Historically Dead Page 10

  I jumped and dropped half of my sandwich on my lap.

  Marlena laughed and passed me an extra napkin. “Wow, you’re jumpy.”

  My hands shook as I cleaned up the spilled food. “Marlena, somebody did kill Professor Burbridge! What if it was one of the students who didn’t want the story of cheating to come out? You could all lose your law licenses, couldn’t you?”

  She shook her head, still smiling at my reaction. “I doubt it. Oliphant Law School was striving for a culture of collaboration, where they encouraged students to work together outside of class. We spent a lot of time poring over the student handbook and parsing each sentence of the academic integrity code. We concluded that if we turned in someone else’s work as our own, that would be an actionable offense, but merely reading someone else’s work out loud would not be. Does that sound like splitting hairs?”

  She paused, waiting for my answer, so I nodded.

  “That’s what lawyers do! That whole episode gave us invaluable skills into the practice of law.” She folded up her napkin and stood up. “True, I wouldn’t want the whole story to come out. You’ll keep this to yourself, right? No running to the Laurel Springs Daily Chronicle with a hot tip!”

  Yeah, McCarthy would have a field day with this. I nodded again. “People know, though. Professor Burbridge’s students know what he was working on.” I gathered up my trash and stood up as well. “Now that he’s dead, they might talk to the police, and the police might want to pursue the story. Who knows, they might already know all about the professor’s work.” I sincerely hoped so, since I didn’t want to find myself in the position of obstructing a police investigation by withholding evidence.

  Marlena tossed her trash in a garbage can and checked her watch. “I need to get back to work. I’m going to assume that no one cares about some student collaboration from four years ago. At this point, I’m calling it water under the bridge. Some of my classmates have moved on to do some very important work in overseas development agencies as well as in the state legislature. Nobody cares whether or not they personally briefed the Vandermeer v. Richmond case for Old Mossman’s class back in the day.” She fixed me with a stern gaze. “Yes, Randall was part of the collaborative group. It wasn’t his idea, but I’m sure he benefited from it. As did we all.”

  “Okay.” I did a final scrub on the oily spot on my pants from that tasty special sauce. “Thanks for telling me about it, Marlena. Thanks for not killing me afterward.”

  She grinned and waved goodbye. “Have fun making that wedding dress for Randall’s ‘lovely’ fiancée!” She bustled on back to the legal aid clinic to do her own version of important work in service of the community. I watched her until she was inside, and wondered if she was right. Did it really matter if a person cheated, if it didn’t hurt anybody in the process?

  Chapter Eight

  I headed to Compton Hall after lunch, hoping I wouldn’t be lectured for tardiness by Ruth the human dragon. But the Hall was quiet when I arrived. I peeked into the kitchen to see what Carl Harper was up to. If he was swearing and throwing tools around, I was prepared to hightail it out of there. But he wasn’t even there. The metal and chrome fixtures had all vanished, and a magnificent open hearth was nearing completion. I paced through the kitchen, admiring the weathered red bricks making up the massive fireplace. They looked familiar, somehow. I was trying to remember where I might have seen similar bricks when Carl walked into the room. He was deep in conversation on his cell phone. “We’ve got to get this straight,” he said. “We can’t afford any slip-ups.” He looked up and saw me standing there. “Listen, I gotta go. Keep it together.” And he ended the call.

  “Can I help you?”

  I flashed him a big smile, my mind racing. I would have given the entire proceeds from Fiona’s wedding dress to know who he was talking to on the phone and what it was that they needed to “get straight.” I tried to keep my conversation neutral. “I see you’ve gotten all the modern appliances out of here. It really looks like an eighteenth-century kitchen now.”

  He beamed. “I’m almost done with the fireplace. I found these antique bricks at the site of the old clockworks factory that was torn down three years ago. See the mortar here.” He indicated the joints between the bricks that had already been applied to form a façade covering up a sheet of drywall. “I can attach them to the drywall the regular way, but the TV folks told me whatever showed had to look old. I had to do a bunch of research about how stonemasons did their work in those times. That professor was going to find some tips for me, but he never came through.” He stopped, as an ugly flush of red swept over his face. “That didn’t sound good. I’m sure he would have, if he had enough time. I mean, he didn’t die on purpose.”

  I felt sorry for the man, struggling to correct the bad impression his words were creating. “Maybe he did find some tips, but he just didn’t have time to tell you. Did you look through his papers to find out?”

  It was an innocent suggestion, but I watched him closely to see how he would answer. I didn’t care to judge, since I had looked through the professor’s papers myself. But I did want to know who had torched Professor Burbridge’s files in the basement after he died.

  “No, I never looked through any papers. I expect they’re all gone by now, between the cops and that lawyer the old girls hired to price out all the valuables in the house.” He pushed back the paint cap on his head to scratch with both hands. He ran a finger over the masonry. “It’ll be fine. The TV folks want the work all done by tomorrow morning.”

  I smiled my assent. “Yeah, I need to get going on my embroidery if I’m going to get the curtains hung by then. Thanks for showing me the bricks.”

  I ducked out of the kitchen and headed straight upstairs to closet myself in the sewing room with the final yard or so of embroidery. I resolved not to leave the house for the evening until the curtains were safely hung in the living room.

  Vines, flowers, and butterflies merged together under my nimble fingers while I replayed this conversation in my mind. Carl’s words were innocent enough, even though he did give the impression that he found the professor’s death to be an inconvenience to him personally. What really piqued my interest was the phone conversation cautioning no room for “slip-ups.” Did that have something to do with Professor Burbridge’s research into the scandal with the contractors’ union? I hoped McCarthy had come up with some information today.

  But what had I learned today? Surprisingly, Marlena had told me the whole story about systematic cheating at the law school. Or had she? I frowned as I picked out some stray stitches that marred the soaring flight of a monarch butterfly. It was odd how readily she told me that tale, given the serious ramifications associated with cheating at the postgraduate level. I found it hard to believe that the students could have rationalized such behavior as being anything other than cheating. They must have really been stressed out!

  I thought back to those days, when Randall was living with me in my house, struggling with the grueling classes in his second year in law school. He had often complained about Old Mossman, but he never mentioned anything about cheating, or collaborating to get the better of this curmudgeon of a professor. Either he knew that what they were doing was risky, or he didn’t want to sully his integrity in my eyes. Or, he didn’t trust me enough to even think of confiding in me. I felt the familiar flush of anger against my ex, and focused on the present instead. Professor Burbridge was looking into this story of widespread cheating. He was making no secret of his work, since his summer students knew about it. Had one of the former law students gotten word, and killed him just as Marlena jokingly threatened to do to me? I took a deep breath and moved to the next logical step. Was that student Randall? Had he discovered some notes in the professor’s boxes that were left behind in the library where Randall was now working, and killed the professor to stifle the story? But that didn’t make sense! Randall moved into the
library after the professor was killed. If he saw any papers, it could only have been after the murder had taken place. Of course, he could have heard about Professor Burbridge’s research earlier, and moved into the library to eliminate any evidence of his work after killing him.

  I rubbed my forehead with both hands, and then stood up to work a kink out of my back. If I were to focus on motive, I would have to say that Randall had a strong motive for murder. Although he had a good job as an associate on a partner track in a prestigious law firm (headed up by his father, no less), he could lose it all if his law school degree were called into question on a serious matter of academic dishonesty. He could get disbarred, with his name published in the newspaper for all to see. A narcissistic person like Randall could never stand the shame.

  I sat back down again and forced myself to continue with the endless vine, while I forced my mind to consider the next question. Was Randall the kind of person who could kill to protect his own interests? He had been increasingly controlling with me, but never violent or overtly threatening. He had always been charming, in a suave kind of way that originally made me feel like the luckiest woman alive. Toward the end I had wondered if the restrictions in my new life were worth the man who put them in place, but I had never once envisioned the depths to which Randall had been scamming me. But did that make him a potential murderer?

  I rushed through the last few inches and thankfully tied off the final knot. I shook out the finished panel and gathered up the other three curtain panels. I carried them down to the living room, and then shuttled down my iron and ironing board. I needed to press them before hanging them in the windows.

  The living room was deserted. Like the kitchen, it appeared to be almost ready for the final filming for the TV series. Completely furnished with period pieces, with the wood floor newly burnished but not waxed to a modern-day shine, it only lacked my hand-embroidered curtains to give it authenticity. I set up the ironing board and turned on the iron, and then checked the time, wondering what the other occupants of the house were doing. It was almost six thirty—they were probably finishing up with dinner by now. While the iron heated up, I paced around the spacious room, wrestling with one final question. Did some part of me want Randall to be the killer? It didn’t really matter, since my feelings had nothing to do with what had happened or who had done it. But in the interest of self-awareness, if nothing else, I faced the reality that I really didn’t hope that Randall turned out to be the murderer. I didn’t even want him to be disbarred for cheating at law school. It wasn’t just that I really liked Fiona and didn’t want her future to be compromised. But I didn’t want to have to admit that I had been taken in by a cheat and a murderer, instead of merely a con artist who had played on my emotions to finance his law school career. But it wasn’t about me. A man was dead, and an eccentric old woman might be the prime suspect in his death. I owed it to them to try to uncover the truth. I didn’t owe Randall anything.

  I took extra care in pressing the four curtain panels, making sure to cushion the embroidered sections by placing a fluffy towel on the ironing board and running the iron along the back side of the fabric. I was in the middle of this painstaking task when Cherry Stamford walked into the living room, clutching her ever-present clipboard.

  She licked her finger and flipped through a number of pages, finally settling on the one she wanted. “And what are you up to now?”

  I indicated the ironed panel I’d carefully draped over the back of the settee. “I’ve finished the embroidered curtains for the living room. I’m just ironing them before I hang them up.”

  Cherry tapped a pencil to her red lips. “We should get minute-by-minute footage of this.” She pulled out her phone and punched in some numbers. “Stillman, get a camera to the living room, pronto.” She pocketed the phone and looked me over critically. “You’ll need some makeup and perhaps a different hairdo. We’ll go with your jeans, since this is an in-process segment. Can you freshen up your makeup, and brush your hair out over your shoulders?”

  “No, and no.” I said. Then I relented at the look of shock in her face. “I need to have my hair up while I’m working, or it’ll get in my way. Sorry. I don’t have any makeup with me, but if you have something you want me to put on, I will. Or I could just finish up my work and call it a day.” I pulled out my phone to check the time, hoping she would conclude that I had better things to do than fuss with makeup in order to film a segment. But she didn’t get the hint.

  She pulled out her phone again, but before she could make the call, Stillman hurried into the room, camera in tow. “What have we got?”

  “Oh, Stillman! We need makeup for”—she checked her papers again—“Daria, here.”

  Stillman looked me over just as Cherry had done. He flipped on the camera and peered through the lens at me, cocking his head from side to side. I stood quite still, not sure if he was testing or filming. He barked in his own phone, “We need lights and makeup in the living room.”

  “Should I keep ironing, or wait until the camera’s rolling?”

  Cherry blinked at me, surprised at being interrupted in the midst of her directing. “How much longer until you’re done?”

  “I have this piece, and then two more just like it. It might take another forty-five minutes or so.” I took another look at the time for good measure.

  “Yes, yes, keep working. You can always go over it again if you have to.”

  I sighed and turned back to my ironing, which was definitely not my favorite part about sewing. I had no intention of going over it again. If nothing else, I could save the last piece until they were ready to film.

  It wasn’t long before the lights and makeup arrived. A young woman wearing enough makeup to qualify her to take the stage with the Twisted Armpits pulled me aside and started brushing on foundation and eye shadow. When she was done with me, she started in on Cherry. A couple of technicians brought in huge lights on poles to illuminate the room. My iron steamed lightly on the ironing board.

  Finally all was ready. Cherry signaled me to resume ironing. She nodded to Stillman, who hoisted the camera and clicked the Start button. “And what are you up to now, Daria?”

  I indicated my ironing board, spread with the final curtain. “I’m finished with the embroidery for the living room curtains.” I extended a hand to one of the pressed panels draped faceup over the settee. “This is all hand-embroidered, just as a woman would do in the 1770s. I used silk embroidery thread so as not to overburden the light fabric with worsted wool.” I ran a finger lightly over the stitches. “This is a very simple design, to give the overall impression of elegant embroidery without spending the time needed for a more elaborate design.”

  Cherry’s hand slashed across her neck in the “cut” sign. She glared at me. “Make no mention of the need to work quickly or give any indication that we are scrambling to catch up!” She blotted her forehead with her handkerchief. “Viewers don’t need or want to know that we are cutting corners to make our deadline.” She circled her hand to Stillman to start filming again. “Is there a particular reason that you’re ironing the curtain upside down?”

  I gulped, and pasted on a camera-worthy smile. “I don’t want to squish the stitches. I’ve placed them on top of a towel so the stitching will fall down into the pile of the terry cloth and the fabric will get ironed.” I peeled up a corner of the hem to display the result. “This technique gives the embroidery as much texture as possible, making it more noticeable.” I passed the iron over the last few feet of curtain. “Now all I have to do is hang them up.”

  Cherry slashed the “cut” sign again. “How long will that take?”

  “It would go faster if I had someone to give me a hand.”

  Cherry looked around the room, but the makeup and lights folks had stepped out, leaving only herself and Stillman. Clearly she had no intention of either helping me or wielding the camera so Stillman cou
ld help. She waved a hand at Stillman. “Get someone to help.”

  Stillman summoned the crew, and then there was another delay while the makeup gal touched up the lights wranglers, and then they were finally ready to film us hanging the curtains. With two strong guys to help me it was a matter of minutes to get the whole job done. The drape was lovely, and the curtains looked like Betsy Ross herself had made them. I beamed at the camera, barely resisting the urge to throw out my arms and cry, “Ta-da!”