“Ready to sniff out some good deals?” Emma asked as we careened down the narrow road.

  “Ha, speaking of ‘sniffing’ out good deals,” I said. “I picked up a practically-new microwave from the e-waste pile down at St. Aelred’s, and the first time I used it I found out why they tossed it. It smells like a toxic waste dump. I pulled out a little plastic glob from under the rotating plate, but it didn’t seem to help.”

  “You didn’t throw it away yet, did you?” Emma asked. “I need a microwave for my lab. I’ll get one of my grad students to take it home and clean it out.”

  “Take it, please. Rodge Cowper used it to heat up his coffee this morning and it stank up the whole floor.”

  Emma wrinkled her nose.

  “Ew, never mind.”

  “You mean the chemical fumes don’t bother you, but the fact that Rodge used it once is a bridge too far?”

  Emma parked in front of the hardware shop so she could plug her car into the free charger. From there it was a ten-minute walk through Mahina’s intermittent rain to reach our destination. Emma declared the inconvenience completely worth it for what she called “free gas.”

  We arrived at phone store to find it surprisingly uncrowded. The mystery was cleared up by a sign in the window announcing the sale started next week. Emma acted like she had planned it this way all along. Her strategy, she claimed, was to stake out her purchase now and pick it up later at a reduced price.

  I trailed after Emma as she walked the perimeter of the store, examining one rectangular black phone after another.

  “I’m going to go look at the accessories,” I said after about five fascinating minutes of comparing front-camera resolution.

  “Don’t buy phone cases here,” Emma said, as she followed me over to the accessories rack. “They’re a rip-off at the store, cause they gotta cover all the rent an’ salaries. It’s way cheaper to buy ‘em online.”

  “Emma, shh,” I whispered. “Your so-called wasteful overhead is that poor kid’s livelihood.”

  The boy behind the counter looked like he was busy with something at the register, although Emma and I were the only customers in the store.

  “That’s how come we need universal income, Molly. The boy shouldn’t be chained to his minimum wage job.” Emma was generally apolitical, but when her husband Yoshi abandoned the MBA rat race to become a freelance artist, Emma became suddenly sympathetic to redistributive social welfare programs.

  “You’re right.” I examined the price tags posted above the pegboard hooks. “These are kind of overpriced.”

  “Eh, Molly, you should get this one. The silverbacks in your department would plotz.” She held up a glittery pink phone case with “Diva” written across it in gold script. “Could you imagine Hanson Harrison huffing and puffing about the Dignity of the Academy?”

  “Not worth it,” I said. “I can listen to Hanson huffing and puffing without buying an ugly phone case. Wait, this reminds me of something.”

  “We have more colors in the back,” said a voice at my elbow. The young man from behind the cash register stood beside us with an expectant expression. I dearly hoped he hadn’t heard my comment about the ugly phone case. “We got a big shipment in for the sale next week.”

  “Nah, we’re just looking.” Emma slid the package back onto the hook.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Do you have this in purple?”

  “I’ll go check.”

  “Molly, you serious?” Emma said as soon as the young man had disappeared into the back.

  “Emma, look at this.” I pulled the glob of purple plastic out of my purse and showed it to her. She took it from me and examined it.

  “You starting a collection or what?” she asked.

  “It’s from the microwave. The one I scavenged from St. Aelred’s. This is the stinky plastic glob I was telling you about.”

  “Oh yeah.” Emma leaned in to examine the glob more closely but didn’t touch it. “Did you take this out before or after Rodge used the microwave?”

  “What? I don’t know. Before. That’s the thing. I took it out, but the microwave still smells terrible.”

  “So what does this have to do with you asking about whether they have the phone case in purple?”

  “Okay, I’ll stipulate from the outset, this is really none of my business, but—”

  “Ha, when’s that ever stopped you?”

  “Fine, I won’t tell you.”

  “Nah, come on,” Emma pleaded. “I’m nosy too.”

  I peeked over the rack of phone accessories to make sure no one was listening.

  “Okay. The St. Aelred’s student who committed suicide. Maureen’s son.”

  “Yeah, Trevor Dos Santos. What, he had a phone case like this?”

  “Well, I was going for the buildup, but yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. My student told me Trevor was his boyfriend.”

  “Wow, your students tell you some personal stuff, ah?”

  “Sometimes, yeah. Anyway, according to him, Trevor bought himself a sparkly purple phone case, which his macho father did not appreciate. Dad cut off the kid’s allowance. I wonder whether it all spiraled down from there. Bryce didn’t come out and say it, but it seems possible Trevor’s suicide could be related to what the father did.”

  “Aw, that’s sad. So how does the microwave fit in? What, you think the boy Trevor burned his phone case in the microwave at the school cause he felt bad about his dad disowning him or whatever?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “So what are you gonna do with this thing?”

  “I was thinking if this is really from Trevor’s phone maybe Bryce would want it. I mean, I know it’s not appropriate to insert myself into a student’s personal life like that. On the other hand, if I were in Bryce’s place, if someone had a memento from someone I’d lost, even if it was a little burned glob of plastic, I’d want it. What do you think?”

  “Shh, Molly, the boy’s coming back with your phone cases.”

  The young man was holding a set of three cardboard-backed packages fanned out as if they were oversized playing cards. The phone cases were glittery and purple, and all of them had Princess emblazoned across them in curly silver script.

  “What model phone do you have?” he asked.

  “This one.” I plucked the biggest case out of his hand and held my plastic glob up next to it. The glob was burned black along the edge, but otherwise it was a match.

  “I can keep that for you at the counter if you want to continue shopping,” the young man offered. If he thought my comparing the phone case with a plastic blob was weird, he didn’t show it. “You can take your time and come up when you’re ready.”

  “I think I’m not going to make a decision on a case just yet,” I said.” “Thank you for bringing those out for me to look at, though. Oh, I will take this charger kit.”

  As Emma and I were headed back to her car, she said,

  “I can’t believe you just spent fifty dollars on a charger kit, Molly. You could get it online for less than half that price.”

  “He was very helpful,” I said, “and I wanted him to get credit for making a sale. We might have been his only customers today.”

  “You’re just getting ripped off and propping up an exploitative system.”

  “Well, until the Glorious Revolution occurs, this is the system we have. I can’t tip him, that would have been weird. What would you have done, Comrade?”

  “I dunno. Buy an overpriced charger kit, I guess.”

  Molly: Gay Casanova

  EMMA HAD DODGED MY question about giving Bryce the plastic piece from (what I assumed had been) Trevor’s phone. As she drove us back to my building, I brought it up again. Emma wasn’t always tactful in giving advice (in fact I can’t recall a single instance of Emma being tactful) but she usually had something useful to say.

  “I dunno,” Emma said. “How come you think Bryce and da kine, Trevor, had a relationship? Just from what Bryce says?”

  “Well, yes, because not to be ghoulish or anything, but I can’t exactly ask Trevor, can I? You sound like you don’t believe it.”

  “From what Maureen was saying, it doesn’t sound like Trevor had a boyfriend.”

  “She’s probably in denial, Emma. They’re at this conservative private school, the dad is this macho big-shot businessman, of course Maureen’s going to edit the reputation of her late son.” I was surprised Emma was being so naive.

  “You’re wrong, Molly.”

  Emma gunned the car into the left turn, barely missing a lifted truck speeding through the intersection from the other direction. Emma leaned on her horn for a good five seconds as we barrelled up the hospital road.

  “Maybe we can discuss this when you’re not driving,” I said as the prickle of panic faded from my fingers and toes.

  “Idiot. Not you. He shoulda slowed down.”

  “Great. After they scrape me out of your passenger seat, they can put that on my tombstone. So Maureen denies her son was gay. But—”

  “I didn’t say she denies it, Molly. It’s the opposite. From what she says, the boy was like gay Casanova. He didn’t have one boyfriend, he had plenty boyfriends.”

  “Emma, are you saying Maureen the school secretary at St. Aelred’s called her own son gay Casanova?”

  “I’m paraphrasing. But yeah, pretty much.”

  “In what context would that be an appropriate thing to say?” I asked.

  “She said she’d wished she’d pushed the boy harder to get counseling. She thought he was looking for male affection cause he didn’t get along with the father.”

  “How sad. So maybe Bryce thought they had something special, but Trevor not so much. Even so, do you think Bryce would still want something to remember Trevor?”

  “A burned piece of plastic? Molly, that might not go over so good. And what if Trevor melted the phone case cause he wanted to get rid of it? Then you’d be going against a dead person’s wishes.”

  Emma turned into the lot of the old hospital complex. My turquoise-and-white Thunderbird was one of only a few cars remaining.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “I should probably stay out of it.”

  “That’s what should go on your headstone,” Emma said as she pulled up next to the Thunderbird. “Emma was right. I should’ve stayed out of it.”

  Molly: The Rodge Cowper Rule

  I THOUGHT I COULD SLIP back into my office unnoticed. I should have known better. I’d just emailed out a reminder about the midterm coming up in Intro to Business Management next week, so I came back to find a cluster of students waiting outside my office.

  I had them come in one at a time, for the sake of privacy. I also kept my office door propped open to comply with the Rodge Cowper rule. Anyone waiting outside could hear every word spoken inside my office.

  I hate being the excuse police, so I use a policy I borrowed from Emma: I don’t let students postpone or make up exams. Instead, they can drop their lowest midterm grade, no questions asked. It’s on the syllabus, but students read the syllabus about as carefully as I read the terms and conditions when I’m updating my operating system.

  You have to miss the midterm because you’re turning twenty-one and your family’s taking you to Vegas to celebrate? I’ll drop the zero and take the average of your remaining scores. It’s your girlfriend’s due date? Congratulations, that midterm won’t count toward your final grade. You can’t take the midterm that day because your pastor told you it’s the date of the Rapture? Assuming I’m left behind to turn in final grades as the Apocalypse rages outside my office window, that’ll be the midterm you drop. (And no, I don’t understand that one either.)

  When the last student had left, I went downstairs to find Dan Watanabe, my dean. Ever since we’d hired Fiona, Dan had been on my case to do whatever I could to help Fiona out. Finally, I had thought of something that would actually be helpful—get her some emergency aid for her legal fees. Honey Akiona was probably the best criminal lawyer on this side of the island, but she was also expensive.

  Serena, Dan’s secretary, produced the paperwork for me to fill out on Fiona’s behalf. I’d have to get Dan to sign the form personally; it wasn’t something Serena could use his signature stamp for. Dan had been in back-to-back meetings all day, but Serena assured me he’d be back at some point, because he’d left his car keys in his office.

  First, Dan had met with our media team to put together messaging that placed Emmett Spencer’s murder “in context” and didn’t reflect poorly on the university’s decision to move faculty offices into the abandoned hospital complex. Next Dan had strategized with Campus Security to figure out how to deal with snooping reporters and curious tourists. At the moment, she told me, he was in an emergency meeting with our Board of Trustees.

  The trustee meeting was going to be “even worse than usual,” for Dan, Serena told me. At best, the Board of Trustees showed all the nuanced understanding of the complex ecosystem of higher education you’d expect from, well, a Board of Trustees. Throw in a potential PR disaster involving a murdered headmaster turning up on campus, and things could get unpleasant.

  “Serena,” I asked, “if you had to guess, who do you think killed Fiona’s husband?”

  Serena was taking our incoming mail from a big plastic bin on a cart and sorting the envelopes into piles.

  “Someone who hated him, probably,” she said without looking up from her sorting. I noticed she tossed the mass-mail pieces directly into the recycle bin, having apparently decided on the faculty’s behalf that we didn’t need our junk mail.

  “Do you think people blamed him for that student’s suicide?” I asked.

  “I blame him.” she paused and looked at me. “Sorry, but who leaves a loaded gun lying around in his desk like that? At a school? Stupid.”

  “I can’t imagine how the boy’s parents feel,” I said. “If I were in their place, I could see wanting revenge. Although I can’t picture Maureen Dos Santos murdering anyone. What about the father, though? Do you think he’d kill someone who he thought enabled his son’s suicide?”

  Serena snorted.

  “Nah. Apostol never like the boy, you know. Shame, having one mahu son.”

  “Really? Wow. How sad. Poor kid.”

  “Bad luck, the family. His first wife died in an accident, you know.”

  “Car accident?” I asked.

  “Tanning bed. He got remarried and had a kid quick though. Didn’t want to grow old alone, I guess.” Serena reached for the ringing phone, signaling the end of our chat.

  I wanted to ask more: Was Apostol Dos Santos so disappointed in his son that the boy’s suicide didn’t bother him? And how does someone die in a tanning bed accident?

  But Serena’s attention was on the caller, who was apparently leaving a message for Dan Watanabe.

  I heard a noise behind me and turned to see Dan Watanabe rushing in. His hair was spiky with sweat and he looked harassed.

  “I only have a minute,” he said to me as I followed him back to his office.

  He plunked into his chair and stuck his hand into the giant jar of peach-colored antacid tablets on his desk. I averted my eyes when he crammed a handful of them into his mouth. I think they’re supposed to taste like orange Creamsicles, but I tried one once and it tasted like a urinal cake. (Or at least the way I imagine a urinal cake tastes, never actually having eaten one.)

  “It’s for Fiona,” I said. “She’s going to have legal expenses. I filled out the paperwork for emergency assistance, and I was hoping you could—”

  “Save yourself the trouble.” Dan removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Fiona Spencer is leaving.”

  Molly: It’s the Optics

  “FIONA IS LEAVING?” I stared at Dan across his desk as he swallowed the remains of his antacid tablets. “How can she be leaving? Dan, she and her mother were just in my office this morning, asking about getting a lawyer.”

  Dan pretended to look through his desk drawers for something.

  “Maybe she didn’t feel engaged with the department,” he said.

  I threw my hands up and let them fall into my lap.

  “Dan, I’m not the one who barbecued Fiona’s husband and left him in her office. This is not my fault. How ‘engaged with the department’ would you feel if it happened to you?”

  “Molly, no one’s blaming you.”

  “Really? Because it kind of sounds like...sorry, I don’t mean to be contentious.”

  Dan shut the desk drawer and looked at me.

  “Fiona Spencer leaving by mutual agreement is probably the best solution overall.”

  “Except we lose a faculty line we never get back.”

  “It’s not great, I agree. But the optics.” Dan cleared his throat. “Apostol Dos Santos is on our Board of Trustees. His son Trevor took his own life in Emmett Spencer’s office. It’s just bad all around. None of it is Fiona’s fault, but like it or not, she’s caught up in it. Better for everyone, especially for her, if she finds a job somewhere else.”

  “Fiona’s definitely caught up in it. I can’t argue with you there. Okay, so if Fiona is leaving at the end of the semester, we have to figure out—”

  “Maybe sooner than the end of the semester,” Dan said.

  “What?”

  Dan averted his gaze again.

  “Great,” I said. “So how do we cover her classes?”

  “I’m afraid that’ll be your responsibility.”

  “Wait, me? Dan, you can’t make me teach Fiona’s classes and mine too.”

  “Technically I can. You’re the department chair. You’re responsible for ensuring coverage.” He picked up a file folder from his desk and fanned himself with it. “Molly, I know you care about our students and you’ll do what it takes to make them successful.”

  “Couldn’t we hire a lecturer just for the last few weeks?”

  “Sure. If you can find someone who’s qualified this late in the semester.”

  “Hang on. I’m not the only person in the management department. Maybe Larry, Hanson, and Rodge can each pick up one of Fiona’s classes. We can offer them a prorated overload—”

 

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