Murder Had a Little Lamb (20 page)

Was Beanie lurking in the hallway all this time, I wondered uneasily, listening in on our conversation?

“Hi, Dr. Popper,” she said brusquely. Turning to Campbell, she said, “Here’s the Diet Coke you asked me to get.” She held it out as if she was presenting her with a valuable gift.

“In a
can?”
Campbell squealed, sounding repulsed by the very notion. “Beanie, you don’t really expect me to drink out of a
can
, do you? Especially when you know I like it with tons of ice!”

“It’s all I could get,” Beanie insisted. “But you have to get moving or you’re going to be late for our next
class.” She grabbed her friend’s arm and started to pull her out of the classroom.

“Sorry, Dr. Popper,” Campbell said, shooting me an exasperated look as she allowed herself to be dragged away.

Even so, somehow I got the feeling she enjoyed the attention as much as she enjoyed having Beanie act as her servant—even if she did sometimes forget the ice.

•   •   •

As I wandered out of the Planet Earth building, I glanced at my watch. It was later than I thought, a harsh reminder that I had to get moving if I was going to get to Sunshine Multimedia’s television studio in time for the live broadcast of my weekly TV spot,
Pet People
.

But because it was Friday, I wanted to be sure to check my mailbox before taking off for the weekend. So before making my way to the parking lot, I stopped off in the administration building and headed toward the neat grid of wooden pigeonholes.

As usual, mine was stuffed. I expected that, also as usual, most of it would be junk mail—or at least mail that was irrelevant, given my status as a short-term volunteer.

I pulled out the wad of paper and scanned the notices about school activities that didn’t affect me. Yet there was something out of the ordinary at the bottom of the pile: a sealed brown nine-by-twelve envelope.

I studied it for a few seconds, noticing there was no postage and no return address. It didn’t appear to be
an internal communication, either, since the Worth School’s emblem wasn’t imprinted anywhere.

The only thing on it, in fact, was my name: Dr. Jessica Popper. The words had been printed from a computer and taped onto the envelope.

Curious, I tore it open and pulled out what looked like a stack of black-and-white Xeroxed pages. A second later I realized they were pages from old newspapers that had been stored on microfilm.

I lowered my eyes to the bottom of the first page. It was dated February 25, 1981.

As I was puzzling over what this could possibly be—and who could have wanted to make sure I saw it—my eyes were drawn to a single word: murder.

JEAN HARRIS CONVICTED OF MURDERING THE SCARSDALE DIET DOCTOR
, the bold headline at the top of the page read.

What
is
this? I wondered, my heart pounding and my mouth suddenly dry. But I began to read.

“Yesterday, a jury convicted Jean Harris of second-degree murder, ending the fourteen-week trial that began on November 21, 1980, becoming one of the longest trials in New York State history. Harris was arrested for murder of Dr. Herman Tarnower, the cardiologist who ran the Scarsdale Medical Center in Weschester County, New York, and authored the best-selling book
The Scarsdale Diet
. Harris admitted to shooting Tarnower repeatedly.”

The Diet Doctor Murder. It was something I remembered hearing about, mainly because it had been an extremely high-profile case. But I had to admit that I didn’t remember many of the details.

I read on.

“The trial caught national attention not only because of the high-profile victim, but also because of the case’s sordid details. While Harris and Tarnower had been in a relationship for fourteen years, he frequently had affairs with other women. According to testimony, the most recent was a multiple-year relationship with his clinical assistant, a younger woman named Lynne Tryforos. Harris, 57 at the time of the shooting, concluded that Tryforos, who was 38, was going to replace her in Tarnower’s life.”

I don’t remember that part at all, I thought, still puzzled. But the reason I was even reading this in the first place became clear as I scanned the very next paragraph.

“The accused was also considered an unusual suspect in a murder investigation,” the article continued, “since the prim, Smith College–educated woman served as the headmistress of the Madeira School, an exclusive girls’ school in McLean, Virginia …”

A chill ran through me as I realized what this was about. In my hand was a stack of articles about a woman who had committed murder—but not just any woman, and not just any murder.

Jean Harris had been the headmistress at an exclusive girls’ school. And her victim had been her lover.

My heart was still beating crazily fast as I riffled through the rest of the Xeroxed pages, anxious to see what else was in the packet. I quickly read through one article after another, all of them about the same case.

Even though I was only skimming, I managed to
pick up on some more of the details. Tarnower had been an attentive suitor, lavishing gifts on Harris and taking her to exotic destinations for vacations. Harris had been taking medication that Tarnower had prescribed for her, allegedly to help her cope with the pressures of her job.

In the end, Harris had driven from Virginia to Tarnower’s luxurious estate north of New York City with a .32-caliber revolver she claimed she intended to use to commit suicide. When she arrived, she found Tryforos’s lingerie in his bedroom, which elicited an argument.

Instead of committing suicide, she had shot the man she claimed she loved four times at close range, fatally wounding him.

It was horrifyingly obvious why these articles had been left for me. Whoever had gone to all this trouble was sending me a message: that Nathaniel Stibbins’s killer was right here in the administration building, sitting less than twenty feet away from where I stood.

But did the person who wanted me to draw that conclusion really know the truth? Was he or she one hundred percent certain that the headmistress of the Worth School had murdered the man she claimed to love—just like Jean Harris, the headmistress of the Madeira School?

Or did that individual, whoever it was, have some other reason for wanting to see the blame pinned on Elspeth Goodfellow—the most obvious one being that the sender was actually the guilty party?

All this meant that I hadn’t really learned much at all.

Yet as I rushed out of the administration building toward my van, I suddenly realized that there
was
something I’d just learned.

And that was that somebody here at the Worth School had figured out precisely what I was up to.

T
he realization that I’d been found out made my skin crawl.

As I strode toward the parking lot, I kept checking over my shoulder. Not that I knew who I was looking for. It was just that I half-expected to see someone watching me, peering out surreptitiously from behind a tree trunk or a window or a piece of sculpture.

Don’t panic, I told myself. Just because someone at the Worth School noticed you were showing a bit too much interest in Nathaniel Stibbins isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Maybe that person could even turn out to be helpful.

I knew I was whistling in the dark. But at the moment, that seemed a lot better than whimpering. As soon as I climbed into my van and turned the
key in the ignition, another jarring thought popped into my head.

I had a television show to do—and if I didn’t make it over to the studio in record time, there was going to be nothing for the folks in the viewing audience to watch but dead air.

It’s amazing how one alarming thought can take precedence over another. Still, as I raced along the Long Island Expressway as fast as I dared, the fact that someone had anonymously left articles about Jean Harris in my mailbox hung over me like a rain cloud on the day of the big picnic.

Who could it be? I wondered.

Rather than giving in to those same feelings of panic that still threatened to engulf me, I decided to methodically go through the list of people I’d met at the Worth School who had known Nathaniel—and who might have had reason to want him dead.

The most obvious of those was Dr. Elspeth Goodfellow. The fact that she and Nathaniel had been lovers made her a prime suspect. The police almost always started a homicide investigation by looking at the spouse or significant other. Surely even Falcone would figure out at some point that she and Nathaniel had been involved romantically.

On top of that, I had to admit that there were disturbingly similar parallels between Elspeth Goodfellow and Jean Harris, the headmistress of another elite girls’ school. If Claude’s claim that the relationship had been one-sided really was accurate, that would mean both Elspeth and Jean had had strong feelings for men who hadn’t exactly returned
their affections in the same manner that Romeo had acted toward Juliet.

In Jean Harris’s case, there had apparently been another woman lurking in the background. While at this point I didn’t know if that had also been the case with Elspeth and Nathaniel, a third party would certainly have strengthened her motive—whether her relationship with the artist was genuine or existed only in her mind.

Then there was Claude. Richard Evans had told me that while the two men had once been friends, they had had some kind of falling out. Reverend Evans had been unwilling to divulge any of the details—and Claude hadn’t exactly rushed to volunteer anything about what had brought about their rift. But I’d seen for myself what an arrogant, competitive man Claude Molter was, and it wasn’t that difficult to imagine him becoming extremely angry with Nathaniel. Perhaps even angry enough to kill him.

As much as I hated to admit it, I couldn’t avoid considering the students at Worth as possible suspects. I’d only been teaching my animal-care class for four days, so it was impossible to identify every single girl who might have disliked him. But I’d been to the murder victim’s house—and I’d seen for myself that Nathaniel had had romantic entanglements with at least one of the young women at the school.

But in addition to the students, I also had to consider their parents. Campbell Atwater’s father, for example. Leighton Atwater certainly didn’t have anything positive to say about the Worth School—or Mr.
Stibbins. I didn’t know what, if anything, had transpired between the two men. But it was possible that Atwater and Stibbins had clashed on some issue and that Atwater, a phenomenally successful businessman who was undoubtedly accustomed to being in control, had decided to take matters into his own hands.

True, he was the least likely person on my list to have stuck those articles in my mailbox. After all, he wasn’t exactly a day-to-day presence on the Worth School campus. But it wasn’t impossible, either. Nor was it impossible that someone else who was a fixture on campus had done it on his behalf. Ms. Greer, for example. Or, I supposed, even Richard Evans.

Of course, either one of them could also have sent me the message about Dr. Goodfellow for their own reasons …

I was starting to feel so overwhelmed by all the possible scenarios that could have been behind the package that had mysteriously appeared in my mailbox that I was actually glad I had that morning’s television spot to distract me. For at least a little while, I’d have something else to think about.

With that obligation looming in front of me, I forced myself to focus on the demands that came with hosting my own television show—even though as one of my students had so thoughtfully pointed out, it was only broadcast on a local cable station. It was true that the demands weren’t that great, since all that was required of me during the fifteen-minute broadcast was speaking about some topic related to animal care—and doing it without giggling, stuttering, hic-cuping, drooling, or scratching. However, pulling that
off still necessitated some concentration, so I tried to get myself in the right mind-set.

Arriving at the studio later than usual didn’t help. As if my earlier feelings of being overwhelmed weren’t bad enough, I was also feeling pretty frazzled as I jumped out of my van and dashed across the parking lot. With only five minutes left before the show aired, I didn’t even have time to comb my hair, let alone to give Patti Ardsley, the show’s producer, a chance to brief me.

Good thing she took care of the topic for this week, I thought, grateful for the way she’d stepped in. Given everything else that’s been going on, thinking up a way to fill my spot is something I just didn’t have either the time or the energy to deal with this week.

I tore through the main entrance of the Sunshine Multimedia building, flashing my ID card at the receptionist. Fortunately, she knew me by now, so getting her to buzz me in was no problem.

“Break a leg!” she called after me.

It might actually come to that, I thought, careening around the corner past the Green Room and the dressing room and heading straight into the studio.

“Made it!” I exclaimed as I burst into the small, boxy room with black walls, no windows, and a single huge camera. Not surprisingly, Patti was already there, along with her perky assistant, Marlene Fitzgerald, a surly potbellied cameraman, and a few other assorted crewmembers.

“We were beginning to wonder if you would,” Patti said dryly. Usually, the young woman with the looks of a cheerleader was the epitome of bubbly optimism.
Still, she was a professional—and that meant making sure the entire production went off without a hitch. I could understand how having the star come dashing into the studio only seconds before the show began could make anyone testy.

“Sorry,” I muttered. Then I gave the one excuse that, on Long Island, never fails to elicit sympathy: “Traffic.”

I headed straight for the set. As I did, I remembered the receptionist’s words and took special care not to knock over the camera or trip on any cables. I plopped into my seat, a tall stool behind a counter on which there was nothing but the telephone used for the call-in segment at the end of the show. Right behind was a backdrop of stuffed animals, everything from fish to zebras made of fake fur in colors as bright as the human eye could tolerate without requiring special protection. The stuffed animals might have been garish, but at least they managed to hold still through the entire show—unlike some of the live four-legged and feathered guests on past shows.