Majoring In Murder by Jessica Fletcher Page B

was drawn and pale, a new worry clearly written on her features. She thanked me and handed her card to Lorraine. “Here’s my number,” she said. “Please call if you need anything. I truly am sorry about Wes’s death. And the college will cooperate with you in any way we can, both with his funeral and with anything else that needs to be done.”
    “I knew I was going to be causing trouble,” Lorraine said to me after Harriet had left. “Can I help you over there?”
    “No. Just sit down and keep me company,” I said. “Cleanup will take only a minute.”
    Lorraine dropped into a chair and sighed. “You know, everything she said about Wes was true. He was quirky and absorbed in his books. I always thought he would become a novelist, not a professor.”
    “Why didn’t he?” I asked, placing the clean cups in the drainer next to the sink.
    “He couldn’t stand the rejections. When he was a kid, he said he was going to write a best-seller and make us all rich. He always had some scheme going to make money. He tried three or four times, and each book was sent back with a form letter.”
    “What kind of books were they?”
    She snorted softly. “Mysteries mostly. But after the last one was rejected, he decided that kind of book was dumb anyway and tried nonfiction.” She placed her fingers over her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
    “No apologies necessary,” I said. “Go on. I’m interested in the sort of things he wrote.”
    “He loved puzzles. That’s why I was surprised that he didn’t stick with mysteries. Mysteries are such wonderful puzzles to solve. When we were kids, we used to hide a prize and then leave clues for each other to find, kind of like a private scavenger hunt.”
    “Is that what he meant in his letter when he told you to investigate like you used to do together?”
    “I guess so. I’d forgotten about that.” She paused before saying, “Is now a good time to say I’m an admirer of yours, Jessica Fletcher?”
    “That’s very kind,” I said.
    “I’m not being kind,” she said. “It’s the truth. And I’m not just buttering you up so you’ll help me.”
    “What help are you looking for?”
    “What I’m hoping is that you’ll help me find Wes’s killer, if there is a killer.”
    “We need to find out more before we can make that determination,” I said. “Harriet mentioned that he was published widely. Obviously he didn’t always receive rejections. What were his successful books?”
    “Oh, I don’t know all of them. I remember that the first book he sold was an analysis of the work of Daniel Defoe. All his published works are academic treatises of one kind or another.”
    “Do you know if he was working on a book now?”
    “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It would have been great if he was writing a novel. He always dreamed of writing fiction. Maybe Harriet is right. Maybe the letter is a product of his imagination. I don’t know.”
    “I don’t know, either,” I said, “but a policeman in New York once told me, ‘Just because a guy is paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t after him.’ ”
    Lorraine smiled, as I hoped she would.
    “You suggested I wait till after the autopsy before I speak to the police,” she said. “What do you think the autopsy will show?”
    “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m hoping it will say what killed him. And I don’t believe it was falling furniture.”
    “Can the autopsy tell you that?”
    “It can say whether the blow to his head was fatal, and sometimes what the object that hit him was made of, but it may raise more questions than it answers.”
    “When can we get the report?”
    “Tomorrow, I hope. Dr. Brad Zelinsky, the county coroner, is doing the autopsy. He was a friend of Wes’s. They played cards together.”
    “They played cards and he remained a friend?” Lorraine said. “That’s a first.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Wes was a real cardsharp.”
    “He