by Eryn Scott
But Alex only shrugged. “Um… I think you know everything I know at this point.”
I think my head did one of those quick, side-to-side double takes. “What?” The pen dropped from my fingers with a clatter.
“Yeah,” he said with a nod, peering at the list in front of me, tilting his head a little to read it upside down.
“But… but…” I stammered.
He cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Your dad — he — you.”
Alex shook his head. “Contrary to popular belief, police officers don’t sit around eating doughnuts discussing crimes all day. I’m not on the case and he doesn’t tell me much about his work.”
Seemingly unconcerned about my stuttering, wide-eyed, open-mouthed surprise, he pulled the notepad toward him and swiveled it around.
“But you were supposed to be getting inside information.” My words sounded breathy, far away.
Alex’s finger swung back and forth in front of me. “No, my job was to make sure you didn’t get yourself in trouble. I never said I would get you classified information about the case.”
He was right, of course. He hadn’t. That had merely been my fervent hope, the reason I told myself I was keeping the guy around. Bouncing my knee under the table, I tried to think through the situation in which my brazen assumption had landed me.
“You mentioned you had new information, though?” Alex caught my eyes with his, quite a feat as they were rather dart-y and wild in my stupefaction.
In that moment, Flirty Alex was gone. Officer Alex took his place. His eyes scanned Liv’s notes.
“I haven’t heard anything about a…” he squinted at the notepad. “Naked Newt?” He cringed.
I waved a hand at him. “Oh, sorry. That’s what we call Nate Newton, the guy who runs Bittersweet.”
Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “That guy? Definitely creepy. And you think he had something to do with this?”
“Not anymore.” I shook my head. “He’s cleared. We checked his alibi. Just normal creepy, not murder creepy.”
Alex returned to the list. “Anything else?”
I felt the blood return to the rational, task-focused part of my brain.
“Uh, yeah. So my brother in law, Josh, works for NWU as a sound engineer and he hired Danny — er — the guy Stephanie mentioned her step-father getting in a fight with during the sound check, remember?”
Alex nodded.
“Well, at first, Josh was adamant Danny was a good guy and couldn’t have done anything, even though he took a break around the time Dr. C was killed.”
“But?” Alex asked.
“Last night at dinner, he told me he was starting to doubt his insistence the guy was innocent.” I went on to tell Alex all about Danny’s motive and his access to the possible poison.
“And he hasn’t told this to my dad?”
I shook my head.
He rubbed his hand across his chin, the rough skin of his fingers making a sandpaper sound as it sifted against his seven o’clock shadow. “Do you mind if I let the station know? They might want to talk to your brother-in-law again?”
“Not at all.” My spine straightened as an idea came to me. “If you find out something for me,” I said.
“You’re still on about that professor you hate?” He shook his head.
“I’m not ‘on about’ anything; I’m right. I know it.” I pushed my shoulders back. “Look, you can tell your dad to bring in Josh for more questioning, but I want you to make sure he’s taking Evensworth seriously as a suspect. I’m worried he’s only looking into Fergie and potentially missing the actual killer.”
A long sigh lifted Alex’s chest. “I just have to make sure he’s looking into him?”
Nodding emphatically, I said, “Yes. That’s it.” Then I tipped my head to the side. “And if you could find out if he has an alibi, that wouldn’t hurt either.”
He pushed air through his nose in a half laugh, half snort, but his eyes were squinted in what looked like amusement as he watched me. “Okay, Brooks. I’ll see what I can do.” Glancing down at his watch, he placed both hands on the table and stood up. “I’d better get going.”
I followed him to the door.
As his fingers settled on the doorknob, he turned back toward me. “Don’t do anything until I get back to you, okay?”
“With an alibi, right?” I bared my teeth in a smile.
“Right. No moving on any of this until I can confirm that.”
“Or deny it.” I put my hands up, palms out, to show how it was out of my hands if Evilsworth didn’t have an alibi —which I was growing increasingly sure he didn’t.
He chuckled. “Night, Pepper.”
“Bye, Alex.”
“See ya, Liv. See ya, Hot Dog,” he called over me. And then — before I could chastise him for getting Hammy’s name wrong again — he was gone.
I pushed out all of the breath I’d been holding along with the door until I heard it click shut. Then I threw the deadbolt until I heard it clunk into place.
18
Maggie convinced me to come over for lunch the next day. I had been dropping Hammy off at her place during the day while Liv and I went to our classes. She’d cornered me that morning, imploring me to come back during my break a few hours later. It was drizzly and gray and Mags was making homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese, so she didn’t exactly have to twist my arm.
Which meant I entered the English building from a different wing as I headed for my last class of the day, Evilsworth’s.
My stomach was full of warm comfort food, a fact I suddenly regretted as I rounded the corner into the main hallway. All of that food dropped to my knees as I saw Stephanie standing, cornered by Professor Evilsworth.
His back was to me and he was towering over the small woman, his deep voice too low for me to make out what he was saying. Stephanie’s eyes frantically searched the hallway, then locked onto me. The light blue of her irises seemed to be draining, sucked dry with each new threat Evilsworth whispered to her.
Protectiveness surged up in my heart. As if to solidify her call for help, Stephanie flinched at the professor’s last word.
“Stop that!” I called across the hallway.
It was pretty crowded; a good ten or fifteen other students milled around this beast and the sprite he’d trapped. How stupid was he to threaten someone in public? Evilsworth must’ve been operating solely on some sort of irrational rage brain. I could just imagine the Caliban curses slithering from his red lips…
A red plague rid you. Toads, beetles, bats light on you.
The monster spun around as my words splattered on his back, nearby students who’d been hit by the overspray of my exclamation turned to watch. Undeterred, I strode forward.
“How dare you talk to her.” My finger flashed out like a switch blade and I pointed it at his heart.
Evilsworth’s face, already red from their conversation, turned almost purple in his rage. Concern flashed across his face for a second, but the anger returned as I reached him and stopped.
“Haven’t you put her through enough?” I snarled.
The man must’ve had a deep, untapped well of acting ability, because he continued to play dumb.
“Ms. Brooks, what on earth are you—?”
I would like to say I took a deep and measured breath, thought carefully about what I was going to say, and then shouted an accusation at the man in the middle of a mildly crowded hallway.
But no. Instead, I —
“What? Killing her father over your stupid book isn’t enough? Now you’ve got to terrorize the woman even more?” Blood pounded in my ears. The hallway tilted slightly.
Gasps sounded all around me. I couldn’t tell if the gasps were of the you’re-so-right kind or the you’re-so-crazy kind because my eyes wouldn’t seem to leave Evilsworth.
His eyes grew wide and dark, and for a moment, I thought he was going to lunge toward me, offing me with a good ole strangle hold (those
who threaten in public are likely to kill in public?). But after a moment his head jutted back.
“Brooks — you — what did you say?”
My finger, now less of a switch blade and more like a blade of grass, flailed between Stephanie and my professor. “You and her father fought about his review of your book right before he died. You hated him.”
I scanned the faces of the other students in the hallway, resisting the urge to circle my hands in front of me in a “right, guys?” plea to garner their support when I saw their blank faces.
Evilsworth blinked and then nodded. “It’s unfortunately true that Davis and I had some heated words before he died.” My professor jabbed a thumb back toward Stephanie. “That’s actually what I was apologizing for.” His large shoulders slumped and his bald head hung. “I regret how I let my temper get the best of me and that our last interaction was so… grievous.” At this last word, he straightened back up to his normal, annoying height. “But I did not kill the poor man.”
I took a deep breath and stood tall at my full height, too. “Oh yeah? Do you have an alibi, professor?” I hated how my voice wavered, how this teacher I hated was seeming less and less like the sure-thing murderer I’d made him out to be in my mind.
His dark eyebrows lowered, casting a shadow over his eyes. “Not that it’s any of your business, Ms. Brooks, but yes, I actually left campus right after my altercation with Dr. Campbell to be there for the birth of my first grandchild.”
The man pulled out his phone and swiped at the screen. He shoved the thing in my face and I saw him beaming, holding a tiny bundle.
“My daughter, my wife, my son-in-law, and pretty much the entire nursing staff at The Pine Crest Memorial Hospital can vouch I was there before the crime took place,” he added.
I bit down on my bottom lip. The students milling about were whispering now, emboldened by the airtight alibi. I could only catch pieces of their conversations, but the ones I did left a terrible taste in my mouth.
“Crazy.”
“So sad.”
“Embarrassing.”
“Who does she think she is?”
The hallway was my own personal amusement ride, flying around me too fast, making me want to puke. I tried to find Stephanie, but couldn’t see her anymore, couldn’t tell how she’d been affected by my presumptuous accusation.
Really, all I could seem to think was, Alex is going to be so mad…
Suddenly, a bony hand closed over my shoulder. I glanced down at the bright red polish and recognized Fergie’s fingers grasping me.
“Pepper, darling, let’s get you some tea.” Her soft voice wrapped around me like the blue silk which draped off her arms, enveloping me as she steered me down the hallway and toward her office.
After a few quiet seconds, I croaked, “How much of that did you see?”
Her hand moved to pat my back and I knew — yep… she’d seen it all.
“My dear, you’ve been under a lot of stress this past year, what with losing your father.” She tsked and pulled me tighter to her side as we walked into the lounge outside her office.
My gut churned at the reminder. Dad had been my compass, my equilibrium. He was the one I went to when I had a dilemma, always helping with his sage advice — and some well-timed quotes from the classics, of course. And without him, I felt lost. It was why I jumped into this major, it was the only piece of him I had left to cling to.
“I was so sure,” I whispered, shaking my head as we walked down the corridor.
“Better three hours early than a minute too late.” Was her reply.
I wanted to snort out a laugh. Fergie wasn’t one to sugar coat things and her Shakespeare quote was no different. Encouraging though it may sound, I remembered back to when the overzealous and paranoid Master Ford spoke those words in The Merry Wives of Windsor. She wanted me to feel better, but wasn’t shy about telling me I’d acted irrationally.
Leading me into her office, Fergie sat me down in the chair in the corner. She shuffled off to make some tea, I assumed, hearing the electric water kettle begin to sizzle.
Groaning, I let my face fall straight into my open palm. What had I done?
I’d been so headstrong about being able to do something on my own, I hadn’t even stopped to think if I should. Alex had told me not to act until I heard from him and I’d gone and accused someone. Maybe Alex wouldn’t find out. I inwardly snorted. Yeah, right. On this campus, in this town…
Somewhere in the clutter of Fergie’s office, I heard the kettle click off and water pour into a mug. Seconds later, there was a cup of Earl Gray steaming in front of me, the lovely citrus scent of bergamot soothing my whirling mind.
I let my eyes drift closed and pulled the cup toward me, about to take a steaming sip.
“Let it steep a little longer, dear,” Fergie said quietly.
Wrapping my fingers around the warm mug, I lowered it to my lap. And as Fergie tutted around me, busy with this and that, I sat there in silence. I’m sure Fergie was just giving me space, but I couldn’t help but use the time to close my eyes and replay my terrible hallway accusation over and over in my head.
I don’t know how many minutes went by, but I realized the mug in my hand had grown colder and I went to take a sip. But as the first drops lighted on my tongue, I pulled back and squeezed my face into a scowl, jolted back into reality by the bitter drink.
Fergie, looked up from the paper she was reading and her face flattened as she watched me. “Oh, I’m sorry. Your first try was too soon and now I fear we’ve let it steep too long. Would you like me to make a new one?”
I wrinkled my nose, but shook my head. “No. I’m fine. This is good. I’ll take it slow.”
Setting the cup on top of the nearest bookshelf, I took a deep, calming breath. Which was when I noticed — Holy mother of messes! — Fergie’s office was an absolute disaster. I was used to her questionable “piles and stacks” system of organization, but this was downright chaos.
My wide eyes took in the papers everywhere, books laid upon books, and trinkets littering the floor, then they landed on Fergie.
“What happened in here?” I felt slightly bad about the incredulity lacing my words. The woman had just saved me from a public death by humiliation, after all.
Fergie looked like she was going to wave a dismissive hand toward me, but instead the hand got lost fumbling through her wispy waves of hair and she grimaced as she surveyed the scene.
“Ah, yes. They brought me a new desk and chair. I got everything out of the old one, but… lost my way sometime after that.”
My heart ached for her. She was scattered at the best of times. Trying to reorganize her whole desk in a time like this was a recipe for disaster.
“Here, let me help you.” I stood, motioning to the desk and the piles.
Fergie let her head sway back and forth. “Oh, no. I don’t even know where I’m going. You don’t want to follow me down that winding, possibly unending path. You’re not even my TA. I couldn’t ask that of you.”
This woman had done so much to help me. It was the least I could do to help her with this. Sure, I wasn’t a master at organization — Liv might argue I was as bad as Fergie, or worse — but I could do this.
“Look, my next class is Evensworth’s and I’m most definitely not going — at least not today. This will help me take my mind off of what happened in the hall back there.” I gave her a pleading look.
Dipping her head in concession, she said, “Okay. Thank you, dear.”
I rubbed my hands together. “Where do we start?”
Fergie sighed. “I suppose finding a common thread and following it through.”
Nodding, I plopped down on the floor, next to the largest stack of papers. “I can do that.”
The new wooden desk was nice, classic and sensible. I leaned over until I could reach the largest drawer, then pulled it open to see what kind of storage we were working with. Oh good. Hanging files. I could definitely work w
ith those.
As I dove into the first stack, Fergie pulled up a stool and sat with a grunt. “Would you like me to add some water to this?” she asked, picking up the cup of tea and setting it on the desk in front of me.
Oh, right. I had all but forgotten. There was a large part of me that didn’t really want any more of the bitter concoction, but I also didn’t want to be rude.
“No, thanks.” I grimaced out a smile then reached forward, pinched the delicate handle with my thumb and pointer finger, and tipped it warily to my lips.
After a few sips, however, I either got used to the intensity or most of my taste buds had jumped ship, because it started to taste normal. Getting back to work, I let my mind wrap around the task in front of me and the incident with Evilsworth melted away.
A few hours later, I sat in relatively the same place on the floor. The space around me, however, had changed dramatically. I’d set Fergie up with a folder for each class in which to keep her copies and syllabi and then a few others for things such as “papers to sign” and “play pamphlets.”
Fergie had left a few minutes ago to go grab us some dinner. Even though we’d made good headway, we still had a good hour or two of work left. Liv had texted, too.
“Going to the football game tonight with Carson. Wanna come?”
My fingers hovered over my screen, wanting desperately to tell Liv all about my terrible blunder with Evilsworth, but it would take a whole lot of typing. I didn’t want to ruin her time with Carson, either. She must really like the guy if she was willing to go to a sporting event with him. What Liv knew about sports could fit on a grain of rice — not that I was any better.
I typed, “No thanks! I’m having dinner with Fergie. Will be home later.”
The NWU Marmots were one of the worst college teams in the state and most of the games they played only served to add to the embarrassment. Plus, I was enjoying how this organizing project had kept my mind off the incident and I desperately wanted to lose myself in that concentration again.
I texted Maggie, asking if she could watch Hammy for a few more hours. When she confirmed it was no problem, I put my phone behind me and headed into the next pile. I came across some more copies, these for her Shakespeare studies classes. I placed them in the stack I’d started. But under those I found something which didn’t fit any of the files I’d already created.