pot was on the sideboard. A box of powdered doughnuts occupied the centre of the table.

  “I see you’re not afraid to reinforce stereotypes,” Charles said. He quickly wondered with embarrassment if his reference to police and doughnuts would offend her.

  It didn’t. She smiled. “I like doughnuts enough not to worry about the consequences, except for those to my waistline.”

  Charles studied her. She was only a couple of inches shorter than his six feet and looked slender and fit for someone he guessed to be in her early fifties.

  “Doesn’t look as though you need to worry,” he said, and then realized that sounded flirtatious. Probably the first thing murderers do is to try to charm the police, he thought nervously.

  “Thanks,” Thorndike replied amiably, flashing him a brief grin. “Would you like some coffee or a doughnut?”

  He shook his head, nervous and not sure he could eat or drink at the same time as he answered questions.

  “Why don’t we get started then,” she said, putting down a notebook in front of her. “First of all, what’s your name?”

  “Charles Bentley. At least that’s one of my names.”

  “You have aliases?” she asked with a deadpan expression.

  “No. But my full name is Horace Charles Bentley.”

  “Really, it sounds better with the first and second names switched.”

  “My mother thought so as well, but my father’s name was Horace, and he insisted on it being first. I never use his name, I go by Charles.”

  Thorndike looked at him as though he might have serious daddy issues. And maybe I do, what of it? Charles thought defiantly. Don’t judge until you’ve walked a mile in my brogues.

  “Before we begin, can I ask whether Underwood was killed with his cricket trophy?” Charles said.

  “We won’t know without further examination of the body and of the trophy. Why do you ask?”

  “Because it will have my fingerprints on it from my first visit to the office.”

  “You handled the trophy?”

  “Not exactly, I threw it across the room.”

  Thorndike gave a small sigh as if to indicate that nothing was ever easy, and asked him to take his story from the top. He gave his rendition of what had occurred, starting with his interview with the Dean, and ending with finding Underwood dead. Thorndike seemed to be surprised when he said that he threw the trophy because of his wife’s picture being broken.

  “Not because this man was taking your job?”

  “Maybe a little,” he answered honestly. “But my anger over that is mostly directed at the college administration. After all, Underwood wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t offered him the position.”

  “That’s very objective of you.”

  “I try to be.”

  The Lieutenant glanced over her notes. “To sum up then, you say you had an argument with the victim. Left him alone and alive in your office, then came back approximately a half hour later and found him dead. You have witnesses who can account for your whereabouts during approximately fifteen minutes of that half hour. For the rest of the time, you say you were alone in the parking lot, pacing.”

  She glanced at him inquiringly, and Charles nodded.

  “So you were alone for fifteen minutes, and could have returned to your office during that period of time.”

  “I suppose I could have killed Underwood then and waited to announce the discovery of his body. Or I could have killed him before I left the office the first time and then returned to discover him. But I didn’t. Wasn’t there anyone who saw Underwood during that half hour?”

  Thorndike shook her head. “Not that we know about so far. My colleague has spoken briefly with the secretary’s assistant, Sheila. She had a good view of the main stairway, and she didn’t see anyone go past the open doorway. We’re going to interview the other people who were in their offices on the fourth floor.”

  “What about someone using the back stairs? Could anyone see them?”

  She shook her head. “If we had found someone who had their eyes on the backstairs who saw no one other than you using them, this interview would be taking place at the police station, and you would have been informed of your rights.”

  Charles sat back in the chair, his heart beating rapidly.

  “Because then you’d think I must have killed him.”

  She nodded. “Of course that’s still that possibility, but we can’t be certain.”

  “Talk to Greg and Andrea, they’ll tell you that I wasn’t acting like a killer in the parking lot.”

  “And how does a killer act? Does he froth at the mouth? Curse loudly? Declare that he’s glad he killed the bastard? In my experience, that happens very rarely. And pacing back and forth in the parking lot is not exactly normal behaviour.”

  “I’d had a bad morning,” Charles said, slumping back in the chair dejectedly, wondering if he would ever survive prison. Foolish question, he thought, what difference did it make? At my age I’d be a very old man by the time I was free, even if I got out early for good behaviour.

  “But don’t panic yet,” Joanna Thorndike said with an encouraging smile. “Anyone could have slipped up that back stairwell while you were in the parking lot, so you’re only a person of interest right now, not a full blown suspect.”

  “That seems like a fine distinction.”

  “Not so fine. It’s the difference between freedom and having to make bail.”

  “I see,” he said softly, shaken.

  “If you think of anything that you haven’t told us, please get in touch. And don’t leave town without contacting me.” Thorndike gave him her card. “Have a nice day.”

  Charles nodded, wondering if she was employing irony.

  Chapter Four

  When Charles got home, he found he was ravenous. He quickly made two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ate them with a large glass of milk. He wondered afterwards whether this was a childish reversion to comfort food. He was glad that the Lieutenant didn’t know he had such a good appetite because it would probably be another nail in his coffin. Most murderers probably enjoyed a hearty meal after dispensing with their victims.

  Thinking of the Lieutenant, he found that, although in one way she terrified him, in another way he was rather intrigued by her. She was intelligent with a sly sense of humour, and there was something appealing about her definitely womanly body being wrapped in a quasi-military uniform. He wondered for a moment whether he had some kind of perverted wish to be dominated by a strong w
oman. Then he wondered if the attraction had something to do with her being so unlike Barbara, who was short and thin with a tendency to wear diaphanous skirts.

  People had tried to set him up on dates several times after his year of mourning had ended, but without success. Even when he agreed to go along on an outing, the effort required in meeting a new person with the intention of deepening the relationship made him feel weary, as if he were being asked to climb a steep hill shouldering a heavy rucksack containing the past. His daughter, Amy, had recently suggested that he join an online dating service, perhaps finding one that specialized in people who were difficult to match. Stung, Charles asked her what she meant by that, she had responded with an airy, “Oh, you know.”

  Thinking about Amy reminded him that he should inform her of the recent turn of events in his life. Even though it was the middle of the day, he could call her at home because she was a full-time homemaker with two small children. Barbara had always worked, even when Amy was small, and Charles often wondered if Amy’s decision to stop working as soon as she’d had her first child was somehow an implied criticism of how she had been raised. Although he often wondered about it, Charles knew better than to bring it up with her. Too much honesty between parent and child was never a good thing. His own father’s blunt honesty had taught him that.

  Amy’s husband, Jack, was a high-flying wealth manager in Boston, so they could easily survive, even in the expensive Boston area, on one income. Charles thought of him, unkindly, as Jack the Philistine because he’d been a business major and had gone right on to law school with the sole intention of working in finance, although Charles knew that this was somewhat unfair to the Philistines, since recent research showed they had actually been much more cultured than their Israelite enemies, their bad reputation only the price of being on the losing side of history. Amy, on the other hand, had received a fine education in history at Opal, and she had gotten in based on merit, not because her father was on the faculty. Sometimes he thought there would be less conflict between them today if she had gone elsewhere and lived away at an earlier age.