A Function of Murder (24 page)

The truth was that, much as I disliked her at the moment, I had a hard time picturing
Chris Sizemore as a killer, of an intimate or of anyone else.

“I’m still not sure I believe Chris committed murder. Maybe they have the wrong person,”
I suggested.

Fran’s brow turned to a seldom-seen row of wrinkles. “Think a minute. Remember how
Chris ran kicking and screaming from the faculty vote? And, there’s also the fact
that the mayor fired her brother from the contract with the city. That can’t be good
for his future as a businessman in New England.”

“So, you think Chris’s motive could have been that the mayor ruined her brother’s
career?”

Fran wrapped her index and middle fingers around each other. “You know how close Chris
and Monty are.”

I did know. My most recent experience of their compatibility and basic agreement on
issues had been during our Main Street encounter only yesterday, as they’d sympathized
with my current nemesis, Elysse Hutchins. At that time, it had certainly seemed to
me that Chris would have killed anyone who did her brother in, and vice versa. But,
in my thoughts, “killing” was a metaphor. I hadn’t envisioned a vicious stabbing.

I felt a breeze on my bare arms before I saw what caused it. Kira had opened the door
and swept in behind me.

“Dr. Knowles, Dr. Emerson, wow! Hi,” she said, as if she were blown away by our presence.

I didn’t for a minute believe Kira’s shocked look. I suspected she had a telescope
trained on the campus, with nothing better to do than look out the window until she
found someone to talk to.

“Imagine seeing you here, Kira,” Fran said, keeping her sarcastic tone at a level
too subtle for Kira to get.

“Are you guys, like, having a department meeting or something? I don’t want to interrupt.”

“Yes, we are talking business, but you can have a seat for a minute,” Fran said, in
the smooth, inoffensive way that I’d never been able to master.

“Oh, okay, if you’re sure you don’t mind.” Kira pointed to the counter, where Buzz
was busy with a spray bottle and a questionable cleaning cloth. “I’ll just grab a
cup of coffee.”

Once Kira was at the counter, probably buying a drink she didn’t want, I addressed
Fran.

“Thanks for taking care of that.”

“I know you worry about her,” Fran said.

I nodded. I’d been worrying about Kira since she arrived in my advanced calculus class
four years ago, having aced all the placement exams. She had more than the usual freshman
angst, which I expected would dissolve as she progressed successfully through a demanding
math major curriculum. I thought eventually she’d become more socially sophisticated
and comfortable with her peers, but year after year, she continued to spend more time
with her teachers than with her classmates, participating in extracurricular activities
only peripherally. She hung around with Jeanne, Nicole, Bethany, and a few other Franklin
Hall science majors, but she seemed to me never quite in the inner circle.

Kira returned with a canned soda, a wise choice on a day like today, when the Mortarboard
was only halfheartedly open.

I knew it was a question of when, not if, Kira would bring up the most recent development
in the murder case that affected us all so deeply.

“Getting ready for the big school across the river?” Fran asked, using our pet phrase
for MIT.

That simple question was enough to get Kira started on the real reason for her alleged
ad hoc drop-in. It was clear
that any comment would have been a prompt for her. After all, if she’d wanted a canned
soda, she could have picked one up on any floor of her dorm.

“I can’t think of grad school right now,” she said, seeming to hold back tears. “Have
you heard what they’re saying?”

“Tell us,” I said. A little lame, but at least I’d finally found my voice.

“Ms. Sizemore was arrested. I must have been still in bed or in the shower or something,
because I didn’t see it, but the police came and took her away. They’re saying the
two of them, Ms. Sizemore and Edward, were, like, together”—she closed her eyes tightly
at this phrase—“and he wanted to break it off and so she killed him. Or, they think
it could have been the other way around, that she wanted to break it off and he wouldn’t
let her and they fought and she stabbed him.”

Kira’s words were punctuated with short breaks for lip biting and erratic breathing.
I wondered which upset her more, that Chris might have been romantically involved
with the mayor or that she might have killed him.

I noticed Fran flinch at Kira’s referring to Mayor Graves as
Edward
, although it was Fran who’d first suggested to me that Kira and the mayor might be
“seeing each other.”

“Who are
they
, Kira? Who exactly is saying this?” I asked.

“Well, Bethany’s roommate, Jocelyn, is an art history major, so she has Ms. Sizemore
a lot for class, and she says Ms. Sizemore used to talk about Edward all the time,
like just bring up things in the newspaper, and one time Jocelyn saw them in the park
together or something.”

It was good that Kira had never considered a career as a trial attorney.

“Did you—” Fran began.

“Then,” Kira said in a loud voice, the better to interrupt Fran. “Then, Jocelyn found
out the police dumped Edward’s
computer and supposedly found all this email correspondence with Ms. Sizemore. Jocelyn
says she’s one hundred percent sure of this because she has a friend in the Henley
Police Department.”

Hey, I have a friend in the Henley Police Department
, I thought, with a bit of pique.

Kira’s revelation, through Bethany, through Jocelyn, through Jocelyn’s HPD friend,
and who knew how many other channels, had been interesting, in spite of its shaky
credentials. I’d been assuming that Chris’s display of animosity toward the mayor
was due to the bad blood between him and her brother. It seemed there might be a more
personal basis for her display of anger.

Who said college campuses were stuffy, uninteresting places with staid professors
engaged only in the research of abstruse subjects?

“Did you know about Ms. Sizemore and the mayor before this morning when the police
came?” Fran asked Kira.

Kira threw up her hands, nearly knocking over her soda. “No. And I don’t believe a
word of it anyway. I don’t care who Jocelyn’s friend is.”

“You don’t believe Ms. Sizemore killed the mayor?” Fran asked, as if she were querying
Kira about a line in the derivation of an equation. I seldom saw Fran in action with
students, and I was impressed at her nonthreatening manner. I should have been taking
notes.

“I don’t believe the two of them were ever together. Ever. They couldn’t have been.
I…I thought he…” Kira drew in a long breath and then exhaled a pout. “Never mind what
I thought.”

I had a good idea what Kira thought. That one day she and Edward would be a twosome.
I recalled the emails Virgil had showed me. I hadn’t let Kira know that I’d read her
declarations of love to Edward. I remembered some of them in too much detail to suit
me.

I wish you’d let me stay last night. You know you’re my number one priority. I’m here
for you.

“Did Mayor Graves ever give you any reason to think he returned your affections, Kira?”
I asked. In other words, I might have asked,
Did he ever email you back? Did he ever give you any sign at all that he received
your protestations? Or is this all in your head?

Fran cracked open a package of shortbread cookies, making a loud popping sound, spilling
some crumbs, and, mostly, giving Kira time to consider how she’d answer.

“You’re going to think I’m really dumb.” Kira addressed this first to me, then to
Fran, and then back again.

“Tell us,” I said, for the second time. Talk about dumb.

“The first time I met him, I was in the campaign office and he walked in and he gave
me this smile, and I knew we really connected.”

I sat back, knowing I could write the rest of the script. A sheltered young woman
and a man of the world—that is, the world of Henley, Massachusetts, population a mere
forty-six thousand, but still larger than the California valley town Kira was born
and raised in, hours from major cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.

I listened now as Kira told her tale of working hard for the extremely important yet
friendly guy who told her how talented she was, how smart, and how far she was destined
to go, with her whole life ahead of her. Apparently Kira had taken that to mean that
they would go far together.

I had to let Fran take the lead in drawing Kira out. I was too busy blaming myself
for not monitoring Kira’s social life more closely. Did I think a party a week in
the Franklin Hall lounge was the beginning and end of my duty to my students? I could
have made a greater effort to bring my majors together, to help Kira be more a part
of the group.

I realized that in loco parentis had pretty much been voted out of schools in the
sixties. Technically, I had no obligation to watch over my students the way their
parents
did, but that didn’t mean I could brush off the sense of responsibility I felt, especially
for young women like Kira, with little worldly experience.

I took a backseat and heard Kira’s story through the perspective of Fran’s questions.
I caught the phrases I was looking for, phrases that I wanted to hear, that would
ease my mind.

“…never ever took advantage of me. He would never do that, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
(Whew.)

“…said he wished he could show me the French Riviera. He thought I’d love it.” (Who
wouldn’t?)

“…treated me more like a daughter”—another whew—“which is not what I wanted, but for
now, while his son was a teenager…”

And one that brought me up short:

“…can’t believe he’d become involved with Ms. Sizemore. Why would he want to be with
an older woman?”

Fran and I stole a glance at each other at that line, thinking the same thing, I guessed—if
Christine Sizemore, roughly thirty-two years old, was an older woman to Kira and her
peers, where did that leave us? I couldn’t wait to laugh openly about it later with
Fran.

I told myself I should be satisfied that Kira hadn’t given herself away completely.
Maybe she’d learn a lesson from this, especially if it turned out that Chris and the
mayor were indeed a couple.

I tuned in to the end of Fran’s interrogation and Kira’s voluntary spilling of her
story when I heard my name.

“So, Dr. Knowles, are you still willing to go with me to the service tomorrow? It’s
at ten in the morning.”

Service? It took a minute for me to remember the memorial scheduled for the mayor
at city hall, and Kira’s earlier request to me. I hadn’t made any promises. I’d stalled.
Now I had to put up an answer. I wanted to express my condolences anyway, so why not
go with Kira? Besides, I had no energy to resist any reasonable request at the moment.
Finally, it would provide a natural ending to the meeting I’d scheduled with Elysse
at eight thirty.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s meet at the”—I caught myself before I said
fountain
—“right here.”

“Okay, right here. At nine fifty tomorrow morning.”

Kira took a deep breath, as if she’d checked off all the items on a long to-do list
and was now ready for a good night’s sleep.

So was I, although it was only four in the afternoon.

I was glad to get outside in the fresh post-rain air. The smell from the deep fryers
and the cleaning solutions in the café had bothered me more than I’d realized in real
time.

In the parking lot, Fran gave me a long look, perhaps noticing my tired eyes and downturned
mouth. “I have an idea,” she said.

“Am I going to like it?” I asked.

“Bruce is working tonight, right?”

“Nine to nine.”

“Come home with me for dinner. You need a little pampering, and a lot of distraction.”

“All that is at your house?”

“Gene is cooking and our grandkids will be there.”

Enough said.