The Probability of Murder (5 page)

Bruce made valiant attempts to bring life back to normal as we drove away from the police station in his SUV.

Unbidden, he stopped at a new chocolate shop in town. He caught the door just as the clerk was about to turn the sign to “Closed” and returned to the car with two mochas and a bag of cookies. I wondered what kind of offer, or threat, he’d made to the scrawny kid in charge of closing up.

The man knew the way to my heart.

Writing out the list of the conversations I’d had with Charlotte over the last week had taken its toll on me. Forced to relive every minute of our recent contact, I’d grown morbidly philosophical.

Would we have texted about the bland food in the Mortarboard Café, the campus coffee shop, if we knew one of us would not live through the weekend? Would we have spent even a moment whining about the faulty self-checkout system at the library? I know we wouldn’t have compared notes on the relative cost of gasoline close to and farther from campus.

Fortified by caffeine and sugar, two of my favorite food groups, I gave Bruce a summary of my interview with his cop friend.

“Does Virgil play the lottery?” I asked.

“Not that I know of. Why do you ask?”

“He started this curious ethical discussion about the lottery, all the scams there are, how the money from the lottery keeps cops on the beat and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the black. You’d think the infrastructure would collapse without it.”

“Maybe he’s right.”

“It doesn’t matter. It was just curious, considering why I was there.”

“Maybe he was just trying to make you feel comfortable, talking about something off-the-wall.”

“It didn’t work.”

Suddenly worn out again, I sank back into the seat. At the next light, Bruce studied my face with his trademark squinty focus and offered to drive me directly home.

“We can pick up your car tomorrow,” he said.

“I’m not as bad as I look,” I said, shaking my head. Too many logistics, and there was a good chance that I’d want to wallow alone and not leave my house for a couple of days. “Just drop me at my car and I can drive myself home.”

“I’ll follow you home, then.”

“I need to stop in Franklin Hall first.”

“I’ll wait.”

Sometimes I was glad for Bruce’s persistence, and this was one of those times.

My task at Franklin Hall was to revisit the scene of the party and make sure things were put away and neatened, in case old Woody, our friendly, trusted janitor, had buckled under the extra workload. The math and science students were dependable, taking turns as cleanup crew, but the arrival of the city of Henley’s entire emergency crew had significantly changed the Friday afternoon rhythm.

I knew my own rhythm would be thrown off indefinitely. Time would help, but the best feelings would return
only when the police had found my friend’s killer. I wished I could do something to help them.

Bruce and I entered the pitch-dark basement of Benjamin Franklin Hall just before eight o’clock. Smells from chemistry on four and biology on three always permeated the air when the doors and windows had been closed up even for a couple of hours. I imagined drips of nasty stuff seeping down, polluting the clean floors of math and physics on one and two. Down here below street level, the atmosphere was worst of all, since there was nowhere else for the ghastly molecules to go.

The old building seemed to creak under our weight and I was doubly glad of Bruce’s presence. I flicked on the lights as we made our way to the elevator.

When the doors opened on the first floor, I was surprised to see a light at the end of the hall, leaking out from under the door to the lounge. Woody wouldn’t ordinarily close the door while he was working, nor would the frugal old man leave a light on.

Bruce instinctively put his arm out and walked in front of me, the way parents do when they’re about to stop short and don’t want their kids taking a header through the windshield.

But years of living with students and knowing their habits told me what was happening in the lounge after hours. As we walked toward the lounge, I coughed so loudly that Bruce stopped and turned to face me. “What’s happening?”

“I’m sounding an alarm,” I said.

His confusion was short-lived as Chelsea and Daryl, the guy who’d challenged her Escher-like one-surface loops, stepped to the door of the lounge, still arranging various parts of their clothing. I was glad that academic differences hadn’t kept them from a budding relationship. Or maybe it was in full blossom.

“Oh, hi, Dr. Knowles and Mr. Granville. We’re just, like, cleaning up,” Chelsea said, though the long conference
table we’d used for this afternoon’s buffet was still piled with the detritus of the Möbius party.

“How nice of you,” I said.

“It’s so sad about Ms. Crocker,” Chelsea said, running her fingers through very long and tangled chestnut hair. I didn’t blame her for being eager to shift my attention from the shoes next to the brown plastic couch. I knew she was an easy mark if I chose to tease, but I was in a mood to let her off the hook.

“Yes, it is sad,” I said.

“Yeah,” Daryl added. He patted all sides of the small patch of blond hair on his chin as if it were the most rumpled part of his overall look. “Have they caught the guy yet?”

“How’s her family doing?” Chelsea asked.

“I don’t know anything yet,” I said. I realized I knew very little about Charlotte’s family. I decided to call her nephew in Boston, Noah, if I could find his number.

“Well, if you see them or anything, tell them we’re really sorry,” Chelsea said.

“Thanks, I will. I’ll be in my office if you want to store any of these leftovers for next week.” I had no desire to talk about Charlotte with students who had other pressing things on their minds.

“We’ll just take everything back to the dorms, if that’s okay,” Chelsea said.

“No problem. Have a great weekend,” I said, as if one were in store for me, too.

The couple’s faces took on expressions of joy, pleasure, anticipation, a very cool evening to come. I couldn’t name it, but whatever the emotion, it butted up against my feelings of loss, for Charlotte, for everyone who would not have a very good weekend.

I turned and nearly ran down the hallway.

“That was too much of I don’t know what,” I half-explained to Bruce as we sat in my office. “How can anyone be happy right now?”

“I get it. Let’s just do what you have to do here quickly and go home. How did those kids get in anyway? And why’d they pick this building for their romp?”

I was glad to have something to smile about. “Students are very resourceful when they need privacy. The couch in the lounge may be the best they can manage that doesn’t cost money.”

Bruce nodded understanding, his eyebrows raised in an expression that said he finally got it. Perhaps remembering his own college days? Another time, I’d have teased him.

“This year, with men on the campus, things are even worse,” I added. “The girls are crowded into Clara Barton and Paul Revere dorms, so the guys can have a whole building to themselves. The boys are in the middle dorm. Nathaniel Hawthorne.”

“Girls to the left; girls to the right,” Bruce joked.

“And you can imagine how much jockeying around goes on. The math and science students are lucky”—I spread my arms to indicate all of Franklin Hall—“they have their own building. Every Franklin resident knows Woody’s schedule. He leaves the basement door open while he wheels the trash out from various locations, and during that twenty or thirty minutes a marching band could enter the building.”

“So much for security. You might want to rethink that campus safety plan.”

I sighed. “No kidding.”

I threw folders into my briefcase. A mere gesture, since I doubted I’d get much done this weekend.

My eyes landed on a green-and-gold duffel bag in the corner. Charlotte’s. I remembered now that Charlotte had given it to me on Wednesday after lunch. It was a different one from the navy blue bag she regularly took to the gym. Though I was happy to do her a favor, I remembered being confused by the reason she wanted to leave the bag with me.

“I’m going to visit a friend in a convalescent hospital that’s not in the best part of town,” she’d said. “I’d feel better if I didn’t have anything tempting in my car.”

“Isn’t this just full of your gym clothes?” I’d asked.

“More or less,” she’d said.

“But I guess a break-in artist wouldn’t know he was stealing dirty laundry until he’d already broken in.”

“Uh-huh. That’s why I’d like to leave it here. And, just think, if I don’t come back for it”—she’d pointed to the duffel—“it’s all yours.”

“Thanks a lot,” I’d responded.

Now I regretted how I’d hesitated to grant what turned out to be my friend’s last request. Had I missed an important signal by not asking her to explain what she meant by not coming back for it?

Bruce picked up Charlotte’s green-and-gold duffel along with my briefcase and my own red-and-gray duffel that served as supplementary overnight luggage.

“Feels like her rock collection is in here,” he said, pretending to be bent from the weight of Charlotte’s bag.

“You always say that,” I reminded him.

“Because you gals always carry way too much.”

“Remember that the next time you want to borrow my nail clippers.”

Here we were fooling around as if my friend hadn’t just been murdered. I stifled a sob, but not before Bruce heard it.

Bruce led me out of the building with a look that said he wasn’t willing to negotiate. “I’m driving you home,” he said.

This time I didn’t argue.

It felt better than ever to be off the campus and on a stool at my country kitchen island. Bruce made himself at home with my pots and pans and the meager contents of my fridge. I’d planned to grocery shop after our getaway in Boston. Still, I knew Bruce would work his magic, and there’d be a spicy concoction for our late dinner.

I drained my now lukewarm mocha and ate another chocolate cookie for an appetizer. Comfort food always helps.

While he peeled and chopped remnants of veggies and stirred something aromatic on the stove, Bruce tried to distract me with talk of his upcoming climb. On Sunday, he’d be off to a mountain in New Hampshire with Kevin and Eduardo, two flight nurses from MAstar.

“Have you ever thought of paying the small fee and just taking the tram ride to the top? The view’s the same, right?”

Bruce smiled a no comment, and I remembered how he felt about people who rode the tram. He insisted that climbers shouldn’t have to share the same peak with those who were carried up in luxury.

“This’ll be Kevin’s first major climb,” he said, proceeding on his own track. “He doesn’t know it, but he’s going to be our belay monkey.”

“Is this a test to see if I remember what that means?” One of the first things Bruce had taught me about climbing was that
belay
was not a verb form of
belie
. I took the bait and the opportunity to show off. “Kevin is going to feed you guys the rope at the beginning of a pitch, and a pitch is sort of a section of the mountain, one rope length long, and you climb one section at a time.”

“Not bad.”

“I also remember that climbing in New Hampshire is where your friend Larry fell and broke his wrist in three places and dislocated all the bones in the palms of his hands.”

“There you go, exaggerating. Larry broke only three of eight bones in his right wrist. He’s been climbing different routes on that peak since he was in college. He got sloppy is all.”

“That’s comforting.”

Why Bruce thought this topic was a good distraction was beyond me. An image of him two hundred miles away and several thousand feet up on the side of a mountain with dried fruit for meals was not what I needed in a time of stress. But he chattered on.

“This will be Kevin’s first multi-pitch, alpine-like climb, so it will be fun for Eduardo and me to teach him a few
things.” Bruce smiled playfully and tossed a carrot in the air before setting it on the cutting board. I hoped he didn’t have something similar in mind for Kevin.

“I wish you weren’t going,” I said.

Where had that come from?

Bruce was understandably concerned at my remark. It wasn’t like me to dissuade him from indulging a hobby he loved. You couldn’t ask a guy who’d done a tour in Saudi Arabia and now landed helicopters on the freeway for a living to sit out all other adventures. Besides that, in times of stress, my preferred state was solitude.

He turned off the stove and came over to me. “Really? Because I’ll cancel the trip right now.”

I quickly waved away the idea. “No, no. I don’t know why I said that.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of that right away.” His beautiful dark eyes turned sad. “Here I am joking around and you’ve just lost a friend.”

Now I felt really bad. Guilt-tripping my boyfriend. Hours of planning and expense had already gone into the climb. I had to buck up and send him on his way.

“I’m going to feel worse if you miss this trip,” I said. “Thanks for offering, though. I’m fine.”

Bruce sighed, and I could see that he was weighing his next move. I hated that I’d put him in a no-win situation with a silly comment. “Soph—”

I held up my hand. “I promise I’ll get Ariana to come over if I feel like having company.”

Bruce finally grinned. “Beading as therapy?”

“Hey, it works sometimes.”

Anything was worth a try.

I’d convinced Bruce to go home to his place after a delicious casserole dinner. Even in my anxious state, I’d been able to eat enough to show my appreciation. Melted Black Diamond cheese will do it every time.

I wasn’t going to be very good company anyway. One of
us moping around my house was enough, and I knew Bruce could use the extra time to pack and prepare the equipment for his trip.

Boys and their toys. Bruce owned duplicates and triplicates of each important piece of equipment, selecting certain sizes and brands depending on the kind of climbing he anticipated. Much of the gear he left behind was stored in my garage, since his own was substandard and barely housed his car, he claimed.