The Perfect Body, page 14
part #8 of Professor Molly Mysteries Series
“I don’t know if the fancy paneling is worth the smaller space.” I went over to the window and looked out. It was overcast and raining. The back of the hospital building looked bleaker than ever.
“Good thing I didn’t take my top down,” I said.
“What?”
“My car.”
I rapped on the wood paneling. “Pat, there must be something on the other side of this. There were four windows. But each office only has one, and there are only three offices.”
I knocked on the paneling again.
“What does that sound like?” I asked.
“A paneled wall,” Pat said.
A rap on the door interrupted us. It was a security guard, a different one from the last one. I hadn’t seen him before either. Unlike the previous guard, this one was young, skinny, and officious. Maybe the other one had reported us snooping around.
“Excuse me, Miss,” he said. “May I see your identification?”
I did not appreciate this pimply whippersnapper calling me “Miss” as if I were thirteen years old. At my age, the only people who answer to “Miss” are either drag queens or tragic figures in Southern Gothic novels.
“Of course.” I pulled my school ID from my wallet. “I’m Molly Barda. Chair of the management department. College of Commerce. My dean, Dan Watanabe, asked me to come here and—”
“How did you get into this office?” he demanded.
“The door was open,” Pat said. It was true—the door was open, after Pat picked the lock.
“And who are you, sir?” the guard asked Pat.
“Professor Barda’s Feng Shui consultant,” Pat said.
“Just a minute,” the guard said, and left. A moment later, he was back.
“OK, you check out.” He handed my ID back. He seemed to have thawed a bit now that he knew I was legit.
“I was wondering what’s on the other side of this wall,” I said. “Do you know?”
He shook his head.
“You gotta call Facilities for that, Professor Barda. But in the meantime, we got you down for Room 314. You should be getting a key within a few weeks. Okay, you two have a good day.”
“Guess you just picked your office,” Pat said.
“Yeah. I’ll let Serena know. So she can cross it off her list.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Emma called me the next morning, just after Donnie had left for work.
“Emma, I had to pick my office without you.” I pressed the phone to activate the speaker and hoisted the baby up to rest her head on my shoulder. I had abandoned the idea of spit up rags, opting instead to throw my shirt in the wash and get a new one when necessary.
“Molly,” Emma’s voice squawked from the phone on the table, “The paper just published Bee’s obituary. And guess what they led with. That Bee Corcoran got the system research grant.”
“Emma, you can’t still be mad about Bee getting the award—”
“I was looking at the rules for the grant,” Emma said. “And guess what. In the event the original awardee leaves the campus, turns down the award, or dies, the winning campus may select an alternate project.”
“And?”
“And I’m thinking I should get to Gunderson and tell him to switch the award to my project,” Emma declared. “Before the money goes somewhere else.”
“Emma, no!”
“What do you mean, no?”
“How is that going to look?”
“Who cares how it looks?”
“Emma, if you try to get Bee’s grant money, people will think you’re the one who pushed Bee out the window. And your motive will be that you wanted her grant.”
Emma was quiet for a moment.
“Emma?”
“Yeah, what? I’m still here.”
“If they have to award the money to another project at Mahina State, there’s a good chance they’ll pick yours anyway.”
“How do you know?”
“Fine, I don’t know, okay? But I do know it’s not a good idea to go steaming up to your dean before Bee’s murder is even solved and asking him for Bee’s grant money. You can see how that wouldn’t look good, can’t you? Besides, I don’t trust your dean. If Betty’s daughter was telling the truth, he’s conspiring with the prosecutor to frame my husband for murder.”
“Molly, I know what I’m doing. You don’t have to be so maternalistic.”
“Is that a word?”
“Yeah. It’s like paternalistic except for ladies. Look, you should be worried about Margaret Adams. That boy she went to Oregon with is probably the one who killed Bee. Bee fired him, ah? How much you wanna bet he got mad an’ pushed her out the window? Go worry about Margaret.”
“I am worried about Margaret,” I said, “I just don’t know what I can do about it from here without risking making things worse. Emma, maybe you don’t even want that award. Who knows what kind of strings Gunderson attached to it?”
“Ew, like sexual favors?”
“What? I was thinking more along the lines of kickbacks. Maybe Gunderson used Bee’s research to get the system’s grant money, and then he got her out of the way, so he could get his hands on the money himself?”
“I dunno,” Emma said. “Gunderson wouldn’t get the funds free and clear. You know grants don’t work like that, ah? It’s not like Gunderson can just take the money and go spend it all at Ye Olde Elbow Patch Shoppe or wherever he buys his clothes. He’s still gotta spend it on legit stuff. Which, depending on how the grant’s set up, could be pretty restrictive.”
“Yeah, I remember you telling me—”
“Like the grant I have now, ah? Can’t spend on meals, lei, manuscript preparation, stipends, books, dues, journal subscriptions, regular lab supplies, computers, printers, printer supplies, nothing. Okay, so back to my idea about sexual favors. What if Gunderson found out Bee’s ‘secret’ and freaked out?”
“Emma, that’s horrible. You think Gunderson killed her just because of who she was?”
“It happens.”
“I know it happens. That’s why it’s horrible.”
Francesca squirmed in my arms. I commenced my “baby march” around the living room, a bouncing gait that usually calmed her down.
“Emma, look, let’s get your mind off this. Can you come over?”
“You sure? It’s a little early for happy hour, but you could talk me into it.”
“I wasn’t suggesting happy hour. It’s nine in the morning. I meant, we haven’t had a rating party in a while.”
“Oh yeah. Okay, I’ll be there in a few. Don’t go anywhere.”
I rubbed Francesca’s fuzzy little head.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be right here.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
A few years ago, some genius in our administration got rid of in-class teaching evaluations in favor of using a certain well-known online professor ratings site. Because anyone can go on the site and leave feedback, Emma, Pat, and I have made sure to curate our online ratings carefully.
Every so often we have what we call a ratings party, where we leave one another reviews on the site. We draw the line at writing our own reviews. For some reason, that feels wrong.
I brewed coffee and opened a bag of stone cookies. They’re like biscotti, too hard to eat by themselves, but great dunked in coffee. I called Pat, but his phone went to voice mail. I texted him to tell him what we were doing.
The baby was fed and napping by the time Emma came by, so we were able to start right in.
First, we each logged in and left effusive, five-star ratings for Pat Flanagan’s composition class. Pat is a part-time lecturer, who is hired semester by semester to teach one or two or five sections of composition. He can be let go at any time for any reason –or no reason at all. High online ratings give Pat a bit of an edge relative to the rest of the lecturer pool.
After we had finished heaping praise on Pat, Emma and I went on to write reviews for each other. You would think that Emma and I would give each other—that is, ourselves—positive reviews. But that’s not what we do. Unlike Pat, both of us have tenure, which means we can only be fired if the administration actually makes an effort to come up with a reason and then do the paperwork.
Because our continued employment doesn’t depend on our constantly convincing the administration of our worth, our main audience is potential students. So we give each other negative reviews to scare the slackers away from our classes.
Im a 3.5+ gpa student going to med school but could barley pass her class
Imposible 2 cheat cos she changes her tests every year. Unfair!
Her coffee mug is filled with the tears of her students.
I was in the middle of typing out a description of Emma’s system for crushing the dreams of future doctors, when my phone beeped with a message from Pat.
Sorry can’t join you. Filming lava flow. Check out Park’s ratings.
“What’s that?” Emma asked.
“Pat texted that he can’t come because he’s down filming the lava, but we should look at Stephen Park’s reviews.”
Across the table from me, Emma was already tapping on her phone.
“Gross,” Emma said. “It’s all reviews from Stephen’s fan club. All positive. Everyone loved Stephen Park.”
I pulled up Stephen’s ratings page on my laptop and scrolled down.
“Not a single disappointed customer,” I said. “Emma, how much do you want to bet he wrote these himself?”
“Look at the dates, Molly. The most recent ones were posted after he died. Oh, here’s a bad one. ‘Loves the ladies, the younger the better.’”
“Okay, maybe he didn’t write all of them. Oh, come on. Someone posted a link to their blog? Someone went to the trouble of blogging about Stephen Park. Have you ever had a student blog about you?”
“Ew, no, and if I caught someone doing that, I’d call the FBI.”
“I’m going to see what she wrote,” I said.
“Whoa, before you click the link. It might be a phish whatever da kine.”
“Oh yeah. Which one is spear phishing and which one is regular phishing?”
“I forget. Just don’t click any links is all you gotta remember.”
I stared at the review.
Stephen Park’s class was one of my most unique experiences in Hawaii. Read more on my blog.
I picked out key words from the review and searched. Emma came over to sit next to me.
It didn’t take long to find the blog. The author was an exchange student. She had been keeping a record of her Hawaii experiences for the benefit of her friends back home. Her latest entry was dated finals week.
The page featured a photo of the lava flow as a header.
“To Stephen, Who Taught Me About Theater And Life,” Emma read.
“The word ‘and’ shouldn’t be capitalized,” I said.
“He let his students call him by his first name?” Emma asked.
“He insisted on it,” I said. “Because he was a bold, unique iconoclast, exactly like all those other edgy cool profs who swear in class and sleep with their favorite students.”
I felt Emma turn to look at me.
“Molly, let it go. He’s dead. Weren’t you saying you’re not supposed to talk stink about the dead?”
“I was not talking stink. To describe is neither to endorse nor to condemn.”
Emma leaned into the screen, blocking my view.
“Whoa. Look at this, Molly. ‘One of the guys asked him how he got so jacked in such a short time. He said, I’m a guinea pig for a top-secret project. If I tell you about it, I’ll have to kill you.’”
“What an original joke.” I pulled the laptop toward me so I could see what she was talking about.
“Maybe it really was a secret, though, Molly. Maybe your idea about Bee killing Stephen wasn’t so dumb after all.”
“Thank you?”
“Think about it. He’s hanging around Bee Corcoran, she’s doing this muscle research, suddenly he starts growing muscles too? Just like the animals in her lab?”
I lowered the top of my laptop.
“So now you believe me? That Stephen was taking Bee’s magic mouse juice?”
“She was working with rats, Molly, not mice. And it’s not ‘juice’, she was using gene—”
“I know, but ‘magic mouse juice’ is catchy. Don’t you think?”
“I don’t care if it’s catchy. It’s wrong.”
“So do you think maybe he found some bad side effects, and Bee was afraid he’d tell someone? She killed him before he could kill her career?”
“Hm.” Emma rested her chin in her hand and stared at the table. “So who killed Bee then? Or you think with everything else going on in her life it was like the last straw, she regretted what she did and jumped out the window?”
“Or when she got the award, which remember she hadn’t asked for, she realized people would be taking a closer look at her work and would find out what she’d been up to. Emma, I just remembered something. Margaret said that her friend told her that Bee’s rats would end up in the wrong cages.”
“What?”
“That’s a problem, right? I mean, that’s not normal, is it, that lab animals would get mixed up?”
“Uh, yeah, it’s a problem. I don’t do animal research myself, but I know there’s all kinds of controls on it. You can’t just go switching your animals around. I knew it, Molly. No one could get results like that unless they were faking.”
“Well, wait though. She got results with Stephen, didn’t she?”
“Maybe, if he really was taking the treatment himself. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was just working out to impress Bee? Yeah, I dunno. It seems like too much of a coincidence, doesn’t it?”
“Emma, I know it happens, but I don’t understand how someone would fake their research results and think they could get away with it. I mean, wouldn’t people find out eventually? Personally, I could never pull it off. I send my datasets to anyone who asks, and they can run their own analysis.”
“Yeah, but that’s assuming your data’s good in the first place. If you wanted to, you could invent survey responses, and then enter ‘em, yeah?”
“Oh. I guess so. But why would I do that? Even if I didn’t care about ethics or integrity or anything like that, it doesn’t seem worth the risk.”
“Not to us, cause we already got tenure. We can get away with publishing in mediocre journals for the rest of our careers. Oh, and if Bee had investors interested in commercializing her research? More motivation for her to keep it going at all costs. Still too early for booze?” Emma got up and brought our coffee mugs into the kitchen.
“It’s only ten in the morning, so yes, still too early,” I called into the kitchen. “But I’ll take another coffee as long as you’re there.”
“If Bee was faking her results somehow,” Emma said as she returned with two steaming mugs of coffee, “and Stephen knew about it, that’s a motive for Stephen’s murder that points away from your husband. You should call Honey and tell her.”
“I already told her, remember? You were there. Both of you were unimpressed by my theory.”
“But you get more evidence now. You found a student’s blog about Stephen Park, where he admits to being a guinea pig. Maybe Honey guys can find something else in there that could help Donnie’s case.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Worst case, Honey says she’s not interested and doesn’t want to know about it.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
I waved to Emma as she drove off, then strapped Francesca into the baby seat in the back of my T-bird. I drove the few blocks down toward the ocean and pulled up to the curb right outside the Drive-Inn. I knew from hard experience that the lane between the Drive-Inn and the recycling center was too narrow for my car.
“Honey wants to talk to you again?” Donnie asked as he lifted Francesca out of her car seat.
“That’s what she said.”
“Well, if you can remember anything that’ll help my case, that would be great. Tell me all about it when you get back.” Donnie inserted Francesca into the baby carrier on his chest and grabbed the diaper bag out of the back seat.
“There are two bottles of milk in there,” I said. “It shouldn’t take long. I should be back in forty-five minutes at most.”
“Take as much time as you need.” Donnie patted the T-bird’s top and turned to go.
I drove down to Honey’s office feeling optimistic. But after her first few questions, I wondered why I had even bothered.
No, I didn’t have any evidence that Bee had faked her results.
No, I didn’t have any witnesses to Bee going out onto the terrace that night, much less pushing Stephen off it.
No, I didn’t have any idea who Bee’s investor might be, nor any evidence that she even had an investor.
Yes, I could see how Stephen’s “but then I’d have to kill you” comment could have been simply a joke.
No, I had no evidence that Stephen Park had been taking any kind of experimental drug or treatment.
Honey had even more bad news for me. Betty Jackson’s daughter was on the mainland visiting relatives and was unavailable for questioning. I didn’t blame Betty for sending Verna away. Of course she would protect her daughter. I’d do the same thing in her place. Unfortunately for Donnie (and me), there was no one else who could corroborate Verna’s account of the conversation between the dean and the prosecutor.
“Well, Professor,” Honey said, standing up and offering a handshake. “I appreciate your keeping me informed. I’ll talk it over with my investigator, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens when the autopsy comes back.”
I went back outside, started the engine, and let it warm up.
Honey’s lack of interest was disappointing. Maybe she thought Stephen had been joking, but making something up about being a “guinea pig” wasn’t the kind of thing Stephen would do. I considered telling Stephen’s parents, but decided against it. I didn’t have anything solid for them, and I didn’t want to be the one to tell them that their son was using an unproven experimental treatment. It would seem like I was calling Stephen vain and reckless. He was vain and reckless, but there was no point in rubbing their noses in it. Maybe I’d get some grocery shopping done and then go back and get the baby from Donnie. Then at least he wouldn’t know how humiliatingly short my meeting with Honey had been.
