Foiled Again (Sarah Deane Mysteries) - Hardcover

Borthwick, J. S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312366558 ISBN 13: 9780312366551

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2007

Synopsis

The Drama School at Bowmouth College is staging its annual Halloween masquerade, known for being a little unusual. This year it's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with a twist---Romiette and Julio instead. English professor and sometime amateur sleuth Sarah Deane has been recruited to assist backstage with the complicated costume changes.
Drama students are known for being mischievous and high-strung, but this year things are a little more serious: During rehearsals a couple of the student actors pass the time by taking whacks at each other with the stage props, and their horseplay leaves Todd Mancuso, the brilliant actor playing Mercutio, wounded. And when Sarah stumbles upon a badly injured student hidden away in a stockroom on Halloween night, events take a turn for the worse. By the time the production is finally staged, a member of the faculty has been badly injured and a student has been killed. Talk about drama!
Sarah gets involved, of course, to sort out a mess that involves academic politics, angry actors, and student activities gone horribly wrong.

About this title

About the Author:

J. S. Bortwick lives with her family on the Maine coast, where many of her mysteries are set.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One Linda LaCroix thought that twelve years in the service of Bowmouth College's English Department should count for something. She had done her stint as a general clerk and had risen to be the department's number one secretary. So why was she being treated by the department's new chair, Professor Danton McGraw, as if she were fresh out of some second-rate two-year business school? All those little lectures on office management and academic protocol. Didn't the guy know she was a grad from Bowmouth's own School of Business--with honors yet? Didn't he see her bachelor's degree diploma framed right there on the secretaries' wall, where he couldn't miss it when he headed into his office? And this semester she and Arlene Burr, the department's chief clerk and assistant secretary, had to sign In-and-Out slips whenever they took off on a two-minute trip for coffee or to run something off the copy machine. Hit the cafeteria for lunch. Stop in the halls for two minutes to say hello to some other human. Now as the late October chills were turning the remaining leaves brown, Linda and Arlene each looked back on her past workstation as something like lost Eden. It had happened with the speed of a falling ax. Last spring and all the years before, the secretary and the clerk had had two adjoining but separate offices, both of which were placed at a safe distance across the corridor from the chairman's office. But then along came Dr. Danton McGraw, who had caused walls to be moved and partitions eliminated. The end result was that now Linda and Arlene found themselves yoked together like conjoined twins fixed in side-by-side desks in the newly created secretaries' space outside Dr. McGraw's office. Here neither could get two paces away from her chair without arousing suspicion from the sharp-eared department chairman. Worse still, neither woman could get away from the other and hunker down in the privacy of her own office space. Take shoes off, sneak a candy bar without sharing it, send a private e-mail to a friend, make a personal phone call. The result was that two good friends and coworkers were beginning to feel an unpleasant tension in their everyday work life. "Trapped," said Arlene to Linda on the Monday of Halloween week. "That's what we are. Say I want to step out of this cage to maybe get a breath of air or go pee. I've practically got to leave fingerprints and bring back a urine sample." But Linda was otherwise focused. She looked around, sniffed the air, and wrinkled her nose. "I don't know about you," she said, "but this place is really starting to stink, and it's not just grungy students coming in and hanging around. Something smells real funny, like there's a fungus growing somewhere. In a file drawer maybe." Linda was a striking woman with a strong opinion on all things. Tall, thin as a wire coat hanger, with a mane of white-blond hair caught into a crown on her head, she had a sharp little chin and narrow blue eyes. And with her whole face bravely covered in a heavy duty makeup and eye enhancements, Linda could have passed for anywhere from thirty-seven to forty-seven. Actually, she was closing in on fifty, a fact she kept quiet about. Her choice for clothing ran to clinging shirts and sweaters--all about a size 3--that still allowed her breasts full presentation rights together with constricted breathing. Then there was the snug skirt, the high-fashion boots and long purple fingernails. Altogether, Linda, known to some of the faculty clowns as "Linda Lovely," was a female who resembled one of those handsome slender but lethal insects that stand on two legs and eat family members. Most of the English Department regulars, faculty and adjuncts, did well to stay on the right side of Linda. The yin to Linda's yang, Arlene was a perfect contrast. She was a comfortably built woman with a cheerful round face, an almost comically turned-up nose, and dark brown hair pulled back with two clips. While Linda dealt with the public with the verbal equivalent of a scalpel, Arlene soothed, comforted, and counseled patience. However, until the beginning of the new semester, Arlene had pretty much taken the faculty ego clashes, the complaints of unhappy English majors, the pleas of adjuncts and teaching fellows as they came. But with the arrival of Dr. McGraw and the new secretary-clerk double-desk setup, her nervous system seemed to have developed a greater sensitivity and her natural buoyancy showed signs of leakage. Now Arlene herself took a long sniff. Well, Linda was certainly right about the smell. "I mean," went on Linda, "maybe it's the new carpet they laid before we moved over here, but I wouldn't put it past someone to poison us. A little bit. And even if no one is doing that, some new carpet dyes have fumes that make you really sick. But this smell seems to be coming right from under your desk." Arlene grimaced. "I don't think it's the carpet. But you know, I'll bet it's that mouse. I'd forgotten the mouse." "Mouse?" said Linda, lifting her feet up and peering at the floor. "Found him two days ago with that batch of blue exam books left over from the spring semester," said Arlene. "On top of those shelves." She waved at a line of shelves packed with catalogues, directories, student handbooks, and reams of printer paper. "I felt kinda bad. You know, like he reminded me of Stuart Little. But all dried up and skinny. He must have starved to death." "What," demanded Linda, "did you do with this mouse?" Arlene grinned. "I wanted to slip him into McGraw's desk drawer but lost my nerve. I need this job. Besides, the mouse might have carried that virus, what's its name?" "Hanta virus. Spread by rodents," said Linda. "So where is the mouse now?" Arlene shrugged. "I think someone distracted me just after I'd found him, so he may be right there in one of the wastebaskets. Like my wastebasket." "Oh, ugh," said Linda. "Ugh," agreed Arlene. "Okay, okay," said Linda. "I'll call Maintenance and they can set some traps or whatever they do about mice. And, for once," she added firmly, "I agree with McGraw. With everything else going on, we don't need mice." She nodded in the direction of a door with a window and the legend Chairman (gold on a black plaque) fixed below the glass. "Please, no traps," said Arlene, apparently still affected by the idea of Stuart Little. "I mean not real ones. I have a little Havahart trap thing for mice. I can bring it in. And it's no wonder this one starved. Before McGraw turned up there used to be plenty of snacks for mice. I used to keep pretzels in my drawer, and the students were always leaving foodstuff around, and of course we were allowed to have our lunch in here. I even had that one mouse, you remember, the one I called Rosie. Last winter." "I don't remember Rosie," said Linda. "We each had our own office space then, remember. But, whatever you do, don't encourage mice. McGraw is absolutely right about bringing in food. If mice really start moving in, he'll probably start having a major housekeeping inspection. He'll be going around with white gloves and a microscope. Like the army." "He was in the navy," Arlene reminded her. "Whichever," said Linda. "But listen to this. Yesterday he just found out that old Professor Morgan keeps a hot plate in his office closet--you know how far away that guy's office is, way down by the back stairs, so he must have missed it. Well, there was Morgan with a teakettle going and he'd had Chinese brought in. All those little white cardboard boxes. Talk about a fire hazard. And mouse heaven. That office is ripe, really ripe." "The poor old guy," said Arlene. "He's been here since World War Two. Or Korea. You can't change him; you can't inspect his office. You can't even get in the place without a shovel. And he's emeritus. Me, I think he's kind of a cute old geezer. And he's pretty smart. But he'll probably be given the boot by the end of this semester." "Wrong. Professor Morgan was asked back again because we lost that new nineteenth-century guy last spring to NYU. Anyway, he's been given those grad seminars on Wordsworth and Keats and Byron, and he's scheduled to go through the spring semester. I've had to print up a whole new guide and syllabus for his students." "Forget about mice. McGraw has Vera Pruczak on his mind," Arlene pointed out. "And who's to blame him there?" said Linda. "I mean, talk about a disaster. That Todd Mancuso assaulted right on the stage. In the middle of a scene. His ear practically cut off, plus almost having a fractured skull." "Yeah," said Arlene. "It was that Terri Colman and Kay Biddle who did the job. I heard from a friend who saw the rehearsal that there was blood spattered everywhere. But you know theatre people. They do things like that." "For the record," said Linda, "A lot of these gals change their names. Some have lousy ones and want something jazzy that looks good up in lights. That Louisa Scotini made me cross out her first name and use 'Weeza.' I end up making corrections whenever I send in the grades to the dean's office. As for that Todd Mancuso, honestly." "What I've heard," said Arlene, "is that Todd Mancuso is too much of a smart-ass for his own good. Thinks females are just drooling for his attentions." "So good for Terri and Kay, beating him up like that," said Arlene. "And you know they're both pets of Vera's. Anyway, the Drama Schoo...

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0312366558
• ISBN 13: 9780312366551
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368