“Helen Carmichael. Professor of history at UVa.”
“What’s she done?” he said over more key rattling.
“Nothing, except she never called to tell me that she couldn’t make it here after all. Which doesn’t prove she’s our unknown murder victim, but …”
“Cool. Hang on a sec.”
Intense key rattling. I had to remind myself to breathe. Would the satisfaction of being the first to learn Jane Doe’s identity make up for how mad the chief would be if he thought I’d withheld information? I honestly hadn’t thought about the professor until I’d seen the boxes again.
“Piece of cake,” he said. “History department has faculty profiles. Some of them have photos. Hers does.”
“Is she blond?”
“Brunette, and graying.”
“She could have dyed it. Does she—”
“Hang on, I’ll send you a copy.”
“I’m not at the computer.”
“I’m sending it to your cell phone. Take a look.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked. A photo filled the screen. Helen Carmichael had a round, cheerful face, short graying dark hair, and, best I could tell on so tiny a photo, dark eyes. She’d need not just a dye job but major plastic surgery to resemble Jane Doe.
“It’s not her,” I said, feeling relief wash over me. “Not the dead woman, I mean.”
“Rats.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It was just a wild idea.” Besides, I liked the idea that Jane Doe was a perfect stranger who had nothing to do with me or anyone I knew. Which probably wouldn’t turn out to be the case, but it was nice while it lasted.
“I’ll keep working on the real estate scam,” Kevin said. “Bye.”
I tried calling Professor Carmichael’s number. No answer. I put away the phone and headed for the parlor to see what mischief my remaining guests were causing.
I found Dad deep in conversation with Mrs. Pruitt.
“I’m glad you see my point,” Mrs. Pruitt was saying. “Lucius has no understanding at all. Keeps making jokes about my trips to dig up my ancestors, as if I were some kind of grave robber.”
Several of the Shiffleys lounging across the room snorted with laughter. Evidently, they saw Lucius Pruitt’s point of view. Mrs. Pruitt ignored them.
“I certainly understand the passion to learn about one’s family history,” Dad said. “I’ve been researching mine for years.”
“How splendid,” Mrs. Pruitt said. “How far back have you gotten?”
She smiled graciously, no doubt thinking she’d found a kindred spirit. Dad would set her straight.
“No further than when I started, alas,” Dad said.
“How far is that?” Mrs. Pruitt said in the slightly cooler tone she saved for people whose ancestors had left no traces of themselves in the county property-tax rolls.
“I was a foundling,” Dad said. “Abandoned at birth.”
“How awful,” Mrs. Pruitt said, drawing away slightly. “They never found your parents?”
“No,” Dad said. “The police tried. So did the librarians, of course, and if they had no luck, I suppose I should have known it was a lost cause.”
“The librarians,” Mrs. Pruitt repeated.
“Yes,” Dad said. “That’s where I was found—in the fiction section of the public library, teething on a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Which I always thought was a nice omen, don’t you think?”
“Very nice,” Mrs. Pruitt said. She didn’t look as if she thought it nice at all. How remiss of me not to have sicced Dad on her sooner. Quite apart from the entertainment potential, it might have spared me her presence this weekend.
“Yes,” Dad said. “Early childhood influences are so important—I think that explains my passion for murder!”
“Only on paper,” I added quickly. Mrs. Pruitt didn’t look reassured.
“Look at the time!” she said, “I really must be going. Meg, dear, thank you so much for … everything.”
With that, she hurried out.
The various Shiffleys rose as if on cue. Four of them headed for the door, while the other two ambled over to me.
“Going to Cousin Fred’s for dinner,” one of them said. Randall, who seemed to be the foreman, or at least the one who liked giving orders. “Won’t be back too late.”
“Back?” I walked out onto the porch with them.
“Chief wanted us around, in case he had more questions,” Randall said. “We figured on sleeping here anyway, if work went late, so we brought the campers.”
“Maybe he’ll let us get on with it in the morning,” the other one said. “If not—”
“Lacie!” Mrs. Pruitt’s voice boomed from the end of the driveway. “We’re leaving now.”
The two Shiffleys glared in Mrs. Pruitt’s direction. No love lost there. If Jane turned out to be a Pruitt …
Lacie shot past, limping slightly, no doubt because she was wearing one shoe and carrying the other.
“Coming, Henrietta! Coming!” she called.
Halfway down the driveway, she finally stopped to put on her second shoe, though she shouldn’t have tried to do it standing up. And why didn’t she set down the bundles slung over both shoulders? Not just her own gear but also Mrs. Pruitt’s and Mrs. Wentworth’s croquet equipment, minus the mallets, which had gone to the crime lab in Richmond with the other confiscated mallets and the sledgehammers.
“They coming back tomorrow?” Randall asked, jerking his thumb at where Mrs. Pruitt and Mrs. Wentworth were stolidly watching Lacie’s efforts from their car.
“God, I hope not,” I muttered. And then, aloud, I said, “Depends on whether the chief lets us resume the tournament tomorrow.”
“Good,” Randall said, “Can’t wait to hear more ’bout the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge. Night.”
“Night,” the other Shiffley said. The two of them set off down the lane with a long-legged gait that looked relaxed but covered ground with surprising speed. I could hear them chuckling until they reached their truck.
“What’s the joke?” Dad asked, joining me.
“Beats me,” I said. “Was Mrs. Pruitt telling you about the Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge?”
“Yes,” he said. “Fascinating story—that was when Colonel Jedidiah Pruitt won his medal from the Confederacy, you know. Must be wonderful to have ancestors like that.”
“I’m sure we do,” I said. “I can’t imagine that our ancestors would be … boring.”
The word normal almost slipped out, but I caught myself in time.
“Thanks,” he said. “But it’s not the same as knowing all about them, is it? Ah, here’s your mother,” he added as Mother stepped out onto the porch.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, dear,” Mother said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek.
“I’m sure I’ll see everyone tomorrow,” I said. “Once word about the murder gets out. Police and FBI agents and reporters and everyone in town with nothing better to do.”
“I’ll come over early to help, dear,” Mother called over her shoulder as they strolled down the front walk. An oddly comforting offer. Mother didn’t cook or clean, like other people’s mothers—she rarely did anything like other people’s mothers—but if I could get her to tackle a task, she’d get it done. If I asked her to help get Mrs. Pruitt and Mrs. Wentworth out of my life …
More immediate comfort had arrived. Michael’s convertible sputtered into silence out on the road. I heard him exchange good nights with Mother and Dad, and a few seconds later, he strolled up the front walk.
“Is that a pizza box?” I asked. I suddenly realized I was starving.
“You notice the pizza box and not the brown paper bag from the Wine Cellar,” Michael said, shaking his head. “Sometimes I wonder about your priorities.”
“I was getting to the brown paper bag,” I said. “Not to give anyone a swelled head or anything, but the first thing I noticed was the hunk carrying the wine and pizza.”
“This isn’t a hunk,” he said with a faint smile. “It’s a tired bureaucrat who’s had a long day of meetings. I forfeited my eligibility for hunkdom when I agreed to be on the Academic Community Enrichment Committee.”
“What does that do?”
“Plans the departmental spring picnic,” he said, wrapping the arm with the bottle around me. “And the fall picnic, and the holiday party, unless I can weasel out over the summer.”
“Cheer up,” I said as we headed for the barn. “At least there’s food involved.”
“I knew faculty life wouldn’t all be like Indiana Jones, wearing a corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches and lecturing to adoring coeds,” he said.
“Better not be.”
“But the bureaucracy gets worse every year. Besides—what was Chief Burke doing here?”
He pointed. The chief and several deputies were strolling down the walk. Leaving, thank goodness.
“I was saving that for later, when you felt more cheerful,” I said. “We had a murder.”
“I knew eXtreme croquet was a bad idea,” he said. “From your calm demeanor, I assume it’s no one we know.”
“No one anyone knows, supposedly,” I said. “Someone’s lying, though. I don’t know who, but I’m sure someone is.”
We adjourned to our bedroom stall and I filled him in while we demolished the pizza and a bottle of shiraz.
“Okay, I was wrong,” Michael said when I’d finished. “I thought I’d had a rotten day, but yours tops it.”
“Wonder if Chief Burke will let the Shiffleys work on the house tomorrow,” I said.
“I could go to town and buy more sledgehammers.”
“What if he decides we can’t work on the house until he’s solved the murder?”
“The sooner she’s identified, the better, then,” Michael said. “Has he considered publishing her photo in the newspaper?”
“I suspect that’s a last resort,” I said. “Tough on her friends and relatives, seeing her photo in the paper with a caption that says ‘Do you know this stiff?’”
“True,” he said.
“Anyway, maybe we should worry more about the possibility of a giant mall in our backyard. Join forces with Mrs. Pruitt to battle it or something.”
“You’re sure it’s not a wild rumor?” Michael asked.
“Good point,” I said. “Kevin’s doing some cyber-sleuthing. Let’s see what he’s found.”
I decided to check my e-mail rather than calling. Avoid annoying Kevin if he was still working. I strolled into the office and turned on my computer. Michael trailed behind, swirling the last of the shiraz in his glass.
“If it’s not one thing …” he said under his breath. He looked discouraged. I felt suddenly guilty about dumping bad news on him when he’d had such a tough day. Then he glanced up, smiled, and I found myself wondering if the students could be relied on to stay at Luigi’s for another hour or so, or if they’d come barging in—
The computer played the chord that told me it was ready for action, and I clicked the icon to open my mail.
“Five messages from Kevin,” I said as I scanned my e-mail. “All full of links and attachments. Yes, I’d say the mall project’s definitely more than a rumor. I’ll read it all tomorrow. Right now—Michael? What’s wrong?”
He was staring at my desk, looking at my contraband photo of the murder victim, which really wasn’t gory enough to account for the slightly ill expression on his face.
“This is the murder victim?” he asked, his voice sounding shaky.
“Yes,” I said. “You know her, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Her name’s Lindsay Tyler,” he said. “We were … um, involved.”
Chapter Nine
“‘Involved,’” I echoed. I thought I kept my voice neutral, but Michael’s head shot up.
“Not recently,” he said. “My first year here in Caerphilly. I haven’t seen her since she left the college. Almost five years ago. Before we met.”
“Okay,” I said. I was embarrassed to realize that I did feel relieved.
“We were thrown together, being practically the only new faces on the faculty that year,” he said. “Plus the coincidence of both having done our graduate work at William and Mary, though in different departments and at different times. We hit it off at first, but it had more or less fizzled out by the time she left. In fact, long before she left, though I didn’t take any formal steps to break up for a while, because I didn’t think she needed to get dumped on top of everything else that was happening to her. The laugh was on me when I found out—ah, well …”
His voice trailed off and he seemed lost in thought.
“‘Everything else that was happening’?” I prompted after a few seconds. “Like what?”
“She didn’t leave voluntarily,” he said.
“They fired her?”
“Not technically. She was an instructor, on a one-year contract. They just didn’t renew her contract.”
“Doesn’t that amount to the same thing?” I said. “She was out of a job.”
“Not just out of a job. They’d all but promised her a tenure-track position, and here she was, out on the street.”
I nodded. I knew what that meant. In theory, the fact that Caerphilly hadn’t kept her on shouldn’t have mattered, but in the real world, it had made her a lot less attractive to other colleges. Many departments would rather start over with a newly minted Ph.D. than take castoffs from some other school’s faculty. A fact I sometimes fretted over when I thought about Michael’s career. In a sane world, his teaching skills and publishing credits should have made him a shoo-in for the tenure-track position he’d pursued for the last six years. But Caerphilly College didn’t operate in a sane world, and if he didn’t get tenure here …
“She had a hard time finding another faculty job?” I asked, forcing my mind back to the problem at hand.
He nodded.
“Took her over a year, from what I heard, and all she found was some tiny little college out west. In Wyoming or Montana, or someplace. Which she would have hated; she thought Caerphilly was dull and way too far from the city.”
“Why did they fire—sorry, fail to renew her contract?” I asked.
“Officially, they were cutting department staff,” he said. “The real reason: She ticked too many people off.”
“It’s those all-important people skills that get you every time.”
“It’s not that she completely lacked people skills,” he said. “Lindsay could manipulate people with the best of them.”
“I’d call that a character flaw, not a people skill.”
“That’s one of the things I like most about you,” he said, glancing up with a quick smile that flooded me with relief. “Yeah, she enjoyed manipulating people. That was what did her in.”
“You think someone she was manipulating murdered her?”
Michael winced.
“Sorry, I meant did her career in,” he said. “Now that you mention it, odds are, if you knew who she’d been playing mind games on recently, you could find the killer. I should go find Chief Burke and tell him all about this, right?”
“Definitely,” I said. “As soon as you finish telling me. Do you think it’s possible that anyone she ticked off back then might still hold a grudge?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “Not only possible but probable.”
“For example?”
“Most of the history department, for starters,” he said. “I’m sure she ticked off people in other departments, too, but your own department’s always the one where you make the most friends and enemies.”
“She was a history instructor?” I asked. Something wasn’t tracking here.
“Specializing in Virginia history, too, which any reasonable person could have parlayed into a neat berth at a history-mad place like Caerphilly.”
“Was Marcus Wentworth chair of the department back then?”
“He’s be
en chair for twenty years.”
“Then would you find it surprising to learn that Mrs. Wentworth couldn’t identify Lindsay’s body?”
Michael blinked.
“Very surprising indeed,” he said. “Downright suspicious. I’d think she, of all people, would recognize Lindsay.”
“They knew each other well?”
“Not that well, but wouldn’t a woman tend to remember someone who had an affair with her husband?”
“Under the circumstances, I think her name and face would be indelibly engraved on my memory.”
“Precisely. May I add that I plan never to give you any reason to engrave any names or faces on your memory.”
“Good plan,” I said. “Because I’m not sure I’d be as forbearing as Mrs. Wentworth.”
“Forbearing? You didn’t see her reaction.”
“She’s not actually a widow.”
“Good point,” he said, smiling. “On the other hand, I suspect she knew who was to blame, and Lindsay’s dead now. Although the time gap makes her less of a suspect.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “Revenge is a dish best served cold, you know. Look, are we talking about the same Wentworths here? I mean Claire, the skinny golf-playing one who’s married to Marcus, the chairman of the history department, the one who looks like an albino telephone pole.”
“I’ve always thought of him as a walking cadaver, but yes, those Wentworths,” Michael said. “Getting back to the forbearing thing—did I mention that she broke an antique Delft chamber pot over his head?”
“Ouch! Please tell me it was full at the time.”
“Yes, but only of sticky-sweet green punch that no one was drinking anyway, because everyone else found it slightly off-putting to serve punch in a chamber pot, however thoroughly sanitized.”
“Yuck,” I said. “I agree. She did this in public?”
“At one of their pretentious garden parties,” Michael said. “To which I don’t get invited anymore, thank goodness. History department only. Or maybe she didn’t find my behavior suitable.”
“What did you do?” I asked, though I wasn’t altogether sure I wanted to know.
“Nothing at first. I mean, what are you supposed to do when the woman you’ve escorted to a party is found in flagrente delicto with the host? Punch someone’s lights out? Slink home and brood for a few centuries? After Claire did her number with the chamber pot—I couldn’t help it—I started laughing.”
No Nest for the Wicket Page 5