Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

you as soon as possible. I knew you’d be worried.”
    “And how did you know that I knew he was gone? And more important, how did you know that I didn’t already know why?” Yes, there was an easier way to ask those questions, but I’ve found that when trying to get the answers you want, confuse ’em with words. Works every time.
    Except for this one. I hadn’t taken into account that my theory was only effective when dealing with lying coeds. Someone of Mark’s superior intellect could find another way to not answer the question and his was to get up and start for the door. “You can talk to Father McManus when he’s ready to communicate with you and you can ask him about what he’ll be doing from this point on.” He stopped midway in his trek and tossed a verbal grenade in my direction. “On his sabbatical, I mean.” Yes, whatever that meant. Priests don’t get sabbaticals. The church elders treat them like Amish children except that the poor men of the cloth don’t get their version of a rumspringa.
    I got up quickly and tried to follow Mark, but my skirt got caught on the corner of my open desk drawer and by the time I extricated myself, he was gone. “But why did he leave?” I called after him, hoping for some indication of where Kevin had gone and why. I raced into the common area that the offices opened up onto and tried to catch a glimpse of him. To no one in particular, I muttered, “Who the hell does he think he is? The freaking Green Lantern?” I had never seen a disappearing act like that one.
    “Alison! Your mouth. Young lady.” Sister Alphonse—aka the Fonz—couldn’t see very well but apparently she could hear and she knew exactly who I was just by the sound of my voice. She peered at one of the office doors, and convinced she was where she needed to be, rapped loudly with her bony, arthritic knuckles, drawing herself up to her full six feet two inches. “Louise? Are you in there? I’m ready for my blood pressure check.”
    “Sister, that’s Coach Burton’s office.” I took her arm and guided her to Sister Louise’s office. And I knew she didn’t want to see Bill Burton, the head of the phys ed department. He wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a blood pressure cuff and a microwave. I deposited her in front of Louise’s office door.
    “Three Hail Mary’s, dear, for that flagrant foul,” she called after me. The Fonz is blind but she’s got a good sense of humor. And she played a mean center for the St. Thomas girls’ basketball squad back in 1942, the last time the St. Thomas Blue Jays had a winning season.
    I went back into my office and hurled myself into my desk chair, rapidly checking my e-mail to see if I had any messages from Kevin. Not a one. Then I checked my local paper online, where a huge headline filled the page: “ ‘I’m Innocent!’ DPW Chief Claims.” A picture of a rather pathetic-looking George Miller, propped up by his weirdo wife, Ginny, accompanied the story.
    You might be innocent, George, I thought, but something tells me that wife of yours isn’t by a long shot.
    I was eating a Lean Cuisine, rather indelicately, when Crawford called that night.
    “So I guess you’ve seen the paper?” he asked.
    “You mean George Miller protesting his innocence?” I tried to lick some sauce off my fork before it dribbled onto my T-shirt. Too late. “What did we expect him to do? I don’t know how he’s going to get out of this one. He’s got me and Greg as witnesses. We saw him punch Wilmott in the head. I’m sure he didn’t mean to kill him, but he did. Plain and simple.”
    Crawford was silent for a moment. “So you’re back on that? You know you’re going to have to testify, right?”
    I changed the subject. “I got pushed into the river last night.”
    Nothing I could tell him would surprise him but this definitely piqued his interest. “By whom?”
    “By Ginny Miller.” I explained the whole story, starting with the note instructing me to “get up again” and ending with my impromptu swim.
    “You know you were trespassing?”
    I guess I was. But that didn’t matter. “Doesn’t it make you wonder what she was doing on the boat?”
    “Sure. But you were trespassing. You were on someone else’s property. You can’t do that.”
    “Neither can she,” I said. “Don’t forget that.”
    “I’m more concerned about you. I couldn’t care less about Ginny Miller. If you get jammed up with Hardin and Madden