Stork Raving Mad

by Donna Andrews

  “You need to tell the chief about all of this,” I said.

  “All right,” Alice said. “If you’ll go with me.”

  “We’ll all go together,” I said. “Right, Kathy?”

  Kathy turned pale. Then she nodded and began burrowing in her cavernous black tote bag.

  “Before we do,” she said. “Here.”

  She handed me a thick file folder.

  I opened it. The first page was a typed table of contents for the documents in the file. It was her evidence against Dr. Wright.

  “We should take this to the chief, too,” I said.

  “That was my idea,” she said. “I brought two copies. One for Dr. Wright, so I could try to talk some sense into her, and one for Abe, that I was going to give him if I failed, so he wouldn’t be totally blindsided. The chief doesn’t need both. Give that copy to Abe. He and Art and Michael might be able to use it.”

  “Don’t they already know about it?” I asked.

  She hesitated.

  “Not really,” she said. “I told Abe I had some information about her treatment of students that might be useful. I don’t suppose he had any idea how much information.”

  I glanced down at the file, which was over an inch thick.

  “We should make sure it’s okay with the chief,” I said, tucking the folder under my arm. “Let’s go.”

  We marched downstairs, making a strange procession. Alice went first, holding her head high, looking like a defeated queen marching to her execution. Kathy just looked anxious, scurrying along with the tote bag containing her file clutched to her chest. I brought up the rear, keeping an eye out to make sure neither of them suddenly changed her mind.

  As we reached the bottom of the stairs, I felt a familiar slight twinge of pain in my abdomen. But it didn’t repeat during the whole long way down the hall to Michael’s office, so apparently it was just another Braxton-Hicks contraction. I couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or disappointed.

  As we turned into the hallway to the library, the doorbell rang. I looked over my shoulder and saw Rose Noire scurrying to answer it.

  “Is this the residence of Professor Waterston?” boomed a resonant voice. The Face had arrived. I breathed a sigh of relief that Rose Noire would be dealing with him. I’d once had to make conversation with him for ten minutes at a faculty party, and it had seemed the longest ten years of my life. I hurried after Kathy and Alice.

  The chief and Sammy were standing at the end of the hallway.

  “More witnesses for you,” I called, as our procession approached.

  I found myself remembering a long-ago fall when mice moved into the basement of our family house. The chief’s face wore the same look of truly mixed feelings that Mother’s had each time our cat caught a mouse and proudly deposited it at her feet.

  We all filed into Michael’s office and, being old hands, took seats on whichever boxes and stools we thought would be preferable to the awful chairs. The chief, who followed us in, frowned slightly. I suspected he was about to ask to speak to his witnesses alone.

  “Kathy and I convinced Alice that she should come and talk to you,” I said. I made the mistake of patting Alice’s hand in a comforting manner, and she seized mine with a death grip.

  “Don’t be afraid, Alice,” Kathy said. Having seen what had happened to me, she patted Alice on the shoulder and managing to avoid being grabbed herself.

  With much encouragement from Kathy and me, Alice sobbed out her story of Dr. Wright’s persecution and her fears that having touched the statue would make her the chief’s prime suspect. It took rather longer than necessary, but probably less time than it would have taken him to extract it from Alice by himself.

  “Thank you,” the chief said, finally. “Let this be a lesson to you not to withhold information in the future.”

  “You’re not going to arrest me?” Alice asked, sniffling slightly.

  “Not unless some other more compelling evidence of your guilt comes up,” the chief said. He stood up to usher her to the door.

  “Wash your face in cold water,” Kathy called after Alice. “And go lie down for a while. They might need you for rehearsal.”

  “Fat chance,” Alice said as she closed the door behind her.

  The chief sat down again. He glanced at me and then fixed his gaze back on Kathy.

  “So, Ms. Borgstrom. Do you also want to confess having handled the statue?”

  “No,” Kathy said. “I wanted to give you this.”

  She handed him the file folder. The chief opened it, leafed through the first few pages, than glanced up as if asking for an explanation.

  “I’ve been keeping a dossier of things Dr. Wright has done to various drama students,” Kathy said. “Actions that might be illegal and certainly were unethical. Losing their papers, grading them more harshly, refusing them extensions and other accommodations that she routinely granted to other students.”

  “For what purpose?” the chief asked.

  “Who knows?” Kathy said. “The woman had a pathological hatred of the theater.”

  “I meant why were you keeping this file?” the chief said.

  “In the hope that we could use it against her,” Kathy said. “Even a tenured professor shouldn’t be allowed to get away with some of this stuff.”

  “So you were hoping to get her disciplined?” the chief asked.

  “I was hoping Abe could use her misconduct in his campaign to liberate drama from the English department,” Kathy said. “It needs to be an independent department. So I started documenting everything. I figured one or two incidents she could easily explain away, but not a pattern documented over several years’ time. And when I heard about what she was pulling now, trying to ruin Ramon’s career, I thought maybe it was time to confront her.”

  “So you brought this file out here to give it to Dr. Sass?” the chief asked.

  “Actually, I planned to confront Dr. Wright with it,” she said. “And maybe put her on the defensive before the meeting with Abe, Art, and Michael. It sounded as if they were going to bring up the idea of secession.”

  “She gave me the copy she brought for Abe,” I said, holding it up. “Is it okay if I give it to him?”

  “Let me see it first,” the chief said, holding out his hand.

  Kathy and I watched as he flipped page by page through both files. At some point I realized I was holding my breath, so I stopped and took a few deep, calming breaths. The chief took out his notebook, glanced at it from time to time, and made a few new notations. No doubt he was seeing which of the people in Kathy’s evidence were already on his suspect list and which he’d have to hunt down. And, of course, making sure my copy didn’t contain anything extra.

  Eventually, though, he handed one of the files back to me.

  “Oh, one more thing,” I said. “It may not be relevant, but Kathy, you should tell the chief what you told Alice and me. About Dr. Wright’s health.”

  “Her health?” Kathy repeated. “Oh, you mean that she was a diabetic?”

  The chief froze, just for a split second, and stared intently at Kathy. But she was looking at me, waiting for an answer, and missed it.

  “Yes,” I said. “Any medical detail could be relevant. Dad was telling me the other day about a crime that wasn’t solved until they figured out that the victim was a hemophiliac. Without knowing that, their time of death calculations were all off. So the chief—and Dad—might need to know about Dr. Wright’s diabetes.”

  Kathy shrugged, and repeated her tale of interrupting Dr. Wright in the act of injecting herself with insulin. The chief continued to scribble for several minutes after she finished.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  Kathy shook her head, and stood up to go.

  “I have just a couple of questions,” he said. “Sit down, please,” he added when Kathy continued to stand as if poised for flight.

  Kathy sat and composed her face into a friendly, helpful expression. Was sh
e really that unworried or was she just a good actress? I felt a pang of anxiety and I wasn’t guilty of anything except barging in on the chief’s interrogation.

  “What time did you learn about the proposed meeting about Mr. Soto’s dissertation?” the chief asked.

  “When Meg and Michael called me,” she said. “I don’t remember the time.”

  “Michael can tell you from his cell phone,” I said. “But I can tell you approximately. Right after Michael called Kathy, I called my brother for some help.” I pulled out my cell phone, scrolled down the list of calls I’d made that day, and showed the chief the one to Rob at 11:55 a.m. He nodded and jotted the time down in his notebook.

  “Thank you,” he said, nodding to me. “And what time did you arrive here at the house, Ms. Borgstrom?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Kathy said.

  “Approximately, then.”

  Kathy frowned in concentration.

  “About 1:30?” she said. “I guess. Do you remember, Meg?”

  My turn to concentrate.

  “I don’t really know what time it was when she came to the door,” I said to the chief. “But it was shortly after you finished questioning me. Just before I took my nap. About the time you had your officers take the witnesses out to the barn so Horace could examine the kitchen. Although—”

  “Yes, that’s right!” Kathy beamed as if I’d passed a difficult test. “I remember I went out to the barn to see Abe and everyone was just settling down there.”

  I glanced at the chief, wondering if I should bring up the curious gap between when Michael and I had talked to Kathy and when she actually arrived at the house. Probably not. Maybe he’d already noticed, and if he hadn’t, he’d probably rather I not bring it up in front of Kathy.

  “I see,” the chief said. “Then would you mind explaining how you managed to park your car so it’s blocked in by Mrs. Langslow’s?”

  “Mrs. Langslow?” Kathy shot a puzzled look at me.

  “My mother,” I said. “She came out to decorate the nursery.”

  “And entered the house at 12:15, some time before Meg discovered the body,” the chief said. “We know the precise time because Mrs. Langslow noted it in her Day-Timer to keep track of the hours her contractor worked on the decorating project. According to Mrs. Langslow, she has been either in the nursery supervising the decorations or in the barn helping with the refreshments all day and did not move the car at any time. Given the position of your car, right up against the barn with a tree on one side and shrubbery on the other, you couldn’t have driven it in or out any other way. So, Ms. Borgstrom, if you arrived at 1:30 would you care to tell me how you happened to be blocked in by a car that had been here since 12:15?”

  Chapter 23

  Kathy stared openmouthed at the chief for a few seconds, then burst into tears. Without taking his eyes off her, Chief Burke reached behind him, took a tissue from the box at the back of the desk, and handed it to her. Kathy swiped at her eyes and blew her nose.

  “I knew you’d suspect me,” she said. She was still sobbing intermittently. “She was so awful to me and she was trying to get me fired, and when I heard what she was trying to do to Ramon, I decided to confront her. Just as I told you.”

  “With the contents of this folder?” the chief said.

  “Yes,” Kathy said. “Before the meeting with Abe, and Art, and Michael. I told you that.”

  “And what happened when you attempted to blackmail her?” the chief asked.

  “It wasn’t blackmail,” she said. “And nothing happened. I didn’t get to talk to her.”

  “And if I said that you were seen entering the sunporch?” the chief said. “The students who smoke spent quite a lot of time in the backyard, with a good view of the sunporch.” I noticed that he didn’t actually say any of them had seen her.

  “Yes, I went into the sunporch and I looked into the library through the French doors,” Kathy said. “But I could see it was no use going in.”

  “Why not?” the chief said.

  Kathy closed her eyes and scrunched up her mouth as if making an effort to get words out. Or keep them in; I wasn’t sure which.

  “Because there’s no use talking to a dead woman!” she said finally.

  “How did you know she was dead?” the chief asked, glancing at me. “Meg assumed she was merely sleeping.”

  “Meg didn’t see that man hit her over the head with the rhinoceros statue,” Kathy exclaimed.

  “Hippopotamus,” I muttered.

  “What man?” the chief asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Not one of our drama students. He was Asian, tall, wearing glasses and jeans and a black T-shirt.”

  I winced. We had several other Asian students in the house, but the only one who wasn’t a drama student was Danny Oh.

  “And you didn’t report this because . . .” the chief asked.

  “Because it would be my word against his, and everyone knew how much I hated her. And then I realized that the longer I didn’t report it the more suspicious I would be, and I figured you’d catch him somehow.”

  “Was he wearing gloves?” the chief asked.

  “No,” she said. “Mittens. Fluffy pink mittens.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, causing them both to turn in my direction. “They’re probably my mittens. I keep them in the front hall.”

  “Did you notice them missing?” the chief asked.

  “No, but I wouldn’t,” I said. “I never wear them. They were a present from an aunt who must think I’m still in grade school. When the students arrived, I left them in one of the baskets in the front hall in the hopes that someone who didn’t have gloves would borrow them and forget to bring them back. I wasn’t expecting the borrower to be a murderer.”

  “Attempted murderer, I think,” the chief said, almost absently. “After all, we know that the blow to her head was not what killed Dr. Wright.”

  “We do?” Kathy said.

  “Yes,” the chief said. “The wound made by the statue didn’t bleed, indicating that Dr. Wright was already dead when it was made.”

  “But who would hit a dead woman over the head like that?” Kathy asked.

  “Someone who didn’t realize she was dead,” I said. “Someone who thought she was just asleep, the way I did when I first found the body.”

  “Then if the man who hit her didn’t kill her, who did?” Kathy said. “And how?”

  “We have reason to believe that she was injected with a fatal overdose of her own insulin,” the chief said.

  “Oh.” I could see Kathy digesting this. She glanced up at me, but to my relief, it wasn’t a reproachful glance. “I can see why you’re arresting me, then,” she said finally.

  The chief sighed.

  “I’m not arresting anyone yet,” he said, “since we don’t technically know the cause of death. Dr. Langslow’s pretty sure it’s insulin overdose, and I have every confidence that he’s right. But a judge is going to want to see a toxicology report, and we don’t have that tonight. So for now, you’re free to go. Don’t leave town, though.”

  “And you might want to find a defense attorney, just in case,” I said, reaching for my notebook. “I can give you some names.”

  “Thanks,” Kathy said. She accepted the slip of paper I offered, tucked it into her purse, and stood up.

  “You’re absolutely sure you didn’t tell anyone else about Dr. Wright’s diabetes?” the chief asked.

  “I wish,” Kathy said. “I wish I could tell you that I announced it at the last cast party and posted it on the department Face-book page, but I didn’t.”

  “If you find anything that indicates someone else does know, let me know immediately,” the chief said.

  Kathy nodded and left.

  The chief and I sat in silence as her footsteps disappeared down the hall.

  “Seems like a nice lady,” he said at last.

  “She is,” I said.

  “I notice you’re not
hurrying to assure me that she couldn’t possibly have done it.”

  I sighed.

  “She cares so much about the department,” I said. “About her boss and the rest of the faculty and all the students.”

  “I don’t go into a murder investigation looking for a villain,” the chief said. “All too often, the killer is someone who cares a little too much about something and gets carried away when that something is threatened. So you think she’s the killer.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I certainly hope not. And I can’t tell you how glad I am that it’s your job, not mine, to figure that out.”

  “Though you have been rather busy sending me suspects and witnesses.” Was that a hint of a chuckle in his voice?

  “Can I help it if people keep confessing things to me, or to each other when I’m within earshot?”

  “No,” he said. Yes, there was definitely amusement in his voice. “I appreciate your promptness in bringing all these bits of information to me instead of running wild trying to solve the case yourself. Which reminds me.” He stood up, walked over to the door, and stuck his head out into the hall. “Sammy!”

  A few seconds later, Sammy entered, accompanied by Horace.

  “Sammy, could you go and get—what’s wrong?”

  I glanced up. Sammy looked so morose that I immediately wondered if Hawkeye had taken a turn for the worse. Rocky and Bullwinkle, apparently already animal lovers in the womb, squirmed with anxiety.

  “Sammy?” The chief’s voice was suddenly gentler. “What’s wrong?”

  “We’re never going to catch the jerk who hit Hawkeye, are we?” Sammy said. “He’s going to get away with it.”

  “We’ll catch him,” the chief said. “Debbie Anne’s got that list of possible vehicles down at the station. There’s only about thirty of them. I know you’re disappointed that we haven’t already caught him, but you understand the murder investigation has to take priority.”

  Sammy nodded. I knew exactly how he felt. What a rotten break that the hit-and-run—which normally would have been the biggest case the Caerphilly police saw for weeks—had to happen on the same day as a murder. I felt a brief, irrational pang of resentment—against Dr. Wright or her killer, I wasn’t sure which. Maybe both.