Smoke in Mirrors

she did,” Thomas said. “She got him out of the mansion and drove him home. The next day she went to see him in his office. He was still badly shaken. Panicky. She pointed out that there was no reason not to publish the algorithm under his own name. It would make him rich and famous. Secure his academic reputation forever.”
    “And Kern went for it,” Deke said grimly. “But when the paper was accepted for publication, Roberta paid him another visit. This time she laid out the terms of the deal. She would protect him and his reputation as long as he paid blackmail. She protected herself by putting an incriminating account of Eubanks’s death and copies of his early notes on the development of the algorithm in a safe-deposit box.”
    Cassie nodded. “In other words, if anything happened to her, Kern would also go down in flames.”
    Thomas scratched Wrench’s ears. “In the end, the college administration was so eager to keep things quiet that neither Kern nor Roberta were even questioned. Things went smoothly for nearly thirty years. Kern got rich and famous. Roberta dropped out of the graduate program and married a chemist.”
    Leonora sighed. “Another ABD type gone bad.”

    Ed frowned. “ABD?”
    “All But Dissertation,” Leonora explained. “A little academic joke.”
    Ed did not smile.
    Thomas cleared his throat. “Roberta decided to forego a career in English Lit in favor of running Mirror House and organizing alumni events. Meanwhile she built up her private retirement fund with Kern’s blackmail payments.”
    “And then she struck it rich a second time when her husband developed a hallucinogenic drug a few years ago,” Leonora said. “Ever the opportunist, she saw the possibilities immediately. But she knew nothing about dealing illegal drugs. She was lucky she wasn’t caught running her little experiments on some of the students.”
    “Meanwhile Bethany was deep into her work on her Mirror Theory,” Deke said. “In the course of her research she came across notes that convinced her that Eubanks had done the early work on the algorithm, not Kern. She confronted Kern, demanding an explanation. Kern panicked. As soon as Bethany left his office, he called Roberta.”
    “Who understood immediately that Bethany’s work might expose Kern and thereby ruin her retirement plan,” Thomas said. “So she invited Bethany into her office, served her some of the drugged coffee and then arranged the so-called suicide.”
    “But in those last moments before the drug overwhelmed her,” Deke said, “Bethany managed to leave behind some clues to her killer’s identity. She must have been hallucinating wildly, but there were mirrors all around her and she had been thinking in metaphorical and mathematical terms about mirrors for several months. She was no doubt beyond being able to write anything legible. So she picked up the catalog of antique mirrors and circled the picture of the looking glass thatreflected her killer. Then she hid it together with the clippings behind the catalog in the library.”
    “Alex Rhodes witnessed Bethany’s so-called suicide,” Ed said. “He figured out that Roberta Brinks was the source of the drugs and he formed the partnership with her.”
    “All went well for a while,” Deke said. “Because no one was paying any attention to the crazy Walker brothers and their demands for another investigation.”
    “I wouldn’t say that,” Cassie offered thoughtfully. “The fact that you were pushing for answers was what inspired Roberta to start those rumors of Bethany’s drug use. She thought it would serve as a simple, believable answer that would put to rest any murder theories.”
    “But I didn’t buy it,” Deke said.
    “No,” Leonora said. “That must have made her nervous. Then, six months later, Meredith arrived on the scene to start her endowment scam. She got involved with Thomas for a while and in the process learned that Deke had major questions about the circumstances surrounding Bethany’s so-called suicide.”
    “Meredith and I weren’t involved, ” Thomas said evenly. “We had a few casual dates, that’s all.”
    “Meredith and Thomas stopped seeing each other after a few casual dates,” Leonora said smoothly, “and Meredith went on with her project to rip off the endowment fund. She had a few casual dates with Alex Rhodes, probably because she figured he would be a good source of local information. She found out he was dealing drugs