The Probability of Murder (28 page)

“Hey, Sophie.”

“Hey, Virgil?”

My senses were on alert, judging Virgil’s tone before he said another word. Not low and sad, as if he had bad news about Bruce, but not happy either, so he hadn’t heard from anyone in New Hampshire. It must be about Daryl.

“Listen, we found your duffel bag, the one that was taken from your garage. Your travel clock was still in it.”

I groaned. Of all things I cared about, the duffel bag, with or without the travel alarm, was near the bottom of my list.

“Great, thanks, Virgil.”

“Actually the guys found it Saturday night in a park Dumpster near your house, but I wanted to wait to see if anything came of it before I told you.”

“That’s nice. Thanks.”

I wasn’t sure what was up with Henley’s homicide squad that they spent so much time on a cheap duffel bag with some toiletries and an atomic travel clock. By now the bag may have been tossed around so much that the clock was broken. Surely they weren’t going to drag me to the station to pick it all up.

“I know it seems unimportant, but what’s interesting is whose fingerprints are on the clock.”

“I assume they’re Daryl’s,” I said.

“Nope. One set came back to your treasurer, Martin Melrose, the other to a low-level con artist, Garrett Paulsen.”

I gasped. “Marty and Garrett broke into my house?”

“The whole thing doesn’t compute, since there were no other fingerprints inside your house or on the electronic bug. I guess they got careless in the garage. Paulsen’s prints are on the handle of the bag; Melrose’s are on the clock.”

“But Mr. Gold—”

“We have to throw this into the mix with Gold’s statement of seeing only one intruder, Sophie. We’ll talk about it. The reason I’m calling you now is we’re on our way to pick up Melrose and the kid, if we can find him. I know you’re on campus, so I just want to say, keep away from Melrose’s office.”

“You think he killed Charlotte? Or Garrett did?”

“I think everyone killed her, until further notice. I’m just saying. You never know when things can get messy, and I don’t want you there. I have enough problems worrying about…” Virgil coughed and I shut my eyes so tight a pain shot through my head.

“Worrying about Bruce? Is that what you were going to say? Is there news about Bruce?”

“No, nothing yet. You know I’ll tell you right away, and I know you’ll do the same.”

“Okay.”

I brought my breathing back to normal.

I hung up and hit talk in preparation for calling Marty’s office, right above me. I decided that for once I’d obey Virgil and cancel lunch with Marty. Not that I believed him to be Charlotte’s killer, but eating alone from my sack of whatever Ariana had dreamed up sounded better to me anyway.

I stepped out of my private little alcove and headed for the side entrance I’d just used, clicking the phone on as I walked.

I took three steps forward and felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Sophie,” Marty Melrose said, running his fingers through his hair with his free hand.

“Martin, I was just going to call you. I—”

He pushed the elevator button and nudged me toward the car. “We can ride up together.”

At least I’d be able to tell Virgil that I’d tried to stay away from Martin Melrose.

We rode up in silence in the creaky elevator that was as old as the building. Admin workers claimed it was the last passenger elevator in the country with a metal gate that had to be manually pulled shut before the machine would move. The car smelled of rust and soggy plaster, causing me to look around for leaks.

Martin cleared his throat several times, and, I guessed, was using coughing noises to mask the awkwardness of the silence.

Martin’s expression was somewhere between sad and worried.

I had no reason to be afraid of Martin Melrose, I told myself. He was the one who should be worried, with his prints all over my alarm clock. The farther back in time Virgil’s phone call became, the less I could picture Marty rummaging in my garage. I began to think the fingerprint analysis was wrong. Virgil’s warning was just Virgil being overprotective.

It was Daryl Farmer we all had to be afraid of, not a mild-mannered accounting major from the sixties.

Anyway, Marty wasn’t in very good shape. He was a designer dresser, for sure, but his body was definitely low-end, approaching Social Security age and badly in need of exercise. Short as I was, I could defend myself against him if I had to. And Virgil had said he was on the way.

Nevertheless, when the elevator doors opened to a bustling second floor, full of deans and vice presidents and their staffs, I felt my shoulders relax. I thought I’d never forgive Charlotte for living a life that ended in murder and thus caused me to be more fearful than at any time I could remember.

We arrived at Marty’s small waiting area, free of anyone who looked like the loser Garrett. Too bad, since I’d been hoping I’d see at least one other person in the English Collegiate Gothic building dressed worse than I was.

I plunked my cloth drawstring lunch bag on the small round conference table in Marty’s office. I waited while he pulled a soft leather sack from his desk, thus becoming the only person I knew who had a lunch bag as expensive as my best briefcase. Marty took a seat. His expression had turned sour, as if he’d already eaten his lunch and it hadn’t been very good.

Seeing the school’s chief financial officer in such a sorry state somehow energized me, bad person that I am, and I felt I’d never have as good an opportunity to get closure on Charlotte’s activities on school grounds. And maybe at a convenience store in Bailey’s Landing.

Marty got ahead of me, however, opening the discussion by scratching his head and saying, “You know, Sophie, I’m not really sure why we’re having this lunch. Not that it isn’t pleasant to see you here at the heart of the college, mind you, where you’re always welcome.”

Another time, I might have been miffed at the suggestion that Franklin Hall was a dispensable appendage of the college, far from its beating administrative heart. But today, with Virgil on the way and Marty about to be taken in for
questioning, if not arrested, I felt confident. An impossible image came, of Marty with his bow tie and high-end lunch sack in a prison cell for the crime of burglary against me.

“And the same goes for you, Marty,” I said, working to make his name sound cute. “We’d love to see you anytime out there in the buildings where the actual work of teaching and learning takes place.”

I smiled, as if to say,
If you’re only joking, so am I.

As I swung my head and my arm to reference the outlying buildings, I looked out the tall, narrow windows and caught a glimpse of the Emily Dickinson Library, a much newer building than Admin. One of the admirable architectural features of Marty’s building was the enormous size and position of the stately windows. From the outside, the array of windows resembled a beautiful block matrix.

On a more practical note, their sills were only a couple of feet from the floor. This meant than even a short person could see out to the campus below.

This short person was now able to see the door to the library. I experienced a simultaneous shot of memory back to when Martin Melrose made a comment to me about locking the doors of buildings on campus. It might have been his indifferent reaction to a murder on campus, or it might have been the remark of the person who’d taken advantage of an unlocked door to the library last Thursday night.

Of all the things Marty could have said to warn me about security, why that one? He might have said, “Don’t stay late” or “Be sure you have someone with you.”

How would Marty know the Emily Dickinson Library door had been left unlocked, thanks to a couple of students who had to get to Nathaniel Hawthorne dorm’s version of a kegger? If he was Charlotte’s killer, what was his backup plan if the door had been locked? Did he have his own key?

I wished I’d paid more attention to the special security brochure all faculty and staff received. I remembered vaguely that it contained a list of all those who had master keys to campus buildings, by title, not by name. I’d glanced at the page and recognized that only the top tier of
administrators were on the list but I couldn’t remember if Associate Vice President for Finance/Controller, Marty’s official title, was one of the trusted offices.

I couldn’t let that detail derail me now.

“You gave yourself away, Marty,” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You all but told me the library door was unlocked the night Charlotte was killed, and I’m saying the reason you knew is because you were able to walk right in and attack the person who was scamming you out of lottery money.”

The accusation sounded lame to me. I had to remind myself that this was part of my plan, the hastily-put-together plan I’d just concocted. Let Marty think I suspected him of murder and maybe he’d confess to robbery and I’d find out why he took my duffel bag.

“You think I killed Charlotte?” Marty let out a high-pitched laugh that was at war with his pinstripes. “You are so far off the charts.”

“Then put me on a chart,” I said, though I had an intense dislike of sports metaphors. “And while you’re at it, explain why your fingerprints are on my stolen travel alarm clock.”

Marty’s eyes widened. I felt an explosion coming on and surreptitiously pushed my chair back and moved to its edge for a quick getaway. I listened for noise in the hallway and was happy to hear chatter.

“It was Garrett Paulsen. All Garrett.”

I didn’t fill in Marty on exactly how the police had found Marty’s and Garrett’s names and numbers in the first place—because, good citizen that she is, Dr. Sophie Knowles turned in the money and notes immediately. Almost immediately.

“Very creative, Marty. Blame the absent guy.”

“Okay, I started it, in a way,” Marty said. “When Charlotte came two years ago, I sensed a kindred spirit. I’m the head of the hiring committee, so I saw her application before the rest of the committee did. Something she’d written prompted me to check, and I saw that she had a record.
I already had a very bad gambling habit by then, mostly horses, and I owed money. A lot of money. I thought,
Here’s someone I can join forces with.
So I made sure she was hired and that no one knew about her past.”

“You kept it quiet, and you blackmailed Charlotte.”

“I did her a favor. I hid her past and gave her a job.”

“Then used that against her.”

“No, no, I would have been happy if she’d just been willing to teach me a few things. I’d never conned anyone or skimmed or anything like that.”

I gave him a dubious look. Marty responded by pointing to his desk and the file cabinets that lined the room, and continued.

“Do you know how easy it would have been all these years to embezzle? Auditors these days are wet behind the ears. And they think all they need is a high-powered computer, but let me tell you, I could have gotten rich the good old-fashioned way.”

“That’s an interesting perspective on your profession.”

“It’s true. Their software would be obsolete by the time they had a clue. But I never took a penny that way.”

“But you ran cons.”

“I think I’ve said enough.”

“Marty, can you help me out here? I’m trying to figure out if my friend was still living a double—or triple—life.”

“You can rest easy on that. I tried to get Charlotte to help me with a couple of simple investment scams. You know, ‘Send me money, and I’ll quadruple it in thirty days.’ Charlotte would have nothing to do with it anymore.”

I wished with all my might that Marty was telling the truth. That Charlotte really had been trying to go straight. I felt a smile come to my face and hoped Marty didn’t misinterpret it as being for him or his story.

In a sense, I’d gotten what I came for. My friend as I knew her was not a criminal. She’d refused an opportunity to engage in unlawful activities with the financial heart of the college.

I felt a selfish sense of vindication, that I’d befriended a good person after all, though I doubted Daryl or any of Charlotte’s other early victims would agree.

Marty went on and on about how so many college treasurers cook the books, a term I hadn’t heard in a while. I picked up his thread when I heard Garrett’s name.

“I scammed the wrong guy, however. Garrett Paulsen. Bad stroke of luck. Garrett’s a grifter himself and was pretty upset when he realized he’d been had. How he fell for my con with all his own experience, I’ll never know.”

I thought I’d show off my research. “Did you tell him he won the lottery but had to pay to collect?”

“No, no. That had been one of Charlotte’s cons years ago. I went the bank fraud route. I can’t believe I’m telling you this. You’re not wearing a wire are you, Sophie?”

I laughed. “No, Marty. I told you why I came. I needed to find out about the woman I’d been friends with for two years.”

“I’m finding this strangely therapeutic, though I can’t imagine why. Maybe I’m accepting the inevitable, that it’s the end of the line for my run. Anyway, I made up some title like Fraud Control Department for a consumer group and sent a letter to bank customers. They filled out the questionnaire that was going to help them protect their identities, but of course, in the end it was what we used to steal them. Even a modest size mailing can net you a goodly sum.”