He glanced through them. “How do you figure?”
“Because none of them are signed by anyone with a first and last name,” I pointed out. “Check it out. All of them are correspondence between these two people: Pluto and someone called the Morrigan. They mention other people, but never by their real names. Argos, Bacchus, Gatsby, Salander, Hoenikker. They’re mostly literary references from what I can tell.”
Wes held one of the letters up and squinted at it. “Did you see this watermark?”
“There’s a watermark?” I grabbed a few of the letters and raised them up to the overhead lamp. Wes was right. Each page sported a transparent emblem, that of some kind of raptor in flight. “Who prints watermarked stationery to send coded letters to one another?”
“Wealthy people,” said Wes matter-of-factly. He set down the rest of the letters and picked up the wooden puzzle box. “What’s this?”
“Yet another mystery,” I said. “I can’t open it.”
He fiddled with the puzzle on the front of the box for a few seconds before returning it to the kitchen table. “Good luck with that. Are you hungry? What should we make for dinner?”
“Do you mind if we order takeout?” I asked. Franklin rested his chin on my knee, and I tickled his ears. “Honestly, I’m pretty deep in this, and I just want to keep working.”
“Chinese it is.”
Over the course of the next week, I spent every minute of my spare time immersed in O’Connor’s findings. The professor himself remained AWOL. According to Wes, the station had officially opened a missing persons investigation. O’Connor’s home was searched for clues as to where he might’ve gone, and they put out an APB for his old sedan. Wes’s boss, Officer Wilson, asked if I could let him and a couple other officers into O’Connor’s office. I obliged, standing quietly nearby as they combed the small room. When they asked about the safe under O’Connor’s desk, I claimed that O’Connor never told me what was in it. Technically, that was true. I’d discovered the contents all on my own.
I continued to teach O’Connor’s undergraduate American History class. It was only twice a week, but I now spent more time creating lesson plans and lectures than focusing on my own studies. Thankfully, the university had found another professor to fill in for the rest of O’Connor’s courses. I logged so many hours in the library that I practically lived there. Wes had taken to complaining about how he rarely saw me at home anymore, and when he did, I was lying on a bed of pillows on the floor of the bedroom, taking notes and reading through the rest of O’Connor’s research. Despite my dedication to the task at hand, I still couldn’t fathom why O’Connor had taken it upon himself to conduct such thorough investigations of his fellow faculty members and certain Waverly students. More than once, I thought about setting everything on fire out of pure frustration, but curiosity got the best of me. Besides, a nagging voice in the back of my mind told me that O’Connor wasn’t paranoid or crazy. He’d collected this information for a reason, and I was determined to figure out what that reason was.
After class one day, I managed to corner one of the professors whose last name had appeared a few times in O’Connor’s files. Stella St. Claire had only been teaching at Waverly as an assistant professor for three years before she achieved tenure, which was more or less unheard of. Of course, her quick rise to a permanent position could have simply been the product of nepotism. The St. Claires went way back with Waverly University. Stella’s great-grandmother created the first sorority charter on campus, and every woman in the St. Claire family since, with the exception of one of Stella’s cousins, had been inducted as a legacy. In fact, the St. Claire name was so prestigious that most of the women born into the family refused to take their husband’s less reputable patronymics. In any case, Stella St. Claire happened to teach American Novel right next door to O’Connor’s history class, so I dismissed my students early and lingered outside in the hallway.
It wasn’t long before St. Claire exited her own classroom. I recognized her right away. Her faculty ID picture had been included in O’Connor’s files, and there was no mistaking her impossibly long, wavy blond hair. She walked briskly, but I stepped into her path, pretending to be immersed in one of my student’s essays, and jostled her shoulder just enough to send the cup of coffee in her hand flying. It hit the floor and exploded, splattering coffee from one side of the hallway to the other.
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry,” I sputtered, watching with disguised triumph as St. Claire attempted to shake droplets of coffee off the legs of her trousers. “I wasn’t paying attention at all. Are you okay?”
“I’m just fine,” she replied curtly. “Though if you don’t mind fetching something to wipe myself off with, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
I jogged to the nearby bathroom, wrenched several cardboard-colored paper towels from the holder, and went back out to the hallway. As I handed them over, I said, “Again, I’m really sorry. You’re Professor St. Claire, right? I’m Nicole Costello. I was thinking about taking one of your courses.”
“Well, I can assure you that an A in my class is not attained by dousing me in hot coffee, Miss Costello.”
“Right. Of course.”
She dabbed at her pants with the paper towels as she glanced up at me. “You’re George O’Connor’s TA, aren’t you?”
I nodded, pleased that the subject had come up all on its own. “I’m teaching his freshman American History course while he’s away.”
“Mm. That’s excellent experience for you, even if O’Connor did throw you under the bus in a way. I don’t suppose you’ve heard from him?”
I shook
