One Coffee With (25 page)

“No!” cried Sandy. The white foam cup was now only a formless ball of plastic that slipped from her nerveless fingers as the girl shrank into her chair.

“Yes!” said Sigrid inexorably.

There was a stunned silence as Detective Tildon read the litany of her rights aloud, a silence broken only by Sandy Keppler’s soft, terrified denials.

When they led her away, a scared and angry David Wade insisted on going with her.

The six people who remained in the large office stared at each other, incredulous and bewildered by the sudden finality of it all.

“She said academic positions were so scarce now,” murmured Professor Simpson. The whitehaired classicist seemed distressed and uncertain. “She chided the Harris boy for not taking the high rate of unemployment seriously, but even so. . . .”

“I hope Washington doesn’t hear of her solution,” said Vance, but the quip was an automatic, mechanical response, a numb reaction to the grim reality of Sandy’s arrest.

“I don’t believe it,” said Nauman, who’d been silent. “Sometimes I
do
get back first. She wouldn’t have left it to chance.”

“You said it yourself, Oscar,” Piers Leyden reminded him. “Either way—you dead, or Riley—Wade would still get tenure. That’s the whole point. It wouldn’t make any difference to her as far as making a place for Wade on the staff goes. And maybe the chanciness of it made her feel that it was out of her hands.
Up to fate.
Kismet.”

“Anyhow,” said Jake Saxer, fingering his pointed beard and breathing easily again, “poisoning is traditionally a woman’s method.”

“Thanks a lot!” snapped Andrea Ross. “You’re saying that if Sandy weren’t guilty, I’d be the only logical alternative?” She stubbed her cigarette and stood up. “I’m going to lunch.”

Professor Simpson, still upset, began murmuring about finding a lawyer for Sandy; but before anyone could leave, Rudy Turitto, who taught photography and who, to his great regret, had missed Wednesday’s dramatics, burst into the office.

“Where’s that Lieutenant Harald?” he demanded excitedly.

When they told him, he dived for the phone book,
then
quickly dialed a number, forestalling their questions.

“Hello? Police?” he said as the call went through.

After identifying himself, he said, “Lieutenant Harald’s on her way there I’ve been told. As soon as she comes in, have her call me—Art Department, Vanderlyn College. It’s very important.”

“What’s happened, Rudy?” asked Nauman.

“It’s Harley Harris! He’s downstairs holed up in one of the graduate studios. Says he’s remembered something about Riley’s death. He was here, wasn’t he? Right there by the coffee the whole time before Riley came in? But the little bastard won’t say what it is.
Says he won’t tell it to anyone except Lieutenant Harald.”

“What could he know?” Vance asked scornfully. “Anyhow, they’ve arrested Sandy for it. They figure she killed Riley to make space on the staff for David Wade.”

“Sandy?
But that’s terrible! Are they sure?
Little Sandy?”
Professor Turitto looked distressed as the others nodded. “Oh, well,” he said, deflated, “in that case, what the Harris kid saw will just pile on more evidence, I guess.”

He turned to go. “I’ve got a class, Oscar. When the lieutenant calls back, would you give her the message?”

Nauman nodded, but his eyes were speculative as they rested briefly in turn on everyone still in the room.

Uneasily they began to drift away—some to their desks, others to the elevator. Lunch in the cafeteria wasn’t gourmet, but it was quick, and no one felt like lingering over food today.

C
HAPTER
20

I
n the studio downstairs
Harley Harris paced back and forth in an uneasy ellipse. The studio was small and crammed with canvases, easels and oddsized stretchers. It had been painted white only two years before, but already the walls were covered with anatomical drawings, mathematical formulas for problems in proportion and perspective, political slogans and a rather rude caricature of one of the red-tape lovers down in the Registrar’s Office.

There were crumpled wads of paper on the floor, and along the baseboard stood a line of coffee cans bristling with dried-up brushes and reeking of rancid turpentine. A trashy, unlovely room, but the light was good, and students with no place of their own to work elsewhere could use it on a sharedtime basis.

An enormous purple and orange batik covered a whole corner from floor to ceiling; smaller ones fluttered from the high molding; and one of Harris’s prouder efforts—a huge snowscape peopled by tiny, beetlelike figures and titled
Hommage à Brueghel
—filled another corner.

“When the
hell are
they coming?” the boy fumed and flung himself down at a rickety worktable under the tall window. He picked up a ball-point pen and tried to concentrate on exact details of Wednesday morning.

A breeze from the open window stirred the batik hangings, and Harris looked at them nervously, chewing on his weak underlip.

He jumped as the door opened, and Lemuel Vance stuck his head in. “So you
are
here,” said Vance. “Rudy Turitto said you had a hot little tidbit tucked away in your head.”

“I’m waiting for Lieutenant Harald,” the boy said, holding the papers in front of his thin chest like a shield.

“And you don’t want to unburden your soul to anyone else first?” asked Vance hopefully.

“N-no!”

“How tiresome.
Oh, well, suit yourself,” Vance shrugged and withdrew.

The door closed, and Harris returned to his narrative struggles. In less than five minutes the door opened again. The boy tensed.

“I thought you could use a cup of hot chocolate while you wait.”

Harris relaxed.
“Oh, Jesus, yes!
Thanks a lot.”

“No trouble.” The chocolate was set on the worktable beside Harley’s scrawled pages. “The police arrested Sandy Keppler, you know.”

“Sandy? But she didn’t do it.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Positive,” said the boy. “There’s something I can’t quite remember, but I’m sure it’s important. Something I heard or saw. I thought if I wrote down every single thing that happened Wednesday morning, maybe it would come back.”

“I’m sure it will,” said the other. “Perhaps the hot chocolate will help. Better drink it before it gets cold.”

“Thanks,” said Harley. “You know, you’re just about the only person here who’s been decent to me. It’s really meant a lot.”

He removed the lid from the disposable Styrofoam cup, tossed it toward the overflowing wastebasket and lifted the cup to his lips.

“Dammit, Harris!” cried an exasperated Sigrid Harald. She fought her way from behind the batik hanging. “I told you not to drink anything!”

“But it’s okay!” he protested, the cup still in midair. “Professor Simpson gave it to me.”

Albert Simpson stared at Sigrid in consternation,
then
his hand shot out and grasped the cup from Harley’s unresisting fingers. Before he could drink, however, the thin young woman wrestled it from his grip. Detective Tildon, who’d been listening at the door ever since Simpson entered the studio, now came up behind the professor and held him immobile as Sigrid
carefully
retrieved the cup.

It still held a few drops of liquid.
More than enough for analysis.

“A trap!” the old man said sadly. “Still, the boy would have told you.”

“Told
what?”
wailed Harris. “I didn’t see you do anything! I didn’t see
anybody
do anything. It was
all the
lieutenant’s idea!”

“I might have known.
Finis coronat opus,”
Simpson said gloomily and declined further speech as Tillie led him away to a waiting squad car.

C
HAPTER
21

“B
ut why
?” asked Sandy for the third time. Her bright blue eyes still showed traces of her earlier tears, but she sat at her own desk once more, and David Wade perched on the edge, holding her hand as if he never meant to let go. They had spent the last half hour in a police car behind the building where they’d waited while the trap was baited and sprung.

“He turned down the chance to be deputy chairman years ago,” Sandy said, “and he didn’t need the extra salary.”

“I don’t think money entered into it at all,” said Sigrid, leaning against the door frame by the bookcase. One hand held her closed notebook and folder. The other was jammed into the pocket of her unflattering navy blue slacks.

“No,” agreed Nauman from across the wide room. “Not money.
His book.”

“His
book
?” exclaimed Leyden. “He’s been working on that moldy thing for thirty years. What pushed him into action now?”

“The expiration of Wade’s contract, probably,” said Nauman. “I think he was genuinely fond of you, David.”

“He’s a great teacher,” the young instructor said sadly.

“You’re the first in a long time to think so.” Nauman’s tone was dry. “Most kids today are only interested in the modern. They write their doctorals on obscure German cubists or speculate on missing paintings. But you were fascinated by his Greeks and Romans,
and,”
Nauman smiled, “you’re almost as bright as Sandy thinks you are. Together you two might well have produced a great book.

“And he had Riley’s example. My fault there, I’m afraid, for giving Quinn too much leeway to use Jake as a personal researcher.” He glanced at Saxer, who flushed and looked away uncomfortably.

“In any event it made Simpson
think
he could do the same with you, David, if he were deputy chairman. The way he hated current art trends, he probably felt justified. And maybe he just got fed up with Riley’s snide cracks about classical art, and how Bert would never finish his book. Probably all those things combined.”

“But did he think I’d stay here with Sandy arrested and everyone thinking she did it for me?” asked David.

“He couldn’t have been looking that far ahead when he poisoned Quinn’s coffee,” said Sigrid. “I think he was truly upset when we arrested Miss Keppler.”

“Not half as upset as I was,” said David, grinning at Sandy idiotically through his wire-rimmed glasses.

“One little point, though, Miss Keppler,” said Tillie curiously. “We could almost have built a real case against you just on that mix-up with Harley Harris’s appointment. The dean’s secretary—” he consulted his notebook for her name “—Mrs. Meyer, said there was no urgency about the dean’s appointment with Professor Nauman that morning, and that she had told you so when she called. It really started to look as if you were trying to crowd this office with people bearing grudges.
First Szabo and then Harris.
So why didn’t you make a later appointment with Mrs. Meyer?”

Sandy’s dimples flashed tentatively. “I was afraid of her,” she confessed. “I know I shouldn’t be, but she and the president’s secretary and the dean of administration’s secretary eat lunch together every day, and they’re very good friends, and—I mean—well, they practically
run
the college.”

“The pecking order,” said Sigrid, sharing a glance of mutual understanding with Tillie. They both knew how civil service worked, and the girl’s reluctance to put off an important dean’s secretary was suddenly quite clear.

That part was Greek to Piers Leyden, and he wasn’t interested in a translation. “What I
do
want to know is how did Bert do it? Sure, he had plenty of time to
doctor
Riley’s cup while Sandy was in with Vance, but how could he be certain Riley would pick the right one?”

“And what did he think Harley saw?” asked Sandy. “By the time Harley got here, Professor Simpson was back at his desk; and I’m sure he didn’t come back in till after Professor Quinn had already taken the cup and gone into his office.”

In the last three days Sigrid had listened to many lectures from these professional teachers, and she was not loath to take the lectern herself now.

“It was a matter of good timing and simple sleight of hand,” she said. “Remember how Harley Harris sat in this chair right here by the bookcase that held the coffee tray? As someone pointed out, this office is the departmental crossroads, and it’s always jammed at the end of the third period. Now Quinn came back from class first, threaded his way through the crowd, picked up a cup and went inside, right?”

Nods and murmurs of assent.

“You were all here,” Sigrid said wickedly. “Who was next to take coffee from that tray?”

“Oscar?” someone asked doubtfully.

“Oh!” exclaimed Andrea Ross. Her eyes sparkled with comprehension.
“Of course!
I even offered to help, but he said he could manage by himself.”

“The books!
“ cried
Sandy.