Back To School Murder #4

by Meier, Leslie

  This was apparently an effective threat—the kids quieted down. Lucy looked for Elizabeth, and found her sitting with two girlfriends, Melissa Burke and Emily Anderson. Lance was several rows away, sitting with Noah Lenk. Lucy was surprised—even a newcomer couldn’t help but be aware that the Lenks were a disreputable clan known for their run-down houses, fierce dogs, and family squabbles that often erupted into violence, landing the participants in jail.

  “What do you know about Lance?” Lucy asked Mrs. Crowley.

  “Not much. He’s a good student—well behaved. I don’t have any complaints about him.”

  “He and Elizabeth seemed to be something of an item when school opened, but now things seem to have cooled.”

  “That’s typical—these kids switch partners so fast that I never know who’s going with whom.”

  “It’s just as well,” said Lucy. “They don’t have time to get into trouble.”

  “Well, I didn’t say that,” said Mrs. Crowley, pulling a book catalog out of her bag.

  Lucy turned and looked out the window. The leaves were still green, autumn was still a few weeks away, but they had a worn and tired look. Asters were blooming along the road, and spikes of goldenrod added a bit of color. The route to the college was taking them inland, away from the coast, and they passed farms and long stretches of woods.

  She massaged her temples, trying to ease the headache that was developing. She didn’t think it was simply the result of the noisy kids and the rattling old bus—this was a stress headache and she deserved it. Why had she let herself go so far with Quentin, she asked herself, feeling her cheeks warm as she remembered her visit to his apartment.

  Her mind might know what she did was wrong, but her body didn’t agree. Feeling the first stirrings of arousal, she shifted in her seat. This was ridiculous—she wasn’t a teenager at the mercy of her hormones.

  It was more than simple sexual attraction, she told herself. She had been feeling sorry for herself over losing her job. Bill hadn’t been very supportive; he had resented her new independence. Even the kids had been especially difficult. Toby was in the throes of adolescence, his voice was changing and he was shaving a couple of times a week, and on top of all that he was upset about Josh Cunningham. And Elizabeth was a worry, especially now that she had been diagnosed with asthma.

  Lucy turned again to check on her, and was relieved to find her laughing with her friends. She seemed to be doing fine, but Lucy wasn’t convinced she would continue to take her medicine now that her symptoms had disappeared.

  “You have to control asthma, or it will control you,” the doctor had warned them, but Lucy doubted that Elizabeth believed it. Well, she’d just have to learn for herself, decided Lucy, thinking wistfully of the days when she had controlled every aspect of her children’s lives. At least she had Sara and Zoë, who still thought Mom had all the answers.

  Was that it, she asked herself. Was she already suffering from some sort of empty nest syndrome? Is that why she had turned to Quentin?

  She could come up with any number of reasons why she was attracted to Quentin, but if she was honest with herself, it was a bit more difficult to understand what he saw in her. She wasn’t young anymore and she was preoccupied with her family. Why had he picked her when he could have his pick of hundreds of beautiful young coeds?

  He had told her she looked alive and interested, she recalled, smiling at the memory. That’s how she liked to think of herself, and she had appreciated the compliment. But come to think of it, how alive and interested did she really look after an hour or so of evening school? It was a line, she realized, embarrassed at her stupidity. He probably told that to all the older students he succeeded in luring to his apartment. A way to flatter them, overcome their resistance, and reel ’em in. How could she have been so gullible?

  Arriving in front of the library, the bus braked and came to a stop. Absorbed in her thoughts, Lucy hadn’t noticed, and was thrown forward. Mrs. Crowley jumped to her feet.

  “Stay in your seats for a moment—I have a few instructions.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s almost ten o’clock. That gives us a little more than two hours for research. That’s not much time so I advise you not to waste it.” She gave the students a meaningful glance.

  “I want you all back here at this exact spot no later than twelve-thirty. That is when we must leave if we are going to be back at the school in time for the buses home. Got that?” She leveled her gaze, moving from face to face.

  “Remember—this is a library—I expect you to behave like ladies and gentlemen.” This time she positively glared at them, attempting to etch her instructions on their brains. “All right, we will file off the bus single file and gather on the sidewalk.”

  Mrs. Crowley turned and stepped off the bus. The aisle immediately filled with pushing and shoving adolescents who blocked Lucy’s exit. She was the last one off and saw that, while most of the students were following Mrs. Crowley, a few renegades were already heading out in different directions. Elizabeth, she saw with some relief, was sticking with the main group, and she followed them into the library.

  They were welcomed there by the university librarian, Mr. Plunkett, a rather short, chubby gentlemen with very thick eyeglasses. He explained the function of a reference library in rather more detail than Lucy wanted to know, so she studied the elaborate ceiling murals which depicted various myths, including the rape of Leda by the swan. When the students scattered to pursue their own research, she asked if the library contained copies of the college newspaper.

  Mr. Plunkett assured her it did, and gave her directions to the periodicals desk, where she requested issues from the years when Carol Crane was an undergraduate. Knowing her interest for self-promotion, Lucy thought it highly unlikely she had slipped through the university unnoticed.

  Lucy was given several boxes containing rolls of microfilm and took them to a reading machine, where she followed the instructions and threaded the film through the mechanism. She was then able to flip through the old issues quite rapidly.

  All colleges are the same, she thought, scanning accounts of football triumphs, protests about the food service and lack of parking, and administrative disciplinary actions against unruly fraternities. Campus feminists were also making their views known, and demanding equal opportunities for female students.

  There was no mention of Carol Crane, but Lucy thought she might have seen her in a photograph of a “Take Back the Night” march. When she spotted an article detailing a sexual harassment complaint against an instructor, Lucy read closely, sensing an issue tailor-made for Carol.

  Sure enough, she was one of four students who had filed a complaint alleging the instructor had behaved in a “sexist manner” in class by presenting “offensive material” and making “inappropriate jokes.” Reading the instructor’s name, Lucy gave a little gasp. It was none other than Quentin Rea.

  Reading the complaints, Lucy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The students were reluctant to provide specifics at first, insisting it would be humiliating, but gradually revealed that they objected to the content of an Elizabethan literature course.

  “It was terribly embarrassing,” said one student.

  “I couldn’t believe the four-letter words,” said another.

  “I dreaded going to class,” stated a wide-eyed Carol Crane. “It was very stressful.”

  At first, Quentin brushed off the complaints, suggesting the students drop Elizabethan literature in favor of something more refined, like Victorian poetry. “The Elizabethans had a very different lifestyle from ours. They emptied their chamber pots out the window, into the street. They nursed their babies, or hired a wetnurse. They lived very public lives in large extended families; everyone in the household shared the same bed,” said Rea. “All this is reflected in their literature.”

  His argument made sense to Lucy, but the issue escalated when Carol Crane accused Rea of attempting to seduce her. The case went to a faculty jury, an
d although Rea was acquitted, his contract was not renewed for the following year.

  Suddenly, the letters seemed to jump out at her. This is it, thought Lucy excitedly. This was the connection she’d been looking for. She knew there had to be something more than Quentin was willing to admit between him and Carol. Lucy had suspected an affair, but this, she realized, was worse. Sexual harassment had become a modern witch hunt on some campuses. Hadn’t she read recently about a Nobel laureate who had been suspended from his professorship for using language some of his students found offensive?

  Carol was looking more and more like the little boy who cried wolf, thought Lucy. Whenever things got a little dull, she got somebody in trouble. It didn’t matter who got hurt, as long as she gained some sort of advantage.

  It was no wonder she was murdered, thought Lucy. The wonder was that it hadn’t happened sooner.

  Checking her watch, Lucy realized she would have to hurry if she wanted to get something to eat before the bus left. She reluctantly returned the boxes of film to the reference librarian, wishing she had time for more research, and hurried across the campus to the student union.

  Entering the crowded snack bar, she kept an eye peeled for Elizabeth, but didn’t see her. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen her in the library either. She did see Elizabeth’s buddies, Emily and Melissa, and made her way over to them.

  “Do you know where Elizabeth is?” she shouted over the lunchtime din.

  They exchanged a conspiratorial glance and shook their heads.

  “I’m worried that she’ll miss the bus,” persisted Lucy.

  “Oh, she’ll be back in time,” volunteered Melissa.

  “So you know where she went?” accused Lucy.

  “Not really—but she’s real responsible,” added Emily.

  “Was she alone?” Lucy was beginning to feel like Elliot Ness.

  The girls exchanged another look.

  “Listen, this is no joke,” advised Lucy. “I’m worried about her.”

  “She went with Lance and some professor guy. He came into the reference room all excited and said he was a friend of Miss Tilley’s…” began Melissa.

  “And how great it is that we come to the university every year…” added Emily.

  “And how he had this plant that blooms only once every hundred years and that anybody who wanted to see it should go with him,” concluded Melissa.

  “A century plant?” asked Lucy.

  “That’s it!”

  “And where is this century plant? In a greenhouse or something?”

  “I didn’t listen to that part,” confessed Emily.

  “Me either,” added Melissa. “But Lance was real interested and convinced Elizabeth they should go.”

  Great, thought Lucy, turning and marching across the lobby to study the campus map. Elizabeth discovers she’s allergic to practically every plant on earth and promptly becomes an amateur botanist. Studying the confused jumble of buildings that constituted the campus, Lucy wished she were back at little Winchester College, where she knew her way around. The state university was much bigger and all the buildings looked similar, constructed of brick in the same utilitarian style.

  Lucy finally found the Arbuthnot Conservatory—a conservatory for plants, she fervently hoped, and not music. It was tucked behind the admissions office and next to the gym so it shouldn’t be too hard to find. It was already a quarter to twelve, and if she couldn’t find them by ten past or so, she would have to head back to the bus herself. What then? She brushed the thought from her mind; she’d simply have to cross that bridge when and if.

  A sign obligingly placed opposite the student union pointed the way to both the gym and the admissions office. Lucy hurried off at a brisk pace. She hoped Elizabeth had remembered her inhaler—they could be growing any variety of plants in the conservatory and she was bound to be allergic to some of them.

  She had been doing much better, Lucy reminded herself, and hadn’t had any more attacks since seeing the allergist. That probably meant she was taking her medicine, but Elizabeth bristled so much whenever Lucy brought the subject up that she couldn’t be sure.

  The conservatory was farther than she’d thought. Lucy checked her watch and saw it was already nearly twelve. A steady stream of students was pouring from the buildings, and Lucy was headed against the flow of traffic. She began studying the faces of the oncoming students, hoping to spot Lance and Elizabeth.

  Finally she stopped a young fellow in a plaid shirt and asked for directions.

  “Sorry,” he said with an apologetic smile. “I’m a poli sci major.”

  “Just behind that brick building,” said his companion. “You can’t miss it.”

  Great directions, fumed Lucy, considering all the buildings were brick. She headed in what she hoped was the direction of the girl’s wave. This was ridiculous, she realized. Even if she found the right building, how would she ever find Lance and Elizabeth? How could her daughter be so irresponsible? She’d like to wring their necks. And if anything had happened to Elizabeth, that Lance would get a piece of her mind.

  “Mom—what are you doing? You’re going in the wrong direction!” Lucy looked up from the asphalt path, straight into Elizabeth’s puzzled face.

  “Are you okay?” she demanded.

  “Sure, Mom. But we’ve got to get back or we’ll miss the bus.”

  “I know that. Why do you think I was looking for you?”

  “Calm down, Mrs. Stone. Everything’s under control,” volunteered Lance.

  “Don’t you tell me to calm down!” Lucy exploded angrily. “What were you doing taking Elizabeth to a greenhouse? Don’t you know she’s allergic to plants?”

  “Mrs. Stone, there are plants everywhere.” Lance’s tone was extremely reasonable. “This place is covered with trees.”

  “Well, that’s different,” insisted Lucy, who was in no mood to be rational. “You gave me a terrible fright. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m sure,” sighed Elizabeth. “But I’m not so sure about you. You look awfully pale. Have you eaten?”

  “No—I was looking for you.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” asked Elizabeth, reaching into her backpack and producing a packet of cheese and peanut butter crackers. “Here. Eat these. You’ll feel better.”

  How did this happen, wondered Lucy, as she meekly followed Lance and Elizabeth back to the bus. She was supposed to be the mother; she was supposed to be in charge. She had every right to be angry with Elizabeth. But somehow Elizabeth had managed to turn the tables on her. Suddenly she was the rational caretaker, and Lucy was the one who needed to be taken care of.

  She opened the packet of crackers and ate one as she walked along, a step or two behind the kids. They made a cute couple, she had to admit it. Lance was taller than Elizabeth and tilted his head attentively toward her. They seemed comfortable with each other and were obviously having a good time. Probably laughing at her expense, she thought with a flash of paranoia, then shrugged the idea away. When she was a teenager, her mother was the last person she thought about.

  Back on the bus, Lucy wondered if Elizabeth was right. Was she overreacting? Why was she making such a big deal out of things? So she’d lost her job—so what? It happened to people all the time. She would pick up and go on. And so she’d nearly slipped into an affair—these things happened. She should be grateful that they had stopped in time. After all, if she had gone ahead and Bill had found out, it would have been a disaster. For her, and for the kids. She shuddered.

  Something had held her back, she realized, and it wasn’t her own sense of virtue. She had been ripe for an affair, but somehow she had never quite trusted Quentin. She found him attractive, all right, but she never felt as if their relationship was developing naturally, at a normal pace. Quentin always seemed to be pushing things, trying to manipulate her. Sometimes, it was almost as if a third person kept coming between them—Carol Crane.

  Why, ju
st the night before he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, and then instead of murmuring sweet nothings into her ear, he had asked her about Carol! He hadn’t really been interested in her at all, she realized, he just wanted to know how her investigation was going. Well, now she knew what he had been trying to hide, she thought, nodding grimly to herself. Carol had already forced him out of one job; he must have been terrified of her. Was she blackmailing him, wondered Lucy. Had she threatened to tell Winchester College authorities about the sexual harassment incident?

  Lucy suddenly felt cold despite the warm weather and wrapped her arms across her chest and rubbed her arms. The one person who had an overwhelming reason to kill Carol Crane, she realized, was Quentin Rea.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  When Lucy picked up Zoë from the day-care center, after returning from the state university, Sue had bad news for her.

  “I think she’s coming down with something. Has anybody in the family been sick?” she asked, wrinkling her forehead in concern.

  “Toby had the flu last week.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if Zoë’s the next victim. Poor baby.”

  Zoë was indeed a poor baby, up most of the night with an upset stomach. Lucy changed the bedding in the crib twice, tossing the soiled linens into the washing machine in the wee hours of the morning. Sleep was impossible; all Zoë wanted was to be held and rocked. She finally went to sleep around five-thirty, giving Lucy a scant hour of sleep before she had to get the family up at a quarter to seven.

  When Bill left for work, and the older kids left for school, she fell exhausted into bed. She slept until eleven when Zoë’s cries woke her.

  “How’s my girl?” she asked, lifting Zoë out of her crib. Her hair was damp with fever, but she was no longer fretful. Lucy changed a very messy diaper and carried her downstairs. Clear fluids were definitely the order of the day. Fortunately, she still had plenty of ginger ale and chicken broth from Toby’s bout the previous week.