A Function of Murder (35 page)

“It’s perfect,” I said.

We tried pinning it to my paisley shirt, but the fabric was too thin and slippery
to hold the extra-thick pin. “I’ll have to wear something tonight that will show this
off in a way that it deserves,” I said, putting it back into the box.

“Maybe I should have chosen—”

I held my hand up, staving off an apology from the old Kira. “This is perfect,” I
repeated.

Kira and I shared a hug and swapped thank-yous. A special moment.

As I let her out of the building, I realized Kira and I had just had a conversation
where the deceased Mayor Edward P. Graves didn’t come up.

Between my reconciliation with Elysse Hutchins and my pride in witnessing Kira’s growth,
I felt like the school year was coming to a satisfying close.

Now if I could only say the same for the murder case.

Back in my office, I was almost surprised to see the mass of paper still in the corner.
One might have thought I was endowing it with magical powers. In any case, I was ready
to tackle it.

I figured I was looking for something very small, or it would already have stood out
to me during my previous searches of my desk, bookcases, and filing cabinets. It was
going to be a tedious job, and I needed to approach it in a positive manner, as if
I were solving an extra-large word search puzzle. It wouldn’t daunt me; neither should
this task.

A wire basket resting on the floor in the corner held the embarrassingly high, approximately
eighteen-inch stack. One more sip of now-cold tea and I approached the pile. I knelt
on the floor and went to work, sorting as I picked up each piece. Some were headed
straight for the real trash—long-ago movie reviews, old memos, out-of-date coupons.
Some were to be filed eventually—conference programs, receipts, folders, journals,
catalogs. About half the height of the stack came from an assortment of features on
everything from differential equations to the best place to get cannoli in Boston,
from puzzles to correspondence to hotel reviews.

I found photos I’d forgotten about, waiting to be framed, plus a paperback I’d accused
Fran of not returning.

I did my best to be patient, taking each piece out, one at a time. If it was a journal,
I held it by its edge and shook the pages; if it was an envelope, I checked inside;
if it was a sheet of paper, I turned it over, in case the mayor had written out his
message.

Finally, my due diligence was rewarded. More than halfway down was a crisp, new white
envelope, one that hadn’t come through the mail. The imprinted return address was
of Henley City Hall on Main Street.

I sat back on my heels and opened it, holding my breath. Inside was a small, flat
blue plastic item, barely one inch on a side.

An SD—Secure Digital—memory card. I let out my breath, excited and happy to have something,
uncertain what it contained. I turned it over and over in my fingers, as if I could
read it through my skin. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if rubbing it forced it to give
up its secrets?

In the real world it was going to take an electronic device like a camera or a computer.
But the only camera I had was an app on my phone. And my campus computer was about
two years out of date and had no adapter to read an SD card. My home laptop had a
USB port and an accessory that would work, but I was miles from it. I felt that after
all this time, I deserved instant gratification, but it seemed it wasn’t to be.

To my surprise, I couldn’t decide between rushing home to my laptop or taking the
SD card directly to Virgil. So unlike me.

I wanted more than anything to see what was on the card, to be the first to see it.
And I’d thought Kira had acted childishly! But I had a plausible excuse—what if there
was nothing on the card but pictures of Cody Graves’s seventeenth birthday party?
Or another boring speech by the mayor himself? Shouldn’t I screen the card before
taking up the valuable time of a detective in the HPD?

On the other hand—maybe it would work to my advantage if I showed the kind of diffidence
and responsibility Virgil would like by taking it to him immediately. I might get
his attention and agreement to share with me. A bargaining chip, in the literal sense.

I wanted to review my suspects—that is, his
suspects—with him. Without more information, I might as well put “Collins,” “Richardson,”
and “Sizemore” labels on a dartboard and see what stuck. It seemed to come down to
money for the two men, love for the woman. I wondered what the statistics were on
those combinations.

The answer had to be on the card I held.

Still undecided, I put the envelope, unmarked except for the Henley address, into
a plastic sleeve meant for a three-ring binder. I’d get in my car and see where it
took me. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d used such a sophisticated method of decision
making.

I flashed back to Saturday, picturing Mayor Graves in my office on graduation day,
having sweet-talked Woody into letting him in, probably hearing the applause across
the campus as young people symbolically started a new life. Did he think back to his
own graduation, to his hopes for the future? Did he ruminate on how much simpler things
were then, when he didn’t have to skulk around hiding things in piles of “NOT TRASH”?
One thing I was pretty sure of: He didn’t know he’d die on this campus that same day.

I wondered again why he would have chosen such an inglorious method of presenting
me with evidence, if that’s what I was holding in my hand. Why not hand me the envelope
at Zeeman, or at the president’s reception? Or send me an email and meet me for lunch.
Not that the most recent lunch I’d had with an official turned out very well.

Why does anyone do what they do in a perceived or real crisis? Nothing that has to
make sense. My mother did some strange things at the end of her life. In the days
before she died, I might find her ironing tablecloths or restocking the soap in the
laundry area, as if they were the most important tasks left for her to do. She set
out large bags, stuffed out of my sight, for the trash pickup. Instead of sharing
stories of her life, she made me promise not to look through the bags.

“What’s in them?” I’d asked her. Since I’d been the one dragging them to the curb,
I’d felt I had a right to know.

“Never mind.”

“Hmm. Love letters to someone other than Dad?” I’d teased.

“If that’s what you want to think,” she’d said, inscrutable. In her last weeks she’d
become harder and harder to read.

It wasn’t very satisfying, but eventually my curiosity faded away as I tried to hold
on to only the unambiguously good memories.

I ran my finger along the SD card through the plastic sleeve. Was I holding the key
to the mayor’s murder?

As I exited the building, the SD card tucked in my briefcase, my cell phone rang.
I looked at the screen. Monty.
Not now, Monty. I have an important errand to run.

My better self won out and I answered, thinking I might get rid of him quickly by
telling him that yes, I did find something and that I’d get back to him within the
hour.

I walked toward my car and slid my phone open.

“Hey, Monty.”

“Sophie, I’m just calling to, you know, check on things.”

I was about to announce to him that I’d finally made some progress and that he’d better
not hold me up if he wanted the results anytime soon. But something stopped me. The
background noise on the phone. There was none. Why the lack of noise reminded me of
the presence of noise, I couldn’t say, but I remembered the sounds as clearly as if
they were playing in stereo.

First, the sound of the train in the background of the call to me from Mayor Graves
on the morning of graduation. Second, the sound of the kids playing in the park below
Monty Sizemore’s business office. One of main attractions at the kiddie park was a
small train that ran around the
perimeter of the area. Kids could sit in the colorful little cars and ride around
the track. Melanie loved it. The pint-size wooden train made a sound like the grown-ups’
train.

It all fell into place. The mayor had made the call after noon from Monty’s office.
I imagined he got in somehow when Monty wasn’t there and took the SD card, perhaps
from a camera he knew was in place, or from any number of repositories. I already
knew he was good at getting into empty offices.

Monty’s story about his sister was true. Chris had let the mayor walk out of the room
in Admin after he called an end to their relationship. But Monty had been waiting
nearby and didn’t let him off so easily.

My head ran the video, as if I were directing a screenplay to a movie set on my own
campus. I could picture exactly where Monty must have been standing, exactly where
a faculty member’s desk held a mug of pens and pencils. And a letter opener.

“Sophie?”

I couldn’t let Monty know what I suspected. I stammered into my phone. “I’m in kind
of hurry, Monty.”

“I can see that,” he said, sending a chill through me.

I looked up from the screen. A man in white was approaching from the direction of
the Mortarboard Café. I squinted against the strong sunlight. Monty, with large shades.

I knew it would be a close race to my car as I quickened my pace and made dramatic
gestures toward my watch:
I’m in a hurry!
And Monty did the same, breaking into a run. He held up his hand and showed me his
fingers.
I only need five minutes.
Whom did he think he was kidding?

If the respective distances we had to travel had been different, I might have made
it to my car, pretending not to understand his five-minute gesture, pretending not
to have figured out who killed the mayor. But Monty was closer to
my car and had longer legs, so the math worked out in his favor.

“Hey, Sophie,” he said from a few yards away. “I thought that was you. Did you find
anything?”

Could Monty possibly not know what I had in my briefcase? Could this be just another
innocent if pesty encounter? It was worth a shot.

“No, I…” I stammered. “I was just doing some work on—”

“You’re a lousy liar, Sophie. You’d never make it in the business world. I knew it
was just a matter of time before you either figured it out or found that video.”

“What video?”

But there was no fooling Monty. I could tell by his anxious expression, and by his
determined pace as he closed the gap between us, towering over me.

And, finally, by the gun he held in his right hand.

In seconds, the air on campus went from hot and sunny to icy and overcast, a heavy
dark cloud passing over the tennis courts and over our heads. Monty’s visage took
on an ominous look. He might as well have been wearing a dark cloak instead of his
tennis whites.

“Hand it over, Sophie,” he said, his face pinched. “I knew you wouldn’t give up until
you found it.”

I couldn’t have been more surprised at the turn of events in the last two minutes.
I felt winded and weak at the same time. I thought I’d fall over on my face. I moved
toward the grass in case I did take a tumble. As if the gun pointed at me wasn’t a
much bigger threat to my well-being.