Murder 101 by Maggie Barbieri Page A

left into the main office area and hobbled back to my office, which faced the back steps.
    I rocked back on my heels so that my feet wouldn’t touch the ground and opened my office door. I threw my briefcase onto the guest chair and settled in behind my desk, opening my top drawer to see what kind of ancient first-aid items might be lurking therein. I found a box of Band-Aids from a drugstore that wasn’t in business anymore and pulled them out. Hopefully, adhesive didn’t have an expiration date.
    I was putting a Band-Aid on my last toe when the phone rang. It was Max. “You’re at work early,” she said.
    “I have a ten-ten class and papers to correct. I figured it was a good idea to get in. What’s up?”
    “You sound pretty good for someone who was drinking her face off twelve hours ago,” she said, taking a noisy slurp of her morning coffee.
    “I wasn’t drinking my face off. I had a martini and a glass of wine. And a couple of sips of Foster’s Lager.”
    “Maybe you were just giddy from your dinner with Detective Hot Pants.”
    “Maybe, Max,” I said, losing patience. “Why did you call anyway?”
    “I just wanted to touch base. We got cut off, remember?”
    “Right,” I lied.
    “Do you want to have dinner tomorrow?”
    “Sure. Remember, I still don’t have a car, so take pity and make it close to me.”
    “That’s right. I’ll come up by you. When are you going to get one?”
    “I don’t know. Before today, I was actually enjoying walking everywhere. Today, however, it seems pretty old.”
    She mumbled something to someone in her office that sounded like “the fish is in the oven.” “Gotta run. Let’s go to the Chart House. Six o’clock.” She hung up without waiting for my answer.
    I had two hours until my first class, blisters on my feet, and no way to get to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. I swung my chair around to look out the window and saw Father Kevin trotting down the steps behind the building. He looked up, saw me, and waved. I motioned for him to come in when he got into the building.
    He arrived moments later, dressed from his morning run in sweatpants, a T-shirt, and running shoes. He was extremely myopic and astigmatic, so he had to wear glasses every moment of the day. Today, they were attached to his head by an elastic headband that back in the day would have made him the recipient of a good beating in most New York City neighborhoods. Fortunately for him, his Irish mother had given him Irish dancing lessons and boxing lessons simultaneously. He was graceful, knew what a hornpipe was, could run fast, and had a killer right hook. He was dripping sweat, his shaggy blond hair almost black from the moisture. “Hi, Alison. How are you?”
    “I’m good, Kevin.” I stood up and gave him a peck on the cheek, trying not to swallow a gallon of sweat in the process. Kevin had taken over as chaplain at the college two years earlier and we had become fast friends. We were about the same age and both loved the Rangers, an instant bond. He was also the most irreverent person I had ever met. Kevin had been the pastor of a parish in Westchester, but his outspokenness was not popular among the wealthy patrons of the church. Since the Catholic Church was not in the position to fire anyone given that vocations were at an all-time low, Kevin got away with saying things from the pulpit that would have had him excommunicated only a few years before. I think the archdiocese figured they would keep him but put him where he could do the least damage, i.e., reach the smallest population. So, Sunday Mass consisted of Kevin preaching to fifty half-deaf nuns and a smattering of college students who thought he was the closest thing to an ordained rock star. I was certain that we would lose him after he referred to the Cardinal as Mo from the Three Stooges, but he was still here. “Do me a favor?”
    “Anything.”
    I lifted my feet and displayed my bandages. “Could you get me a cup of