Passport to Murder

by Mary Angela

  “What positive outcome?” asked Lenny. “I can’t think of a single one.”

  “It would give lots of people in technology jobs, and I said so. In a meeting I had with other chairs, President Conner said that EROS Data Center had contacted the school about post-doctorial research opportunities. It seems that part of EROS’s job includes monitoring and gauging the environmental impact of the pipeline. A job with EROS or one of their contractors would have kept more science grads in state, and you know we need to keep everyone we can to compete.”

  “EROS Data Center,” I repeated. “They have over six hundred employees.” EROS Data Center was a huge research facility for the U.S. Department of Geological Survey and housed one of the largest computer complexes in the U.S.

  “I know. It’s one of the best employers in the state, but Molly didn’t bother to consider the practical view.”

  I contemplated this new information, wondering if anyone tied to the sciences agreed with Arnold and saw the pipeline as an economic benefit for the state. It didn’t take long for me to remember Judith Spade. Although she taught for the School of Medicine, she was a champion of Health and Sciences all around and our new associate dean. Plus, she had attended the visitation.

  A student approached. They exchanged a few words.

  “We’d better let you go,” I said. “We’re taking you away from the exhibit.”

  “Don’t forget to get some free food,” said Arnold, turning back to the student.

  “That’s next on our list,” said Lenny.

  He and I began moving in the direction of the refreshment table. “Well, Arnold’s out,” Lenny said.

  I looked back to see if Arnold overheard. Luckily he was engaged with the student. “Not so loud.”

  “We’re in a room full of people,” he said, taking four tea sandwiches and crowding them on his luncheon plate. “Jeez, what are we? Infants? Give me another plate.”

  I handed him one. “It’s not an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” he said, scooping two pieces of cake on his second plate.

  I took a sandwich and some grapes, leaving no room for cake on the tiny plate, and followed Lenny toward the corner with the drum keeper. We listened to him play the drum as we ate our sandwiches. When the drum quieted into a steady background beat, I asked Lenny what he thought of Arnold’s information about EROS Data Center.

  “I was surprised,” he said. “I wouldn’t have made that connection. But I see the logic. It’s hard to keep graduates in a state where the median income is so low.”

  “You know what other connection it made me think of?”

  “Bennett Jaspers?” he said, taking a bite of cake.

  I put down my grape; that was a thought. “No… I was going to say Judith Spade.”

  “Hey Jude, our soon-to-be associate dean. That should be fun.”

  “I think she’ll do fine,” I said. “I like her.”

  “I like her, too, but she and Dean Richardson are polar opposites. I wouldn’t want to be in that office during budget talks.”

  “As I understand, she will be the associate dean of administration, not academics,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I can’t keep all the titles straight in my head, let alone what they actually do.”

  I looked at his second piece of cake. “Chances are, you’ll never have to talk to her unless you run up against a nasty case of plagiarism. Then she’d probably sit in on the mediating committee.”

  “I think they just make up stuff to do so that they don’t have to teach. Maybe I should look into becoming a dean.”

  “Yes… look into that.”

  “God, Prather. Hand me your plate already,” he said. He scooped his extra piece of cake onto my plate and handed it back to me. “I suppose you need a fork.”

  “I took one just in case,” I said with a smile. I had a terrible sweet tooth. “Thank you.”

  “So you think Judith could have killed Molly and Nick? She is a physician. I guess I can see why she’d target Molly—because of the job—but why Nick?”

  I finished chewing and took a sip of my lemonade. “Nick was setting up a fund in Molly’s memory. He said so at the visitation. Can you imagine Judith wanting Molly’s work to continue? Nick would have made certain that the funds were put to their intended use, especially when it came to tenure, trips, or anything administrational.”

  Lenny shrugged. “Well, when you put it that way, I suppose it’s possible, but I think I’d believe just about anything when it comes to your gift for web weaving. You really do read too many mysteries.”

  “And she was at the visitation,” I said, pointing my fork at him.

  “That’s two. You need just one more thing to achieve a trifecta.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Her antidepressant prescription.”

  I decided to go to Winkle’s Pharmacy and Drug after five o’clock because college kids worked there nights. I knew this because every time I went to get my melatonin supplements, the student workers were more than happy to answer questions. They liked trying out new words they had learned in class. The last time I’d endured a particularly grueling bout of insomnia, I’d grilled the kid behind the counter about melatonin’s efficacy for a good twenty minutes. Had I gone during the day, old man Winkle would have told me to get a sleeping pill, and that would have been the end of the conversation. Plus, students were very good at forgetting a face. Mr. Winkle not so much.

  My plan was to say that a doctor had recommended that my friend start taking amitriptyline, and I had questions about the drug. After all, it would be only natural for me to show concern for a friend, and I didn’t want them thinking I had been prescribed the antidepressant, which they could easily look up on their computer database. It would be a way to gather credible research about the drug that had been used to kill Nick Dramsdor.

  Satisfied with my strategy, I walked through Winkle’s front door at six o’clock. When the bell jingled, a young female cashier wearing heavy eyeliner looked up and smiled at me. I smiled back. Although it was discreetly tucked under the plastic bag hanger, her math textbook jutted out below. She had been using the downtime for her nightly studies.

  I looked around. The store itself was a hodgepodge of bric-a-brac. Postcards, thimbles, Christmas clearance—they were all jammed near the front of the store on three-tier shelves. The aisles, which numbered five or six, were lined with humidifiers, bandages, gift wrap, and food. The pharmacy, located at the back, was where the cold medicine, cough drops, supplements, and vapor rub were sold.

  I meandered through the food aisles so as not to make a beeline for the pharmacy. There was a neat display of wines from a local winery. A wine made in South Dakota? This was something I had to taste to believe. I selected a bottle, surprised Winkle’s qualified for the grocery store status to sell it. Then again, the store did have quite a few staples. Unable to pass up the buy-one-get-one-free sale, I picked up two chocolate bars as well. It was getting too close to dinner to be shopping in the snack aisle.

  Now I moved on toward the pharmacy, where two young men stood behind the counter, one filling prescriptions and one running the cash register. I didn’t know if they were the same men who had helped me with my melatonin questions. It had been too long ago to remember.

  I approached the cashier. “Hello. My friend’s doctor recently recommended a prescription, and I thought you might have some information on it. I don’t think she has all the facts. I’m worried it might be dangerous.”

  “I think we can help you with that, can’t we, Joe?”

  Joe, the young man filling pill bottles, nodded without looking up.

  “What’s the name of the drug your friend was prescribed?” the cashier asked.

  I ignored the implication. “Its name is amitriptyline. Do you know anything about it?”

  The cashier looked to Joe, and Joe answered, “Sure, what do you want to know?”

  I started wi
th the basics. “What is it used for?”

  “Mostly to treat depression,” he said, shoving a bottle of pills into a white bag and zipping it closed. “Is your friend depressed?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Is she anxious?”

  I thought about that one. “I don’t think so. Why did you say ‘mostly’?”

  He hung up the bag and joined the cashier and me at the register. “What do you mean?”

  “You said it’s mostly used to treat depression.”

  “I meant there are other things it can be used for.” He looked at the bottle of wine in my hand. “Like treating recovering alcoholics. It can help with sleep disturbances.”

  I blinked. Was this the man who had helped me with my melatonin? Now that he was closer, he did look familiar. “Oh, this information is for a friend.”

  The cashier snickered, but Joe had the good sense to elbow him in the side.

  “For all the facts, your friend should get in touch with her doctor,” said Joe.

  My face growing warm and probably red, I excused myself as delicately as I could. What I really wanted to do was make a headlong dash out the store. “Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. You’ve been most helpful. I will tell her what I’ve learned.”

  I paid for my groceries at the front of the store and quickly walked to my car. Once I started my Mustang, I touched the Safari app on my phone. When Lenny and I had researched the drug, nothing came up about alcoholism, but the moment I added alcoholism to my search, the young man’s words proved to be true. Indeed, the drug was used to treat withdrawal symptoms of alcoholism, including sleep disturbances.

  Instead of going home, I went to my office. I needed to search the academic databases in light of this new information. The English Department was deserted, so I was able to go straight to my office without answering questions about what I was doing there after hours. A few faculty knew about my nighttime walks through campus when I couldn’t sleep, though, so maybe I wouldn’t need an excuse. Still, it was way too early for bed.

  I logged on to our university’s research databases. Munching on a candy bar as I scrolled through articles, I found out that amitriptyline could cause hallucinations in cases of over medication. In one case study, a nurse had given a patient the wrong dose, and the man had jumped out the window to his death.

  I threw my candy wrapper in the trash bin and shut off my computer. According to this study, the person in the window whom Nick described to Amanda could have been a hallucination, a side effect of the drug. Nick was murdered at the visitation, and now I guessed by whom. I needed one more piece of evidence to confirm my theory.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The next day was Thursday, so I didn’t have classes. I was thankful because I had to prepare for Student Fest, a daylong event that highlighted students’ contributions to their academic fields. Their submissions were voluntary, and participants went to some trouble to create panels, find moderators, and conduct research for their projects. I myself was moderating for a group of literature students. The best and brightest scholars would receive awards for their efforts.

  But before the event commenced, there was something I needed clarified, and fortunately I knew someone who taught earth science and might be able to help. Professor Owen Jorgenson taught in the Thompson-Carter Science Center, an orange brick building that housed several enormous lecture halls. As I stood inside, I took a few minutes to ready myself after what seemed like a long walk to campus this morning. While the sun was radiant against the cobalt-blue sky, the wind was blowing from the north, bringing with it a fresh arctic blast.

  As I fiddled with my belt, tucking it back into the loops of my spring trench coat, students passed me en masse. It was fifteen minutes after the hour, and classes were being dismissed. Unlike most Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes, which were fifty minutes long, Tuesday/Thursday classes went seventy-five minutes. As I started walking against the wall of students, I saw Owen standing outside one of the lecture halls, talking with a student. One more was waiting in line. I stalled until he was finished with both, and by the time they left, the crowd had thinned considerably.

  “Owen,” I said as I approached him.

  “Emmeline, it’s been a while.” Owen was an athletic man in his mid-forties. Just from looking at him, you could tell he exercised regularly.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I meant to check in.”

  “That’s okay. What’s up? It’s rare that I see an English prof over this way. What brings you here?”

  “Is your office nearby?” I said, looking past him down the hall.

  “It is, but I have another class in fifteen minutes. Do you want to come back?”

  I shook my head. “That’s all right. I’ve got to get over to Student Fest. This won’t take long. I have a question about EROS Data Center, and I don’t have time to research it before the event.” I hoped he would think my question was academically related. In theory, it was. It related to a couple of academics on our campus. “What’s the connection between EROS and the pipelines?”

  Owen placed one of his hands in his suit-jacket pocket. “Well, EROS uses remote sensing to monitor land use. I assume they monitor the effects of pipelines on the environment.”

  No one associated with Molly Jaspers worked at EROS as far as I knew. “Okay. So EROS monitors the land surrounding the pipelines. How do the pipelines monitor themselves?”

  Owen went into professor mode, speaking very patiently. “See, the pipelines place little sensors—they’re like tiny computers—throughout the pipe. When a leak is detected, the manager can shut down that section of the pipe remotely so that the leak is contained to one area. It’s smart in terms of stabilization. It ensures a leak doesn’t pollute any more land than necessary. Someone told me the new pipeline, Midwest Connect, is planning to install technology that can detect lower oil flow rates, which will be a godsend. That was the trouble with the pipeline in North Dakota in 2013. No sensors were in place to detect the leak; a farmer ended up finding a six-inch spurt of oil in his field. Before they were able to fix it, over eight hundred thousand gallons of oil leaked into his wheat field.”

  I remembered hearing about it. This leak was one of the reasons the Native American tribes in our state were fighting the new pipeline so vigorously. They didn’t want their sacred lands contaminated, and I didn’t blame them. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  “So these new sensors, they could be a good thing for the business manufacturing them?”

  “A good thing?” He laughed. The muscles in his neck showed. “They could be a great thing. Just by way of comparison, TransState plans on using sixteen thousand of them—if that line is ever completed.” Although TransState passed through the Midwest, it did not run all the way through the Southern states as originally planned. After so many leaks and questions about the quality of pipes, the continuation of the line was on hold.

  I was stunned. Of course the Midwest Connect pipeline would mean big business, just as Arnold Frasier had said. I thanked Owen for his time and ducked into an empty study alcove down the hall. It was time to talk to Officer Beamer and tell him my theory. I dug into my purse and found his card beneath a candy wrapper. On it, he had written his cellphone number, and I dialed it immediately. When he answered, I told him who I thought had killed Molly Jaspers and Nick Dramsdor. He agreed that it made sense but was waiting for a warrant on the prescription drug to confirm. He expected it to arrive any minute.

  I told him to meet me at Student Fest as soon as he got the results. An award ceremony would take place at noon at the Student Center, highlighting the best submissions. The award winners would be printed in our campus newspaper as well as our annual student magazine. Students and finalists would be there as well as the professors sponsoring the projects and panels.

  After I ended the call, I started off in the direction of the library. I was moderating a panel titled “Romance, Mystery, and Intrigue: The Genre Novel and Female Empowermen
t.” Four of my literature students, three females and one male, had created the panel after our discussion of the domination of female writers in the cozy and romance genres. Despite their domination, however, critics still had plenty to say about women’s fiction. Even readers, some quite famous, felt guilty for reading and enjoying these genres. It was the group’s purpose to explore and dispel the myths surrounding the genres that led to guilt and shame, two emotions common to women reading books, rearing children, or ruling the workplace. I couldn’t wait to hear them present.

  As I entered the Herbert Hoover Library, a musty building with three book-laden floors, I noted the easel marked with the day’s schedule. My students’ panel would be presenting on the second floor. I walked up the metal staircase and turned left. It was twenty minutes before the presentation, and a student was at the table. A few attendees were scattered in the twenty-odd chairs set up for the presentation. One of them was Lenny, looking dapper in a camel jacket and jeans. When he saw me, he waved, and I motioned that I had something to tell him.

  “Lenny! I’m so glad you’re here,” I said.

  A few footsteps away, he said, “I couldn’t miss it when I saw the title. What did you do? Bribe them into reading your research?”

  I held up my hand. “I promise you, Lenny, they came to this idea all on their own when we were discussing Rebecca last month.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier? What did Giles think of that selection?”

  “Giles doesn’t question my selections. He thinks anything that will spur me on to finish my book is a good thing. And you know romance has been a creative outlet for lots of women writers, so it’s not that much of a stretch. Besides, I bet he’s read Rebecca more than once. You should have heard how engaged he was when we discussed it.” I grabbed his hand. “I have to tell you something, though. Come on. I only have a minute.”

  I walked into the heart of the second-floor collection, where we were surrounded by towering bookcases. I could tell the aisle was rarely visited by the amount of dust particles wafting up from the shelves as we proceeded as far in as possible.