Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

Marguerite, the two cops, and the cab driver vacated the premises. I guess I might have noticed that one of the police officers was young, handsome, and tall, wearing a clean white undershirt that peeked appealingly from the top of his unbuttoned uniform shirt. I know for sure that I did notice the gold band glinting on the ring finger of his left hand, thinking that he was too young to be married. He was sent to find the cab, which he did with alarming alacrity. Turns out our cab thief, one Maxine Siobhan Rayfield, hadn’t driven it very far; it was found, running with all of its doors locked, about five hundred feet from the circular driveway in front of the dorm but as close to the river as one could get with a motor vehicle without getting it wet. The officer, whose name I never got, had jimmied the lock on the driver-side door and driven the car back to the dorm. He was the closest thing to a superhero I had ever encountered.
    Sister Marguerite looked at me as the cabdriver described the young woman whom he had picked up in front of Maloney’s on Broadway: short, thin, dark haired, dressed all in black. Drunk as a skunk. Sister looked as though she were ready to blurt out Max’s name, but something about my expression stopped her. Maybe it was the recognition that if Max was fingered and subsequently expelled (or worse), I would be lost; my father had died suddenly the summer before of a massive heart attack at the age of forty-four and Sister Marguerite knew that I was hanging on by the thinnest of emotional threads. Maybe it was the idea that Max’s stunt would cast aspersions on our fine institution of higher, Catholic-style learning. Maybe it was the dawning realization that she herself would be in deep shit for not keeping a closer eye on things. Whatever it was, she stopped and disavowed any knowledge of the little deranged pixie who, if found, would be charged with a felony. She paid the cabdriver the fare from petty cash with an extra twenty for his trouble, apologized profusely for wasting everyone’s time, and told the police officers and the cabdriver that she would pray for their safety every day for the rest of her life at evening vespers. She never did bring up the incident again but it was clear that she wasn’t pleased and that she would look for any transgression to boot Max’s skinny little ass from the dorm and, eventually, St. Thomas.
    It was an incident that I had buried deep in my unconscious until Crawford had brought it up at dinner the week before. I was ashamed that I had been part of the incident, and that all these years later, I was still lying to protect my delinquent friend. He sometimes asked me why I was still friends with her and all I could say was that I loved Max. She had seen me through some very dark days and I was forever in her debt, as she was in mine. In her own way, she takes care of me. We don’t always see eye to eye but we share a history. I am an only child and both of my parents are dead, having died long before they should have. Before I met Crawford, Max was all I had.
    I understand undying love, even the platonic kind. I understand going to the ends of the earth for someone you love, even when they disappoint you or even when they betray you. I understand doing things that go against your very core so that they don’t suffer for their transgressions or for the things that they don’t even bring on themselves. I understand all of that.
    So I understood why Lydia Wimott wanted her husband to die.
    Queen had already figured out who had put the explosive device on Carter’s car engine. She had been in the guesthouse less than twenty-four hours and had solved the mystery of who else wanted Carter dead, but that’s what happens when you’re dealing with amateur criminals. They talk too much, and leave too many clues. You just have to be looking in the right place at the sort of right time, and you’ll know everything that went into the commission of the crime.
    Queen had been looking for a hedge clipper in the shed so that she could trim the boxwood that grew around the front door of the guest house. She never did find the hedge clipper, but she did find a cache of explosives and some copper wiring, and some kind of electrical setup that would serve as the igniter, or so she surmised. It was all there, right next to a bag of fertilizer and three half-empty cans of paint, the same paint that had been applied to the outside of Queen’s doll-like new