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

by Nancy G. West

  “Did you also add substances to the APOE proteins they think might affect the onset of Alzheimer’s?”

  His eyes became slits. “That was another of our interests.”

  It appeared I wasn’t going to extract more information from Eric Lager.

  “I know he was interested in the daf-2 gene and in telomeres. He dropped some papers about them before our first class. I picked them up and have been meaning to give them to Dr. Bigsby. She’s expecting them.” I smiled.

  He glowered at me with eyes that were no longer friendly. It was time to leave, but I had to ask one more question.

  “Had Dr. Carmody been ill for a long time?”

  “He had horrible allergies that sapped his strength. Other than that...” He shrugged and stretched his fish mouth into a thin line.

  “I’d better go,” I said. “I’ve enjoyed this so much, I didn’t notice it was getting late.” Light had disappeared from behind the drawn window shades. I headed for the door. He reached the door first and held the knob secure as he peered down at me.

  “It’s encouraging to see a student so interested in scientific discovery.” One side of his mouth curled.

  “Yes. For my column.”

  “Of course.” He nodded and released the doorknob. I scooted through the door, down the hall and out of the building into suffocating heat, forced to take deep breaths to slow my heartbeat. Now I knew why Eric Lager had invited me to tour the lab. He intended to scare me from ever coming back.

  Dusk had descended into darkness. Campus lights glowed softly. People crossed through light circles and shadows walking to their cars.

  I spotted Brandy strolling with another scientist I’d seen flirting with her at the funeral. It wasn’t Stanley or Phillip. They walked side by side, smiling at each other.

  When they stopped by a tree with their faces close together, it looked like they kissed, but it was too dark for me to be sure. I glanced up at the backlit clock tower. Rising from darkness over the shadowy campus, the pinnacle of hope appeared ominous.

  The spot where I’d parked Albatross, overshadowed by the gloomy hulk of the science building, was pitch dark. I walked on hot pavement to the driver’s side, probing for my keys. As my hand closed around them, I heard a noise and a swish and felt an excruciating blow to the back of my head. I lunged for the door handle and slumped to the asphalt.

  Nineteen

  Car lights hit my face. I blinked my eyes open in time to roll halfway under my car, over my keys. After the car passed, I swiveled back toward fresh air, trembling. My head pounded and my stomach reeled. I rolled out onto the pavement. On hands and knees, I fumbled for my keys. Clutching them, I crawled on hot asphalt around the back of my car. I made it to the curb and threw up on the grass. Panting, I tried to regain the strength to stand. After I wiped my mouth, I groped for the purse strap still on my shoulder. Feeling down the strap, I unzipped the purse, dropped the car keys inside and fumbled for a tissue. I felt my wallet with money and credit cards. Carmody’s papers were gone.

  I searched the darkness, my head throbbing. Seeing no one, I grabbed hold of Albatross’s bumper, pulled myself up and tugged my body around the car to the driver’s side. The moon glowed white on paper trapped beneath my windshield wipers. Carmody’s papers? I reached for them, opened the door and threw them inside. Collapsing into the seat, I locked the doors. Struggling to breathe the hot stale air, I started the engine and turned on the AC. Tilting the paper toward moonlight, I realized it didn’t belong to Carmody. I blinked at blocked, crude letters scratched on a single sheet, “You’re not wanted here. Take this warning. STAY AWAY.”

  Despite feeling nauseous, I managed to drive home. With relief, I drove into my garage, slipped through the door to the kitchen and locked myself inside. After heading to the bathroom to splash my face and brush my teeth, I grabbed a hand mirror to view the back of my head in the mirror above the sink. Caked blood splayed my hair, and a mound swelled underneath. Fearful of washing my head, I sponged blood off with a damp towel. The bump lay behind the crown of my head. The spot didn’t hurt unless I touched it, and I thought I could rearrange my thick hair to camouflage it. It was high enough that I should be able to sleep without putting pressure on the lump.

  The attack could have been much worse. But somebody was desperate to keep me from gaining further knowledge about Carmody’s research. The most obvious person and the one closest to the attack was Eric Lager, but scads of people were leaving campus after Carmody’s reception, including Brandy Crystal and her boyfriend. Any one of Dr. Carmody’s disgruntled colleagues could have seen me enter or exit the lab, followed me, hit me, found the papers in my purse and deposited their crude warning.

  My column had more effect than I intended. I expected Carmody’s fellow scientists to squabble among themselves, expose their deadly jealousies and take some sort of action which would point to the one who wanted him dead. I never expected anyone to come after me.

  The magnitude of Dr. Carmody’s death was sinking in. It might take years before anybody learned how to alter genes to delay aging. My chances of staying young and attractive were looking dim. My chances for staying alive weren’t looking too good either.

  If I lived long enough to gather the courage to reveal my secret to Sam, I’d probably be too old for him to love me. I pictured my dismal future: withering youth, no job and no Sam. If only he were here to comfort me.

  My phone rang.

  “Aggie, you sure were in a hurry after Carmody’s funeral. I tried to catch you, but you and Meredith drove off too fast.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed, relishing the sound of his voice. I imagined his arms wrapped around me.

  “I had errands to run,” I told him, “and I stumbled off a curb on the way home and hit my head.”

  “Is it bad? Should I come over?”

  Should I let him come? Could I shower and change clothes without bumping my head? Could he kiss me without hurting my head? He must have heard me sigh.

  “Why don’t I bring some soup? And some wine, if you feel like having company. I was up most of last night on a tough case. It’s been a long day. I won’t stay late.”

  Even smiling made my head throb. “I have tons of salad to go with the soup.”

  Twenty

  I managed to shower and dress without hitting my bump and used my dryer to fluff hair up around the protrusion. The mound looked strange, but it felt protective.

  After I sprayed perfume on my hair, I popped the White Stones’ Secret Garden into my stereo, soothing music I didn’t think would make my head throb. When the doorbell rang, I had just released some produce from the refrigerator. So much greenery looked revolting. Right now, I’d just as soon eat grass.

  When I opened the door, Sam stood there in khakis, holding a grocery bag. He grinned.

  “I brought two cartons of deli soup, crackers and two bottles of wine.” He followed me to the kitchen, put things down and took me in his arms. “I’m sorry about your head. Want to show me?”

  “No. It’s okay.” Everything was okay. I just didn’t want him to start thinking about how I managed to trip off a curb and land on the crown of my head. He took my face in his hands and kissed me. He looked into my eyes, smiled and kissed me again. Then he drew me close and held me tighter. His breathing changed.

  I pulled gently away and kissed his cheek. “My head’s pounding a little. Do you think it’s all right to take two Advil with a glass of wine?”

  “I don’t think it’ll hurt.” He handed me the bottle of capsules and went to open the wine while I swallowed two pills with a handful of tap water. I rinsed salad greens, sliced tomatoes and baby spinach and put them into a colander to drain.

  “What did you think of Dr. Carmody’s funeral?” I asked.

  “The service was pretty impersonal.”

&nbs
p; “That’s what I thought. Surely someone had fond memories of the man.” I lifted my two best placemats from a drawer, grabbed napkins and utensils and arranged them on the square wood coffee table between my sofas. When I bent to place the settings side by side so we could sit on the same sofa, my head throbbed and I felt dizzy. I should probably have had my head x-rayed, but once Sam called…

  “Did you notice the two women sitting at the left end of my pew?” I said. “Brandy Crystal and Penelope Farquhar. Men kept turning to eyeball them. Penelope writes for AARP, and Brandy is Eric Lager’s lab assistant. They’re both in my class.”

  “I did see them. I should find out who they were flirting with. The men could be scientists who made visits to Carmody’s lab.”

  “They might know what he was working on.” If I’d known the name of the man strolling with Brandy, I would have told him. But I’d have to explain why I was traipsing around campus after dark.

  “Which woman was Dr. Bigsby?” he asked.

  I hated to describe her as Popeye’s girlfriend Olive Oyl. “Well, she’s tall, but she doesn’t stand out because she wears subdued clothes, her hair in a bun…”

  “Right. I saw her.”

  I tossed the salad with sugar-free, fat-free dressing that I hoped wouldn’t make him gag. Even the tossing movement made my head hurt. We heated our soups in the microwave and made our way to the sofa. Sam brought the wine and glasses.

  I lowered myself gingerly onto the sofa, holding my head steady.

  “You should be checked out after that fall. Tell me again how that happened.”

  “Just a silly misstep. I’m fine.” I held up my glass. “Cheers.” The wine tasted good. Besides having a headache, I felt weak.

  Sam plunged into eating. I tasted the soup, and my stomach flipped. When I put down the spoon, he looked over.

  “The soup is delicious, but I’m not too hungry. I’ll save it for later. You go ahead.”

  While he polished off his meal, I sat very still and willed my stomach to settle. By the time he finished eating and smiled at me, I felt better but different, like a rag doll with a porcelain head. I felt secure with him sitting beside me on my sofa. We were teammates. Soulmates. I smiled at him. “Have you ever thought of opening a private investigation firm when you retire?”

  He laughed. “I will have spent more than enough time solving crimes.” He put his arm around me, moved closer and kissed me. “Feeling better?”

  “Hmmm.”

  He kissed me on my forehead. Overcome by the urge to snuggle, I rested the side of my head on his shoulder, cuddled into him like a child and closed my eyes.

  “You may have a concussion that’s making you sleepy.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I’ll stay for a while so I can wake you if you go to sleep.”

  “Hmmm.”

  When I woke, my head felt like a basketball on a spring. Sam lay stretched lengthwise on the sofa, snoring, with his feet sticking toward me. What would it be like, after busy days and delicious nights, to wake up and see him lying next to me, relaxed and peaceful?

  I stretched my stiff neck toward the window, saw daylight and checked my watch: six a.m. His all-nighter the night before last had taken its toll.

  While he snored, I considered telling him what I’d done and everything that had happened. But I knew he’d be furious. If I wanted him to appreciate me as an investigator and view me with respect as an equal, I had to take a few risks. My head would be okay. I’d come a long way toward flushing out Carmody’s killer. If I succeeded in exposing the person who killed the renowned Dr. Carmody, my self-esteem would skyrocket, and Sam would take notice. I wanted to be more than just his old, comfortable friend.

  Rising as quietly as I could, I sneaked to the back of my cottage to dress, closing the door to my bedroom so the noise wouldn’t wake him. I planned to eat breakfast at Wendy’s and let him sleep. When I was dressed and ready to leave, I tiptoed back to the living room and covered him with a blanket. Leaving a note on the table, I slid through the kitchen door into the garage.

  Twenty-One

  Fortified by my Wendy’s breakfast, I decided to interview Brandy Crystal. UHT had apartments at one end of campus for graduate students and visiting professors. I’d heard the apartments were pretty plush compared to other campus housing. Maybe the man she’d kissed under the tree lived in one of the units.

  I’d entered her phone number from Carmody’s list into the reverse directory and found her address: Garden Apartment Q, UHT. Stanley Bly lived in Apartment B.

  After driving around campus, I located the Garden Apartments and snagged a parking spot. The five-story brick building, built around an open enclosure, looked newer than others on campus. In a breezeway at ground level, I found Brandy’s name listed for Apartment Q and took the elevator to the top.

  I stepped off into a courtyard with a large hot tub in the center surrounded by lawn tables and chairs shaded by umbrellas. Plush. Across the corners of the building, apartments were separated by head-high trellises partially covered with flowering vines. The sweet smell of honeysuckle was intoxicating. I squinted. Were those clothes blowing on a line behind the corner trellis? What a clever way to hang laundry in fresh air. Or you could bask in your own private patio.

  To the right of each apartment entry door, five-foot high trellises ran the width of each unit. The delicate odor permeating the patio smelled like paradise. UHT must have paid a clever architect a substantial sum for the design.

  I thought I saw Brandy enter her trellised nook from inside Apartment Q. I walked over and peeped through the latticework.

  “Brandy, is that you?”

  She jumped.

  “It’s Aggie Mundeen from Science of Aging.”

  “Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Come to the front. I’ll let you in.” Shola Ama’s “You Might Need Somebody” blared from her apartment. When she opened the door, I thought she was expecting somebody, but not me.

  Fuchsia pink hoops piercing her earlobes matched the neon pink camisole stretched across her braless chest. Her silky green shorts clung like glue. She must work out a lot to have such a perfect figure. I could exercise until I collapsed and never look like that. Her dark eyes were lined in musky brown framed by mascara-clad lashes. Her hair was spiked to perfection. She was barefoot.

  “I was expecting…” She checked her Timex. “It’s only nine o’clock. Come on in.”

  A streamlined apple green sofa, two flower-patterned chairs and glass tables floated on the faux wood-planked floor. She skimmed across the surface on tiny feet. Despite my new jeans and crisp t-shirt, I felt like a clumsy oaf swaddled in burlap.

  A picture window banked the entire outside wall across from the door. The wide sill held a funky teapot and green shoots in slender glass containers. Some of the plants were ivy; others looked like they’d spent their formative years in a laboratory and were struggling to develop into plants.

  “Have a seat. Want herbal tea?” She gyrated to the radio and decreased the volume.

  “No thanks. I saw you at Dr. Carmody’s funeral and thought I’d come over and commiserate. Can you believe he’s actually gone?”

  “No. He’s been part of my life for so long. Ever since freshman biology at Boston University.”

  “If I remember correctly, you were also a graduate and doctoral student there?”

  “That’s right.” She blinked heavy lashes. Did her eyes grow moist, or did I imagine it?

  “I remember you said you loved Boston. Did you consider staying there to teach?”

  The corners of her mouth drooped. “It’s difficult for a woman to succeed if she stays at the institution where she trains. She becomes a fixture—one of the in-house females. The department is always searching for the star scientist, the white knight they recruit from o
utside to elevate their program.”

  She pinched her mouth into a pout and gazed toward the window, where flat-bottomed glass vials on the ledge held an array of decorative powdery sands.

  Their color ranged from white to yellow to pink to purple to reddish-purple.

  “Those sands are lovely,” I said, walking toward the sill.

  “I enjoy experimenting with colors.”

  “Are they powders? Sand?”

  “Some of both.” She walked back toward the sofa.

  I wished I could snitch a couple of vials to take to a private laboratory for analysis, especially the one with the reddish-purple powder that matched Eric Lager’s description of ethidium bromide. The chemical could have decomposed over time and be harmless. But why did Brandy have it?

  There was no way I could grab the vials. I followed her to the sofa and sat.

  “Did you do research in Boston?”

  “Yes. I was sought after as a researcher by Carmody and others. He was young and promising. It was fun. Sometimes I was head collaborator on research papers, first author, sometimes second author. There might be a dozen collaborators listed. It’s understood that ideas generated by coworkers are considered the professor’s ideas, so Professor Carmody’s name always appeared at the honored place on articles. No matter how many people collaborated, others said that ‘Carmody discovered’ or ‘Carmody and coworkers discovered,’ and they ignored all the other names.”

  “Yet you had a doctorate and were obviously capable.”

  “Other professors gave more credit. They said things like ‘Here are the names of the people who did all the work’ or ‘My role was minimal, I just stood out of Smith’s way.’ They were being modest, of course, maybe falsely modest. But Dr. Carmody never bothered to share credit. I got tired of being relegated to ‘et al’ or ‘coworker’ status.” She folded her arms.