Passport to Murder

by Mary Angela

  “André!” I said. “I was just thinking of you.”

  “And I of you,” he said, setting his satchel down on the ground. “I came by your office to give you this.”

  He pulled a bottle of wine out of his bag. The label read Trois Frères.

  “It’s a bottle of your family’s wine,” I said.

  He nodded and sat on the bench beside me. “I have a bottle for Lenny, too. He expressed some interest.”

  I turned the bottle over in my hands, reading the back. The organic label was nowhere to be found. “It’s not organic,” I said, my belief in André’s innocence confirmed.

  His dark eyebrows furrowed. “Did you think so?”

  I nodded with a smile. “I thought maybe it was, after hearing you talk about the winery. Your father’s processes sounded very traditional.”

  He shook his head. “We are an old family and winery. We do not have the resources to worry about the certifications that these new fads require. They come and go. Our winery stays.” He threw his hands in the air. “Who knows after this debacle? It might be back to the fields for me.”

  “And Freshman English for me?”

  We shared a laugh.

  “Which is worse?” I said.

  He nudged my shoulder with his. “I needed a laugh. Thank you.”

  “How is Dean Richardson?” I asked.

  “He is not happy, and I can’t blame him. He has parents calling him, the grant committee, all sorts of misery.”

  “Did you talk to him any more about the French major?”

  “I didn’t breathe a word of it,” he said. “Until the truth comes out about what happened to Molly, he will always wonder if I had something to do with it. And now the suicide of the cowboy?” He shook his head. “My academic reputation, I do believe, is ruined.”

  Head in his hands and shoulders slumped, he stared at the hard ground. It looked as if he hadn’t shaven for a few days, and while a five o’clock shadow was attractive, a three-day-old beard was not. I wanted to figure out this murder, and soon, for him and the students. Travel to foreign countries was an important part of education. I hated to see an opportunity for them and myself disappear.

  I put the wine into my bag. “Don’t worry about your academic reputation for one minute, André. I am going to get to the truth of the matter; I promise you that. Then we can see what Dean Richardson says.”

  He smiled. “You are good at telling stories.”

  “Not telling stories, just trusting in my research abilities. As you said, I’m a keen researcher.” I stood. “Thank you for the wine. I think we will need a glass before the week is over.”

  “The week? Em, I think we shall need a glass before the day is over.”

  After exchanging goodbyes with André, I walked to my house, wondering why Sophie hadn’t called me yet. It was four o’clock, and she said the preliminary autopsy reports would be in this afternoon. As my bungalow came into sight, the answer became clear. A police car sat outside my house, and next to it stood not Sophie Barnes but Officer Beamer. He was next to Mrs. Gunderson, who took great delight in his presence. She was wrapped in her faux fur overcoat and spoke excitedly when I joined the conversation.

  “Emmeline, you have an officer from the Copper Bluff Police Force here to see you.” A smile touched the corners of her bright pink lips.

  I held out my hand. “Officer Beamer, it’s good to see you again.”

  “Ms. Prather,” he said, shaking my hand. “I hear I missed a visit from you today at the precinct.”

  Mrs. Gunderson’s eyes grew wide with curiosity.

  “Why don’t you come inside?” I said, motioning toward my house. “It’s getting chilly out here.”

  “I have a nice hot dish in the oven that’ll warm you up, Officer,” said Mrs. Gunderson. “It will be done in about thirty minutes.”

  “Thank you,” said Beamer, “but I’m sure my wife has something on the stove. I’d better come home hungry if I want to stay in her good graces.”

  “Well, if you change your mind…” said Mrs. Gunderson. “And you, too, Emmeline.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Gunderson,” I called out as I walked up to my front porch. Beamer was right behind me.

  Once in the house, I flicked on the lights. I wished the room were tidier. Three books, a coffee cup, and a stack of students’ folders were on the coffee table in the living room, and the dining room was no better. When I’d noticed a wren in my Arc de Triumph birdhouse, spring fever took hold, and I brought my books to the dining table so I could watch it. They were the tiniest birds, wrens. And fascinating to watch. But now I wished I had kept the clutter contained to my office. I had to move stacks of stuff off the chairs so that Officer Beamer could sit.

  “Coffee?” I said as I cleared the chair across from him.

  “No thank you.”

  “I wish I could say I had a hot dish in the oven, but I don’t,” I said. “In fact, the entire notion of a hot dish is still a little bit of a mystery to me.”

  “That’s the idea,” said Officer Beamer, putting his gray coat on the back of the chair. “Nobody knows what goes into those things.”

  I laughed. It was good to see Officer Beamer again. I had met him last semester when a student of mine died unexpectedly. He was a careful man with a deep wrinkle between his eyes from thinking too hard about his cases. In his mid-sixties, he had hair graying just above his ears, which I thought might have been caused by the stress of the job. The rest of his hair was so dark as to almost be black, and his shoulders gave no indication of his age. They were solid and straight.

  “Is this about Nick Dramsdor’s autopsy results? Did they find… anything?” I asked.

  Now it was his turn to smile. “You know, Ms. Prather, I think it’s remarkable how much interest you take in my job. It would be flattering if it weren’t so disturbing.”

  “Really? It’s disturbing? I would think anyone would be concerned about the suicide of her colleague. I’m sure you’ve had numerous calls on the subject already.”

  He shook his head once. “No, I haven’t. Not one. But I did have a call last week from one Jack Wood. He seemed to think you knew something about the death of Molly Jaspers. What was the word he used…. I remember. Suspect.”

  “What did you say?” The question gave me time to get over my surprise that Jack Wood had called me a suspect.

  “He had you tied to this fellow André Duman, who he has pegged as a prime suspect, but I disabused him of that notion. I said you were an overly curious English professor who had read too many books. That you were very concerned with anything that had to do with your university.”

  “Thank you, Officer Beamer. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that. Jack Wood is, well, he’s just overworked. He’s a big-city cop who’s trying to put this case to rest as soon as he can so he can move on to the other hundreds of cases dumped into his lap every day. Now his partner, Ernest Jones, he was busy, too, but much more interested in getting to the bottom of the truth. He was very kind.”

  “Yes, I talked to Ernest Jones,” said Beamer.

  “What did you think of him?”

  He folded his hands on the table. “I think he sounded like your long-lost brother. You weren’t born in Minneapolis, were you?”

  I shook my head. “No, Detroit.”

  “My point is, the FBI is overseeing the case, so I need to make sure everything is done by the book. Since you are an English professor, I bet you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “And I bet that means you know I can’t have you asking questions or calling coroners or pathologists.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I was thinking of doing no such thing.”

  “Or stopping by the precinct to pump an old student for information,” he added.

  “I wasn’t ‘pumping her for information’; I was giving her information,” I replied, trying not to get excited.

  “That’s why I’m here,” he said. “You
r tip from the girlfriend put Nick Dramsdor’s blood sample on my radar. When it came back, I noticed the amount of amitriptyline in his system. It was lethal.”

  “What’s amitriptyline?” I asked.

  “An antipsychotic. An antidepressant,” he said.

  “So he overdosed on his antidepressant and then shot himself with a gun? Don’t you think that’s overdoing it a bit?”

  “That’s the thing. He didn’t have a prescription for an antidepressant that we could find in his hotel room. As far as we know, he wasn’t on one.”

  I inhaled deeply. “Someone gave it to him? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions yet, Ms. Prather. Let’s leave that to the scientists on campus.” He took a tiny notebook out of his front pocket. “Did you notice anyone arguing with Nick Dramsdor the night of his death? Sophie said you were at the visitation for Dr. Jaspers with him.”

  “No, but he got very upset there, and Amanda, his girlfriend, said he told her that someone was watching him from outside his hotel window.”

  “Sophie and I re-checked the scene with that scenario in mind but didn’t find any corroborating evidence—no footprints. Could the girlfriend be lying? Did she have a motive for killing Mr. Dramsdor?”

  “I know what you’re suggesting,” I said, “and maybe she is trying to deflect suspicion from herself, but I didn’t get that feeling this morning. I felt she was grieving the loss of a loved one. In fact, she called Nick her ‘true love.’ ” Of course, Amanda wouldn’t have been the first woman to kill her true love to keep him for all time. Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” was testimony to that phenomenon.

  Beamer wrote something in his notebook and then shut it. “Well I don’t think I can rule out the possibility that the girl made up the stalker outside Nick Dramsdor’s window. The front-desk clerk saw no one enter or leave his room or any suspicious activity before the shooting.”

  “What about the antidepressant? Who from the original group is on antidepressants?” I said. “Could one person be responsible for both deaths?”

  “We’re not sure the deaths are connected. Heck, Minneapolis doesn’t even have proof someone is responsible for Jaspers’ death,” Beamer said. “And plenty of people are on antidepressants. It’s not as easy as you think to get warrants for peoples’ medical records.”

  The two deaths were connected. I would stake my career on it. In fact, I was staking my career on it. Unless I could find the perpetrator, André’s reputation would always be sullied by the fatal spring break, and the French major would remain a pipe dream.

  He put his notebook back in his pocket. “If you think of anything, let me know. In the meantime, keep yourself safe—and your questions to yourself. If you’ve got any suspicions, bring them directly to me.”

  “I will,” I promised. “And you’ll keep me informed?”

  He put on his hat. “Of course. I can’t think of any other way to keep you out of my precinct,” he said with a grin.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The night had grown dark, and my house was lonely. I thought about taking Mrs. Gunderson up on her invitation to come over and eat hot dish but then reconsidered. I needed someone I could talk to about what Beamer had told me, someone sympathetic, someone like Lenny. I looked at the clock. It was six, and I wondered if Lenny had eaten. Then I wondered if I could bring food to his house without him teasing me about my dating situation. The truth was I wasn’t scared of his jokes; I was scared I was growing closer to him than I liked to admit. In Minneapolis, I could have sworn we almost kissed. And while kissing was inconsequential with my other dates, with Lenny, it would change everything—from our relationship to our careers. And nothing had turned out well for me—or him—thus far in the romance department. Did I really want to put our friendship up against our shoddy dating records? I shook my head. With the looming problem of Nick’s suicide on my mind, I didn’t know and couldn’t decide. It was dinner, nothing more. I was way overthinking it.

  I grabbed my cellphone out of the bottom of my purse and sent him a noncommittal text. Was he up for takeout from Vinny’s? I needed to get out of the house. When he responded with a yes and his order of spaghetti Bolognese, I called Vinny’s and then slipped out of my trousers and into my jeans. I pulled on an old blue sweatshirt as a clear signal I wasn’t dressing for a date. After pulling my curls into a haphazard ponytail and feeding Dickinson, I was ready to go.

  Thirty minutes later, I was at Lenny’s door. I raised my finger to the doorbell and stopped. He was playing the loveliest piano song I had ever heard. I was still standing there, transfixed, when it stopped and Lenny pulled open the door.

  “Hey, sorry. I just saw you,” he said. He was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, but his living room was the cleanest I’d ever seen it. His black couch was clear of clutter, and his glass coffee table looked as if it had just been dusted.

  “I didn’t ring the bell or knock,” I explained. “What were you playing?”

  He took the takeout bag from my hand. “Nothing, really. Just fooling around.”

  “It was beautiful,” I said.

  He placed the takeout bag on the coffee table and took a seat on the couch. I sat down beside him, leaving one cushion between us, and pulled out the bottle of wine André had given me.

  “Compliments, food, wine? Are you trying to seduce me, Prath—” He stopped midsentence. “Is this the wine from André’s winery?”

  “We don’t have to drink it,” I said. “I mean, I brought it to show you it’s not organic. He didn’t kill Molly. He has a bottle for you, too.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “We don’t have to drink it? What’s the matter with you? I’ve never known you to leave a bottle of wine corked while eating Italian.”

  His teasing put me at ease, and I pulled a wine opener out of my bag.

  “Ah, there’s a girl after my own heart. She carries her own utensils. Let me get glasses.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen, and I opened the wine. He came back wiping two glasses with a towel. “They were a little dusty. I wasn’t expecting fine dining on a Tuesday night.”

  He set them on the table, and I poured.

  “So you were right about Scarf Man after all.” He took the Styrofoam box marked spaghetti Bolognese. “He didn’t kill Molly. Hey, do you need a plate?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m good.”

  “How’s the wine?” he said, opening his spaghetti container.

  “Excellent,” I said. “I can see why André wants the winery to stay the way it is.”

  “So this is good news,” he said, taking a drink. “It makes it official that André had nothing to do with Jaspers’ death.”

  “We’re convinced,” I said, “but until we uncover the identity of the real culprit, he’ll be under suspicion. Especially now that another murder has been committed.”

  He set down his wine glass with a clang on the table. “Not Nick Dramsdor. I saw on the news that it was a suicide.”

  I proceeded to tell him about my conversations with Amanda and Officer Beamer while he twirled spaghetti around his fork. I told him about the gunshot, the gun residue, and the amitriptyline. When I finished relaying the details, I took a bite of my ravioli, and we both chewed in silence for several minutes. Then Lenny said, “But André wasn’t even at the visitation.”

  That was right. We never saw André once at the visitation; I didn’t think he had attended. “True,” I said, “but maybe the police will see that as the opportunity he needed to murder Nick in his hotel room.”

  “Nah,” said Lenny, setting his container on the coffee table and grabbing his laptop from the floor. “That stuff has to have time to get into the blood stream. What’s it called again?”

  “Amitriptyline.” I set my container on the table, too, and scooted closer to him to see the results of his search.

  “See? Fifteen to forty minutes. ‘A reaction occurs within fifteen to forty minutes upon lethal adminis
tration.’ ”

  “It fits,” I said. “The drug overdose could have accounted for his strange conduct at the visitation, too. It says here an overdose can cause ‘manic’ behavior.” I pointed to the screen. “Manic. That’s exactly how I would describe Nick that night. Wouldn’t you agree?” I read several more facts, but Lenny was silent. Was he tuning me out? Why was he so reluctant to get involved when the evidence was right before our eyes? I looked up. He was staring at me in such a way that made it impossible for me to ask.

  He reached over and touched my hair. “You know what I love? I love these little curls that fall over your ears. No matter how hard you try, they never stay back where they’re supposed to.”

  “I… I know. They’re absolutely hateful,” I stuttered.

  “Em, do you think when this is over, we could.…” He stopped and took a drink of his wine. “I don’t know. Go out on a date?”

  I couldn’t answer; I could only blink.

  “Oh god, please don’t blush. You make this so damn hard. If you were any other girl, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But somehow you got me into a way of thinking that is a hundred years old—maybe two.”

  “I’m sorry. Am I blushing?” I put my hands to my face; it felt hot. “I do. I would. I mean, we could try it.”

  He nodded. “We could try it. I know we both have shaky dating records, but maybe it could work.”

  “Hey, speak for yourself,” I said. “I dated Ricky Anderson for nearly two months before I told him I thought it was asinine for a grown man to wear a high school letterman jacket.”

  “Cathy Carter? I went three months before saying anything about her Pokémon Go addiction. She was on that thing all the time.” Lenny smiled. “But this will be different. This will be… us.”

  “This will be us,” I repeated, and suddenly I felt less nervous.