“I’m a computer-science major,” he said. I knew what was coming. The eager rundown on his qualifications, followed by the impassioned plea for me to convey his résumé to Rob.
“Give Rob your résumé, then,” I said, in the hope of cutting short the usual rigmarole.
“Just give it to him?” Bill said. He looked daunted at the thought.
“Better yet, give it to Mother. She’s chairman of the board. Works closely with the personnel department.”
Actually, Mother was the personnel department, for all practical purposes, vetting the résumés the company received and performing most of the initial interviewing. She’d started doing this after Mutant Wizards went through what we in the family referred to as “a bad patch,” which I thought was a nice euphemism for having several employees arrested for assorted crimes, up to and including murder. I had to admit, things had run much more smoothly since Mother took over the hiring, and it had the added advantage of keeping her too busy to launch the interior-decorating business she’d been talking about for several years.
“Okay,” Bill said. “I can see why you don’t want a creative genius like him wasting his time on routine administrative stuff.”
I resisted the impulse to point out that without people to do the routine administrative stuff, Rob’s so-called creative genius wouldn’t have gotten him anywhere.
“What about Tony and Graham?” I said. “Are they computer majors, too?”
“Tony is,” Bill said, sounding a bit surly, as if he begrudged the idea of sharing Rob with his friends. “Not sure what Graham’s majoring in. Engineering or computer science, probably, but he’s only a freshman.”
“Not humanities, then?”
Bill shook his head.
“So I guess it’s understandable why none of you knew Lindsay Tyler,” I said.
Bill’s face froze.
“I mean, I guess none of you takes many history courses. That’s what she taught, right?”
“I guess,” he said. “I pretty much stick to the computer-science building.”
“Never saw her around campus?”
He shrugged. I let the silence drag on.
“Now that they told us who she is, yeah, I sort of recognize her,” he said finally. “But it’s not as if any of us would have any reason to know her that well. And I guess it’s right that people look different when they’re dead.”
I nodded as noncommittally as possible.
“I should see how Tony and Graham are doing,” he said. He got up and hurried over to where they were still sitting with their legs propped up so the cold compresses wouldn’t fall off their shins. They weren’t sipping their mugs of herbal tea, though. Cousin Horace and Deputy Sammy had each appropriated a mug and were sipping away, faces tense with the effort of smiling after each swallow. Rose Noire appeared oblivious to their heroic efforts. She was showing Dad one of her herb jars—presumably the one from which the tea had come—and gesticulating enthusiastically. Dad was nodding and beaming. Evidently, he approved of Rose Noire’s concoction. A good thing there were only a few remaining shreds of dried weed left in the jar, or Dad would have ordered a round for the house, on general principles. If Rose Noire ever found someplace where she could grow herbs in quantity, we were all in trouble.
Missing from this touching tableau was Bill, who had forgotten his stated intention of checking on Tony and Graham and had gone straight into the barn.
“Touching, isn’t it, how concerned he is about his buddies?” Michael said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Something fishy there.”
“Definitely.”
“I can’t see how it fits in with the outlet-mall thing, though.”
“Maybe it doesn’t,” Michael said. “Looking at the crew we have here, I can imagine more than one of them’s up to something shady, can’t you?”
“All too well,” I said.
Just then, Dad came bounding up.
“Meg!” he exclaimed, “I have a great idea!”
Chapter Eighteen
Dad’s great ideas always made me nevous. I braced myself for an argument—probably over the proposed herb garden—but Dad’s enthusiasm had moved on.
“I’m going to train Spike to do something about the sheep!”
“Do what about them?” I asked, following Dad to Spike’s pen. “Chase them around until they have the ovine equivalent of a nervous breakdown?”
“Chase them back to Mr. Early’s fields,” Dad said.
“He’d be good at the chasing part,” Michael said. “It’s the ‘back to Mr. Early’s fields’ concept he’d have trouble grasping.”