The Invasive Species, page 18
part #4 of Professor Molly Mysteries Series
Donnie wonders why I can’t just go into my closet and grab any old top and bottom to wear together. He has no idea.
When I was nearly finished picking out my ensemble, I heard the bathroom door open. I pulled on a robe and rushed out to see Davison, wearing only grey cutoff sweatpants, pushing the bathroom door back and forth in a fanning motion.
“You might wanna light a match before you go in there.” He started back toward the guest room.
My bladder was aching, but I realized this might be my only chance to get information from him about Donnie’s Wednesday night plans.
“Davison, would you like a cup of coffee?”
He looked confused.
“What? Oh, sure. Really?”
“Of course. I always show hospitality to my guests.”
Davison seated himself at my kitchen counter. I pulled out my beloved sixteen ounce Chicken Boy coffee cup, brewed a large portion of coffee into it, and handed it to him.
“Eh, Molly. Hope you don’t think I’m a guest. We’re family, ah?”
He was giving me the sad eyebrows again. Great. I guess I said the wrong thing again, and now Davison will complain to Donnie, and Donnie will be all disappointed in me and my maternal inadequacy.
“Of course we’re family. Drink your coffee.”
“Never slept over at your house before.” He pushed the heel of his hand up his face, as if to wipe away the remnants of sleep.
“Certainly not.”
“Kind of a trip.” He grinned. “Sleeping over at my teacher’s house. ’Cause you was my teacher, ah?”
“Yes, I was. So. Today is Wednesday. Anyone have any special plans for the day?”
“Nothing special. Maybe go work out.”
Davison gulped his coffee, holding the mug close to his face like a baby bottle. His slurping noises weren’t making my aching bladder feel any better. I just had to hold out for another minute or so to see what information I could worm out of him before he was off doing whatever occupied his days.
“Hey, so what about your dad? What’s he up to?”
Davison gave a one-shoulder shrug. The two-shoulder kind apparently cost too much effort.
“How about tonight?” I persisted. “Do you happen to know if your father has any plans for tonight?”
Davison set his coffee cup down. “How come you don’t ask him? I dunno nothing.”
“Look, Detective Medeiros said it looked like the fire was set on purpose. Remember?”
Davison nodded.
“Now, I was assuming someone was trying to intimidate me because of this biotech research, but no one’s come after Emma Nakamura, and she’s the other investigator on the grant.”
“But Professor Nakamura’s doing all the real science, ah?”
“Whatever. The point is it looks like Emma and I were not the target. So that leaves your father. He might be involved with something that’s put us all in danger.”
“You should just ask him, then.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, and took a deep, cleansing breath, just as I’d learned in yoga class.
“If your father is in the crosshairs of some nutjob for some reason, then this little house, where we’re all staying, is the next logical target. We were lucky last time. No one was home, and no one got hurt. But what if we’re not so fortunate next time?”
“Eh, Molly. This coffee taste good, ah? I can get some more?”
I snatched the mug from his outstretched hand. “Davison, this is serious. Where is your father going on Wednesday nights? Where?”
“Chill. I dunno. I think maybe he said he was gonna go up to the college.”
Now I knew where, but I still didn’t know what. All kinds of groups used the classrooms as meeting spaces in the off-hours. The rental income provided a much-needed infusion to our frail budget. It wasn’t like Donnie to get involved with a group of extremists, but then again, how well did I really know my husband? We’d only gotten married during the summer, and we were in the fall semester, barely at midterms.
“Do you know where at the college?” I asked. “Which room?”
“Shoot, I dunno. Eh, so how about that coffee?”
I couldn’t continue this conversation any longer.
“Here you go.” I banged the empty mug back down on the counter in front of him. “Coffee machine’s over there.”
“But Molly, I—”
I couldn’t hear the rest of his sentence through the closed bathroom door.
Chapter Forty
“You want me to keep you company while you spy on your husband?”
“Shh,” I whispered. “I didn’t need everyone in the cafeteria to hear. But yes, Emma. I need your help with this.”
Emma picked up the stub of her Spam musubi from the cafeteria tray and popped it in her mouth.
“So it’s tonight?” She looked at my tray. “Hey, you’re not eating your burger. How come?”
“It’s raw inside.”
“So? Aren’t you always complaining that you can’t fit into the clothes in your skinny closet? A good dose of salmonella would fix you right up.”
Emma thought the whole idea of my skinny closet was silly. According to her, I should have given away my too-small clothes long ago, and kept only the items that fit. That might have made sense for someone who didn’t own a single Lilli Ann suit, and whose typical outfit was nondescript jeans and a five-year-old t-shirt from the annual meeting of the American Phytopathological Society.
“You ever find the tablet? The one we bought with the grant money?”
“You don’t have to keep reminding me. No. I looked in my office. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that I left it at Donnie’s house.”
“Well, something weird’s going on with it. Someone’s adding new pictures to our photo stream.”
“Photo stream? What are you talking about?”
“Come on Molly, what century are you living in? Whenever someone takes a picture, records an interview, whatever, it’s automatically backed up onto a remote server.”
“From our tablet?”
“Yes, dummy. So all the stuff you recorded, like at that biotech forum? It’s all backed up and retrievable.”
“It is? Great.”
“I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t know. Was there some kind of online account you never told me about when you set up the tablet?”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess so. Remind me to get you the login information. Not now, though. I don’t have it here.”
“So you’re saying new pictures have been appearing, after the fire?”
“Yup.”
“Like what kinds of pictures?”
“Young guys, without their shirts on, doing muscle poses.”
“Sounds like some kind of scam. We need to report it to IT. Can you do it since you have all the login information?”
“Sure, Molly. I’ll get right on it.”
“So back to my plan. Donnie’s going to be on campus, so we can coincidentally happen to walk by. It won’t look suspicious because we both work here.”
“So you think we should be sneaking around here at night? That’s never gonna not look suspicious. Why don’t you call Detective Medeiros if you think Donnie’s in trouble? He said he wants us to let him know about anything new.”
“I don’t have anything concrete to tell him. After tonight, we might, though. What could Donnie be mixed up with that would make someone want to burn his house down?”
“Who knows? Man, I’m still starving. I had a hard workout today. Here, let me see that.” She grabbed my half-eaten, undercooked hamburger.
While she was devouring it, I explained my plan: I would go home after work as usual, where I’d cook dinner. (At this, Emma briefly choked on the burger). Right after dinner, I would say I needed to go grocery shopping. Donnie would tell me he had work to do and would see me at home later. I would drive about a block uphill and wait for him to leave, then follow him to campus. Emma would wait at her office for my text.
Emma swallowed the last of the burger. “Wait, wait, wait.” She waved her hand vigorously. “You’re gonna cook?”
“I’m going to do a slow cooker pork roast,” I said.
“Doesn’t Davison need all his meat to be organic and shade grown or something?”
“He ate half an extra-large pizza last night. I think he’ll be fine.”
I rushed home after lunch to start dinner. I rinsed off a five-pound pork butt, stuck it in the slow cooker, showered it liberally with steak seasoning, put the cover in place, and turned the temperature to “auto.” Then I knocked the old, pebbly rice out of the rice cooker, rinsed out the inner container, and started a new batch. Both the meat and the rice would be ready by dinnertime. If I was feeling ambitious, I could even stop off to buy a couple of heads of lettuce this evening on the way home and round out the meal with a nice salad.
My dinner wasn’t as elegant as one of Donnie’s productions, but the pork was tasty, and the rice unobjectionable. I served the meal on my fanciest dinnerware, bright red and yellow vintage plates with whimsically mismatched utensils, all of which I’d purchased from the Salvation Army. Emma had volunteered to test the red plates for radioactivity and lead, but I told her I’d rather not know.
Davison looked like he was going to make a comment about the food, but Donnie shot him a silencing glare, and Davison ended up wolfing down a pile of salad, followed by three consecutive servings of pork and rice. I was too nervous to eat much.
After dinner, I excused myself to go “grocery shopping,” ducked out, and waited in my parking spot a block away.
Half an hour later, I stood in the dark outside the Language Arts building, a two-story concrete structure with classrooms on the ground level and the English Department faculty offices on the second floor. Pat’s old office was up there, along with what was probably the world’s oldest working coffee vending machine. (“Working” in the sense that it accepted money and in return dispensed a hot liquid that looked like coffee but tasted like chocolate and chicken broth.)
“This building is creepy at night.” Emma’s voice in the dark made me jump about ten feet.
“Oh good.” I clutched my chest. “It’s you. I know. This building is oppressive.”
The Language Arts Building, constructed during the energy-conscious Brutalist revival of the 1970s, was a severe-looking block of raw concrete. Mahina’s soggy climate endowed it with a perpetually tear-stained look.
“I can imagine Marcel Breuer shaking his head at the sight of this building, going, ‘Dude, that’s bleak’.”
“Who’s he? Some architect of hideous buildings?”
“Pretty much. He’s the one who designed the Hubert H. Humphrey building in D.C. It houses Health and Human Services. Ironic, because the mere sight of it makes you want to kill yourself.”
Light glowed through the vertical strip of glass embedded in the door of Language Arts 124, the room into which I had watched Donnie disappear.
Emma and I tiptoed up to the source of the light. Emma peeked through the narrow glass window and then pulled back.
“Donnie’s in there,” she whispered.
“Anyone with him? I don’t want to stick my face in the window.”
“I don’t see anyone except him.”
“He’s been coming to campus every week to sit in an empty classroom by himself?”
“Hold on.” Emma ducked under the window and moved to the other side, then peered in again.
“Nicole Nixon,” Emma hissed.
“From the English Department?”
“Uh-huh. Hey, she divorced what’s-his-name, didn’t she?”
“It’s just the two of them? Donnie and Nicole?”
“Looks like it.”
We scuttled away and ducked into the first-floor bathroom. The stall doors were missing from the stalls, and the dividers were covered with graffiti.
“Holy deferred maintenance.” Emma glanced around. “This looks like something right out of that cop show Yoshi likes.”
“Which one?”
“The one with a lot of swearing and people getting shot and beat up. It’s supposed to be ‘gritty.’ Molly, you okay?”
“He’s having an affair.” I blinked rapidly. “He’s been coming here every Wednesday night for a rendezvous with Nicole Nixon. This whole time, he’s been sneaking out—”
“Are you crying?”
I snatched a brown paper towel from the wall dispenser and dabbed it under my eyes. “I am not crying.”
“So what does this have to do with his house getting burned down? You still think his life is in danger?”
“Yes, I do. Because I’m going to kill him.”
“Whoa, Molly. Slow down.”
“I have to see for myself.”
Emma shrugged and followed me back to the classroom door. I was about to peek through the glass when my phone exploded with a burst of choral sound.
“Run,” Emma hissed, unnecessarily. We were already fleeing at top speed toward the parking lot.
“Hello?” I panted as we slowed to a walk.
“Professor Barda? This is Ka`imi Medeiros, of the Mahina Police Department. I called your husband, but he doesn’t seem to be picking up.”
“Detective Medeiros. Yes, Donnie is apparently busy right now. Is there any news about the fire?”
“It seems the fire started on your front porch. According to the investigator, the accelerant was a large piece of cardboard or papier-mâché. Any idea what it might be?”
“The fire was started with something made of papier-mâché?”
“A piñata?” Emma suggested.
“Why would someone burn a piñata on Donnie’s front porch?”
“Professor Barda?” Medeiros’ voice squawked on my phone.
“Sorry Detective. I don’t know. I have no idea what it might have been, or who would have wanted to burn down our house. Did you find anything else?”
“Just it’s a good thing your husband’s insurance is paid up. Not much salvageable.”
“Any way we can help the investigation?”
“No, unless you remember something else.”
Emma and I plodded glumly to her car.
“Donnie’s having an affair.” I regretted saying it aloud. I hated hearing the words.
“You don’t know for sure. I mean, they weren’t doing anything. It looked like they were just talking.”
“Should I confront him? Should I wait until he tips his hand? Emma, what should I do? What would you do if it were Yoshi?”
She touched the door handle to unlock it.
“What would I do? I’d kill him.”
Chapter Forty-One
On the way home from campus, I stopped by Nishioka Drugs and bought a birthday card for Davison. He might not have been my favorite person in the whole world, but no one was going to accuse me of being a thoughtless, un-maternal birthday-forgetter.
When I got home, Davison was in my living room, bare feet on my coffee table, watching something on his phone.
“Eh, Molly, you been watching the feed?”
“Sorry. I don’t know what feed it is I should be watching. Davison, people eat off of that table.”
Davison pulled his feet off the coffee table and placed them on the floor.
“Come on, Molly. I know you not that old. The Mahina State news feed online. They send out announcements, what’s going on and stuff. It used to be so junk an’ boring, but now it’s funny. Mister Flanagan’s doing it now, is why. Listen to this: Mahina State Slogan Contest. Now in the lead: Mahina State, Not as Bad as Everyone Says.”
“I hope he doesn’t get in trouble.” I went into my little office (a tiny space, which originally served as a telephone nook adjacent to the main living area), set down my bag, started up my computer and navigated to my course website.
“Eh Molly, you looking at the feed now?” Davison called from my couch.
“No. I’m going to try to get caught up on my grading.”
He was quiet for a few seconds and then,
“Eh Molly, what’s this mean?”
“Can I look at it later?” I called out, but he was already walking his phone over to me.
“Try look.”
The official Mahina State feed, tagged #AlohaState, showed a muscled, shirtless man working under the hood of a classic Mustang, his glistening brown arms covered with triangular Polynesian tattoos.
“It looks like a plug for our automotive repair program,” I said.
“What’s this mean, right here?” Davison pointed.
“I have no idea.” I turned back to my computer and pulled up the course assignment page. “You’ll have to ask Pat.”
As soon as Davison was back on the couch, I pulled my phone out of my bag.
Are you trying to get fired? I texted Pat.
I didn’t get a response. He was probably back up the mountain already. I sure wouldn’t want to live off the grid, far from modern conveniences like county water and reliable phone service, but Pat really loved his place. It occurred to me that if Pat was really attached to the place, he might have killed Randy Randolph for it, but I quickly dismissed the idea.
I tried to tune out the TV noise (Davison had turned on some kind of sporting event) and pulled up the list of uploaded papers from the Intro to Business Management class. This week’s assignment had been a gimme—or so I’d assumed. I’d asked my Intro students to find and describe an instance of an unsuccessful product launch from an otherwise successful company. I thought it would be an easy, fun project. Back in class, we’d have fun picking apart Colgate frozen dinners, McDonald’s hotels, and Smith & Wesson bicycles.
