Smart, But Dead (An Aggie Mundeen Mystery Book 3)

by Nancy G. West

  After Psalms, prayers, and a reading from the Gospel, the Reverend McClintock began his homily. For the first time, he spoke the name of Kermit Carmody, and the deceased became part of the service. He recalled Kermit’s childhood with his parents and brother, and then went straight to the professor’s academic achievements. He prayed for Carmody, the mourners and the Christian community and tossed the ball to Eric Lager.

  When Eric walked to the front, I noticed his pants rose three inches off the floor. Highwaters. For his boss’s funeral. I understood he preferred studying cells and enzymes, but couldn’t he glance in a mirror to see if his pants approached the vicinity of his shoes?

  He stepped onto the platform wearing a gray threadbare suit that matched his hair and a string tie. He looked like the undertaker in an old Texas movie. He reached in his pocket for notecards, placed them on the podium and cleared his throat.

  “I know we’re all saddened by Dr. Carmody’s sudden death. But he would want us to carry on. Learning and research were his life.” As he mouthed “research,” his gaze involuntarily landed on me. A few students I recognized sliced eyes toward me. They’d read my column. Penelope leaned forward, peered down the pew and gave me a disdainful glance as though she was quite familiar with every plebeian word I’d written.

  Eric Lager praised Carmody and listed his accomplishments and discoveries, occasionally nodding to scientists who had apparently worked with him.

  “To show how far we’ve come in the past ten years,” Eric intoned, “when Dr. Carmody and I attended NIH’s conference in April, scientists agreed that cystic fibrosis was a well-characterized, serious genetic disease inherited from a genetic disorder mapped to chromosome 7. They believed isolating the gene could lead to curative gene therapy and ultimately, prevention of the disease.” He smiled proudly. Maybe he was demonstrating how close he and Carmody were, close enough so that he would now assume the premier scientific mantle.

  He offered no intimate or humorous recollections of his former colleague. He might as well have handed out the professor’s curriculum vitae with bibliography attached.

  “There will be a reception for Dr. Carmody here in the parish hall after the service.” He emerged from behind the podium and walked down the steps.

  No family members rose to eulogize the professor. Had Dr. Carmody been more preoccupied with cells in laboratories than cells created into human beings?

  Father McClintock said final prayers and committed Dr. Carmody to eternal rest—a less-than-idyllic prospect, I thought, for a man whose eagerness for discovery far outweighed his desire to rest. The final hymn was “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” which I found incongruous for a man who, so far as I knew, rarely found things bright or beautiful outside the laboratory.

  Then I remembered that tiny moment when he’d said, “I’ll try to live up to your perception of what I can do.” He must have had other such moments. I was proud to have been present for a rare glimpse into who he really was. He’d dedicated his life to improving humanity. Tragically, he might have taken the knowledge prematurely to his grave.

  Penelope had found somebody to flirt with. I stepped into the aisle and waited for her. As fellow writers, surely we could have some sort of camaraderie.

  “Go on ahead,” I told Meredith. “I’m going to chat with Penelope. Want to drop in briefly at the reception?”

  “Sure. I’ll try to learn how long Carmody had been ill.”

  As I lingered, Eric Lager sidled up. “I read your column. A nice tribute to Dr. Carmody. You seem quite interested in his work.”

  “I am. I’d love to see his workplace.”

  “Your class will eventually visit the lab. It’s on the schedule. But I guess I could give you a quick preliminary tour.”

  “Do you think it’s appropriate?”

  “I think he’d be pleased.”

  “I suppose I could.” I was dying to learn what Carmody had been working on. To figure out what might have killed him, I’d have to visit both the lab and his home.

  “I don’t know how long people will stay at the reception,” he said. “Why don’t you come over to the lab around five?”

  “That will work. I’ll see you then.”

  He turned and joined the exodus leaving the church. Penelope finally made her way to the aisle.

  “Nice service,” I said.

  “Yes. Too bad he died, though. Especially for those of us interested in his work.”

  She turned heel. It appeared Penelope and I were not going to become friends.

  As I passed through the church doors, I saw Sam standing off to one side, scrutinizing the exiting mourners. He’d probably studied photos and bios of UHT’s faculty and scientists who worked in Carmody’s field and might attend his funeral. He must share my suspicion that Carmody’s death wasn’t accidental. Otherwise, why study the attendees? Sam’s name was apparently not on the guest list for the morning memorial service. UHT wouldn’t be eager to have police officers there until they had some idea of what had happened to their star professor. Sam wouldn’t press the issue, but he’d probably already obtained a list of students, faculty and guests.

  I felt guilty watching him screw up his face trying to recall specifics about each person. I should go back inside the church and ask forgiveness for my omission and tell Sam everything. But I viewed my interviews with possible suspects as an attempt to achieve justice and help Sam. I simply wasn’t quite ready to discuss my plans with him.

  I walked with him to the parish hall, making small talk about the service.

  “What did you learn at the memorial this morning?” he asked.

  “That several people had reason to dislike Dr. Carmody. I’ll write their names down for you later.” I walked faster, entered the parish hall and headed for Dr. Carmody’s brother in the receiving line.

  “It was a lovely service,” I said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you both for coming.” Claude shook our hands without giving me a chance to introduce Sam. “I’ll get some investment information together for you,” he said, looking toward the next person in line.

  I knew Sam would head for the food table, so I slipped away to survey the room. Not seeing any people I knew were scientists, or Meredith, I left the parish hall, walked back past the entrance to the church and descended the steps toward her car. She was seated when I hopped in. I didn’t mention my appointment with Eric Lager.

  “Did you learn anything at the reception?” I asked.

  “Only that I’m ready to go home.”

  Seventeen

  At soon as she dropped me at home, I changed from funeral attire into slacks and a blouse. It was three p.m., and I wasn’t due at the lab until five. I entered Carmody’s phone number into the reverse directory and found his address. I hopped into Albatross, steered down Burr Road and turned south on Broadway.

  People at St. Peter’s would still be visiting or heading for home. With the results of Carmody’s autopsy unknown, police wouldn’t be scouring his apartment. It was the perfect time to snoop. Since I thought he’d been murdered, this was my best chance to find a link to his killer and a clue to the motive.

  I’d heard that Carmody and other UHT staff members lived in apartment buildings south of the university off Broadway, the main thoroughfare between the lush campus setting of Uptown Broadway and the downtown area leading to the tourist-filled San Antonio River Walk.

  A few blocks south of Hildebrand, I veered left off Broadway onto a side street. About a block down, a gray-painted brick apartment complex abutted land at the west side of Ft. Sam Houston. The two-story apartments probably stayed full because of their proximity to the post. Neat and tidy, they lay in a large two-story U around a center grassy area. I estimated there were sixty to seventy-five apartments. There wasn’t much shade in the center area, b
ut the right leg of the U was shadowed by trees. It would be easy for me to wander there unobserved. Carmody’s apartment number indicated he was on the ground floor, so I casually meandered toward the tree-canopied area. If anyone asked, I’d say I was interested in renting a unit.

  I rummaged in my handbag for the discarded dental pick I secured from my dentist. It worked pretty well on most locks. I wasn’t accustomed to picking locks, but I liked to be prepared. When I was sure no one was around, I found Carmody’s apartment and slid the implement into the lock. It clicked. I slipped inside, eased the door closed and reminded myself not to touch anything.

  His living room looked like the aftermath of a tornado. Except for his television and swivel chair, nothing looked strategically placed. Desks with chairs sat randomly around the room. Papers covered the desks and some had fallen to the floor. The air conditioner was still on, but the apartment smelled stale, as though the windows had never been opened. I peered into the kitchen. Dirty dishes filled the sink with old teabags staining the porcelain. In the bedroom, the bed lay unmade—no surprise there. A bottle of his nasal spray sat on the nightstand. No photographs personalized the room. Not one. No wonder he wasn’t department chair. He didn’t seem to have any relationships, and he was way too messy.

  I peeked into the bathroom, grabbed some tissue to wrap my fingers and opened the medicine cabinet. I found aspirin, Tylenol, and Propanalol, the drug to reduce high blood pressure. Brother Claude hadn’t mentioned Kermit’s blood pressure. Some people were highly allergic to Propanalol. Carmody had raved about the drug in his diatribe. People with high blood pressure were more prone to have strokes and heart attacks.

  I heard steps outside the building. It was after four p.m. People must be coming home from work. I perused the living room, wishing I had time to start the desktop computer and search Carmody’s files. The best I could do was skirt between desks looking for papers with familiar words. I knew that if Carmody was murdered and I snitched something, I’d be guilty of tampering with evidence, in addition to breaking and entering,

  One paper referred to “daf-2.” I grabbed it. I read “telomerase” on another paper and swooped it up. Folding the sheets carefully, I slipped them into my purse and tiptoed behind the front door to listen. My heart was about to beat through my blouse. I hadn’t touched a thing, except for the papers I took.

  People conversed outside. When I heard another door open and the sound of voices receding into an apartment, I peered around the door. Seeing no one, I slipped through, closed it silently behind me, left the complex and walked briskly to my car.

  The inside of Albatross felt like an oven. I locked the doors, started the car, clicked on the AC and swept my gaze around the area. Apparently, no one had seen me. Taking a series of deep breaths, I eased onto Broadway and drove north toward the UHT campus.

  Eighteen

  At a little past five p.m., it was still sweltering. The days were getting shorter, but the parched land thirsted for rain and relief from the sun. I parked on a side street in the shade of the science building, entered the building and walked down the hall, thankful for the invention of air conditioning. Professor Eric Lager held the door to the lab open.

  “I’m glad you made it. The reception is over, and everybody is finally headed home. I’m drinking V8 juice to get my veggies and carry me until suppertime. Care for some?”

  The cold, healthy drink sounded good. He handed me V8 over ice and I sipped. “Hmm. Salt tastes good. This heat really dehydrates you.”

  “Yes. I should probably buy the low-sodium variety. Welcome to our cell genetics teaching lab.”

  “Thank you. Did you enjoy the reception?” I hadn’t seen him there.

  He shrugged. “It was okay. The scientists all tried to impress each other and pump me about projects Carmody and I were working on.”

  “His death was so unexpected. I can see why they’re curious. You must have found it fascinating to work alongside him.”

  “He was autocratic, but brilliant. Our work was important.”

  No personal regret. Only the work. Eric Lager was a cold fish.

  The lab was larger than I expected, with counters around the periphery and sinks installed at intervals. Supply boxes, gloves, rubber tubing and black boxes as big as microwaves covered counters. The room had a medicinal odor I couldn’t identify. Probably some cleaning compound. Countertops indented at various intervals allowed chairs to slip underneath to create workspaces. A computer sat at one workspace, perhaps where Dr. Carmody or his assistants entered data. I wondered if this computer communicated with the one at his apartment.

  Windows flanked the far side of the lab, but the shades were drawn against the heat. Cabinets on sidewalls held glass vials, plastic bottles and glass tubes. There was space in the center of the room for freestanding counters with drawers and room for round pedestal tables surrounded by rolling chairs.

  “We’re fortunate to have this space,” he said. “Once we signed on to be part of the genome project, we received a huge grant and were able to expand the lab and equip it comparably to labs in large research universities.” He pointed to a table. “We recently got those 1000X stereo microscopes.”

  “Can you see the C. elegans roundworm with those?”

  “Yes.”

  “I remember you saying how you separate DNA into strands using chemicals or electricity.”

  “We can break DNA into single strands using that electrophoresis chamber.” He pointed to a clear plastic rectangular box sitting on a freestanding cabinet. “We plug power cables into the chamber and use two thousand volts to separate the strands. But if the electric current gets too hot, the gel around the DNA melts. And if somebody puts both hands in the gel buffer inside the chamber, they get a nasty shock. There’s a safety lid on the machine, but some people don’t bother with it. Plus, we have to stain the gel with ethidium bromide, which is considered a carcinogen in powder form. You have to wear a mask and gloves when handling it. We still have stock of the old powder that nobody threw away.” He pointed up to a high shelf with containers labeled “Ethidium Bromide.”

  “Don’t you worry that somebody could inhale the powder?”

  “Nobody gets those containers down. And the powder is a bright reddish-purple color...hard to miss. It’s a rarely used procedure. Now we use enzymes to cut entire genes out of the genome.”

  He was pretty casual about dangers in the lab. Who else knew about the powder? Did somebody manage to have Carmody unknowingly inhale the chemical?

  I didn’t reveal my suspicions that Dr. Carmody had been murdered. Eric Lager would clam up. He was a fountain of information. He could also be a prime suspect.

  “After you use enzymes to cut genes out of the genome, what do you do next?”

  “Using original genes and genes we’ve copied, we insert some into a bacteria which produces a blue color. We do all this in a sterile environment. Follow me. I’ll show you.”

  He opened the door to a smaller room. Long and narrow, the space looked like an oversized storage closet. I noted that the door at the far end of the room opened into the main hall, parallel to the main door we used to enter the lab.

  He walked to a piece of equipment with a waist-high perforated metal tray and extended his forearms over the tray.

  “We work with our genes, enzymes and bacteria here.” A clear hood floated above his arms. “Ultraviolet light from the culture hood over my hands illuminates the work area and keeps it sterile.”

  “Can’t ultraviolet light damage your cells?”

  “If a person is under UV light too long or looks directly at the light, his cells will suffer damage. UV light also increases progerin. All humans have some progerin, but if we have a genetic mutation which allows too much of the toxic protein to be produced, we’ll get the disease progeria. Since you write an anti-aging column, you�
�re probably familiar with progeria.”

  “Where children degenerate into old age and die young?”

  “Yes. We know a genetic mutation causes the condition, but we don’t know yet why the gene mutates. We do know that UV rays increase progerin. You probably shouldn’t get too close.”

  Was he just hassling me, or was the danger real? I stepped back from the hooded tray, eager to change the subject.

  “So you’re preparing to see how some agent will change individual genes?”

  “Yes. We put genes mixed with culture mediums on agar plates and into the cellular incubator.”

  He strode back into the lab, stopped just beyond the door and pointed to a machine that looked like a mini-refrigerator. “That’s the 37°C incubator. Cells stored inside reproduce at human body temperature.”

  His fish grin gave me the creeps. I wanted to obtain as much information as possible and leave.

  “I guess you and Dr. Carmody were adding the enzyme telomerase to various types of cells to see what effect it had? Whether it prolonged the life of the cells? Or whether some other substance you added would inactivate telomerase so the cells died?”

  He studied me with a look of appraisal. “That was one of our interests. Researchers try to make progress until they hit a dead end, or before a scientist using another approach makes a breakthrough.”

  Or until a scientist makes a discovery and is murdered by a jealous competitor?

  “I’m sure you can appreciate the pressure of time passing too fast,” he said, “since you’re concerned with aging.” He attempted to smile.

  He obviously enjoyed needling me. Working with a grumpy autocrat like Dr. Carmody who probably didn’t appreciate him must have been frustrating. Was he discouraged, wondering if his own chances for scientific renown were slipping away under the tutelage of the famous Dr. Kermit Carmody?