The Grim Steeper: A Teapot Collector Mystery (24 page)

“Next time I get a brilliant idea I’m going to run it past you first,” she whispered fervently to Jason. “You’re the level head to my impulsivity.”

“Next time,” he murmured back, squeezing her hand. “We’re in it now, so keep your head in the game.”

They sank down together in the shadows by the wall, right near the door into the office, and Sophie prayed as she crouched in silence. There was some noise in the office. Sophie could hear Julia clear her throat and shuffle some papers, and she said softly, “Testing.” Sophie rapped on the floor in their prearranged signal.

There was silence for a while, just the sound of Julia sighing, rattling through papers, muttering under her breath and her chair squeaking. But finally there was a tapping at the back door, which led directly from the office out to the parking area behind the shop. Sophie almost held her breath, listening.

“You came,” Julia said. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

There was a murmur. Sophie’s prayer switched to an earnest one that the confession-slash-revelation they hoped to get was audible on tape. Had Josh done everything right? Was the recording device on? Would the killer reveal everything they needed for a conviction? Had the police showed up outside, which was Cissy’s part in this all?

“Have a seat and let’s get down to business.”

Sophie almost didn’t recognize Julia’s voice, and she exchanged a glance with Jason. But he nodded; like most people, she probably had a voice she used normally, in conversation, and one she saved for talking to difficult people when the need to be stern overrode any desire to placate. Jason would have heard that businesslike tone before.

“Let’s. I’m not quite sure what you meant by what you said on the phone, but if you think I have something to do with this whole grading mess, then I’m ready to listen.”

Sophie took in a deep breath. So that was how Brenda Fletcher was going to play it, as the mystified innocent; okay, then Julia would have to be canny. She let her breath out quietly, hoping the professor could handle what was on her shoulders.

Chapter 23

“C
ome on, Brenda, I
know
you’re behind it all. Do you think I haven’t been working on figuring this out since Asquith first talked about the fake grade? And do you think I ever for a
moment
assumed it would be just one student’s grade? Quite frankly, Jason’s not smart enough to take money for changing a grade.”

Sophie squeezed Jason’s hand in the dark. There had been no response from Brenda.

“But
I
am,” Julia said.

Sophie felt a spurt of fear; right now, on tape, that would play like a confession of grade changing from Julia. They needed Brenda to come through with her own confession.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” Brenda asked, sitting down and shifting position, from the sounds coming through the headphones.

There was silence for a long minute. Then Julia said, “I’ll
tell you what I know. After a little digging I know that you were on the archery team while an undergrad.” That was amazingly simple to find out, since Brenda had done her undergrad degree at Cruickshank. It was all there, in the recent athletic history of the school. Sophie had discovered it in minutes once she knew what they were looking for.

“And I know that when Coach Donovan approached you about upping the grades of some of his critical players, like Mac MacAlister, he also promised the cooperation of the football coach,” Julia continued. “You got the idea to also help out a particular grad student who is poised to go to the Olympics if she can keep training with the Cruickshank archery coach. For that she needs to keep her archery scholarship, which requires a B or better.”

Sophie nodded. She was sticking to script.

Brenda was silent, and so was Julia. But finally the assistant registrar said, “That’s quite the fairy tale you’ve spun.” There was suspicion in her voice.

This was the moment; Sophie felt it. When you were trying to get someone to do something, there was always a moment when it hung suspended, on the precipice. Anything Julia said now would either tip Brenda over the edge into trust, or make her back away from the edge in hardened suspicion.

“Brenda, I need you to let me in on this,” Julia said, urgency threading through her tone. “Now that Dale is dead, I can find a way to hush this up,” she continued. “I don’t know what Dale was going to tell the media, and I don’t care. It’s lucky he died before being able to speak. I’ll bet Paul killed Dale, he was so anxious to get Jeanette to himself. Or maybe Jeanette killed her husband; I never did like her.”

There was a protracted silence. Sophie waited. She and Julia had decided against having her admit to Brenda that
she knew the assistant registrar was the dean’s killer. Brenda was unlikely to believe that Julia would shield a murderer out of greed so she could get in on the scam.

Sophie crossed her fingers as she glanced at her lit watch dial. Eight o’clock. Josh would have provided the police with a headset now, and they’d be listening in. She hoped they didn’t interrupt, as they may feel they should.

“Okay, say I believe that you can hush up the grade scandal thingie,” Brenda said. “Though I don’t admit anything. Why would you, a hoity-toity professor on the tenure track, be willing to risk it all to alter grades?”

“Because I can,” Julia said, her tone smug, with a hint of laughter. “That’s exactly why; no one will suspect me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I
need
this, Brenda, badly,” Julia said, her voice breaking.

Sophie’s eyes widened. Good touch!

“I’m keeping things together, but just barely. I’m almost broke, I’m . . . I’m pregnant, and my husband is going to leave me if I drive us into bankruptcy with this stupid, god-awful teahouse,” she said, her voice harsh and grating. “I hate it! You saw what it was like the night of the stroll; bad food, bad management. What was I
thinking
? And now I’m going to bring a baby into this . . . this
mess
. I’m going to have to sell this place, but if I don’t get some money soon, I’ll lose everything. I’m desperate.”

“So you
need
me,” Brenda said, her tone gloating.

Bingo. Sophie squeezed Jason’s hand. They had her.

“I didn’t say that,” Julia replied. “I could go ahead and set this up on my own, and I think I’m probably smarter than you, so
I
won’t get caught.”

Sophie’s eyes widened. That wasn’t part of the script!
No, no! Julia don’t blow it
, she thought.

“You think you’re smarter than me?” Brenda bellowed.

Or maybe taunting an egoist like Brenda was just the right move.
Brava, Julia
, as Jason would say.

“I
know
I’m smarter than you. After all, I figured out your scheme, right?”

“Every professor and teacher at Cruickshank thinks they’re so damned smart,” Brenda griped. “Bunch of frickin’ losers. If you were so smart, you wouldn’t be teaching at a third-rate college with the rest of these boneheads. I’m
so
much smarter than all of you, because I figured out a way to double my measly salary. I did it
all
, my own plan. You’re dead wrong, you know. Heck Donovan didn’t approach me, I approached
him
, even though he didn’t know it was me! He
thought
he was dealing with Vince, can you believe it?”

Sophie almost gasped in surprise. That was kind of brilliant, to do all of that and yet hide behind a third party.

“Asquith didn’t know it was me, either,” she said.

“Well, no; he thought it was Vince, right?”

Brenda chuckled. “Yeah, I had everyone confused. Vince thought it was Paul, and Paul thought it was Vince. The dean thought it was Vince, too, and wanted Paul to prove it.”

“That couldn’t have gone on forever,” Julia said. “Was it just luck that Dale was murdered that night?”

Sophie tensed; how were they going to get Brenda to admit she killed the dean? Surely she wouldn’t just say she did it. The confession they needed felt like a long shot now; maybe they hadn’t planned it quite well enough. So far all they had was the grade fixing.

Brenda sighed. “You know what, I’m sorry it’s come to this. But I can’t let you join my little scheme, and I certainly can’t have you approaching student athletes on your own. I think . . . yeah, you’re going to have to be a sad victim of circumstances.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Paul may have suspected that you were the grade fixer all along; I can find a way to support that. So you killed him, then out of remorse came back here and took your own life. It’s messy, and not what was supposed to go down, but it has as good a chance as any of working. Big risk, big reward.”

Sophie stared into the shadows, listening to the madness.

“Brenda, what are you talking about?” Julia asked, a note of real fear quavering through her voice.

Sophie felt for Jason’s hand and squeezed one more time. It was time to end this farce. She slowly, quietly rose from her squatted position, but her feet were numb and she stumbled slightly.

“What are you looking for?” Julia said sharply, her words covering up, hopefully, the faint noise Sophie had made.

“That’s a nice letter opener, kind of Oriental, and pointy.” There was a clatter. “You know, Dale never saw it coming. I’m sure he felt the arrow I shot from across the street in the dark, even though it just nicked his neck. Enough to get a little aconite in his bloodstream, anyway, and make him shaky and weak. I’m a pretty good shot; I should have gone to the Olympics myself, but I have other plans.” She paused, then said, in a conversational tone, “Trouble was, Dale was going to name the wrong person, true, but a little digging by anyone, even that stupid news brat, and folks would have figured out it was me who altered the grades using Vince’s computer and password.”

“But the worst that would have happened was you’d get fired, right?”

“Maybe. But then I wouldn’t be able to get another job as registrar, right? So many schools, so many student athletes, all longing for good grades. Cruickshank was just the beginning for me. I’ll do it again, and do it better. I needed a distraction, a fall guy. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was
going to do to cover my tracks, but getting rid of Dale seemed like a good first step. He met me there like the schmuck he was—he always did underestimate women—and never saw it coming until the moment I got real close and plunged my arrow in his chest, twisting it before pulling it out. The snob had it coming to him.” The sound of a chair pushing away from the desk rattled in their headphones.

Julia, her voice quivering with honest fear this time, said, “Brenda, you
killed
Dale? I didn’t think . . . I mean—”

“Of
course
you didn’t think.”

There was a noise outside, a car door slamming.

“What was that?” Brenda said.

“The police, coming to get you!” Julia shrieked. “Jason, Sophie!”

That was their cue; together they surged toward the office door, but it flung open and knocked them backward onto the floor. Brenda, swearing, clattered through the dim rooms to the tearoom entrance; the front door banged open, a motion detector alarm going off. “Jason, make sure Julia is okay,” Sophie said, springing back onto her feet. “I have to follow Brenda!”

Jason grabbed her and kissed her and said, “Go get ’em, tiger! But don’t do anything stupid.”

Sophie dashed through the dark tearoom after Brenda and out of the front. A police car was on the other side of the street, and the detective was getting out, her service revolver in her hands. Brenda dashed down the street toward her pricey little Porsche Boxster.

“Stop! Police!” Detective Morris shouted, pointing the gun at Brenda’s back, but the woman started zigzagging.

Sophie raced after her and saw the beautiful moment when Brenda Fletcher went flying, tumbling down the sloped street,
tripped by a rolling walker shoved in her way by Mr. Bellows and his two companions. Thelma Mae Earnshaw hobbled over to the downed young woman and began whaling away at her with a heavy ancient pocketbook constructed out of the finest alligator skin, shouting unintelligible swear words. She had to be hauled off the murderess by Officer Wally Bowman, who contained her as Detective Morris shoved Brenda Fletcher’s face down into the dirt and grass and made the arrest, with all the appropriate warnings.

*   *   *

T
hree hours later, as Sophie and the rest waited in Auntie Rose’s tearoom, they got the news. Paul Wechsler and Kimmy Gabrielson had been found unharmed in Brenda Fletcher’s basement. Paul admitted that he had gone to see Brenda to try to blackmail her, since he had figured out she was behind the grade scam. She agreed to pay him off and convinced him she had a safe full of money in her basement. He underestimated her. She led him there and knocked him out, tying him up while he was unconscious. Her intentions toward him were unclear, but Sophie wondered if she was going to stage something that would make it look like Paul was behind it all, and had killed the dean, too, before committing suicide out of remorse.

That plot was messed up when Kimmy Gabrielson came hammering on her door demanding answers. Kimmy, gullible as could be, followed the assistant registrar downstairs, where Brenda said she had all the information that Kimmy would need to expose the real guilty party. Kimmy, too, was neatly knocked out and confined with Paul Wechsler as Brenda went to meet Julia, trying to decide what the professor knew, if anything.

Brenda Fletcher was digging herself deeper and deeper into a hole, despite her posturing bravado toward Julia. Her plot was becoming tortured and overcomplicated, and she would have been found out at some point soon, since the police were closing in on her and Vince Nomuro as the logical suspects. Brenda had already brought attention to herself by being the one who questioned Jason’s timeline with the police. It seemed she was not above throwing shade wherever she could. But thanks to Sophie, Julia and the others, Paul and Kimmy were unharmed, and the police had what appeared to be an airtight case against the assistant registrar.

*   *   *

“W
hat gave you the idea that it was Brenda behind the grade altering and not Vince?” Julia asked the next day, as they all sat in the now-open Auntie Rose’s tearoom.

Sophie poured her a cup of mint tea and smiled, deeply grateful that the professor seemed none the worse for a frightening confrontation with a killer. “There were a few things. It snowballed, I guess. Random facts. I noticed all the pins on Brenda Fletcher’s jacket when I met her in the bookstore the day after the murder, but what I didn’t realize was the pin I thought was for her birth sign, Sagittarius, couldn’t be, because her birthday is the end of October and Sagittarius doesn’t start until late November. She’s a Scorpio, a scorpion.

“Why would she wear a Sagittarius pin, then? Well, she wouldn’t, but I realized if it wasn’t a zodiac sign, then the pin was simply an archer. When I found out what the postulated weapon in killing the dean was, that it had to be barbed
to do the damage it did internally, I thought of an arrow, and more specifically a poison arrow, which could have caused the nick on the dean’s neck and his other symptoms. Furthermore, when I cleaned out our carpet cleaner, there were feathers clogging it. I couldn’t figure out where they came from until I learned Brenda was into archery, and I remembered a friend in prep school who made all her own arrows. Brenda was one of the few people who actually was in the tearoom, so I wondered if they came out of her coat pocket. I’ll never know for sure, I guess. We know the rest from her own words; she actually did use poison on the arrow, aconite, which incapacitated the dean somewhat. Then she came right up to him and stabbed him with another arrow, pulled it out, and carried it away with her.”