Duck the Halls(63)

“Even better,” I said. “Then it can feed our family a couple of times. As long as it’s fresh.”

“Very fresh,” Michael said. “I just barely avoided being introduced to it. And they’re still off … um … preparing it. Which means unless I want to come all the way back into town and back out again later, I’ll be stuck out here a while. Could you do something for me?”

“Sure.”

“My friend Charlie—the one who owns the basement apartment—is waiting for me in his office,” he said. “As soon as he hands over his spare keys, he’s free to split, so if there’s any chance you could swing by the college—”

“I’ll be going right by it soon,” I said. “Where’s his office?”

“Peake Hall, room two twelve,” Michael said. “Thanks.”

I started the car again, and as I drove the rest of the way back to town, I figured out the quickest route to Peake Hall. Wasn’t it an administration building rather than an academic one? Odd—Michael’s friends tended to come from the faculty rather than the administrators. Then again, since the current chair of the drama department was grooming Michael to be his successor, maybe I should be overjoyed if my husband was making friends in the bureaucracy.

Although as I climbed the stairs to the second floor, I wondered if I should call back and ask Charlie’s last name.





Chapter 28


One mystery was solved when I reached room 212, which was a rather imposing office with a sign on the door that read CHARLES GARDNER. REGISTRAR. Aha. Michael’s friend Charlie was a moderately important bureaucrat.

The secretary who would normally have been guarding his door against all comers had apparently already started her holidays. I knocked, peered inside, and instantly recognized the occupant as one of the actors in a production Michael had directed last spring.

“Polonius!” I cried.

The distinguished-looking fifty-something man with touches of gray at his temples and in his neatly trimmed goatee looked up with the unmistakable pleasure of the amateur actor whose role has been remembered.

“Only Charlie, now that the play’s run is over.” He stood and held out his hand, glancing briefly at my sling. “How are you, Ms. Langslow? Not a broken arm, I hope.”

“Meg,” I said, taking the outstretched hand. “And the sling’s only to help my semidislocated shoulder heal faster. Michael sent me to release you from your vigil.”

“Ah! Thank you,” he said. “They’re predicting more bad weather. My plan is to put a few hundred miles between me and the closest snowflake by nightfall.”

He fished into his pocket and handed over a key ring with an elegant bow that would have been fully in character for the courtier he’d played in Hamlet.

“Mi casa, su casa,” he said. “At least the subterranean part of it. And I told Michael to feel free to use the refrigerator upstairs or the dishes if you need to. Hope the private getaway is a success. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, I think— Wait. Yes,” I said. “Could I ask you a couple of questions? Quick ones,” I added. “I know you have a storm to miss.”

He looked surprised, but gestured to the chair in front of his desk and sat down again himself.

“Ask away,” he said.

“You’re the registrar,” I said. “Is your office where someone would check to make sure a job applicant really had a degree from Caerphilly?”

“Not anymore, thank goodness,” he said. “All the paperwork involved in sending transcripts used to be the bane of our existence, but these days we outsource it. There’s a central national clearinghouse for degree verification. We send them the data on all the degrees we award—and then every year when our hundreds of graduates send out thousands of resumes in their initial job searches, the clearinghouse answers all the queries from interested employers—for a modest fee.”

“So if I suspect someone has lied about his degree, I should start by finding out if his employer bothered to check with this clearinghouse.”

“Correct,” he said. “Most large employers do. Smaller ones…” He shook his head. “The most common mistake is to take everything a job applicant provides at face value. We had an applicant show up here once with a stellar résumé, complete with what looked like copies of completely authentic reports from the clearinghouse on both his undergraduate and graduate degrees. Fortunately, we ran a check anyway. And did not offer employment. Here”—he picked up a pen, jotted something on a notepad, then handed it to me—“if you really think someone is committing degree fraud, you could start by checking him out here.”