1 Picking Lemons

by J. T. Toman

  “Um, sure. I guess they could,” C.J. hazarded an answer to Betsy’s question.

  “I knew it!” cried Betsy. “I said so to Mr. Williams when I heard the news. I said, ‘Mark my words, honey. Edmund’s death is weird enough to be a Law and Order.’ How wonderful. Now, tell me all the details of yesterday, so I can recognize the episode when I see it.”

  C.J. smiled to herself. More evidence that traditional economic theorists like Walter Scovill needed to rethink their research. Walter, like most economists, based his research on a set of assumptions, a favorite being that people are rational.

  Rational people are devoid of emotion, but simply make the best choice for themselves every time, having considered all the available information. They never impulse buy apps for their smart phone or overeat nachos while watching Monday Night Football or procrastinate about saving money. C.J. had looked closely, but she had never found a rational person. And it didn’t look like she was going to stumble on one today. The woman sitting opposite her had just described a murder as “wonderful” because it might be made into an episode of her favorite TV show. Surprising? No. Rational? Well...

  C.J. took a long sip of coffee and then looked up, ready to answer Betsy’s request for details. “Well, we gathered yesterday at two o’clock for Edmund’s hideously boring seminar. But, notably, not everyone was there. In fact, to begin, there was only myself, Peter Johansson, that Industrial Organization economist over in 43 Knollwood, and Walter. Annika and Jose, Edmund’s Ph.D. students, didn’t show, which I suspect had something to do with a lover’s tiff. Charles never showed, but that isn’t a big surprise. He was probably at home getting an early start on his ‘fivesies.’ Jefferson scraped it in right at two o'clock, panting like a Labrador in July. Clearly he had been on another one of those painful-looking runs. I’m all for being outdoors, but you know, I’ve never seen a cow or a sheep run laps around a pasture for ‘fun.’ People are just plain weird. You ever see a horse strap a parachute to its back and jump out of an airplane? And people say that animals are dumb. Uh huh. And Stephen showed up, but late. My guess is he was in his office performing ancient Chinese death rituals against Edmund for leading the charge against his tenure.”

  Betsy looked up from her knitting, with the alertness of a hound sniffing the scent. “Sure looked like those death rituals worked. Are you sure that’s all Stephen was doing?”

  C.J. frowned. Hell, yes, she was sure, wasn’t she? This was Stephen, the runt of the faculty litter. “Betsy, this isn’t actually Law and Order. We’re talking about Stephen. The man can’t tie his own shoelaces without falling over. How is he going to strangle Edmund with a Harvard Ph.D. hood?”

  Betsy shuddered, gleefully. “Is that really how he died? Strangled with his beloved Harvard hood? You know, Edmund loved to wear his academic robes around the office. He said they made him think professorial thoughts.”

  “Yep. Well, he wore them one too many times. While he was standing at the whiteboard in his office, someone came up from behind and…” C.J. made the motion of tightening a knot with her hands.

  Betsy put her hands up to her face, half in horror, half in delight. This story was going to carry her through many a bake sale, school play and piano recital. No one she knew had anything nearly as exciting to tell. Without doubt, as someone who knew a murdered man, she was going to be the center of attention in the Elm Grove Grandma Brigade for a long, long time. Betsy refocused her gaze on C.J., waiting for more sordid yet splendid details.

  “Back to yesterday,” C.J. continued. “Walter, Peter, Jeffy and I were sitting around in the seminar room, waiting for Edmund, and, of course, all four of us were seriously annoyed at both the incredible waste of time and having to waste it with each other. We were all desperately faking interest in our cell phones, so we didn’t have to talk to each other. At about five after two, when Edmund still hadn’t shown, Jeffy offered to look for him and toodled off. Stephen arrived a few minutes later, grumpy at the world. Then, Jeffy returned shortly after that and gasped that Edmund was dead.”

  C.J. paused and took a sip of her coffee.

  “Oh, for the love of Our Lord. Don’t stop there. Then what happened?” asked Betsy.

  “Well, at first, we thought God was sick of being Edmund’s number two and had struck the man down with a heart attack or the like. So Walter called 9-1-1, and I said that I knew CPR, which is true-ish. I know how to do CPR on a cow. So I ran down to Edmund’s office with Jeffy and that’s when I saw that no amount of CPR was going to make that seminar happen.”

  Betsy had the decency to look a little green and briefly slowed her knitting. “You actually saw him? All strangulated, lying in his office?”

  “You bet your knitting needles I did. The police reckon he had been killed sometime in the hour before we found him, so it was okay. He was freshly dead, like a pig at a spit roast. Not smelly, maggoty dead, which would have been terrible.”

  “Oooooh,” said Betsy, deliciously horrified and wishing she had a pen and paper to write down the details before she forgot them. She was forgetting more and more these days. Mr. Williams teased her and said she was going to forget him one of these days. Like that would ever happen. After fifty-four years of marriage, Betsy could recognize her husband’s belch at a beer and brats BBQ. “Did you see anything else important while you were there? Like muddy footprints, or cigarette butts?”

  “Sadly, I think everyone else also watches Law and Order and so are pretty careful with the evidence they leave behind at a murder scene,” commented C.J. dryly. “As the police don’t think a stranger did it, I don’t think fingerprints are going to narrow it down. The fingerprints of every faculty member and student going back three hundred years are in that office. The only thing that was strange was a ladder outside Edmund’s window, but I think it belonged to Charles. Remember, I saw him with one earlier in the day.”

  “Disappointing,” sighed Betsy. “It’s unlikely Charles did it. He’s almost ninety. If he had a beef with Edmund, he could have taken care of it years ago, when he had the strength. But what do you mean, the police don’t think a stranger did it? Do they think…one of the faculty did? Or a student?”

  “So I gather,” said C.J. “I guess burglars have a tendency to steal things and nothing was taken. And the method of killing was very…personal. We all got to spend a long time last night answering the same question. Basically, where were we in the hours leading up to two o’clock yesterday afternoon?”

  “And where was everyone?”

  “To be honest, I can’t say for sure. They asked us individually. But, of course, we all chatted afterwards. Jefferson was indignant on Edmund’s behalf that so few faculty had shown up for the seminar. I didn’t like to point out that the real issue wasn’t how many people turned up to Edmund’s seminar, but rather the fact someone didn’t let him live to present it.”

  “Well, do you know where the rest of the faculty were?” asked Betsy.

  “Well, quite a few people in 40 and 42 Knollwood have sabbatical this semester, so they were understandably absent as they are visiting other colleges. But the majority of the faculty didn’t make the seminar because they were either at home or out of town, extending the summer vacation. You know who I mean. It must have been a ghost town at 41 and 43 Knollwood.”

  Betsy just murmured. She was always amazed by the bitchiness in an academic department.

  “For those of us who were around, from best I can tell,” continued C.J., “Edmund went to the faculty lounge for coffee at eleven, as per usual. Both Jefferson and Stephen saw him there. Why Stephen was at faculty coffee is anyone’s guess. Sucking up now is not going to help. The tenure decision was final. Oh, Peter Johansson, he was there too. Anyway, Stephen says he left about eleven-thirty and went back to his office and was there doing research and job hunting until he caught sight of the clock and ran to seminar. Jefferson and Edmund left the lounge together at eleven-forty-five, and Peter was still there when they left. Peter
must have left right after though, as he was teaching a graduate seminar from noon until one-fifty. Edmund went to his office and told Jefferson he planned to spend the afternoon there until the seminar. Jefferson says he went back to his office, changed and went on his usual two hour run, but you can bet a silver dollar he detoured via Mary Beth’s desk on the way.”

  Betsy nodded. “Well, that seems to fit in with what we know, anyhow. You said Stephen came in late, and Jefferson came in right on time, clearly straight from a workout.”

  “Right,” said C.J. “Those two seem to check out. Charles wasn’t in his office when the police did a door check to make sure no one else had been killed, so I guess he spent the afternoon at home. Walter was teaching from ten-thirty until eleven-fifty and then had a lunch meeting at that pho place...”

  Betsy interrupted. “Walter had lunch at a pho place? Huh. I didn’t think he was a noodle soup kind of guy.”

  “He’s not. He was lunching with the Chair of the Business School, who was just back from Vietnam and very keen to relive the culinary experience. Walter suffered through it from noon until one. I can only guess he really wants something from the Chair of the Business School. Walter was then in his office until the seminar. I, of course, met you for coffee here at eleven and then sat outside on Knollwood collecting parking meter data until the seminar started.”

  Betsy looked troubled. “No one seems to have a really solid alibi for the time of the murder. Stephen was alone in his office, as was Walter. I think you are right about Charles. He probably went home for lunch and didn’t come back. Jefferson was out running. Even you, you were sitting outside with parking meters. I bet no one saw you the whole time. If people were teaching or out of town or at home with their family, that’s okay. But otherwise...” Betsy petered out.

  “What can they expect? That is what academics do all day. Sit by themselves and think. Or run by themselves and think, in the case of Jefferson.”

  Betsy paused to think for a moment, though she was once again knitting at a blinding pace. Today was a bright red and blue sweater with a sail-boat on the front for a seven-year-old grandson. “They say the most common killer is the spouse. Has anyone thought about Lisa?”

  C.J. just snorted. “I’m sure the police have. If it were Walter who was killed, Mrs. Scovill would be high on my list. Imagine living with Walter, listening to him drone on about his theories on the marginal benefits of sexual relations, factoring in, of course, the length of a marriage and the attractiveness index of each spouse. It’s amazing the man is still alive.”

  Betsy tried to stifle a laugh. Sometimes C.J. was just too...honest.

  “But Lisa,” continued C.J., “she didn’t even have to live with Edmund. That woman is safely tucked away in New York City with her art gallery. Amazing as it is to think of Edmund being married, those two were perfect for each other. Each is so self-absorbed, they didn’t notice the other one wasn’t there. There’s no reason for her to kill Edmund. They barely saw each other as it was.

  “I do have something funny to tell you though,” C.J. said, seamlessly changing the topic, without apparently taking a breath. “My graduate class thought they were going to investigate the crime, as a case study. Jose, of course, was leading the charge. Citing the ‘Mission of Eaton University’ as the reason I should let this farce occur in my classroom.”

  Betsy looked at her, suddenly worried. “You aren’t going to let them, are you? I know it would be so interesting. Like that fellow on that show, Numbers. He always finds the murderer using mathematical models. Like you say, the data hold the answers. It’s just a case of knowing how to let it speak. But I don’t think it’s a good idea for the students. It might not be safe.”

  “No, no. The students aren’t doing anything,” reassured C.J. “But Annika did notice this is just like the market for used cars. As a buyer, you don’t know which cars are good and which are bad. So the owners of the lemons try to off-load them by making their cars look good, and the owners of the good cars need to let you know their cars are actually the real deal, so they can sell them. You know, with warranties, test drives, return policies and the like. The murder market can’t be any different. The innocent will want to let the police and the rest of the world know they didn’t do this, so they don’t go to jail. Come forth with their alibis and a lack of motive and so on. And the murderer...”

  “Won’t the murderer try to disguise himself as a ‘good car,’ so to speak?” asked Betsy. “How will you tell the difference?”

  “I guess that is the $64,000 question. How do you pick the lemon?”

  *****

  Tuesday, the first Edmund-free day of Walter Scovill’s life, was not beginning as he had imagined it would. He had fantasized countless times about a life without the egocentric, pompous jackass whose astonishing similarity to Walter was what annoyed him the most. Without the irritation of Edmund, Walter always pictured an idyllic life, awash in accolades and glory. But this morning there were no marching marionette bands, proclaiming Walter to be the Greatest Economist That Ever Lived. Missing also were the people lining the streets, cheering his name. And, sadly, he was not having warm, scented oil rubbed over his fleshy, naked body by a nimble fingered, obliging Asian masseuse. Instead, before he even had an opportunity to pay an underemployed, art history major to make his first cup of shade-grown, hand-picked, baptized-with-sun-warmed-water coffee, Walter was being questioned by the police. Again.

  “Where was he between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. on the day in question?”

  Walter sighed. Being questioned by the police was not like a fine wine. It certainly didn’t improve over time. How often would he have to answer this question? He was in his office. Alone. So, yes, he realized there wasn’t anyone who could corroborate it. That was one of the defining characteristics of being alone. There was no one else there.

  Then, just before two o’clock, he was walking through the Smythe Lounge to the seminar room. Then, he was sitting in the seminar room. This was not rocket science. Walter wondered what the average IQ of a policeman was. Certainly not high enough to form a MENSA membership voting bloc. An average IQ of 85 maybe? Perhaps 85 was the national average, skewed upwards by some bright stars. The ones that all those T.V. shows seemed to be based on. The average of the Elm Grove police force seemed closer to 70.

  “What happened at the seminar?”

  Walter shook his head in disbelief. Really, did he have to write the questions for these imbeciles? They weren’t going to get any information at this rate. Nothing happened at the seminar as the seminar did not take place owing to the fact the presenter was murdered.

  “I think what you meant to ask was what happened in the seminar room leading up to the discovery of Edmund’s body,” Walter corrected pedantically.

  And nothing unusual happened, except that Edmund had expected all the faculty to be assembled for his seminar and only five people showed. Walter himself wasn’t surprised by the turnout. It was the first day of semester, which did not equate to the first day of work for a lot of professors. One of the benefits of a Ph.D. is you get a lot of flex time.

  But it would have been a blow to Edmund. Typically, faculty only attend seminars in their field areas. But Edmund was a very distinguished faculty member. He demanded a certain level of…attention… as he was highly favored to get the Nobel Prize this year. Sadly, for Eaton University and its publicity machine, that could no longer happen. As Walter was sure the police knew, you must be living to receive the Nobel.

  Walter paused in his musings. There was one faculty member who had been at work, who wasn’t at the seminar. Charles Covington III was not in attendance. But that was not a surprise either. Charles was almost ninety years old and was a little...old. Walter was not willing to say out loud, even to a pair of imbecilic Elm Grove policemen, that the renowned economics department of Eaton University had a senile member of staff.

  “Anyway, in the seminar room at two o’clock,” Walter emphasized with an
overbearing condescension, “there were four professors waiting for Edmund. Myself, Jefferson Daniels, Peter Johansson and C.J. Whitmore. After about five minutes, the troops got restless, and Jefferson volunteered to look for him. No surprise there. Edmund and Jefferson work together. The paper being presented was half Jefferson’s work. At least half, I would say. Anyway, while Jefferson was away, Stephen Choi tried to sneak into the room like a naughty child. Please. As if we care. We’ve already denied his tenure. And then Jefferson came back at about ten after the hour and told us Edmund was dead.”

  “Had you scheduled any maintenance work for the building that day?”

  Walter shook his head and cursed inwardly. That damn ladder. What was the deal with that damn ladder?

  “No,” Walter replied dryly. “There should not have been a ladder outside Edmund’s window.”

  “Isn’t that a rather strange place for a ladder?”

  Walter looked blankly at the policemen in front of him. “You mean, up against a building, serving its intended purpose of allowing people to easily ascend walls?” Walter said icily. “No, I cannot agree. I don’t think it is all that strange for a ladder to be leaning against a wall. Perhaps, instead, you want to find who was using it for its intended purpose. A gang member? A burglar? This is Elm Grove after all. Rated the fourteenth most dangerous city in America. Not a statistic that Eaton University puts in its glossy brochures.”

  The police seemed nonplussed by his suggestion. Apparently Elm Grove’s street element strongly favored guns. There wasn’t a single gang known to crime enforcement at the moment that used strangling via academic gown as their method of killing. And as for burglars, characteristically they stole things. The fact that nothing was missing from Edmund’s office strongly pointed away from Walter’s burglar theory. Walter couldn’t help but agree. You didn’t have to be Einstein to work this out. He knew the stranger theory was a long shot, but a more comforting idea than the alternative. That one of them...a Pug…