One Coffee With

'If the poison was for Oscar, that lets Saxer and me both out,' said Leyden thoughtfully.

Professor Simpson cleared his throat. 'Also me, I presume?'

'And you, Professor Ross?' asked Sigrid.

'If you think promotion's a strong enough motive for murder, then I'm still in. Either way an associate professor gets promoted to full, and I'm next in line for the associate.'

The medievalist leaned back in her chair and lit another of the cigarettes she'd been chain-smoking all morning. Her brittleness had become even more apparent as the net tightened.

'We're like the Mad Hatter's tea party, aren't we Lieutenant? 'Move down! Move down!' Only there's an extra chair left over at this party and I'm not the only one who benefits either way, am I?'

Piers Leyden had been puzzled by David Wade's presence, and now he beamed appreciatively. 'Why, Andrea, how very perceptive of you!' And he too, turned to stare at the young lecturer.

David returned their stares in bewilderment. 'I don't understand. What's it all got to do with me?'

'Nothing!' cried Sandy, crumpling her empty cup in agitated hands. 'He wasn't even here. He was in the library.'

'That's true,' Sigrid said. 'We even have a student aide and a librarian from the reserve stacks who'll swear to it. But you were here, Miss Keppler.'

' Sandy?' said Wade incredulously. 'You've got to be spaced out. She's the last person in the whole department! Didn't you know? We're getting married this summer. Probably move to Idaho.'

'Why?'

'Because my contract's expired and-oh.'

He looked like a man who'd been kicked in the groin, and his eyes sick as he spoke to Andrea Ross. 'That's what you meant about an extra chair left over.'

'I'm afraid so,' said Sigrid. 'Your contract expires in June. They couldn't extend it without offering you tenure, and until Wednesday there wasn't a tenured position open. Now there is. After Professors Simpson and Ross are promoted, there'll be an unfilled position left on the history side. Either way Wade would get tenure, wouldn't he, Professor Nauman?'

Nauman nodded stonily. 'A chairman teaches only one course. Riley dead or promoted to chairman-either way- someone would have to take up the slack of his other classes. I was going to speak to David this afternoon. Discuss tenure.'

'And who has David Wade's career interest most at heart?' asked Sigrid. 'Who very loudly read the warnings on the container of potassium dichromate last month? Who could unlock that chemical closet at her leisure or leave the coffee wherever she chose and maneuver things so as to implicate as many people as possible? Who could mark the coffee lids and position the cups on the tray, knowing which Quinn would pick up?'

'No!' cried Sandy. The white foam cup was now only a formless ball of plastic that slipped from her nerveless fingers as the girl shrank into her chair.

'Yes!' said Sigrid inexorably.

There was a stunned silence as Detective Tildon read the litany of her rights aloud, a silence broken only by Sandy Keppler's soft, terrified denials.

When they led her away, a scared and angry David Wade insisted on going with her.

The six people who remained in the large office stared at each other, incredulous and bewildered by the sudden finality of it all.

'She said academic positions were so scarce now,' murmured Professor Simpson. The white-haired classicist seemed distressed and uncertain. 'She chided the Harris boy for not taking the high rate of unemployment seriously, but even so…'

'I hope Washington doesn't hear of her solution,' said Vance, but the quip was automatic, mechanical response, a numb reaction to the grim reality of Sandy 's arrest.

'I don't believe it,' said Nauman, who'd been silent. 'Sometimes I do get back first. She wouldn't have left it to chance.'

'You said it yourself, Oscar,' Piers Leyden reminded him. 'Either way-you dead, or Riley-Wade would still have got tenure. That's the whole point. It wouldn't make any difference to her as far as making a place for Wade on the staff goes. And maybe the chanciness of it made her feel that it was out of her hands. Up to fate. Kismet.'

'Anyhow,' said Jake Saxer, fingering his pointed beard and breathing easily again, 'poisoning is traditionally a woman's method.'

'Thanks a lot!' snapped Andrea Ross. 'You're saying that if Sandy weren't guilty, I'd be the only logical alternative?' She stubbed her cigarette and stood up. 'I'm going to lunch.'

Professor Simpson, still upset, began murmuring about finding a lawyer for Sandy; but before anyone could leave, Rudy Turitto, who taught photography and who, to his great regret, had missed Wednesday's dramatics, burst into the office.

'Where's that Lieutenant Harald?' he demanded excitedly.

When they told him, he dived for the phone book, then quickly dialed a number, forestalling their questions.

'Hello? Police?' he said as the call went through. After identifying himself, he said, 'Lieutenant Harald's on her way there I've been told. As soon as she comes in, have her call me- Art Department, Vanderlyn College. It's very important.'

'What's happened, Rudy?' asked Nauman.

'It's Harley Harris! He's downstairs holed up in one of the graduate studios. Says he's remembered something about Riley's death. He was here, wasn't he? Right there by the coffee the whole time before Riley came in? But the little bastard won't say what it is. Says he won't tell it to anyone except Lieutenant Harald.'

'What could he know?' Vance asked scornfully. 'Anyhow, they've arrested Sandy for it. They figure she killed Riley to make space on the staff for David Wade.'

' Sandy? But that's terrible! Are they sure? Little Sandy?' Professor Turitto looked distressed as the others nodded. 'Oh, well,' he said, deflated, 'in that case, what the Harris kid saw will just pile on more evidence, I guess.'

He turned to go, 'I've got a class, Oscar. When the lieutenant calls back, would you give her the message?'

Nauman nodded, but his eyes were speculative as they rested briefly in turn on everyone still in the room.

Uneasily they began to drift away-some to their desks, others to the elevator. Lunch in the cafeteria wasn't gourmet, but it was quick, and no one felt like lingering over food today.

20

IN the studio downstairs Harley Harris paced back and forth in an uneasy ellipse. The studio was small and crammed with canvases, easels and odd-sized stretchers. It had been painted white only two years before, but already the walls were covered with anatomical drawings, mathematical formulas for problems in proportion and perspective, political slogans and a rather rude caricature of one of the red-tape lovers down in the Registrar's Office. There were crumpled wads of paper on the floor, and along the baseboard stood a line of coffee cans bristling with dried-up brushes and reeking of rancid turpentine. A trashy, unlovely room, but the light was good, and students with no place of their own to work elsewhere could use it on a shared-time basis.

An enormous purple and orange batik covered a whole corner from the floor to ceiling; smaller ones fluttered from the high molding; and one of Harris's prouder efforts-a huge snowscape peopled by tiny beetlelike figures and titled Hommage a Brueghel filled another corner.

'When the hell are they coming?' the boy fumed and flung himself down at a rickety worktable under the tall window. He picked up a ball-point pen and tried to concentrate on exact details of Wednesday morning.

A breeze from the open window stirred the batik hangings, and Harris looked at them nervously, chewing on his weak underlip.