The Grim Steeper

by Amanda Cooper

  “But what?”

  “But I never want you to feel you have to stay here if you’d rather be elsewhere.”

  Sophie crossed the bedroom and bent over her grandmother, giving her a fierce hug. “I am exactly where I want to be. I think it took going back to the Hamptons to get that in my head. I have friends here, and you and Laverne; what else could I want?”

  “And Jason?”

  “And Jason,” Sophie said, trying to keep her tone light. What would happen between them if he had to leave? She didn’t even want to think about it.

  “Are you going to see him tonight?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Say hello to Rhiannon for me.”

  “I will. I’m bringing back a fresh box of our tea. We’ll need extra for tomorrow night.”

  “Good thinking. Night, honey.”

  “I’ll be quiet when I come in. Good night, Nana. And Pearlie-Girlie,” she said, dropping a kiss on the cat’s fluffy head. The Birman stretched and yawned, then curled up in a goofy ball, feet pointing skyward.

  Barchester Hall, one of the buildings from when Cruickshank was expanded to accommodate the influx of returning GIs going to college on the GI bill, was a large building with cement columns separated by aqua, salmon and glass panels. It housed an auditorium theater for speakers, as well as a big room for conventions and displays. She parked and entered the retro lobby, which featured starburst and amoeba designs, veering off toward the convention hall.

  The event was in full swing. A few hundred people strolled the long aisles, perusing tea-related displays of all kinds of vendors, from tea blenders, porcelain makers, teapot artisans, antiques merchants and many more. She rushed along the line of tables until she came to Rhiannon’s and hopped into the booth, giving her friend a quick hug.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.” Rhiannon, her auburn hair pulled back and woven into a braid, pulled off her emerald-green apron and flung it down on the table. “I need to go to the bathroom!”

  “Drink too much tea?” Sophie asked with a grin.

  “Funny. Look, can you hold down the fort for a minute? Tell anyone who asks I’ll be back in a sec.” She grabbed her purse and rushed off.

  Sophie looked around, familiarizing herself with the booth. It was roughly a ten-by-twelve space, with square shelving units holding a variety of Galway’s special blends in both loose-leaf and tea bag types, as well as imported teapots, infusers, strainers and Irish linens. Rhi had some thermal jugs set up that dispensed hot tea in five different blends.

  Folks drifted past and some paused; she served them tea blends, telling them the difference between the two black blends, and the green, Earl Grey and chai teas offered. She pointed out the excellent quality but plain teapots, various steepers, strainers and infusers, and packaged loose-leaf teas.

  Rhiannon came back, shoved her purse under the counter and picked up her apron. “I’m lucky you came along when you did. That time of the month, you know?” She grabbed an extra apron and thrust it into Sophie’s hands.

  “Happy to be of assistance,” Sophie said, donning the apron, which had Galway Fine Teas in white script across the chest.

  They worked together, with Sophie directing folks who had more complex questions or orders to Rhiannon. In between they talked about the problems that Jason was having at the college. Rhiannon said that Cruickshank had always had a lousy athletic program, and she knew because she had gone there on a women’s volleyball scholarship.

  “We did our best, but college leadership wasn’t very encouraging,” Rhiannon said, flinging her auburn braid back over her shoulders. She perched on the edge of the green-tablecloth-covered table. “We were ranked first in our division and still couldn’t get any money or gym time. Don’t laugh, but back then, besides us, they had great bowling, fencing and archery teams. Totally random, right? Nowadays they don’t have any good teams.”

  “All I know is, Jason didn’t do what he’s being accused of.”

  A passel of locals came by. Sophie recognized some of them from the businesswomen’s association in Gracious Grove. She hailed Elizabeth Lemmon, owner of Libby Lemon’s, a kitchenware store in downtown Gracious Grove.

  “Hey, Sophie, Rhiannon,” the woman said, pushing back her dark fluffy curls.

  “You two know each other?” Sophie asked.

  “Sure. We talked about carrying Rhiannon’s tea in our store. We still may do that!”

  They chatted business, in between Rhiannon helping customers and talking about tea. As Rhiannon moved into the concourse to talk to some folks who were interested in having her do a talk on tea for their church group, Elizabeth leaned in to Sophie. “I’ve been hearing about what’s going on with your fellow, Jason. You know the dean’s wife, Jeanette Asquith? She’s a gossipy soul, and has been spreading the word through every group in town she belongs to.”

  Dismayed, Sophie said, “Why would she do that?”

  “Jeanette seems frosty, but once you get to know her, you find out she will talk your ear off about anything. She’s a bit of a self-important pain, if you ask me, but she’s such a good customer I can’t shut her up.”

  “What did she say? What is she telling people?”

  The woman took Sophie’s arm and drew her out of the booth toward a private curtained area behind, which was storage for the vendors. It was dimly lit and lined with boxes. “In the last couple of days she’s been telling anyone who will listen that one of the instructors has been caught red-handed upping one of the athlete’s grades. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess she means Jason Murphy. It was being talked about even before that story in the Clarion.”

  “Do people in Gracious Grove actually read the Clarion?”

  “Off-campus students live in town, so a lot of places carry it and many local business advertise in it. I don’t; no student is in the market for high-end kitchen gadgetry. But Peterson Books ’n Stuff carries it and advertises in it, especially since they supply school texts to a lot of Cruickshank students.”

  That was how Dana knew about the newspaper article before anyone else. “I don’t get why Dean Asquith’s wife would be spreading around the rumor.”

  Elizabeth touched her arm. “Look, you didn’t hear it from me, but she’s got a friend on the side.”

  “I’ve already heard that. What has he got to do with it?”

  “Paul Wechsler is systems engineer at Cruickshank.”

  Sophie, mystified, shook her head.

  “Think about it! Who could change those grades easier at any point than the fellow who has access to every area of the computer system?”

  “But why would he?” Was she being dense? She didn’t get the connection.

  “Okay, let me spell it out. You’re not the gossipy type, right?”

  Sophie shook her head.

  “Okay, well, the scuttlebutt is that Paul is so in love with Jeanette that he’d do anything for her. He wants her to leave Dale Asquith, but knows she won’t do it as long as Paul just works for the college. I could be wrong, but I think he may have done it for a bribe from Mac MacAlister’s parents, who are already wealthy, but hoping he gets an offer from the NBA. His dad played here back in the seventies. Their dream is for him to play for the Knicks. If the bribe was big enough, Paul thinks he could start the IT company he’s been talking about for a year, make it big and tempt Jeanette away from Dale.”

  That seemed like a particularly tortured theory to Sophie, but she took it in and thought about it. “So you’re saying Jeanette, knowing what Paul did, is trying to throw shade on Jason, hoping her boyfriend won’t get caught?”

  “Exactly!” Elizabeth said. “You go to the head of the class.”

  Sophie peeked around the drapes; Rhiannon was swamped, so she excused herself from Elizabeth and returned to the booth.

  “You’re Sophie Taylor,
right?” said a young woman who stood with a friend looking over the teapots.

  “I am! How’d you know?”

  “My aunt described you. I’m Vienna Hodge.”

  “Laverne’s niece? Eli’s little sister?”

  “One of the many . . . nieces, I mean,” the young woman said with a laugh. Midtwenties and slim, wearing a peacoat over leggings, she had the most gorgeous long-lashed hazel eyes. Her dark hair was shiny and short, sleeked forward and dyed mahogany on the ends. “Eli’s my half brother; I’m from Daddy’s third marriage. Anyway, Auntie Lala called me and said you would be here, and asked if I could stop in and talk to you. She wouldn’t say what about.”

  Well, this was awkward. Vienna’s similarly slim but blond and blue-eyed friend was talking to a fellow in the aisle. “I don’t want to take your time. You work in admissions here, right?”

  The young woman nodded.

  “I really just . . . it’s about Jason Murphy. He’s my friend, and is in trouble, as you likely know.”

  “That’s all anyone is talking about. None of us want to see him fired,” she said, motioning to her friend. “He’s the hot prof, you know? The one all the girls have a crush on. And he’s nice, not a jerk like some of them. Whenever he comes in to the office, he always stops to chat. But what can I tell you? I’m just an assistant in admissions.”

  “I guess I’m grasping at straws. You know these people, though; have any of them been acting odd? Or has anyone said anything about who the dean is leaning toward blaming?”

  “My boss is friends with the registrar, Vince Nomuro. Do you know him?”

  “Just enough to recognize him.” Sophie explained about the basketball game she had attended.

  “Yeah, no doubt. Vince is such a big basketball fan that he’s at every game. I overheard them talking this morning, the registrar and my boss. Vince is worried. I don’t know if he did it, or if he just worries in general, but I did hear him say that he won’t go down without a fight.”

  Vienna and her friend were meeting people at the Crook’s Lair, the on-campus pub, so they bustled away. Sophie pondered what she had just heard; surely it would be an even more serious thing for someone like Vince Nomuro, whose whole career was based on trust with data on students. He had certainly seemed nervous at the basketball game, and was keeping his eye on Dean Asquith.

  The evening was winding to a close and the hall was emptying, with the last few customers chatting to vendors and finalizing orders. Sophie helped Rhiannon tear down the booth. They loaded the shelves and product on a dolly cart and wheeled it through the convention center, with Rhi pausing to talk to people along the way. At one of their stops, Sophie noticed Dean Asquith speaking to a thirtyish woman with auburn wavy hair and a curvaceous form, hugged by an expensive dress. Asquith looked around with a nervous twitch, then grabbed her by the elbow and hauled her away. Interesting.

  But irrelevant.

  They circled the active area of the convention floor, beyond the long curtains, and threaded through pallets of boxed products to a garage-style door. “Wait here, and I’ll go get my van and back it up to the door,” Rhiannon said.

  Sophie sat on the edge of the dolly cart and considered what she had learned so far. Paul Wechsler, Jeanette Asquith’s boyfriend, had the motive and could easily have changed Mac MacAlister’s grade in exchange for a bribe from some source, possibly the guy’s parents. When one considered the size of the paychecks NBA players received, a bribe could well be worth it, but would it matter if he got good grades or completed his schooling? Couldn’t he go directly to the NBA if he was so talented? She didn’t understand all the ins and outs of the athletic and academic worlds. Maybe there was some scouting opportunity Mac needed to be a part of, or maybe getting into the college basketball finals would bring him to the attention of NBA scouts more surely than anything else.

  Vince Nomuro, according to Vienna Hodge, was worried about his own job, though. He was certainly in the best position to change the grade, but why would he do it, unless bribery was also his motivation? Or was he so much of a basketball fan that he would have done it out of love for his college team’s prospects? That was a big jump to imagine him risking his good job to keep Mac on the team.

  Another merchant wheeled a dolly cart into the area, raised the steel door with a loud rattle and pushed the laden cart out to a waiting cube van, where the driver helped him load up. They left the door open and drove away, with a roar of the engine and smell of exhaust fumes. A cold wind swept in, along with some dried leaves. What was taking Rhiannon so long?

  Sophie got up and paced away from the big open door. It was getting colder. There was a protected spot beyond the open door where she could still keep the loaded dolly cart in sight. She squeezed herself into it, and warmed her hands under her armpits. Another set of people left, loading their few boxes in a car trunk and taking off. Where was Rhiannon?

  She heard voices again, but this time they were just beyond the long heavy curtains that separated the storage and loading dock area from the convention center floor. “. . . you can’t keep me hanging on. I won’t have it!” a female’s shrill voice complained.

  A male voice with a condescending tone responded, “You’ll have to put up with it, Sherri. I’m not getting a divorce, and neither is my wife. I like things the way they are.”

  “To hell with that, Dale.”

  “Hey, you’re seeing other men; don’t try to tell me you aren’t. I have spies everywhere, Sherri.”

  “That was just . . . I wanted you to know, Dale. I wanted you to know I can have anyone I want.”

  “Look, let’s end this as friends. No hard feelings, okay?”

  “No! I’m not going to put up with this anymore. You made promises, Dale. I’ll talk; I swear I’ll talk, and you won’t like what I have to say. I know that some of your precious student athletes aren’t doing all their own work, are they? What about that? A nice, fat, juicy cheating scandal.”

  “You will not say a word to anyone!” There was a bit of a scuffle, and the curtain wavered, then there was silence, and the sound of a woman weeping, and more words, soothing in tone, as they both appeared to move away.

  Dale? That was Dean Asquith’s first name, if she was right. Sophie nipped across the open space and peeked out of the curtains just in time to see the tall figure of the dean with his arms around the flame-haired woman Sophie had seen him with earlier. Well, that was interesting; so that was his mistress. If Sophie was a gossip, she would spread that little scene around, but she couldn’t care less. More important was the news that cheating at the college may not be confined to grade hiking. How bad a scandal would that be, if students weren’t doing their own course work?

  At that moment Rhiannon backed the van up to the door and got out, apologizing. “Darn thing wouldn’t start! I had to get some guy to give me a jump. I can’t shut it down in case it won’t start again, so help me load up and I’ll get out of here.”

  Sophie grabbed the box of Auntie Rose’s tea out of the back, got a lift across the parking lot to her Jetta and drove home.

  Chapter 7

  Auntie Rose’s was closed, as it was a Sunday. Most Sundays were quiet, calm, peaceful days. Nana would spend it reading or talking on the phone to friends; sometimes she accompanied Laverne to church. Sophie would piddle around in the kitchen, inventing new recipes, getting ahead on prep and enjoying the sunshine that streamed through the window.

  But this Sunday was crazy busy, as they were getting ready for the Fall Fling Townwide Tea Party. Laverne had helped with organizing, her strong suit, but then headed home to have a nap. Sophie made her grandmother go upstairs to lie down, telling Nana she would not let them open otherwise. Sophie tiptoed around for a couple of hours, preparing everything she could, then had a sandwich for dinner while reading restaurant reviews in an old New York Times.

  And then it was showt
ime. Sophie was actually nervous, more so because the tea walk would mean the dean and many others from the college would be stopping by, and she wasn’t sure how to talk to them, especially with all she was thinking and feeling about how they were treating Jason. But she needed to set that aside for one night. She would be herself. At In Fashion she had hosted senators and movie stars, authors and fashionistas, among other luminaries, so a college dean and his entourage should be small potatoes, as Nana said.

  There was still that niggling doubt in the back of her mind, though. Academics seemed a whole different breed to her, and academic culture was strange, insular, snobbish, almost inbred.

  Cissy Peterson was helping her grandmother and Gilda at Belle Époque, and Dana had offered to help Sophie at Auntie Rose’s, but both were late. Sophie lugged a sturdy folding table out to the front of Auntie Rose’s. The structure itself was a big white clapboard house, the entire main floor converted many years before into a tearoom. Nana had explained to Sophie when she was a child that when she lost her husband, she needed to find a way to make a living, and she had always loved tea and enjoyed baking, so opening a tearoom was her answer.

  Sophie understood more now about how much Nana had suffered many years ago, losing her husband and a son—her oldest child had died in Vietnam—and having the other son disappear. No one had heard from Jack for forty years, though Nana had hired a private detective at one point to try to find him. He had drifted into the drug scene in California in the nineteen seventies, the detective was able to discover, but then he disappeared. The tearoom and Laverne’s friendship were her saving graces.

  The garden in the front of Auntie Rose’s was kept simple so that maintenance would be easy. It was contained by low box hedges, and much of the area was graveled with white marble, though there was a section of lush green lawn, too, with a flowering crabapple tree. In one corner by the front window there was a pretty Japanese maple. Sophie hung a teacup mobile in the tree, tied a light to the branch and ran an extension cord thorough the front window. She set the tea table up under the light and spread a plastic cover over it, clipping it with clothes pegs in case a breeze came up.