Chapter 16
By Tuesday morning when Chris walked into the empty outer office, things had returned to normal, more or less. Finals were over, the semester had officially ended, and grades had been turned in. That was the normal part. That there were no policemen in the building, though a relief, struck Chris as faintly abnormal under the circumstances.
A sign on the door said Charlie Ingquist was off getting the mail since there wasn't intra-campus delivery over school holidays. Chris was struck by the hollowness of the Fine Arts building when there were no students or faculty around. She scanned Charlie's desk for anything he might have for her and noted a stack of papers awaiting filing. McCarty's thick set of file folders was also still there. Charlie must have been very busy yesterday. He was normally a paragon of efficiency whose desk never looked used, let alone cluttered.
She opened her office and lamented her own lack of efficiency. Books and papers were stacked on the corners of her desk and only the blotter was clean. Time to tidy up. She told herself this was why she'd come in this morning—to do a little sorting and organizing. Actually, Pansy was still intent on arranging a birthday party for her and, rather than fight about it, Chris said she had work to do and left. It wouldn't hurt to do a little tidying, she told herself and started in.
Ten minutes later Charlie was back with an armload of mail and two cups of coffee. "Thought you'd be here," he said, putting one of the cups on her desk. He returned to the outer office to begin sorting letters.
Chris reviewed and tossed until her file drawers were immaculate. The top of her desk still looked like a paper-recycling drive, but she'd made progress. She began sorting through the piles.
Charlie stuck his head in the door and grinned. "You want some gossip, Boss?"
"Anything to relieve the tedium of housekeeping." She consigned her notes for last semester's class to an accordion file.
"The top two candidates, according to my buddy at the cop shop, are Dr. Westphall and Howard Randall." He came all the way in and sat down.
Chris paused and looked at him. "Really? Do you know why?"
"She had a fight with both of them and he had the opportunity and the skill to make one of those E-M guns. They're still pretty sketchy about a motive for Randall, at least as far as Bjornson's concerned."
"Antonia couldn't make one of those things, could she?"
"That's a hang-up from what Cliff says. They've got the motive and the opportunity for her and the opportunity and the means for him. Gotta have all three for the county attorney, so they're are still digging around. Cliff says they're trying to find out if she could have stolen the parts from Bjornson. He also says they're canvassing every hardware store in the area looking for someone who bought the right supplies."
"From what I saw Saturday if they go at it that way, the list of possible candidates could be huge."
"Why's that?"
Chris shrugged. "All common, garden variety stuff. Extension cords, copper wire, PVC pipe, welding rods—not much more than that."
"Interesting. You got to see it? The E-M gun?"
"My son helped them make one."
"Sweet! Did you see it work?" Charlie would have been right at home in the basement of the P. D.
Chris thought, Must be a guy thing. When she'd recounted as much as she could remember, Charlie returned to his office and Chris returned to sorting and filing. The tedium had almost reached its maximum tolerable level when she was finally able to see the entire top of her desk. She flopped back in her chair and said, "Done!" to the ceiling. Then she called, "I'm out of here, Charlie."
"Me too, boss. Remember I'm going home for Christmas tomorrow so you're on your own until next Monday."
"I'll bring the mail over every day, but I'm not sitting here in an empty building when there are cookies to be baked," Chris said, wrapping her scarf around her neck. "Don't forget to make sure the file cabinets and drawers are locked. I assume a few people will come in to check their mail. And have a great holiday, Charlie."
"You too, Boss. And happy birthday."
Chris stopped mid-stride on her way to the door. "Thanks. How'd you know?"
"You told me when I asked about your name years ago. Don't see many people named Christmas, y'know?"
"You have a very good memory," she said, continuing out the door and spent the walk to the parking garage trying to remember whether he'd ever wished her a happy birthday before. You're being overly suspicious, she told herself at last.
Chris assumed Pansy had forgotten about her birthday by the twenty-seventh of December. She was wrong. She had taken her mother shopping for a winter coat. When her mother ultimately refused to buy one, in spite of having tried on several that looked very nice, Chris should have been suspicious. When Pansy declared she couldn't live without a pizza at Spike's, bells should have rung. None did.
When they walked into Spike's Pizza at six o'clock that Monday, Chris was astonished to see everyone in the Art Department who hadn't left town, Aaron Brinkmann from Music and Tony Taylor and the normally reclusive Colin McCarty from Drama. Her amazement redoubled when he raised his glass with everyone else and shouted, "Happy Birthday!"
"Mondays are slow in the pizza business," Pansy explained when Chris had a chance to ask how her mother had been able to arrange to take over the restaurant. Charlie admitted to having conspired with Pansy to pull this off, and Drew sidled up to his mother grinning widely. He gave her a nudge with his elbow. Hugging one's mother in public was apparently still a no-no. A nudge is better than nothing, Chris thought as she returned nudge for nudge.
She was seated at a table covered with wine bottles in gift packages reading the cards aloud when she got another surprise. Hjelmer Ryquist and Tom Eicher, Pansy's physical therapist, walked in with two women Chris assumed were their wives. They came straight for Chris, bearing cards and wine bottles of their own.
"Pansy invited us," Ryquist explained in answer to the question Chris was determined not to ask.
"I'm so glad she did," Chris responded truthfully, for she did like the detective sergeant, in spite of the circumstances of their meeting. Ryquist introduced his wife, Mae, and announced that Tom Eicher, the physical therapist, also was his nephew. He introduced Eicher's wife, Patty. Chris was reminded once more of the smallness of Camford.
She went back to the cheerful task of reading aloud the outrageous cards, most of which suggested it was a miracle she could still walk without help and didn't drool. When she got to one that had two vultures on the front saying, Enjoy your birthday! she should have been prepared for the punch line: It might be your last. Somehow, she was not. She tried to grin and passed the card around with the rest, but a shadow had passed over her good mood.
Don't be stupid, she thought. She opened the last few cards and finally joined the line at the buffet for pizza.
"Having a good time, Chris?" Antonia asked when she settled at a table with the art historians.
"Absolutely!" Chris responded stoutly and dug into her piece of pepperoni.
Dan McFarland chuckled. "Some of those cards were great."
Talisha Rice sniffed. "Not that vulture one. Tacky, I call it. Under the circumstances and all."
"It was okay," Chris said. "We wouldn't even notice if it weren't for the situation."
"What's that policeman doing here, I wonder?" Antonia whispered after a bit. Only the people working in the kitchen didn't hear her.
"My mother doesn't know many people here," Chris explained. She recounted the story of her fifth birthday, but Antonia didn't look comforted. When Chris caught Ryquist looking at Antonia speculatively, she decided Antonia was right to be unnerved. Party or not, he was a policeman.