A Function of Murder (25 page)

Fran had been right. There was nothing like a normal multigenerational family gathering
around the dinner table to put
things in perspective. I’d met Fran’s family before, at least briefly—Fran and Gene’s
daughter and son, their spouses and children. They all seemed to get along well. Even
if I was seeing their “company” behavior, it was impressive.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a dinner like my own grandmother used to
cook. A New England pot roast feast, heavy on the thyme, with potatoes and carrots,
gravy, bread, and salad. All at the same meal. Was this a typical night at the Emersons’?
If so, I might move in.

My question was answered when Fran explained that we were celebrating the excellent
end-of-year report card of third grader Lindsay.

“Grandma told me about that,” I fibbed to the little girl. One thing I loved about
Fran was that she never pounded anyone with stories and pictures of her family. Photos
and drawings were placed discreetly around her office, and anyone could inquire, voluntarily.

“I got all A’s,” Lindsay said.

“I know. And I have a present for you.”

I dug into my purse and pulled out a new puzzle, an electronic maze game I’d been
planning to send to Bruce’s niece. I had plenty of time to find a replacement for
Melanie, and it seemed to fit the moment.

“Cool,” Lindsay said, smiling broadly and putting her tiny fingers to work immediately.

“I’m probably going to get all A’s, too,” Derek said.

“Me, too,” Kendra said.

All four-year-old Ethan did was lean into me and put his head on my lap. A schemer
and a charmer, that one.

I promised to send suitable prizes for all through their grandmother.

Dessert was served in the family room of the large Vermont-style house. As if we were
still hungry, we all reached for an ice cream sandwich. Not the kind that came in
a thin cardboard box with freezer burn, but a concoction of rich vanilla ice cream
between two homemade cookies,
one chocolate chip, the other oatmeal. I wished I’d packed my pj’s in my briefcase.

By eight o’clock, if someone had mentioned the words “bloody fountain” or “grade inflation”
or “Facebook posting,” I’d have had no idea what they were talking about.

I reached my street around nine thirty, feeling that all was right with the world.
It had stopped raining hours ago, but the wind had picked up and lent a pleasant,
cleansed feeling to the air.

Early as it was, my plan was to download a book and curl up in bed. I wanted to stretch
out the good feeling I’d gotten from family night with the Emersons.

I pulled into the garage, entered my house through the kitchen door, and punched in
my alarm code. It seemed a long time since I’d been home. When I left this morning
for class and, admittedly, for snooping at Zeeman Academy, I hadn’t planned on getting
home so late and hadn’t left any lights on.

Now I flicked on the lights in the kitchen and hallway and headed toward my bedroom.

As I approached the den on the left, I felt a breeze. Had I left a ceiling fan on?
I doubted it, since I seldom needed to run one in the morning.

I walked past the den, dropped my briefcase in my office, and continued to make my
way back to my bedroom. The breeze got stronger with each step.

No wonder. I’d left the window open.

No, not the window. The patio door.

No, I hadn’t left it open. Someone had opened it for me.

By throwing a brick through the glass.

I dropped my purse on the floor and froze in place. My ears went into some supersonic
state where I seemed to be picking up sounds outside the range of normal hearing.
A car door closing at the end of my street. The digital clicks and rumbles of the
hard drive in my computer that often sounded
like my stomach growling for food. A siren from an emergency vehicle on the expressway,
a mile from my home. I even thought I heard again the sound of the train in the background
of the voice mail message Mayor Graves had left me.

What I didn’t hear, fortunately, was any sound of a brick thrower camped out in my
home.

I stood about three feet from the foot of my bed, unable to move. The dull red brick
lay at my eleven o’clock, giving off an unlikely shimmer in the light from the hallway.
My lavender décor, my color of choice much of the time, took on a nasty, garish look,
as if it had been violated by the smashed window and the shards of glass on the wet
carpet.

A gust of wind that blew through the hole in my patio door shook me into action, and
I spun around as if another brick might be coming at me from behind. I ended up flat
against the wall of my bedroom, next to the door to the hallway I’d just come from.
If I’d been holding a gun, one might have thought I was sneaking up on the bad guy,
as I’d seen cops do in Bruce’s favorite movies.

I’d neither seen nor heard anyone as I’d entered the house and walked the length of
it from my kitchen to my bedroom. My alarm had been set, needing my code as I’d entered.
I had no reason to think anyone was still in the house right now, but that didn’t
stop the shivers making their way through my body.

I finally left my wall post, holding my breath as I opened my closet door. Nothing
but the new set of organizer drawers Bruce had installed for me, with my clothes stacked
and hung in the neatest arrangement they’d ever seen. Next to the closet, my dresser
appeared intact, its lacy scarf in place, no drawers open. A box of tissues, a few
bottles and jars, and a jewelry box stood undisturbed on top, silent witnesses to
what had transpired across the room.

I made my way around the room. Nothing else seemed out of place except the brick.
Or what looked like a brick. It might have been foreign matter from outer space, a
meteor
fragment, for all the sense it made. Maybe one of those unstable satellites had disintegrated
and was raining on Henley.

It took me another few minutes to adjust myself away from my fear and absurd thoughts
and into a rational thinking mode. I’d been making too much of what was most likely
a prank, some suburban kids on an “I dare you” mission. Most of Henley’s schoolchildren
were out on vacation and they had nothing better to do than cruise around creating
havoc.

From the wet carpet, I figured the hole in the patio door was made before or during
the showers; but the rain had been on and off most of the day and it was probably
impossible to pin down when the brick had been thrown. I felt another shiver as I
considered the fact that if my day had gone as planned, I might have been home when
the vandalism occurred.

Though my intrusion alarm had been set, it had been useless as an alert since the
brick didn’t set off any of the magnetic triggers. No doors or windows had opened—Bruce
would say the perimeter hadn’t been breached—during the commission of this crime.

Without a lot of thought as to why I was doing it, I retrieved my phone from my purse,
clicked on the camera icon, and took several pictures of the brick in situ.

I grabbed a tissue and picked up the brick, finally noticing a note attached to it
with a rubber band on the underside. I picked out the piece of paper from under its
shackle and unfolded a small, square yellow sticky note with a handwritten message:
“SUPPORT ELYSSE.”

I could hardly believe it. Had Elysse recruited a band of freedom fighters to her
cause? Had she rallied union workers? Fraternity and sorority friends? Where was the
Elysse of only a short while ago, the “Are we good?” Elysse wanting to meet with me
in person?

I shook my head, placed the note on the floor next to the brick, and snapped a few
more pictures.

Amazing that
support
was spelled correctly, I thought,
not feeling very charitable. Under the rallying cry was a URL that was a Facebook
address, most likely for Elysse’s page, though there was no identifying subset in
the long string of characters. It was all very low-tech, from the brick to the handwritten
URL. I’d have expected a flame war online, or—settling for the real-life brick and
note—a simple Quick Response Code that could be scanned, instead of an unwieldy URL
that was barely legible.

I imagined a crazy scenario where the brick wasn’t targeted for my house at all, but
was one of many bricks, thrown by a posse of Elysse’s Facebook Friends, at windows
and patio doors all over the city of Henley. I scrutinized the tiny note for signs
of my name or any ID of me, Elysse the Victim’s persecutor. Nothing. The note didn’t
begin with “Dear Sophie,” and it bore no words that said, “This means you, Professor
Knowles.” At least I wasn’t being immortalized that way.

What next? I could call any number of people, official and unofficial—Virgil for police
intervention, Fran for moral support, Bruce for a little of both. And my insurance
company for logistics.

One call I knew I had to make was to a glass replacement company. I’d do that first,
before deciding how public to take this latest entry in the Sophie versus Elysse drama.

I took my laptop and a bottle of water to my den and used Google to search for the
equivalent of “glass hit by bricks.” I was amazed to see the number of companies that
offered emergency glass services, twenty-four-seven. I seemed to have my choice of
installer if I could believe the ads: One offered a tall, muscle-bound guy wearing
a leather tool belt; another showed an older man who looked like every kid’s favorite
coach; a third, equal opportunity company showed a woman in a baseball cap, on a ladder
at an upstairs window. Any of them, apparently, would come to my home or business
and either board up the offending window, or install replacement glass immediately,
depending on whether a custom fit was called for.

I guessed I was lucky I wasn’t familiar with the multitude of such services in my
own city.

Rring, rring. Rring, rring.

Bruce. I picked up too quickly, without first checking my cool level.

“Hey,” I said, and then uttered a frustrated moan.

“What’s wrong?” Bruce asked.

I set my laptop aside and leaned back on the couch. “Nothing serious. Just that someone
threw a brick through the patio door in my bedroom.” Too late to make light of the
situation, but I gave it a try. “It’s okay, really. I was about to call a glass replacement
service. Did you know there are any number of them that will come out immediately
and board me up?”

“Are you sure there’s no one in the house?” I heard the man of action take over, as
he had at the Henley College fountain two nights ago.

“Quite sure.”

“Did you check the doors? Did you reset the alarm?”

“The alarm—” I began, intending to report on how useless it had been in the brick-through-a-window
scenario.

Bruce interrupted. “I’m sure it didn’t go off if the perimeter wasn’t breached”—I
smiled at his predictability—“but set it again anyway, okay?”

I carried the phone to the panel on the wall by the front door. “I’m doing it now,”
I said. I was breathing better, just having Bruce at the other end of the line.

“Have you called Virge yet?”

“No, I don’t see what he can do. He’s homicide, for one thing, and I know the uniforms
will just want me to fill out tons of paperwork and nothing will come of it. Remember
the break-in across the street this winter? The Andersons actually had things stolen
and the police never found the kids or the stuff. I don’t think they bother unless
there’s personal injury.”

No response from Bruce. Had he hung up? I waited a beat. “Bruce?”

“I’m back. Virge is on his way over. Don’t touch anything.”

“I picked up the brick. I couldn’t just leave it there.”

“Okay, that’s okay. Don’t touch anything else, okay? And don’t call the glass company
yet. Wait till Virge gets there.” Bruce let out a grunt. “I’d be on my way there myself,
but I’m the only driver here,” he said, meaning he was the only pilot on duty and
couldn’t leave without a major schedule disruption.

“I’m fine. I wish you hadn’t bothered Virgil,” I said.

“Liar.” Said sweetly.

“Uh-huh,” I admitted.

I told Bruce about the message on the note that was attached to the brick.

“Elysse? Is that the student who doesn’t like her grade?”

“The same.”

“It sounds like a ploy to annoy you. But it’s odd. I don’t figure college kids for
that kind of vandalism,” Bruce said.

“You’re right. It doesn’t make sense at all, especially since she called me today
and wanted to meet. She sounded at least open to talking. I don’t know why she would
do this.”

“Maybe some overzealous friends?”

“Could be.”

“So how was the rest of your day?” Bruce asked, sounding as though he’d just put his
feet up on what passed for a coffee table in the MAstar trailer living room–like space.

“Are we going to chat until Virgil arrives?” I asked.

“Something like that.”

“Thanks.”