The Gambler Grimoire: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Wicklow College of Arcane Arts Book 1)

by BR Kingsolver

  “When they admitted women for the first time?”

  “Yes. Half the faculty resigned.”

  “I’m afraid that among certain groups, Wicklow’s reputation is still somewhat tainted by that era,” I said. The Institute of Witchcraft, where I did my doctoral studies and taught on the West Coast, was founded by women in the late nineteenth century, and the original student body was predominantly female.

  Ricard laughed. “Yes, the suffragettes have still never forgiven us our patriarchal past.”

  “But,” I said, “in some ways, Wicklow is remarkably forward-thinking. The range of subjects taught in the mundane sciences is far greater than the offerings in Sausalito.”

  He nodded. “I don’t see how you can ignore physics and chemistry. Without such foundations, how do you teach the interactions of magic with the physical realm? I think you’ll find that the prerequisite courses for upper-level alchemy have adequately prepared your students.”

  Chapter 11

  When I finished my dinner, Ricard escorted me through Scholars’ Quad, and on to Howard House, the home of the college president. It was lit up, and all the people in formal dress outside gave it an old-fashioned feeling. I felt sure that Robert Howard would have been comfortable if he had shown up.

  When we approached Phillips, he was talking with Kelly near the main entrance. She spoke to him, and he turned toward me.

  “Dr. Robinson! So nice to see you. I apologize that we haven’t had a chance to chat, but I’ve been out of town. Ms. Grace has been telling me that you’ve had an unusual introduction to Wicklow.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” I responded. “I didn’t expect it to be quite so exciting.”

  “Hopefully it won’t continue that way,” Phillips said. His hope and mine were in sync. I didn’t mind excitement but preferred a different sort of events.

  I had seen pictures of Dr. Phillips but was surprised at how young he was. Fifty at the oldest, by my estimate. He and Ricard greeted each other like old friends, and standing together, dressed the same way, they were remarkably alike—close to the same age, same height, with the same build and dark hair.

  Ricard escorted me around the room, introducing me to far more people than I could possibly remember. The ballroom was ornately decorated in typical nineteenth century fashion, and I found that far more interesting than memorizing names and faces.

  It did surprise me that Kelly spent most of the evening hanging around with President Phillips. I mentioned it to Ricard.

  “Oh, Ms. Grace is the President’s protégé,” he said with a leering note in his voice. “He actually held her position prior to his elevation. Their magical talents are very similar, and both are single, so she routinely attends him at functions when he needs an escort.”

  Some time later, we encountered David Hamilton. The interaction between him and Ricard was not exactly cordial, and I considered the college’s internal politics and how I might fit in. Academia had a centuries-long reputation for being a snake pit of jealousy, sabotage, and back-stabbing. As a student and an instructor, I had been in Sausalito for almost a decade, and knew where the skeletons were hidden, the land mines planted, who was sleeping with whom, and who not to turn my back on.

  Judging from my first few days at Wicklow, turning my back might be far more dangerous than I had ever worried about in California.

  Could petty politics be the reason for Kavanaugh’s murder? I couldn’t see it as having anything to do with Agnes’s death, however. As an adjunct instructor, she was at the lowest level in the hierarchy. Unless she was blackmailing someone. I hadn’t thought about blackmail in regard to Kavanaugh, but perhaps? What were those court settlements with local women about?

  “Dr. Carver told me that it had been twenty years since the last faculty murder here,” I said to Ricard. “Was that killing ever solved?”

  He chuckled and gave me a wink. “That was a mage duel, with a hundred witnesses in the middle of Scholars’ Quad. Very good theater mixed with some fairly bad magic. A graduate student attacked a faculty member who downgraded her. In the end, she proved more competent than he was, not that it did her any good. The Council convicted her of murder, and I guess, threw her in a dungeon somewhere.”

  “A woman scorned?” I suggested.

  “Yes, there was that rumor also,” Ricard replied. “Trying to sleep your way to the top can be a risky endeavor.”

  “Do you have experience in that?” I asked.

  He choked, and for a second, I thought he might spew his drink. Then he grinned.

  “I never had the opportunity, but I had a professor as an undergrad who sparked some fantasies.” His eyes traveled from my shoes up to meet my eyes. I had received such lewd compliments many times and refused to blush.

  “That rumor starts anytime a young woman shows any promise,” I said.

  He glanced toward where Kelly was standing with Dr. Phillips. “I guess it does.”

  By ten o’clock, the crowd had shrunk by half, and those who were left were trickling out the door. I found Dr. Phillips and said my good night.

  As I took my leave, I asked Kelly, “Are you driving?”

  “Oh, no. I’ll call a taxi. I’ve been to these things before, and I always overdo it, so I left my car at home.”

  To my surprise, both Hamilton and Ricard were waiting for me in the lobby, although they weren’t standing together. Both started toward me when I appeared.

  “Do you live here on campus?” I asked Ricard as I strolled through Scholars’ Quad between the men.

  “Oh, no. I have a place outside of town,” he said. “You’ll have to come see it sometime. I renovated an old barn, and it’s quite lovely.”

  Hamilton was very quiet, not joining in the conversation as I asked questions about the town and the surrounding area.

  The moon was very bright, illuminating the quad and casting shadows that gave the buildings an even more creepy, gothic look. As we reached the west end of the quad, I saw a dark lump in the grass near an ancient oak by the faculty dining room. It was one of the few features breaking up the smooth lawn.

  “Is that someone?” I asked.

  “One of the hazards of being out late at night is tripping over drunken students,” Ricard replied. Indeed, we could hear shouts of revelry from the direction of the dorms and the student pub. “Attendance in your courses tomorrow morning will give you a good idea of which students are serious and which aren’t.”

  I peered closer, and it seemed as though the person lying there was sprawled in a very uncomfortable position. I stopped, then stepped off the sidewalk in that direction. My heels sank into the moist ground, so I stripped off my shoes.

  When I reached the boy, my nose told me that drunkenness wasn’t his problem. My healer’s Gift also told me that I needn’t bother checking on his well-being. I pulled my phone from my clutch and hit one of the few contacts I had called in recent days.

  “Lieutenant Kagan? This is Savanna Robinson. I’m afraid I’ve found another one. Here at the college, in Scholars’ Quad.”

  While I was calling Kagan, Hamilton called the campus police. Being closer, they showed up first, followed by the city cops about ten minutes later.

  That gave me plenty of time to study the body. The boy was wearing a light-colored shirt and darker pants. He lay on his back, limbs akimbo, and a dark stain covered the lower left side of his torso, leading me to think he had either been shot or stabbed. Without turning him over, I couldn’t tell.

  When Kagan showed up, he simply stood silently staring at the body, then walked all the way around it, never getting closer than about ten feet.

  “Okay,” he finally said, “who found him?”

  “We did,” I answered. “We were walking back from the reception.”

  “And you were the first ones to leave?”

  Hamilton answered, “I’m sure we weren’t. At first, we thought he was simply passed out drunk. I’m sure anyone else who spotted him mig
ht have thought the same.”

  Kagan nodded, glancing in the direction of the dorms, where loud music and students’ voices could still be heard. “That would be more likely, wouldn’t it?”

  He pulled shoe covers and gloves from his pocket and put them on, then approached the body. Bending down, he picked something up and brought it over to the three of us.

  “I hate to jump to conclusions,” Kagan said, “but I think this might have something to do with his condition.”

  It was a knife—an athame—cheaper, lighter, thinner, and narrower than either mine or Agnes’s.

  Ricard leaned close and aimed the beam of a small flashlight on it. The blade had blood on it.

  “He is a bit far from the building to have fallen out of a window, but good luck tracing that,” Hamilton said. “That athame is part of the student tool kit they sell in the bookstore. Probably several thousand of them here on campus.”

  “He could have been playing quidditch and fallen,” I said. All three men snorted.

  The same woman who had been the medical examiner at Agnes’s murder scene walked over and opened a plastic bag. Kagan dropped the knife in it.

  “That could do it,” the woman said. “Stabbed once in the abdomen, under the ribs. At least that’s what I can see right now. No other obvious wounds.”

  “I think it was safer in Oakland,” I said.

  “We have had a rash of murders lately,” Kagan said. “Do any of you recognize him? I’m going to start with the assumption he was a student.”

  “Joshua Tupper,” Ricard said, “fourth-year student in alchemy.”

  The name seemed familiar, and I shot him a glance. “Was he one of Kavanaugh’s advisees?”

  Ricard looked thoughtful for a moment. “You know, I think he was.”

  Hamilton leaned close to me and quietly said, “It’s a small place. Almost everyone has some kind of connection with everyone else.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone else about?” Kagan asked.

  “No,” I answered. “A couple was walking quite a distance in front of us, but they exited the quad about the time we entered.”

  “He’s been dead for a couple of hours,” the woman from the ME’s office said, then turned away to go supervise two men who were lifting the body onto a gurney.

  “Can we go?” Hamilton asked.

  Kagan looked around, then said, “Yes. I know where to find you if I have any more questions.”

  I walked to my apartment between the two men. We were all very quiet. They dropped me at my door, Hamilton crossed to his, and Ricard continued to the parking lot.

  I shut my door, then spent about twenty minutes setting wards on my doors and windows.

  Chapter 12

  On my way to my first class the following morning, I met Emma coming toward me.

  “Hi, Dr. Robinson.”

  “Hello, Emma. Going to the greenhouse?”

  “Yes, I just want to check on things. I don’t think Lia will make it today, and I don’t get out of class until late.”

  “Is she all right?”

  Emma looked around, and seeing no one else was near, said, “I don’t know if you heard, but a student was killed on the quad last night. He was Lia’s ex-boyfriend.”

  “Yes, I heard,” I said, “but I didn’t know him. If there’s anything I can do for her, please let me know.”

  Of course, the buzz in my first class was all about the death, and I could tell the students weren’t very attentive. I was also distracted and glad I didn’t have to lecture on anything substantial. I handed out the course syllabus, gave them a reading assignment, and talked a little about the history of alchemy.

  When I went to lunch at the faculty dining room, I found the conversations around me weren’t much different from those in the classroom. Word of the murder had spread, and the rumors weren’t always accurate. Just among those I overheard, Joshua Tupper died from a knife, a gunshot, poison, magic, and had fallen from the roof of a building.

  It didn’t surprise me that people were upset. I was upset too, and I’d never met the boy. I had never felt unsafe on a college campus, but suddenly Wicklow seemed a rather foreboding place.

  As I was finishing my lunch, Kelly came in, looked around the room, then rushed over, and sat down at my table.

  “I just heard that you were the one who found that student,” she said. “How horrible! I didn’t even know about it until I showed up for work this morning.”

  “How late did you stay at the reception?” I asked. The police and crime scene people were still there when I and my professorial escort finally left the quad well past midnight. Of course, she might have stayed the night, but it seemed rather rude to suggest that. We really didn’t know each other that well.

  “Not long, but the taxi picked me up at Howard Hall, so I didn’t leave through the quad. How are you doing?”

  “A little shaky,” I admitted. “Until last week, I’d never seen a dead person before, except at a funeral, and now it’s getting to be a regular occurrence. I think Kagan is starting to wonder about me. At least I have an alibi for both murders.”

  Kelly laughed a bit nervously. “I don’t think murderers usually report their crimes. They’re too busy trying to hide their tracks.”

  I chuckled. “You’re an expert?”

  “Mystery reader and TV watcher.”

  “Well, I don’t think Kagan watches TV, or he’d know he should be solving the crimes quicker. Most TV detectives take less than an hour.”

  Kelly shrugged. “If Dr. Phillips has his way, the investigation will evaporate today. He’s not happy that the local newspaper picked up on the story. He’d prefer that parents, other than Joshua’s of course, never heard about it.”

  “I can’t imagine there is so much interesting news in Wicklow that the media wouldn’t pick up a murder story.”

  “Yeah. Usually, they happen at the Wolf’s Den. That’s a biker-shifter bar, and the story is on the back page. This one was front page. Anything even slightly scandalous about the college is big news.”

  “You’re saying I should discreetly manage my scandals?”

  “Definitely. I’m sure there’s a section on that in your tenure evaluation.”

  In my afternoon lecture, the students were older, and many of them knew the deceased, so it was still the major topic I overheard as I entered the room. I wondered if Kagan was talking to Tupper’s classmates, or if Dr. Phillips would even allow it.

  It turned out that Charlotte was in my afternoon Intermediate Apothecary Arts class. After the class was over, I saw her huddled with several of her classmates, and their discussion seemed quite animated.

  After class, I went back to my rooms, changed clothes, and checked the herb garden and the greenhouse. Two of the undergraduates were working, and they asked me a few questions about fertilizer and watering schedules. They also wanted to chatter at me about the death.

  “Did you hear about the murder?” Barbara asked. “They say the body was just lying out in the middle of Scholars’ Quad.”

  “Yes, I heard. I don’t think I’ll be walking around alone at night,” I said.

  “Do you think it was a mugging, or something like that, do you?” Charlotte asked. “I talked to someone who knew him, and they said he had a reputation. Poaching on other people’s girlfriends.”

  “Oh? And is that the normal way people handle that here at Wicklow?”

  “Huh? No, of course not. But I guess there was a scene last night. At a party.” Charlotte stared down at her shoes, then raised her head. “I heard that Lia was part of that.”

  “Well,” I said, “I think there are probably a lot of rumors, most of which have little basis in fact. So far today, I’ve heard he was killed by every method including little green men with ray guns, so it might be best to do more listening than spreading.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” both girls muttered before going off to attend to their chores.

  Emma showed up about twenty
minutes later, and I told her about Charlotte’s statement.

  “I agree with you about the rumors,” Emma said. “Everyone has a different theory. But I talked with Lia, and I do know that one has a basis in fact. She was at a party with her boyfriend, and Josh tried to talk with her. The two guys got in a shouting match, and Josh stormed out. I don’t think he took their breakup very well.”

  “So, it was Lia who broke up with him?”

  “Yeah. They hooked up when he was a first-year, and she was a year ahead of him. She graduated last spring. At one point, she planned to go to grad school in Boulder, and I know he wasn’t happy about that.”

  “But she ended up staying here?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know why.” Emma shrugged. “Maybe Corey, her new boyfriend. He’s a doctoral student, works as an assistant for Dr. Hamilton. Dr. Kavanaugh offered her this job, which for anyone doing apothecary is kind of a big deal.”

  “It sounds like she has a lot of drama going on,” I said. “So, she didn’t work here last year?”

  Emma laughed. “She started work here after mid-winter break. She does like men. I don’t know, she always seems to be looking for something better, and Josh was the jealous type. Her father has been married a bunch of times, and so has her mother. She grew up splitting time between them, and also spent time at a boarding school in Switzerland. I just don’t think she’s very happy.”

  “How did she and Agnes get along?”

  “About like everyone and Agnes got along. Dr. Robinson, Agnes was prickly, you know? Very private, and particular. She had her own way of doing things, and she was very judgmental. But she really was a nice person. She could have a sharp tongue, but she wasn’t ever mean. If someone didn’t do things the way she thought they ought to be done, she’d grumble, but she’d fix it. She could have reported some of the girls for a number of things, but she never did.”

  “But she argued with Dr. Kavanaugh.”