The Fever Cabinet, page 16
part #9 of Professor Molly Mysteries Series
I could see why the student had noticed the man’s watch. The midnight-blue leather glowed richly, and the crisp platinum-and-white face was minimalist elegance itself.
I downed my lukewarm coffee (for courage? I don’t know why) and crossed the landing to Fiona’s office. Her door was ajar, so I rapped on it and pushed it open without waiting for an invitation.
Fiona was sitting with a student, going over a marked-up paper. Apparently Fiona had chosen to ignore the Student Retention Office’s ban on using red ink on student work, because the paper looked like a crime scene. (The Student Retention Office had at one point tried to block the department secretaries from ordering red pens. It didn’t go well. As powerful as the Student Retention Office may be, no one pushes the secretaries around.)
“Oh hey Professor Barda,” the student said.
“Hi,” I replied cheerily, completely unable to remember her name. She’d been in my Intro to Business Management class last year. “I’m so sorry to interrupt. I need to have a quick word with Dr. Spencer.”
Fiona followed me over to her doorway.
“The worker over there, lying on his back,” I whispered to her.
“He’s awfully close to the edge.” Fiona’s voice sounded hoarse. “Is he dismantling the balustrade?”
“I’m sure he’ll put it back together when he’s done. My question is, do you recognize his watch?”
We watched him work for a moment, which was very stressful for me. I kept imagining him sliding head-first off the balcony and plunging to a bloody death forty feet below. Fortunately that didn’t happen.
The man raised his hand, and I heard a little gasp from Fiona.
“Is it the watch you gave Emmett?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Or very like. What should I do?”
“If it is his, I assume you want it back?” I asked. She nodded.
“Is it engraved or anything? So you can identify it as your husband’s?”
Her face fell.
“No. We were—I was going to have it engraved. But Emmett said it was perfect as is and he didn’t want to ruin it.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can find out.”
She nodded again and slipped back into her office. Finally, I could do something useful for Fiona.
I didn’t want to bother the man again while he was working on the ledge, so I waited inside my office with the door propped open. I kept an eye on him until he had finished up and was brushing the dust off his jeans.
The student who had been in Fiona’s office wandered in and sat down in my visitor chair.
“Oh hi Ashley.” I stood up to signal that I had to leave. At least I had remembered her name, finally. The man with the watch was already starting down the steps, toolbox in hand.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said earnestly, “but I was hoping you could help me check my graduation progress. Dr. Spencer says trying to figure out our gen ed requirements was making her woozy.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “I just need to talk to that man for a second. Wait right here.”
I tucked a clipboard under my arm and started down the steps. The man was gone, probably disappeared into the elevator on the third floor. I raced down to the bottom of the steps and to the back of the ground floor lobby and waited in front of the elevator.
Eventually the bronze doors creaked open, and the man walked out past me.
The watchband looked black now in the dim lighting of the ground floor.
“Excuse me,” I called after him, and he slowed down to let me catch up. “I couldn’t help noticing your watch. I was wondering where you got it.”
He looked at his wrist.
“Yeah, nice, ah?”
“Very. I was thinking, my husband might like one like it.”
I had to walk quickly to keep pace with him, so I couldn’t tiptoe on the muddy utility road. I’d have to worry about my shoes later.
“Mr. F gave it to me.” The man was able to talk and carry a heavy toolbox without slowing down at all. “I don’t know where he got it from, but.”
“Mr. F?”
“Teaches science down at St. Aelred.”
“You mean Mr. Ferman? The one who was in an accident and ended up in the hospital?”
“Shame, ah? Good man, Mr. F.”
“May I see the watch again?”
The man stopped walking and held his wrist out for me to admire. Out in the sunlight the band looked dark blue again.
“If you know Mr. F, you could ask him where he got it,” he said. “Anyway, I gotta go, ah? You have a good evening, Mrs. Gonsalves.”
The man hurried off. I shouldn’t have been surprised he knew who I was. Or, rather, who my husband was. Everyone in Mahina knows Donnie Gonsalves, founder and owner of Donnie’s Drive-Inn. So much for me being a clever spy.
I walked (carefully) back to our building, cleaned the mud off my shoes in the first-floor ladies’ room, then went upstairs to tell Fiona what had just happened.
She agreed that this must be her husband’s watch. The Mr. Ferman connection couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. She dialed Mahina PD and asked for Officer De Silva. He wasn’t there so she left a message. She described the watch in impressive detail, although all she seemed to recall of the man was that he was “dressed like a builder.”
After she hung up, I asked,
“Why didn’t you say anything about Mr. Ferman?”
“I don’t believe Mr. Ferman killed my husband,” she said. “I’d only be giving the police an excuse to harass the poor man. The builder’s probably lying about where he got it in any case.”
“Oh. I didn’t even think of that.”
A quiet knock made us both look up.
“Ashley! I’m so sorry.” I had completely forgotten about the student waiting in my office. “Okay, let’s go have a look at your transcript...hang on, what just happened? Where did they all come from?”
A line of students had formed in front of my door and stretched down the stairs.
“They just sent out a text alert about early spring registration opening,” Ashley said as we walked back over to my office. “So you can help me plan my spring semester schedule too.”
Molly: A Purple Glob
I HAD TO PUT THE QUESTION of Emmett Spencer’s watch out of my mind temporarily. You don’t want to hear the details of navigating our Byzantine course registration system—really, you don’t. Just trust me when I tell you that trying to help students work out their class schedules is as challenging as solving a murder mystery, and much less fun.
The last student in line was Bryce Kahului. By the time he was up, my brain was so wrung-out I was happy I even remembered his name. He set up his laptop on my desk, and I asked him how he was doing.
“Kinda hectic at St. Aelred,” he said. “They’re hiring a search firm to look for a new headmaster. I think Maureen’s got it under control though.”
Must be nice to work at a private school where you can replace people when you lose them, I thought.
I was tempted to tell him about my conversation with the Konishi Construction employee and ask him whether he knew anything about Emmett Spencer’s watch. Specifically, how it might have ended up in Mr. Ferman’s possession. But as curious as I was, it didn’t seem right to drag a student into this.
“You call your boss Maureen?” I asked. “Not Mrs. Dos Santos?”
“Nah, she never like being called Mrs. Dos Santos. She says, Mrs. Dos Santos is my mother in law, call me Maureen.”
A twinkly noise filled my office. Bryce pulled his phone out of his messenger bag and shut off the sound. I wondered whether his hot pink phone case had caused him any grief with his relatives.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “It’s my sister calling again. I don’t have the money to fly home for Thanksgiving and she’s giving me a hard time about it.”
Should I invite Bryce to our Thanksgiving potluck? Donnie would be okay with it. But to avoid the appearance of favoritism, I might then have to invite every student in the College of Commerce, something I definitely wasn’t prepared to do.
I took Bryce through an audit of his past classes and current requirements, switching windows among the table of historic course number changes, the schedule of currently available courses, and the maps of which courses (which may or may not be offered in the current semester) fulfilled which gen ed requirements. The faculty have repeatedly asked for all this information to be consolidated on one site, so we wouldn’t have to open several different browser windows and PDF documents each time we wanted to advise a student. But migrating data takes resources, and faculty labor is apparently unlimited and free, so the answer is always no.
Fiona Spencer’s spring classes were filling fast, I noticed. There were a lot of students who wanted to experience a class with “Mary Poppins,” a nickname I didn’t think Fiona would appreciate.
“Do you have someplace to spend Thanksgiving?” I asked Bryce when we were finished with his course scheduling.
“Oh yeah. St. Aelred’s. The dining hall does a nice meal for the boarders and staff. I’ll be having Thanksgiving dinner there.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “Oh. One more thing.”
I pulled the purple plastic glob out of my bag. Poor kid, if he couldn’t spend Thanksgiving with his family at least he could have this little memento.
“Bryce, I think this might be from Trevor’s phone. Do you want it?”
Bryce frowned at the charred glob on my desk.
“Why do you think this is from Trevor’s phone?” He asked.
“Because, remember you told me about Trevor’s sparkly purple phone case, and how it caused so much trouble between him and his father? When I saw this, I remembered what you told me. Sparkly, purple, that’s how I made the connection.”
I didn’t tell him the part about matching the piece to the cases at the store. It would have seemed weird.
“Where’d you find it?” Bryce asked.
“There was a new-looking microwave in the pile of e-waste on the St. Aelred School campus,” I said. “So I picked it up for the department. This piece of plastic was stuck inside, under the rotating glass plate.”
“Can I see it?” Bryce picked it the glob and shook his head. “Doesn’t match. Trevor’s one was a different color. Where’s the microwave you’re talking about?”
“It’s the one right out there on our break table. We’re not really using it, because every time someone turns it on our whole floor smells like toxic waste. If you know anyone who needs a stinky microwave, it’s there for the taking.”
“I could use it,” Bryce said.
“Really? Well, okay. Sure. Help yourself.”
Bryce slung his messenger bag onto his shoulder, went over and unplugged the microwave, and carried it down the stairs.
Fiona: Thanksgiving
AS SHE WAS GETTING ready for bed that evening, Fiona’s phone rang. It was the lawyer, Honey Akiona.
“Dr. Spencer.”
Fiona thought Honey Akiona’s tone sounded grim. She sat down on the bed.
“Yes?”
“Looks like someone’s kicked a hornet’s nest. Things have started to move pretty fast.”
“Oh?” Fiona felt queasy.
“Do you remember our conversation?”
“Yes. Are you saying my mother and I—”
“I think your mother’s okay for now, actually,” Honey said. “But you somehow got on the wrong side of someone important.”
“I did? How ever did I manage that?”
All Fiona had done was leave a message for Officer De Silva about the builder who was wearing what looked like Emmett’s watch. De Silva hadn’t returned her call and upon further reflection, she realized it wasn’t much to go on. She didn’t have a good description of the man wearing the watch, and perhaps it hadn’t really been Emmett’s watch after all. The man could have invented the story about Mr. Ferman, who after all, was famously eccentric.
“I’m not sure what you did,” Honey said. “But someone’s putting pressure on Mahina PD. It’s not a healthy climate for you right now.”
“How much time do I have?” Fiona asked. “Do I have the weekend at least?”
“Oh yeah,” Honey said. “As long as you’re out of here by Christmas you’ll be okay.”
So Fiona quietly arranged her departure and, in the meantime, did her best to keep up appearances. She taught, and graded, and kept office hours, although with the door shut so very few students dared bother her.
Wary of letting the mask slip, she avoided any unnecessary contact with people. She especially evaded her mother. Harriet was both perceptive and indiscreet; no secret was safe around her.
But on a rainy, lonesome Thursday, when Americans were celebrating their Thanksgiving holiday, Harriet roared up to Fiona’s house on her motorcycle. Harriet shanghaied (her phrase) her daughter for what she called “a Thanksgiving feast by the seaside.”
Fiona’s escape plan was well enough along by now that even if Harriet found out about it, she couldn’t cock it up. Emmett’s Mini Cooper Convertible would already be down at the harbour and would ship out today or tomorrow. The only thing left for Fiona to do was to notify her department head she wasn’t coming back on Monday. She would do that later today.
Fiona accepted her mother’s invitation, even though it meant riding on the back of Harriet’s 1966 Triumph Bonneville in the rain. Getting rained on in Mahina wasn’t so bad, really. It was like stepping into a warm shower.
“The Maritime Club is the social centre of Mahina,” Harriet shouted to her daughter as they pulled into the car park. It was nearly full. “And they have a gorgeous Thanksgiving spread today.”
“Don’t you have to be a member to eat here?” Fiona asked.
“I joined, didn’t I tell you?” Harriet took Fiona’s helmet and her own and locked them up. “Clyde put me up for membership. He’s quite well-known here, you know.”
Harriet secured the bike and they hurried into the weather-beaten little clubhouse. At first Fiona didn’t recognize any of the diners. But as she took in the room, she saw a man she thought looked awfully like Mahina’s state senator, and over there by the window was the mayor with his wife. The walls were chock-a-block with black and white photographs of the Maritime club and its members throughout the years. The maître-d greeted Harriet by name, wished her a Happy Thanksgiving, and led Fiona and Harriet to a small table next to a window overlooking the ocean.
Hanging above their table, directly next to the window, was a black-and-white photo taken at a Maritime Club Christmas party. (Many of the people in the photo were wearing Father Christmas hats.)
“Well, isn’t this interesting,” Harriet exclaimed.
“Do you see someone you know?” Fiona asked.
“Just a who’s who of Mahina. Including the little tart from the stationers who was snogging your husband.”
“Oh yes, I remember. When you publicly incriminated yourself and me as well.” Fiona deliberately did not look at the photo. Little tart? This was new information. Who was the little tart, Fiona was dying to know? “Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Mother.”
“I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” Harriet said. “I am sorry.”
“Well you did mention it, didn’t you?” Fiona retorted. “It’s a bit late to take it back.”
A waiter came by and placed a basket of little baguettes and a tub of butter on the table.
“Get you ladies something to drink?” he asked. “In addition to coffee, tea, juice, and soft drinks, we offer prosecco, which is a sparkling wine.”
“No need to introduce us,” Harriet said. “Prosecco and I are old friends. Two, please.”
“Just coffee for me,” Fiona said quietly. She was annoyed that Emmett’s infidelity had intruded on what should have been a tolerable meal.
But she was also curious.
When the waiter left, Fiona forced herself to look at the photo. A quick scan didn’t reveal any faces young or attractive enough to raise suspicion.
“You may as well tell me who it was,” Fiona said, adding pointedly, “I’m sure I have the self-control to refrain from creating a public disturbance.”
“Right there, in the leopard print.” Harriet finished buttering a bit of baguette and pointed with her knife. “I don’t understand the attraction, but there’s no explaining that sort of thing, is there?”
Fiona looked to where Harriet was pointing. Then she stared.
“Let’s not dwell on it, darling,” Harriet said. “No point in being cross about it now, is there? Look, is that a chocolate fountain? I’m ravenous. Come on, let’s get something to eat.”
“You go first.” Fiona pressed her hands to her temples to keep her skull in one piece. She barely noticed when the waiter set the coffee down in front of her.
Fiona needed fresh air more than she needed caffeine. She went out the side exit door and found herself standing on a bit of lawn just a few feet above the crashing surf. She took out her phone and scrolled through her emails. There was the Thanksgiving invitation from Molly, complete with street address and phone number.
She dialled Molly’s number. Might as well get this bit over with, at least.
Molly: The S-Word
WHEN DAN WATANABE MOVED up from department chair to College of Commerce dean, I became department chair. I also inherited the department tradition of hosting Thanksgiving potluck. Today Rodge was the only one from the management department who showed up, his contribution to the Thanksgiving banquet a bag of tortilla chips from Galimba’s Bargain Boyz. Emma and Yoshi brought a pot of kim chee chili. (It sounds like it would taste weird, but it’s really good. The kim chee adds crunch and heat, like onions but less onion-y.) Iker Legazpi from the accounting department had come with a savory homemade chicken and vegetable stew. Some of the kids that worked at Donnie’s Drive-Inn were there too. One of them happened to be a student in one of my classes.
Emma was on her best behavior, doing her utmost to hide her loathing for Rodge. Rodge, fortunately, had the decency to refrain from trying to flirt with Emma while her husband was sitting right there. I called my student “Riley” and afterward remembered his name was “Ryler” and “Riley” was someone else. I hoped no one noticed.
