by Mary Angela
“Quite,” he said.
“So I can leave.”
“Of course,” said Ernest. “Your presence here is completely voluntary.”
I looked to Tom Sanders for confirmation.
“Just remember, Ms. Prather, you are part of an ongoing investigation. This isn’t over until we find out exactly how Dr. Jaspers died.”
“Me?” I said. “I couldn’t possibly have any reason for hurting Molly. I’m an English professor.”
“And a very convincing storyteller,” added Tom.
I decided not to respond. My garrulity had caused me enough trouble.
Chapter Ten
Nick Dramsdor was right about one thing: we wouldn’t be leaving the country any time soon. This meant another night at the Normandy Inn. Two nights might prove too many. We would be fielding calls from parents, administrators, or both any minute now. All we could do was ask the group to stay together until André could charter a bus home.
After André and I made hotel and dinner arrangements, I left the precinct to get some air. The rest of the interviews would take at least an hour, maybe more, and André and the students had decided to eat and shop afterwards at the Nicollet Mall downtown. As I had no interest in shopping, and an hour was a long time to wait for breakfast, I dialed Lenny on my cellphone, telling him where I was and asking him if he would like to get something to eat. I wanted to tell him what the detectives had discovered about Molly Jaspers’ death.
“So what you’re really saying is that you’re stuck at the police station without a car?”
Lenny could be so perceptive at times. “Something like that.”
“Well, my sister made some sort of egg bake I’m supposed to eat.”
“I understand. You eat with your family, and I’ll get something downtown. I’m close to everything.”
“Just a sec.” He covered the phone, ignoring my protests. “Okay, I’m back. She says I have time to pick you up. I’m not far.”
“Are you sure, Lenny? I don’t want to intrude.”
“I’ll be right there,” he said, ending the call and silencing my objections.
Fifteen minutes later, when he pulled up in his beat-up Ford Taurus, I waved and smiled. He was a bright spot in an otherwise gray day.
“You looking for a free ride into the world of suburban casseroles, lady?” he said, rolling down the passenger window. “We’ve got ’em fresh, frozen, and ready-to-serve.”
I opened the door. “Thank you, Lenny. I really appreciate it. I didn’t want to wait for the rest of the group, and André said not to bother. He and the students plan to go shopping when the stores open.”
“And how did your interview go? I bet you were an absolute sphinx.”
I coughed. “Oh yes. I kept my answers short and on point. But they confirmed Molly died from anaphylactic shock. They’re trying to determine negligence.”
His brow furrowed. “What’s that mean, ‘negligence’? They think somebody is responsible for her death?”
“Somebody or the airlines.”
“Wait. What about Paris?”
I shook my head. “It’s not happening. André is waiting for a call from the airlines, but they pretty much told him last night that they didn’t have enough seats on their flights today.”
“I’m sorry, Em. I know how much you wanted to go to France.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I mean it will be okay once we figure this thing out. The FBI agent zeroed in on André, and to be honest, Lenny, I’m afraid for him.”
“FBI?” he said. “When did the FBI get involved? After your interview?”
“Ha ha. Very funny. The FBI has jurisdiction over all crimes committed in the air.”
At a stoplight, he turned to study my face. I avoided meeting his eyes.
“You say that as if you’re an expert on criminal procedure, which you’re not. You’re an English professor. Okay? An untenured English professor.”
I settled into my seat as we pulled away from the streetlight. “I’m well aware of my tenure status, Lenny, and believe me, if I could make this trip happen, I would. But it would appear that romance and adventure are two worlds that continue to elude me, so I must make the best of a bad situation. Although we are faced with a dead professor and a disgruntled group of students, on the plus side, I have a dependable friend who is always there when I need him.” I smiled as sweetly as I could. “Are you sure your sister doesn’t mind my coming?”
“Are you kidding? She’s thrilled. She has someone to send leftovers home with.”
“Except that I’m staying at a hotel and have nowhere to store leftovers,” I said. “I can’t remember… did you say she is married?” I knew she was five years his senior.
“Not anymore. She used to be. Her husband left her for some old high school fling on Facebook. A real dirt bag.”
Anger tinged Lenny’s voice, so I didn’t pursue the subject.
“But she seems none the worse for it,” he continued, changing his tone. “You’ll love the girls. They’re funny as hell.”
“What are their names again?”
“Adeline and Abigail.”
I smiled. “They sound adorable.”
“I woke up to a conversation between Ken and Barbie on their boat. Little did I know the couch becomes a Disney cruise ship during the day.”
We pulled up to a one-and-a-half-story house that stood well above the curb. More than ten tiny steps had to be climbed to reach the front door. From the living room window peered two little faces, one just a bit bigger than the other.
“This is it,” said Lenny.
As we walked up the steps, I asked if his parents would be joining us, but he said they wouldn’t be. They were out of town for the day visiting friends and wouldn’t have come anyway; they didn’t approve of Julia’s non-kosher cooking.
The faces from the window appeared at the front door.
“Hi, Uncle Lenny’s girlfriend!” said the younger girl. She had round cheeks and curls to match. She was the epitome of cute. I guessed she was six and her sister eight.
Her comment earned her a jab from her older sister, whose slender face was full of freckles.
“She’s not his girlfriend. She’s his date.”
“Actually…” I began, but then Lenny’s sister, who had spiky, short hair and looked nothing like her two girls, appeared from behind the kitchen wall. She was tall, like Lenny, and slim. She could have been a model; her build was just right for the clothes. Her skinny jeans looked like they did on mannequins, fitted but not tight, and her short-sleeved T-shirt revealed toned arms.
“You must be Emmeline. You are even more gorgeous than Leonard described. Let her come in, girls. Come on. Help me dish up.” She disappeared again behind the wall.
The younger girl bounded toward the kitchen. The older one moved on more reluctantly.
“Leonard?” I whispered. “When were you going to let me in on that little nugget?”
“Never,” he said.
The eat-in kitchen was cheery and bright, with freshly painted yellow walls and white café curtains. In the middle was a small round table encircled by four wooden chairs and a fifth folding chair. The girls were carefully placing the napkins on the center of each plate. They had clearly done this before.
“You can sit here, next to Uncle Lenny,” giggled the youngest one with curls.
“Thank you,” I said. “Are you Adeline or Abigail?”
“I’m Abby,” she said. “She’s Adeline.” She pointed at her big sister.
“Well, it’s very nice to meet you both. Thank you for inviting me to your house. Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked his sister.
“Not a thing,” she said without turning around. She was at the stove, cutting squares of breakfast casserole and placing them on a large white plate. “I’m Julia, by the way. I don’t know if Lenny told you.”
“Yes, he told me he was staying with you over spring break.”
She pla
ced the plate on the center of the table and sat down. Fruit and muffins had already been positioned near a small vase of daisies. She smiled at Lenny, and I noticed she had the same deep dimple. She also had the same punkish hair that was just a few inches longer than Lenny’s. I was completely jealous. “We feel honored to have a genuine rock star in our presence, don’t we girls?”
“My uncle was on a stage last night,” said Abby.
“I know,” I said, taking a lemon poppy-seed muffin. “I saw him, and he was very, very good.”
“My mom refused to let me go,” said Adeline, suspiciously poking at the egg bake Julia had placed on her plate. “She said I’m too young.”
“Nice verb choice, Addie,” said Lenny. Then quietly to me, “Julia’s a teacher, too.”
“Elementary school. Third grade,” said Julia. She placed a napkin on her lap. “When they say kids aren’t learning anything in school, it’s not my class they’re talking about.” She looked up and smiled. “So Lenny said you were on your way to France but got stuck here. What happened?”
“Do you speak French?” Adeline asked.
“Say something in French!” said Abigail at the same time.
“Vous êtes très jolies jeunes filles,” I said. “That means you are very pretty girls.”
“No wonder you adore her,” Julia said to Lenny.
“I never said that,” Lenny muttered.
I laughed. “Anyway, we were on our way to Paris when a professor became ill. The police are trying to figure out what went wrong.”
“Did he die?” asked Abigail.
I nodded. “Yes, and she.”
“That’s horrible,” Julia said. “But why not continue on to France? There’s nothing you can do about it now.” She was scooping fruit onto her daughters’ plates.
I glanced at the girls, wondering how much I should say in front of them. “There are no seats left on the planes leaving today. Also, the police are investigating the death.”
Adeline stuck a piece of cantaloupe with her fork. “That means they think she was killed,” she said to the younger Abby.
“So you’re involved in a murder,” said Julia.
“Please don’t encourage her with that sort of talk,” said Lenny.
“Who’s encouraging anyone? I’m simply stating a fact,” said Julia.
“Does that mean you’re a suspect?” asked Adeline.
Everyone turned to me. “I don’t know.” Abby inched away from me, and I stifled a laugh. “But if I’m a suspect, everyone on the plane is a suspect.”
“Well,” Julia said, “I think it’s terrifically interesting, although I’m so sorry you missed Paris. What crummy luck. How long will you be in Minneapolis?”
“One more night, if we’re lucky,” I answered. “We’re trying to procure a bus ride home for Monday.”
“You can stay here. We’d love to have you, wouldn’t we, girls?”
“I could braid your hair,” Abigail said.
“No you can’t,” said Adeline.
“I can, too!”
“It’s way too curly, Abby,” said Adeline.
Julia shook her head. “Girls!”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Adeline is right. My hair doesn’t take to braids too well, but I do have a lot of scarfs. You could dress up Uncle Lenny.”
“Ha ha,” said Lenny.
The girls seriously considered the possibility.
“I’m afraid it won’t be tonight,” I said. “Our group is staying downtown, and the students need me right now. It has been an awful couple of days, and I want to be there for them. Thank you for the offer, though.”
“Well, if anything changes, I hope you’ll consider our house. All jokes aside, we would love to have you,” said Julia.
“Thank you, and thank you for the breakfast. Everything is just delicious,” I said.
Afterwards, Lenny and I helped Julia do the dishes. Then we had one more cup of coffee before we left. I explained that I had to drop in at the police station. I also had to get back to the hotel in case André needed assistance with parents or administrators. This prompted several more questions from Adeline and Abigail about André and France and whether or not André wore funny hats. Lenny was only too happy to indulge them, confirming their every stereotype.
I shook hands with each of the girls before saying goodbye, and they returned the handshake with much formality.
“Goodbye, Em Prather,” said Adeline. “I hope you don’t end up in jail.”
“I hope that as well,” I replied with a straight face.
“If you do,” chimed in Abigail, “we will rescue you, won’t we, Mom?”
“Don’t be silly, Abby. Only lawyers can rescue people from jail.”
Chapter Eleven
Brunch with Lenny’s family was a welcome reprieve from the darkness of the day. I felt as if I had known them my entire life instead of just a few hours. When I went back to Detroit, it was just like that: talk, food, and dishes. My mom loved inviting her loud sisters over for big dinners, much to my father’s chagrin. She tackled complicated recipes that took two and three people to complete, and there was always much to be done before we could sit down. Books “were for the scholar’s idle times,” she often said, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson. But she always made time to pull me aside, afterwards, and ask me about my love life and other figments of her imagination. When I told her it was short on the love, she made excuses for me, saying that she always knew I would find my true soul mate in France. It’s why I named you Emmeline, she would explain. So that you would go out and seek your fortune… abroad. She thought graduate school was a six-year misstep on my part, and my dad agreed with her, though for opposite reasons. The debt! he would say. What young person can ever get out from under that kind of debt. But all this was said good-naturedly. They knew my career brought me happiness and my goals were different from theirs. I didn’t make as much money as I would have, had I taken a job on the East coast as they had hoped; still, they were proud of my accomplishments. We couldn’t get as far as the local grocer before my mom would announce to a passerby, “Emmeline’s a professor, you know.” My achievement was a very big deal in the old neighborhood of MorningSide.
As Lenny and I walked down Julia’s steep steps, I noticed his smile. But I didn’t say anything. I figured he was happy to be back in Minneapolis.
He turned on the ignition of his car. “I would have never guessed you’d be good with children, but you really are.”
“I am?” I asked, trying to keep the surprise out of my voice. The thought that I could be good at anything but English and French pleased me a great deal.
He was carefully entering an onslaught of traffic, which had picked up considerably since breakfast, and didn’t reply.
“Well… yes,” I pondered more to myself than to Lenny. “Naturally I’m good with children. I’m a teacher, after all, and… that kid who lives across the street likes me. What is his name? Brendan. Anyway, he always used to come and visit me and pet my cat Dickinson.” I thought back fondly to the boy and the rapt attention he had paid to my stories on the front porch. “If I remember right, he was quite a Poe fan. ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ scared the pants off him, though. I had to walk him home that night. It was October, and you know how the trees whip the shadows into hideous shapes in the fall. I didn’t see him much after that night. His mom said he was developing an unnatural fascination with crime and had asked for a police scanner for Christmas. Can you believe it? What’s unnatural about that? It’s naturally fascinating when someone does something that goes against the laws of human nature.”
Lenny’s smile had turned into more of a grin. “Mothers. They’re such worrywarts.”
We pulled up alongside the brick police building.
“Do you want me to come in?” asked Lenny as he parallel parked.
“Would you mind?” I asked. “I don’t know if anyone’s still in there.”
“I’ve always wanted to see the ins
ide of a police station. And somehow, Em, the improbable always becomes probable when you’re around.”
No one from our group was in the lobby, so I gave the officer at the front desk my name and asked if I could go back to the office area.
“Wait here,” she said tersely.
“Pleasant woman,” said Lenny as he sat down.
“Believe me, she was much nicer when André was around.”
“I bet,” he said. “Do you want me to try a French accent on her? Sweet chérie, you are zee most beautiful mademoiselle….”
He sounded a lot like Pepé Le Pew, and I was going to tell him so, when all of a sudden the woman with red hair walked through the metal doors.
“That lady was on the plane the day Molly died. She was asking about her,” I whispered. “The police must have brought her in for questioning.”
“How did she know Molly?” he asked.
“That’s what I want to find out.” I stood abruptly.
He followed me. “What are you going to do? Just go up to her?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” I said, nearly in step with the woman now. “Excuse me, ma’am? Miss!” I said loudly as she placed her hand on the outside door.
She turned around, befuddled. Then a look of recognition came into her eyes.
“Yes?” she asked. She still had her hand on the door handle.
“I’m Emmeline Prather. We were traveling on the plane to Paris together before it was grounded,” I said as I caught up with her. “Please, I’d like to talk to you for just a minute if you have time.”
She let her hand drop from the door. “Yes, I remember. You were with the group, with the woman who died.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I teach in Copper Bluff, South Dakota. This is Professor Lenny Jenkins. He teaches there as well.”
Lenny gave her a small, silent wave, obviously wanting to stay out of the conversation.
“I remembered you from the airport. Do we happen to know each other?” I asked.
