The Grim Steeper

by Amanda Cooper

  “Brenda, I need you to let me in on this,” Julia said, urgency threading through her tone. “Now that Dale is dead, I can find a way to hush this up,” she continued. “I don’t know what Dale was going to tell the media, and I don’t care. It’s lucky he died before being able to speak. I’ll bet Paul killed Dale, he was so anxious to get Jeanette to himself. Or maybe Jeanette killed her husband; I never did like her.”

  There was a protracted silence. Sophie waited. She and Julia had decided against having her admit to Brenda that she knew the assistant registrar was the dean’s killer. Brenda was unlikely to believe that Julia would shield a murderer out of greed so she could get in on the scam.

  Sophie crossed her fingers as she glanced at her lit watch dial. Eight o’clock. Josh would have provided the police with a headset now, and they’d be listening in. She hoped they didn’t interrupt, as they may feel they should.

  “Okay, say I believe that you can hush up the grade scandal thingie,” Brenda said. “Though I don’t admit anything. Why would you, a hoity-toity professor on the tenure track, be willing to risk it all to alter grades?”

  “Because I can,” Julia said, her tone smug, with a hint of laughter. “That’s exactly why; no one will suspect me.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I need this, Brenda, badly,” Julia said, her voice breaking.

  Sophie’s eyes widened. Good touch!

  “I’m keeping things together, but just barely. I’m almost broke, I’m . . . I’m pregnant, and my husband is going to leave me if I drive us into bankruptcy with this stupid, god-awful teahouse,” she said, her voice harsh and grating. “I hate it! You saw what it was like the night of the stroll; bad food, bad management. What was I thinking? And now I’m going to bring a baby into this . . . this mess. I’m going to have to sell this place, but if I don’t get some money soon, I’ll lose everything. I’m desperate.”

  “So you need me,” Brenda said, her tone gloating.

  Bingo. Sophie squeezed Jason’s hand. They had her.

  “I didn’t say that,” Julia replied. “I could go ahead and set this up on my own, and I think I’m probably smarter than you, so I won’t get caught.”

  Sophie’s eyes widened. That wasn’t part of the script! No, no! Julia don’t blow it, she thought.

  “You think you’re smarter than me?” Brenda bellowed.

  Or maybe taunting an egoist like Brenda was just the right move. Brava, Julia, as Jason would say.

  “I know I’m smarter than you. After all, I figured out your scheme, right?”

  “Every professor and teacher at Cruickshank thinks they’re so damned smart,” Brenda griped. “Bunch of frickin’ losers. If you were so smart, you wouldn’t be teaching at a third-rate college with the rest of these boneheads. I’m so much smarter than all of you, because I figured out a way to double my measly salary. I did it all, my own plan. You’re dead wrong, you know. Heck Donovan didn’t approach me, I approached him, even though he didn’t know it was me! He thought he was dealing with Vince, can you believe it?”

  Sophie almost gasped in surprise. That was kind of brilliant, to do all of that and yet hide behind a third party.

  “Asquith didn’t know it was me, either,” she said.

  “Well, no; he thought it was Vince, right?”

  Brenda chuckled. “Yeah, I had everyone confused. Vince thought it was Paul, and Paul thought it was Vince. The dean thought it was Vince, too, and wanted Paul to prove it.”

  “That couldn’t have gone on forever,” Julia said. “Was it just luck that Dale was murdered that night?”

  Sophie tensed; how were they going to get Brenda to admit she killed the dean? Surely she wouldn’t just say she did it. The confession they needed felt like a long shot now; maybe they hadn’t planned it quite well enough. So far all they had was the grade fixing.

  Brenda sighed. “You know what, I’m sorry it’s come to this. But I can’t let you join my little scheme, and I certainly can’t have you approaching student athletes on your own. I think . . . yeah, you’re going to have to be a sad victim of circumstances.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Paul may have suspected that you were the grade fixer all along; I can find a way to support that. So you killed him, then out of remorse came back here and took your own life. It’s messy, and not what was supposed to go down, but it has as good a chance as any of working. Big risk, big reward.”

  Sophie stared into the shadows, listening to the madness.

  “Brenda, what are you talking about?” Julia asked, a note of real fear quavering through her voice.

  Sophie felt for Jason’s hand and squeezed one more time. It was time to end this farce. She slowly, quietly rose from her squatted position, but her feet were numb and she stumbled slightly.

  “What are you looking for?” Julia said sharply, her words covering up, hopefully, the faint noise Sophie had made.

  “That’s a nice letter opener, kind of Oriental, and pointy.” There was a clatter. “You know, Dale never saw it coming. I’m sure he felt the arrow I shot from across the street in the dark, even though it just nicked his neck. Enough to get a little aconite in his bloodstream, anyway, and make him shaky and weak. I’m a pretty good shot; I should have gone to the Olympics myself, but I have other plans.” She paused, then said, in a conversational tone, “Trouble was, Dale was going to name the wrong person, true, but a little digging by anyone, even that stupid news brat, and folks would have figured out it was me who altered the grades using Vince’s computer and password.”

  “But the worst that would have happened was you’d get fired, right?”

  “Maybe. But then I wouldn’t be able to get another job as registrar, right? So many schools, so many student athletes, all longing for good grades. Cruickshank was just the beginning for me. I’ll do it again, and do it better. I needed a distraction, a fall guy. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do to cover my tracks, but getting rid of Dale seemed like a good first step. He met me there like the schmuck he was—he always did underestimate women—and never saw it coming until the moment I got real close and plunged my arrow in his chest, twisting it before pulling it out. The snob had it coming to him.” The sound of a chair pushing away from the desk rattled in their headphones.

  Julia, her voice quivering with honest fear this time, said, “Brenda, you killed Dale? I didn’t think . . . I mean—”

  “Of course you didn’t think.”

  There was a noise outside, a car door slamming.

  “What was that?” Brenda said.

  “The police, coming to get you!” Julia shrieked. “Jason, Sophie!”

  That was their cue; together they surged toward the office door, but it flung open and knocked them backward onto the floor. Brenda, swearing, clattered through the dim rooms to the tearoom entrance; the front door banged open, a motion detector alarm going off. “Jason, make sure Julia is okay,” Sophie said, springing back onto her feet. “I have to follow Brenda!”

  Jason grabbed her and kissed her and said, “Go get ’em, tiger! But don’t do anything stupid.”

  Sophie dashed through the dark tearoom after Brenda and out of the front. A police car was on the other side of the street, and the detective was getting out, her service revolver in her hands. Brenda dashed down the street toward her pricey little Porsche Boxster.

  “Stop! Police!” Detective Morris shouted, pointing the gun at Brenda’s back, but the woman started zigzagging.

  Sophie raced after her and saw the beautiful moment when Brenda Fletcher went flying, tumbling down the sloped street, tripped by a rolling walker shoved in her way by Mr. Bellows and his two companions. Thelma Mae Earnshaw hobbled over to the downed young woman and began whaling away at her with a heavy ancient pocketbook constructed out of the finest alligator skin, shouting unintelligible swear wo
rds. She had to be hauled off the murderess by Officer Wally Bowman, who contained her as Detective Morris shoved Brenda Fletcher’s face down into the dirt and grass and made the arrest, with all the appropriate warnings.

  * * *

  Three hours later, as Sophie and the rest waited in Auntie Rose’s tearoom, they got the news. Paul Wechsler and Kimmy Gabrielson had been found unharmed in Brenda Fletcher’s basement. Paul admitted that he had gone to see Brenda to try to blackmail her, since he had figured out she was behind the grade scam. She agreed to pay him off and convinced him she had a safe full of money in her basement. He underestimated her. She led him there and knocked him out, tying him up while he was unconscious. Her intentions toward him were unclear, but Sophie wondered if she was going to stage something that would make it look like Paul was behind it all, and had killed the dean, too, before committing suicide out of remorse.

  That plot was messed up when Kimmy Gabrielson came hammering on her door demanding answers. Kimmy, gullible as could be, followed the assistant registrar downstairs, where Brenda said she had all the information that Kimmy would need to expose the real guilty party. Kimmy, too, was neatly knocked out and confined with Paul Wechsler as Brenda went to meet Julia, trying to decide what the professor knew, if anything.

  Brenda Fletcher was digging herself deeper and deeper into a hole, despite her posturing bravado toward Julia. Her plot was becoming tortured and overcomplicated, and she would have been found out at some point soon, since the police were closing in on her and Vince Nomuro as the logical suspects. Brenda had already brought attention to herself by being the one who questioned Jason’s timeline with the police. It seemed she was not above throwing shade wherever she could. But thanks to Sophie, Julia and the others, Paul and Kimmy were unharmed, and the police had what appeared to be an airtight case against the assistant registrar.

  * * *

  “What gave you the idea that it was Brenda behind the grade altering and not Vince?” Julia asked the next day, as they all sat in the now-open Auntie Rose’s tearoom.

  Sophie poured her a cup of mint tea and smiled, deeply grateful that the professor seemed none the worse for a frightening confrontation with a killer. “There were a few things. It snowballed, I guess. Random facts. I noticed all the pins on Brenda Fletcher’s jacket when I met her in the bookstore the day after the murder, but what I didn’t realize was the pin I thought was for her birth sign, Sagittarius, couldn’t be, because her birthday is the end of October and Sagittarius doesn’t start until late November. She’s a Scorpio, a scorpion.

  “Why would she wear a Sagittarius pin, then? Well, she wouldn’t, but I realized if it wasn’t a zodiac sign, then the pin was simply an archer. When I found out what the postulated weapon in killing the dean was, that it had to be barbed to do the damage it did internally, I thought of an arrow, and more specifically a poison arrow, which could have caused the nick on the dean’s neck and his other symptoms. Furthermore, when I cleaned out our carpet cleaner, there were feathers clogging it. I couldn’t figure out where they came from until I learned Brenda was into archery, and I remembered a friend in prep school who made all her own arrows. Brenda was one of the few people who actually was in the tearoom, so I wondered if they came out of her coat pocket. I’ll never know for sure, I guess. We know the rest from her own words; she actually did use poison on the arrow, aconite, which incapacitated the dean somewhat. Then she came right up to him and stabbed him with another arrow, pulled it out, and carried it away with her.”

  “I can’t believe she did that,” Jason said. “Quiet, meek little Brenda. I never looked at her twice!”

  “She sure didn’t seem meek to me,” Julia said, shivering.

  “She was wearing a different jacket the night of the tea stroll, a nice one, but she never wore it again. I was surprised she didn’t wear something nicer to work other than that ratty old jacket with all the archery pins. But now I realize, the nice jacket must have been splattered with the dean’s blood and couldn’t be worn until cleaned. Those other pins, an apple and some scatter pins with initials, were all archery related, too. An apple is a common archery pin; I guess it probably came from the old William Tell story, of the apple on his son’s head. But the others . . . after I started getting suspicious of her I looked up the initials on them—at least the few I remembered—and found out they were from school teams she’d been on. And by the way, that ratty old jacket was worn more on one sleeve than the other because it’s the one she used to wear when she practices archery. Archers wear a protective guard along their bow arm, and I think it rubbed on the fabric, wearing it out unevenly.”

  “Clever girl! So, what about the sightings of Vince Nomuro in his tweed cap late that night?” Nana asked.

  “He was wearing the duffer cap, but at some point Brenda stole the cap, probably from his car before he left, and wore it to do the murder so her face would be concealed by the brim. They’re about the same height.” She paused and frowned. “You know, I realized suddenly that her alibi was predicated on having a roommate that she stayed up with and told everything to about the evening. But she told me, among other things, that Vince was nice enough to feed her cat for her when she went out of town. If she had a roommate, why did she need someone to come in and feed her cat? I was pretty sure that there was no roommate, and of course now we know that, because she felt completely safe in locking Paul and Kimmy in her basement. No roommate, no alibi.

  “By the way,” Sophie continued, “she was his Secret Santa last Christmas and gave him the arrow tie clip he wears. I figured that, though I wasn’t sure. Tara called me this morning with some info; a few folks in the office told her that Brenda Fletcher was behind his recent ten years of service gift, a reproduction urn with the images of archers on it. Like a lot of people, she planned gifts according to what she likes, rather than considering what the person would like to receive. When I began to suspect it was an arrow used to kill the dean, those items, the arrow tie pin and the urn with the archers on it, threw me off for a while; I thought maybe Vince was the grade scammer and killer.”

  “And the sports car in Grandma’s photo?” Cissy asked.

  “Yeah, the sports car. I was thrown off by that as well, because everyone seemed to drive one, even Vince. But so did Brenda, and if I’d paid attention to something Josh said earlier, I would have wondered how an assistant registrar who was paying for her doctorate could afford a newish Porsche Boxster. Dead giveaway. You could kind of see, in that picture, the outline of the bow sticking up in the passenger seat.”

  Chapter 24

  The scandal rippled through the college ranks. Dozens of student athletes had their grades adjusted. Heck Donovan was fired and arrested for his part in the affair, as financial records proved the bribery was funneled through him, and that he actually took a cut off the top before putting the rest of the money in a safe deposit box in the bank. Penny left him and moved back to New York, taking her job back at the nonprofit.

  An interim dean of faculty was named. Computer security was made a priority, but they had to hire an outside firm to take care of it. Paul Wechsler moved to New York with Jeanette Asquith, leaving his job for his own start-up, funded by his wealthy girlfriend, who by all accounts loved him in ways she had never loved her husband.

  And Mac MacAlister was expelled, not for the grade alteration, but for skimming through school on bought papers paid for by his ambitious parents. Tara exposed it all with the help of Kimmy Gabrielson, who had been trying to get Mac to eschew the easy way out and actually study. That was what she had been telling him the night of the tea stroll when she pulled him aside, that if he didn’t start writing his own papers, she’d turn him in. In fact, Kimmy confessed that she had been trying to stir things up without getting into the mess herself, and that was why she had slipped the badly spelled note into Julia’s mail slot; she was hoping Julia would investigate further.

  The unlikely pair
Tara Mitchells saw was Paul Wechsler with Vince, who gave him a lift the day he crashed Jeanette’s car. She got her byline on a piece in the Rochester newspaper on cheating by college athletes, and every word of it was the truth.

  * * *

  Almost two weeks later, Dana Saunders was a happily engaged young woman, and had gotten her friend to let Wally and Cissy book the cottage on the lake for a romantic weekend away, just the two of them. It was a Saturday, and Belle Époque was full, with Thelma seated at a table in the middle of things, regaling the tea sippers with her story of how she beat the killer into submission so the police could haul her away.

  Auntie Rose’s was busy, too, but Cindy, supervised by Laverne, was happily working away, making scads of money in tips. For the moment there was a lull, as everyone had their tea and goodies. Sophie washed some dishes as Nana sat at the register in front. The Auntie Rose phone rang.

  It was Wally. “Sophie, you, Laverne and Mrs. Freemont better get over to Belle Époque right away! Something major is up,” he said, and then the phone went dead.

  “What now?” Sophie hurriedly explained to her godmother and grandmother what Wally said, and hustled them across the alley. Gilda let them in the side door and led them through the kitchen to the tearoom, a silly smirk on her face. As they entered from the back, they saw Dana, Eli and Jason at a table with Cissy. Wally, uniformed, stormed in the front door and rushed to the table.

  And dropped to one knee by Cissy. “Cissy Peterson, when I first saw you, you were a little girl in a flowered dress a little too big and knee socks that sagged down around your ankles. You were six and I was seven, and I fell in love with you.” His voice broke, and he paused, clearing his throat.

  Cissy, eyes wide and again wearing a pretty floral dress, had her hands clasped in front of her. Thelma, grinning, had turned from her group and sat, her hands propped on her knees, watching.