LITMIR.BIZ

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to know better than to discuss business with Juliet Favor over dinner. Next to Coffee, around the table to Favor’s right was Henry DiSalvo. At the right end of the oval sat Kathryn Aimsworthy, chairwoman of the sociology department and the anthropology program. Opposite her, at the far end of the oval, there was Walt Camry, chairman of the English department. To his right sat President Laughton, who was on Sonny’s left. Facing Juliet Favor from left to right on the other side of the oval sat Dick Pomeroy, chairman of the chemistry department; Michael Branden, history chairman and founder of the Millersburg College Museum of Battlefield Firearms; Phillips Royce directly opposite Favor; Carol Jenkins, chairwoman of economics; Elizabeth Williamson, women’s studies chairwoman; and to Aimsworthy’s right, Rebecca Willhite, physical education director. In all, then, twelve guests sat at the table with Juliet and Sonny Favor.

      Food was served from the tables lining the curve of the large bay window. Light came from several candlesticks and from the window, reflected from the snowfall. Polite discussions in genteel voices were the rule. Juliet gradually withdrew from the conversation, the back of her neck and head giving her obvious discomfort. By the end of the meal, most guests knew to take their envelopes, make a graceful exit, and go home to read in private of their department’s fate.

      Among the last to leave was President Laughton, who was politely rebuffed. Phillips Royce, who intended to stay, was also refused. As Daniel saw him out the back door, Favor went up the rear staircase holding the back of her head. Soon after that, the Amish servers finished clearing the tables, and they left together to walk home in the snow. And by 11:30 P.M., Daniel Bliss had dismissed the kitchen staff, plowed one more time, and retired to his quarters at the back of the property, in a ranch-style home behind a four-bay garage.

       9

      Saturday, November 2

      7:30 A.M.

      CAROLINE Branden was out with the sunrise, bundled head to toe against the cold, filling her backyard birdfeeders. At the back of the lot, near sheer cliffs overlooking a wide Amish valley blanketed in white, she filled two finch feeder tubes with black thistle seed. At several stations in the middle of the yard, she put out whole sunflower seed and cracked corn. On a pole near the kitchen window, she tied on a new strip of raw suet and replaced a cake of commercial peanut suet in a square wire cage. Pulling her bags of seed and other supplies on a green plastic toboggan with yellow rope, she trudged through the deep, soft snow to the door at the side of their full-length back porch. One at a time, she lifted the heavy bags up the steps, and stacked them inside, with the rest of her winter stores.

      She brushed off snow and stomped her feet before crossing the length of the porch to a sliding door. There, she stepped into the Brandens’ family room, slipped out of her yellow-and-black hooded ski parka, and sat on the couch to unlace her high snow boots. Black snow pants came off last, and she laid the whole outfit out on the carpet to dry. Down to blue jeans and a sweatshirt, she put on fluffy green slippers and found her husband, Professor Michael Branden, in the kitchen, still in his blue cotton pajamas. He had a mug of freshly made coffee waiting for her at the kitchen table.

      Caroline Branden was a tall, slender woman with long, light-auburn hair. Her husband, equally trim, was half a head shorter, with brown hair graying at the sides.

      “No self-respecting bird is going to be out in this weather,” Branden remarked as his wife sat down opposite him at the large maple table, the gift of an Amish friend.

      “Six kisses says you’re wrong, Michael,” she said confidently, sipping her coffee.

      “I’ll take that bet,” Branden replied and smiled. “Get bigger feeders and you wouldn’t have to go out every morning.”

      The phone rang, and he got up slowly to answer it, as Caroline remarked, “I like things just the way they are.”

      As he spoke on the phone, Caroline watched her first customer arrive, a male downy woodpecker, with his black and white coat and a small patch of red at the back of his head.

      Branden motioned her to the phone and whispered, “It’s Evelyn Carson.”

      Caroline queried him with her eyes as she came up beside him, and he cupped the receiver and said, “Martha Lehman” as he handed her the phone.

      Caroline took the phone, and the professor remained at her side. She said hello, listened, and said, “Oh no, Evelyn! Have you got her there? Not at the hospital?”

      Then Branden heard her say, at intervals, “Of course. You’re sure she’s not bleeding? Why not? OK, keep her there with you. Of course. No. I’m coming down.”

      Caroline hung up the phone and headed directly for her boots in the family room. As she sat on the edge of the couch to lace them up, she said, “Martha’s over at Evelyn’s office. She’s got blood on her apron. And it’s not fresh blood, Michael. I mean, it’s . . . I don’t know. Evelyn says she’s not bleeding. And there’s a Lexus with its front end smashed in, parked in the alley. Does Martha have a car?”

      “No,” the professor replied, “but her boyfriend has a Lexus.”

      “I’m going down to Evelyn’s office.” Caroline said.

      “I’ll go with you,” Branden said.

      “No. Better idea would be to call down to the sheriff’s office first and see if anything’s been put out on the radios about a car crash. Some kind of accident.”

      “Take your cell phone,” he said, and turned back to the kitchen.

      PAST a silent and deserted courthouse square, Caroline Branden turned right on the Wooster road, and drove north through plowed slush to a pink Victorian house south of Joel Pomerene Hospital. Here, several large Victorian homes on the left side of the road had been renovated to hold offices for doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. In an alley beside the pink house, Caroline pulled her Miata to a stop in deep snow, wedging the front of the sports car into a snowbank, next to a silver Lexus with its front end smashed into a light pole. Caroline got out of her car, brushed snow from the driver’s-side window of the Lexus, and saw a deflated airbag hanging from the steering wheel. She followed tracks through the snow to a side door, climbed the stairs to the second floor, pushed in through one of the heavy office doors, and found Martha Lehman sitting on a couch beside Evelyn Carson.

      Pulling off her coat, Caroline sat in a recliner near the couch. Martha turned her head toward her old friend, but her eyes registered no reaction.

      Evelyn Carson eased Martha Lehman back from the edge of the couch and let go of her hand. She motioned for Caroline to follow her to a small office bathroom, where she washed blood from her hands.

      Taking a seat at a desk in a far corner of the office, Dr. Carson said, “I found her curled up outside my door there, when I got in around 7:00. She’s not hurt. The blood’s only on her apron, plus her hands and whatever she’s touched. At first I couldn’t get her to move. Once I did get her inside, she wouldn’t talk.”

      Caroline asked, “Won’t talk or can’t talk?”

      “This is trauma,” Evelyn said, “so it doesn’t matter right now whether it’s ‘won’t’ or ‘can’t.’ She’s mute again, just like before.”

      “You got her through this once, Evelyn. She’ll pull through again,” Caroline said.

      The phone rang and Evelyn answered it and handed the receiver to Caroline, saying, “It’s Mike.”

      Caroline took the phone and said, “It’s not good, Michael.”

      “It may be worse than you think,” the professor replied.

      “You talked to the dispatchers?”

      “Juliet Favor has been murdered,” he said flatly, “and an inebriated Sally Favor is being questioned at the scene.”

       10

      Saturday, November 2

      8:00 A.M.

      MIKE

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