Physics Can Be Fatal (11 page)

     A few hours later Edwina was awakened by the sound of voices.  Startled and momentarily confused by her surroundings, she sat up and stayed very still.  What sounded like two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, drifted faintly from one of the offices.

     Edwina tiptoed toward the direction of the voices.  The whole place was in pitch dark, and she had to creep along slowly through the reception area, to avoid bumping into anything or tripping.  When she got to the hallway it was too dark to make out the names on the doors. The darkness was disorienting and it was difficult to gauge where she was.

     Edwina hovered in the hallway, breathless, heady with curiosity. With no escape plan in mind, and no adequate explanation for spying if she got caught, she simply hoped the office door would not suddenly open.  She was determined to know whose voices she was hearing.

     Edwina could not make out the hushed words being exchanged, but she gleaned intonations of anger and recrimination. She thought the male voice might be Donald Gaylord.  The female voice sounded familiar, too, but she could not quite place it.  She had definitely heard it before.

     Starting to feel nervous about getting caught, Edwina reached down into the pockets of her jeans trying not to make a sound.  She felt around for a scrap of paper or a rubber band or paper clip.  Gingerly, she extracted a lone toothpick. Silently, she bent down to feel for the baseboard along the wall, and carefully laid the toothpick on its narrow ledge.  She backtracked to her own office as hastily as she could, and slept fitfully for the rest of the night on two chairs pulled together. 

     She awoke the next morning at seven o’clock with a stiff neck.  It was too early for the department secretary, Ruth Benjamin, to be at her desk in Reception, so Edwina ducked into the Ladies’ Room.  She washed her face, combed her hair, and brushed her teeth, hoping no one would suspect she had slept over. Remembering the toothpick, she walked quickly down the hallway to retrieve it.

     Sure enough, there it was, sitting atop the baseboard trim right outside Donald Gaylord’s office.     

*

     Will Tenney felt somewhat intimidated by Professor Helen Mann. Her height of six feet did nothing to discourage the Head of the Physics and Astronomy Department from wearing preposterously high heels, and the result was that she towered over most people––even Will, who was also six feet tall.  Helen’s helmet-hairstyle, sharp nose, and prominent incisor teeth conjured an almost predatory appearance.

     Helen welcomed the detective into her office, and gave him a firm handshake.  She sat down in a Queen Anne wingback chair behind her massive desk.

     “How can I help you, detective?”

     “Thank-you for meeting with me,” he said. “The New Guilford Police Department is looking into the death of Alan Sidebottom.  I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

     “Not at all,” Helen replied.

     “How long have you been Head of the department?”

     “Ten years,” she said. “I was appointed when Professor Jacobson retired.

     “Did you know Alan Sidebottom well?”

     “Not well, no. We hadn’t spoken in decades. I won’t mince words with you, detective; I knew Alan in the Biblical sense. But that was some thirty years ago, and we did not maintain any kind of relationship afterward.  It was a brief affair, one of those things one does when one is young and foolish.”

     Will kept quiet, taking notes and waiting for more information. Helen merely returned his gaze. This standoff lasted for almost a minute, each trying to take the measure of the other.

     “Is there anything you can tell me that might help with the investigation?  Anything that might shed light on Professor Sidebottom’s untimely death?” Will prodded. “Problems he might have been having with a student, or a fellow teacher? Any problems in his personal relationships?”

     Helen shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and accidentally knocked some papers off the desk. Will picked them up off the floor and handed them to her.  On top was a pink flyer advertising a discount for a haircut.

     “I could do with a haircut, myself,” he said genially.  “Is this place any good?”

     “I wouldn’t know. I go to Boston to get my hair done. Makes a nice change from small town life,” Helen explained imperiously.

     “Can you tell me whose decision it was to invite Alan Sidebottom to Cushing?” Will asked.

     “It was mine, as a matter of fact.  I felt it would be very good for the department’s standing to have someone as prominent as Alan Sidebottom teaching here for the semester. Alumni love that sort of thing.  Famous names associated with the college seem to encourage them to contribute more money to the old alma mater.  And we always need more money.  Simple fact of life. Running a financially successful department is what I get paid for, detective.”

     “Had you been in touch with Professor Sidebottom at all over the years?  Had you seen him in the past thirty years?” Will asked.

     “No. We fell completely out of touch,” Helen replied.

     “Did you harbor ill will toward him because of your earlier relationship?”

     “Not at all,” Helen said.  “I chalked it up to youthful folly.  Nothing more, nothing less.”

     Will made notes. He felt sure Helen Mann was being less than completely honest.  Her presumptive royalty act was getting on his nerves.  But more than that, he knew she acted that way as a defense.  She was hiding something about herself or about Alan Sidebottom’s death.  Or both.

     “It seems that Professor Sidebottom led a very colorful life,” Will said. “From what I understand he had any number of enemies.”

     “If you’re talking about the situation with Mitchell Fender, it’s old news.  I had a talk with Mitch about it before Alan Sidebottom arrived. The whole incident was put to rest. Mitchell gave me his word that he would not stir up any old business that might create divisiveness in the department,” Helen said. “And Mitch knows I mean business.”

     “Uh-huh.  Well, thank you for your time, Dr. Mann.  If you do think of anything else, please give me a call,” Will said, leaving his card.

Chapter 7

     Ravi Kapoor was the first one to arrive at the Observatory that evening.  He parked his car in the deserted parking area, and crunched his way across the gravel courtyard, looking upwards at the moonless, black sky, stuffed full of gleaming constellations.  The sound of his footsteps was amplified in the surrounding silence.

    The shadowy, cavernous spaces inside the Observatory aroused in Ravi a sense of awe and wonder from his childhood, just as if it were his very first visit to the planetarium.  Never had a place moved him so deeply.  Never had architecture registered on him as something sacred, the way the building soared upwards toward the heavens and seemed to touch the sky.  Here was Ravi’s cathedral.

     He passed through the darkened, domed room where the telescope was housed, into the computer control room.  Ravi took off his coat, flipped on the lights, and settled in at the computer console.  He soon heard someone enter the building.

     “Lois not here, yet?” Paolo Rossetti said, appearing in the doorway.

     “No,” Ravi said, looking up.  “That’s kind of weird.  She’s usually the first one here,” he said, checking his watch.

     Their brief preliminaries over, the conversation turned to the subject at hand of theoretical cosmology and to the data they were analyzing. 

     A text rang on Ravi’s phone.

     “Lois says she can’t make it,” Ravi said.  “She’s not feeling well.”

     “Anything serious?” Paolo said.

     “Tummy bug,” replied Ravi.

*

     Lois Lieberman did feel a bit sick to her stomach, but it was because she had lied to Ravi and Paolo, something she had never done before, and something so out of character she vowed never to do it again.

     But desperate times called for desperate measures, and Lois was desperately in love with a married man who had called in the late afternoon to say he could see her that evening if she could get free. 

     Lois disliked the subterfuge and the questionable morality of her situation intensely.  But when human wiring goes right, the impulse to endure outweighs all else, and Lois rationalized her affair with the belief that her paramour could only be happy with her, and she with him, and that without one another each would suffer.  In the urge to thrive, all bets were off.  

     The man parked his car two blocks away from Lois’s house.  He walked the rest of the way under cover of darkness, through the unlit, sleepy streets.  Lois let him in the kitchen door at the back of the house where they would not be observed.

     “It’s getting late,” Paolo said, looking at his watch.  “I think I’ll call it a night.  How about you?”

     “I think I’ll stay a bit longer,” Ravi said, staring at the computer screen.  “I am very encouraged by this data––I just want to look at a bit more. See you tomorrow.”

     “Ciao, Ravi.  See you in the morning.”

     Paolo zipped his coat against the cold night air, and on the way to his car had a sudden thought.

    
Poor Lois and her stomach bug!   I’ll pick up some ginger ale and plain crackers and chamomile tea on the way home, and leave a care package at her door,
Paolo thought, filled with the satisfaction of having thought up a good deed for a friend.

*

     Paolo parked his car on the quiet street in front of Lois’s house, since he did not wish to wake her with the sound of his car pulling into the driveway. He scribbled a note and stuck it inside the bag of grocery items.  Carefully setting the bag on the wrought iron bench next to the front door Paolo began a silent retreat back to his car.

     Just as he turned away from the house he caught a brief movement out of the corner of his eye. He focused on the upstairs window where he thought the movement came from, and stood still, waiting to see if anything else would happen.  No light came on.  All was quiet.

    
Perhaps it was nothing,
Paolo thought. 

    Anyway, I’d better get home before Francesca starts to worry about me.
 

*

            Will stopped by Sanborn House, hoping to interview the librarian. A dozen students sat scattered at long, library tables, reading and studying, working at laptops, even napping. Others had settled into comfy reading chairs in recessed alcoves that overlooked the college Green. The atmosphere in the library was tranquil and quiet.

     Will found Charlotte Cadell hovering over the tea table, arranging rows of sliced cake, scones and cookies on a Calyx ware platter.

       At some point during her seventeen years at Cushing College, Charlotte Cadell had managed to carve out the Physics and Astronomy library at Sanborn House as her undisputed territory.  This meant that no one – not even Heads of Department – quibbled with her about anything to do with how the library was run.  Over the course of her stewardship the library evolved into something of Charlotte’s personal principality – rules governing the library were proposed and enacted by her, alone.

         Although no one could remember quite how this de facto arrangement came to be, it was widely respected. Occasionally misled by Charlotte’s demure demeanor, and by the idea that they outranked her, a few department members along the way had made the mistake of being high-handed with her, or of questioning her authority.  Charlotte knew when and how to be quietly ferocious, and these missteps were rarely repeated.

      Having finished arranging the tea table Charlotte sat down at her desk and tucked her skirt tautly under her thighs.  In her forties, she displayed the dull remnants of what was once natural beauty.  She was one of those attractive women who made little or no effort toward her appearance.  On occasion she wore a bit of lipstick, but no more than that.  Her butterscotch-color hair was graying, and her once lovely figure had thickened at the waistline.  Charlotte Cadell’s delicate features and fine bone structure told the story of classic, faded beauty, like the portrait of a beautiful woman, slightly blurred and discolored by sunlight.