Angel Food and Devil Dogs (8 page)

"
No hay duda."
It was the Spanish idiom for,
No doubt about it
. Then her eyes widened and her veneer of composure slipped. "You think someone may have been trying to... to ... kill Bart Edgar... because of some stupid thing he did? It was an accident, was it not?" she asked incredulously. "I find this hard to comprehend."

"Ms. Juarez, isn't what happened yesterday and what happened to Carl Rasmus, generally hard to comprehend?"

She pulled herself together and said, "Yes..." she thought for a moment, then began again slowly, "last month Bart was working with a fundraising committee with Professor Jimmy Harmon. It had to do with the preservation of old time music from the... is it "
Ozark"
Mountains?" She pronounced it Oh-sark.

"Ozark," I said with more of a zee sound.

"Ozark," she repeated. "Bart had volunteered to be in charge of invitations. This was to be a $1000 dollar a couple black-tie event. Professor Harmon gave Bart all the information written on a sheet. All Bart had to do was give the sheet and the design to the printer. But he did not. For some reason he rewrote the information into an email. As time got closer, Professor Harmon asked Bart if he had checked information with the printer. Bart said yes, which was not true."

She went on, "The printed invitations, which were embossed and goldleafed, were reviewed at the next meeting. The date and time were wrong. Even the name of the event was misspelled. Professor Harmon was furious, he called Bart names, he moved to hit Bart, but others restrained him. Professor Harmon walked out of the meeting and called out that they must cancel the entire performance."

Huh, quite a shadow on Jimmy Harmon. I asked, "Have there been other people...?"

"Yes, many. It is Bart's job to provide each of the departments with enrollment data to project costs and apply for state reimbursement. Every Department Chair has had strong words with Bart due to serious mistakes in his data. You see, these mistakes make the Department Chairs look inefficient. Most produce the data themselves, now."

"Can you tell me if any of the other Tenure Committee members have had problems with Bart Edgar?"

"Ms. Gale, he irritates everyone."

"How does he irritate you?"

She paused looking at me, then said honestly, "He volunteers for jobs he does not have time to do and then either does not do them, or makes a mess of them. At the same time, he excuses his poor job performance by saying he was busy doing the things he volunteered to do. Frankly, I think his best choice would be to claim disability from these recent injuries."

I nodded. "What can you tell me about Carl Rasmus?"

"Dr. Rasmus did his work, he was pleasant, but just a few months ago he began to change. He became rude and I guess you would say paranoid. Then he would calm down again. He yelled at people and accused them of odd things. He sent very rude emails."

"Was any of this directed at you?"

"No... well, one mass email he sent to everyone in Administration and the Tenure Committee. Very bitter. That was just a day before he killed himself."

"How well did Carl type, I mean, was it possible that some of the email he sent or received was just poorly written or had typos...?"

"Yes, that can happen. Someone writes I
can
go, when they mean to say I
cannot
go... but the tech department set up a voice translation system for Dr. Rasmus. He could talk into the machine and it would write his words and read them back to him. Quite amazing, really. He had the technology to know just what he was writing. The words were not mistakes. They were from a very angry and sad man."

"Do you know anything about his personal life?"

She paused searching her data bank brain, "Not really." She seemed disconcerted that she hadn't been able to answer a question fully.

"Do you remember where you were when Carl killed himself?" I was planning on asking everybody this question.

"Oh... I..." she reached for the desk calendar and flipped to the previous week. "Yes, I was in Becks County, arranging for the production of the next College Catalog at the printer in Doonestown. I left at 12:30 and returned at 6:00. I went directly home, as it was so late."

This was not a great alibi for her. If indeed Carl was murdered, she had a window of time.

"The drinks Connie Robinson brought in on the tray, what was the procedure for that?"

Miranda Juarez was unfazed by the change of subject, she said, "President Bouchet has just started that. He feels that the personal attention makes people feel valued. Everyone who regularly attends a meeting has already indicated what his or her beverage preference is. We have a small refrigerator in the storage room next to my office. Connie gets the list and fills the tray with the choices of those attending."

"What's your preference?"

"I usually have water in a bottle but I left it on the tray. I'd just had coffee," she added as an after thought, "the President drinks iced tea."

"President Bouchet told me there had been witnesses near Carl Rasmus's office on the day of his death..."

"Two students and a graduate assistant," said Miranda Juarez. "I have their contact information here."

I glanced at the sheet she handed me. The undergrads were: Caitlyn Zale and Mike Jacobsen. The grad assistant's name was Jack Leavitt.

"I'd like to look at the top floor now."

She gave me the keys. I left the well-lighted office and climbed the stairs to what was now a burned-out disaster scene. The reception area was a shambles. The police had sealed the conference room with a piece of yellow tape across the door. I didn't really think the thin piece of plastic would keep anyone out, but I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to go in. It stank. Would I ruin another of my clothing ensembles just by absorbing the smell, the way one's clothes do in a smoky bar?

Looking in the conference room, I had a flashback. When I'd been in graduate school, a small house I'd rented with friends caught on fire during a rainstorm from an electrical short in the attic. Luckily, we were all out for the evening. One of my roommates, Adrienne, had a girlfriend who was quite a bit older than the rest of us. Come to think of it, she was the age I am now. I digressed for a moment wondering why a 35-year-old woman would want a 19-year-old girlfriend, but that wasn't the point of the flashback.

This "older woman" had given Adrienne a gift of a spice rack, complete with two dozen bottles of assorted spices. The rack hung on a wall in the kitchen but the girlfriend was over protective of it and constantly insisted Adrienne and the rest of us not
waste
the spices by using them. It became an in-house joke, but we did painstakingly conserve them, thus making all the food we cooked consistently bland.

After the fire, the fire department let us back in to salvage what we could. When I went into the kitchen, I called to Adrienne that we didn't have to worry about saving the spices any more. She asked why. I pointed. Not only was the spice rack gone, so was the entire wall it had been hanging on. The wiring in the kitchen wall must have ignited too. When we looked up, the ceiling and roof were gone as well. There was a moral in there somewhere about the spice rack, but the real lesson was: Fire Is Scary.

In a way, the Irwin Administration Building conference room now looked more horrifying than when it was actually on fire. Maybe because I had more time to think about it. A large section of the ceiling was gone. Tarps covered the torn open roof. The fire department must have cut it away to be sure the fire was out. Part of the back wall behind the table where the drinks had been was now just a large hole with twisted metal behind it. Everything in the room was black and sooty. Splintered furniture parts stuck out at odd angles like greenstick fractures. File cabinets lay on their sides. Shards of glass crunched under my feet. Another tarpaulin hung over the broken window area, but a sharp December breeze buckled it into the room. The wind was stirring up rank odors and wet grit.

It was easy to see how the fire had spread. The pattern of blackened scorch marks resembled a childlike charcoal drawing of the sun. The irregular rays generated from a round blackened area at the back table.

The chair Bart Edgar had knelt on was lying on its side. The back was charred, its plastic arms melted. But the area directly above the chair was fairly untouched, as was the area where Bart had fallen to the floor. The phrase, "gods protect little children, drunks and fools," seemed particularly apt.

Nighttime temperatures were forecast to drop below freezing. Puddled water on the rug would be ice before dawn. I marveled that I hadn't seen more water damage to the ceilings of the floor below, but then Bart's office wasn't under this part of the building.

In a heap on the floor next to the coat rack, was my once beloved parka, filthy and stinking of burnt rubber. I left it there. Good thing my good gloves hadn't been in the pockets.

The reception area window was smashed where Connie had tossed out the marble stand. I pulled the tarp to one side, interested to see if the stand was still on the ground below the window, but it was gone. Good thing it didn't hit anybody. My mind segued for a moment to Carl Rasmus's dead body on the sidewalk.

I had hoped looking at the fire scene would give me some profound insight. It didn't, except the fire pattern seems more like a wide slash than a blow out. I took out my laptop and rested it on Connie's not too dirty desk. I made a few notes about events leading up to the explosion. I also noted that Miranda didn't have an alibi for Carl's death and that according to her, Jimmy Harmon had tried to punch Bart. Miranda was a fount of information, maybe I should have quizzed her about Kathryn Anthony...
So Miranda, does Dr. Anthony live with anyone?
But then, Jesse Wiggins voice echoed in my mind, Why don't you ask her?

When I returned the keys to Miranda, I noticed that half the pile of Bart's papers on the floor was gone. It was nearly 11:00 AM.

Since Leo Getty had rescheduled, my next appointment was with Daniel Cohen at 2:00 PM. Plenty of time to walk home, check some things in my office, look over my notes, then hop in the car and speed over to Sears to replace my dearly departed jacket. I wore the new parka to the meeting with Cohen.

I was a little early, so I darted over to the Student Union and snagged a pre-made sandwich of Swiss cheese and lettuce on a hard roll. Not many choices left by nearly 1:50 PM. I mused that my choice for a meeting beverage would probably be a Stewart's Root Beer in a glass bottle. Stewart's would always win my vote in a blind taste test. I thought again about Carl Rasmus. He'd had such a promising future... he died too soon. At that moment, I made a promise to Carl. I would solve the case and ring out justice, in his name. It sounded like a folk song, but I meant it.

Daniel Cohen's building was on the other side of Washington Street facing the Administration Building. The Environmental Safety Building had soaring angles, projecting cantilevers, and all the outside surfaces were mirrored glass or polished steel. I liked the irregular negative space it created. The inside lobby felt vast, because there was a spectacular outdoor view in every direction. Pipes running along the ceiling were polished sculptural bronze. There were bright lights and splashy colors, with giant posters and even some neon. It had the feel of a high style mall, which must have made many teenaged students feel at home.

Professor Cohen's office door was painted red. Inside the secretary ducked her head into the door behind her desk when I explained who I was, then said genially, "Go on in." She seemed happy and enthusiastic. Maybe it was a reflection of the way Cohen ran the department.

"Nice office," I said taking in the glass wall view, then eyeing a shaped canvas painting by Frank Stella on the wall by the door.

"Yeah, it is isn't it?" he smiled. "The painting's part of the College's permanent collection. I don't even want to know what it's worth. More than my house, probably. Have a seat." The chair was a museum reproduction of Le Corbusier's "Wassily" chair, made of steel tubing and leather.

Cohen was casually dressed in a sport jacket. He was the kind of guy you instantly thought of as a dad who'd fix your car or hang up a basketball hoop in the driveway. There were playful models of 1940s trucks on a shelf and neat piles of papers, folders and documents on almost every other surface in the room. A photograph of two attractive women, probably his wife and daughter, was on the desk. There was also a large computer with a huge monitor.

Daniel Cohen's ruddy round face broke into a warm smile, he reached out with one of his large meaty hands. He and I suddenly felt a comradeship that neither of us expected. We'd faced death as a team just the day before. It was like we were part of the Justice League. I smiled too, gripping his hand for a moment with both of mine.

"You were at a two day conference on fire safety in Virginia at the time Carl fell from the balcony?"

Cohen chuckled, "I guess giving a keynote address in front of 500 people is a pretty good alibi."

I said directly, "I think the explosion had something to do with one or more of the bottles that were on the back table of the conference room. But, you're the fire safety expert, what do you think?"

"Me too," he said simply, but then he began to digress into the way fire inspectors work and that he shouldn't jump to conclusions.

"Daniel," I stopped him, "I'll bet you have some pretty strong opinions about what happened already, and you probably trained all those fire inspectors yourself, didn't you? Have you spoken to them?"

"Confidentially?" he asked. When I nodded he went on, "My guys, who happen to be on the fire team called me. Some of the State guys just want to chalk this up to a back flow gas tank leak, but that's not how it started, not what I think anyway. My guys on the inspection team say there was accelerant in one or more of the bottles on the table and Bart managed to tell the police at the hospital that there was a bang when he lifted a bottle. The cops aren't taking him seriously though."