Scoop to Kill (20 page)

We both scanned the numbers on the sheet. The notations next to them were gibberish to me, but I could tell that both spreadsheets were basically the same. All except for the numbers at the very bottom of the screen, one labeled F&A and the other labeled Total.

“What’s F and A?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.” Finn highlighted the number next to F and A on the first spreadsheet, the one labeled EmilyGrant. “It’s a formula,” he said. “See, right here?” He pointed to a bar across the top of the sheet. “C44 * .485.”

He bopped the cursor over to the other spreadsheet, the one labeled Grant_Calc_Temp. “This formula is different. C44 * .49.”

“I’m lost,” I said.

“Yeah, me too.”

“But I know someone who might be able to help us.”

I called Alice and wheedled Reggie’s number from her. And then I called Reggie. Turned out he was right down the hall, working in his own office.

“I can’t believe you guys broke in here,” he said, as he slid into the seat Finn had vacated. Reggie seemed to fit in Emily’s office, his unkempt ginger curls a near-perfect match for the fake rooster’s red felt comb. And he seemed comfortable behind her desk, mousing around her computer desktop like someone familiar with her filing system.

“We didn’t exactly break in,” Finn said. “The building was unlocked, and Alice gave us the key to Emily’s office.”

“Semantics,” Reggie muttered.

He studied the two spreadsheets silently for a few minutes, then sighed.

“It’s just a math error,” he said.

“Explain,” Finn commanded.

“This is just a spreadsheet for calculating how much money you need for a project. The research office provides this template”—he pointed at the second spreadsheet—“and you fill in the numbers. See, this is what Emily estimated for her airfare; this is for graduate student assistance; this is for computer equipment.”

“What’s F and A?” I asked.

“Facilities and Administration. When you get a grant from some outside agency, like the federal government or a nonprofit organization, you ask for the money you, the researcher, will need. Then the school tacks on a percentage to cover the school’s costs. They have to hold the money, distribute the checks, audit the researcher’s books. That’s the ‘administration’ part. The ‘facilities’ part is to cover overhead for things like electricity and computer maintenance and stuff like that.”

“So why are the two numbers different?” Finn asked.

Reggie shrugged. “This one, the one with the higher number, that’s the official spreadsheet the university generates. This other one, that looks like Emily created it herself.”

“Oh, right!” I said. “Finn, remember when Alice brought Emily the grant documents? She said she couldn’t get to the budget spreadsheet because it was on the university drive, so Emily said she was going to have to re-create it from the printout.”

Reggie nodded. “Yeah, this first one you showed me, EmilyGrant, is probably the one that Emily created herself. She just used a different percentage, 48.5 instead of 49, for this calculation.”

He picked up a blue folder that was on top of the desk clutter, the words “Summer Grant” scrawled across its front in black marker. He flipped open the folder and pulled out a printed spreadsheet.

“See, if she was re-creating this spreadsheet, it looks here like the F and A percentage is 48.5. But apparently in the official spreadsheet, the number is rounded up to 49 before the F and A is calculated.”

It looked to me like Emily was in the right and whoever had drafted the official spreadsheet had made the error. I had kept the books for Wayne’s Weed and Seed before Wayne Jones and I got divorced, so I knew how easy it was to make an error in a big ol’ spreadsheet. I guessed that professional number crunchers could make mistakes just like us little guys.

Reggie spun around in Emily’s chair to face us. “Like I said, it’s just a math error. No big deal. Now can I get back to work?”

“Sure,” Finn said.

Reggie didn’t budge.

“You have to leave,” he said, waving us toward the door.

Finn and I did as we were told, though Finn pocketed the key to Emily’s office. Thankfully, Reggie didn’t think to ask for it back.

We trudged out to the parking lot, dejected.

“That got us exactly nowhere,” Finn complained.

“Not exactly,” I said. “At least now we know that she was working on her grant the night she died. She was making plans for the future. Which means she thought she had a future to plan for.”

Finn stopped in his tracks and lowered his head.

“She didn’t plan to die,” he said softly.

“No. She planned to live.”

He pulled me close, wrapped me in his arms. “Thank you,” he whispered into my hair.

I just hugged him closer.

E
mily’s parents claimed their daughter and returned to Minnesota. Finn asked if they wanted to stay with him, to linger long enough for a memorial service, but they declined. They were eager to whisk their child away from the place that took her life, and I couldn’t blame them.

Ultimately, it became clear that Emily Clowper had no ties to Dalliance beyond the Dickerson campus, and the faculty, staff, and students of the university were ready to put the whole sordid situation behind them. No one wanted to dwell on Emily Clowper’s death, and that meant no one particularly wanted to remember her life.

Instead of a memorial service, which would have been all the sadder for the lack of attendants, we decided to honor Emily by helping her parents pack up her earthly possessions.

That Thursday morning, ominous clouds roiled on the horizon, boding a powerful early-summer storm. By the time Alice and I got out of class and piled into the van, fat raindrops hit the windshield with an almost purposeful smack, not just falling but diving to earth. We drove slowly through the veils of water to Emily’s house.

Finn and Bree were already parked in her driveway. I could just barely make out their shadows in the front seat of Finn’s Jeep. When my headlights sliced the gloom, their forms stirred and soon we were all darting through the torrential downpour to the shelter of Emily’s wide front porch.

Finn led the way into Emily’s living room. I shuddered as the visceral memory of the night of her death welled up inside me. The strange silver-green light of the stormy afternoon cast few shadows in the near-empty room. It felt otherworldly, a mournful dreamscape.

Alice wandered over to a cardboard box next to the faded velvet sofa. She sank down to sit on the bare wood floor tailor-style, her thin pale legs folded beneath her so that I could see the faded scars on her knees, the familiar traces of her childish mishaps. She wore a hint of color on her lips and mascara darkened her golden lashes, but she sprawled on the floor with the artless inelegance of a child.

Without a word, she pulled the box closer, pulled the flaps on top open, and began lifting out books and binders.

“Her parents asked us to send anything that looked personal. Jewelry, photos, scrapbooks. And they said that Emily had a set of china that belonged to her grandmother. They’d like to pass that on to her sister. Everything else, we can donate.”

Bree pulled a box of trash bags out of her mammoth purse, pulled a handful of them out of the slit across the top, and set the box on the floor by the front door. “I’ll start in the bathroom,” she said. “Most of that will be stuff to pitch or donate.”

Alice nodded absently, still not saying a word. She kept her head down as she thumbed through a large book that might be a photo album. I didn’t see any tears, but something about the brittle set of her shoulders made me think she wept.

Finn bent down and retrieved a couple of trash bags, handed them to me, and picked up a stack of flattened packing boxes. “Bedroom or kitchen?”

A wave of dizziness hit me hard at the very thought of going back into Emily’s bedroom. “Kitchen.”

He followed me through an empty room that might have held a dining table and into the kitchen. I noticed more this time. The white-painted cabinets with their whimsical handles shaped like eating utensils, the black-and-white checkered vinyl floor, the frilly lavender curtains on the window over the enamel sink. There was something so playful and girly about Emily’s kitchen; I wondered if she’d inherited this decor. It seemed inconsistent with her brusque attitude, sharply angled hair, and androgynous eyeglasses.

But then I thought of her flowing dresses and the petal pink of her bicycle, and I could imagine her choosing these items carefully, tiny acts of feminine defiance committed by a woman who refused to fit into a mold.

Finn pulled open a kitchen cupboard and revealed a few boxes of cereal, some canned beans, and a handful of spice jars.

“This isn’t going to take long,” he said sadly.

I walked past him, pausing to give his shoulder a reassuring squeeze, and opened a pantry filled with instant soup containers and unopened rolls of paper towels.

“She struck me as someone who didn’t place much stock in material possessions,” I said.

Finn laughed. “You’ve always been a master of understatement, Tally.”

We worked quietly for a bit, throwing away opened packages of food and perishables, boxing up unopened cans and packets for the local food bank, sifting through kitchen gadgets and utensils for those that were worth donating and those that weren’t.

Then, out of the clear blue sky, Finn said, “Tell me about this place Peachy’s staying.”

I paused in the act of stacking a set of plastic measuring cups together, wondering what prompted that question. “It’s nice,” I said, tucking the neatly nested stack into a box for the local thrift store. “Peachy’s in a wing for active seniors. They all have their own apartments with sitting rooms and kitchenettes and separate bedrooms. She can fix her own dinner if she wants, or go down to the dining room. They have game nights and field trips to the movies, and Peachy already has a regular euchre game in her room.”

“So she likes it?”

I chuckled. “As much as Peachy likes anything. You know how she is. She’s not happy unless she’s raising Cain about something or another.”

Grandma Peachy had a sweet name but a salty disposition. She swore like a sailor, smoked a pipe, and could shoot straighter than the most grizzled cowboy. She’d had to manage a good-sized ranch and raise a couple of hell-raising daughters all on her own after my grandpa Clem got sent to the federal pen. It took grit, which Peachy had in spades.

“What about people who can’t cook for themselves?” Finn asked.

I shrugged. “That’s one of the reasons we wanted Peachy to move into this place now. They have more involved care for people who have physical problems or even dementia. She’s healthy as a stoat right now, but if something changes she’ll be able to stay put. It was hard enough moving her out of the farmhouse. We’re not moving her again until we haul her cranky butt out to the cemetery.”

Finn didn’t respond. He pulled open the doors of a mint green-painted breakfront. Emily’s floral china was stacked neatly inside. I could see the film of dust on them from where I stood.

He silently constructed a cardboard box and secured the bottom with packing tape. He grabbed a roll of paper towels, tossed another one to me. We began pulling dishes out of the cupboard, wrapping them in towels, and tucking them into the box.

“I’m thinking of leaving Dalliance.”

He said it so quietly, so matter-of-factly, that his meaning didn’t register at first.

I froze, my hands wrapped around a delicate tea-cup.

“What?”

“I’m thinking of leaving town. Moving on.”

“What about your mom?”

“This was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, just until she got back on her feet. My mom had another checkup with her neurologist. It’s been over a year since her last stroke, and she’s not getting any better. She’s not
going
to get any better.”

He blew out a frustrated breath, pulled the last few dishes out of the box and started to repack them more securely. I watched his big hands manipulate the feminine saucers and bowls. It seemed so intimate, him pulling Emily’s treasures from their hiding spot.

“I can’t take care of Mom on my own. The home- health care workers are great, but there’s no continuity there. It’s a different woman almost every day. Mom should have people who know her situation taking care of her, people who will notice subtle changes from day to day.”

I forced myself to move, to continue packing Emily’s dishes.

“Where would you go? Back to Minneapolis?”

“No. There’s nothing waiting for me there. Maybe Chicago or Atlanta.”

“I see.”

“Dammit, Tally, don’t take that tone with me.”

“What tone?” I asked, genuinely confused. The thought of Finn leaving town left me bereft. But more than hurt, I had a sense of déjà vu.

With Finn’s chin set at a defiant angle and a fire burning behind his moss-green eyes, his expression transported me through the years to a sultry summer evening during our senior year in high school. Finn telling me he was going to travel the world instead of staying in Texas for college. Me telling Finn that I couldn’t go with him. That it was over. Finn tearing off into the darkness, lost to me until he showed up on my doorstep the autumn after my divorce.

Here we go again
, I thought.

“You’ve got that tone like I’ve disappointed you,” Finn snapped.

I tore a sheaf of paper towels from the roll. “Of course I’m disappointed,” I said. “Dalliance is a better place with you in it. But you didn’t disappoint me.”

He grunted.

“Really. I’m not in a position to have any expectations of you, Finn.”

He cut his eyes to the side, studying me.

“Is that so?”

I sighed. “Isn’t it? Dang, Finn. You disappeared for seventeen years, and when you pop back up, you act like you never left. Like we can just pick right up and be buddies. But we’ve changed, both of us. I think I like the man you became, but I don’t even really know you anymore.”