by Cynthia Kuhn
No one spoke.
Mina, who had been standing off to the side, moved in between the chairs and said, “Jasper, it’s time to come clean.”
His head swiveled so fast it seemed to blur. “What are you talking about?”
“Babe, just tell the truth.” She wiped a tear from her eye and smiled weakly at him. “We all know you did it. It will feel better to admit it, and we’ll be able to help you.”
“Me? You’re the one who should come clean—sounds like you were scamming Damon the whole time. At least I was honest with him.”
“Honest with him? You stole the manuscript so you could sell it! You knew it would be worth more after you exposed him.”
“Technically, I didn’t steal it. I paid a student to take it for Damon. I was just the middleman,” Jasper protested. “And if I were going to sell the manuscript, I wouldn’t have given it back to him, which I did. It was part of our deal. He wanted to destroy it before it went on perpetual tour as evidence of the world’s longest-running plagiarism case or something.”
She shook her head and locked eyes with Tall Officer, then gave a tiny shrug, her hands palm up, as if to say what can you do with a guy like this?
“I’m going to need the name of that student later,” Lex said.
Jasper ignored him, focusing on Mina.
“Please explain why I would want to be hit by a spotlight. It almost killed me!”
“It was the perfect way to point suspicion elsewhere and gain attention for Damon’s reading. You could play the victim and soak up the sympathy. Meanwhile, you were plotting the next thing.”
“Which was what?” Jasper asked. “Seriously, think about it. Why would I drug Damon? I wanted him to give a successful reading so he would confess. That was the whole point.”
“Again, for publicity,” Mina said. “I’m just glad you’ll be behind bars so you can never hurt my father again.”
“He is not your father. You’re delusional,” Jasper said, his face bright red, “and I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You just admitted that you stole the manuscript from the library,” Mina said exasperatedly.
“That’s true,” Jasper admitted. “But I didn’t do anything else.”
“Well, let’s see...you blackmailed my father and you kidnapped Lila.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it kidnapping,” I protested.
“Well, you were tied up,” Mina snapped at me, eyes blazing.
“That’s true,” I agreed.
“So you’ve done plenty,” she said to Jasper. “Don’t you understand right from wrong?”
“Look,” Jasper said, in a placating manner. “My part in this was to rectify an injustice. What’s done is done. Damon has confessed and we can all move on.”
“You don’t get to move on,” Mina said, her eyes wide. “You’re done too.” She addressed Lex. “Jasper doesn’t know this, but the final chapter of his dissertation—the one calling my father a fraud, the one he planned to submit after tonight—has already been deleted from his computer, flash drive, and email as of this morning. He could write it again, of course, but I doubt his committee, or the university press for that matter, is going to be interested in his dissertation at all once they hear about how he blackmailed someone into participating in a plagiarism scheme for In Medias Res.”
“You deleted it? How could you?” Jasper yelled. “You bitch!”
“Do not call me that,” Mina yelled back. “And you cannot profit from what you’ve done!”
Lex looked back and forth between them, then held his hand up authoritatively. “Okay, let’s take everything down a notch here. Let’s start with the statue and work our way backwards.”
I thought back to the Valentine’s Day party, remembering the way the statue came crashing down. And before I knew it, I was on my feet yelling too.
“No—wait! He didn’t do it!”
Everyone turned to me and the room fell silent.
Lex gestured for me to go on. His blue eyes were fixed on mine.
“He couldn’t have done it. I was standing by the fountain right before the bust fell. And I saw Jasper go out the front door toward the valet station.”
“But no one came down the stairs,” Lex said.
“Correct,” I said to him, then turned to address Mina. “Because you and I found the elevator together before that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. Her lips were pressed together in a thin line.
“When we were upstairs, remember? We talked about the wallpaper inside the elevator? And you said it was...what was the word you used? Oh, right: you said it was ‘fancy.’”
She shrugged. “Whatever. We saw an elevator. That was earlier, Lila. When the statue fell, I was in the same room as your mother, and we went to find Damon together.”
“Except,” I heard my mother say clearly from behind me, “we weren’t together in the same room.” She came over and stood next to me, resting her elbows on the stage. “Now that Lila mentions it, I distinctly remember admiring how the wallpaper inside of the elevator had the same bronze tones as your hair the way the overhead light shone on it, which means you must have been standing inside when the doors opened.”
Mina opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“And afterwards, when you said you were pushed down the stairs. You made that up, didn’t you? No one actually saw it happen,” I said.
“But it did—” she began.
“It’s about the money, isn’t it?” I cut her off. “All the talk about wanting to preserve your father’s legacy was really about the inheritance you thought you were getting. Keeping his reputation intact would ensure you were set for life. On the flip side, if he were exposed, the money would surely be in question, especially once the legal action kicked in. That’s why you didn’t want either Jasper or Damon to speak in public. At least until you’d convinced Damon not to confess...or so you thought. You started with the spotlight, didn’t you? To keep Jasper quiet?”
She shook her head emphatically. “No!”
“Come to think of it,” Damon said slowly, standing up. “The night of the panel, you said you were going to take a nap in the room you shared with Jasper before the dinner party. You had a migraine, you said. The inn was so close to campus—you could easily have made it there and back before Francisco and Lila came to pick us up. I would never even know you’d left. Plenty of time to pitch a light onto Jasper and run back.”
“Jasper told me you majored in theater, Mina,” I added. “You’re a good actress—actually, a great one. I really thought you’d been pushed down the stairs. And with the theater experience, you certainly would know your way around a catwalk, I’d wager.”
“You could have killed me,” Jasper added angrily. “Or Damon, with the drugs.”
“You’re the one who has a prescription for Xanax, not me.” She pointed to him. Apparently, she was sticking to her story. “You know those anxiety attacks you had last fall? You said they were about your dissertation, but maybe it was from all the plotting and scheming. Your conscience was trying to tell you something.”
He stared at her. “I do have a prescription,” he said slowly.
She smiled triumphantly at Lex. “See? I guess it’s pretty clear what really happened here.”
“Wait, how do you know about that, anyway?” Jasper pressed her.
“You told me about the attacks.”
“No,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. “I mean about the meds. I never used them after the first time. They made me too groggy to write. How do you know I had them?”
“I happened to see a bottle in the back of your medicine cabinet.”
Jasper threw up his arms. “Well, I didn’t bring any with me.”
“But you did,” I interjected, speaking directly to Min
a. “Right? Would have been easy to pocket some pills in case you needed them.”
“I would never drug my father,” Mina said coldly.
“But I’m not your father,” Damon reminded her, matching her tone. “And you knew I wasn’t.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Those endless questions about the books and royalties...did you think you were being subtle?”
“I just wanted to know where things stood. I was trying to help you.” Mina looked wildly around the stage, her eyes welling with tears. “I can’t believe you’re all accusing me.”
Damon stared at her until her shoulders slumped.
“All I have ever done was look out for you,” she said to Damon reproachfully, wiping a tear from her cheek.
“You mean you were looking out for your inheritance,” he corrected her, shaking his head. “The one you thought you were getting, anyway.”
“This is ludicrous,” Mina protested. “You’ve all lost your minds.”
“Ms. Clark, we need to finish this conversation down at the station,” Lex said, walking toward Mina, handcuffs at the ready.
Time to leave. I turned, took two steps, and bumped into the chancellor’s expensive suit—my face firmly planted into his chest.
“Oof,” I heard him say above me.
I apologized, cheeks aflame, and propelled myself backwards.
He relocated himself to a safer distance by the first row of seats and beckoned me over. “Walk with me, Dr. Maclean,” he commanded, moving briskly toward the center aisle.
My heart plunged straight into my boots.
He was going to fire me.
I followed reluctantly, wondering how I would ever find another position for next fall at the tail end of the academic hiring cycle.
The chancellor walked halfway up the aisle and stopped to face me.
“A student complaint came across my desk earlier this week,” he said, waiting for acknowledgment.
“I know which one you mean.” Simone must have convinced Stephanie Barnes to go through with it.
The chancellor rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It’s a tricky situation since the student in question is related to one of our most generous donors.”
Dang. Here it came.
“I read carefully through the report you had filed with student judicial. Thing is—” He paused for a long moment, during which perspiration emerged from every pore in my body.
“—I agree with you.”
You could have knocked me over with a quill.
“Especially in light of this,” he said, as he gestured toward the stage. “Stonedale needs to stand firm against academic dishonesty.”
He must have been worried about how it looked to the rest of the world that we’d invited a scoundrel to be our author of the week.
“I agree,” I said, surreptitiously wiping the panic-sweat off my forehead.
“I wonder if you might be interested in joining a new task force to be charged with developing publicity-friendly anti-plagiarism slogans to raise awareness. Stonedale could become quite a leader in this area if we do it right.”
I said I’d be delighted to serve on the Everyone Knows Academic Dishonesty Is Wrong But Here’s Yet Another Reminder Committee.
I didn’t say it like that, though.
“Thank you very much, Chancellor, for your support.”
“Of course,” he said loftily. “We do strive to support our professors.”
The ones they liked anyway. Wait, did this mean the chancellor and I had turned the corner on our previously vexed relationship?
“I can’t tell you how relieved I am,” I said. “I thought you were going to—” I stopped myself.
“Going to...what?” he asked gently, his mouth curving in a tiny smile. A smile? We were definitely having a moment. Go for it.
“I thought you were going to fire me,” I confessed, with a little nervous laugh.
“Oh. Well.” He waved his hands in front of his chest as if erasing our budding connection. “We’ll have to see how things go from here, won’t we?” He strode back toward the stage, leaving me standing there with a jumble of emotions.
I may have—stupidly—just put the idea into his head, but I wasn’t getting fired today.
Take that, Simone.
Chapter 25
The next afternoon, Calista and I met for coffee at Scarlett’s. My spirits had been lifted by the sunshine on the way over, and I bounded into the café in a most unprofessorial manner, throwing my arms around my cousin and giving her a hug.
“What was that for?” she asked, laughing. She readjusted the collar of her sage sweater coat and waited, looking quizzical.
“Well, Arts Week is done, for one thing. And we figured out what’s been going on—as I texted you, it was Mina all along.”
“Yes, I want the scoop, but let’s order first. I’m starving.” She swept me in line for the counter. “Did Aunt Vi leave?”
“Yes, this morning. Sorry that you and Francisco didn’t get our voicemail about joining us for dinner last night.”
“Me too,” Calista said, looking glum. “I was recharging my phone. Stupid battery. Though Francisco was crushed by Damon’s revelations, so it’s probably better we stayed away from other humans.”
“Well, at least you got to see her during the visit. And she gave me a thousand not-so-subtle hints about improving my tiny house with fabulous art. I’d be happy to share.”
Calista smiled. “Well, if there’s one area she knows....”
“Indeed.”
“Is she still going to date Damon?”
“She mentioned something about how he really was a bit old for her. Which in Violet code, as you know, means curtains for that relationship. In addition to Damon turning out not to be a writer after all, I suspect she’s also angry he didn’t confide in her about Mina’s real father. Minerva had fed Mom some story about what she called ‘a Hot French Guy’—”
A flash of annoyance crossed her face. “What? Why didn’t she tell me?”
“There was no time—”
Calista crossed her arms over her chest in a kind of nonverbal harrumph.
“She would have told you too, if you’d been there yesterday,” I assured her. “Anyway, it’s a moot point now that it turned out to be a lie. There was no Hot French Guy. Or if there was, he wasn’t the father. As Damon said last night, it was someone in politics. Mina admitted to Lex later after much questioning that she had actually known who her real father was. All the insistence onstage about how she thought it was Damon? Huge lie. She was scamming him, as he suspected. And once Lex was able to obtain the Big Truth, the rest was easy to sort out.”
“Ooh, how did you find out?”
“Lex called last night.” I’d pressed for details on the case, but he’d only confirmed the paternity thing, which may have been unintentional as he tried to dodge my barrage of questions while simultaneously helping me understand that I was not an official member of the crime-solving team. Even though I’d solved the crime. And yes, I had reminded him of that little fact. “I don’t know if I’m technically supposed to have the information about the paternity thing, so maybe don’t repeat it.”
Calista made a zipping gesture across her mouth and threw an imaginary key over her shoulder.
“I think it’s pretend to lock your mouth and throw away a key or do the zipper thing. I don’t think you can mix and match.”
“But you know what I mean, right?”
“Yes.”
“So I do it how I do it,” Calista said, shrugging. “Okay?”
I laughed. “Carry on.”
“Anyway, poor Aunt Vi. She and Damon were cute together.”
Boy did we ever have different readings of Mr. Von Tussel. I was thrilled my mother was breaking up with hi
m.
“Don’t worry about her, Cal. She has many admirers, as you know.”
We placed our orders, paid for our drinks, and moved to the pick-up area.
“I’m not worried about her,” she said. “I’m just sad they reconnected and it turned out not to mean anything. I just want Aunt Vi to be happy.”
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Sometimes the reconnection is the meaningful part all by itself.”
Calista brightened. “That’s true.”
“How’s Francisco? He seemed upset last night.”
That was stating it mildly. I’d seen him storm up the aisle of Brynson Hall immediately after the reading was over, Calista trailing behind.
“He’s fine. It took all night to calm him down though. After a long rant, he realized his book was still viable. He just had to add a prologue explaining that the authorship had changed. The texts, though, remain the same, so his analysis should still hold. He wasn’t doing biographical criticism, thank goodness.”
“What’s going to happen to Jasper’s book?”
She shrugged. “No idea. What about Damon’s? I mean, his entire authorial reputation just vanished into thin air.”
“You’re right. But Mom said he had already called his publisher and was making arrangements to have The Medusa Variation published under Vera’s name. And there will be no more copies of In Medias Res printed. Ever.”
“What will happen with royalties and so forth?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure there will be a great deal of litigation in his future.”
Calista sighed. “You know the original books, with the fraudulent name on the cover, will become the editions that collectors will seek out.”
“That’s just wrong, isn’t it?” I said. “But, again, you’re right.”
“Tell me more about what happened after the reading,” she said.
“Basically, Mina blamed Jasper for the spotlight, the drugging, and the statue. He said she was lying and blamed her right back,” I told Calista.
She shook her head. Her blonde bob stayed in place admirably. “I’m assuming the engagement is off, then.”