Chapter 3 No Cake
No Cake
Nobody says your birthday is supposed to be perfect, but Margaret’s has turned decidedly frustrating and sour. She left her house on time (her hummingbird blouse was ironed and exactly where it was supposed to be), but everything after that has been a bumpy, downhill ride.
First, a big white SUV swerved in front of her on the highway, causing her to have to stomp on the Toyota’s brake pedal, which set off a grating squeal that made her fear one of the truck’s back wheels had fallen off.
Then, as she was weighing out some potassium permanganate on the lab’s analytical balance, a machine so precise it could weigh the ink on a handwritten letter, Zhang had walked by and tossed a notebook onto the bench next to her.
The resulting breeze had caused the mound of dark-purple crystals to scatter across the scale and onto the floor like poppy seeds tossed into a hurricane.
Now a cardboard box has arrived with a half dozen Büchner flasks, all the wrong size.
Margaret checks the delivery against the order she’d sent and, as she suspects, the funnel-shaped glassware with its small side arm is not what she requested, and she lets out a little huff of breath.
So many companies hire people who don’t care about the quality of their work.
Margaret has cared for the quality of her work at every job she’s had, even the summer she worked at an ice-cream shop where, after a few days behind the counter, she brought a small glass bowl and her own scale to work.
That way she could confirm that each scoop weighed exactly five ounces, which meant neither the customer nor the shop would be cheated.
She’d been let go three days later when customers began complaining about long wait times and melting cones, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t put all her effort into the task required of her—just like other people should do.
Margaret is about to slap packing tape on the carton and send it back to the manufacturer when it comes to her that Dr. Deaver may have ordered the equipment for a purpose about which she was not informed. He’s done that kind of thing before.
Margaret checks her watch. Twenty to noon.
She’ll drop by Professor Deaver’s office, which is on the way to the mailroom, check to see if he wants these flasks and, if he doesn’t, proceed to seal and return the carton along with a note suggesting that employees at the company be given copies of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which she has read and which promotes pride in one’s work. Then she will go to lunch.
As Margaret heads for Dr. Deaver’s office with the offending flasks, Beth Purdy glances up, wrinkles her nose, then quickly looks away.
Purdy’s desk is stationed at the junction of the lobby, the main elevators, and Dean McDonald’s office, the perfect spot for a woman who tends to hold herself above the rest of the staff and gathers gossip as readily as dog hair on a wool coat.
As expected, there’d been no cake.
The science building hallway is long and dimly lit, the result of the building’s 1930s architecture and cost-saving measures that the college is always instituting, except when it’s spending money for things like promotional mugs and donor lunches.
The result is a walk that is not unlike trudging through a medieval dungeon.
A thin vertical column of light leaks from Professor Deaver’s office door and, for a moment, Margaret pauses.
It’s not unusual for Dr. Deaver to leave his door open as an invitation for others to visit (“Who knows who might spark an idea,” he says).
Yesterday, however, he’d specifically told Margaret he planned to spend the whole day sequestered in his office and did not want to be disturbed. He had an idea, a new project.
“This is going to change everything, Finch,” he said.
Margaret wouldn’t have bothered him except, in her experience, ideas brought an almost immediate demand for supplies, like these large Büchner flasks.
Margaret shifts the carton in her arms, taps a knuckle three times against the door and pushes her way in. Which is when, against every law of nature, time comes to a halt.
There are Dr. Deaver’s bookshelves lined neatly with scientific tomes and journals. There is the brown leather sofa where Dr. Deaver sometimes spends the night. There is the potted ficus and Professor Deaver’s big oak desk, and on the faded Persian rug next to it is, inexplicably, a human hand.
Margaret takes a step forward and peers around the desk to find that lying face up on the floor is the owner of the hand: her mentor, her boss, her idol. Dr. Jonathan Deaver.
Margaret doesn’t even register the sound of a box of scientific glassware crashing to the ground, but apparently others do.
The next thing Margaret knows she is kneeling by Dr. Deaver’s side searching for a pulse, Beth Purdy is at the door screaming at a volume that could set off car alarms, and the postdoc Calvin Hollowell is shouting that he will call 911.
By the time the paramedics determine that Dr. Deaver is deceased and the campus police arrive, Purdy has been escorted away and a small crowd has gathered.
Margaret is standing just outside the office door, shuffled aside by the coroner and a beefy paramedic who are now zipping Professor Deaver into a black body bag.
It’s a scene so final, so disrespectful, that Margaret finds herself reverting to science to keep herself from becoming a blubbering heap of snot and tears.
She will not lose control. Instead, she takes three deep breaths, reminds herself that logic is the antidote to emotion, and sends her gaze around the room, cataloging items the way you would make observations before formulating a hypothesis.
Margaret registers the framed photo of Dr. Deaver accepting the prestigious Lionel Cohen Award lying face down on his desk and a yellow Post-it note pasted on the edge of his computer monitor with 4:30 written in black ink.
She notices a jumble of papers and a recent issue of the American Journal of Botany shoved toward the edge of Dr. Deaver’s usually neat desk and his favorite leather jacket, which once belonged to his fighter-pilot father, crumpled on the floor near a filing cabinet.
An empty soda bottle is on the floor next to his office chair.
She bends to the right to better see the label.
Diet Coke it reads. She frowns, then straightens.
The office’s two windows are wide-open, despite the coolness of the day. A smear of darkening blood stains the corner of the desk, and there, in the trash can, is an empty bottle of Dr. Deaver’s favorite scotch.
It’s not unusual for Dr. Deaver to celebrate some successful experiment or good piece of news with a finger of scotch in his office at the end of the day.
Yesterday, however, as she dropped off the newest data set (encouraging results), she noticed there were at least three ounces of the amber liquor left in the bottle, which sat in its usual spot on the bookshelf behind Professor Deaver’s desk.
Which meant either he had shared an afternoon drink with someone, or something had caused him to finish off the bottle.
And where was the cocktail glass he usually used?
It wasn’t in its regular spot on the bookshelf or on the desk either.
Margaret is thinking these thoughts when a male voice interrupts.
“You need to move on, ma’am,” it says. “Nothing to see here.”
Margaret looks down to see the voice belongs to a youngish-looking campus police officer who is easily three inches shorter than she, a fact that, Margaret has learned, often results in men turning defensive and puffing out their chest like some over-hormoned chicken.
Still, she can’t let a male’s tender feelings get in the way of facts.
“Actually, there is a lot here to see, Officer…” She peers at his name tag. “Bianchi,” she adds.
“There’s the overturned photo and the Post-it note with the time four thirty written on it. There’s Dr. Deaver’s jacket and a Diet Coke container on the floor, and the empty scotch bottle in the trash. Plus, the cocktail glass he uses is missing.”
“Scotch?” The officer’s gaze slides sideways to the wastebasket.
“Yes. Johnnie Walker Black Label. Professor Deaver’s favorite.”
“He was a drinker, then.”
A wave of outrage washes over Margaret.
“He was not a drunk, if that’s what you’re saying.”
“Some people hide it well, you know.”
Margaret is about to inform him that she, of all people, would know if Dr. Deaver was an alcoholic, when, suddenly, a voice interrupts. It’s Calvin.
“It’s my fault,” he says.
Calvin is at the door, twisting his hands as if he were wringing out a very wet and stubborn sponge.
“How is it your fault?” the officer asks. “Are you confessing to something?”
Is that excitement on Bianchi’s face? Margaret guesses the only things people confess to him are fistfights and petty thefts. Not dead bodies.
“I guess I am,” Calvin says.
Officer Bianchi takes a step closer. “Tell me more.”
Calvin’s voice shakes. “Well, you see, Dr. Deaver has this genetic heart condition that can cause sudden death. It makes your heart go out of rhythm so badly that it finally stops. It’s like having a ticking time bomb in your chest.”
Officer Bianchi frowns. “I don’t see how that involves you.”
A low groan escapes Calvin’s lips. “Because I thought he looked really pale the other afternoon and I told him he should see his cardiologist. They can implant a little defibrillator in your chest so, you know, you don’t die.
My great-aunt had one and she didn’t pass until she was ninety-four.
He told me that he was just feeling a little off and that I needed to calm down—which is what everybody is always telling me—so I got a little upset and left.
I should have insisted, maybe even taken him to the clinic, but I didn’t. ”
“Well, that’s something, I guess,” Officer Bianchi says.
It’s more than something, Margaret thinks. How had she missed the signs of Dr. Deaver’s unwellness?
“Did he mention his symptoms?” the officer asks Calvin.
The postdoc raises his gaze to the ceiling. “Fatigue, lightheadedness, a bit of nausea,” Calvin says. “Oh, wait. I think I was the one who was nauseous that day.”
“So, it’s his heart, you say.” The officer pulls out a leather-bound notepad.
“That’s the only thing it could be,” Calvin says.
“What about you, ma’am?” Officer Bianchi finally turns toward Margaret.
“He did have a genetic heart condition,” Margaret admits, “but he told me it was under control.”
Before she can say more, however, a small black mic on the officer’s shoulder squawks to life. Bianchi presses a button and listens through an earpiece in his right ear. Then: “Victim is 10-45D. Request 10-40 for Sergeant Leland at Coroner’s Office,” he says. “Also, I will be 10-7B in forty-five.”
What do the numbers mean? Reflexively, Margaret adds them up in her head. One hundred sixty-seven. It doesn’t help.
She can’t hear the reply to that barrage of numbers, but Officer Bianchi lowers his voice. “Son’s soccer practice,” he says.
What kind of person talks about sports when a great man is dead?
The officer clears his throat and assumes a serious face.
He asks Calvin for his full name, title, birth date and cell phone number, which he records in his notebook.
Margaret then supplies her own name, title, birth date and number, but she suspects by the officer’s puff of breath as he writes her information that he’ll never call.
For a woman her size, it’s surprising how often people act like she has nothing to say and, sometimes, like she isn’t even there.
“What about next of kin?” the policeman asks Calvin.
“A wife, no kids. The dean’s assistant will have the information at her desk. I need a cigarette anyway. I’ll show you.”
The two men stride off and Margaret is left alone in the hallway, an empty, echoey feeling now building in her chest.
How could such a bright light be snuffed out like that?
How would they carry on?
The image of Professor Deaver’s lifeless body fills Margaret’s mind. He looked so vulnerable, so innocent. So alone. All that beautiful, brilliant energy dissipated, never to be gathered the same way again.
Sudden tears sting Margaret’s eyes and she swallows them away. Crying never helps anything. No, it’s better to stiffen your back and soldier on. She learned that a long time ago.
From outside comes the sharp squawk of a blue jay, as if it, too, is lamenting the loss.
Perhaps that is what she should do: let out a screech of unfairness, of shock and of grief.
Nature often has the answer to life’s troubles.
Don’t seedlings rise from the ashes of a forest?
Don’t herbaceous perennials come back year after year?
Margaret takes a deep, shuddering breath and gives a last look into Dr. Deaver’s sanctum.
What will happen now?