1 Picking Lemons (7 page)

A large gust of wind startled C.J. from her reverie. The
clouds in the sky were building and had turned a menacing shade of slate grey. C.J. had no idea why the founding fathers decided to settle around New England. Surely it wasn’t for the weather. Long, dragging winters that were suddenly replaced in May by hot, humid summers (apparently missing spring altogether). Summers that eventually eased into fall with its torrential rains from the hurricane season. And it looked as if one of those rains was moving in tonight.

Really,
thought C.J., forgetting all about Annika and focusing entirely on the storm overhead,
would it have killed the founding fathers to settle in Hawaii first? Then, maybe Eaton University would have been founded there.

*****

Mary Beth loved lunchtime. She was always ready to leave the confines of the office. She loved to visit the different lunch spots around campus and read
Cosmo
and
People
and
Us Weekly
. Mary Beth reveled in celebrity gossip, especially the break ups, and took careful note of the hairstyle tips and beauty advice. She knew you couldn’t let yourself go, and, with that in mind, Mary Beth decided that the current Mourning Manicure had run its course. She would need a Funeral Manicure before tonight, even if it meant using an Elm Grove manicurist.

Today
, Mary Beth was heading to Zoe’s. The deli was one of her favorite places in town. Delicious food, but not too fattening. No rich husband was going to want a chubby wife.

Leaving the office, Mary Beth
was stopped by a strong wind. She did a quick outfit check. Did she have a coat in the office cute enough to wear to lunch? Deciding she didn’t, and it was better to freeze and look cute rather than be warm and ugly, Mary Beth continued down the street.

Mary Beth
spotted Professor Whitmore walking towards her. Now, that woman was unmarried for a reason. Didn’t she own a mirror? What was she thinking with those pink cowboy boots and loud spangled cowgirl shirts and skirts? Underneath the fashion accident that was her wardrobe, there was a relatively attractive woman.
Mary Beth had considered sending in C.J.’s name to
Extreme Makeover
. But people can be so sensitive, even when you are doing them a huge favor.

“Hey
, Mary Beth,” called C.J. loudly. It seemed to Mary Beth that C.J. did everything loudly––another reason she would not get a husband.
Cosmo
was very clear. Demure and soothing would win the day. Well, it was probably just as well that C.J. was loud and ugly. Less competition for Mary Beth.

Mary Beth responded to C.J. with a large, toothy smile, somewhat like a cat spotting a tasty mouse. S
he had wanted to talk with C.J. and get her take on the events of the last few days. This was the perfect opportunity, out of the office and the big ears that lurked around every turn.
“Hey, Professor Whitmore,” said Mary Beth, in her most welcoming tone. “What a fabulous shirt. I love that color….magenta is it? Are you grabbing some lunch?”

“Oh no. I just had coffee with a friend. I’m heading back to work.”

“Darn. I’m running out to Zoe’s. Have you checked it out?”

C.J. co
nfessed that she didn’t know Zoe’s, but the two women agreed that they would have lunch together there someday, while each of them knew this would never happen.

“Hey, I’m like, um,
still too scared to sleep because of Professor DeBeyer. Is it true? Was Professor Choi arrested?” Mary Beth asked, fishing for information. “Because, you know, I saw him walking into town when I was at lunch on Monday. It’s like, too freaky that we’ve been risking our lives working with a serial killer.”

C.J., as she liked to say herself, was not new to the barn. She inwardly rolled her eyes at Mary Beth’s supposed
fright. The young woman standing before C.J. looked very well-rested. “I can say with certainty that your life has not been in danger from a serial killer, at least not yet,” C.J. said dryly, though at the same time wondering why not and thinking it wouldn’t bother her if the real killer wanted to elevate himself to the status of serial killing if it meant he would kill Mary Beth. Wasn’t there someone in the world who was sufficiently annoyed with this walking manicure to do her in?

“Well, you never know. I knew Professor Choi was a murderer, even before he killed Professor DeBeyer.”

C.J. just raised her eyebrows.

“You know, he like, had that murderous look.”

C.J. wondered if the murderous look Mary Beth was referring to was the fact that Stephen was Asian and, therefore, looked different to Mary Beth. As Stephen was a practicing Buddhist, C.J. could not imagine Mary Beth had seen Stephen wandering around the department with looks of murderous rage on his face frequently. Though, in Mary Beth’s defense, Stephen was prone to be moody. “No. I’m not quite sure I know,” murmured C.J.

“Oh
, yes. And then he had that terrible temper. Why, just on the day of the murder, he got into a terrible fight with Professor DeBeyer.”

Now Mary Beth had C.J.’s attention.
“A fight? When?”

“After lunch
. I had come back from my lunch and was going up to Professor DeBeyer’s office to drop off the letters I had typed for him...”

C.J. interrupted
. “What time was this?”

“That’s the thing. Time is, like, so confusing. I’m supposed to be back from lunch at exactly one. But I was running a few minutes late, as I had to finish reading this article in
Us Weekly
about new ways to style your hair that will drive your man wild. Though I’m not sure a hair style is what guys are into, you know? I find that a push-up bra and a scoop tee work pretty good.”

C.J. cleared her throat.
“You got back to the office?”

Mary Beth look
ed at C.J. blankly for a moment. “Oh right. Yeah. So, I got back to the office, a little late. And then, I had to find the letters. I was sure I had left them on the tray on the right side of my desk. But there they were, on the left side, after all. So my best guess is that it was about when the big hand was pointing to the two or the three.”

C.J. just stared.

“I have this new watch, you see,” explained Mary Beth, seeing C.J.’s confusion. “It has a face. But it’s like super confusing as it doesn’t actually say the time.”

Mary Beth showed C.J. her analog watch, and C.J. could see at once that Mary Beth was saying that she went to Edmund’s office between ten past and fifteen past one.
“Ahh. I see. So you went up with the letters …and then what happened?”

“Well, I could hear Edmund yelling something awful.
But only when I got right up close to the door, mind. Those offices are built like fortresses. I wish my apartment was that sound proof. The things I hear my neighbors doing. TMI, that’s all I can say.”

C.J., not at all interested in the sex lives of Mary Beth’s neighbors, tried to steer the conversation back.
“But at Edmund’s door...”

“Oooh
, yes. I heard Professor DeBeyer in a right old dust up with Professor Choi. He must have said something to make Professor DeBeyer real mad because Professor DeBeyer yelled ‘You’re finished, you hear me, you are finished!’”

C.J. waited, expecting more, but Mary Beth was clearly done.

“What happened after you heard Professor DeBeyer yell that?” asked C.J.

“Well, it obviously wasn’t the time to drop off the letters
, so I went back down to my office.”

C.J. stared at the girl for a few moments.
“Mary Beth. Let me make sure I understand. On the day Professor DeBeyer was murdered, you told Professor Daniels that you saw Stephen Choi walking downtown while you were sitting at Bruegger’s Bagels at a few minutes before one o’clock. And now you are telling me that sometime between 1:10 and 1:15 p.m. on the same day, you overheard Professor DeBeyer yelling a threatening statement at someone. But you didn’t see that someone or hear that someone. So, you don’t know who that someone was or even if that someone was in the room with him. That person could have been on the phone.”

Mary Beth couldn’t contain herself any longer.
“But, we do know it was Professor Choi who was in the office arguing, Professor Whitmore,” said Mary Beth, with the tone of one explaining basic math to a child. Again. “It was Professor Choi because he’s the killer. It’s not my job to explain how he did it. I guess he ran back really quickly. Professor Choi had such a bad temper he provoked Professor DeBeyer into an argument and then killed him. And that doesn’t surprise me. I always knew he had the look of a killer.”

C.J. looked at Mary Beth with a long, thoughtful stare. “M
ary Beth,” she eventually asked, “did you see Stephen Choi come back to the department at any time on the afternoon Professor DeBeyer was murdered?”

“Oh yes!” said Mary Beth with a cheerful lack of concern. “About two-ish, I’d say. He came rushing in to
40 Knollwood to go to the seminar. But I couldn’t say if he’d come from his office or downtown. Not that it matters. He’d, like, already done the deed by then.”

*****

Later that afternoon, sitting in her office, C.J. opened her Google page. Stephen, being under the age of fifty, was also a complete Google addict. Gmail, Google Play, Google Docs, and, of course, Google Calendar.

She set about hacking his Google account. She entered his email address and then experimented with passwords.

Choi1

Too short
. What was the minimum length? C.J. guessed six or eight characters.

Choi12

Nope again.

Choi1234

Bingo!

Ah. It was great to have colleagues with no lives outside the office. No chance for passwords named after much
-loved pets, Star Trek characters or motorcycles ridden in a misspent youth. Of course, it takes one to know one. C.J.’s own password, from Amazon to Netflix to Wells Fargo, was CJWhit12. A hackers dream.

Successful with Choi1234, C.J. was in, looking at all of Stephen’s documents, email, and calendar. She was sure that access should
have been frozen by the police but she was guessing that they were still thinking of computers as items with a hard drive. Not shells used to access the cloud.

She went straight to the
calendar. Monday, 1 p.m.–– 2 p.m: G.A. Not much help. C.J. couldn’t think of anyone on the faculty with those initials. C.J. racked her brains.
G.A.:
G
rade
A
cademic papers. (Unlikely on the first day of semester.);
G
olf with
A
dam. (Did Stephen even play golf? C.J. didn’t think so.);
G
ive
A
lms. (Unlikely. Any economist knows you donate to the poor on December 31
st
.) But at least it didn’t say “Murder Edmund” she thought ironically.

C.J. started to look through Stephen’s emails, his documents, his playlist and his recent book purchases. She had never realized he liked funk-fu
sion jazz. Or, embarrassingly, that the man was Korean, not Chinese. As C.J. read Stephen’s email, she was amazed to discover he had a girlfriend who was a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. What else didn’t she know about him?

C.J. spent some time clicking her way through his documents, not finding much of anything. Some uninspiring research papers, a few rather boring Powerpoint slides for teaching and a rather mysterious, half-written letter of apology addressed to herself. But then, C.J. clicked on an innocuous
-looking document buried deep in a research folder, labeled “Statistics.”

Sadly, as a statistician
herself, C.J. understood what she was looking at. She clicked around Stephen’s folders, looking for more evidence. Now the apology letter made sense. And she was certain she knew who G.A. was and why Stephen wasn’t saying anything.

*****

Many people thought the Triunity Church, located on the north edge of the large sloping lawn of the Elm Grove Town Square, was spectacular. To be sure, the church was a striking example of the gothic architecture that littered the streets of Elm Grove. The outside of the church was somber, heavy-set grey stone, but the inside was where it shone. Cathedral ceilings gleamed with polished wood and graceful arches. Stained glass windows cast rainbows of lights throughout. Rows of traditional wooden pews lined a protracted center aisle, making the church an ideal choice for the Elm Grove bride looking for a lengthy walk to Pachelbel’s Canon.

By seven o’
clock on Wednesday night, the storm had moved over Elm Grove in earnest. Unrelenting, heavy rain fell, and strong winds rattled windows and doors. Edmund’s casket, covered with pale blue forget-me-nots (
“As if we ever could,” whispered C.J. to Betsy when she saw the choice of flower.),
was set at the front of the Triunity Church. As C.J. and Betsy entered the church, they could see the church was filling with Eaton University dignitaries
(“Oh look,” said Betsy, “that’s the President of Eaton University himself over there.”
), the faculty and staff of the economics department, plus many others from colleges and universities around the country.
(“How many economists does it take to change a light bulb?” C.J. joked to Betsy. Betsy shook her head in disbelief and made shushing noises. “Two. One to assume the existence of the ladder, and one to change the light bulb.”
) Some of the hungrier graduate students were also in attendance, looking for free food. And of course, the police were quietly hovering in the background. (“
See? They don’t think it’s Stephen, either,” whispered Betsy with delight. “They’re here to spot the killer.”
)