The Grim Steeper

by Amanda Cooper

  “Yeah. I saw the dean’s wife sneak off.”

  “When was this? And where did she go?”

  “It was late. Everything was wrapping up for the night. She got in a car and took off.”

  “A car? What kind of car?”

  “How should I know? Something noisy, that’s all. It was dark blue and small. She didn’t go far, I don’t think. I saw that same car parked on a side street not too far from here a little later, as I was waiting for my ride back to Cruickshank.”

  Jeanette Asquith; Sophie followed a line of thought. Elizabeth Lemmon had said that the dean’s wife was a gossip, and had said that a professor was responsible for the grade hike. Could she have been trying to cover up for her boyfriend Paul, who was also a likely candidate for the cheater? And was her phone conversation a confirmation that she told Paul he had better kill her husband that very night because they were running out of time; in other words, Dean Asquith was going to expose him as the culprit the very next day? But why would the dean have had the systems engineer looking into the cheating scandal in the first place? He must have trusted him . . . misplaced trust, perhaps?

  It was a puzzle, and she’d have to find some way of establishing Mrs. Asquith’s and Paul Wechsler’s whereabouts at the time of the crime.

  Tara got some quotes from them about how shocked they were at what happened, and how they hoped the police would wrap things up quickly. Sophie agreed to call Tara if she heard anything that she could use for the New York newspaper, which, as Sophie had suspected, was actually a small upstate weekly, not a city newspaper.

  Most importantly from the school newspaper’s aspect, Tara agreed that she should be looking into whether other athletes’ grades were hiked. Sophie had basically gotten that confirmation from Paul Wechsler, who said the alterations occurred in two areas—which if she had to guess meant two different sports, like basketball and football, the biggest marquee sporting events in college—but she wasn’t about to feed Tara the info. Let her find out on her own.

  After the student reporter left, Sophie retreated to her apartment and curled up on her feather duvet with Pearl, falling into a deep immediate sleep, and didn’t awaken until the sun’s rays slanted across her bedroom wall in a golden stream. It was late in the day; she had slept for hours. She emerged from her cocoon and descended, yawning.

  Cindy, Laverne’s niece, was there helping her aunt finish the carpets in the tearoom.

  “Laverne, I told you I’d help with that,” Sophie said, feeling bad for not doing her part.

  “Honey, you were up all night and you needed your rest. Besides, Cindy is happy to help after school and make a little spending money, aren’t you, sweet girl?” she said, hugging her niece.

  The girl smiled and nodded, her green eyes sparkling. “I’m saving to go to Darien Lake next summer. I’ll be almost sixteen by then, and can go with some friends. My mom said as long as I can pay for part, she’d kick in the rest.”

  Laverne pushed the heavy carpet-cleaning machine away into the corner. “I don’t know why this danged thing is clogging up. Just getting old, I guess, like the rest of us. What did you do to it last time it acted up like this?” she asked Sophie.

  “There’s one filter that’s hidden. I’ll clean it out for you; leave the machine here,” Sophie said.

  Laverne returned to the two younger people as there was a tap at the side door. Cindy jumped and hopped over to it, throwing it open.

  Josh Sinclair sauntered in, smirking at Cindy, who swiftly disappeared and came back with her jacket thrown over her arm.

  “What gives?” Sophie asked, yawning and stretching.

  “The natural science exhibit at the college. I’m taking Cindy. Remember?” Josh said, in that tone that implied all the world must know the most important thing in his life.

  “I have to go to the bathroom first,” Cindy said and disappeared.

  “Hey, Sophie, I had a free period this afternoon, so I was out at Cruickshank tutoring a guy on American history,” he said, carefully pushing back his reddish-brown hair. He wore a golf shirt over jeans with an oversized Cruickshank College blue-and-silver jacket over it all. He jammed his hands in his jacket pocket. “I got a lift back into town with Miss Fletcher; she’s the assistant registrar at Cruickshank.”

  “I was talking to her this morning about the . . . you know.” Sophie hooked her thumb over her shoulder toward the drama out their front door.

  “Yeah, she told me. She said you got her to thinking about a lot of stuff.” Josh leaned against the kitchen counter, his eyes thoughtful. “By the way, the cops are mostly gone from out front.”

  “Josh, I think it’s disrespectful to call them cops,” Laverne said as she got her own jacket from the coat closet off the kitchen. “They are police officers, or the police.”

  Sophie rolled her eyes, but Josh nodded. “Yes, Miss Hodge. Anyway, Wally is still outside, so I stopped to talk to him,” he said to Sophie. “He asked me to tell you to call police headquarters because Detective Miller would like to speak to you all again.”

  “Okay. Anyway, how do you know Brenda Fletcher?”

  “From registering for summer courses and stuff like that at Cruickshank.” Josh was just seventeen, but he had already completed several courses at Cruickshank toward his undergrad degree. He was extremely smart, as evidenced by him tutoring college-level students. “We talk sometimes, about her days in college, you know? She’s been cool. I told her a few weeks ago about knowing you and Mrs. Freemont from the tearoom and from the Silver Spouts.”

  “What did she have to say? You said that I got her thinking?”

  “Yeah, right. She gave me a lift,” he repeated. “She has got the most rad sports car; totally awesome. It’s a Porsche Boxster, you know?”

  He, like most young fellows, was obsessed lately with cars, now that he had his license. “Yes, all right, and . . . ?” Sophie prompted.

  He glanced around toward the washroom, shifting from foot to foot. All those teen hormones, Sophie thought, zipping this way and that. He was distracted. “Josh, what did she say?

  “Oh, right. She said she’s worried. I guess she snooped a bit after talking to you. She asked if I could pass on a message.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s not quite a message, more like a question. She said to ask you, did you think that whoever killed Dean Asquith did it to hide some other kind of crime?”

  Chapter 16

  Sophie wondered what triggered Brenda’s question. It merited a face-to-face conversation, though, not a phone call and not a text message. “I don’t even know how to answer that.”

  Josh glanced toward the bathroom, and at Laverne, who was getting her things together. She would be driving the young couple out to the college natural history display, Laverne had explained, because Cindy’s parents didn’t feel comfortable with Josh driving her yet, even though he now had his license. He sidled closer to Sophie and murmured, “I’ve been thinking . . . who would she know about other than Mr. Nomuro? And I did a little digging, you know, about the grade-fixing thing? The person with the easiest access to the grades is the registrar.”

  “Or his assistant,” Sophie amended.

  “Sure, but he has the final say and takes a final look.”

  “At least he’s supposed to; who knows if he actually does?”

  “I guess. But he’s supposed to be ultimate authority, in this case.” Josh had a tendency to debate everything. “If he’s diligent, he’d check things through.”

  “That’s not enough to convict the man,” Sophie said with finality. She was still thinking about Paul Wechsler; as the systems engineer at the school, he would likely know a hundred ways to change a grade even after the registrar had signed off on them, and he was definitely in need of money if he wanted to support Jeanette Asquith in the style to which she was accustomed.
Spilling the info to her earlier could have been a quick cover-up on his part, trying his best to act like an innocent in the matter.

  And there was still Heck Donovan to consider; he had a distinct reason to want Mac MacAlister, and probably others on his team, to keep playing. She knew virtually nothing about the coach. For all she or anyone else knew, he was a computer genius, or had a hacker son. Too many suspects, all gathered at the tea stroll.

  “I was wondering, Soph . . . maybe Miss Fletcher is doing a little digging, you know?” Josh said. “Figuring things out?”

  “I hope she’s not talking about it to her boss. If he is the killer, she could be putting herself in jeopardy,” Sophie remarked, remembering what she had heard from Julia about Nomuro and the dean having a heated exchange. “But she didn’t strike me as dumb.”

  Sophie got a text from Jason; he was at police headquarters waiting to talk to the detective again. They wanted to know where he was every minute of the evening, and had told him what he said didn’t accord with some of the other accounts of the evening from others about his behavior and actions. A pain shot through her stomach. She texted him a quick note, reminding him of their late texting back and forth, and how, with the police’s forensic abilities, they would be able to establish where he was from that. She hoped.

  “There has to be a way to figure out who was where, maybe eliminate some people from the pool of suspects,” she murmured, mostly to herself. To Josh she said, “I’ll go out to the college tomorrow morning to speak with Brenda.”

  Laverne left with Cindy and Josh, and Nana hobbled into the kitchen from the tearoom with a clipboard, which she laid on the kitchen counter. “I’m done in. My feet hurt, my knees hurt . . . everything hurts. It’s early to bed for me.”

  Sophie hugged her little grandmother, remembering distinctly what it was like to hug her when she was just a child, and her Nana seemed so tall, her rock in a world where she didn’t fit in. “You’ve been doing too much and worrying too much,” she said, not sharing her own concerns about Jason being questioned by the police. “I’m tucking you into bed with a bowl of soup, Pearlie-Girlie and a mystery. Leave thinking about crimes to the fictional world.”

  Nana set her granddaughter away from her and gazed into her eyes, a serious look on her soft, plump face. “Sweetie, don’t think you have to protect me. I know my health scare gave you a rough time. I’m okay, for now, but I am getting up there. God willing I’ll be here a few more years, but you must not worry about it.” She touched Sophie’s cheek. “This is your time. We’re all given an allotment of years to be young, and I don’t want you wasting yours worrying about me.”

  Sophie paused, compressed her lips, but then saw the determined expression on her grandmother’s face. That only meant one thing to Sophie: instant capitulation. “Okay, I’ve got it. I love you, Nana. I can’t promise I’ll stop worrying, but I’ll remember to have some fun, too.”

  “Honey, I mean it. You have to stop worrying about me. You’ll make me very unhappy unless you let go of that, let me live my life the way I see fit. You can’t wrap me in cotton any more than I can keep you from suffering the pains and sorrows of being young.”

  Pains and sorrows, slings and arrows; she stopped, mouth open, about to protest, but then thought for a moment. “I’ve been doing that, haven’t I?” She hadn’t even realized that her own worrying about her grandmother was causing Nana sorrow. “Okay, I get it. I don’t want you to be unhappy, so I will do my best to stop worrying about you. I guess one way to get my mind off everything else is to call my mother.”

  Her words were laden with sarcasm, but Nana seemed pleased. “That is a grand idea! Tell Rosalind I’ll call her this weekend.”

  “I have some questions for her. The dean’s wife, Jeanette, knows Mom, and I hope she’ll be able to tell me what the woman is like, and maybe some things about the Asquith family. But it’ll probably go south from there. I want to know the truth about how much Mom had to do with me being hired by Bartleby’s, and why she feels the need to keep interfering in my life.”

  Nana sighed and cupped her granddaughter’s shoulder. “Honey, I have no doubt that Rosalind wished she could have had that same conversation with me when I wanted her to come back to Gracious Grove after school, and tried to guilt her into doing it. Go easy on her, honey; you may not appreciate it now, but your mother loves you.”

  “Okay, I got it. But first I’m going to do something fun. I’m going to take apart the carpet cleaner and see what’s clogging it.”

  * * *

  Thelma Mae Earnshaw watched Gilda squirm into the oven to clean it, her butt wiggling like she was a goat trying to get out of a python’s grasp. That was the problem with watching all them nature shows; you saw stuff like that, a big snake eating a goat. As Cissy often said, there are some things you wish you could unsee. She shuddered and looked back down at her phone. She had tried sending a text, but all it said was sending . . . and it never said sent, like Cissy showed her it would. Took darned longer to tap the message in, using that stylist thingie Cissy had given her—stylish, style list, whatever they called it—than it would to call and say what she had to say.

  Instead, she got the camera part of it on the screen and held the phone up, taking an unflattering photo of Gilda, though her own arthritic finger also featured prominently in the photo. She’d been doing that a lot lately, using the camera. It sure was fun, but it would be even better if she knew how to send a picture, and had someone to send it to. Folks would get a giggle out of that! She’d been doing that same thing all evening during the tea stroll, taking photos when folks didn’t know it, but darned if she could find them now. Sometimes she knew where to look, and at others, they seemed to disappear into some filing system of their own making.

  She sighed. She was feeling real fidgety today. They should be open, making money, not sitting there closed, with nothing to do. A couple of groups had had to be turned away already, and it sure didn’t do them any good to be tied in with that murder, and all because she had been part of that tea stroll nonsense. How could they capitalize on the publicity it was supposed to bring if they couldn’t even open?

  “We gotta solve this murder, that’s all there is to it!” she said.

  Gilda smacked her head on the top of the oven and crawled out with the greasy cleaning rag, staring at Thelma like she’d seen a ghost. “By ‘we’ you mean ‘me’ don’t you?”

  Gilda was still sore that Thelma had sent her outside to take out the garbage the previous night after seeing that fellow from the college skulking around. “No, I mean ‘we,’ as in me, too. Who knows how long it’ll take those doodyheads at the police department to figure this out if we don’t take a hand in it? I solved the last two, and I can solve this one.”

  “You did not solve the last two! Sophie Taylor did most of the work, and the police came in and cleaned up the mess.”

  “You’ve gotten real mouthy and disrespectful lately, Gilda Bachman! I shoulda never invited you to stay under my roof, but out of the kindness of my heart, I did.”

  Gilda was about to bellyache back, but at that moment the grand Pooh-Bah himself, Sweet Pea the Siamese cat, strolled down the stairs and into the kitchen, looking around as if trying to find his throne. Gilda immediately went all silly-clingy with the cat, plopping her big butt down on a chair, picking him up, settling him on her lap and crooning over him as if he were a baby, while she stroked his smoky fur and tickled under his chin. He put up with her foolishness, but Thelma knew he was far too dignified to be treated like some dumb normal cat. When they were alone Thelma talked to Sweet Pea, and he had a way of slowly blinking as he looked up at her that let her know he agreed with her entirely.

  Gilda had never had kids, and Thelma supposed that was what happened to women who never had children; they went batty over cats. Thelma didn’t mind the cat, but he sure did get more than his fair share of attention! All he
had to do was meow, and it was as if he was a two-year-old doing algebra; Gilda went nuts about how clever he was.

  Though he did seem smart, except that he liked Gilda, which made her question that intelligence. Or maybe he appreciated having staff.

  “I gotta go out,” Thelma said, heaving herself to her feet.

  “Oh, do you want me to go instead?” Gilda said, with a troubled expression on her plain face.

  “No, you stay here and hold down the fort,” Thelma replied, as if Gilda was a soldier defending against all comers, like in one of them old gladiator movies. More likely, she’d thaw herself a few or a dozen of Sophie Taylor’s cookies and make a big pot of tea and put her feet up, petting Sweet Pea and humming “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain.”

  But Thelma had things to do, a crime to investigate, so she’d don her invisible deerstalker cap, pick up her magnifying lens and go out hunting. Shirley Holmes, on the trail!

  * * *

  There was no avoiding it, Sophie decided. After cleaning out the carpet shampooer—what was clogging the hidden filter was an unfortunate amount of cat fur, human hair and shredded feathers, a strange combination if ever there was one—she had to phone her mother.

  “Yes, we’re fine, Mom,” Sophie said, pacing the length of her little apartment on the top floor of the house. After that came a rapid string of questions . . .

  “What is going on in Gracious Grove? I mean, really, Sophie, dear . . . three murders in just a few months?”

  “I know it’s unusual, but we’re not in any danger.”

  “Are you sure? I worry about your grandmother, you know, even though you think I don’t.”

  “We’re both fine, and no, we don’t need Daddy or you to come here. Daddy’s in Shanghai and you’re in Tahiti, anyway.”

  “Not Tahiti, dear . . . I’ve moved on. It’s Bali.”

  “Oh, Bali. Did I call at a bad time?”

  “For you there is no bad time,” Rosalind Taylor said, her sleepy voice honeyed with love.