Coming Up Murder Read online

  “And if I don’t?” I asked.

  “They don’t have to publish your work. Period.”

  I didn’t like that answer. I couldn’t handle the thought of the work remaining unpublished now that the call had come and the contract had been signed.

  “Promise you’ll talk to me before responding again,” said Claudia.

  I couldn’t promise anything. It was our turn to bestow congratulations on Jane Lemort.

  “That was a wonderful performance, Jane,” I said. “I really enjoyed myself.”

  “Me, too,” said Claudia. “I wish I would have brought my kids.”

  “Thank you.” She glanced over my shoulder. “Where is Lenny? I hardly see you apart these days.”

  Jane liked bringing up the topic of our relationship whenever she could, especially in front of other faculty members. She knew I’d been cautious about dating Lenny—a colleague and my best friend—in the beginning, but that was months ago. I could talk about it in front of anyone now.

  “He couldn’t make it,” I said. “He sends his regrets.” I noticed Mackenzie putting her viol in the case. “Excuse me. I want to congratulate Mackenzie before she leaves.”

  Claudia gave me an enigmatic look. If she’d dared show me how she really felt, she’d have outright glared. Now she would have to wrap up the congratulations with her least-favorite colleague on her own.

  I hurried over to Mackenzie, who was snapping shut her instrument case. Her wheat-colored ponytail dipped over her shoulder. “That was a fantastic performance. I just wanted to tell you.”

  She glanced up and smiled. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d be at the concert,” I said.

  “Really?” She stood. “It was on the poster.”

  “I must have missed it.”

  “Most people think of me as a softball player.” She hoisted her instrument case onto her back. It had two straps that allowed it to be carried like a backpack. “More people attend games than performances, I guess.”

  “That’s the truth,” I said. “Games get better advertising too.”

  She nodded in a distracted fashion. I’m sure she wondered how long I was going to keep her and to what purpose. I kept my tone casual as I continued, “And how are you doing with Tanner’s death? I heard you used to date him, so it must have hit you hard.”

  She glanced over my shoulder before answering. The crowd was beginning to dissipate, and we were nearly alone. “That was a year ago. We were still friends, though, so it’s hard.”

  “Did you break up because of his attraction to Mia?”

  She smiled, showing two small dimples. Like her hair, her fresh complexion was natural. She wore very little makeup. “We broke up because of his attraction to everyone.”

  Her statement confirmed what others had implied about Tanner. While he enjoyed flirting, he didn’t want his girlfriend flirting. Such behavior seemed controlling and manipulative. “His wandering eye didn’t bother Mia?”

  “I’m sure it did, but she loved him. She put up with a lot.”

  “Maybe she was fed up,” I said.

  She understood the implication. “Not Mia. She defended him no matter what. It was pathetic, honestly. His moods were getting worse, but she blamed it on the play. After it was over, she insisted he’d be better.”

  Her description reminded me of the argument the night before his death. “Someone at the bar saw Tanner arguing with a man in glasses. Was it over Mia?”

  She snorted. “You mean Denton Smart. It was sad how Tanner turned on his friend. I don’t think Denton even knows how to flirt, but Tanner was jealous of him. Denton’s really intelligent. He knows a lot.”

  I agreed. On our panel, he’d radiated intelligence. He’d said he could prove de Vere lived much longer than the historical record said, which meant de Vere could have written the later Shakespeare plays. If true, he had the evidence Tanner needed to make his case against Shakespeare. Why would Tanner chance an argument with him? I needed to find out more about Tanner’s work. I could accomplish that with a trip to the library. “Are you sure they were arguing about Mia?”

  “Positive.” Mackenzie’s plain face was open and honest. “That night, Tanner told Denton to stay away from Mia. Denton left. Tanner tried to get him to come back, but he wouldn’t. He was really upset.”

  Just how upset was he? I needed to find out. “I have to get to the library, but it was a really great performance, Mackenzie. I hope to hear you play again sometime.”

  “Thanks,” she said. It was all the permission she needed to join a friend.

  I returned to Claudia, who was now talking to Giles. Jane had disappeared and so had the sour look on Claudia’s face. She and Giles were discussing Felix’s keynote address, taking place this evening in the small, but regal, lecture hall in Stanton. The English Banquet would follow at Bluff View Restaurant. Giles wanted to make sure all faculty members would be in attendance, since he would be bestowing next year’s scholarships and awards.

  “We’ll be there, won’t we, Em?” said Claudia.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” I said.

  Giles acknowledged our responses with a murmur of appreciation.

  “I’m headed to the library,” I continued. “Anybody going in that direction?”

  Claudia shook her head. “I need to get back to the kids. They have science projects due on Monday, and we haven’t even started them.”

  “I’m meeting Felix inside.” Giles pointed toward Harmony. “There’s an afternoon panel on Elizabethan art, if you’d like to join us.”

  I’d had my fill of Elizabethan culture for one afternoon. “Sounds interesting, but I really do need to take care of a few things before this evening. I’ll see you at the lecture?”

  They both nodded, and I started toward the library. The blue of the sky was intense, like cornflowers, providing a stunning canvas for the white peaks of Stanton Hall on this beautiful spring day. Had it not been for the garish crime scene tape surrounding Shakespeare’s Garden, it would have been the perfect backdrop for a small Midwestern college.

  I paused for a moment at the gate. Pink flowers lined the path to a reader’s paradise. Complete with benches for sitting and blossoms for smelling, the garden invited passersby to put away their busyness and open up a book. The refurbished bust of Shakespeare would watch over them in silent approval.

  If only the bust could speak—he would tell me who killed Tanner. I still pictured the young actor posed on the bench, a ghastly reenactment of a scene from Hamlet. Could I ever sit on that bench, could anyone, without thinking of Tanner? I doubted it.

  Students had piled flowers, cards, and candles at the entrance, a shrine to a life ended too soon. My eyes focused on a single red rose. It was next to a bouquet of wildflowers wrapped in clear cellophane, the kind purchased at the local grocery store. Beside it was a yellowing piece of paper, dull in contrast to the flowers. I picked it up. It was a page ripped from Hamlet, the famous “To be, or not to be” soliloquy. In the speech, Hamlet contemplates suicide. Did its placement here suggest Tanner killed himself? Or was it chosen as a memento from the play because the lines were the most recognizable?

  A breeze swept through campus, lifting the page from my hands. I grabbed it and returned it to the pile, unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching me replace it. It was a prickle that began at the base of my spine and traveled all the way to my neck. I glanced around. No one was there. Still, the eerie feeling persisted all the way to the library. It was instinctual, irrational fear. Even in my previous encounters with murder, I’d never experienced anything like it. My body was warning me of danger. What that danger was, though, I couldn’t say.

  I fought the temptation to run. Reason told me the day was warm, the campus was picturesque, and I was wearing my good heels. It could see no hazard at all. And yet, there was the warning, like a hand on my back, pushing me forward.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I checked
my fear and pulled open the library door. Maybe I was losing my nerve. Or maybe I was losing my touch. I had several clues to the killer’s identity—the sonnet, the flowers, the skull—yet I couldn’t work it out. It was like putting together a five-thousand-piece puzzle without the corner pieces. I needed to build the framework first. When I did, I was certain the rest of the pieces would fall into place.

  Since it was Saturday, the library was sparsely occupied but not deserted. A few students worked at tables while librarians shelved books or answered questions. I logged on to a computer near the copy machines and pulled up the library catalog. Tanner’s PhD dissertation was incomplete; it wouldn’t be printed because he wasn’t alive to defend it to his dissertation committee. The killer had effectively killed his work. But I did find his master’s thesis, because he’d done his coursework at Copper Bluff. Unfortunately, a thesis couldn’t be checked out, but I could read it in the library. I hoped it might give me clues to Tanner’s later research.

  After finding the call number, I climbed the stairs to the third floor, where the books were dusty from disuse. I released a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. Surrounded by towering bookshelves, I felt safely ensconced in a place where no one could touch me. Now that I was feeling more like myself, it didn’t take me long to find the red leather book with Tanner’s name on it.

  I skimmed through the first few pages as I took it to a study alcove. As the title suggested, it was about Shakespeare, but the table of contents suggested the work analyzed Shakespeare’s plays rather than discussing the author himself. I slouched into a chair, skimming pages for information. Histories, comedies, tragedies. They were here, but where was Tanner’s allegation that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare? Maybe that idea hadn’t come until he began work on his PhD. I turned to the last chapter, coincidentally on Hamlet.

  Many scholars purport that Hamlet is autobiographical, that the author inserts himself into this play more than any other. Tanner asserted the same, but with an acknowledgment of a contradiction. How could William Shakespeare, a man of lowly origins, write about the struggle between social obligations and personal desires with such depth and understanding? It was here I found the first mention of de Vere, a man who led a double life, according to Tanner. De Vere was a court favorite and a minor poet, a husband and a philanderer, a father and a murderer. Wait. Had I read that right? Yes, according to Tanner’s thesis. At eighteen, de Vere killed Thomas Brincknell. Hamlet, too, commits murder. He’s responsible for five deaths in the play.

  I leaned back in my chair. De Vere did resemble Hamlet. He was polished, as Ophelia claims, but also full of offences, as Hamlet himself admits. In fact, the description sounded a lot like Tanner. On the outside, he was an accomplished actor and scholar. But he, like de Vere, was also known to treat people cruelly.

  The chapter ended on a melancholy note, with Tanner questioning whether Shakespeare really wrote the plays. It was not the assertion presented so confidently at the conference; the tone was that of a fledgling scholar, deflated and disenchanted. Coming to the end of the thesis and finding the contradiction, Tanner could no longer summon the enthusiasm so prevalent in the acknowledgments and first chapters. No wonder he’d hoped to exact revenge on Shakespeare scholars, who he now believed knowingly propagated a myth. But what of his proof? Had he really found evidence that proved de Vere faked his own death? I shut the book. I’d have to ask Denton that question, and fortunately, I knew just where to find him.

  Denton worked at the medical library, a fact I’d noted in his bio when I was preparing for our panel. Today was Saturday, and I guessed he put in most of his hours on weekends. Returning Tanner’s thesis to the shelf where it belonged, I started for the M.M. Scott Medical Building. It was newly refurbished, thanks to the gift of a young doctor who’d had a noteworthy breakthrough. She’d created a drug that reduced transplant rejections significantly and credited Copper Bluff for her outstanding education. I enjoyed seeing her picture whenever I visited the building, which wasn’t often. It had a large auditorium for lectures and an impressive library with serious-looking gray texts.

  As I surmised, Denton was working today. He was seated at the front desk, staring at a computer screen. A book lay open at his side. I greeted him with a cheery hello.

  He looked up from the screen, his glasses hanging off his nose. “Professor Prather, right?”

  “Good memory,” I said. “This is a nice library. I don’t know if I’ve been in here before.”

  He took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He looked less scholarly with them off. “It’s a good job. It’s quiet here, and I get a lot of studying done. What brings you in?”

  “Actually, you do,” I said. “I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your research on Shakespeare.”

  “My research is in molecular biology, actually,” he answered. “My presentation on Shakespeare was recreational. I like his work, and I’m interested in genetics, as a hobby.”

  Brightness radiated off him like sun off a mirror, and I had no trouble believing he researched genetics in his spare time. He probably also crunched algebraic equations. Suddenly my reading hobby seemed a bit frivolous. “But you’ve put some time into researching Shakespeare’s true identity. During our panel, you mentioned having evidence to support Tanner’s theory.”

  “I did, but I wish I hadn’t.” He cleaned closer to the ledge that separated us. I could smell his aftershave or cologne, something nautical. “After our presentation, Felix Lewis cornered me in the lobby. He told me not to associate with Tanner. He said doing so would put a red X on my back. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but now my enrollment in the summer research program has been put on hold.”

  “Do you think there’s a connection?”

  “What do you think?” Denton said. “There has to be.”

  Felix didn’t know anyone on campus except Reed, and Reed had nothing to do with the medical school. I couldn’t see how Felix could have him booted out of a summer research program. “Did you tell Tanner?” I asked.

  “Of course,” said Denton, “He was ecstatic. He said to have a Shakespeare authority like Felix Lewis threaten me proved how close we were to solving the authorship mystery.”

  “And were you?” I asked.

  He glanced at a professor passing by. After the teacher was gone, he continued, “If the test results match, then the answer is yes.”

  “What exactly are you testing?” I asked. “You never said in the panel.”

  “No, I didn’t, and I don’t know if I should say anything now.” He returned his glasses to his nose. A sheen of perspiration glinted off his forehead. “Tanner is dead.”

  “And you think you might be next,” I said.

  His eyes widened behind his spectacles. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to,” I said. “I can see you’re afraid.”

  “Not just about that … everything. My education, my career, my future. I’ve spent years in med school. I can’t risk throwing all that away.”

  I stepped as close to the counter as possible and leaned in. “Look, Denton, you may be smart, and your last name might be Smart, but you’re missing the obvious point here. You won’t have a future if you’re dead. Tell me what you and Tanner were into. Maybe I can help.”

  He tilted his head, as if deciding how to proceed.

  “You can trust me,” I said.

  He started talking, but in a whisper. “A few years ago, a letter with Edward de Vere’s signature was auctioned at Bonhams—that’s an auction house in London. The document itself was worthless, just a record of an annuity left to a servant. What was interesting was the person who bought it: one of de Vere’s ancestors. The ancestor wished to see if the signature matched the handwriting in a letter he had in his possession, dated 1610.”

  “Wait,” I said. “De Vere died in 1604.” The only reason I remembered the year was because it was the crux of the entire controversy. One of Shakespeare’
s plays referred to an event that took place after 1604, so Shakespeare scholars claimed that proved de Vere couldn’t be Shakespeare.

  “That’s the official date of death, but there’s always been a question surrounding de Vere’s final resting place.” Denton took off his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief; meanwhile, he nonchalantly scanned the area to make sure no one was listening. “One of de Vere’s cousins said de Vere was exhumed and reburied at Westminster at a later date. Some say that’s the real date he died.”

  I thought it made sense. Why would de Vere’s body be moved to Westminster years after his death? I could think of no reason. “So, did the signatures match?”

  “One hundred percent,” said Denton, pronouncing each word distinctly. He leaned back in his chair, satisfied with impact of his revelation.

  It was a heck of a nugget, the golden wrapper in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. No wonder Tanner and Denton had been so excited during the Shakespeare symposium. I would’ve had a hard time keeping the news to myself. They had to be waiting on something else. “The signatures match, but is that conclusive? There’s no way to prove de Vere was alive in 1610, is there?”

  A smile touched his lips, his bright eyes sharper than ever. The look gave me pause. “There is now.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Denton explained that when de Vere’s long-lost relative took the letters to a handwriting expert, the expert noted a dark spot on the parchment and theorized it was blood. Elizabethans used quills, quills that required sharpening before use. Penknives were invented for this very reason. The expert speculated that de Vere might have nicked himself while sharpening the quill. The difference in ink weight supported the theory of a newly sharpened instrument.

  Tanner Sparks’s timing was impeccable. According to Denton, he and Tanner traveled to England last summer. Tanner was reading de Vere’s letters at the National Archives when he met de Vere’s relative. They were the perfect partners, both dedicated to debunking the Shakespeare authorship myth and giving de Vere his rightful place in history. When Denton returned from a backpacking excursion in Edinburgh, Tanner introduced them, and a plan was hatched.