Chapter 12
By the time Chris had given her final exam in Nineteenth Century European Art the next day, she felt as wrung out as her students looked as they slouched out of the classroom after dropping their test booklets on the desk. A couple of them stopped long enough to wish her a happy holiday. One took the time to tell her how much she enjoyed the class. Most simply fled. She envied them their sudden release. The winter holiday would hold no such exhilaration for the director of the Division of Fine Arts. The best Chris could hope for was some quiet time with her son and her mother and fewer interruptions at the office while she tried to catch up with the normal business that had been pushed aside for the last few weeks.
When the last straggler gave up, she bundled the booklets into her briefcase, checked the room for forgotten gloves and textbooks, flicked off the lights and closed the door. When she turned she almost collided with Colin McCarty.
"I didn't mean to startle you, Chris. I just wanted to have a word with you before you disappear for the holiday."
"I'm not going anywhere, Colin." She hefted her bulging briefcase. "I'll be here over the break."
"Let me take those," McCarty said and relieved her of the lighter half of her burden. "I need to talk to you about something if now is a good time."
"Sure. Do you want to come to my office or is the hall good enough?"
"Let's go to your office." They walked the Art Department hallway and traversed the central lobby to the office complex. It was unnaturally quiet. Chris tried to make conversation as they went, but with not so much as a grunt in return she gave up.
They entered the office together just as the department ceramics professor, Michael Windwalker, was leaving the conference room. He looked very pleased to be out of there.
"Did you just finish with the police?" Chris asked.
McCarty's head whipped around before Windwalker could respond. "The police?"
"They're still using the conference room to interview faculty about Richard's death," Chris explained.
Windwalker smiled as if relieved. "I guess they're done with me because I was down on the Rez when Richard was killed. Of course they'll be checking up, but lots of people saw me." He headed out the door in the direction of the ceramics studio, his single black braid swinging across his broad back.
When Chris and McCarty were seated at last in her office with the door shut, she folded her hands on the desk and waited without comment, regarding him quietly. McCarty was one of those faculty members whom she had come to know more by association than through personal contact. She had decided long ago on no clear evidence at all that he was gay. He fit several parts of the stereotype. He was single, never married, always tastefully and expensively dressed, and owner of one of the most beautifully restored Victorian homes in Camford.
He smiled thinly. "I'm sorry to bother you right now. You must have so much on your mind."
"No problem, Colin." Chris wondered at his reticence, extreme even for him. "Please tell me what I can do for you."
"Well, I just needed to see what you want me to do about the proposal to remove the Museum of Art from the Division of Fine Arts."
Chris gaped. "Remove the museum—I thought the police were satisfied it wasn't a big deal."
It was McCarty's turn to gape, his eyes widening. "What do the police have to do with it?"
"Wait—what are you talking about?"
"Elizabeth's proposal to remove the museum and make it a free-standing entity. You're listed as receiving copies of all the memos I have."
Chris shook her head slowly. "I really don't know what you're talking about. I've never received a memo about it."
"She was playing me," McCarty said quietly. "What do the police have to do with it?"
"They figured out that Elizabeth didn't like the current administrative arrangement and were looking into whether that could be a motive for her murder but, as I say, they seem satisfied that it wasn't too likely."
McCarty considered that for a moment. "You really didn't know she was forcing the issue?"
"I know she never liked the arrangement, but I hadn't heard she was trying to do anything about it for three years at least. I thought it was a dead issue."
"Oh, it was very much alive. She was calling me at all hours since mid-term, trying to get it moved to the top of the agenda for the Executive Committee to deal with."
Chris's brain whirled as she tried to digest this new information. "How would you be able to accomplish that for her, Colin?" But the answer came to her before she finished speaking. "You're on the Ex-Com! She wanted you to bring it up to the Senate!"
"Yes. She thought I could influence the Ex-Com to bring it to the floor with a 'do-pass' recommendation. You know how rarely the Ex-Com does such things and how infrequently the Senate goes against a do-pass. She thought it was a lock." He laughed mirthlessly.
"She thought you would be able to sway the Ex-Com all by yourself?" Chris shook her head. "She obviously didn't understand much about the workings of the Faculty Senate."
"Apparently not. Anyway, I suppose the proposal died with her, but I just wanted to check before I chuck all the paperwork into the trash. I was supposed to bring it to the Ex-Com at tomorrow's meeting, but with all the excitement... I just forgot." McCarty sounded tired and preoccupied. "It's the last meeting of the semester and Page insisted that it be dealt with so it could come to the full Senate in January."
"Would you mind giving me what you have on the issue rather than chucking it?" Chris asked. "I've really heard nothing about it and I'm curious."
"Well, I'm glad I talked to you. I was sure you were aware of what she was up to before she died."
"It's all right, Colin. I would have found out before it could go too far."
"It's so terrible what happened to her, isn't it?" He shook his head. "And now Bjornson. I mean I never really knew either of them well. She could be difficult, I know that for sure, and I've heard a lot of people talking about how mean spirited he was at times. And I know for a fact he was an alcoholic, but it's a terrible waste, I think."
Chris nodded her agreement.
He continued. "I guess Bjornson's practical jokes caught up with him. Have the police got any leads?"
Chris just shrugged.
"Was it murder for sure? I've heard a few rumors."
"The police seem to think so."
"Why do they think that?" All pretense of casual interest was replaced with frankness.
"Apparently there was an object in his skull, just like Elizabeth," Chris replied.
"A bullet, you mean?"
"The police aren't saying anything about it, but in Elizabeth's case it was a ball bearing."
"How odd! Were they killed the same way, do you think?"
"I suppose so, " Chris replied.
"Will there be a memorial service?" McCarty said, blinking somewhat blearily as his habitual reserve settled around him once again.
"I understand the President's Office is arranging something for later this week."
McCarty nodded and pushed himself to his feet. "I'll bring those memos by before I leave today." He left without another word.
When the phone rang later Chris was so absorbed in trying to decipher a student's very bad handwriting that she jumped. Detective Sergeant Hjelmer Ryquist was on the line.
"Got something you might be interested in, Doc. You gonna be in your office for a while?"
"Yes, I'm grading finals, so I'm not going anywhere."
"I'll be by in an hour." He rang off without further comment.
Chris shook her head. What now? No point worrying about it until he got there, and she still had lots of exam booklets untouched in a pile in the middle of her desk. She got back to work.
When Hjelmer Ryquist poked his head in her doorway an hour and a half later she jumped again.
"Didn't mean to scare you, Doc." He shed his overcoat and settled into her visitor's chair.
Chris waved a hand
at the heap of test booklets. "It's just that I'm really focused on trying to get through these tests. It'll be my last official act for the semester and I want to get out of here this year more than usual."
"Can't blame you for that." Ryquist adjusted his belt. "Found something over at Bjornson's place that might interest you, Doc. If you can take a minute." He handed a small pile of papers over the desk, each in a sealed plastic pouch. "Don't try to take'em out. They're evidence."
Chris leafed through them. Memos from herself to the faculty, an exhibition agreement with the museum. Nearing the bottom of the pile, she gasped. It was the condition report on the Picasso.
"How'd this get to Bjornson's place?" she asked skimming the top page, the only one visible of what looked like three pages stapled together. There was no mention of a restoration, but the first page only went up to 1960. The piece had been cleaned in 1958, long before Randall bought it. She really wanted to see the second and third pages. Ryquist didn't answer immediately and she looked up. He sat passively looking out the window. "Hjelmer?"
He turned his steady gray eyes to her. "You got any ideas about how that came to be at his place?"
"None at all. Did he pick it up by mistake? Maybe bring it along with the exhibition contract?" she offered, then shook her head.
"See? You got ideas. Picking it up by mistake. Now, if he wasn't dead, I'd be questioning him again about his relationship with the deceased, but since he is also deceased, I'm asking you, and you give me a possible solution. He picked it up by mistake." He returned his gaze to the scene outside the window.
"You don't like that solution, do you?" Chris said.
"Not at all. In my experience, things that stick out do so for a reason. Accident is low on the list of reasons."
"Can I ask what's your take on it?"
"Nope. I got to think about it for a while."
"Will we be able to see the rest of this any time soon?" She waved the condition report. "I know Randall said he hadn't had any restoration done, but I'm really curious about the history of the painting."
"I'll let you know when, Doc. See you this weekend, if not sooner." With that cryptic remark he picked up the stack of plastic evidence bags and left.
This weekend? What does that mean? Chris couldn't afford to give it too much thought at the moment and forced herself to return to the tests still littering her desk.
Later that night, as Chris sat bundled in her bathrobe with the rest of the house quiet and asleep, she paused in her reading to rest her head on the back of her armchair and think. Test booklets were scattered about her. The files of clippings Rachael Jacobsen had given her and a fairly thick folder containing all the paperwork Colin McCarty had turned over were untouched in her briefcase. The exams came before anything else, much as she'd rather have studied the details of Page's maneuvering.
She shrugged off the thought. Page was dead and the proposal did indeed die with her. No point in wasting time with it, she told herself for the tenth time since receiving it. Something else was bothering her, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Her meeting with Hjelmer Ryquist had left questions chasing randomly around in her brain: a whole lot of motion but very little forward progress. She really wanted time to sip tea and think. That luxury would have to wait until the tests were marked and the final grades calculated. Maybe whatever was bugging her would present itself politely at that time.