Stork Raving Mad(25)
“Enrique Blanco,” Josh said.
I had a feeling I’d just enlisted six hackers instead of one.
“How . . . official do you want this?” Danny asked. Keyboard rattling abruptly stopped, as if everyone else had paused to listen for the answer.
“Something we could take to court or to the police would be most useful,” I said. “But knowing that something would turn up if we got a subpoena would also be useful.”
“Gotcha,” Danny said. “Want me to call you when I’ve got something?”
“Please,” I said. I scribbled my cell phone number on another sticky note and affixed it to the wall behind his monitor.
As I turned to head back up the stairs, I looked around. I no longer saw any castle-strewn fields.
I felt strangely better. I had no idea if their searches would turn up any proof that Ramon had turned in his papers and gotten permission for his dissertation on Mendoza’s plays. Or, for that matter, any dirt on the prunes. But at least we were doing something.
In the kitchen, small numbers of students were still talking together quietly. Actually, plotting might be the better choice of words. I overheard the words “petition” and “protest” several times. Yes, the home team was definitely at work. I nodded and waved to the ones who greeted me on my way to the bathroom.
As I was leaving the lavatory I felt another brief, slight contraction and paused for long minutes, waiting to see if it repeated. Nothing. Braxton-Hicks again.
Still, better to get off my feet. I’d been standing and walking more than usual today and my back hurt. I returned to my chair in the hall, opened my notebook, and began trying to think of something else we could do. Preferably something that I could do while sitting down.
I couldn’t think of anything more, at least not until my hacker team reported in. And until Michael and his colleagues finished their meeting. And . . .
I must have drifted off to sleep almost as soon as my body hit the chair.
Chapter 9
“Mrs. Waterston? Are you all right?”
I started, and almost fell off my chair. A thin, pale young woman student was leaning over me with a concerned face.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just dozed off. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” the young woman said. “At least—well, nothing, except that I can’t seem to get Dr. Wright to answer the door.”
I glanced at the front door for a moment, puzzled. Then my brain shifted into gear again.
“The library door?”
The student nodded.
“I knocked and knocked, but she didn’t answer.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to be bothered,” I suggested.
“Yes, but Dr. Sass told me to go and ask her if she was ready for their meeting.”
“And you told her that?”
“I yelled it through the door.”
“Did you stick your head in to see what she was doing?”
“I didn’t want to annoy her,” the student said. “If she was busy, I mean.”
“I’ll go get her,” I said. I waddled off toward the library.
“She won’t like being disturbed,” the student called after me.
“Then I’ll get all the more fun out of disturbing her,” I called back.
The student giggled.
Not a joking matter, I reminded myself. Dr. Wright had power over our future and she already didn’t like us.
Polite. Businesslike. That’s the ticket.
And I had plenty of time to calm down. The library was in a separate wing, at the end of a long corridor, about as far as it could be from the kitchen and still be in the same zip code. I was winded but positively mellow by the time I knocked on the door.
“Dr. Wright?”
No answer. After a few moments I took a deep breath and called to her again, projecting from the diaphragm, as Michael was always telling his students to do.
“Dr. Wright? Dr. Sass and Dr. Rudmann are here.”
No answer.
“They’re all in Dr. Waterston’s office.”
Even applying the D-word to three drama professors didn’t seem to get a rise out of her.
“The meeting can begin as soon as you’re ready.”
Had she gone away? Snuck out through the sunroom and gone back to town, perhaps?
I opened the door, peered in, and winced at how untidy it was.
“Dr. Wright?”
No answer. But I felt my nose tickle from the faint odor of her annoying perfume.
I stepped inside and spotted her sitting at one of the work tables at the far end, near the doors to the sunroom, with her head down on the tabletop.
“Dr. Wright? Are you okay?”
She didn’t move. As I picked my way across the room toward her, I fished a tissue out of my pocket and held it to my nose to keep her perfume from setting off sneezes. Thus armed, I leaned over and put my hand on her shoulder, intending to shake her gently awake if she didn’t respond to my touch. But when I touched her, she slumped sideways out of the chair and fell to the floor. Her eyes were wide and staring, and there was a bloody gash on the left side of her head.