He nodded.
“Because he was wearing a tiki-torch hat?”
“Very funny,” he said, “but no. When Travis set his slide on fire with the Bunsen burner he dropped it in the sink. The problem was whoever had been in the lab before us had dumped alcohol down that sink.”
“Which was not my fault,” Travis interjected.
“I think I get the picture,” I said. “But I still don’t understand how the professor’s hair set off the sprinklers.”
“It wasn’t exactly his hair, if you get what I mean,” Dani said with a Cheshire-cat grin.
I nodded. “I’m starting to.”
“Dr. Martindale was an excitable kind of guy.” Travis looked toward the front of the restaurant. When he caught Claire’s attention he pointed at his cup the same way I’d seen him do earlier.
“Flaming hair will do that to you, I’m guessing,” I said.
Claire arrived at the table with the coffeepot then. As she filled my cup I met her gaze and held up one finger. She nodded almost imperceptibly and I felt confident that she knew I intended to take care of the bill.
“Okay, Dr. Martindale’s alleged hair was on fire,” I said as I doctored my coffee. “Then what happened?” It was impossible to keep my smile contained.
John made a face. “He had on a pair of those big plastic goggles you wear in the lab and when he pulled them off his hair got caught in the strap and it”—he made a rolling motion with one hand—“kind of somersaulted into the sink.” He shrugged. “You know, I was never really sure that hair was human hair.”
“You’re making this up,” I said, shaking with laughter. Even Marcus was smiling at the memory.
“No, we’re not,” John insisted. He held up one hand, palm facing out. “I swear it’s the truth. There was a lot of smoke, the sprinklers went off and we had to evacuate the building. That was the end of the lab. We all ended up at this bar just off campus.” He shrugged again. “That’s really how we got to know each other. We all pretty much agreed without talking about it that we weren’t going to say a word about Dr. Martindale’s hair being the reason the sprinklers went off.”
“I can see how it would have been a hot-button issue for him,” I said, dissolving into laughter again.
“I think we were probably the reason Dr. Martindale retired at the end of the year.” John winked at me and reached for his coffee.
“You mean the field trip,” Travis said. The smile on his face was more like a smirk. “Yeah, I think that cemented it for Martindale.”
A look passed between Marcus and Dani, so quickly that I wasn’t completely certain I’d seen it at all.
Dani stretched one arm behind her head and shifted to look at Travis. “C’mon, Trav, we’re probably boring Kathleen talking about the good old days.”
Travis was still leaning back in his chair, one hand wrapped around his mug. With the other he sent a knife on the table spinning in a circle. “Are we boring you, Kathleen, talking about Marcus’s youthful indiscretions?” he asked.
I could feel the tension in the air, like ozone before a thunderstorm. I knew there was no right way to answer Travis’s question. Something had happened between him and Marcus. Maybe that was why Marcus had never talked about any of them.
Under the table I put my hand on his leg. He covered it with his own for a moment. “Talking about Marcus is never boring as far as I’m concerned,” I said to Travis. That was true and it was the most neutral answer I could come up with.
Marcus turned sideways in his chair and smiled at me. “The year we took that biology class the administration decided to add some fieldwork to the course.”
“It was the only year they did that,” John added.
Marcus’s gaze flicked to Dani again and she picked up the story. “So, anyway, the college owned a woodlot and Dr. Martindale decided to take the class camping overnight. We were supposed to collect plant samples all day and then when it got dark we were going to look at the stars. Dr. Hemmings and a couple of grad students from the physics department came with us.”
“To foster an atmosphere of interdepartmental cooperation and learning,” Travis said, as though he were quoting the words straight from some university press release. He pushed his hipster glasses up his nose with one finger.
“The two grad students had to lug a telescope through the woods,” John said, grinning at the memory.
Dani gave me a smile. Her voice didn’t betray any tension but I could see it in her shoulders and the way she held her head. “Marcus volunteered to make breakfast.”
I glanced at him again and smiled. “He’s a good cook.”
John almost choked on his coffee. “You’re serious? He cooks?”
I nodded.
Dani turned and glared. “Be nice,” she said.
He just laughed.
“I didn’t exactly volunteer,” Marcus said. “I was the only one up.”
He looked over at John, who immediately shook his head and turned to look at me. “For the record, Kathleen, I do not snore and I did not drive him out of our tent.”
“Duly noted,” I said.
“Dr. Hemmings gave me a bag of oatmeal and a pot,” Marcus said. “She told me to make breakfast for my group.”
“And you what? Burned the oatmeal?”
John was laughing now. Dani’s smile still seemed forced.
“You’re a librarian, Kathleen,” Travis said. His voice was still laced with a touch of sarcasm. “You probably know the story of Medusa.”
I had no idea what a character from Greek mythology had to do with Marcus making oatmeal but I nodded. “Medusa was a Gorgon. According to the legend, the sight of her face was so terrible it would turn anyone who looked at her to stone.”
Travis’s gaze slid from Marcus to me. “Yeah, well that’s pretty much what Marcus did to our breakfast.”
“It wasn’t quite like that, Kathleen,” Dani said. She wore a silver double-infinity-knot ring on the middle finger of her left hand and she twisted it around and around on the finger.
“It was pretty much exactly like that,” John retorted.
“My mother always made oatmeal with milk,” Marcus said.
“Something you need to know about John is that he always has a few essential supplies when he’s out in the field,” Dani said. She looked past me, at Marcus, giving him a genuine smile of affection. “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Pop-Tarts, coffee, powdered milk.” She put extra emphasis on the last two words.
“I’m starting to think I know where this is going,” I said. “You thought you’d use the powdered milk.”
Marcus nodded.
I turned back to Dani. “But?”
“John also had a bag of plaster of Paris in his backpack.”
“No,” I said.
John’s head was bobbing up and down. “Yes.”
“You could have put a label on the bag.” Marcus leaned forward to look at John.
“Hey, plaster of Paris and powdered milk don’t exactly look that much alike.” John was laughing.
“They do at five in the morning when you’re sleep-deprived.”
I leaned against Marcus for a moment, feeling the warmth of his body through the fabric of his shirt. “So what happened to the oatmeal?”
Travis spoke up before anyone could answer. “You know how people say stuff like that is good for you because it sticks with you?”
“I do,” I said.
“Lucky for Marcus that oatmeal stuck with the pot so nobody actually ate it.”
John turned to look at him, waving one hand in the air. “No, that’s not true. We actually managed to get it out of the pot. It was like a big cylindrical boulder. We just rolled it into the trees. I think Dr. Hemmings made one of her grad students carry it back to campus so she could use it as a doorstop. She thought it was some kind of unusual rock formation.”
“Okay, I know you’re making that up,” I said, shaking with laughter.
John put a hand over his heart. “Sadly, I’m not.”