Passport to Murder

by Mary Angela

  He put his wine glass back on the coffee table. “So, the drug…. If it was administered at the visitation, who was there from the original thirteen?”

  I thought for a moment. “Me, Nick, Amanda, Kat, Meg, Olivia, Bennett, Judith…. Arnold had to have been there because his painting was on that easel. Remember?”

  Lenny nodded. “So that clears everybody else?”

  “If we have one murderer,” I said. “I suppose it’s possible we have two and the second death is retaliation for the first, but I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, so who out of those people, present company excluded, needs an antipsychotic?”

  I smiled and took a drink of wine. “Here’s one: Kat told me in my creative writing class that Amanda was acting very strangely. And then there’s the story about the person outside the window, which Officer Beamer wasn’t able to confirm. Maybe Amanda killed Molly because Molly found out about her affair with Nick and then killed Nick because he didn’t propose? She’s smart enough to get away with it; still, that’s two passionate murders for one level-headed college girl.”

  “Maybe she was reacting badly to her meds? They make people do crazy things, I’ve heard.” He took a big bite of his spaghetti and swallowed. “I knew a guy who shook like a leaf after taking his.”

  “It’s a possibility,” I said. “But they’re suppose to control your psychosis, not set it off.” I was silent for a moment while a thought hovered at the edge of my mind.

  “What is it, Em? Did you remember something?”

  I shook my head. “No, it was just a feeling I got. I can’t remember exactly.”

  “Maybe it’s the wine,” he said, refilling our glasses. “Wine makes me forget a lot of things.”

  I agreed. “Tomorrow’s my creative writing class, and Kat’s in it. I’ll ask her if Amanda is on anything. Discreetly, of course, through implication.”

  “Yeah, weave it in there between your lesson on hyperbole and personification.”

  “Good god, Lenny, we’re way beyond that. It’s a sophomore class.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  That night, I had a hard time sleeping, which wasn’t unusual, but the circumstances keeping me up were. Lenny had asked me out… on a date. As I tossed and turned in my Eiffel Tower pajamas, I wondered what a date with Lenny would look like. Where would we go we hadn’t gone before? Would he drive, or would I? Would he be different? Would I?

  After I readjusted my pillow for the seventh time, my cat, Dickinson, got fed up and jumped off the bed, leaving me more room to stretch my legs. It was during this short interval that I must have fallen asleep and dreamed the most wonderful dream about Lenny. We were in my yard, on a bench, surrounded by the wildflowers I had planted. They had grown into something only plausible in a historical romance novel. Complete with hedges and gates, my garden rivaled a distinguished manor’s. It was so large, in fact, that my house was nowhere in sight. When I awoke, I was smiling, and I wished I could stay in bed for the entire day, surrounded by flowers, sunshine, and Lenny. But it was Wednesday, and my creative writing class met this morning. I hopped out of bed and into my slippers. It would take a healthy dose of caffeine to pull me out of fantasyland today.

  When I walked out of the house an hour later, Mrs. Gunderson was only too happy to yank me back to the present, and all visions of flowers wilted with the sound of her sensible voice.

  “Interesting visit you had from the police department last night,” she said by way of greeting. She was standing outside with her white mutt, Darling, who was peeing on my tree. He yipped aggressively as I walked down the stairs.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Gunderson. Hello, Darling,” I said. That was the only thing I liked about him. His name. I liked saying it like a 1940s movie star.

  “I hope you’re not in trouble, dear,” said Mrs. Gunderson. “It’s never good for the neighborhood when police cars start showing up outside of houses. Next thing you know, you start hearing about drugs, drug addicts. That’s how they found out about Mr. Winkle, you know. He had a terrible addiction to morphine. Nearly lost his business. Of course his wife was right to ship him off to that clinic in Minnesota. That’s what saved him.”

  “Oh, nothing like that,” I said. She did guess right about the drugs, though. Just the wrong one. “One of my colleagues committed suicide Monday night. Officer Beamer came to talk to me about that.”

  Darling scratched at the ground with his back paws. “Oh, how awful,” said Mrs. Gunderson. “I’m so sorry. But you know those academic types.” She tapped her forehead. “Some are a little… touched.”

  I opened my mouth but didn’t know how to respond.

  “Have a good day, dear,” she said.

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Gunderson,” I said with a wave.

  The street was quiet, except the occasional bang from a student rushing out a door. I loved the ten minutes before class, the absolute insistence of them. I picked up my pace. In the summer, the street would change. It would grow desolate as houses stood empty, waiting for the students’ return. Lawns would go unkempt and porches be left unoccupied. Forgotten mail would pile up in the boxes, and summer would cover the street like a great creeping vine. And that was the best thing of all about Copper Bluff—the changing of the seasons. Days were collected like flowers in a garden, and when one died, another sprung to life; each made you feel new again. Each made you feel alive.

  When I stopped at my office to grab my grade book, I noted Giles’s door was already open. There wasn’t another chair or professor who worked more hours than he did.

  He hollered from his office, “Emmeline, is that you?”

  Hollering of any kind was unusual for Giles, so I put my keys back in my book bag and went directly to his office. “Hi, Giles.”

  “Emmeline, what is this business with Nick Dramsdor. Is he dead?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said. I debated whether to tell him about the antidepressant overdose and decided against it. I knew nothing yet for certain. Besides, he would only attribute it to my new affinity for crime. “He shot himself in the Happy Rest Hotel on Birch Street.” I leaned on the chair next to the bookshelf, allowing my book bag to drop. “Well, not so happy for him.”

  He folded his hands on his lap. “Why? I was under the impression that he was an important scholar in the field of paleontology.”

  “Me, too. The story goes that he was grief-stricken over Molly’s death and killed himself. Maybe a little too grief-stricken for just a friend?”

  Giles surprised me by saying, “Oh, I don’t think so. Molly was very much committed to her husband. He’s a heck of an engineer. Did you know that? His company makes miniature robots that monitor everything from seismic waves in California to the oil rigs in Alaska. Fascinating man.”

  I leaned in closer. “Do you know him well?”

  Giles took a drink of his coffee while he thought over the question. He was not a man to rush to an answer; everything he did was deliberate and methodical.

  “I’ve met him three times at university events, so I cannot say I know him well. But he is well connected and has amassed a small fortune from his business. The university fundraisers are always glad to see him coming, if you know what I mean.”

  A detail from the visitation came back to me. “Nick said he was going to set up a fund in honor of Molly. Maybe a scholarship or something.”

  “Oh sure, I wouldn’t doubt it,” said Giles. “Molly would want students to continue to travel in her memory. She thought fieldwork was much more important than classwork. Of course, her work lent itself to that mindset.” Giles smiled in a way that told me he disagreed completely. “Poor fellow,” he continued. “It seems Bennett won’t be off the hook, even with Molly gone.”

  Or would he? I asked myself. A memorial fund wouldn't be the first time he was asked to give money to a project for Molly’s sake. Arnold Frasier said Molly had been quite an investor in the arts at one time. And with the meager salaries paid by the university, one
didn’t need to look far to see where she got her money. Maybe Bennett was weary of funding his wife while receiving none of the accolades.

  “Whatever I said that put that look on your face, it was nothing, so you can just go ahead and forget it,” said Giles. “You look a million miles away, and I’m pretty sure your creative writing class meets in the next building.”

  “My creative writing class!” I grabbed my bag from the floor. The gold clock on the wall struck the top of the hour, and I realized my grade book would have to be left behind. “See you later.”

  “Goodbye, Emmeline,” said Giles with a shake of his head.

  “No running in the halls,” Allen Dunsbar called out with a laugh as I rushed by his office.

  Thankfully, my class was waiting for me when I entered; it was just one minute past the hour. The university had a policy that stated if a professor was more than five minutes late, students were free to leave. The students took this policy quite seriously.

  “Good morning,” I said, a little out of breath. “Thank you for not leaving.”

  The class laughed.

  “We knew you’d be here. We figured your bike had a flat tire or something,” said Kat.

  “No, I can’t blame it on my bike. I didn’t ride it today.”

  “If we have time, can I read a few new pages of my story?” asked Kat, holding up the pages in her hand. “I didn’t have a chance to submit them.”

  “Of course,” I said, pulling up our class drop box on the university’s intranet, “but let’s begin with Andrew and his bathtub. It seems to have gotten out of the bathroom and into the kitchen.”

  Andrew was interested in magical realism, a genre that didn’t interest many in the classroom, but I thought his piece was terrifically original. It didn’t generate a lot of discussion, however, so the class had time to consider it and three other works before we got to Kat’s new pages. I suggested that she read them aloud slowly so we could follow along, making notes to ourselves.

  As she read her murder mystery, I found my mind wandering back to Giles’s office and to the real-life deaths of Molly and Nick. It was in Giles’s office that I remembered Molly had funded Arnold Frasier’s art exhibits. On the bus, Arnold had relayed his disdain for Molly’s environmental zeal to me, and Nick had said something smart when Arnold challenged Molly’s authenticity. What was it? As Kat read on, I remembered. Nick had said Molly discredited a theory of Arnold Frasier’s in a journal article. Could it be that Arnold retaliated by murdering the critic? Artists were passionate creatures, especially when it came to their own work. And wasn’t his painting prominently displayed at the visitation Monday night? Maybe its display was his idea of having the last word.

  As Kat flipped to the last page of her story, Jason, the boy who sat next to her said, “Hey, it’s just like we said on Monday. The murderer killed someone else.”

  I refocused my attention on the class. I wished I had paid more attention to Kat’s story.

  “It wasn’t murder, it was suicide,” said Claire.

  “No, Jason’s right,” Kat said, shaking her head. “It might look like suicide, but that’s not what happened.”

  “What? What could have happened? The guy shot himself in the head. Tell me that’s not the textbook definition of suicide,” said Claire.

  Kat looked at me; I looked at the clock.

  “We’ll have to find out the answer to that question on Friday,” I said. “We’re out of time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I was determined to see Arnold Frasier as soon as possible, so I decided to forgo lunch and head directly to the Fine Arts building after my creative writing class. I wanted to see him before my afternoon classes, which didn’t leave me much time. Fine Arts was the only building set apart from the main campus and housed the Art and Music Departments as well as the theater. It was a place I knew well from last semester’s play, Les Misérables. A student of mine had died on the set, and I had spent a good deal of time in the building finding out why.

  I was walking briskly past the Student Center when I heard my name.

  “Prather! Wait up.”

  I turned around to find Lenny coming out of the building with a cellophane-wrapped piece of pound cake.

  “Hey, Lenny. I love that stuff,” I said, pointing to his cake. “I suppose you don’t have another piece in there?”

  “Yeah.” He took a second piece out of his brown paper sack. “You look like you are hell-bent on going somewhere. What’s up?”

  As I unwrapped the piece of spongy cake, I explained my theory about Arnold Frasier. By the time I relayed the story of Arnold and Molly’s argument on the bus, he had finished his piece.

  “Ponytail Man?” he clarified.

  I nodded and took a bite of my pound cake. Delicious. “He’s in the Fine Arts building,” I said, wiping the crumbs from my mouth. “That’s where I was headed. Why don’t you come along?”

  “Oh sure, let’s go down this rocky road again. Who knows? Maybe one of us will get knocked off in the theater. At least there will be a witness this time. Unless they get us both.”

  “No way,” I said. “The Art Department is down the hall from the theater, and besides, the spring show is much lighter—a musical. The Lion King?”

  “Last semester’s was a musical too,” grouched Lenny, but he started walking with me in the direction of the building.

  “True, but hardly similar in content.”

  “So how was class?” Lenny said, making small talk as we crossed the street. I could see in the distance that the Fine Arts parking lot was full; something must be going on.

  I told him about Kat and her mystery story. “I can’t wait to see what she comes up with for Friday.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little strange, Em, how she needed another murder to happen, and presto, another one did?”

  I could feel my brow furrow at the suggestion. “Yes, I guess it is a little odd. But as they say, fiction often mirrors real life.”

  “Or the other way around….”

  The Grant C. Hofer Center for the Fine Arts took up the entire block, if you counted the parking lot. It was a modern brick structure from the 1970s and looked quite different from the rest of the old buildings on campus. In front was a bronze sculpture that Lenny and I often speculated about. Was it the gavel of justice? Was it a hammer? We weren’t sure. Today we passed it without comment as we entered the building.

  Inside, noise was coming from the gallery that housed art exhibits year-round.

  “I wonder what’s going on in there? Do you know?” I asked Lenny.

  He shook his head.

  “Let’s check it out,” I said. We headed in that direction.

  In a month or so, this room would display the works of graduating art majors, but today, the sign said there was a reception for artist-in-residence Jeremy Looks Twice, a Native American painter and sculptor who had several works prominently on display.

  “Score! There’s food,” said Lenny, pointing to a table filled with snacks and refreshments.

  “Hold on. Let’s talk to Arnold first.”

  We walked around the perimeter of the room, glancing at some of the paintings. I loved them because they were painted with warm, bold colors. The fiery images seemed to jump off the canvas, so real and full of life.

  “This guy is good,” said Lenny.

  I agreed.

  A few steps later, I caught sight of Arnold’s ponytail. He wore a dark suit jacket with a checked shirt underneath and looked the part of the thoughtful art professor as he observed a painting, nodding and agreeing with what the man beside him was saying.

  “Arnold,” I said when the two finished talking.

  “Emmeline, I’m glad you could make it. Hey, Lenny,” he said, shaking Lenny’s hand. “There’s a guy over there you might be interested in. He’s a genuine drum keeper.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Lenny, looking toward a man setting up a drum in the corner. “I’ll have to c
heck it out.”

  “This is a fascinating exhibit. The artist is obviously very talented,” I said.

  “Jeremy’s work is visionary. I’m sad that his residence is over, but I know his work will sell. Just look at this crowd.”

  “It’s a wonderful turnout.” I glanced around at the fifty-plus people in the room. “Arnold, I was wondering… did you hear about Nick Dramsdor’s suicide?”

  “Of course, I read about it in the paper. I can’t say I’m surprised.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “The guy was obviously in love with Molly. I guess he couldn’t move on.”

  “Did you go to the visitation?” I asked.

  He blinked a few times. “I didn’t. I suppose I should have, but I’d had enough of it all in Minneapolis. When Bennett asked if I wanted to contribute anything, I sent over one of her favorite paintings… or what used to be one of her favorite paintings. It was the best I could do.”

  “Hey, no one can blame you,” said Lenny. “It’s not like you guys were close anymore.”

  Arnold shook his head. “No, we weren’t. But that didn’t bother me. What bothered me was that she lashed out at anyone who didn’t agree with her, even criticizing my article without supporting her comments with logic or research. That’s not the way we do it in academia. There’s room for difference—or should be.”

  “Did she really discredit your article?” I asked, leaning closer to him.

  He smiled. “No, not discredit. Nick was exaggerating. She left a negative review on the website where the article was posted. It wasn’t a big deal. I knew she was just mad that I had made a positive remark about the Midwest Connect pipeline earlier that week.” He nodded at an attendee who said hello. “I mean, you just can’t stick your head in the sand and deny that the times they are a changing, as Bob Dylan would say. Even with art.” He motioned around the room. “Even our artist-in-residence is challenged to connect his art through technology and social media. I thought it was foolish that Molly couldn’t acknowledge one positive outcome of the pipeline.”