The Grim Steeper Read online

  “Mmm . . . sounds odd. Was there an argument?”

  Sophie shook her head. “No, he kind of drew him aside and they walked off talking.”

  “Yes, well, before that they were talking outside SereniTea when we were gathering to move on down the street, though I wasn’t close enough to hear them. That exchange looked heated.”

  “Was that before or after the dean’s conversation with the registrar?” Sophie asked.

  “After, I think. I’m pretty sure.” Julia chewed her lip, her gaze unfocused. “I’ve been wondering ever since the grading problem came out if Paul was a culprit. He’d know exactly how and when. And he’d even be able to make it look like someone else did it. The timing of the grade change was perfect to pin it on Jason. Knowing Paul was talking to Dale last night makes me worried. I’ve thought all along that Dale should bring in an independent forensic technician to go over the computer data, but no, he didn’t want gossip to spread. Said we’d handle it ‘the Cruickshank way,’ whatever that is.”

  “Hushing things up and hoping for the best,” Jason interjected.

  “But why would Paul Wechsler do that, alter Mac’s grade?” Sophie asked.

  “Bribery? The gossip is that Paul wants Jeanette to leave Dale. He’s intent on starting his own business, and for that he needs money. In fact, to do anything with Jeanette he needs money.”

  This echoed what Sophie had heard from Elizabeth Lemmon, and was a kind of independent verification of the theory. Elizabeth wasn’t the only one pointing the finger at Paul Wechsler. “Okay. So he’s a candidate, for sure. But we can’t get stuck on the theory that whoever did the grade alteration also killed the dean. I mean, if we’re going for affairs, then the dean’s mistress was there; I saw her,” Sophie said. “She seemed upset because the dean was ready to move on, or already had.”

  Julia bit her lip, then said, “You know, gossip is so the worst trait of the college community. However, it could help us figure this out right now. The scuttlebutt is that Dale was playing hardball with Sherri. She thought she could pressure him into making a commitment to her by openly dating other men.”

  “So him trying to dump her was a power play?”

  Jason furrowed his brow and looked from one to the other of them. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you just love him?” Julia said, hitching her thumb in Jason’s direction. “So clueless. Because he’s a nice guy and would never manipulate someone or treat anyone like crap, he doesn’t realize that other guys do it all the time.”

  “I know. It’s adorable.” Sophie ruffled his hair.

  He jerked his head away. “Stop. I don’t get it.”

  “The games people play, Jason,” Julia said, folding her arms on the desk and leaning forward. She was fully back to professional, smart, even-tempered Professor Dandridge now. “Sherri Shaw wanted Dale to leave Jeanette and was trying to make him jealous by going out with other men. She thought he’d try to keep her. Instead, he decided to break it off, or maybe he said so to keep her in line, you know . . . make her aware of her place in his life.”

  “In the shadows,” Jason said.

  “Oh!” Sophie was reminded of the night before. “In the shadows!” She told them what she had seen, and both agreed that the dean was too big for someone to wrestle his body into the hedges. “So if that was him I saw with someone else, he was alive at that point.”

  “How much time was there between what you saw and you finding his body?”

  Sophie thought back. “About half an hour, I’d say?”

  “Okay, on to other people outside of the Asquiths’ affairs. What about Heck Donovan?” Jason said.

  “The coach?” Sophie said. “That’s stretching things, isn’t it?”

  “You didn’t see all the interactions I did, Soph. Dean Asquith and the coach had a heated argument that evening.”

  “I did notice them all there,” she replied. “The coach, his wife, Mac and what looked to be Mac’s parents?”

  “That’s what started it all,” Jason said. “I was sticking to the dean’s group, trying to get a chance to talk to him before today. I thought the tea stroll was my only shot. Once he made his announcement, I figured he’d be stuck with the story or risk embarrassment, and if you know—knew—Asquith, he doesn’t—didn’t—do embarrassment.”

  Julia nodded in agreement. “I thought it was your only hope, too, if Dale was actually going to announce he had proof you did it.” She shook her head and added, “Even though we know he didn’t, not what we’d call proof, anyway.”

  Sophie watched Julia, and a sudden thought assailed her. What if Julia was the one who changed the grade? SereniTea was not doing as well as she had hoped, and now she and Nuñez had a baby on the way; wasn’t she the perfect candidate for bribery, over anyone? They only had her word for it that when she saw the grade it was already an A. She glanced at Jason. He’d never believe it about his friend and colleague, not in a million years, and it was nothing she could ask either of them about. It was something she had to think about. However . . . Julia would never have killed the dean. Sophie was not wedded to the theory that the grade changer and the killer were one and the same.

  And on the subject of grades . . . “Were any other grades changed? It may not be just Mac MacAlister’s A we’re talking about, right?” Sophie suddenly asked.

  Julia looked shocked. “No one has said. Maybe there are others, and they haven’t come to light yet!”

  “But that doesn’t mean the dean didn’t know about them.”

  “That’s true,” Jason said.

  “Or maybe . . .” Sophie considered what she knew and didn’t. “Could there be more that haven’t been discovered yet, and the dean was close to finding out about them? That would be motive for killing him.”

  Julia put her head in her hands and moaned. “It’s too much. There are too many possibilities here!”

  “But we can narrow them down,” Sophie insisted. “Some folks will have alibis. You two can talk to people that I can’t. Most of them are from the college, and I’m sure you can find an excuse, especially given what happened and your connection to each other, right?”

  Julia watched her speak, wide-eyed, then said to Jason, “I hope you know you’ve got a keeper here. This girl is smart, ten times more than half the grad students at Cruickshank.”

  That was a mixed compliment, Sophie thought, meaning that Julia hadn’t expected her to be so smart because she didn’t attend a traditional college. But she smiled, deciding to take the good, which was that Julia appeared to see them as a couple.

  Jason reached around and put his arm over her shoulders. “I knew my two favorite ladies would hit it off!”

  They parted ways, with Jason and Julia agreeing they would try to find out where some of the players were when the actual crime happened. Julia was also going to try to find out what the dean was actually going to say that day. Maybe he would have cleared Jason of suspicion and fingered someone else, though Jason seemed pretty sure he was being railroaded for the deed.

  Sophie was going after whomever she could find to question. Tara Mitchells was first on her list; she was going to approach her, ostensibly to chew her out over her Clarion story. There was also Kimmy Gabrielson, who seemed so attached to Mac that she’d do anything for him, maybe even change his grade. If she got caught by the dean, what would the consequences be to her career? But she also decided not to rely on Jason and Julia for the others, and would take any chance she could to go after those at Cruickshank; as employees of the college, they might be wary of questioning people they knew, like the registrar and his assistant.

  There were two questions they needed to answer: Who changed the basketball star’s grade, and who killed Dean Asquith? Sophie was keeping an open mind, because those two questions may or may not have anything to do with one another.

  * * *
/>   Thelma sat at her window overlooking the lane between her and Rose’s establishments and simmered; stewing in her own juices, her cranky grandma used to call it when little Thelma Mae Hendry would sulk and gripe. There came Sophie in the dark, back from who knew where, trudging up to the side door like the world was on her shoulders.

  That girl wouldn’t know about trouble until she lost her husband, her daughter, and had a sulky teen granddaughter and a troublesome grandson to worry about. Even years after her daughter’s lingering illness and death, trouble hadn’t stopped coming for Thelma; she still worried about her grandkids. Cissy was okay, she guessed, but Phil . . . he was always a concern. He was coming home soon from working in Ohio at some kinda trucking company. As much as she would be happy to see him, there also came the worries of what he would be up to next. Nearly got himself in jail so many times she’d lost count. Heck, he’d been in the pokey a time or two.

  The light went on in Auntie Rose’s kitchen as Sophie slunk in. That girl had been up all night, baking and fussing, talking to that detective woman. Her heart compressed a skosh. The trick she’d pulled on Sophie with the salt, that was nasty. Behindsight was twenty-twenty, folks said, and Thelma could see now that she’d just had her nose outta joint. Sophie had tried to include her even if that professor woman hadn’t. Sophie was a nice girl, and she’d been kind to Cissy more than once. Why had Thelma gone and ruined it like she always did?

  Maybe she could make it up to her. She picked up her cell phone and examined it, squinting at the tiny screen. Okay, so Cissy had put in the phone numbers she’d most likely need from a list Thelma had given her. There was a thingie that looked kinda like a telephone receiver; she poked at it, and the screen lit up and showed a list of people. She used her stubby finger to make the screen do what the kids called scrolling, though there was precious little scrollwork that she could see. She stabbed one number and watched out the window across the alley.

  Sophie raced and picked up the phone after glancing at the call display. “Mrs. Earnshaw, you’ve dialed out again.”

  “Sophie? That you?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Earnshaw. You’ve accidentally dialed out again. Over here. To Auntie Rose’s.”

  “Not an accident. Why does everyone think it’s always an accident?”

  “Oh. What can I help you with, Mrs. Earnshaw?”

  The girl was polite; she had to give her that. Sophie Taylor had been raised right, not like those hooligans nowadays who wouldn’t move out of the way when she was trotting down the sidewalk. Maybe she’d get herself one of those scooter thingies and run ’em down. Like a cartoon, she could see little hooligan bodies flying to the right and left of her as her scooter, with flames painted along the body, plowed through ’em. Then who would have the last laugh?

  “Mrs. Earnshaw?”

  “Yeah,” she said, coming back from a pleasant daydream. “Sophie. Right. I think we oughta get together. Counsel of war, you know, a powwow.”

  “I don’t think that’s what a powwow is—a counsel of war, you know—and I’m not sure you should say powwow nowadays anyway, ma’am.”

  Thelma squinted and looked at the phone. Almost sounded like that girl was laughing at her, but that couldn’t be right, because she was dead serious. Dead, as in Dean Asquith dead. Asquith; if ever there was a name deserved to be laughed at, that was it. “I saw who did it, Sophie.”

  “Did what?”

  “I know who killed that miserable man, that cheating dog of a dean, Asquith.”

  Chapter 12

  Sophie was silent for a few seconds. What was Mrs. Earnshaw saying? “I don’t understand. Who is it? How do you know?”

  “I’ll tell you all later. You bring Rose and Laverne over at ten and we’ll talk. I got something else to do right now.”

  Sophie was about to demand more information, when the phone line went dead. She glanced through the kitchen window over to the main floor kitchen of Belle Époque and saw Mrs. Earnshaw get up from the table with difficulty and toddle out of the room. The police had probably told her what they had told Sophie and her grandmother, that both establishments would be closed for at least that day, so she couldn’t be going to get ready to open up. Besides, she thought, glancing at the clock, it was only six in the morning.

  Something else to do right now, she had said. It crossed Sophie’s mind that that could be ominous, or it could mean she was going to get something to eat. She cleaned up the kitchen and packaged the extra food she had made, tucking it away in the freezer. Nana descended, and they had breakfast, of course talking about the crime, and she told her grandmother about the meeting at SereniTea.

  “Then something weird happened,” she said, glancing over at her grandmother. She told her about Thelma’s phone call and ominous last words. “What do you think she meant?”

  Pearl had ambled down the stairs and now stood on her hind legs, patting at Nana’s blue housecoat. Nana picked up the cat and settled her on her lap. “Who knows with Thelma? Maybe it would be wise to give Cissy a call, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Good idea. I want to talk to Dana anyway. She’s in a book club with Kimmy Gabrielson, and I need to talk to that girl about Mac MacAlister and her own whereabouts last night after the tea walk. Cissy may be at the bookstore, too.” Peterson Books ’n Stuff, Cissy’s business, employed Cissy’s best friend, Dana, as sole employee, while Cissy drifted in and out, taking care of the business end of ordering. Dana did the actual work of deciding what books would be bought, since Cissy’s favorite part was the “Stuff”: pens, mugs, stuffed animals, crystals, jewelry, greeting cards and book-related paraphernalia, like bookmarks,.

  She was actually very canny about all of that, and with Dana’s exquisite design sensibility, the store was a cozy welcoming nook. But as in many college towns, one steady source of income was used textbooks. Even in a digital age, physical books were still needed; Cissy wisely capitalized on that, building a thriving buy-and-sell used textbook business. Her store was a haven for thrifty Cruickshank students.

  It was nine; the bookstore would be open and hopefully Dana would answer first.

  “Peterson Books ’n Stuff,” Dana said on answering the phone.

  “Hey, Dana.”

  “Oh, hey, Sophie. I was about to call you, but I wanted to get a coffee first. So, now you’re knocking off college deans outside your tearoom?”

  “Ha-ha, very funny,” Sophie said. Her all-nighter was beginning to wear on her, she realized, and she threw herself down on the sofa in her living room. “I called for a few reasons.”

  “Wait a minute, girlfriend. Not so fast, You are going to tell me every second of what happened last night, as I listen breathlessly and inhale a cup of coffee—Eli stayed over last night and I did not get a lot of sleep, if you know what I mean—but I want to hear it all.”

  Sophie complied, knowing it would take longer to talk Dana around to what she wanted to know, than to explain what happened and move on from there.

  “Wow,” Dana said when Sophie finished her tale. “That’s awful!” She sounded more serious, not as flippant. Death had a tendency to do that to a person.

  “I know. The reason I’m calling you is—”

  “Hold on a sec; Cissy just came in.” Dana put the receiver down and Sophie could hear a muffled conversation in the background, with some exclamations, and a few Wows and Oh nos

  After a few minutes, Dana came back with a clatter of high heels and clanking jewelry. “Hey, Soph . . . sorry, but Cissy had news.”

  “Really?” She hoped it wasn’t news of the sort of who kissed who, or which of their friends was getting married next, but more along the lines of the murder investigation. Given that Wally and Cissy were practically living together—though no one whispered a word of that to Thelma—it was possible.

  “Really. I guess her grandmother called her last night about the dean be
ing killed, and so when Wally came home, Cissy grilled him but good. He was tired and trying to shut her up—okay, so that’s how I saw it, not what Cissy said—and ended up telling her stuff he probably shouldn’t have.”

  “Like? Don’t be a tease, Dana. I have to go over to Mrs. Earnshaw’s; she’s called some kind of meeting and told us all to come over.”

  “Nuh-uh . . . first, you have got to tell me . . . what did it look like the dean died of, to you?”

  “Hard to tell. He looked contorted, and there was drool hanging from his mouth. He appeared bluish to me. I saw a wound on his neck, too, and a lot of blood soaking through his shirt at the chest.” She paused and shuddered. “I wasn’t exactly giving him a physical.”

  “That’s enough. Okay, so from what Wally told Cissy, there are signs of poisoning so they’re doing toxicology tests, and he did have a scrape on his neck. But he likely died from the stab wound in his chest.”

  Sophie stilled. Poisoning, a wound on his neck and stabbed? Someone had wanted him very dead. Like, dead enough for two people. Was it possible that there was more than one assailant? Or was it one very determined killer?

  “Sophie?” Dana said.

  “I’m here. Stabbed; crap, that’s serious. Thanks for the info. Is Cissy still there?”

  “Sure. She’s checking our inventory of used textbooks. Thanks to her, we’re making a killing—pardon the pun—from Cruickshank students.”

  “May I speak to her?”

  “Okay, but first, who do you think did it?”

  “I don’t have a single idea. But I sure do know of a lot of people who may have wanted him dead.”

  “Besides Jason?”

  “Dana!” She heard the stifled chuckle, but this was nothing to kid about. Sometimes Dana’s sense of humor came out in odd ways. “Yes, besides, Jason. Like Kimmy Gabrielson. She says she doesn’t have any feelings for Mac MacAlister, but that’s not what I saw last night. I’d say she has it for him bad, and that’s not appropriate given their professional relationship.”