With that she hung up.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out what feats of decorating Mother was capable of when she was trying to impress not one but two church women’s groups. At least between my bruised shoulder, my job as location tsarina, and most important, Michael and the boys, I’d have plenty of very valid excuses to avoid getting involved if Mother tried to enlist my help.
I ducked back inside. In my haste to remove my offending phone from choir practice, I’d left my purse, my coat, and the tote containing my laptop in the pew where I’d been sitting. I slipped into the sanctuary and collected my gear. Lightfoot was so busy yelling at the baritones for sloppy enunciation that he didn’t notice my arrival.
As I was about to leave, I realized I hadn’t collected the hard copy of the latest schedule from my printer. I plodded down the dark little hallway to my temporary office. I unlocked my door, went in, and closed it after me, because I suddenly felt a little light-headed and didn’t want anyone to see me wilt into my desk chair.
Definitely time to go home and rest. Past time. And maybe a good time to take that next dose of the tranquilizer after all. I set down my tote and began to rummage through it one-handed for the water bottle I usually kept there.
Then I heard a noise from the office next door. From Riddick’s office. Which had been closed when I walked down the hall, with no line of light under the doorway.
I was opening my mouth to ask who was there when it occurred to me that maybe someone who was sitting in an office with the lights off might be doing something that wasn’t on the up-and-up.
I put down my tote and the water bottle and tried to stand up quietly. I was taking slow, careful steps toward the door—
And tripped over my purse. I twisted to avoid landing on my shoulder, and ended up knocking over the office chair, which landed with a noisy clatter on the linoleum floor. I scrambled up as quickly as I could, but I heard soft, rapid footsteps going down the hall.
By the time I opened the door, the hallway was empty.
And now Riddick’s office door was standing open.
I walked in.
At first I thought that Riddick had made a clumsy attempt to decorate his office for Christmas. Then I realized that the decorations piled on his desk, his shelves, and his floor were actually church castoffs—broken angels, half-melted candles, an ancient fly-specked Santa. All the worn-out items Mother and the ladies of St. Clotilda had winnowed out and marked for donation or disposal when they’d decorated the church. Was he keeping the junk out of some sense of thrift or feeling of nostalgia? Or was it merely, like so many other things at Trinity, a case of Riddick just not yet getting around to dealing with the detritus?
Maybe the mounds of paper covering every horizontal surface were similar signs of neglect rather than busyness. It would take someone more familiar with them—perhaps only Riddick himself—to tell if anyone had been messing with them. But I did notice that his computer was on. Would he have gone home and left it on? Many people did, of course. If I were Riddick and knew Barliman Vess might come snooping around at any time, alert to every nanowatt of waste, I wouldn’t, but maybe Riddick was used to Vess’s nagging.
I stepped inside to see what was on the screen. It appeared to be the alumni directory for a prestigious school of music. Someone had done a search on the name “Lightfoot.” I scrolled down to see the results. Only one Lightfoot, and he was Arnold, not Jerome. The picture didn’t look right, either—the choir director was a tall, skinny, light-skinned African-American. This Lightfoot was a short, bespectacled white guy with thinning blond hair. About the only similarity was their age—at a guess, they were both in their forties.
Of course, the fact that our Lightfoot hadn’t showed up didn’t necessarily mean anything. I wondered if the University of Virginia, my alma mater, had an online searchable directory—one accessible to anyone who went to the alumni Web site. If they did, they certainly wouldn’t have a recent picture of me. Maybe Lightfoot just hadn’t signed up for the directory. It seemed largely calculated to let students and alumni look for jobs and network with people who might be interested in musical collaborations and jamming. Lightfoot had a job, and I didn’t see him as the collaborating type.
Up until a few weeks ago I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea how to extract any more information from Riddick’s computer, but it had occurred to me that given how precocious Josh and Jamie were, all too soon they would start playing with our computers and getting into who knows what sort of trouble. One of the perks of Rob owning a computer game company was access to expert tech support whenever we needed it. Rob had been happy to send over someone from his help desk to set up parental controls on all our computers and to teach me a few basics on how to check up after the boys—knowledge I hoped I wouldn’t have to use for a few more years.