A Pyrrhic Mystery by Sarah Shaber

with two exceptions.  It was heavily stained with blood, and random letters, written in heavy black marker, ranged fully across its length. The letters were: A M Z Q L D M X Y O M S T E.

     “While Petty was lying pinned to the floor bleeding to death, he took off his belt off and wrote these letters on it.  We found the marker on the floor next to the body.” “Hmmm.”

     “Humm, what?”

     “Nothing, really.” Simon said, giving the belt back to Gates and stripping off his gloves.  “Could it be a code?”

     “I thought of that.  We’ll send it off to the forensic cryptologists at the FBI.  Most likely Petty was half-crazy

with shock and pain, and the letters mean nothing.”

    

 

Out on Petty’s back porch Gates scribbled in his notebook.  He was about the only person Simon knew who still used a pencil.  Simon waited for him to finish, inhaling the rich sweet odor of the red trumpet vines and honeysuckle that climbed Petty’s back fence, luring hummingbirds.  Petty loved birds, which just went to show you that no one was all bad. The vine-laded fence divided Petty’s back yard from a bank parking lot.  In fact, banks lined the entire street, buffering the old neighborhood from the noise and traffic of Cameron Village, a tiny urban shopping center home to trendy boutiques and restaurants.

     “Anyone else hate this guy besides the neighbors?” Otis asked.

     “Every student he ever had.  He was picky, contradictory, and just plain mean.  He was an emeritus professor at State, so he still served on an occasional thesis committee.”  Simon knew of two former students of his struggling with Petty’s scathing last-minute comments on their final drafts.  He saw no need to volunteer their names to Gates.  He’d find them out for himself when he interviewed Petty’s colleagues at State.

     “Petty had one married daughter,” Gates said, consulting his notebook.

     “Nice young woman,” Simon said.  “She has three children, I believe. Her husband runs the Italian bistro in Cameron Village.”

     “I’ve been there.  Great calamari.  He found the body, you know.  The son-in-law, Mark Lozano.  Dropped in on the old man this morning.”

     “I saw him in the house.  He looked shell-shocked.”

    

Simon called Mack Smith at his office and reported what he had learned.

     “You know what,” Mack said, “When I got to work I heard that Petty’s house was already for sale.  One of our guys has the listing.  He just hadn’t put the sign out front yet.  Petty told our agent he was moving to Italy.  Had you heard anything about that?”

     Simon hadn’t, which was a surprise.  The academic grapevine was usually swift and accurate.  Petty must have kept his plans very quiet.

 

 

Simon wasn’t teaching this summer, he was working on a new book on the coastal history of North Carolina, but he liked to drop by the history department to eat lunch with the few faculty who stayed in town to teach summer school. 

     Sophie Berelman, long-dark hair wound into a thick braid, wearing her trademark cat’s-eye-shaped glasses, was forking up salad, dieting after the birth of her first child.  Simon’s close friend Marcus Clegg, acting chair for the summer, was eating lunch with her.  Clegg could pass as a refugee from the sixties, if he’d been old enough, with his shoulder-length brown hair, John Lennon glasses, and brown lunch bag of healthy sandwiches and fruit.

Simon joined them with his satchel of fast food.  He stuck a straw in the super-sized Coke and drained half of it. 

     “We’re listing suspects, Simon,” Sophie said.  “We’re up to one hundred and fifty seven.”

     “That’s not funny, Sophie,” Marcus said, turning to Simon.  “Your friend Otis Gates was on the phone to me this morning.  Seems a couple of our former students are only too glad that Petty is dead. I think you taught both of them?”

     Kenan didn’t offer graduate degrees, but many of its graduates went on the study further at nearby universities. Simon knew exactly who Marcus meant:  Amber Marie Hardy, a doctoral candidate at State, and Rufus West, a masters candidate there.  Both of them were desperate to finish their degrees, and both had been driven to distraction by Petty’s criticisms of their theses.

     “Sergeant Gates was surprised you hadn’t mentioned them to him this morning,” Marcus said.

     “I figured he’d find out about them soon enough.”

     “I talked to a friend of mine at State this morning,”

 

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A Pyrrhic Mystery © Sarah Shaber