I didn’t teach on Tuesdays or Thursdays, but that didn’t mean I didn’t work. If I wasn’t in my office, I was usually grading papers or writing my own essays for eventual publication. This being Tuesday, I was up early, rewriting the last chapters of my book. It was a difficult process, one I couldn’t completely reconcile myself to. Dickinson was in my office and heard the grumbling and saw the headshaking. After deleting a few sentences, I would turn to her for comfort. With a squint of her eyes, she would assure me that I was the last person on earth to be right about anything. So I continued deleting and rewriting until I’d cut thirty pages and added seven.
I sent the file to Owen and pushed my office chair away from the desk. Revision was hateful. I was not hearing the happy voice that told me to write all these wonderful pages in the first place. A devil sat on my shoulder. Then he’d jumped into the chair and had his way with my manuscript at last. I hoped he was happy. I certainly was not. But I trusted the writing process enough to know I would be when the project was finished.
My phone was buzzing on the counter when I deposited my coffee cup in the kitchen sink. It was Lenny. Maybe he’d decided to come to Thomas Cook’s office with me after all. “Hello?”
“You know I can hear it in your voice when you’re smiling?” said Lenny. “That’s why I love calling you.”
I attempted a straight face and failed. “You got me. I am.”
“I called to tell you that Andy is really sick,” said Lenny. “I just got off the phone with Felix, and the antibiotic they started isn’t helping. Andy’s worse than ever. Giles is teaching, so I’m taking Felix to the hospital. I wondered if you wanted to go with me.”
“Shoot,” I said. “I would, but I promised Thomas I’d meet him at his office. Remember? You go and see what you can find out. Call me when you’re done.”
“I will,” he said. “Be safe.”
“You, too.” I ended the call, more convinced than ever that Andy’s illness wasn’t food poisoning. None of the people at the banquet had gotten sick, including faculty members or students. If something was wrong with the food, that would have been discovered. Even if it was food poisoning, Andy should be feeling better by now, not worse. Nothing they did was helping. I’d bet my summer vacation it was because the doctors hadn’t found the underlying cause.
As I was tucking my phone into my blazer pocket, it rang again. This time it was Claudia. She was making arrangements for Shakespeare’s birthday party and wanted my input on the desserts. My suggestions included chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate.
“And don’t forget coffee,” I added. “Get it from Café Joe if you can. The university’s coffee is weak.”
“Chocolate and coffee,” said Claudia. “I got that. But what about finger foods? I need a vegetarian option.”
“Cucumber sandwiches are always nice,” I said.
“You’re right,” said Claudia. “Shakespeare’s English. We should have tea.”
“Who said anything about tea?” I said.
“Plus, Felix is English,” said Claudia. She was talking to herself now. I heard her scribble something on a notepad. “Thanks for the ideas, Em. This helps.”
“Don’t forget: chocolate and coffee. You can’t go wrong with that combination.”
She promised she wouldn’t before she ended the call.
I slipped my purse off the coat hook and started out the door. I needed to meet Thomas at ten, and it was a quarter till the hour. I stopped, went back, and grabbed my keys, noticed the full trash bag, and grabbed that too. Tuesday was garbage day, and the trash needed to be in the alley this morning if I had any hope of it getting picked up. Even though Mrs. Gunderson hated it when I put the garbage out early, I always did. Otherwise, I’d forget it, as I’d almost done today.
The air was chilly, and after I placed the bag in my receptacle, I buttoned my blazer. The air was cold, the kind of cold that brought sleet and sometimes snow. I checked the sky: steel gray. Oh no. I didn’t want a snowstorm ruining our above-average spring. Ice now would freeze buds and break branches. The thought was inconceivable, and I shook it off and started toward campus. It was too warm for snow. Maybe rain. Possibly sleet, but not snow. I noticed Mrs. Gunderson’s garbage receptacle was open. I would shut it—just in case.
As the lid clanked down, I hesitated and turned back. I didn’t want to snoop, but something had caught my eye. I reopened the lid. It was just as I thought. Through a clear bag, I could see a container of antifreeze. I looked at Mrs. Gunderson’s tidy white house. Was she still driving? I shut the can and kept walking. She had a spiffy black Cadillac tucked away in her garage. I’d seen the car but had never seen her drive it. For all I knew, she took it for a late-night drive every evening. I chuckled aloud. More likely, she kept her car as immaculate as she kept her house. I crossed the street, a smile still on my face. Mrs. Gunderson under the hood would be a sight to behold.
Before going to Thomas’s office, I stopped at mine to pick up the copy of the anonymous sonnet. Giles’s door was open, so I grabbed the poem and poked my head in. “Alice Hudson stopped by yesterday to make a schedule change. I told her I’d let you know.”
“Thank you,” said Giles. “She got ahold of me. Guess whose class she wants to add?”
“Whose?” I said.
“Yours,” he said. “It sounds as if you’ve made an impression on the student. She had good things to say about you. Nice work.”
“Thank you.” Singing my praises to my boss? I was really starting to like that girl. “Did you hear about Andy?”
“I did,” said Giles. “Felix called, but I told him I couldn’t miss class this morning. I’m glad Lenny could take him. I wonder why Andy’s not getting better. It seems every time Felix checks on him, he gets worse.”
A new thought entered my head. I took a step into Giles’s office. “Like Munchausen’s Syndrome. You’ve heard of it, I assume.”
“Of course.” The three grooves in Giles’s forehead grew more pronounced. “It’s when someone makes another person ill, usually a child, to get attention. That’s not what you think Felix is doing, do you?”
“It’s possible,” I said. “If Andy has food poisoning, he should be better by now, and he’s not. The only one who has been with him at the hospital is Felix. If someone’s making him worse, it could be him.”
“But why would he do that?” asked Giles. “He’s his mentor and colleague.”
“Andy was friends with Tanner at one time,” I said. “He might know something about Tanner’s death. If Felix was involved, Felix could be trying to silence him.”
“But Felix is his advisor. He thinks of him as his own child.”
“That’s what I’m saying. He might not be trying to kill Andy, at least intentionally, just keep him quiet. But, as is often the case with Munchausen’s, he could be doing irreparable harm.”
Giles nodded, and his sweep of brown hair fell over his forehead, covering the wrinkles.
I checked the clock on the wall. It was a few minutes after ten. “I’m late to meet Thomas. I have to go, but Lenny told me he’d call when he was done at the hospital. I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“Thank you, Emmeline,” said Giles. “It’s a great relief to know you’re asking questions. I’m confident you’ll have the answers soon.”
I flashed him a smile as I scooted out the door. I wished I were as confident. My mind was spinning with possibilities, yet only one person killed Tanner, a person who reveled in the planning, the details, and the game. The killer was a formidable opponent, but like Giles said, I had justice on my side. Truth was like grass rising from the hard ground in spring, natural and good. Murder would never be natural or good. It took effort to keep evil hidden.
“There you are,” said Thomas as I knocked on his door. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten about the sonnet.”
I took off my coat. “I wish. It seems I’m in my own personal Shakespearean hell these days. I dreamt I was Hamlet last night.”
Thomas put down the paper he was reading, placing it on the tidy stack on his desk. His office was neat, noticeably so, and decorated with modern touches like a steel lamp and framed picture of New York City. The room was just as cool as its occupant. “Hamlet,” he repeated. “That makes sense. He’s trying to find his father’s killer, just as you’re trying to find Tanner’s killer.” He tapped his fingertips together. “Just don’t wind up dead.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, smoothing out the copy of the poem on his desk. “This was turned in to the sonnet-writing contest. The last stanza in particular is troublesome.”
I leaned back and let him study the poem. I knew what it said. I could probably recite it from memory if I had to. Thomas would see it with fresh eyes. I didn’t want to taint his impression with mine.
“The person you’re looking for has an enormous ego,” said Thomas. “He’s probably smart but not social. He doesn’t play well with others, because he distrusts them, and has high aspirations. He might distrust technology, too. He knows it leaves a trail, which is why he wrote this by hand.”
I blinked. “Where are you getting all this?”
“Handwriting analysis,” he said, not looking up from the paper. “I wrote a paper on it.”
Thomas wrote papers on everything. Maybe if I weren’t so busy solving murders, I’d write more papers. “I assumed the all-caps were a way to disguise the writer.”
“A valid assumption, except when people disguise their handwriting, the line is smoother because they write more slowly. This shows wide variation in thickness, which means the author might naturally write in all-caps.”
I was intrigued. Thomas wasn’t analyzing what it said but how it was said. A fresh perspective indeed.
He brought the paper closer to his face. “This is interesting. The slant of the letters varies. The author might have a psychological problem.”
“You think?” Obviously the person had a problem if he or she murdered Tanner.
“I’m serious.” Thomas put down the paper. “You need to be careful. Whoever you’re dealing with might suffer from schizophrenia or another mental condition. You wouldn’t realize it until it’s too late.”
His words sank into my bones, pushing me down into the chair. They confirmed the uneasiness I’d felt since Tanner’s death. “Do you think the poem was intended for me?”
“Taking into account everything else you’ve told me—the flowers, etcetera—yes, I do. The person might admire you, but calls himself a foe.” He leaned toward me. “He’s issued you a challenge. Don’t trust anyone, especially your students.”
The look in Thomas’s eyes changed, and I had the feeling he was speaking from personal experience. Usually cool and reserved, Thomas revealed emotion that wasn’t there before. In a moment I understood it was about Lydia. All of it: why Lydia taught online and not in person, why she rarely left the house, why Thomas studied violent rhetoric. She had been frightened, perhaps was still afraid, and he was looking for answers. “What happened to Lydia?”
A small smile crossed his lips. “I knew you’d find out one day. I just didn’t think I’d be the one to tell you.”
“You can trust me,” I said. “I know what it means to be afraid.”
“I know,” he said. “But I also know your curiosity is insatiable. If I tell you, I want the story to stop with my explanation. Promise me you won’t take it any further.”
I promised, and he proceeded to tell me what happened. Lydia wasn’t always so shy and retiring. She, like him, had been a young professor on campus, excited to have a job in the big city. Unlike him, she was from a small town in Indiana. He said it singled her out in a way that made her more vulnerable. She wore her sweetness on her sleeve. One night on her way home from class, a man tried to assault her, but she’d had a whistle and blown it. Campus police showed up just as he was dragging her away. The man fled before they could catch him. Police were convinced he was the same man who’d assaulted many young women in the area. This assault had the same MO. After that, she started receiving threatening calls and letters. Police said the perpetrator couldn’t deal with the fact that one of his victims escaped. So they moved away, but she still feared for her safety, and so did Thomas.
I let out a breath. It was a terrible situation, one I deeply sympathized with. “Does she still receive letters or calls?”
Thomas shook his head. “No. We picked Copper Bluff because of its remote location. I’ve tried to assure her he will never find her here, but it’s hard for her to believe it.”
“I’m sorry.” I knew it was all he wanted me to say, and I wanted him to understand I wouldn’t interfere.
“Thank you, Em.” He caught himself by surprise. “It’s okay if I call you Em?”
I smiled. “Of course. That’s what all my friends call me.”