The Gambler Grimoire: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Wicklow College of Arcane Arts Book 1)

by BR Kingsolver

  “I was told that he was her ex-boyfriend.”

  Kagan nodded. “Evidently, there was a row earlier that night at a party in one of the dormitories. She accused him of stalking her, and then Tupper and her now boyfriend, another student named Corey Lindsay, got into a physical altercation. At the end of which, Lindsay yelled, ‘Come near her again and I’ll kill you.’”

  “Oh, dear.” I decided that I wanted to sit down—whether Kagan did or not—so I took a seat on the couch. “You know how it is at that age, Lieutenant. Everything is so dramatic.”

  “Yes, and if young Mr. Tupper hadn’t ended up dead, no one would be asking questions about it.”

  “Well, I don’t think I can help you, Lieutenant. I haven’t spoken to Ophelia since this all happened. I was told she doesn’t feel well.”

  There was a knock on the door, and I jumped up. “That’s probably Steve. Excuse me.”

  I went to the door, and came back with a tall young man carrying a suitcase.

  “Steve, this is Lieutenant Kagan, with the local police. Lieutenant, this is my friend Steven McCallum, from San Francisco.”

  “Oh, well, I guess I’ll be running along,” Kagan said. “Do you know if Ms. Harkness is working in the greenhouse this afternoon?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t. But if not, you might try her dorm room.”

  I showed the detective out, and when I came back, Steve was sprawled on the couch. A little over six-feet tall, with a slender, athletic build, thick light-brown hair, Steven McCallum was every girl’s dream—and every gay man’s, which was more important to Steve. He worked as a model and an occasional actor in California.

  “Can I hit you up for something to drink?” he asked.

  “Sure, lemonade, water, wine? Or maybe a cup of tea?”

  “Lemonade sounds great. Have you been a bad girl? What’s the fat cop want? Or is he an admirer?”

  I poured him a glass, and one for myself, then sat down and gave him a quick overview of my introduction to Wicklow.

  “Lovely,” he said when I finished. “And you thought it would be a good idea if I came here to share all this fun with you?”

  I winked. “I’d hate to be accused of selfishness.”

  He made a point of looking around the room. “Nice digs. Is everything here so nineteenth century?”

  “Pretty much, but they have paved the streets in town, replaced the water troughs with parking meters, and I’m told most places have running water, indoor toilets, and electricity. Electricity was a retrofit here. I haven’t checked the plumbing very closely, but it works better than at my apartment in Oakland. When’s your first interview?”

  “Ten o’clock tomorrow. They put me up at the Wayfarer’s Inn in the city. Do you know where that is?”

  “Not really. Let me call someone.” I called Kelly. “Hi, a friend of mine is in town for an interview. Where is the Wayfarer’s Inn?”

  It turned out it was next to the grocery store. Kelly offered to take him there, and stopped by later when she got off work. As I expected, her eyes lit up when she saw Steven.

  “Well, hello! Kelly Grace, at your service.”

  “Hi, Steven McCallum,” he replied. Knowing him well, I could see the hesitation and reticence in his manner. Steven was used to women throwing themselves at him, and to their varied reactions when he wasn’t receptive.

  The three of us and Steven’s bag piled into Kelly’s car, and she drove to the hotel.

  “This is where the college puts everyone from out of town,” Kelly told us. “Savanna, if you were here for a conference, this is probably where you stayed.”

  “Maybe. I really don’t remember, except that it was a little too far to walk, and the bus took forever to show up.”

  Kelly nodded. “About two miles. And the buses here always take forever to show up.”

  “How’s the food?” Steven asked. He waved a piece of paper. “This is a voucher I can use either at the hotel or at the Faculty Club. I guess that’s a dining room on campus.”

  “Decent breakfast at the inn,” Kelly said. “Diner quality. But I’d rather eat on campus for lunch and dinner.”

  “Well, I’m starving,” Steven said. “Let me check in, and perhaps you ladies would join me for dinner?”

  While Kelly and I waited in the car, I said, “This is really nice of you. You’ll bring him back after dinner?”

  “It’s on my way home. You didn’t tell me that this guy looks like a Greek god.”

  “Add another ‘g’ to that description,” I said with a laugh.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. That’s one of the reasons he and I get along so well. He makes a great wing man because we have very different tastes in men.”

  Kelly sighed. “There are downsides to being a single woman in Wicklow.”

  “Lack of single men? I haven’t had time to really investigate, but all of those I’ve met seem to be confirmed bachelors.”

  “Almost all of the men you’ve met are employed by the college. Not a very representative sample, since they can read, write, count past ten, and know the difference between a napkin and their sleeve. And yes, very confirmed bachelors.”

  “I met Lieutenant Kagan.”

  “A typical local male.”

  “He’s a little young for me,” I said.

  “I wish I could say that. I kept giving him lame excuses until he finally stopped asking me out.”

  Savanna laughed. “How long did that take?”

  Kelly shook her head. “A couple of years. He is incredibly persistent.”

  “I wish I could say that about his detective work.”

  About that time, Steve came out of the inn and slid into the front seat of the car. Kelly drove to the college, parked next to the library, and the three of us walked to the Faculty Club.

  “My, this is nice,” Steve said, looking around before opening his menu.

  “And the food reflects the atmosphere,” I said. “Especially nice since they run it as a break-even enterprise. Much cheaper than the other high-end restaurants in town.”

  During dinner, I mainly listened as Kelly chattered on about the college and the town, their history, and answered questions Steve had. A lot of it was almost verbatim what she’d told me a couple of weeks before.

  Immediately after the waiter cleared our dishes, David Hamilton stopped by our table. I made introductions, then David leaned down to me.

  “Kagan arrested Corey Lindsay this afternoon.”

  “For Tupper’s death?”

  David nodded. “Evidently he also questioned him about Brett’s murder. Corey’s father contacted me, and I helped arrange for a local lawyer—a fishing buddy of mine. He told me that Kagan thinks Ophelia Harkness had a relationship with Brett.”

  “Oh, how interesting. Has the lawyer spoken with Ophelia?”

  Hamilton shook his head. “Can’t get near her. She’s also engaged a lawyer.”

  Chapter 16

  When I came home from class the following day, I found Steve sitting on my front stoop. He looked very professional in a gray suit—the same suit he’d worn to defend his dissertation. I wondered how many suits he had. Academia in the Bay Area wasn’t terribly formal.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  His face lit up with a smile. “Nailed it. Decent salary, and a free place to live. Not as fancy as your place, but nice enough.” He gestured in the direction of Howard Quad, and I assumed he had been offered one of the studio apartments set aside for junior faculty, or sometimes senior graduate students.

  “Congratulations! Come on in and I’ll pour you a drink. When do you start?”

  “A week from Monday. Now, all I have to do is figure out how to get my stuff here from California.”

  “Work on your teleportation spell.”

  He barked a laugh. “You know, I’ve been working on that one since I was eight years old, and still don’t have the hang of it.”

  “Me neither. I�
�ll give you the information on the shipping company I used.”

  “Thanks, I’ll take it. But the big problem is my car. I can’t drive here from San Francisco in a weekend.”

  “Ask for some time off, or wait until the first break. I think there’s a week surrounding Samhain. Did you meet the ladies who’ll be working for you?”

  I dumped my briefcase and the books I’d been carrying on my desk, and went into the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses.

  “I met a couple of them. Two graduate students named Emma and Ophelia, and a younger girl, Charlotte. The setup here is nice, and the greenhouse is quite state of the art.”

  “Plus some. You and Emma need to recast the wards. We evidently do get occasional violent storms in this area, so you need to protect the glass. I’ll have a list of botanicals I need for my classes by Monday. I’m sure other professors will have their own lists.”

  Steve nodded, loosened his tie, took a sip of his wine, and leaned back in his chair. “Thanks. Is Doctor Carver as humorless as he seems?”

  “Not completely, but as Kelly describes him, he’s not a people person. On the other hand, I wouldn’t expect him to micromanage. I almost never see him. You’ll probably deal with Katy, his secretary.”

  He chuckled. “He doesn’t strike me as having much of a personality at all.”

  “It is one of his charms. But he seems to wear what few emotions he has on his sleeve. I take it that he was relieved you agreed to take the job?”

  “You’re right about showing his emotions. I’d love to play poker with him. I didn’t expect that he’d throw in a free place to live.”

  “My understanding is that there aren’t a lot of rentals in this area. Students are required to live on campus their first three years, and there are these apartments for single faculty. I’m not sure I’d want to share this space with someone. How was Ophelia doing when you saw her?”

  “Okay. Quiet. She didn’t say much.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “She’s the extrovert, she and Charlotte. Boy crazy, so I’m a little surprised you didn’t get a rise out of her.”

  “From what you told me last night, that hasn’t been going too well for her lately.”

  “No, it hasn’t. I’m not sure if she has poor taste in men, or she just attracts the wrong sort.”

  “Any idea where the gay crowd hangs out here in Wicklow?”

  “Nope. It wasn’t on my priority list. The town isn’t very large, though, so I don’t think it should take an extended search to find out. There’s always Pittsburgh on weekends.”

  “I think I owe you dinner,” he said. “Change into something more comfortable, and let’s go paint the town.”

  “Thanks. I’ll show you a place I like.” I glanced at my watch. “I’d better get a move on. The bus will be here in twenty minutes, and as Kelly said, it’s a bit of a hike into town from here.”

  The location of my apartment shielded me from most of the noise from the dormitories and the student pub. There was also a small pub that was off limits to undergrads—on the ground floor of the junior faculty housing building between the two quads. Faculty, staff, and grad students only.

  But at about eleven o’clock that night, I heard some strange noises through the front door. I waited for a minute, then the noise ceased, and I didn’t think any more about it.

  The following morning, knowing I couldn’t put it off any longer, I gathered the material I needed to have copied for students. My assigned classes were Introduction to Alchemy, first semester Intermediate Apothecary Arts, and a senior seminar in Advanced Alchemy. In addition, I had two graduate tutorials—five students in Alchemy, and six students for Apothecary Arts.

  The Intro to Alchemy course had an enormous number of students, but I had taught it so often at other colleges that I could have probably done it in my sleep. I would lecture twice a week in the largest room in the college—the theater auditorium in the President’s house. But I had ten grad students assigned to do the grading and hold the tutorials. The other courses were capped at twelve students each. Carver provided two senior undergraduate assistants to help with my grading, typing, copying, and other chores in those courses.

  I gritted my teeth when he told me all of this, reminding myself of what they were paying and his promise to hire more professors. The position announcements had already been posted, so I hoped they filled them before I had to do all of that the next year.

  With a briefcase full of paper, my purse, and an umbrella that I decided to take due to the dark clouds that had moved in overnight, I was juggling things when I opened the door. As a result, I dropped the umbrella. Nudging the door open with the briefcase, I bent down to pick up the umbrella. Then my purse slipped off my shoulder.

  Mumbling curses, I set the briefcase down and pushed it through the door with my foot. There was a loud noise, and the door slammed into me. The stout oak door protected me from the full force of the explosion, knocking me down behind it. I lay there, curled into a ball, stunned. Something hurt. Maybe a few somethings.

  My ears were ringing, but I could hear hurried footsteps coming nearer from the far end of the breezeway. The door was pushed, squeezing me, and I cried out. I sensed someone standing over me.

  “Dr. Robinson? Savanna? Are you all right?” David Hamilton asked, a frantic note in his voice. His looming presence shrank as he crouched down beside me and put his hand on my arm. “Savanna?”

  I tried to find my voice, tried to sit up. Things just weren’t working properly. The effort was too great. Managing to lift my arm, I reached out to him. He put his hand on my arm, his other hand under it, and pulled me into a sitting position.

  “Are you all right? Are you injured?”

  “I don’t know.” I could barely hear myself.

  Excited voices beyond the door. Someone tried to push it open.

  “Carefully!” Hamilton shouted.

  A forehead and a pair of eyes peeked around the edge of the door.

  “Get a doctor,” Hamilton ordered. The eyes disappeared, to be replaced by a different pair.

  I managed to focus on his face. “I don’t think I’m hurt very badly,” I said. “But I am terribly twisted and uncomfortable. Do you think you can help me stand?”

  He stood, braced his back against the door, and reached down, putting his hands in my armpits. Straightening, he pulled me up, and I managed to untangle my legs and lean back against the wall.

  I took a deep breath, and said, “Perhaps a chair.”

  He guided me into the sitting room and gently pushed me down into the nearest chair. I watched as he scanned me, looking for injuries. Evidently deciding I wasn’t in imminent danger of death, he went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water, which he handed me.

  And then a woman wearing a white coat appeared, picking up my wrist to check my pulse, peering into my eyes, and then laying one hand on my head, the other on my leg.

  “You are one lucky girl,” the woman said after a minute. “When I saw the damage outside, my heart about stopped.”

  “The door protected me. I didn’t ever step outside,” I said.

  “Well, I still want to take you to the infirmary for observation. I’m Dr. Evans, by the way.”

  Evans was about my age, with short brown hair and the sort of kindly face one would hope a healer would have.

  “Fine with me, as long as you don’t expect me to walk. I’m still feeling a bit shaky.”

  “No problem,” Evans said. “I have a couple of orderlies and a witch taxi waiting for you.

  After they loaded me on a gurney, and the orderlies used magic to float it over the stoop and down the steps to the quad, I understood what a witch taxi was. Hamilton was still there, walking by my side and looking worried.

  “My briefcase?” I asked.

  “I think you’ll need a new one,” he answered.

  “The papers inside?”

  “Mostly intact, but some are the worse for wear.�
��

  “I was taking them for Kelly to copy, then I was going to give them to Kagan.”

  “Ah, I wondered. I took a look at a couple. I can take care of all that for you.”

  They floated me up the stairs into the infirmary on the ground floor of the Admin Building, and into a room where two nurses took my clothes, dressed me in a hospital gown, and put me to bed.

  Dr. Evans and another doctor came, examined me, then left, leaving one nurse to watch over me. I had just woken up, and had three cups of tea with my breakfast, so I shouldn’t have been sleepy, but I dozed off anyway. My last conscious thought was, Why would someone want to kill me?

  Soft whispers woke me. Opening my eyes, I saw David Hamilton and a nurse standing near the door of my room.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “You slept for about an hour,” the nurse answered.

  David walked over and put a stack of paper held together with a large clip on the nightstand. “Kelly has your copies.” His eyes flicked toward the door. “The cops are here.”

  “Did you see anything?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I was at the end of the breezeway, on my way to my office, when I heard the explosion. I turned around and saw the smoke coming from your door.”

  “No one else around?”

  “When I got there, I saw a couple of people coming from the parking lot. Otherwise, no. I’ve already talked to the police. Do you feel up to it?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. I think the adrenaline and shock have worn off. I really wasn’t hurt, was I?”

  “The doctor said we need to watch for concussion symptoms.”

  He turned and nodded to the nurse, who opened the door. An older man in a police uniform came in, followed by Sam Kagan.

  “Dr. Robinson?” the uniformed man asked. “I’m Alistair Crumley, chief of the campus police department. Do you feel up to answering some questions?”

  I tried to give him a smile. “I think I have more questions than answers, but I’m glad to tell you what I know.” I went on to tell them what happened from my point of view.