Outside in the bushes Richard had hidden a black plastic garbage bag. Inside the black plastic was a brown paper grocery bag. Inside the grocery bag was a dead squirrel.
He had found the squirrel this afternoon in the middle of the road surrounding the campus. Immediately he had known that the squirrel would end up as a major inconvenience to Daniel Farnham. He had kicked it off to the side of the road, where he had come back after dark with a couple of bags and some sticks and had scooped it up. He’d been planning to leave the squirrel in a burning grocery bag on Farnham’s front porch and ring the doorbell. Farnham would come to the door, see the fire, and stomp it out. He’d get squirrel all over himself.
The problem was that Farnham was supervising the mixer. So he wouldn’t be home. It was beginning to seem like a silly, risky plan anyway, with all these people all over the campus. Maybe he would just leave the squirrel in Farnham’s car. Or hide it somewhere in the scene shop. By Monday it would stink like hell. What he’d really like to do is leave it in Landon Hopkins’s bed, under the pillow. Too bad he didn’t have two dead squirrels to play with.
Heilman was clearing his throat again. Richard looked up.
“There’s a movie on television tonight that my wife and I really want to see,” said Heilman. “You know what I’m going to do with you rascals? I’m going to let you out of here half an hour early. Now scoot.”
Scoot. Madre de Dios, but Heilman was such a nerd. Still, Richard scooted himself right out that door and down to the mixer at Bradley.
It was cold and damp outside, but Bradley Hall was steamng. Richard left his coat on anyway. The place was packed. He paused in the foyer and then turned left, toward the art room, and tried to spot Farnham.
Thomas was in the hallway with his girlfriend, Hesta. She was pretty nice, Richard supposed, but he couldn’t see anything special about her. For Boatwright, she was like Venus. Richard thought girls were interesting in a clinical sort of way, but he didn’t have time to pursue a regular girlfriend. He saw himself as too busy to fool with them. He also found them a little scary.
“What are you doing here?” Thomas asked him.
“Heilman decided to act human.”
“Susie Boardman’s here without a date,” Hesta said.
“Yeah,” Richard had said. “Well, I’m waiting for some people.”
Boatwright and his bimbo went inside the art studio to dance.
Down the hall was the scene shop. Richard could see that the light was on. He unzipped his coat and moved down to scope the place out. There were people constantly in motion in the hallway, so it was easy for Richard to approach the door and take a casual peek inside as he strolled by. Someone was inside, all right. But it wasn’t Farnham; it was Greg Lipscomb.
Richard walked into the scene shop. “You seen Farnham?” he said. The band on the stage was on break, so they could talk without screaming.
Lipscomb was pacing around the bed frame in the middle of the room like some guy in the movies whose wife was about to have a baby. “He just left,” he said. He was acting as though Richard were some mosquito.
“What’s your problem?” said Richard.
“Nothing. You seen Tom?”
“Just a second ago. He’s with Hesta.” Richard didn’t have anything against black guys, but he couldn’t stand it when somebody had a secret and obviously kept it from him. “Look, I’m not here to bug you. I just want to find Farnham.”
“I wouldn’t try talking to him now if I were you.”
“I don’t want to talk to him. I just want to know where he is.”
“Farnham went flying out of here,” Lipscomb said, “after doing that.” He pointed to a brown stain on the cinder-block wall and the glistening damp brush on the floor that had made it.
“What’s he mad about now?”
“Who knows? Something to do with Mrs. Warden, I guess.”
“She was in here with him?” Richard could imagine what was going on. Apparently Mrs. Warden was some nymphomaniac, if you could believe what Robert Staines said about finding her on the floor with her husband, but he couldn’t conceive of a wimp like Farnham ever actually doing it with her.
“She was here, she left, he went crazy, he left. I was here to ask him a favor, but not when he’s throwing paintbrushes.”
Throwing paintbrushes. Crud. He could be anywhere. Richard should leave Boatwright’s roommate to paint the bed or whatever he wanted to do. Lipscomb sure was jumpy.
“Why are you so skittish?” Richard asked. He did not really expect an answer.
Instead of shrugging him off, Lipscomb surprised him. “I’m about to bust to tell somebody,” he said. “Can you keep a secret?”
Richard said he was practically a priest.
“I think I’ve found that secret tunnel Delaney’s been talking about.”
“Bull.”
Greg told him about the drawing in the library and his theory that the tunnel led from Stringfellow Hall to the basement of the gym. “Do you think it makes sense, with the chimneys and all?” he said.
“It makes a hell of a lot of sense,” said Richard. Ideas exploded like popcorn. Oh, yes, yes, yes, it was perfect. To think that he had been getting tired of the whole project, that he had been on the verge of leaving the squirrel on McPhee’s doorstep, McPhee who was also a jerk, but the squirrel seemed so right for Farnham, who was so tidy and picky and perfect.
Richard shrieked with his most contrived mad-scientist-sounding laughter. Several people from the hallway looked inside the scene shop, then moved on.
The band started to play again, so Richard had to shout. “Show
