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  “You’ll have to evict Art and Abe from the nursery, then,” I said. “Maybe they can have their meeting in our bedroom—it’s about the only empty room I can think of.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Michael said. “I’ll let you know what I think of the plan after I’ve reviewed it.”

  He led the caravan upstairs. When they were out of sight, I closed my eyes and realized I had to go to the bathroom again. And as long as I was getting up, maybe I should see if Rob had recruited my tame hacker. Yes, that was the ticket. I’d visit the refugee computer science students in the basement. Art’s and Abe’s arrival had given me a new burst of energy, and I thought I could handle the stairs.

  I passed through the kitchen on my way to the basement. Normally the kitchen would be alive with students reading lines to each other, debating the merits of the latest movies to hit town, and arguing over such timeless philosophical questions as whether killing another human being was ever justified and who was funnier, the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges. And after Señor Mendoza’s arrival, the kitchen had temporarily become a nonstop party. But the arrival of the prunes had cast a pall over the proceedings. Instead of the impromptu flamenco band, a single student sat in one corner, fingering soft, melancholy blues chords on his guitar. A few students sat in twos or threes, talking in undertones. Even Rose Noire seemed preoccupied as she listlessly stirred something on the stove.

  Luckily she was too preoccupied to notice me or she’d have tried to keep me from climbing down to the basement. I slipped through the door, closed it behind me, and carefully began descending the stairs.

  Chapter 8

  I heard melodramatic music coming from somewhere down in the basement.

  “What is the name of this monster?” a tinny-sounding voice said.

  “Godzilla.”

  More melodramatic music, followed abruptly by the loud music and louder voices of a commercial so familiar and annoying that I wanted to throw something at the TV every time I heard it. Clearly, at least some of the interns shared Rob’s eccentric taste in cinema. The commercial continued as I slowly descended, and the volume was up so high that I doubted anyone would hear me coming. I was surprised I hadn’t heard it up in the kitchen. No doubt the programmers had turned the volume up to hear over the flamenco music and never turned it down again when the prunes’ arrival dampened the festivities.

  When I was close to the bottom of the stairs and could see the main part of the basement, I peered around. Five—no, six—young men sat at makeshift desks made of boards and cinder blocks, peering intently at the monitors of their computers. Rob’s interns.

  None of them looked up.

  I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed with their dedication or feel sorry for them for having to work with all the excitement that had been going on upstairs. I wondered if I should have a word with Rob about driving his staff too hard.

  Around and behind the desks I could see sleeping bags, air mattresses, and the same piles of clothes, books, and electronics the drama students had created in the rooms they occupied upstairs. The computer interns were no tidier, but certainly no worse.

  I tried to pick Danny Oh out from the crowd, but I couldn’t see any of their faces well enough. I was about to call out his name when one of the young men, who had been slouched back in his chair while studying something on his monitor, suddenly sat upright and slammed his fist down on the makeshift desk.

  “Damn!” he exclaimed.

  “What’s wrong?” another asked, almost shouting to be heard over the sound of planes and bombs on the TV.

  “Ajax just plundered my new city,” the first one said.

  “Lose much?” asked a third.

  “Three million stone,” the plundered one said.

  “Stupid to keep that much around,” one of the others said. “You knew he was going to hit you before long.”

  “Josh’s right,” another said.

  “I was saving up to upgrade my wall,” the first intern said. “Damn, but I hate Ajax.”

  “What in the world are you guys doing?” I asked.

  Six startled faces turned up to look at me. Someone hit the TV mute and the basement became almost unnaturally quiet. I could hear the whirring of fans in the computers and languid chords from the guitar upstairs.

  “Are we bothering you, Mrs. Waterston?” the one called Josh finally asked.

  “How could you possibly be bothering me, lurking down here in the basement like . . . like . . .”

  I groped to find a suitable metaphor. Rats, mice, bats—I couldn’t think of anything likely to lurk in a basement that I’d want to call them. I decided to leave it dangling.

  “I just wondered what this is all about,” I said. “All this about Ajax plundering and building stone walls.”

  They all brightened.

  “We’re play-testing Rob’s new online game,” Josh said.

  I peered at the monitor of the nearest computer, the one belonging to Josh. In the center of the screen was a picture of green countryside dotted with castles and around the perimeter were so many words, graphics, and numbers that the whole was about as intelligible as the control panel of a jet aircraft. Around the room, every screen showed a similar graphic. Okay, if Rob was having them play-test games, I didn’t have to worry so much about him overworking them. They’d overwork themselves and consider themselves lucky. Rob’s games tended to be addictive.

  “Is one of you Danny Oh?” I asked.

  One of the six raised his hand, as timidly as if I’d asked who hadn’t done his homework last night.

  “Did you get Rob’s call?” I asked.

  Danny nodded.

  “Can you help?”

  He nodded again. I was beginning to wonder if he had a voice. I stepped onto the basement floor and glanced down at the clutter littering it. Three of the students leaped up from their seats and cleared a path before me by picking up armfuls of paper and equipment and throwing them out of the way. One of them pulled over a chair.

  “Thank you,” I said. I didn’t follow it with “Get lost!” but they all acted as if I had and scurried back to their desks.

  Maybe Rob was right. Maybe impending motherhood had made me begin to take on Mother’s commanding manner.

  Scary thought.

  “What did Rob tell you?” I asked Danny when the others were, if not out of earshot, at least not hanging over our shoulders.

  “Find anything in the college system to prove Ramon filed all his paperwork and got approval for his dissertation,” he said.

  “Correct,” I said. “And also, we’re looking for any dirt—um, information—on Dr. Wright from the English department and Dr. Blanco from admin. services.”

  Danny nodded and scribbled something on a Post-it note.

  “First names?” he asked.

  “I’m not on first-name terms with them and probably never will be,” I said. “I can try to find out if you like.”

  Danny scribbled. I heard keyboards rattling elsewhere in the room.

  “Jean Wright,” said one of the other interns.

  “Enrique Blanco,” Josh said.

  I had a feeling I’d just enlisted six hackers instead of one.

  “How . . . official do you want this?” Danny asked. Keyboard rattling abruptly stopped, as if everyone else had paused to listen for the answer.

  “Something we could take to court or to the police would be most useful,” I said. “But knowing that something would turn up if we got a subpoena would also be useful.”

  “Gotcha,” Danny said. “Want me to call you when I’ve got something?”

  “Please,” I said. I scribbled my cell phone number on another sticky note and affixed it to the wall behind his monitor.

  As I turned to head back up the stairs, I looked around. I no longer saw any castle-strewn fields.

  I felt strangely better. I had no idea if their searches would turn up any proof that Ramon had turned in his papers and gotten permission fo
r his dissertation on Mendoza’s plays. Or, for that matter, any dirt on the prunes. But at least we were doing something.

  In the kitchen, small numbers of students were still talking together quietly. Actually, plotting might be the better choice of words. I overheard the words “petition” and “protest” several times. Yes, the home team was definitely at work. I nodded and waved to the ones who greeted me on my way to the bathroom.

  As I was leaving the lavatory I felt another brief, slight contraction and paused for long minutes, waiting to see if it repeated. Nothing. Braxton-Hicks again.

  Still, better to get off my feet. I’d been standing and walking more than usual today and my back hurt. I returned to my chair in the hall, opened my notebook, and began trying to think of something else we could do. Preferably something that I could do while sitting down.

  I couldn’t think of anything more, at least not until my hacker team reported in. And until Michael and his colleagues finished their meeting. And . . .

  I must have drifted off to sleep almost as soon as my body hit the chair.

  Chapter 9

  “Mrs. Waterston? Are you all right?”

  I started, and almost fell off my chair. A thin, pale young woman student was leaning over me with a concerned face.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I just dozed off. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” the young woman said. “At least—well, nothing, except that I can’t seem to get Dr. Wright to answer the door.”

  I glanced at the front door for a moment, puzzled. Then my brain shifted into gear again.

  “The library door?”

  The student nodded.

  “I knocked and knocked, but she didn’t answer.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to be bothered,” I suggested.

  “Yes, but Dr. Sass told me to go and ask her if she was ready for their meeting.”

  “And you told her that?”

  “I yelled it through the door.”

  “Did you stick your head in to see what she was doing?”

  “I didn’t want to annoy her,” the student said. “If she was busy, I mean.”

  “I’ll go get her,” I said. I waddled off toward the library.

  “She won’t like being disturbed,” the student called after me.

  “Then I’ll get all the more fun out of disturbing her,” I called back.

  The student giggled.

  Not a joking matter, I reminded myself. Dr. Wright had power over our future and she already didn’t like us.

  Polite. Businesslike. That’s the ticket.

  And I had plenty of time to calm down. The library was in a separate wing, at the end of a long corridor, about as far as it could be from the kitchen and still be in the same zip code. I was winded but positively mellow by the time I knocked on the door.

  “Dr. Wright?”

  No answer. After a few moments I took a deep breath and called to her again, projecting from the diaphragm, as Michael was always telling his students to do.

  “Dr. Wright? Dr. Sass and Dr. Rudmann are here.”

  No answer.

  “They’re all in Dr. Waterston’s office.”

  Even applying the D-word to three drama professors didn’t seem to get a rise out of her.

  “The meeting can begin as soon as you’re ready.”

  Had she gone away? Snuck out through the sunroom and gone back to town, perhaps?

  I opened the door, peered in, and winced at how untidy it was.

  “Dr. Wright?”

  No answer. But I felt my nose tickle from the faint odor of her annoying perfume.

  I stepped inside and spotted her sitting at one of the work tables at the far end, near the doors to the sunroom, with her head down on the tabletop.

  “Dr. Wright? Are you okay?”

  She didn’t move. As I picked my way across the room toward her, I fished a tissue out of my pocket and held it to my nose to keep her perfume from setting off sneezes. Thus armed, I leaned over and put my hand on her shoulder, intending to shake her gently awake if she didn’t respond to my touch. But when I touched her, she slumped sideways out of the chair and fell to the floor. Her eyes were wide and staring, and there was a bloody gash on the left side of her head.

  “Oh, no.” I backed away. I wanted to sit down or maybe run away. It was probably just the sudden jump in my heart rate, but both P and non-P began wriggling frantically.

  “Quiet down, kids,” I said, patting my stomach. “Mommy’s busy right now.” In what was probably a bad omen for the future, they paid no attention and went on thrashing as I pulled my cell phone out and punched the key that would speed dial Dad’s cell phone.

  “Dad, where are you?” I said. “I need your help.”

  “Ah!” Dad exclaimed. “Are we having a blessed event?”

  “No, we seem to be having a murder,” I said. “Someone coshed one of the nasty visiting professors over the head.”

  “With what?” Dad asked.

  “How should I know?” I asked. “Does it really matter? Just come quick. She looks pretty dead to me, but what do I know? Maybe she’s still alive.”

  Even as I said it, I didn’t believe it. And I realized that maybe calling Dad wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Maybe I should have called 911.

  “I’m already on my way,” Dad said. “Just pulling out of Clarence’s parking lot.”

  Good. Clarence Rutledge’s veterinary office was only five miles away.

  “It’s a pity you didn’t call a few minutes ago,” he said. “I’ve been sitting next to the chief in Clarence’s waiting room. You could call their office and have them put him on.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “That means the chief can get here soon, too. But he’d probably rather not advertise the murder to everyone in the waiting room. I’m going to hang up now and call 911.”

  “About that weapon . . .” Dad said.

  “I have to call the police,” I said.

  “Just don’t let anyone in until we figure out what it is.”

  Good point. I glanced around. I didn’t see a lot of potential blunt instruments in the room. Then I took another step and my ankle connected with something.

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” Dad asked.

  “I think I tripped over the murder weapon,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ll show you when you get here,” I said.

  I hung up and looked down at where the statue of Tawaret lay near my feet. The strands of Dr. Wright’s brown hair stuck in the statue’s overlarge hippo teeth did not improve her appearance.

  “Chief Burke isn’t going to like you,” I told her.

  I sighed and called 911.

  Chapter 10

  “Meg? Is something wrong? Do you need an ambulance?” Debbie Anne, the dispatcher, was normally unflappable, but she sounded distinctly rattled now.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “At least not with me.”

  “I can have the ambulance out there in—”

  “No ambulance,” I said. “I’m not in labor. I just called to report a murder.”

  “Are you serious?” Debbie Anne asked.

  “I’m standing here by a dead body!” I snapped. “Just tell Chief Burke!”

  “Hang on for a second,” she said. The line went silent, and I mentally kicked myself for shouting at Debbie Anne. I’d have to remember to apologize to her later. Then I heard the chief’s voice.

  “Yes, Ms. Langslow?”

  “I’m standing here by a dead body,” I said, this time more calmly. “I think she’s been murdered.”

  “Where’s here and who’s she?”

  “Our library, and she’s Dr. Wright of the college English department. I’m sorry, I can’t remember her first name right now.”

  “Never mind that,” he said. “What happened?”

  I gave him the CliffsNotes version of Dr. Wright’s arrival and her ill-fated stay in our house. As I spoke,
I found myself staring at her hands to avoid those unnerving open eyes.

  “Are you sure she’s dead?” the chief asked.

  “Pretty sure,” I said. “But Dad’s on his way. I called him first, in case she was actually alive. I’ll let him check her vitals. I’m going to sit down someplace that isn’t part of your crime scene.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Jean!” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Her first name’s Jean,” I said. “Dr. Wright. The victim. I knew I should be able to remember that.”

  “Very good,” the chief said. He sounded as if he thought I needed humoring. Maybe I did. “Don’t move anything until I get there,” he added.

  With that he hung up.

  “Did you get the chief?” Dad popped into the library, medical bag in hand. He must have set a new speed record on the small country road between our house and the vet.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Grandfather said, appearing in his wake.

  “I called the chief and he says don’t move anything,” I said. “He’d probably like to keep as many people as possible out of his crime scene,” I added to my grandfather, who had followed Dad in and was peering over his shoulder.

  “Right, right.” He didn’t look as if he planned on going anywhere.

  “Could you maybe find me a chair?” I asked.

  “Plenty of chairs here,” my grandfather said.

  “Yes but they’re part of the crime scene, and I want to sit outside the crime scene, in a chair that was never in the crime scene. Could you get one from the kitchen?”

  He frowned, turned, and stumped off.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked Dad.

  “Call your cousin Horace,” Dad said. “The chief might need him. He’s in town this week.”

  I nodded. Horace was a crime-scene investigator in the sheriff’s department back in Yorktown, where I grew up. Since he was spending more and more of his free time here in Caerphilly, the chief had taken to borrowing him whenever he had a case that needed forensic assistance. As I picked my way through all the students’ clutter to the door, I felt sorry for Horace. He’d probably have to process most of the stuff in the room. And for the chief, who would have to deal with the owners of the stuff.