Maybe something I hadn’t eaten was tainted, like the onion dip or the store-bought pie.
“Was there something in the food at the party?” I asked Rachel, while my kitchen spun around. A serious solid of revolution.
“He was… they’re saying Dr. Appleton was murdered, Dr. Knowles.”
A whole new set of shivers and waves of unrest came over me and seemed to push me back into the kitchen and onto the ladder-back chair in the corner. Suddenly the room was too bright; the many tones of blue in the braided rug under my feet were too gaudy. I shaded my eyes and tried to process what I was hearing.
I’d wished Keith Appleton would leave Franklin Hall, not the land of the living. Hadn’t I? Really, I just wanted him to be civil, I explained to the universe around me. My mind raced to undo Keith’s demise. If I make my intentions clearer, I thought, Keith will spring back to life.
“Who told you all this, Rachel?”
A long, nerve-racking pause. “The police. They came to my house and brought me down here and they questioned me, for, like, hours.”
Down here? I remembered the lack of caller ID readout. “Are you at the police station?”
“Yeah.”
“Did they”-I could hardly get the word out-“arrest you?” I almost said, “like, arrest you.” I was that rattled.
“No, no. But they just let me go a minute ago; I wanted to call you right away. Believe it or not, there’s a pay phone here.”
“Did they confiscate your cell?”
I didn’t know where I got that idea, except perhaps from seeing hardened criminals give up their possessions on television crime dramas. I also didn’t know why it mattered. I was simply thrashing around trying to make sense of the last few minutes. I knew if Bruce were here, he’d recite the titles of a dozen movies where the star winds back time and redoes the past.
“No, they didn’t take it,” Rachel said, but I’d lost track of the question.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I still have my cell. But I didn’t want to use it. What if they’re bugging it or something? And I know once I get home, I won’t be able to call you. It will be awful. My mom is a wreck and all her sisters will be showing up.”
“So you’re free and they haven’t charged you or anything?”
“Yeah, I’m free, but they told me not to leave Henley.”
I breathed more easily. “They must be questioning everyone, Rachel.”
“They said they were but I don’t see anyone else from school around here. I’m sure they think I did it, Dr. Knowles. They think I poisoned Dr. Appleton.” Rachel’s voice faded away and then came back. “Dr. Knowles?”
“Why in the world would they think you killed him?”
“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Will you meet me somewhere tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
“The police interview room was stifling and I feel like I haven’t had a shower in a week.”
I did a quick calculation of the timeline. It was now eight o’clock. If Woody called the police after four, by the time they arrived, questioned Woody, put things together, and decided to question Rachel, it would have been at least six. That meant the longest Rachel could have been at the station was a couple of hours. I had no trouble believing that two or three hours in adversarial interrogation by the police could seem like a week.
“Just one thing, Rachel. Was Dr. Appleton okay when you went upstairs to give him the cake and drink from the party?”
A long pause while I sat down and drummed my fingers on my knee.
“I didn’t see him. I knocked, you know, lightly. He doesn’t like to be disturbed if his door is closed. That’s the code for all his students. If he doesn’t answer a light tap, tap, tap, we just go away.”
I couldn’t recall Rachel’s coming back down to the lounge with the food and drink, but neither had I been tracking her movements. I wondered if she was a suspect simply because she tried to deliver a treat. Had Woody seen her, perhaps, and assumed she’d gone in and… I couldn’t imagine.
“You should be home with your family,” I said. A pittance of advice but I wanted her out of what must have been a depressing environment, though I had no experience to confirm it. I imagined the police had one set of rooms for casual visitors and another, more dismal setup for suspects.
“I guess I should get home. Can I call you tomorrow to set up a time to meet?”
“Absolutely.”
Once we hung up, I sat with the phone on my lap. I had so many questions. Did Rachel have a lawyer? Were there any other suspects? There should be. So many people had it in for Keith Appleton.
But who hated him so much they would kill him? No one I could think of.
Rachel’s thinly veiled plea for help rang in my head. I hadn’t a clue how to assist a murder suspect, but my faith in her innocence was unshaken. For all her whining and complaining about Keith, I couldn’t recall ever seeing her angry. Certainly not angry enough to hurt someone. When she was upset, as she’d been yesterday, she tended to cry or withdraw. Rachel would rather quit than fight.
I thought I was ready for more sustenance. I headed for the cheese plate, but still couldn’t bring myself to eat. None of the food in my house had been at the party, but what was to say that the person who poisoned Keith hadn’t snuck into my home and injected the contents of my fridge with whatever substance killed him?
The realization that this fear was irrational didn’t stop me from emptying my food into the sink. I flushed it down the disposal, holding my nose against the odor of shredding apple and cheddar cheese.
For some reason, they smelled of death.
It took a while for me to collect myself enough to take some action. Finally, I picked up the phone. I had one and only one contact in the Henley PD, and it was once removed at that.
I punched in the speed dial number for Bruce. I usually waited for him to call me when he was on duty, to avoid waking him from a nap or catching him mid-flight to an accident scene. Or in the middle of a serious poker game, as I had a couple of times.
“I know you’re not calling to tell me you love me,” he said. “Pretty awful what happened, huh?”
“You’ve already heard about Keith Appleton?”
“I’m not best friends with a homicide detective for nothing, Soph.”
Bruce had known Virgil Mitchell, of the small but very effective Henley Police Department, since college. I hoped to capitalize on that friendship for Rachel’s benefit.
“Why didn’t you call to let me know?” I asked.
“I was going to, as soon as I finished my second doughnut.”
I laughed in spite of the gravity of the moment. I pictured Bruce lying on his cot, flight suit on the floor at the ready, in one of the tiny bedrooms in the company trailer. He’d be heedless of how his steel-toed boots were sullying the quilted bedspread I’d given him, purchased at a crafts fair Ariana had dragged me to. “Doughnuts,” I echoed. “You try so hard to be a cliché.”
“But a well-informed one.”
I heard the sounds of explosions in the background and hoped it was coming from the television set in the den and not from outside his window. If Bruce had his way, he’d keep the facility’s media cabinet stocked with old movies and cult films, but, alas, most of his colleagues preferred contemporary action flicks.
“How much do you know about all this, Bruce? Rachel called me, but she wasn’t very forthcoming beyond that she thinks she’s a murder suspect, if you can believe that.”