Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

to remember how to tread water when I heard a yelp. I saw Trixie in front of me, a piece of red nylon in her mouth, which she dropped on the dock. Convinced that I was engaged in some kind of fun swimming activity, she launched her body and did a belly flop into the Hudson, emerging slowly and starting a vigorous doggy paddle that made my swimming attempts look ridiculous at best.
    My parents had schooled me in a lot of useful endeavors, but swimming was not one of them. I cursed both of them at this moment in French, Spanish, and Mandarin, three languages that they insisted I take as electives in high school.
    Ginny was gone by the time I reached the dock; the splashing had attracted a fair amount of attention from the few boaters who were on their docked crafts and I was surrounded by concerned yachtsmen and women of various ages in no time. Two men pulled me onto the dock. One of the younger, stronger men helped me get Trixie out of the water by grabbing her back legs while I struggled to get purchase on her slippery front legs. Once on the dock, she paced excitedly, obviously thrilled that she had given chase and then had the opportunity to take a refreshing swim.
    Ginny Miller was in the wind. Whatever regimen she had begun in the wake of those unflattering pictures being posted on DF Matters, it was working. That woman was fast and strong. As the crowd asked after my well-being following my precipitous dip, all I could think about was this strange woman and her relation to the Wilmott family.
    I managed to extricate myself from the crowd, whose number had grown to about ten by the time I left. Thankfully, there was nobody among them who recognized me, but they all learned that I was a sad, almost B cup based on my involuntary participation in the wet T-shirt contest. I walked home along streets that were now cast into complete darkness, my flashlight held in my bandaged left hand, Trixie’s leash in my right, a pathetic sight indeed in my sagging, drenched jeans. I thought about Ginny Miller, yet another resident of my quaint village, whom until two days ago I had never laid eyes on. What was she doing on Carter Wilmott’s boat? And why did we keep running into each other? I knew Trixie wouldn’t know the answer to those questions, so there was no point in asking. But there was nothing that I couldn’t figure out while staring into the icy depths of a dry martini in a frozen glass, wrapped in my terry-cloth bathrobe.

Thirteen
     
    I was convinced that I still smelled like the river when I got to school the next day, a suspicion confirmed when Mark Etheridge walked into my office shortly after I arrived and lifted his nose in the air.
    “Good morning, Alison.” He settled into the guest chair across from my desk and crossed his legs. “What’s that I smell?” He leaned in close and my heart sank. I really did smell like fetid river water and that would do nothing to endear me to the already suspicious administration. “Do you wear Chanel No. 5?”
    I did today. I practically had bathed in it. “Why, yes, Mark, I do.”
    “My grandmother’s favorite scent,” he said proudly. “She was a real lady.”
    That did nothing to buoy my spirits; Etheridge was a good ten to fifteen years older than me so that put his grandmother … well, never mind. Suffice it to say, I was not interested in smelling like Grand-mère Etheridge, despite his protestations of her status as a real lady. And here’s the thing: Etheridge isn’t very nice to me usually. So his dropping by and complimenting me on my choice of Chanel No. 5—the scent worn by grandmothers all around the world—was suspect. In the nicest way possible, I asked him to cut to the chase.
    “Hey, Mark, what brings you here?”
    His fakey-fake smile faded and I was confronted with the true face of Mark: sullen, nonsmiling, and decidedly unsunny. I could only imagine the energy it had taken him to keep up the façade of dedicated and faculty-loving president that he had put forth for the thirty seconds preceding my question about his visit.
    “Have you spoken to Father McManus?” he asked.
    “No. And as a matter of fact—”
    “Yes, he’s gone.”
    Thank you, Captain Obvious. Now, the question was, why? Followed by, and where did he go? “Hmmm …” I said, stalling. “Where did he go?”
    “He’s taking a sabbatical. He wasn’t sure if he would have time to tell you, so he asked me to communicate his leaving to you. I wanted to get to