Page 40 of The Botanist's Assistant
If she were a cursing woman, she might do that now.
There aren’t a lot of people who phone Margaret. Sometimes her cell won’t ring for a full week. But what if a spammer suddenly calls to inform her that the IRS is after her and she needs to give them her bank account and Social Security numbers? What if Calvin finally snaps at the sight and sound of all those yipping dogs and phones to say he needs a leave of absence? (With pay, of course.) Could Keith decide this was the perfect time to dial her number and tell her more about her horselike face and demand an apology for hurting his feelings?
She presses her lips together as if she could quiet her phonesimply by miming silence. Should she reach into her pocket and try to mute it?
A file drawer clunks shut. Papers rustle. A chair squeaks. Is someone sitting at Dr. Deaver’s desk?
She wonders if it could be the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. In mystery books, writers sometimes havetheir detective attend funerals and survey the crowd that gathers at crime scenes.
Joe catches her eye. He must be reading her mind because he gives a little shake of his head that either means “Don’t try to look” or “Why is the intruder taking so long and what is he or she doing?”
Finally, the pad of footsteps and the door opens and snaps shut.
Joe is up from behind the couch so quickly and quietly, it’s as if he levitated himself.
Margaret, however, uncurls with a groan. She is too old and too big to be doing all this crouching and hunching. Save that for the young and the small.
Joe puts out a hand and helps her to her feet.
“Did you see who it was?”
“No, but whoever they are, I don’t think they could have gone too far. I’m going to go after them. Grab the notebooks you want and meet me in the janitor’s closet.”
He’s out the door in a flash and Margaret limps over to the file cabinet, her knees complaining about how long she left them pressed against a hard floor.
She slides open the file cabinet drawer.
It takes her a few seconds to register what she sees.
Dr. Deaver’s most recent notebook is gone.
23
When the Deluge Comes
The rain begins, as stormsnear the coast often do, with a shift in wind direction and the sudden rolling in of clouds. By the time Margaret is driving home, the rain has turned steady and cold. It matches her mood.
She powers the truck up her wet driveway—she has maneuvered through much worse—and arrives at her cottage, the headlights sweeping across her front porch and revealing the presence of a small creature staring intently at her front door.
“Well, I’ll be,” she says.
It’s the cat.
Margaret lets herself into the house through the laundry room to avoid tracking mud into the cottage and puts on her house slippers. She opens the front door.
“I guess the coyotes didn’t get you after all,” she says to the small hunter, who does not even look up at her but stares intently past her and into the cottage as if willing himself inside. His fur is wet. Smears of mud have been added to theburrs on his legs and belly. He looks unkempt but somehow noble too.
“Are you hungry?” she asks, then answers herself. “Of course you are. Why else would you be here?”
It’s been a long day of surprises and turns of events. The return of the cat is only the latest of them.
Joe had arrived at the janitor’s closet flushed and slightly out of breath. He hadn’t located the intruder despite hurrying through every inch of the building’s first-floor hallways and outside where a person could easily escape into the maze of walking paths and buildings.
Whoever had breached the office was quick and agile, he’d surmised, which, to Margaret’s mind, would rule out the dean, and also Calvin. The former intern, Emily, also didn’t seem like a possibility. She was slender and softly fleshed, given to sighs and languid movements. Emily had, in fact, come back on Friday asking if she could have something of Dr. Deaver’s. Apparently, she wanted to set up some kind of memorial altar, which her poetry professor had suggested as a way to cope with lingering shock and grief. Calvin had instantly handed over Dr. Deaver’s coffee mug, which Margaret didn’t approve of, but she didn’t feel like she could yank it out of the girl’s hand.
Both Blackstone and Veronica Ann Deaver were athletic, however. In December, Dr. Deaver had complained that since his wife began training for a half-marathon, she’d grown so thin and angular it was like trying to hug a fence post, and Margaret had spotted Blackstone in the hallway wearing tight shorts and a biking jersey and walking like a duck in those weird, clicking shoes. She didn’t know how fit Officer Bianchiwas, but why would he run after letting himself into the office?
No, the intruder must have been either Blackstone or Veronica Ann. Both could have gotten their hands on a key to the office and to the locked lab cabinet. Both would have known about the research notebooks. But why either would have stolen the latest of them was unclear.
