“The college’s bottom line, you mean.”
“Yes,” I said. “It wouldn’t help our bottom line at all—not that that’s the most important thing. I could make up the difference with my blacksmithing if I had to, though that would certainly slow down the house project. But if Michael doesn’t get tenure, he might not want to stay on, and it can be hard for someone refused tenure to get a good teaching job anywhere else. And much as he likes acting, it’s teaching he really loves.”
“So this is where Giles comes in,” Dad said. “He’s pro-Michael.”
“Exactly,” I said. “When Michael arrived, they took a look at his background—the soap opera stuff, mainly—and made the mistake of assuming he was a lightweight. So they didn’t figure they had to pack his tenure committee with curmudgeons—they gave him a bunch of honest, if slightly pedantic, professors. And so far, Michael has won them over. He has the credentials; he publishes regularly; he’s jumping through all the hoops. His committee loves him—he and Giles have even become friends—but the department is running scared. If Chief Burke arrests Giles and gives the department fuddy-duddies an excuse to force him off the committee, they’ll replace him with one of the hardliners, and Michael will have no chance at tenure.”
Just then, Chief Burke looked up from his conversation with Giles and frowned at me. I picked up the chairs, waved them, smiled, and then turned toward the house.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “I’m sure there are other suspects.”
“A whole flock of them,” I said.
“No, not a flock,” Dad said, frowning. “Ah! I’ve got it! A skulk. Like a skulk of foxes.”
“A skulk of suspects,” I said. “Works for me. But just in case Chief Burke disagrees, get Michael to call that defense attorney he knows.”
“The one who represented Rob when he got arrested?”
“That’s the one,” I said.
Dad scurried off and I focused on the chairs.
As I lugged them along, I realized that it had been several weeks since Michael had complained about anything going on in his department. Not a good sign. When he was feeling generally optimistic about how his career was going, he’d vent about small day-to-day irritations. When he thought something was going badly, he clammed up about work. Which was what he’d been doing recently. If I hadn’t been so crazed over the upcoming yard sale, I’d have noticed. I should have noticed.
I vowed to make up for this as soon as possible, thus fending off a full-scale attack of the guilts that I didn’t have time for right now.
While I was crossing the soaring front hall, I heard the patter of sneaker-clad feet from the landing above.
“Bang!” piped a small voice.
“Argh! You got me!”
Chapter 11
I glanced up to the second floor landing and saw Frankie, Chief Burke’s grandson, minus his Darth Vader mask but still swathed in the long black robes, standing at the head of the main stairs, clutching his side. Then he fell over and bumped slowly and noisily down the whole twelve-foot length of the main staircase before landing with a thump in the front hall.
“Frankie!” I exclaimed, racing to his side. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said, frowning with impatience at this typically annoying grown-up interruption.
“It’s your turn to be the detective,” Eric called from the top of the stairs.
“Is there an adult around here … taking care of anything you need?” I asked.
“Rob,” Eric said, racing up the stairs toward the third floor.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Frankie leaped up from the floor, pointed toward the living room, and ran off after Eric.
Evidently Dad’s definition of someone reliable to watch the boys differed greatly from mine. Rob lay on the floor of the living room with his Harpo hat pulled down against the glare from the enormous front windows. He had a tiny portable TV on his stomach and was watching a football game.
“You’ll need cable,” Rob said. “Assuming you can even get cable here in the back of beyond. You may have to get a satellite dish. You might want to think about that before you decide whether you’re actually moving way out here.”
Did he really think we were likely to change our minds at this point?
“Aren’t you supposed to be babysitting the boys?” I asked aloud.
“They’re fine,” he said, as he fiddled with the miniature TV’s rabbit ear antenna. “Having a great time.”
“Ya got me!” Eric yelled, and then I heard something bumping down the stairs from the third floor. I stuck my head back out into the hall. Not content with a single flight of stairs, when he finally hit the second floor landing Eric improvised a series of picturesque twitches and convulsions that propelled him to the head of the main stairs and then over the edge of the top step for another histrionic descent.