His voice trailed off and he seemed lost in thought.
“‘Everything else that was happening’?” I prompted after a few seconds. “Like what?”
“She didn’t leave voluntarily,” he said.
“They fired her?”
“Not technically. She was an instructor, on a one-year contract. They just didn’t renew her contract.”
“Doesn’t that amount to the same thing?” I said. “She was out of a job.”
“Not just out of a job. They’d all but promised her a tenure-track position, and here she was, out on the street.”
I nodded. I knew what that meant. In theory, the fact that Caerphilly hadn’t kept her on shouldn’t have mattered, but in the real world, it had made her a lot less attractive to other colleges. Many departments would rather start over with a newly minted Ph.D. than take castoffs from some other school’s faculty. A fact I sometimes fretted over when I thought about Michael’s career. In a sane world, his teaching skills and publishing credits should have made him a shoo-in for the tenure-track position he’d pursued for the last six years. But Caerphilly College didn’t operate in a sane world, and if he didn’t get tenure here …
“She had a hard time finding another faculty job?” I asked, forcing my mind back to the problem at hand.
He nodded.
“Took her over a year, from what I heard, and all she found was some tiny little college out west. In Wyoming or Montana, or someplace. Which she would have hated; she thought Caerphilly was dull and way too far from the city.”
“Why did they fire—sorry, fail to renew her contract?” I asked.
“Officially, they were cutting department staff,” he said. “The real reason: She ticked too many people off.”
“It’s those all-important people skills that get you every time.”
“It’s not that she completely lacked people skills,” he said. “Lindsay could manipulate people with the best of them.”
“I’d call that a character flaw, not a people skill.”
“That’s one of the things I like most about you,” he said, glancing up with a quick smile that flooded me with relief. “Yeah, she enjoyed manipulating people. That was what did her in.”
“You think someone she was manipulating murdered her?”
Michael winced.
“Sorry, I meant did her career in,” he said. “Now that you mention it, odds are, if you knew who she’d been playing mind games on recently, you could find the killer. I should go find Chief Burke and tell him all about this, right?”
“Definitely,” I said. “As soon as you finish telling me. Do you think it’s possible that anyone she ticked off back then might still hold a grudge?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “Not only possible but probable.”
“For example?”
“Most of the history department, for starters,” he said. “I’m sure she ticked off people in other departments, too, but your own department’s always the one where you make the most friends and enemies.”
“She was a history instructor?” I asked. Something wasn’t tracking here.
“Specializing in Virginia history, too, which any reasonable person could have parlayed into a neat berth at a history-mad place like Caerphilly.”
“Was Marcus Wentworth chair of the department back then?”
“He’s been chair for twenty years.”
“Then would you find it surprising to learn that Mrs. Wentworth couldn’t identify Lindsay’s body?”
Michael blinked.
“Very surprising indeed,” he said. “Downright suspicious. I’d think she, of all people, would recognize Lindsay.”
“They knew each other well?”
“Not that well, but wouldn’t a woman tend to remember someone who had an affair with her husband?”
“Under the circumstances, I think her name and face would be indelibly engraved on my memory.”
“Precisely. May I add that I plan never to give you any reason to engrave any names or faces on your memory.”
“Good plan,” I said. “Because I’m not sure I’d be as forbearing as Mrs. Wentworth.”
“Forbearing? You didn’t see her reaction.”
“She’s not actually a widow.”
“Good point,” he said, smiling. “On the other hand, I suspect she knew who was to blame, and Lindsay’s dead now. Although the time gap makes her less of a suspect.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “Revenge is a dish best served cold, you know. Look, are we talking about the same Wentworths here? I mean Claire, the skinny golf-playing one who’s married to Marcus, the chairman of the history department, the one who looks like an albino telephone pole.”