Murder in Primary Colors Page 2

  Chapter 2

  Chris sat in her kitchen drinking a much-needed beer. Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream, her fatal weakness, would have been better, but she'd forgotten her original errand when she discovered the body.

  Suddenly she remembered, in spite of the hour, someone in the university hierarchy beside herself should know what had happened in the museum. Since chain of command on a university campus aspires to military perfection, her first call was to Lorraine Campbell-McFee, Dean of Arts and Letters. Jerry McFee answered sleepily, and asked whether he could take a message. Chris told him what had happened. The dean came on the line immediately after her husband's startled, "Jesus Christ!"

  After Chris filled her in and explained that the police were still on the scene, the dean said she would take over informing the rest of the administration. Chris was about to hang up when Lorraine asked the one question she hadn't thought about at all.

  "Did she have family in town?"

  "No, I'm sure she didn't."

  "There must be next of kin somewhere. Let me know and I'll send them a condolence too." With that she said good-bye and hung up.

  Next of kin. Chris hadn't even considered it. Elizabeth Page was so self-contained, even self-manufactured, the idea of parents or siblings was faintly illogical. Writing a letter of condolence would be for later, however. At the moment, finding next of kin was a priority she hoped she could leave to the police.

  She finished the beer and wondered whether she could sleep.

  The doorbell rang. A uniformed policewoman introduced herself as Kate Branvold and said she had been sent to pick up the answering machine. "Got to tape the message first in case your machine is one of those that wipes out when the power's off."

  Chris nodded and gestured toward the machine on the table. Branvold held a little recorder up to the speaker and Chris pushed the playback button. The officer left with the machine two minutes later and walked out to her cruiser trailing wires in a fashion that brought the awful events into sharp focus. Chris burst into tears.

  By ten o'clock Monday morning, Chris Connery was still dispirited. She was also cranky. Lack of sleep had done nothing to improve the situation. At eight-thirty she'd stumbled into the office and sat bleary-eyed, trying to ignore Charlie Inquist, her six-foot tall secretary, in the outer office as he fended off the curious. So far he was doing an admirable job, but the death of Elizabeth Page had been on all the local radio and television stations. Everyone in Camford and the university community knew what had happened, and it seemed to Chris from the safety of her office that half of them wanted to hear about it directly from her.

  When her phone rang she grimaced and lifted the receiver as if it might bite.

  "How are you holding up?" Dean Lorraine Campbell-McFee asked.

  "Tired. Didn't get three hours of sleep."

  "I imagine the police kept you a long time," Lorraine said with a degree of empathy. "What time was it when you called me?"

  "Two-thirty, I think."

  "Go home early. That's an order."

  "Roger that." That had been Chris's plan from the first.

  The dean switched to business mode. "I called because we can't let this derail the Unveiling."

  The Unveiling. Chris had almost forgotten the stupendous gift the museum was about to receive from one of the university's wealthiest alumni.

  Chris tried to sound confident. "I'm sure Elizabeth had the Gala well in hand. I'll get her assistant to fill me in."

  "I'd like you to do more than that, Chris. You need to be in charge of the whole event. We can't risk offending the donor or messing this up."

  Chris thought, The donor probably has already been inconvenienced by the death of the museum director. He was at the opening yesterday and she'd given his name to the police as one of the attendees. Howard Randall was unlikely to forget his first visit in fifty years to Midstate University. She sighed. "What do you want me to do, Lorraine?"

  "As soon as the museum is released by the police, you need to get over there and find out what arrangements she'd made. The Unveiling is only three weeks off. The invitations have gone out to the whole legislature, the governor and every notable in the state. We can't have Midstate look like... like amateurs."

  Chris opened her mouth to say how much she trusted Page's assistant, the long-suffering Rachael Jacobsen, but Lorraine interrupted her. "I understand no one has even seen the painting yet. Get this under control." With that the dean excused herself and rang off.

  Chris sat for a long moment, looking out her window at passing students. So much for going home early. She wondered where museum staffers were this morning since the police had cordoned off the whole building. She knew it was off limits because when she'd trudged in to work, her first steps from the parking garage led, as usual, to the museum. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered across the main doors and she was forced to continue on to the Fine Arts Complex without her usual stop at the Lotta Latte Coffee Bar. The swill that passed for coffee at the Student Union was out of the question.

  Well, at least she'd get to see the fabled painting at last. Elizabeth Page had refused to show it to anyone, even her boss, a fact that had been the source of considerable tension between them in the last few weeks.

  Howard Randall was a collector of early Twentieth-century European art and he was donating one of the plums of his collection to his alma mater. Pablo Picasso's Still Life with Pipe and Wine Bottle from 1914 was estimated conservatively to be worth twenty-five million dollars. One of the premier examples of Synthetic Cubism by the master, it would be the jewel in the museum's permanent collection the instant it was unveiled. Elizabeth Page had been smug from the moment Randall had offered it.

  Randall's correspondence indicated he'd heard about the museum and its new building from the Alumni Association and was interested in doing something special to mark its opening. His was the first major donation attracted to Midstate because of the new facility. Page had been convinced it would not be the last. "Of course, he gets a great tax write-off," she had said in one of her less-guarded moments with Chris. "I checked him out. His collection is large and very strong. We can expect more from him if we do this right."

  Maybe if Chris walked over to the museum, someone there could tell her how long the building would be cordoned off or where the staff members were waiting out their exile. She pulled her purse out of the bottom drawer of her desk and stepped into the outer office.

  Her secretary was hunched over his desk, his phone held to his shaggy blond head. "As I said, Dr. Connery is unavailable at the moment. If you'll give me your name and number I'll have her get back to you when she can." He jotted a note on a pink message slip and hung up as Chris rounded his desk.

  "Dr. Connery? Do you want to talk to reporters?"

  "No. Absolutely not."

  Charlie crumpled the pink slip and tossed it.

  "I'm going to the museum, Charlie. I have to find out how long it will be before it's available."

  A familiar voice behind her made her turn in surprise.

  "We should be done this afternoon." Detective Sergeant Ryquist came through the outer office door. "You can probably have it first thing tomorrow."

  "You saved me a trip, Detective." Chris smiled at him even though his presence wasn't exactly welcome.

  Ryquist returned the smile. "So, Dr. Connery," he said. "You busy?" Chris was not comforted by his apparent friendliness.

  Charlie cleared his throat. "Ah, she's been harassed all morning. She needs time to get her class organized."

  Chris appreciated Charlie's effort on her behalf, but she knew it was useless. The police were all over the building, interviewing those who had attended the opening or had other dealings with Page. Class schedules and office hours meant nothing today. She invited Ryquist into her office and waved him to a chair.

  Ryquist casually leaned back and ran his big hands through his hair. "You get any sleep?"

  "Not much." Chris shru
gged. "You have more questions for me, Detective?"

  "Call me Hjelmer, Doc," Ryquist said, trying for a casual tone but failing to Chris's ear. "Yeah, just a couple more questions. For example, have you thought of anyone else I should talk to who was at the opening yesterday?"

  "I did the best I could last night, Hjelmer, but I can't even remember whose names I gave you then. Besides, I don't know all of them by name."

  Ryquist fished several pages of printouts from his suit coat pocket and tossed them on Chris's desk. "Look that over. Maybe you'll think of someone else when you see what we've got."

  She looked at the list. Most of it was familiar, but when she came to two names she didn't recognize, she stopped. "I didn't give you all these names, did I?"

  "Nope. We've been interviewing people all morning and one of the things we ask is who else was at the museum when they were there. So, anyone new come to mind?"

  "No, but I'll call you if I think of anyone. Can I ask why you're so interested in who all was there? Elizabeth was fine when I left, and if my answering machine is correct, she was fine as late as six o'clock. The opening ended at five."

  Ryquist leaned forward, laced his blunt fingers together and rested his elbows on his knees. "We're just doing the routine stuff, Doc. Not to worry. So tell me about the guy who made all those mechanical things. The 'Do-Nothings,' I guess they're called."

  Chris was relieved to move on. "Richard Bjornson? He's the sculpture professor in the Art Department. They're neat, aren't they?"

  "They are that. Very interesting mechanically. He and Page get along?" He watched Chris with guileless gray eyes.

  Chris realized the question hadn't been casual after all. There would be no casual conversations with this man in spite of his apparent nonchalance. "I really don't know. She gave him a show in the museum, so I assume they must have gotten along well. She doesn't... didn't do that for just anyone. Have you talked to Richard? He's got classes this afternoon."

  "I telephoned for him, but your assistant out there said he'd called in sick. Guess we'll have to go over and bug him in his sickbed."

  "I didn't realize he wasn't in today, Hjelmer. Sorry."

  "Suffering from the 'bottle flu' from what I gather."

  "Well, he was pretty drunk when we got him out of the museum at five. If he kept going once he was home, he'd have one heck of a hangover today."

  "You and this McCarty guy did that, right? And he took over and you left to go home. That right?"

  "Yes."

  "You think of anyone else who might have been unhappy with the deceased?"

  "It's a long list, Hjelmer. She could be difficult."

  "So are McCarty and Bjornson friends or what?"

  "I don't know that they're friends... they know each other, but that's true of everyone in the division. We all know each other, at least by name and by sight."

  "Bjornson have any special friends that you know of?"

  "Not really. That is, I don't know who his friends are because Richard and I aren't particularly close. Just a working relationship, you know? There are a couple of students he works with. Maybe they can tell you." She wrote their names on a sticky note and handed it to him.

  "I'll look into that. Just seems funny, guy doesn't have friends among his coworkers, y'know?" Ryquist said and leaned back in his chair.

  Chris took a deep breath. "Someone must have told you about Richard's practical jokes."

  "Doesn't seem to have endeared him to the other art teachers, Doc."

  "He's got a talent for picking on the one thing guaranteed to push someone's buttons. Very few people find them as funny as he does."

  "Nobody I talked to would describe his jokes in detail. So what does he do? Water balloons from the second story windows?"

  Chris grimaced. "Not quite that juvenile, but close."

  "Gimme a for-instance, Doc."

  "Talisha Rice is a good example. She's the most recent victim. She teaches Art Ed and Art Appreciation. She's a religious person, a fundamentalist, though she doesn't make an issue of it. Bjornson must have found out because he used the drawing skeleton and a plaster cast of a Greek torso to create a homosexual pornographic tableau in the storage closet she uses."

  Ryquist frowned.

  "He added realistic phalluses to the skeleton and the torso. They were made out of clay."

  "Ah." Ryquist nodded. "So that offended Ms. Rice. He ever pick on Elizabeth Page?"

  "Not to my knowledge. And if he had she'd have yanked his solo show from the schedule in a skinny minute." Various scenarios rolled around in Chris's brain, none of them good. "May I ask why you're interested in Richard's pranks?"

  "Just being a nosy cop, Doc. You've got a class to get ready for so I'll let you go." Ryquist rose and collected his printout. "I know where to find you." He ambled through the door and was gone.

  When Chris returned from her class at two that afternoon, Charlie was nearly bouncing in his chair with suppressed energy. "You hear the latest?"

  "Now what?"

  "The police confirmed she was murdered." He paused to let that sink in. "I've got a buddy on the force and he says they shipped her body off to the capital for an autopsy but they X-rayed her head first. Seems there's some big round metal thing in her skull."

  "Big round metal thing. You mean a bullet?"

  "My buddy thinks she might have been shot with an antique rifle, like a Civil War weapon."

  "What?"

  "Those old guns shoot big pellets, like nearly half an inch across. He says the metal in her head is about that size."

  Chris flopped back into a chair. "That's just bizarre! Who would do that?"

  Detective Sergeant Ryquist joined the conversation once again from the doorway. "Anyone around here collect old guns, Doc?" He took the chair next to Chris.

  "I'm pretty sure no one in Fine Arts does," Chris said firmly, mentally crossing her fingers and hoping she was right.

  "Is it true she was murdered?" Charlie blurted.

  "Yep," Ryquist responded. "Looks that way at the moment, so we'll proceed accordingly until the autopsy tells us different."

  Chris and Charlie exchanged looks.

  Charlie whispered, "Wow!"

  "So, Doc. You got a minute now that your class is done?"

  "I guess so. Come on in." She rose to move to her office but Ryquist shook his head.

  "I mean over at the museum."