Death Comes to a Retreat (Book 4 Molly Masters Mysteries)

by Leslie O'Kane

  “No! There’s no need to try to let the puppy decide. I’d lose. Every so often, I used to lose my temper over her barking. She’s afraid of me.”

  Why on earth would Lois want a dog that was afraid of her? She stared at my neck, and I began to worry that she wanted to wring it. She pointed, “That pin you’re wearing used to belong to Allison.”

  I touched the scooped collar of my T-shirt and felt the small pin shaped like a bird. It was a bluebird, not even a half-inch long from beak to tail. Lois, to my surprise and befuddlement, was right. Allison had won the pin at a golf tournament years ago for scoring a birdie. Then, at the same tournament the following year, I’d accidentally struck a Canadian goose that was sitting in the fairway. Allison had jokingly awarded me her pin for “hitting a birdie.” I’d fastened the pin to my shirt and kept it there ever since, even during spin-rinse cycles.

  “You in position yet, Molly?” Joe called through the ceiling.

  “Just a sec,” I called back. Though I felt moronic, I removed my pin, which must have been worth all of two dollars, and held it out to Lois. If Lois actually cared about the little dog, she wouldn’t have frightened her in the first place. I suspected that Lois wanted to own Betty only as a prize to signal some weird victory over Allison or perhaps over me. “Would you consider a trade? I keep the dog, you keep Allison’s pin?”

  Lois sniffed, but accepted the pin. “Fine. Have the damned dog. At least this way I get something to remember Allison by,” she muttered.

  I forced a smile and nodded, though I was mentally playing the theme music for The Twilight Zone. Lois had a bizarre obsession for Allison.

  She crossed her arms and gave me another visual once-over. “Has Joe talked to you about his wife?”

  “He’s mentioned her several times, yes. He obviously loves her.” I turned and aimed the flashlight at the opening in the wall. “Bet you think I’m quite the fool, carrying a torch for a married man. You better hope you don’t wind up like me—kids grown, no husband, no career, suddenly alone.”

  “See it yet, Molly?” Joe hollered.

  “Not yet.” Keeping my flashlight and my vision riveted to the rectangular opening, I asked, “Did you ever talk to Allison about her relationship with her husband?”

  “Not really.” The wire end popped into view, and as I snatched it, Lois called, “We got it, Joe!”

  As instructed, I kept pulling until the order to stop came from on high. That done, I turned toward Lois, still perched on the side of her bed, hands in her lap. “I guess I never really knew her.”

  “Yeah? Well, I sure did,” Lois snapped. Then she tilted her head and said in a voice that was both quiet and heavy at once, “When Richard moved out, I went over to her house with a bottle of wine to help her celebrate. She just looked at me and said, ‘It isn’t over. It won’t be over till he’s dead.’ She killed him.”

  Chapter 8

  That’s Not True, Dear

  Lois had me positively spooked, but she instantly brightened at the sound of Joe tromping down the attic stairs. On the hunch that she wouldn’t mind spreading a little dirt about Celia, I asked, “I heard a rumor that Richard was seeing somebody else.”

  To my surprise, Lois promptly said, “Cindy Bates, a young tramp who works as a graduate assistant for Katherine.”

  Joe strode in, all business, not even glancing at Lois, who had now sprawled on her bed in an alluring pose straight from a pinup calendar. “I’ll have this wired up for you in a jiffy,” he said.

  “It was good seeing you again, Molly,” Lois said, a strong hint that she wanted me to leave.

  Joe shot me a pleading look.

  Liking Joe infinitely better than I did Lois, I said, “It was good to see you, too, Lois. I’m just going to watch and make sure there’s nothing else for me to do.”

  “I would think you’d want to go home and get ready for Allison’s funeral tonight,” Lois said through clenched teeth. “That’s not till seven-thirty,” Joe replied, installing the new switch so rapidly he looked to be moving in fast-forward. In no time at all, he had the switch plate back in place and even threw up his hands in a dramatic motion afterward as if this were a timed rodeo event. Within five minutes, we were leaving Lois’s house, Joe’s hands full of brownies, mine full of stepladder.

  Once we said our goodbyes, he did give me one brownie for the ride home. I truly didn’t know what to make of Lois, or of Celia’s relationship with Richard. I’d been expecting Lois to name Celia as Richard’s lover, not some grad assistant of Katherine’s.

  Though my contact with Lois had been limited, I couldn’t understand her and could picture her as a murderer, especially if she thought Allison was a rival for Joe’s affections. I could also see Celia killing Allison, perhaps to avenge Richard’s murder, if she—like Lois—believed that Allison had killed him. But I didn’t have any proof of either theory. The only hard evidence pointed straight to me.

  Once home, it made me feel great that someone was this happy to see me. My family, playing a card game, ignored me completely; however, Betty Cocker was so thrilled, she could barely contain herself. In fact, she couldn’t; she piddled on the floor.

  I was further delighted to discover that I had a customized eCard order: an editor at a university press in the Midwest wanted a cartoon that she could affix to her signature line.

  The next half hour was spent verifying my initial reaction: This was not going to be an easy job. My doodling eventually led to a scene with a man and woman in bed. The man is looking forlorn and says, “I feel like you’re so busy criticizing my every word, you’re not really listening.” The woman says, “That’s not true, dear;” however, pen in hand, she is physically editing the man’s words above their heads. The caption for the cartoon reads: One reason that romantic liaisons between editors and authors rarely last.

  I had already realized that there was not a chance this editor would buy this particular cartoon, but I had fun drawing it. Then it occurred to me: This was a university press. The best possible place for me to look for cartoon ideas was a college campus. As a bonus, while there, I might be able to get some information about Katherine and her assistant.

  Jim was napping on the couch. I called his name quietly. He opened his eyes a slit’s worth and tried to look at me, letting out a grunt in partial cognizance.

  “I’m going to C.U. to get some ideas for a new assignment I just got. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  “Unn-hmm,” he said, his eyes shutting.

  Well, nobody could accuse me of keeping him in the dark. It was his choice to have his eyes closed during my feeble attempts at illumination.

  As I backed down my drive, I saw a police car parked in front of the house. After a moment’s consideration, I set my emergency brake, got out, and tapped on his window. It was the young male officer who’d found my shoes, which were being held as evidence, so I was perhaps destined to wear Lauren’s sandals for this entire trip. Looking wary and perplexed, he lowered his window. I asked him for directions to the English department and parking suggestions. It seemed to me that if he was going to be following me, I should at least know how to get to where I was going.

  Taking his suggestion, I parked on the Hill—a half mile or so of shopping area surrounded on three sides by frat houses and the fourth side by Colorado University. I made my way through the pedestrian tunnel that went underneath Broadway, dodging skateboarders and kamikaze bicyclists, and entered the school grounds.

  The C.U. campus is a marvelous mixture of old and new architecture. The buildings feature red Spanish tile roofs and sandstone walls, set in mature landscaping. I hoped to soak up the ambience of being back on a college campus, but there wasn’t quite as much ambience to be had as usual. There were so few students milling around as I walked the cement sidewalks of the campus that I suspected summer session had not yet begun. This made the prospect of my discovering Katherine Lindstrom at work unlikely, but it was worth a shot. I wanted to ask her abou
t her graduate assistant, as well as what she knew about roofie, the drug Allison, Lauren, and I had all ingested.

  In contrast with the bucolic external setting, the interior of Hellem—the language arts building—was cold and cellar-like, with old, oversized hallways. The one or two classrooms with open doors were in need of a face-lift, their tables shabby, the gray-black carpeting worn. Frosted-glass windows on the outside of classroom doors inhibited my view of the offices. By wandering through the halls and looking at nameplates, I managed to find Katherine’s office and went inside.

  To my surprise, Katherine was there, seated at a wooden desk stacked with papers, a computer terminal blinking away with a screen saver that showed flying toasters. Behind her was a large window, so overgrown with ivy leaves that only a few square inches let any light through. The room was furnished with three tall bookshelves and a pair of tall, institutional gray metal cabinets. Only a battered couch with a bright flower coverlet broke the monotony.

  Katherine turned to look at me, her short hair now combed back behind her ears, a pair of glasses with green frames resting partway down her freckled nose. She whisked them off and gave me a nervous smile.

  “Why, Molly. To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”

  “Hello, Katherine. I wasn’t sure you’d be working now. Aren’t you on summer break?”

  “Yes, but this gives me a chance to get caught up. This time of year, there’s nobody knocking on my door to say, ‘Professor Lindstrom, what can I do to get an A?’”

  I smiled at her impersonation of a meek student, complete with clasped hands and batting eyes. “And how do you answer that question?”

  “I tell them a thousand dollars should do the trick. Sometimes more, depending on their grade point at the time.”

  I laughed, though with her droll delivery and my barely knowing her, there was no way to tell whether or not she was kidding.

  “What can I do for you, Molly?”

  While attempting to prepare for this question, it had occurred to me that Katherine did not seem the sort to indulge in idle gossip. This made my seeking information from her more of a challenge, but I chose the only tack that seemed even remotely plausible.

  “I’ve been considering for some time looking into getting a part-time position at SUNY Albany. Do you have a few minutes now to give me an overview of what your job entails?”

  Katherine raised one eyebrow. “You want to be a professor of greeting cards?”

  “Well, no,” I said, bristling a little but trying not to show it. “Creative writing was what I had in mind.”

  “And do you have a Ph.D.?”

  “No, but I was thinking of teaching a noncredit course. Or if that didn’t work, maybe a position as assistant to some professor. Do you have an assistant?”

  “Yes, she does research for me in connection with some articles I’m writing. For which she gets free tuition and a measly few thousand a year.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Cindy Bates. Why?”

  “Is she likely to be on campus now? I’d like to talk to her about what she does. Her duties and the like.”

  Katherine blinked a couple of times, but held my gaze. “I don’t follow. Are you interested in obtaining a post-graduate degree?”

  “No, but my theory is, if I knew precisely what teaching assistants did, maybe I can get SUNY to create a position for me in exchange for course credits. Kind of like an internment…or rather an internship, and then they’d be more likely to hire me for a noncredit teaching position when one becomes available.” Sheesh. That hadn’t made much sense, but I’d inadvertently slipped into a throwback to my own experiences of bluffing my way around teachers: Talk really fast and use a whole lot of verbiage.

  “Oh, I see.” She paused, then added. “I think.” She glanced at her watch and rose. “Cindy generally holds court at Buchanan’s Coffee Shop on the Hill. Grad assistants don’t rate their own offices, or even desks, so they often develop their own ipso facto offices at restaurants. Follow me, and I’ll point her out to you. I’ve got to speak to her anyway to make sure she’s begun the project I recently assigned.”

  We left the building together. The sky was that picture-puzzle cloudless blue, the air hot arid dry. I asked her again if she liked her job, and she said, “Yes. Teaching is a bore, of course, but I love my research, especially in summer when I actually have some time to devote to it.”

  From her haughty tone of voice, it was apparent that her “research” was supposed to be impressing me. I toyed with calling her “Kath,” just to annoy her, but realized this wouldn’t suit my purposes, so I merely nodded and murmured in the appropriate places as she identified the buildings on this end of the campus and augmented each with some obscure historical fact. She must be dreadful company in a museum—the sort who would stop to read every word at each exhibit and then recite whatever arcana she’d collected.

  “You’re going to Allison’s funeral tonight, I assume,” Katherine asked.

  “Yes. Did you know that she and I were drugged Saturday night?”

  “Drugged?” she repeated, looking sincerely startled.

  “My friend Lauren was, too. The police said it was known as a date-rape drug. Ever heard of such a thing?”

  She pursed her lips and nodded. “Flunitrazepam,” she answered easily, though the word sounded like a foreign language to me. “It’s sold under the brand name Rohypnol, hence its street name, roofie. It’s similar to Valium, but supposedly ten times as potent. I read an article about it in the Camera recently.”

  “How would somebody go about getting that drug? Here in Boulder, I mean, since I’m assuming that’s where it came from.”

  “I would imagine it would be fairly easy to buy on the street. One could hang out at any bar, or even, unfortunately, at a popular coffee shop on the Hill, and simply ask who might be selling.”

  We were headed back through the pedestrian tunnel, dodging the very same skateboarders as before, only now my shoe-hoarding policeman was standing at an intersecting sidewalk. I hope it made it into his reports that I’d not only gone exactly where I’d said I would, but had taken his advice on where to park. Katherine gave him a couple of long looks.

  “That’s odd,” she muttered.

  “What is?”

  “That officer’s with the sheriff’s department. One usually sees only campus cops or the BPD here.” I deliberately kept my mouth shut, but she went on, “Is there any particular reason that officer might be watching you?”

  I was tempted to ask how she could be so cognizant of policemen’s typical whereabouts and their uniforms as to notice this, but then, Katherine would probably have an arrogant answer at the ready. Instead, I told her the truth. “They seem to think I killed Allison.”

  She froze and stared at me. “I assumed she accidentally died from a drug overdose.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “Allison had quite a drug problem, for a number of years.”

  That was news to me, but so had been Lois’s revelation about Allison’s hideous relationship with her husband.

  “I believe she went into one of those clean-and-sober clinics after Richard had left her. So, when I read in the paper that she died from’ a tranquilizer overdose, that’s what I assumed. The police never said anything that might dissuade me.”

  We entered the coffee shop, and Katherine led me through what I’d thought to be the entire restaurant, but what proved to be only the front room. “Why do the police think you murdered her?” she said in a near whisper as we climbed a set of stairs with open risers alongside the kitchen. There was little to prevent the chefs from looking up Katherine’s skirt. Good thing I was wearing shorts.

  “Gee. I have no idea. Maybe they don’t. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

  She glanced behind us. “Well, if so, part of your paranoid delusion just followed us into the building.”

  “Let’s ignore him.”

  Katherine gave
me a doubtful glance but then turned and scanned the room, which was two-thirds full, all college-aged clientele. Thanks to Boulder’s no-smoking ordinance, coffee aroma permeated the place. “Ah, there she is,” Katherine said, pointing. “Come on and I’ll introduce you.”

  We approached a gorgeous young thing sitting alone and sipping what I judged from the absurdly small cup to be an espresso. She tensed her shoulders and pushed back from the table, gazing at Katherine with sky-blue eyes. She had a perfect complexion that I’d not seen this side of a porcelain doll. “Katherine,” she said with a nod, then turned toward me.

  “This is an acquaintance of mine. Molly Masters. She wants to talk to you about…Well, I’ll let her explain it. Did you read through that material I gave you?” Her voice bore an air of superiority that irritated me, even though I was merely eavesdropping.

  Cindy appeared to stiffen further, giving me the impression she was turning into a mannequin out of awkwardness at her boss’s presence. “Yes. I’ll have an outline on your desk in the morning.”

  “Good. I’m heading home, then.” She whirled around and said, “I’ll leave you two to your discussion,” then strode across the room and down the stairs with a self-conscious gait, as if she expected all eyes to be on her.

  The instant Katherine was out of the room, Cindy’s posture relaxed, and an unspoken Thank God she’s gone, seemed to hang in the air. I felt empathetic toward her, the result of my own years kowtowing to pompous bosses. “Do you mind if I join you for a minute?”

  She smiled and gestured at the empty chair across from her table—a small square made out of flimsy-looking plywood. “No, go right ahead.”

  I sat down slowly, not anxious to delve into a subject that would be uncomfortable for both of us. “I told Katherine I was interested in hearing about what it was like to be a research assistant. I’d imagine it’s a lot like any internship—all of the work with a fraction of the pay.”