Kent didn’t want to think of that, either. She turned the conversation around to the subject she and Clare had discussed last night. “Which brings us to another topic we need your opinion on, Tig, because the nuances of university politics aren’t always as clear to us as they would be to you. Remember the comments Professor Ayari made about wanting to be director? Well, we were thinking…I mean, it’s a possibility that even if the department doesn’t close completely, that you still might be…”

  Kent faltered to a stop and looked at Clare, who didn’t seem sure of what to say either because she just shrugged unhelpfully at Kent.

  “Don’t bother dancing around it,” Tig said. “I know the likelihood of me remaining in my position is slim, even if we make it through this intact. Are you asking if Sami would kill me to get my job?”

  “No,” Kent said. She decided to take Tig’s advice and stop prevaricating. “If she had wanted to kill you, she’s already had plenty of opportunities, including the night of Davies’s murder. But you might still be the indirect target. Someone could have killed Davies and Morris to make you look bad. Your people were causing a public spectacle, then they end up dead—it looks like you’ve completely lost control of your department.”

  “Not that we think you have, of course,” Clare chimed in. “You’re doing great.”

  Kent was so relieved to see Tig laugh at Clare’s comment that she joined in, too. The laughter didn’t last long, but Tig’s smile seemed more natural after it ended.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Clare,” she said. “So, would Sami kill them to get me demoted?” Tig paused for only a brief moment. “No. She wouldn’t risk the department. I’d bet she’d rather be demoted to TA as long as our vision for Med Studies remained intact.”

  “Really?” Clare asked, sounding as surprised as Kent felt. “Do you feel the same way about this?”

  Tig shrugged. “Probably not. If for some reason the new program was abolished, I’d be disappointed, but it would be on a much different level from what Sami would probably feel. Look, I love Classical Studies, especially Ancient Greek literature and languages. They speak to me, and something inside me responds. But even though I appreciate and study Greek things, I’m not Greek. Sami is from Northern Africa, from Tunisia, so this is more than her field of expertise. It’s her culture. A culture whose historical and literary significance has too often been subverted and erased by a Eurocentric focus on Greece and Rome.”

  Tig gestured at a map on her wall, showing a depiction of the Mediterranean region in ancient times. “Other Classical Studies programs across the country are changing to Mediterranean Studies, like we’re planning to do. Too often, though, they only include the bare minimum of those less European focused courses. For someone like Sami, that kind of token change is nearly as problematic as being ignored in the first place. It’s just a way for some universities to prove how modern and relevant they are, while nothing much changes in terms of course offerings and professorial positions. We talked about that quite often when we first started planning how our department would change, so I’m not putting words in her mouth here.”

  She turned in her chair and pulled a thick binder off the shelf that was next to her desk, tucked under her windowsill. She opened it and flipped through pages of lists and charts. “Ours was going to be different. We’re adding more faculty positions, several underrepresented languages, and a variety of inclusive history and comparative literature classes. It’s an important program—it’s groundbreaking in a lot of ways. Just to be part of it is something special to her and to all of us. It would be a professional coup for her if she was named director of all this, but just helping create this program means more to her on a personal and cultural level than it could for me. It matters more to her that the program exists than that she’s the leader of it.”

  Kent didn’t speak right away. With every step of this investigation, she felt farther from figuring out the truth, yet closer to understanding Tig. She had assumed Tig was a well-respected and excellent professor to be named director of the new program, but Kent hadn’t realized what a significant impact she was having not only at the UW, but on Classical Studies programs everywhere. She kept finding more to admire about Tig. More to love.

  Like. More to like.

  “Wow, Tig,” Clare said. “Libby told me this transition was a big deal, but I thought she meant that in relation to you, that it was going to be a lot of work. This really is a big deal.”

  “It is,” Tig agreed. “I’m worried about losing my job here, but it’s even more important that the curricular changes happen, either with or without me.”

  With her, Kent vowed to herself. That was how it should be. She meant that in more ways than just with her changing department, too. How much more? She wasn’t sure yet.

  “Then let’s get busy and solve these murders,” she said. “First, we need to check out Morris’s office. I get what you’re saying about Ayari, but I’d still be interested in having a chat with her about what’s going on. Not as a suspect, but as someone who might be able to shed more light on this case.”

  She reached out her hand and pulled Tig to her feet. She almost forgot where she was and kept Tig’s hand in hers, but remembered to let go as they were going out the door. Morris’s office was one floor down from Tig’s, and she opened it with the key she had gotten from admin.

  Her first thought on opening the door was that the place had been tossed, but Tig followed her in without comment and started poking around. Kent figured she’d seen his office before, so this must be his version of normal. Books were askew on the shelves, and several jackets and scarves were on the floor next to an ironically empty coatrack. And there were papers everywhere. Some of the ones on the top layer of the desk had coffee mug rings on them, and others were crammed into file folders that seemed sadly insufficient for the job he had expected them to do.

  “This is…” Clare hesitated, apparently searching for the right word. “Appalling.”

  Kent agreed. Davies’s office had been similar to Tig’s. Lived in, with piles of books and ungraded papers lying around, but an ordered sort of chaos. This was simply chaos.

  “There’s a computer under here,” Tig said, peering under some papers on the desk with her gloved hands. “Can I look at what’s on it?”

  “Yes,” Kent said. “If you need help getting passwords, I’ll bring Larson in.”

  Tig started up the computer and tapped a few keys. “No need. I’m good.”

  Kent walked over and stood by her shoulder. She had done the same with Larson in Davies’s office, but with more distance between them. Now, she stood close enough to touch Tig, to place her hand on Tig’s shoulder.

  “No passcodes needed, or did you guess the correct one right away?” she asked, looking at the screen. It was crammed with icons, none of which were in a straight row.

  Tig shook her head. “Looks like he disabled the lock screen or had someone do it for him. I’ll see if I can find out how he stored papers and class lists.”

  Kent brushed against her gently as she walked away, giving Tig time to search his computer. She started straightening papers, trying to sort them into more comprehensible piles that they could go through in more depth later. Clare was pulling books off the shelves, skimming through their pages, then replacing them, probably hoping to find a note or other message tucked inside one of them.

  “Look at this,” Tig called, and both of them clustered behind her chair. “I found his class folders from two years ago. See this one on Herodotus? Look who took the class.”

  She pointed the cursor at Spencer Cassidy’s name.

  “Can you find a paper he wrote?” Clare asked. “Something to compare to the one Davies wrote?”

  “No,” Tig said, searching the folder again to show them that there were no results. “I can find papers from other students, but nothing for Spencer.”

  Kent frowned at the screen, not really seeing anything on it as she tried to piece together the clues. “Do you think someone else removed the essays? Maybe someone knew we were looking into the papers Davies wrote.”

  Tig gestured at the screen again. “There’s nothing recent in the document history. Maybe someone who knew how to cover their tracks could have done it, but that’s beyond my level of skill.”

  Plagiarized articles, ghostwritten essays, missing papers. Kent let the three simmer together in her mind. “Oh,” she said, as a thread wove its way among them. “What if this was the price of blackmail?” Tig and Clare turned to her, not following her train of thought yet. “Davies wants this Spencer kid to succeed, so he writes his papers for him. But why bother with Morris’s classwork if he has the goods on the professor?”

  Tig nodded, her expression admiring as she looked at Kent. “He was blackmailing for grades, not for money. That actually makes a lot more sense since we’re talking about Kam.”

  “There’s a kind of elegant reckoning there, if that’s really what happened,” Clare said. “Using a plagiarized paper as a way to force Morris into giving falsified grades on nonexistent ones.”

  “That would have appealed to Chase, I think,” Tig added. “It would maybe have given him a way to justify what he was doing, in his own mind.”

  “Okay, then,” Kent said. “Let’s look deeper into Spencer Cassidy, and maybe try to get names to go with a couple of the other examples, too, but only if some are connected to professors you trust, Tig. We’ll talk to Ayari today, and then we’ll see where these two leads take us.”

  Kent felt more positive than she had over the past few days. They were getting somewhere and finding some connections. Was it too little, too late for Tig’s future here? She hoped not.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tig had another class to teach, so Kent and Clare went back to the station to prepare for their interview with Ayari. They walked along paths dotted with sodden leaves and puddles, relieved to have a brief respite from the near-constant rain of the past few days. They were in civvies since Clare didn’t have to work patrol today, and street clothes helped them get across campus more easily, without people stopping them to ask for directions or to handle other cop-related issues.

  “It feels like we’re trying to fit two different sets of puzzle pieces together,” Clare said with a frown. “On the one hand, we have Morris and Davies who are rivals in the Med Studies debate, and on the other we have them mixed up in the same cheating scandal.”

  Kent agreed. The pieces didn’t match up. “Don’t forget your third hand,” she said. “The vases. Are they connected, or were they just another scheme Davies had going?”

  Clare shook her head, no more able to answer that question than Kent was right now. “And the person who killed them,” she continued. “Why pick those two? Is it just coincidence that they murdered the two who were involved with the papers?”

  “Don’t forget, there were more papers. If they were the only two involved, then it would seem unlikely the murderer would randomly have chosen them as sacrifices. But if there were more professors connected to the falsified papers, then the odds would have been higher that any two chosen would have been part of that, too.”

  They walked in silence for a while, both stewing over the disparate elements of the case. Kent’s mind was torn between turning the clues over in her mind and thinking about Tig. Tig was in the lead so far, in terms of the amount of time Kent’s focus was on her. She had looked so exhausted and worried, overwhelmed by the amount of work required of her because of the two murders, and now the possibly far-reaching cheating scheme. Not to mention the ever-present concern that one university decision could mean that she no longer had to worry about either of those because she had lost her job. Kent felt the weight of that concern, too.

  They came to the stoplight on Fifteenth and stood to one side, out of earshot of other pedestrians. “You know, if someone really wanted to discredit Tig or the department, what better way to do that than by bringing the scandal to the university’s attention? Why bother killing two of the men involved if the same result can be achieved with just an accusation?”

  “Good point,” Clare conceded. “That would have eliminated the risk of being caught, and would have made the accuser seem like a hero for uncovering this mess.”

  They started walking again when the light changed. Kent kept her voice low with so many people around them. “Plus they would still have had the satisfaction of getting Davies and Morris fired or investigated, if their intention was to harm them. Tig said once that the effects of accusations such as plagiarism never really go away, even if charges are dropped, so they would have tainted their reputations, maybe even permanently, no matter whether they were convicted or not.”

  “You’d think that would have furthered the cause to take away some of the prestige of studying classics in the traditional way and to open the door for a more relevant approach. Much simpler than killing them and maybe turning them into martyrs.” Clare held the door to the station open and they walked inside. “Which brings us back to it being a coincidence that someone murdered the two members of the faculty who were involved in the cheating thing. And I remember from our last murder case how little either of us likes coincidences.”

  “We hate them,” Kent confirmed. “They’re messy, and they usually are indications that we’re heading in the wrong direction. Don’t forget, though, that we only found the evidence from Davies and Morris because they were murdered. We might have found similar proof if two others had been chosen.”

  “Great, now it’s a which came first, chicken or egg scenario. I hate those, too. Did we find the evidence because they were killed, or were they killed because of the evidence we found?” Clare clutched the hair at her temples in her fists. “I’m getting a headache.”

  Kent was, too. “Go get some water. Or caffeine. Take a break. Ayari will be here in an hour, and maybe we’ll be able to learn something from her perspective when we talk to her in person.” She sighed. “One of us needs to be on her game, so it’d better be you because I have to go do some admin work and make my headache even worse.”

  She and Clare parted ways, and Kent went into her office. She’d been neglecting her regular work, and even after a mere few days it was beginning to create alarmingly high piles. One stiff breeze when someone opened the door, and her office would look like Morris’s did, minus the clothes on the floor. She did have some standards.

  She checked her watch, and then pulled out her cell instead of getting to work. She had five minutes before Tig’s class started.

  “Hey,” she said when Tig answered.

  “Hey, yourself. So, are you calling to tell me you and Clare solved the case?”

  Kent laughed, suddenly feeling very glad that she had made the call. “You mean, on the walk from Denny to the station? Yes, we did. Everything’s neatly wrapped up, and this is all over.”

  Tig laughed, too. A welcome sound over the phone. “Well, that’s a relief. Good job, you two. Now I’ll be able to sleep more peacefully.”

  “Speaking of sleeping,” Kent started. Or not sleeping. Either one. “I wanted to ask if you’d come stay at my house tonight. I’ll feel better knowing you’re safe.”

  “With you?” Tig asked, then another laugh. “Sorry, stupid question. Of course you’ll be there, too. Yes, I’d like that. Just for safety’s sake, of course.”

  “Of course,” Kent agreed. “There’s no other reason I can think of to have you spend the night with me.”

  “I’m hanging up now. If we talk about this much longer, my cheeks will turn bright red. Pair that with these bruises, and my students will think our department is becoming a clown college, not Med Studies. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “I’ll pick you up at Denny after your last class,” Kent said before ending the call.

  She spun her phone slowly in her hand as she replayed the conversation in her mind a couple of times, then she resolutely put the cell to one side and pulled the first paper off the stack. A request for a shift change, how exciting. She signed the form and moved it to one side before reaching for the next task.

  * * *

  She happily locked the door on the rest of her work once the desk officer let her know Ayari was in the conference room. She joined up with Clare on the way, and they entered the room together.

  While Clare handled the introductions and the forewarning that the interview would be recorded, Kent observed the professor. She was wearing a similar outfit to the one Kent had first seen her in, but this time instead of reds and purples, she was in a sunny yellow shirt and banded trousers with a bright spring-green head wrap. The hint of yellow undertones in her light brown skin and the etched laugh lines on her face gave a sense of warmth to her black eyes. She had a ready smile and seemed amused by the experience of being called to the station. Kent remembered reading the same tone into her expression when she saw her at the Davies v. Morris bout. Her demeanor was relaxed, and Kent wondered what she thought about the chaos occurring on campus. She seemed detached, but this was meant to be her new home. The demise of the Classics Department—and by extension, the Med Studies program—would mean a shift in her personal career, as well as a major roadblock to the exposure these university students would have to her culture.

  She would have thought Ayari would at least seem mildly concerned.

  “I understand that you were instrumental in designing the expanded Mediterranean Studies department at UW, weren’t you, Professor Ayari?”

  She inclined her head, as if graciously receiving Kent’s accolades. “I proposed the concept, yes, but there were many at the university who had already been considering the change. I merely provided some guidance in terms of courses and ways to integrate the various cultures into the existing program. Professor Weston had been working on a similar project, and she and I have worked together to design the new curriculum.”