I froze so I could hear better, all the while
envying dogs their ability to swivel their ears in any
direction.
“His own wife?” a second voice
exclaimed. “You can’t really think Minerva—”
“No, silly, Gordon’s
wife.”
“Carol? I thought she and Gordon split
up two years ago.”
I pretended to find something wrong
with the chair I was about to fold, and risked a look over my
shoulder. One of the Marie Antoinettes we’d been watching so
closely as a possible shoplifter was leaning toward a stout,
gaudily dressed Gypsy.
“It was five,” Marie Antoinette said.
“And they reconciled; but now they’ve split up again, and this time
it looks permanent.”
“Very permanent, with him dead and
all.”
“Well, naturally,” Marie Antoinette
said. “I mean it was looking permanent, before Gordon was killed.
They were fighting over property, and Carol swore he was hiding
assets from her.”
“And was he?”
“For heaven’s sake, it’s Gordon we’re
talking about,” Marie Antoinette said, tossing her fluffy white
wig. “Of course he was hiding assets.”
“Troll,” the Gypsy
muttered.
“But she’s been going about it the
wrong way. She should have just hired a private investigator to
follow the jerk. But she’s been trying to do it all
herself.”
“Maybe she can’t afford to hire
anyone?”
“Well, that’s possible. But at least
she shouldn’t have run around doing things that probably made the
judge think she was a nutcase.”
“What kind of things?” the Gypsy
asked.
“She broke into his house,” Maria
Antoinette said. “And got caught.”
They both shook their
heads.
“So if you ask me, Chief Burke is
barking up the wrong tree, hassling that poor Professor Rathbone,”
Marie Antoinette continued, jerking her head toward where the chief
was still talking to a stricken-looking Giles. “They should look at
Carol.”
“How does killing Gordon help Carol
find his hidden assets?” the Gypsy asked.
“If he’s dead, and they’re still
married, she doesn’t need to worry about finding them, silly.
They’re all hers now.”
“Unless he’s hidden them so well that
no one ever finds them,” the Gypsy suggested.
Or unless she was the one who murdered
him.
“Wouldn’t that be something?” Marie
Antoinette exclaimed, and they both giggled. I suspected that
however much they disliked Gordon they weren’t overly fond of Carol
either.
I folded the chair and turned toward
the house. I realized that I might have a very good chance of
prying information out of Carol, since I probably had a good idea
where Gordon had hidden his assets. Several times, while delivering
things to the bin we’d rented at the Spare Attic, an off-site
storage place, I’d run into Gordon coming from or going to a nearby
bin. He’d looked anxious when he noticed I’d seen him. If I could
find Carol, maybe I could trade her this information in return for
the inside scoop on what she’d seen in the barn.
Of course, the ethical thing to do was
to tell the chief what the two women had been saying and share my
knowledge of Gordon’s storage bin with him.
Later. Assuming I could pry the chief
away from his intense conversation with Giles.
“Damn!” I muttered.
“What’s wrong, Meg?”
I looked up to see that Dad had
returned. Alone.
“Eric and Frankie—” I
began
“Taken care of,” he said, waving
genially.
“Fine,” I said. Giles was still talking
to the chief. I shook my head and stuck a folding chair under each
arm.
Giles was pointing toward the
barn.
“Damn the man,” I
muttered.
“What’s wrong?” Dad asked.
“Someone should tell Giles not to talk
to the police without a lawyer,” I said.
“You think he had something to do with
the murder?”
“No,” I said. “I can’t imagine him
having anything to do with the murder, but I don’t think Chief
Burke agrees. If Giles doesn’t watch out, he’ll get
arrested.”
“Oh, dear,” Dad said. “He seems like
such a nice man.”
“Very nice,” I said. “And he thinks
Michael deserves tenure.”
“So do I, naturally,” Dad
said.
“Yes, but you’re not on his tenure
committee,” I said. “Giles is.”
Dad frowned.
“But I thought Giles was an English
professor,” he said.
“He is,” I said. “So is Michael,
technically. The drama department, being small, is technically a
subgroup of the English department.”
“How odd,” Dad said. “Is that a good
thing or a bad thing?”
I sighed, and rubbed my forehead. The
slight headache I’d been trying to ignore suddenly felt worse. I
could have sworn I’d explained this to most of my family several
times already. Maybe I’d just fretted about it so much that it
seemed as if I’d told them.
“Depends on your point of view,” I
said. “If you ask me, most of the English professors—the tenured
ones, anyway—are stuffy, pompous bores. Of course, I could be
prejudiced by the fact that they all look down their noses at their
colleagues in the drama section of the department.”
“That must be annoying.”
“Worse than annoying,” I said. “Every
year or two, they try to eliminate all but the driest and most
academic of drama courses. Which would also let them eliminate all
those déclassé theater people like Michael.”
“Oh, dear,” Dad said. “So Michael’s job
isn’t safe?”
“Well, it is and it isn’t,” I said.
“The college administration always reinstates the canceled
classes—they’re too popular to kill. But while the administration
wants the prestige of having an award-winning theater arts program
and the fees the drama classes bring, they could care less if any
of the faculty responsible ever get tenure. So far, in the past
thirty years, not a single one has.”
“That doesn’t sound promising,” Dad
said, staring at the house as if the connection between Michael’s
tenure and our ability to continue paying the mortgage had begun to
dawn on him.
“Doesn’t mean Michael would be
unemployed if he didn’t get tenure,” I said. “He’d almost certainly
be welcome
to stay around indefinitely, as a lecturer or something. On a
suitably tiny salary, with no benefits to speak of. That helps the
bottom line almost as much as those popular courses he
teaches.”
“The college’s bottom line, you
mean.”
“Yes,” I said. “It wouldn’t help our
bottom line at all—not that that’s the most important thing. I
could make up the difference with my blacksmithing if I had to,
though that would certainly slow down the house project. But if
Michael doesn’t get tenure, he might not want to stay on, and it
can be hard for someone refused tenure to get a good teaching job
anywhere else. And much as he likes acting, it’s teaching he really
loves.”
“So this is where Giles comes in,” Dad
said. “He’s pro-Michael.”
“Exactly,” I said. “When Michael
arrived, they took a look at his background—the soap opera stuff,
mainly—and made the mistake of assuming he was a lightweight. So
they didn’t figure they had to pack his tenure committee with
curmudgeons—they gave him a bunch of honest, if slightly pedantic,
professors. And so far, Michael has won them over. He has the
credentials; he publishes regularly; he’s jumping through all the
hoops. His committee loves him—he and Giles have even become
friends—but the department is running scared. If Chief Burke
arrests Giles and gives the department fuddy-duddies an excuse to
force him off the committee, they’ll replace him with one of the
hardliners, and Michael will have no chance at
tenure.”
Just then, Chief Burke looked up from
his conversation with Giles and frowned at me. I picked up the
chairs, waved them, smiled, and then turned toward the
house.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “I’m sure
there are other suspects.”
“A whole flock of them,” I
said.
“No, not a flock,” Dad said, frowning.
“Ah! I’ve got it! A skulk. Like a skulk of foxes.”
“A skulk of suspects,” I said. “Works
for me. But just in case Chief Burke disagrees, get Michael to call
that defense attorney he knows.”
“The one who represented Rob when he
got arrested?”
“That’s the one,” I said.
Dad scurried off and I focused on the
chairs.
As I lugged them along, I realized that
it had been several weeks since Michael had complained about
anything going on in his department. Not a good sign. When he was
feeling generally optimistic about how his career was going, he’d
vent about small day-to-day irritations. When he thought something
was going badly, he clammed up about work. Which was what he’d been
doing recently. If I hadn’t been so crazed over the upcoming yard
sale, I’d have noticed. I should have noticed.
I vowed to make up for this as soon as
possible, thus fending off a full-scale attack of the guilts that I
didn’t have time for right now.
While I was crossing the soaring front
hall, I heard the patter of sneaker-clad feet from the landing
above.
“Bang!” piped a small
voice.
“Argh! You got me!”