Death of a Professor Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Mailing List Signup

  Juniper Grove Mystery Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Still as Death Cover

  From the Author

  More Books

  DEATH OF A PROFESSOR

  A JUNIPER GROVE MYSTERY

  KARIN KAUFMAN

  Copyright © 2018 Karin Kaufman

  Series cover design by Deranged Doctor Design

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

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  JUNIPER GROVE MYSTERY SERIES

  Death of a Dead Man (Book 1) — Out Now

  Death of a Scavenger (Book 2) — Out Now

  At Death’s Door (Book 3) — Out Now

  Death of a Santa (Book 4) — Out Now

  Scared to Death (Book 5) — Out Now

  Cheating Death (Book 6) — Out Now

  Death Trap (Book 7) — Out Now

  Death Knell (Book 8) — Out Now

  Garden of Death (Book 9) — Out Now

  Death of a Professor (Book 10) — Out Now

  Still as Death (Book 11) — Coming Soon

  CHAPTER 1

  I knew within minutes of arriving at Sam Richmond’s house that an unpleasant evening lay before me. And that somehow I would find a way to leave early.

  When I’d accepted Sam’s invitation, I had thought the six of us—me, Sam, and his four other guests—were in for a night of fun and lively conversation. Twice a month, Sam, a retired professor of English, hosted a group of friends, most of them retired or current professors, to discuss old, unsolved murder cases. The object was to solve the murders, or at least have a good time trying to solve them.

  And then once a month, one of them would invent a murder and supply the group with made-up clues. The killer was always among them. Whoever solved the faux murder first won a prize. Usually an expensive bottle of pinot noir.

  Tonight was a faux murder night. It was a Monday evening, and Julia, my friend and next-door neighbor, was out with her man friend, Royce. Holly, my baker friend, had to rise at four in the morning on weekdays and wasn’t up for a night of wine, cheese, and detective work. I, on the other hand, had just finished the first draft of my latest mystery novel and was ready for a break. I was eager to talk with real human beings instead of created characters—or to do just about anything but write.

  On arriving, Sam had briefly introduced me to everyone and then directed me to a cushy chair by the fireplace. There I sat with my glass of wine, trying to get my bearings and appear as though I wasn’t awkward in new social situations or slightly intimidated by the presence of Jack Lusby, a well-known thriller writer who had recently moved to our little town of Juniper Grove, Colorado.

  “Of course, you all know that Rachel writes mysteries,” Sam said, taking a chair near mine. When his large frame settled to the cushion, the chair creaked. “I happened to pick up one of her books in the library after reading about her real-life crime-solving abilities in the newspaper.”

  Libby Weiss raised her free hand. “I just read your latest.” Libby had drawn the short straw and been relegated to the middle seat of the room’s only couch, with nowhere to put her wineglass. In her mid-fifties, a sheen of perspiration on her forehead, her fingers playing nervously at the stem of her glass, she looked even more uncomfortable than I felt.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Libby has taken classes in criminology,” Sam said, giving his friend an approving nod. “She’s the only one in our group to have done so.”

  Libby smiled at me then averted her eyes. “It’s been twenty years, Sam, and it was just two classes.”

  “You use that knowledge at every meeting,” Sam replied.

  Jack Lusby cleared his throat and crossed his long, slender legs. “So you write books, Miss Stowe?”

  Sam jumped in. “Jack, of course, writes thrillers. He’s our resident author.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “I was surprised to hear you’d moved to Juniper Grove, Mr. Lusby.”

  “It’s Jack,” he said. “I’d had my fill of Denver. Small towns are good for writing, don’t you think? Away from the noisy neighbors, endless train of cars, and barking dogs. How many novels have you written?”

  “Five, with a sixth on the way soon.”

  He chuckled and slapped a hand to the manila folder on his lap. “You’ve got a long way to go.”

  “That’s because she’s not as ancient as you.” Nadine Coogan, sitting on the couch to the right of Libby, frowned and cocked her head at Jack. “Give her time, for goodness’ sake. She must be thirty years younger.” Her dark eyes shot to mine. “How old are you, Rachel?”

  Taken aback by her question, I nevertheless answered her. I refused to be coy about my age. “I just turned forty-four.”

  Looking pleased with herself, Nadine grinned. “I was right. Jacko here is seventy-three, and he’s been retired from teaching for twenty years. That’s a lot of free time to crank out the books.”

  “I don’t crank, Nadine,” Jack said. “Cranking is for sausages. Or nonfiction.”

  “And here we go,” Nadine said. “Every meeting Jack has to argue the superiority of fiction over nonfiction.”

  “I do no such thing,” Jack said. “There’s no need to argue the point. It’s self-evident.”

  Nadine turned back to me. “I write nonfiction. Mostly on art.”

  “And how’s that working out for you?” Jack said. He smiled sweetly at Nadine, but it was clear he intended his words to sting. I’m making the big bucks. How about you?

  Ignoring Jack, Nadine continued to address me. “I just retired from teaching art at Colorado State University. Twenty-five years of lecturing undergraduates, most of whom didn’t care for art but thought it would be an easy major. I disabused them of that in their first semester. I’d start with a class of forty and end the semester with twenty.”

  A short and slightly shriveled-looking woman in her early sixties, Nadine had chin-length blonde-gray hair and doll-like features that had probably been cute and pert in her younger years. In late adulthood, those same diminutive features were oddly out of place and clashed with her aging skin.

  “Nadine brings her own expertise to our little group,” Sam said. “And she’s written textbooks on art.” He waved a hand at his bookshelves. “I’ve got two of them.”

  “I have one too,” Libby said. “It’s wonderful, even for people who aren’t art students.”

  “So many writers packed into one living room,” Jack said. “Gerald and Pia over there, the s
ilent ones, write too. We are, or were, all professors, and we all write.”

  Libby raised her hand again. “I’m not a professor.”

  “That’s right, Libby, my dear,” Jack said. “But give writing a try one day. Be bold and forge ahead. The rest of us have. You can write about our little group.”

  “We all think we can write,” Nadine said. “Few of us can.”

  “The queen has spoken,” Jack said.

  “Do you want sugar or do you want the truth?” Nadine said.

  “I didn’t ask for either.”

  Sam gave his large, beefy hands a clap, drawing attention to himself and away from the brewing argument. “All right, ladies and gentlemen. The evening is on. Let’s get started. Has everyone got enough wine? Cheese? Snacks?” He scanned the faces in the room.

  “I’ll have more later,” Libby said.

  “Raring to go,” Nadine said.

  “A little more pinot noir?” Jack said, holding out his empty glass.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Nadine said. “What is that, your third glass?”

  “And what are you, my mother?” Jack retorted.

  “Jack, the bottle is by the lamp on your side table,” Sam said. “You put it there.”

  “Oh, silly me.” Jack twisted back for a better look at the table, took hold of the bottle there, and emptied the last of its wine into his glass.

  “I’ve often said Jack’s surname is missing the letter h,” Nadine said, giving Sam a nod. “You know, Lushby.”

  “Yes, Nadine,” Sam said. “That’s not the first time we’ve heard that.” He turned to me, a mortified look on his face. “Can I get you anything, Rachel?”

  “I’m fine, Sam. The wine’s delicious.” I wondered if Jack and Nadine were always irritated by each other’s presence, always trying to one-up the other, and if so, why Sam let them into his home. I didn’t care how good my pinot was. I wanted to leave.

  “Well, Jack,” Sam said, “the floor is yours. Take it away.”

  Jack took a gulp of wine, grunted, and then shoved himself to his feet, wavering a moment on his strikingly gaunt legs before feeling assured enough of his balance to pull sheets of paper from his folder and begin handing them out. It seemed to me that there was more strength in his arms, thin as they were, than in his skeletal legs. He looked like a gray-haired scarecrow—scrawny arms and legs and a little overstuffed in the middle.

  “Here you are, silent Pia,” he said, handing Pia Montfort the first sheet.

  “I talk when I have something to say,” Pia said. “Nothing unusual in that. You should give it a try.”

  Jack turned to the couch. “Libby and Nadine, your clues.”

  Pursing her lips, Libby strained to focus on her sheet of paper. She lifted her chin, gazing through the lower portion of her glasses, and squinted, a hopeless look on her face.

  “Hang on, I’ll read it to you in a minute,” Nadine told her.

  “Let me get the whiteboard,” Sam said, heading to the far side of the living room and seizing a large whiteboard and stand he’d leaned against a bookcase.

  Jack laid a sheet on Sam’s vacant chair. “And Miss Rachel Stowe,” he said, handing me my sheet.

  He was about to return to his chair when Gerald Rossi coughed. “You forgot me.”

  “Sorry about that, my man Gerald,” Jack said, handing over the last piece of paper. “That would be ironic.”

  “No, that would be par for the course,” Gerald replied.

  “Here we go,” Sam said, setting the board on the stand. He handed Jack a dry-erase marker before dropping down to his chair and examining his own paper. “Let’s see what our clues are. A tasty California pinot awaits the winner—and let me tell you, it’s excellent. Are you game, Rachel?”

  I felt sorry for Sam. He was a cheery man by nature—at least he’d seemed so in the very short time I’d known him—and he was hoping his enthusiasm and eager chatter would overcome the unpleasantness in the room.

  “A knifing,” Nadine said in a flat voice.

  “Is it?” Libby brought her sheet even closer to her face. “Who was knifed?”

  “Not very original, Jack,” Nadine said.

  “What’s originality got to do with the murder weapon?” Jack said. Looking as though he needed to sit, he shifted his weight to one leg. “Murder weapons are mundane. Knives, guns, poison. It’s the clues that count. Weapons are a dime a dozen. You shouldn’t get too creative in that department. It looks ridiculous.”

  “My weapon wasn’t mundane,” Nadine said, arching her neck proudly. She turned to me. “An arrow let go in a locked room.”

  “Rachel’s seen that a dozen times,” Jack said. “Haven’t you, Rachel?”

  “Not really.”

  “All those knitting mysteries you read and write.”

  “Cozies,” I corrected. “And there’s no knitting in mine.”

  “All the victims die in locked rooms.”

  “Not really,” I said again.

  “Arrows, poison darts and frogs, gargoyles knocked from parapets in the middle of the night,” Jack said. “What kind of murder is that? I wanted a no-nonsense knife attack so we could focus on the clues and the victim.”

  “There’s no name at the top,” Nadine complained. “We always give our made-up victims names. We have to have a name to refer to.”

  “It does make it more real,” Sam said.

  “Never fear,” Jack said, hobbling to the whiteboard.

  “A fifty-nine-year-old professor?” Gerald said. “It says here, ‘A fifty-nine-year-old professor of cultural anthropology, male, wears glasses, a paunch bred by a sedentary lifestyle, and bottle-dyed brown hair.’ What’s your game, Lusby?”

  Nadine dropped her paper to her lap. “That’s too much, even for you, Jacko.”

  Jack began to write on the board. “You know how we’ve always said that our phony murders don’t have the immediacy that our cold cases do? Or they don’t fill us with the same urgency—let’s say that. I found a solution to that problem.”

  He stepped back from the board. At the top, he’d written a name in block capital letters: Gerald Rossi.

  CHAPTER 2

  “This is your idea of humor?” Gerald said, squirming in his chair. “I’ve always said you think too highly of your own wit. How about we investigate your murder?”

  “Fine by me,” Jack said. He sat again, grimacing on his halting way down. “Do that when it’s your turn.” He spread his hands, claiming innocence. “Look, I’m just trying to inject something new into our parlor game. It’s not personal. I pulled your name out of a hat.”

  “Really?” Libby said.

  “Figuratively,” Jack said.

  “There’s no such thing as a figurative hat,” Gerald said. “You chose me deliberately.”

  I looked down at my sheet of clues. Admittedly, Jack Lusby had a gift for description. He had Gerald Rossi down to a T, sedentary paunch, bottle-brown hair, and all.

  Pia Montfort exhaled loudly. All eyes turned her way.

  “She speaks!” Jack said with a laugh.

  “This is distasteful,” Pia said. “Why couldn’t you have made up a name like everyone else?”

  “You’re taking this too seriously,” Jack countered. “Everyone is. And you can relax, Gerald. It’s not like we’re going to murder you for authenticity.”

  Pia leaned forward in her chair and fixed her eyes on Jack. “Did something happen to you as a child? Were you dropped in the nursery?”

  I bit the inside of my lower lip to keep from smiling. When Pia decided to speak, she was a corker.

  “The creative writing teacher doesn’t appreciate creativity,” Jack said. “Pia has a PhD in creative writing, Rachel. Mine’s in English.”

  “My degree is in linguistics, Jack. I teach creative writing—as you know. And I enjoy it, however sad and dejected you want me to feel about it.” Pia turned my way, her wide mouth curved in a smile. She was a few years older than me, forty-eigh
t or so. Her light brown hair was sprinkled liberally with gray and there was a slight gap between her two front teeth. “I’m writing my first novel. I’d love to talk with you about writing sometime.”

  “Sure. What’s your novel about?”

  “Life in Juniper Grove.”

  “So let’s be clear,” Gerald said, obstinately returning to the subject of his brutal death at the hands of Who-Knows-Who. “You want me to investigate my own murder? That rather takes the joy out of it. On second thought, Sam, I think I will have more wine.”

  “In the kitchen,” Sam said. “Help yourself.”

  Gerald strode from the living room.

  “Another bottle for me,” Jack called after him.

  “From what I’ve heard,” Nadine said, “your novel is loosely autobiographical. Am I right, Pia?”

  “Loosely,” Pia replied. “You could say it’s a fictionalized autobiography, and I’m filling in the bare spots with a generous helping of imagination. I’m calling it a novel, after all, so it’s technically fiction, though I’ve changed names to protect the guilty and innocent. I’m hoping the reader will have a hard time telling the difference between real and imaginary.”

  Having given up trying to read her clue sheet, Libby chimed in. “You’re writing about real events? Are any of us in it?”

  “Ah,” Nadine said. She raised her wineglass, as if toasting Libby. “We get down to brass tacks.”

  “It’s what everyone wants to know,” Libby said.

  “I’m more interested in where Gerald is with that bottle,” Jack said.

  “Then go find him,” Sam said, wearily rubbing his eyes with his large and calloused hands. Though he’d been a professor of English for most of his adult life, he’d retired three and a half years ago and these days spent hours a week in his garden, acquiring a workman’s hands. We’d met in September at Appleton Garden Center, where he’d introduced himself to me, saying he’d just finished my fifth mystery novel. Would I be interested in joining his detective club one evening in October? Unfortunately, I’d said yes.