The Grim Steeper: A Teapot Collector Mystery (20 page)

“Sure. But any system is only as good as the humans utilizing it.”

Lots of cracks and possible problems, then. And no one would know that better than those in charge of using it constantly, like Vince and Brenda, and the one charged with maintaining it, Paul Wechsler. If she eliminated Jason and Julia from contention, then the most likely grade alterer was among those three.

But she couldn’t forget that this information was coming from Vince. She had Julia’s account that the dean had questioned Vince himself about his spending habits. Sophie inferred from that, that the dean still hadn’t fully made up his mind yet on the guilty party, even just hours before he was to make the announcement. He clearly still felt it was possible that Vince had taken bribes to change Mac’s grade.

Maybe when Paul pulled the dean aside near Auntie Rose’s, he was telling him that if he named Jason he’d look like a fool, because Vince was really the guilty party. Or . . . maybe he pulled the dean aside to tell him that he would look like a fool if he named the registrar, because it was someone
else
who was the guilty party. She sighed, feeling no closer to the truth. “So you haven’t tried to speak with Paul yet?”

“He hasn’t come into work today,” Nomuro said. “And he didn’t call, either, the office told me.”

*   *   *

R
ose and Laverne exited the police headquarters into the brilliant, hard October sunshine. It was a crisp day, one meant for hot tea and scones, and for hosting groups at Auntie Rose’s. Without the daily rhythm of the tearoom, Rose felt bereft. “I’m worried, Laverne. Why do you think Sophie hasn’t been in to see the police yet?”

“That girl is off chasing a murderer, if I know her.”

“Detective Morris warned me to make sure she stays out of trouble.”

Laverne snorted as she unlocked the car and held the door open for Rose, who climbed into the low old vehicle with some difficulty. She circled and climbed in behind the wheel, started the engine and cranked up the heat. “As if either of us could make Sophie do or not do something she had on her mind. That girl is as obstinate as her grandmother.”

Rose smiled wearily and put her head back. “Laverne, who did this awful thing? And why outside our tearoom?”

“I know Sophie is doing her best to figure it out, but I think it’s time the Silver Spouts leaped into action.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is nothing a group of snoopy older folk can’t ask,” Laverne said with a chuckle.

“You’re right,” Rose said, sitting up straighter. “And I think we ought to start with our old frenemy, as Sophie calls her, Thelma Mae Earnshaw. She’s the one who claims to have seen the college registrar, but what did she really see?”

They headed home, and as they pulled in noticed Gilda outside with a bucket cleaning the siding by the front step
of Belle Époque. It was such a surprising sight they stopped and Rose rolled down her window. “Gilda, what are you up to?”

She looked around stealthily, then scooted over to the car window, leaning over and poking her frizzy head in. “I’m staying out of the way. Madame has her knickers in a twist,” she said sourly.

“Why this time?” Rose asked.

Gilda looked furtive. “It was a phone call this morning that set her off.”

“Just tell us,” Laverne said, leaning across Rose. “What phone call? Who was on the line?”

“It was from the college. The dean of students wanted to chew her out for going to the dorm last night and upsetting Mac MacAlister.”

Rose and Laverne exchanged looks. “We
have
to hear about this,” Rose said.

Ten minutes later they had coaxed Thelma and Gilda over to Auntie Rose’s and had them ensconced in the tearoom at one of the smaller round tables with a cup of Auntie Rose’s Tea-riffic Tea Blend and a lemon scone with Devon cream and fresh berry coulis, something Sophie had made the day before.

“So, what happened, Thelma, and why was the college upset?”

In a halting and sniffly manner, Thelma related what had happened, finally, after many interjections and exclamations, arriving at the part where she had labored up the stairs and found the room in which Mac MacAlister held court. “You’d think he was Rudolph Valentino as the Sheik, with all those giggly girls lying around, cooing over him. One was even combing his bushy hair, for cripes’ sake!” Thelma said, her
pudgy face red with indignation. “It would be a cold day in the blistering underworld before I’d do that. Girls are so stupid. Cissy’s over the worst of that, but she’s waiting around for a proposal from that wet noodle, Wally, when she should be proposing to him herself, if that’s what she wants.”

Rose and Laverne exchanged a look. Once Thelma got up on one of her high horses, it was hard to make her dismount. The only way was to force the issue.

“So Mac MacAlister was in his room with a bunch of college girls giggling over him,” Laverne said.

“What did you say when you barged in there?” Rose added.

Thelma clattered the teacup against its saucer and moved the teapot, a figural representing a graduation cap resting on a stack of books, around. “I said, ‘Who do you have to bribe around here to change your grade?’ and he kinda looked offended. That’s when he called dorm security.”

“That was it?” Rose sighed. She’d thought the woman actually found something out.

Thelma gave her a cagey look. “Who said that was it? I skedaddled out of his room and down the hall, and this blond girl took me aside, pulled me into a room. I recognized her; she’s a reporter for the college paper, the one who’s been hanging around so much, and was at your tearoom talking to Sophie yesterday.”

“Tara Mitchells,” Laverne said.

Thelma nodded. “Anyways, she asked me a bunch of questions. I didn’t know the answer to any of ’em. Then she said something strange. She said that she had seen two people together who didn’t fit, and it made her wonder if they were all barking up the wrong tree.”

“Did she name names?” Rose asked.

Thelma grimaced. “Can’t remember. One was something that made me think about appliances.”

“What could make you think about appliances?” Laverne asked.

Thelma shook her head.

“Blender?” Rose mused. “Oven? Mixer? Vacuum? Beater? Are there any names in the case that sound like any of those?”

Laverne was biting her lip to keep from laughing, but she got control of herself and asked Thelma, “So you can’t remember the name, but what else did she say?”

“She said this fella, the appliance one, was in a car with someone she never thought she’d see him with.”

And that was it, that was all Thelma could tell them. Tara had shut up after that and snuck Thelma out of the dorm as Mac complained loudly to security.

“Now, what about this other thing, you saying you saw the registrar skulking late that night,” Rose said. “When you sent Gilda to take out the garbage?”

Gilda sniffed and crossed her arms over her chest. Pearl ambled into the kitchen just then, though, and with a glad cry Gilda sank to the floor and enticed the cat into her lap. The delicate Birman hesitated, glanced up at Rose, then climbed into the generous velour-clad lap. From then on Gilda’s mood was significantly better, as she fed the cat scones with dabs of cream.

“I did see him,” Thelma said. “Or at least . . . I saw his hat.

“You already told us that, the duffer cap,” Rose said. “So what was it made from?”

Thelma shrugged, her floral printed caftan rippling with the action. “It was a funny kind of tweed material, you know?”

“That’s not enough to accuse the man,” Rose said.

With that, Thelma got huffy again. “Well, he was the only one wearing one of those that night,” she said, and dragged Gilda back to Belle Époque.

“We need to tell Sophie to get a hold of Tara Mitchells and ask her what she told Thelma,” Rose said. “I hope that girl doesn’t do anything rash.”

“Tara?”

“No, Sophie!”

Chapter 19

V
ince Nomuro retreated to his office and Sophie sat for a moment, gathering her thoughts. When Julia came back with a hopeful look on her face, Sophie said, “Can you sit for a moment? We need to talk. What does this mean?” She pulled free the note in the pile of papers, read it over more completely, then handed it to Julia. In full, it read,

Mac’s grade is just the tip of the iceburg.
JM didn’t do anything, but I know who did. Ms. Dandridge, you should be very very carefull of all the cheets at this skool.

The professor read it, and pink flooded her cheeks. She settled herself for a moment, then looked up at Sophie. “I don’t know what this means. You’re not going to believe me, but I don’t.”

Sophie regarded her for a moment. All this time, despite doubts pinging at the back of her mind and knowing that the professor could use some extra money, she had chosen to believe Julia when she said she had nothing to do with the grade changing. Mostly, she acknowledged, because Jason trusted her. “The JM mentioned is Jason, don’t you think?”

Julia nodded, carefully avoiding Sophie’s eyes.

“Why was this note written to you? And why does it tell you to be careful?”

“It was stuck into my departmental mail slot this morning, and I piled it in with this stack of papers. I hadn’t even read it until this moment.” She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know what it means, why it tells me to be careful. Is it . . . do you think it’s a threat?” She put her hand over her stomach.

“It doesn’t sound like it,” Sophie said. An anonymous note.
Another
anonymous note, like the one that had tipped Tara off to the grade alteration in the first place. Who was the whistleblower? And why was Mac the one pinpointed?

“Julia, you never did answer my text. I sent you a note; I was told that you were crying the night of the tea stroll, that the dean said something to you, and you were upset.”

“Oh, Sophie, it wasn’t important. He told me our food was awful.” She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I burst into tears. I do that about three times a day right now. It wasn’t important; that’s why I didn’t mention it.”

Sophie watched the professor, and decided to try out one of her theories. If she was right about any of this, there was little chance that Julia was guilty of the grade change, and certainly not the murder. “I do wonder about what it means, that Mac’s grade is the tip of the iceberg. It could mean other of Mac’s grades were altered, or—more likely—that there are other departments involved, more students’ grades
changed. Vince Nomuro explained how the content management system here works. When you use your work computer, do you ever leave the office with the computer on? Have you ever come back to find someone else in your office, or just leaving it?” She should be asking Jason the same question, and she would.

“I don’t remember a specific instance, but . . .” Julia shook her head. “I’m horribly confused,” she confessed. “I feel like my brain is going into hibernation, asleep a great deal of the time.”

Sophie regarded her. “I had a waitress who said that the only real problem she had while she was pregnant was that she was thinking of a thousand things at once and worrying, so she didn’t get enough sleep and was forgetful.”

Julia nodded. “That sounds like me. I never should have gotten into the tearoom business. What was I thinking? Now, with the baby coming, I can’t afford to keep going with it if it’s ultimately going to fail.”

“Do you want my true opinion? The ruthlessly honest truth from someone who has failed in a restaurant?”

Julia nodded.

“I think you need to decide what you want from the business. If you’ve discovered that it’s not your thing, there’s no shame in that. Sell the business and the building. You’ll lose a little money, but you’ll be out of it. However, if you can be happy with it breaking even for a couple of years, you can use that time to find your niche. It’s not necessarily a bad idea, but either you find someone else to manage your place, or Kirsten needs to take a management course. And you definitely have to hire a better cook. She can’t do everything, and right now she’s not doing anything well.”

“But she’s a friend, and a great yoga instructor! I can’t fire her, and I don’t know how I’d tell her to shape up.” She
shrugged helplessly, tears in her eyes. “Maybe I should sell SereniTea.”

“Maybe,” Sophie said. “Or maybe not.” She felt for her. “After this is over, let’s talk.”

“Okay.”

Sophie pondered the note and what it could mean; the spelling was comically atrocious, but was that purposeful? Why warn Julia? Had anyone else received notes, or just her? Sophie decided she needed to put it on the back burner for now. Maybe her subconscious would have a better idea than she did. “Julia, I appreciate the idea you had, of sticking me here and bringing people to me to figure this out, but I don’t think that’s the best plan. I’d prefer to see people in their natural habitat, if you know what I mean.”

Julia nodded. “I guess I was overzealous. I want this to be over for all of our sakes. Is there anything I
can
do, though?”

“Sure. I know we said you or Jason should handle Coach Donovan, but we both know it’s best if you guys stay out of it. I’d like to talk to him. Where would I find him?”

“Heck has an office here in administrative, but he’s not usually in it. If you’ll help me get this stuff to my office,” she said about the stack of paperwork, “I’ll help you track him down.”

Ten minutes later Sophie was standing in the lobby of the gymnasium where she had attended the basketball game. Heck Donovan had his main office in the auditorium complex, but his schedule had indicated he was coaching a basketball practice at that moment. Julia had offered to come along and introduce her, but Sophie wanted to do this on her own. She wasn’t sure how she was going to proceed, but from her hopeful expression it appeared that Julia had a much better opinion of Sophie’s investigative abilities than she had of herself.

Her cell phone chimed and she noticed that she had several
text messages and a missed call. She found a secluded alcove and checked out the text from Josh. It was actually a string of texts, as he was in class and couldn’t call. He had done some research and found a few toxins that could have produced the convulsions and drooling that the dean apparently suffered. He mentioned everything from ricin, fairly easily distilled from the castor bean plant, to exotic Amazonian cane toad poisons, like the ones he and Cindy had seen at the exhibit at the college. There was a more likely one, though, he said; monkshood was a locally available plant, and deadly.

She appreciated the information, but did it help? If she was even right about the dean being poisoned, how was it introduced into his system? Was it in something he ate? And he didn’t die of poisoning, he was stabbed to death. Also, there was the wound on his neck; was it an attempt at a first stab, or something entirely different? Without access to the police information, she might never know.

She sighed deeply, staring off into space. What she wouldn’t give for a gabby police informant right that minute. How convenient for amateur sleuths in novels when someone on the police force happily spilled all the information the amateur happened to need right when they needed it. She was lucky indeed that Wally had told Cissy what little he had, that there was poison in the dean’s system.

The missed call was from Nana. Heart pounding with alarm, she stepped outside of the auditorium into the cold clear air and called the tearoom line. Nana answered and reassured her everything was fine.
She
was fine. It was just that they had a talk with Thelma Mae and she had information she thought Sophie might want before talking to folks at the college. Sophie listened with amazement to the tale of Thelma Mae’s misadventures in the dorm, and her chat with Tara Mitchells. She could hear Laverne chuckling in
the background, the warm throaty sound that had taken her through numerous teen crises, usually accompanied by her godmother’s pat on the back and a
this too shall pass
.

“I need to find Tara Mitchells to have a talk with her about what she meant by having seen two people together who didn’t fit. I also need to track down the systems engineer, Paul Wechsler. He’s not been in to work today, which could mean anything, I guess. I don’t even know if anyone has seen him since yesterday, when he had that accident outside Auntie Rose’s. I think I’ll pay the registrar another visit, though, when I’m done here.”

They chatted a moment longer and she ended the call, then reentered the auditorium. Practice was still going on; she could hear the squeak of shoes on hardwood, and the coach’s whistle, with some swearing and loud admonitions. She made her way into the gym and watched from the shadows for a while. Coach Donovan was red-faced and yelling much of the time. Mac MacAlister seemed off his game and missed most of the shots he attempted. Sophie knew little about basketball, but it appeared his timing was off. Maybe his mind was somewhere else, or maybe because he was suspended and couldn’t play in games, he didn’t care. The whole team appeared lackluster.

Finally the coach dismissed the players. Sophie wondered if she’d have a chance to talk to Mac about his grade hike, but he stormed from the court with his teammates and she was not about to follow him into the locker room. The coach, however, was another thing entirely. He stormed past her and she followed until they reached his office.

He unlocked the room, stomped in, got a can of root beer from his desk drawer, popped the top and took a long swig.

“Coach Donovan?” she said.

He whirled and glared at her. “Who are you?”

“We’ve met,” she said, striding across the room and holding out her hand. “I’m Sophie Taylor. Jason Murphy’s friend? We met the night of the basketball game at the reception for the alumni donors.”

He looked at her thrust-out hand and back up to her face, but didn’t shake. She pocketed her hand. “What do you want?” he asked and took another long slurp of his drink.

He was a no-bullcrap kind of guy, she assumed. Okay, straightforward, then. “Your star player has been accused of having one of his grades raised to keep him eligible for the team.” Even if he didn’t officially have access to the CMS, he might know a little about how it worked, probably enough to take advantage of a computer left logged on to alter a grade. He might be smarter than he looked. “I don’t know whether he asked someone to do that for him or not, I only know Jason didn’t do it. Do you have any idea who did?”

The perpetual scowl on his face deepened, the grooves bracketing his mouth shadowed and bristly with beard hairs missed during his morning shave. He was as unprepossessing a fellow as she had ever seen, but it was mostly his glower that made him so. “If I did, why would I tell you?”

Her father had told her, during one of their rare talks, that when faced with a combative individual in the business world, his best strategy had always been to disarm him with honesty, and then keep him off balance with rapid questions. Sophie wasn’t sure if she knew how to do that, but it didn’t hurt to try, since she couldn’t think of a single reason why he’d tell her anything otherwise. “Because I can tell it’s getting to you. You need to talk to someone, and I don’t matter; why not tell me? All I want is for Jason to not get in trouble.” She paused, but he stared at her, wordless. Well, at least he hadn’t tossed her out yet. “Coach, did anyone approach you about Mac’s grades?”

“We all knew he needed to get his grades up, but I never asked anyone to cut him any favors. All I said was he needed some remedial help, and could they get him a tutor.”

“Who did you say that to?”

“His adviser, Kimmy. She’s a great gal; really went to bat for Mac.”

Sophie was back to square one, in a sense, because Kimmy could still have been the one who altered the grade. “And no one else?”

“His parents; we discussed it at length. Dean of students, Lilith Klein. She was the one coming down hardest. All I asked
her
was to cut Mac some slack.” He grimaced and took a swig of root beer, hand on his stomach. “Ha, fat chance. She hates athletics. Hated that Asquith was trying to get them featured more prominently at Cruickshank. She’d like to have mathletes, not athletes.” Even a joke came out growled from Heck Donovan.

From the sounds of it, the coach was the last person who would have wanted to harm Dean Asquith, and she thought it was probably safe to rule him out as the killer. “Was she pressuring Dean Asquith to find out who among the faculty or staff had boosted Mac’s grade?”

He nodded. “Hell, yeah. She was putting on the pressure. She’s all about STEM,” he said, using the acronym for science, technology, engineering and math. “Makes her sick that more money comes to colleges from athletics than from math or science. No one ever bought team color jerseys for mathletic events, did they? I told her to suck it up, buttercup, and she got all red-faced. Mad as hell that I make more than her, probably.”

Sophie took a deep breath, and felt a moment of compassion for Dr. Klein. She also spared a thought wondering how
Heck and his wife, Penny, got along. She seemed a firebrand kind of woman, mousy
looking
but not mousy acting. She was strong-minded and resented Cruickshank. How did they deal?