The Quotient of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles) Page 25

  I put my elbows on the table, my head in my hands, and breathed deeply. A picture formed that began to make sense. Ted was certainly computer savvy enough to send me phony emails. In other words, he had the means, the first element in means, motive, and opportunity, the familiar summation of criteria for developing suspects in criminal cases. Ted also had opportunity, though I wasn’t sure he’d even need physical access to accomplish the job; he’d asked to use my computer the day the group of students and faculty were at my home, the first day Jenn was in the hospital. He’d claimed that his laptop battery was dead and I’d nonchalantly sent him down to my home office, with instructions on the use of my equipment.

  Motive was another story. Why would Ted annoy me with spam copyedits, fill my email inbox with junk, and steal my credit card ID? It was clear that whoever had hounded me hadn’t meant to wipe me out; he’d wreaked just enough havoc to keep me busy and distracted. I thought back to my spam email and the ads I’d received. For eyeglass repair—check, Ted wore glasses. For golf clubs—check, Ted played golf. For chess software—check, and ditto. For pets—I wasn’t sure about this one, but it didn’t necessarily matter. He could have chosen a few ads at random.

  I remembered something Ted had said in the lounge when I complained about my annoying copyeditor and the spam ads. He’d commented on how I might have to drop the investigation, meaning, at the time, my curiosity about Kirsten Packard’s fall from the tower. Was that Ted’s motive? To distract me? Was this just another aspect of the big cover-up of twenty-five years ago? Maybe that cover-up wasn’t for the sake of Kirsten’s father, the DA, after all, but for Ted himself, in the middle of a promising career. Ted would have been in his early forties, the right age to be seeking tenure at the college.

  Great. Now I had Ted throwing Kirsten off the tower and asking Wendy to help him out by not telling the police anything that would instigate an investigation. I wished now that I’d confronted Ted earlier, asked him why he lied to me about knowing Kirsten Packard and her family. It was a long way from the “I might have met her once or twice” that he admitted, to “Her father was my roommate and best friend in college.”

  I was about to accuse Ted of the crime of B&E, breaking into my house, to add to my level of distress. But I couldn’t imagine his doing that. That would connect him to the money in the tower, and, in turn, to the attack on Jenn.

  I had to draw the line somewhere.

  Just in time, I noticed Andrew hovering a few tables away, giving me space. I waved him over.

  “Thanks,” I said, meaning for the space and for the fresh mug of tea. I didn’t think I could handle a hospital cookie, however. I put it in my purse and told him I’d enjoy it later. Not likely.

  Andrew put his coffee on the table and took a seat. “I’m really sorry, Dr. Knowles. I’m still kind of, like, shocked. I can go over it again, or I can get my friend Doug back in Berkeley to look at it. I didn’t want to get anyone else involved without asking you first.”

  Good choice. “It’s okay, Andrew.”

  “Do you still need a tower key?”

  “I’m all set. Detective Mitchell is going to meet me there.”

  “The cop Dr. Donohue is going out with?”

  I laughed, enjoying the release it brought. Judy would be happy to be part of campus gossip so quickly, I thought. Virgil, not so much.

  As for me, I was ready to take on a physicist.

  • • •

  Andrew and I headed to the parking lot together, then parted ways. I hinted that he should keep our little project confidential and told him I owed him one—at least one.

  He zipped his lips, then unzipped them to say something about being glad to help.

  I drove toward campus, having decided that it was better to approach Ted in person, with no warning like a phone call or a voice mail message. I did also consider getting Andrew’s help to spam him two hundredfold, but that would be mean, and not very useful in the long run.

  I pulled into the entrance on Henley Boulevard and surveyed the parking lot. Ted’s car was one of the few faculty vehicles still on campus. I remembered that he had an afternoon lab on Mondays from two to four; it should be breaking up any minute. I’d give him a little time to wrap up the session, then barge into his office.

  In the meantime, as luck would have it, I saw another opportunity—Pete Barker talking to a couple of workers. Shouting at them, would be more accurate. Ted wasn’t going anywhere. I could talk to him whenever. Now would be the time to get into the tower. I checked my smartphone one more time to see if Virgil had reported in after his meeting. Nothing yet.

  I lowered my window and waved at Barker. He waved back and held up his hand to indicate that I should wait for him. No problem. I wedged my car into a small spot near the library, grabbed my purse, and walked toward the fountain. The sun was low in the sky, soon to disappear and leave us even colder.

  Barker yelled a command or two and the men walked off toward the diminishing fleet of industrial vehicles by the east wing of Admin. Dismissed, I guessed, by Barker’s orders. Barker was barking orders, I mused. Funny.

  Then not so funny. I stopped in my tracks. My mind flew back to my visit with Wendy and her story about long-ago days with Kirsten and her pals in the diner. The nicknames of the men Kirsten pressed her into meeting came back to me. Ponytail, because he had one. Einstein, because he was smart. And a third guy who split from the group. I gulped. Big Dog. Not Smoky, a name I’d made up when I’d briefly considered that Barker, the smoker, might be involved. Not an imaginary Smoky, but Big Dog. Einstein’s competition for the role of leader. Big Dog, because, as Wendy had said, he was always barking orders.

  Coincidence? I thought not. Hard as it was to grasp, the three men in Kirsten’s and Wendy’s life had all been circling the money in the tower for twenty-five years. The Warnocky cousins roamed New England furthering their career in crime until the tower was reopened. Big Dog had obviously made a career change to construction, keeping clean, but staying close to ground zero.

  But Barker had been in the best position to grab the money for many months. He must have charged up to the tower in the middle of the night every chance he got, as Bruce had suggested Einstein and Ponytail might do. Who knew how many times he’d searched, to no avail. Now that his job—and his possession of a key card—were coming to an end, he was desperate. And thanks to the urgent message I left on his phone, he figured out that I knew where it was.

  Barker’s interest in music and smooth talk wasn’t his way of flirting at all; it was an interview, to see if I knew more than he did.

  Was it Barker, not Einstein, who attacked Jenn for her key? Which one killed Ponytail? It was pretty clear that he’d sent the police on a wild-goose chase to a vacant lot they thought was Einstein’s address.

  Shivering, I woke up to the present and realized that Barker was closing the gap between us. My car was behind me. I turned to gauge the distance to my car, and Barker moved faster.

  “Sophie,” he said. “You’ve come to take me up on my offer of a tour of the tower.” He pointed to the sky. “A perfect time of day to see the city lights.”

  Before I could react, he was upon me, taking my arm, steering me to the nasty entrance to the tower. “I got your message. Let’s take a walk.”

  I felt a hard object poking my left side. I was sure it wasn’t a carillon dowel. My purse hung from my right shoulder. I couldn’t figure a way to reach my phone or anything else in the purse that I could use to defend myself. If I screamed or tried to break away and run, I’d be dead, but Barker would be caught. Would he take that chance? Would I?

  The campus was nearly deserted. The only people in sight were Barker’s own men, packing up at the far end of Admin. For all I knew they were in on it, waiting for their cut. The administrators in the offices far above me weren’t likely to be looking out their windows. In fact, they’d be packing up to go home soon, too.

  “This isn’t a good time,” I said. Playing
it cool. Maybe it wasn’t a gun prodding me along. Maybe Barker didn’t know I had a good guess about the money. And maybe three hundred and thirteen wasn’t a prime number.

  Barker—Big Dog—squeezed my arm harder. “You’re wrong,” he said. “It’s the perfect time. I’ve waited many years for this moment. And you’re going to take me to what’s mine.”

  “I’m not sure where it is,” I said. No use pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “But you have a pretty good idea, I know, or you wouldn’t all of a sudden want to go up to the tower. I watched those cops come down empty-handed. But you’re a smart one. I don’t know how, but you figured it out. And now we’re going to get it.”

  He pulled me along, seeming to push the gun farther into my ribs with each step. “Move. I don’t have time to waste.”

  Barker used his key card to enter and pushed me ahead of him into the cavernous tower entrance. We climbed the steps more slowly than Barker wanted, I knew. I pretended to be winded, clumsy, tired, anything to avoid ending up in the belfry. Ending up like Kirsten Packard.

  “Did you kill Kirsten because she wouldn’t tell you where she hid the money?” If nothing else, I’d die smart.

  “I don’t know who did that,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been so stupid. I’d have gotten the money first.”

  Like now. I felt a symphony of shivers, from my toes to my head.

  “And Ponytail?” I asked, a touch of sadness in my voice, as if the smarmy-looking man had been a friend.

  “He had to go. But I didn’t do that either. Ponytail was a stupid, stupid man. He attacks the girl at lunchtime with guys all over the place. He told me he didn’t think she’d put up a fight. He saw her come down from the tower and head for the bank, so he decided on the brilliant play of stealing her backpack in broad daylight.” Barker paused, then shouted, his voice echoing down the dark, dank stairwell. “Which had all of two hundred dollars and change.”

  I wondered if I should feel bad that Jenn’s backpack hadn’t been full to the brim with hundreds like the one I’d found in the bushes. If it had been—in other words, if Jenn had been greedy—I wouldn’t be on my last outing.

  We’d reached the lobby floor and entered the museum area. After the near blackness and cold of the stairway, the brightness and warmth of the room was startling. I saw Barker’s ruddy face clearly now, the determined look, every muscle set in place.

  I saw the gun, too. But he’d denied killing either Kirsten or Ponytail. Did that mean he wouldn’t kill me either? He had no reason to lie to me at this stage.

  Barker caught me looking at his gun. “I know what you’re thinking. Will I kill you after I get the money? Maybe throw you off the tower?” He laughed, enjoying his position of power. “We’ll see how it goes.”

  “You mean if the money is where I think it is?”

  “I like you, Sophie. We might have had a thing, you know, in another life.” I tried not to show my disgust. “We’ll talk after you show me the money.”

  Show me the money. From the movie Jerry Maguire, though I doubted Barker realized it. I thought of Bruce, who would have been able to quote the next line, whom I might never see again. I struggled to hold back tears. I thought of my friends and my students. Would they even know what had happened to me?

  “So where do we go from here?” Barker asked.

  I could tell him we’d passed the money on the way. Send us back down the stairs, point to a corner on a landing, and make a dash for the door. I could . . . No, I couldn’t. Nothing like that would work.

  “To the belfry,” I squeaked out.

  Barker motioned for me to climb the indoor spiral stairway.

  “All of these attacks and killings, and you’re innocent?” I asked, intent on filling my last minutes with information.

  “I didn’t say that. I racked up my share of felonies over the years. But it was Einstein who knocked off Ponytail. Not that I blamed him. Ponytail was impatient, bringing attention where it was not desirable, if you know what I mean. Einstein is like me. He takes his time, plants himself in the basement of that building to stake out the girl.”

  “And me.”

  “Yeah, you. You have kind of a reputation, you know.”

  I didn’t want to hear that I was the subject of conversation among thieves and killers.

  “Where’s Einstein now?” I asked.

  “They’ll never find him. He knows how to disappear and show up again when and where he wants to. He took off after he broke into your house. Believe me, when he figures out I have the money, he’ll find me.”

  “You’re pals, huh?”

  Barker’s hoarse smoker’s laugh came from behind me as we made our way up the stairway single file. If I had any confidence in my physical fitness, I would have back-kicked him, knocked him down the stairs, jumped over the railing—and all before he had the presence of mind to simply shoot me.

  “Pals. You could say that. Me and Einstein make it work.”

  We climbed and climbed smooth stairs, interspersed with landings that I assumed led to the music library, the practice rooms, and Randy Stephens’s studio. I no longer had to pretend that I was winded and tired; the stressful climb took its toll on me. Barker showed no signs of wear, however, and uttered the occasional gruff, “Move.”

  When we arrived at the floor that housed the carillon, I felt it was almost worth the trip. The magnificent instrument was enclosed in a transparent shield, its batons highly polished, its system of wires and levers shining, even in the dim light coming down from the belfry. Maybe I’d already been shot and had arrived in heaven. In my mind I heard again the beautiful music from Andrew’s laptop. My own private concert. I hated that I had to witness the majesty of the carillon tower under the threat of death.

  In any case, the inspiring vision didn’t last long.

  “Move it,” Barker said. “If you behave, you might live to hear the thing.”

  Right above us now was the belfry, with its fifty-three bells. And its bag of money. Or so I supposed. I hadn’t given any thought to what would happen to me if I was wrong. I couldn’t imagine Barker would simply take off and leave me with a great story to tell.

  We stood looking up at the large metal framework that held the bells in place, some of them stationary, others able to swing. The network of wires, loops, and rods that connected the bells to the carillon keyboard looked like a giant three-dimensional puzzle, like the ones that spilled from my purse in the first moments of my meeting with Wendy Carlson.

  We were at the point where the belfry windows began, where Kirsten Packard had fallen, or been pushed to her death. I looked across the multilevel roof of Admin, over to the Paul Revere dorm, and past the campus to nearby buildings. Lights twinkled, cars sped by, and, though I couldn’t see them, people were living normal Monday evening lives.

  Barker pushed me in front of him. He laughed. “Now I get it,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.” I turned slightly as he hit the side of his head with his gun hand, as if to berate himself for being so dull. For a hopeful moment I thought he’d lost focus, but he recovered quickly. “The money’s up there, inside a bell, or taped to the outside. Brilliant. I’ll bet the kid moved it after she found it, so no one else would see it.” He clucked and chuckled in a way that sounded like admiration of a young woman’s cunning. “Then she could use the money, a little at a time, until they had the final inspection before they opened the tower.”

  Barker wasn’t asking for my confirmation, so I didn’t give it.

  “I think I can take it from here,” he continued, his smile broader than ever in the short time I’d known him.

  He shoved me ahead of him and adjusted his arm accordingly, ready to fire. So much for his hints of leniency. I was now expendable.

  I seemed physically unable to turn my body around completely and look down the barrel of the gun. Maybe he wouldn’t shoot a lady in the back and I’d gain a few more minutes.

>   But I had to make a move. I had nothing to lose by trying.

  In the dwindling light, I could just make out the bells’ frame. The giant puzzle wasn’t completed yet and I could see that I’d be able to reach into the clapper of the nearest one. Here I go. I dashed swiftly toward a bell, startling Barker. I grabbed the giant clapper, pulled on it with all my might, then let it go.

  A peal rang out, stinging my ears. I pulled it again, and again, and then rushed to the back wall of the belfry. I’d at least made a call for help, sounded an alert. If nothing else, someone would investigate and Barker might be caught as he exited the tower.

  Barker was on the move, readjusting his aim, while I dashed in and out among the pieces of the frame around the bells, my ears still ringing on their own.

  “You can’t get away,” Barker said, stepping back to the top of stairs where we’d entered.

  I knew he was right. All he had to do was wait. Around me were the open windows of the belfry, and it was a long way down. One hundred and seventy-six feet, give or take, according to the brochure.

  “First Kirsten, now me,” I said. “You can’t get away with it again.”

  Surely someone had heard and was already on his way up. If I kept him talking another minute, help would be here.

  “I told you, I don’t know how Kirsten died,” Barker yelled. “Maybe she jumped like they said. I didn’t kill her.”

  “I did,” said another voice.

  What? I peered between the rods and levers and saw the source of the new voice.

  Wendy Carlson, with a large wooden slat that she sent crashing down on Barker’s head. He fell to the floor, his gun flying out of his hand. Wendy bent to pick it up and aimed it at him, though he showed no signs of moving.

  Wendy Carlson, from out of nowhere, dressed all in black, had saved me. “I did,” she’d said. Did what?

  Then I saw it clearly: a young, straitlaced physics major, Wendy Carlson, sick and tired of Kirsten’s offbeat, losing lifestyle, fed up with covering for her roommate, not wanting to be dragged into questionable, if not criminal, activities with Einstein, Ponytail, and Big Dog. I saw Wendy in the tower that morning, twenty-five years ago, arguing with Kirsten, trying to talk sense into her. Things get out of control and the next thing she knows Kirsten is on the ground below and she’s frantic, hysterical. And calls her mentor, Ted Morrell.