“Why? What’s wrong?” he asked alarmed.
Colin described the accident in the chemistry lab.
Polk reached out to Curie. “Will Meg be all right?”
The little beagle whimpered.
I awkwardly patted the older man’s arm. “She’s okay, Polk. An ambulance drove her to the hospital. Hopefully, we will hear soon how bad the burns are. Dylan put the fire out really quickly.”
Polk’s face was drawn. “There will be an investigation. It’s just like it . . .” he trailed off.
Colin cocked his head. “Just like what?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” He shook his head like a toddler refusing food. “Meg could not be responsible for the explosion. That is a very simple and common experiment. She could have done it in her sleep. Any chemist could have.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I — I must have remembered it from when I was in school.”
My brow wrinkled. Polk must have been out of school for sixty years, if not more. He either had the world’s best memory or knew more about chemistry than he let on. Maybe his knowledge of chemistry was why Dr. Comfrey allowed him in the science building after hours.
“Andi, we need to go back. Dylan said ten minutes.” Colin kept looking over his shoulder as if our counselor would come looking for us at any second.
I nodded. “Polk, can you come over to Colin’s house for dinner tonight?”
Colin’s mouth fell open.
The janitor blinked. “That’s nice of you to ask, but I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Colin recovered. “Bergita would love it.” He removed his phone from pocket. “I can text her right now and ask.”
Polk wrapped Curie’s leash around his hand. “I couldn’t — ”
“Yes, you can,” I said. “Do you have other plans?”
Polk shook his head.
Colin’s phone beeped. “She says it’s okay and that we are having a cookout tonight.”
Polk frowned.
“Please, Bergita is expecting you,” Colin said. “If you don’t come, she’ll be so disappointed.”
“Why do I have the feeling I’m being ambushed?”
Colin and I grinned.
He nodded. “Yes, I will be there if it means that the two of you will return to camp. I don’t want to be held responsible for keeping you.”
“Good.” I paused. “And if I were you, I’d stay away from Colburn today. There are a lot of people there, including Kip. He won’t be happy to see you.”
Polk’s face clouded over. “He never is. He has his reasons.”
I hoped Polk would tell us what those reasons were at the cookout.
Colin rattled off his address. “Bergita said you should be there at five.” Colin and I ran around the side of the building and almost knocked over Ava in the process.
I pulled up short. “What are you doing here?”
She placed one hand on her hip. The other held a stack of books. “I returned some library books. Is that a crime?” Ava arched an eyebrow at me. “Were you able to return your books, Andi?”
I didn’t answer.
“I’d be surprised that you had enough time to run into the library since you were so busy talking to Polk.”
Colin paled. “Ava, you can’t tell anyone that.”
She gave him a small smile before heading up the library steps.
CASE FILE NO. 14
By the time Colin and I returned to the oak tree, we had been gone thirteen minutes. Colin timed it. Fortunately, Dylan was too preoccupied by the irate parent stabbing her fingernail into his chest to notice how long we’d been gone.
The woman folded her arms. “This campus is supposed to be safe. I send my son here to learn science, and his teacher is almost killed.”
Dylan was sweating. “Mrs. Harper, Dr. Comfrey will be all right. I’m sure she’ll be good as new in no time.”
“One of those exploding test tubes could have hit my son. He could have been burnt,” she screeched.
“The kids were well back from the ex — ”
“Don’t make excuses.”
A few feet away, Brady squirmed and looked like he wished the earth would open and swallow him.
“Mrs. Harper.” Madison stepped between the angry mother and Dylan. “You have every right to be upset, but we hope you will let Brady come back to camp tomorrow. He’s a bright kid, and we would hate to lose him.”
Mrs. Harper’s shoulders relaxed. “Yes, Brady is exceptional. He always has extremely high test scores. He’s bound for the ivy league.” She sniffed. “Not a shoddy university like this.”
“Mom,” Brady’s voice jumped an octave.
Mrs. Harper smoothed the sleeve of her blouse. “We are leaving now, but Brady will be back tomorrow. I am not going to let this mishap ruin my son’s chances for a scholarship someday.”
Madison smiled. “I’m glad.”
“I’m glad too,” Dylan said.
Mrs. Harper scowled at Dylan before wrapping her arm around her son’s shoulders and leading a red-faced Brady to the parking lot.
Dylan frowned. “Why did she smile pretty at you and give me the stink eye?”
Madison chuckled. “I’m the responsible one, remember?”
It was the first time I’d heard her laugh.
Other kids’ parents arrived to pick up their children. I didn’t see Bergita. Since Amelie was on her way to Canton with Bethany, I expected her to tell Bergita to pick us up. Colin’s cell phone rang.
“Hi, Bergita,” Colin said. “No, we are both fine.”
“Ask her if we can go see Mr. Finnigan before going home,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Just ask,” I said.
Colin repeated my question to Bergita. “We should be home by dinnertime . . . Yes, we will help get ready for the cookout.” He hung up.
“Why do you want to go see Mr. Finnigan?”
Before I could answer, Dylan slipped his phone into the back pocket of his jeans and said, “It looks like everyone from our group is either getting picked up or is headed home. Colin and Andi, you are supposed to ride your bikes to Colin’s house.” He checked his crinkled list. “Well, everyone is headed home except for you, Ava. I couldn’t get a hold of your mom, and the guy who answered the phone said you would have to wait here until the normal time.”
Ava crossed her arms. “That’s fine. I don’t care.” She kicked the trunk of the oak tree so jagged pieces of bark fell to the ground.
I edged away from Ava and spotted Madison speaking with a middle-aged man in a suit. While Dylan and Colin were distracted by Ava, I walked over to the man and Madison.
“Obviously, you should put someone else in charge of the department,” Madison said to the man. “She’s making poor decisions and putting those kids in danger.”
The man pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Dean Cutter, you want someone like that making decisions about the chemistry department’s budget? She’s making drastic cuts. Someone else on the faculty will make better choices about the budget.”
“Miss Houser, if this is about the think tank for next summer, I don’t want to hear it right now. I am not going to discuss the university’s budgetary policies with a student.” He brushed passed her. “Now, if you will excuse me.”
I jumped behind a tree as he passed.
Twenty minutes later, Colin’s bike coasted up alongside mine. “Now are you going to tell me why we are going to see Mr. Finnigan?”
I squeezed my bike’s brakes as the brick-faced cooling tower of the old Michael Pike bottling company came into view. The bottling company closed decades ago, and now was the home of the Killdeer Historical Society and Museum. Mr. Finnigan was the town curator.
“Because if anyone in Killdeer knows the history about the university and Polk, it would be Mr. Finnigan.” I kicked out my bike stand and parked the bike on the sidewalk in front of the building’s front door.
Colin and I
went inside. Like always, the curator sat at the too small reception desk just inside the door with his long legs stretching out in front of the desk.
“Andi! Colin! To what do I owe this pleasure?” His brow wrinkled. “I thought you two were in Discovery Camp this week,” he said, proving that Mr. Finnigan knew everything that happened in Killdeer. I hoped that he knew about Polk too.
Colin sat in one of the two armchairs across from the curator’s desk. “Camp was canceled for the rest of the day. There was an explosion.”
Mr. Finnigan flattened his hands on the desktop and sat up suddenly, knocking his knees on the underside of the desk in the process. “What?”
I stopped a pencil from rolling off of the desk. “Dr. Comfrey was hurt. She has burns on her am. We haven’t heard how bad the burns are, but she was talking to the other professors and the camp counselors when the ambulance took her away.”
Mr. Finnigan leaned across the desk. “Tell me everything.”
I told the curator what happened, and Colin jumped in every now and then with more details.
“Oh my, I can’t believe I am just hearing about this now. I’m glad that you kids came here to tell me. As the town curator, I should be one of the first to know when something significant like this happens in Killdeer so that I can record the facts properly.”
I shifted in my seat. “There’s another reason we stopped by too.”
“Oh?”
“What can you tell us about Polk?” I asked.
“Polk? Polk who?”
“Polk, the janitor at the university.”
“Oh, you mean James Samuel Polk, no relation to the 11th president of the United States. His mother must have been unable to resist naming him James. He’s worked at Michael Pike for over forty years.”
“Whoa,” Colin said. “Do you know his birthday too?”
The curator ran a finger over his dark mustache. “Not off hand, but I can look it up if you need it. What’s your interest in Polk?”
“The explosion isn’t the only strange thing going on around campus,” I said. “Things have turned up missing from the chemistry lab and Kip, the security guard — ”
“Yes, I know Kip too,” he gestured for me to continue.
“Kip seems to think that Polk is behind it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kip thought Polk was behind the explosion too.”
“There’s a simple reason for that,” the curator said. “Kip, full name Kipling Bart Reynolds — ”
“His middle name is Bart,” Colin snorted.
Mr. Finnigan just gave him a look before continuing. “Kip hates Polk. He has a grudge against him that is decades long.”
“Why’s that?” I asked. “What happened?”
Mr. Finnigan leaned across the desk to us. “Polk killed Kip’s father.”
“What?” Colin squawked before he fell out of his chair.
CASE FILE NO. 15
Colin scrambled back into his chair, and I stared at Mr. Finnigan gap-mouthed. Finally, I regained control of my voice. “What do you mean that Polk killed Kip’s father?”
Mr. Finnigan leaned back into his chair. “Polk wasn’t always a janitor at Michael Pike. Back in the 1970s, he was the chemistry professor there.”
So that’s how Polk knew so much about chemistry.
“How did Polk go from being a professor to the janitor?” Colin asked.
“I’m getting to that,” Mr. Finnigan said. “Polk was a rising star in the area of chemistry. Kip’s father, Doug Reynolds, was Polk’s protégé. Without permission, he ran an experiment in the chemistry lab after hours. I believe the theory was he wanted to impress Polk, so that Polk would write a recommendation letter for graduate school. He was alone, and there was an explosion, a large one, not just a Bunsen burner malfunctioning like you described, and Doug was killed. He died from chemical burns.”
I shivered.
“When was this?” Colin asked.
“April 1974.” Mr. Finnigan pushed back from the desk. “Hang tight. I have a file on this back in the archives. It will have all the details that we need.” Mr. Finnigan was back within minutes. He must have known exactly where the file was.
He fell back into his seat and put the archival folder in the middle of the desk. A newspaper article slipped out of it. “Here’s an article about it from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. A big story like this was covered even in the big cities.” He slid the clipping across the desk to Colin and me. We leaned forward to read it.
Colin ran his finger along the print. “It says that Doug was doing something with thionyl chloride. What’s that?”
Mr. Finnigan shrugged. “That’s a question for a chemist. Whatever it is, they think it came in contact with another chemical Doug used, which caused the explosion. Chances are if he hadn’t been in the lab alone, he would have had burns but may have survived. I believe Polk found him and tried to pull him from the room, but it was too late. It is a waste. It sounds like he would have been a great scientist.”
I slid the article back to Mr. Finnigan. “Did Polk go to jail?”
The curator shook his head. “No. Today, he probably would have. I’m guessing both Polk and the university would have been charged with neglect since Doug had access to the lab and conducted the experiment alone. Back in the ’70s, I think the Pike family may have paid off some people to make the problem go away. They were still very much in control of the university and town then.”
“Because of something that happened so long ago and something that was an accident, Kip automatically assumes that Polk is behind it?” Colin said.
“Kip and the entire Reynolds family always held Polk responsible for the tragedy even though the rumor was they took money from the Pikes too. Polk didn’t cause the accident, but the college fired him from being a professor there. The Reynolds did everything in their power to make sure he didn’t find another teaching job. The college felt sorry for Polk — he had been one of their star faculty members before — and offered him the janitorial job. I think everyone was surprised when he took it, and even more surprised that he has kept it so long and not found something else or moved away from Killdeer.”
“Why didn’t he move away?” Colin asked. “I would want to get as far away from this place as I could.”
“That I don’t know. You will have to ask him.” The curator leaned back in his chair, and it squeaked.
We were all silent in thought. I didn’t know about Colin and Mr. Finnigan, but my mind was reeling from this information. Maybe Kip took the security job at Michael Pike University because Polk was still working there. Maybe he was working there to torment Polk as some kind of forty-year-old payback, or even maybe Kip framed Polk as the ultimate payback for his father’s death.
Colin stood. “Andi, we’d better go. I promised Bergita we wouldn’t be long.”
I raised my eyebrows at Colin. He’d told Bergita we’d be home by dinnertime. It wasn’t even noon yet. I stood up too, and we thanked Mr. Finnigan and headed out to our bikes.
When we got outside, I asked, “What’s the rush? Bergita doesn’t expect us home for a few more hours.”
“I know that, but now that we know the history between Polk and Kip, I want to get back to campus. It’s the best place to learn anything about Kip. I think he has more to do with these incidents than we ever thought before. Are you in?”
Of course I was in.
Colin and I had left campus less than two hours before, but what a difference that time had made. As we cruised by the science building, I noted that the small parking lot beside Colburn was crowded with cop cars, a crime scene van, and another van that said “chemical containment” on the side of it.
“Whoa,” Colin said.
My thoughts exactly.
Kip was in the middle of the parking lot talking to a cop and a guy in a hazmat suit. Dr. Comfrey with her arm in a blue sling was there, as well as Dr. Ruggles. I was so relieved to see that the chemistry professor was all right, although surprised she h
ad returned from the hospital so quickly. They must have wanted to ask her questions. She wore a short-sleeved shirt, and a white bandage wrapped from the palm of her hand all the way to her bicep.
I worried my lip. “Do you think camp will be canceled for good?”
“I hope not. At least Dr. Comfrey looks okay.”
I put my feet back up on the pedals. “We had better get out of sight. The science teachers and counselors thought we went home. I don’t think they would like it if they caught us here.”
Colin followed me on his bike over to the dining hall. I thought it was the best place to go. We could hide behind the building to keep out of sight from the officials swarming Colburn but still have a great vantage point to see most of the action.
Colin and I parked our bikes beside the blue dumpster that I had hid behind that morning and then returned to the corner of the building.
Suddenly, Colin pulled me backwards by my T-shirt.
I yanked my shirt away and hissed, “What?”
He didn’t say a word, just pointed. The camp counselors and Ava stepped out of the cafeteria’s side door. Colin and I ducked behind the dumpster.
Madison folded her arms and unknowingly turned her back to Colin and me. “I don’t know why they won’t let me over to help the crime scene guys. I know as much chemistry as anyone else, even those wannabe biohazard officers.”
“Someone has to stay with Ava.” Susan snapped her gum.
“We don’t all have to be with her. Kip used that as an excuse to get rid of us.”
Ava folded her arms. “I don’t need to be babysat. I’d be fine by myself in the library until my brother gets here.”
“See,” Madison said. “And I shouldn’t have to spend my summer babysitting any of these kids,” Madison snapped. “I should be in DC.”
“Ugh,” Susan said. “Madison, you hold a grudge, girl. If I hear one more word about your ‘woe is me’ story and how you were forced to work at this camp, I’m going to hurl.”
“Me too,” Luis agreed.
“You two are just jealous because you never even had a shot.”
Colin and I shared a look.
Andi Under Pressure Page 7