Donna Andrews - Chesapeake Crimes - This Job Is Murder!

“Yes, we have other things to do,” another one said.

“Is this going to take long?” the complaining continued.

Yes, George’s death must be such an inconvenience for you.

I turned without responding and asked my deputy to escort the professors one by one to Room 400, where I would question each one.

Dillard 400 was a large classroom with lecture-hall seating. Many of the chairs were either broken or missing. Students had declared their love or immortalized the words to their favorite songs on the tops of the fixed tables. Some of the whiteboards could no longer be erased. Over the past two years, it, like most of the bigger classrooms in the building, had fallen into disrepair, through lack of regular use and maintenance. With the number of Business majors at an all-time low, class sizes had never been smaller.

The first faculty member in was Marcia Paulson. She took the chair at the front of the classroom, no doubt used to being the focus of the room.

“Dr. Paulson, can you tell me your whereabouts yesterday evening, around six p.m.?” I began.

Paulson huffed. She ran both hands through her gray-streaked hair and shook her head several times to make it all fall back into place. Then, with squared shoulders and a firm glare, she said, “I don’t understand why you’re questioning any of us. We’re PhDs, not murderers.”

I replied with the obvious. “Every one of you hated George Lewis’s plans for the Business Department. Wouldn’t some of you want to get even?”

She thought for a moment before replying. “You’re right; but murder is beneath us. Besides, we were all at the meeting.”

“What meeting?” I asked.

“The meeting to develop a plan to stop the destruction of the Business Department.”

“Really? What’s the plan?”

“We were still working on it, but murder was not on the agenda, I can assure you.” She smiled. “It doesn’t matter now; someone has already solved our problem.”

She raised her eyebrows and waited. When I didn’t take the bait, she went on anyway.

“You’re not going to want to hear this, but the person you should be talking to is Annette.”

“Annette?” I acted sufficiently surprised.

“She was the last one here with George last night. Just ask Doug Mancini.”

It was no secret how I felt about George’s secretary, Annette. What I didn’t know was how much everyone else’s knowing would impact my investigation. Rather than react to Paulson’s insinuation, I told her she could leave and asked my deputy to bring Doug Mancini to me.

Mancini stormed in all fire and brimstone. “If you think you’re going to pin this on me, you’re nuts! Yes, I hated him. Who didn’t? But when I left here last night, George was still alive; and I was at the SOD meeting until one a.m.”

“SOD?”

“Save Our Department.”

Mancini loomed over me waiting for my response.

I swallowed a smart remark about academics and their ridiculous acronyms and said, instead, “But you saw George Lewis last night, before the meeting?”

His bravado waned as he stammered out his response. “Yes, well, I wasn’t here long, and, we just had some business to go over, and, you know-he was alive when I left!”

“Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened yesterday evening, Professor Mancini.”

He released a long sigh and found his way to one of the student chairs.

“Look, Annette’s going to tell you that I threatened George, but she’s the one with the bigger motive here. We all knew she was sleeping with him, and he was planning on leaving her behind when he moved into the president’s office. She had to feel used, betrayed, furious.”

I knew all this. Annette had told me so herself. I hated George for what he had been doing to Annette.

“Did you threaten George Lewis, Professor Mancini?”

“I wouldn’t call it a threat, exactly.”

“What would you call it?”

“It was more of an observation. I just told him changing our department from a degree program into a certificate program would be a poor choice for him to make.”

Yes, I’m sure that’s just how you phrased it.

“Did you see Annette here last night?”

“Yes, and actually, I was surprised to see her. All she’d been talking about all week was going to her daughter’s baby shower. But the way she was dressed, I thought, maybe she’d changed her mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was wearing the ugliest muumuu I had ever seen, not at all something someone would wear to a party.” He thought another moment and said, “Of course, she didn’t have much reason to come to work looking good anymore.”

Was he rubbing my nose in it? Assuming that even with George out of the picture, Annette wouldn’t want me?

“As I was leaving, she was coming into George’s office carrying all of our personnel files,” Mancini said, barely able to keep the anger out of his voice. “Her file was right on top. I felt bad for her; that bastard was making her deliver her own execution papers. She was still here when I left.”

“What time was that?” I asked, hoping his answer was precise enough to narrow down the time of George’s murder.

“A few minutes after six p.m.,” he said.

I nodded to my deputy, who escorted Doug Mancini out and brought in the next faculty member.

Eduardo Calibri-Ed for short-started babbling before he entered the room. “What have the others told you, Steve?”

I took a deep breath. “Why don’t we talk about what you have to tell me, Dr. Calibri. You must have a theory about what happened.”

Calibri threw his shoulders back and sat upright, grinning from ear to ear. “I’ve been wondering when you’d ask! We’ve all been talking about it, and everyone thinks your best bet is Annette.”

This is going to be easier than I thought.

“Go on,” I said.

“George’s office was locked when the cleaning lady came in this morning. I asked her that, specifically, before coming to see you.” He nodded with satisfaction.

By all means, interfere with a police investigation.

I waited for him to continue.

“Who locked the door if George was lying in there dead to the world? Who had keys to his office? George, the cleaning lady, and Annette.”

“Why couldn’t the killer have used George Lewis’s keys?” I asked.

“Come on, Steve. Now you’re just insulting us. George’s keys were on his desk. I saw them myself this morning, before you shooed us all away.”

Of course you did.

I had everything I needed from Calibri and sent him out with my deputy.

After three more hours of interviews with the Business Department faculty, I learned the following: George Lewis planned to hold a department meeting in two days, in which he would “make a historic announcement.” Everyone knew what it was: he was dissolving all their tenure contracts and giving them renewable one-year posts in his new certificate program. They all expected that he would spend that year finding and hiring their replacements. Some of them had talked about suing or throwing his offer back in his face; but they couldn’t afford an expensive lawsuit, and their chances of leaving Boswell County to teach at another college were limited, considering they had few publications on their vitae and even less respect, coming from the lowest-ranked business program in the state. The youngest of them were in their mid-to-late forties, too old to start over somewhere else; and their only option in town was mussel farming in the Clinch River. They were at George’s mercy. Stuck. If George had lived, the SOD committee would have been little more than a group whining session, but now it gave them all an alibi.