1 Picking Lemons Read Online Free PDF Page A

with a Harvard Ph.D. hood?”
    Betsy shuddered, gleefully. “Is that really how he died? Strangled with his beloved Harvard hood? You know, Edmund loved to wear his academic robes around the office. He said they made him think professorial thoughts.”
    “Yep. Well, he wore them one too many times. While he was standing at the whiteboard in his office, someone came up from behind and…” C.J. made the motion of tightening a knot with her hands.
    Betsy put her hands up to her face, half in horror, half in delight. This story was going to carry her through many a bake sale, school play and piano recital. No one she knew had anything nearly as exciting to tell. Without doubt, as someone who knew a murdered man, she was going to be the center of attention in the Elm Grove Grandma Brigade for a long, long time. Betsy refocused her gaze on C.J., waiting for more sordid yet splendid details.
    “Back to yesterday,” C.J. continued. “Walter, Peter, Jeffy and I were sitting around in the seminar room, waiting for Edmund, and, of course, all four of us were seriously annoyed at both the incredible waste of time and having to waste it with each other. We were all desperately faking interest in our cell phones, so we didn’t have to talk to each other. At about five after two, when Edmund still hadn’t shown, Jeffy offered to look for him and toodled off. Stephen arrived a few minutes later, grumpy at the world. Then, Jeffy returned shortly after that and gasped that Edmund was dead.”
    C.J. paused and took a sip of her coffee.
    “Oh, for the love of Our Lord. Don’t stop there. Then what happened?” asked Betsy.
    “Well, at first, we thought God was si ck of being Edmund’s number two and had struck the man down with a heart attack or the like. So Walter called 9-1-1, and I said that I knew CPR, which is true-ish. I know how to do CPR on a cow. So I ran down to Edmund’s office with Jeffy and that’s when I saw that no amount of CPR was going to make that seminar happen.”
    Betsy had the decency to look a little green and briefly slowed her knitting. “You actually saw him? All strangulated, lying in his office?”
    “You bet your knitting needles I did. The police reckon he had been killed sometime in the hour before we found him, so it was okay. He was freshly dead, like a pig at a spit roast. Not smelly, maggoty dead, which would have been terrible.”
    “Oooooh,” sa id Betsy, deliciously horrified and wishing she had a pen and paper to write down the details before she forgot them. She was forgetting more and more these days. Mr. Williams teased her and said she was going to forget him one of these days. Like that would ever happen. After fifty-four years of marriage, Betsy could recognize her husband’s belch at a beer and brats BBQ. “Did you see anything else important while you were there? Like muddy footprints, or cigarette butts?”
    “Sadly, I think everyone else also watches Law and Order and so are pretty careful with the evidence they leave behind at a murder scene,” commented C.J. dryly. “As the police don’t think a stranger did it, I don’t think fingerprints are going to narrow it down. The fingerprints of every faculty member and student going back three hundred years are in that office. The only thing that was strange was a ladder outside Edmund’s window, but I think it belonged to Charles. Remember, I saw him with one earlier in the day.”
    “Disappointing,” sighed Betsy. “It’s unlikely Charles did it. He’s almost ninety. If he had a beef with Edmund, he could have taken care of it years ago, when he had the strength. But what do you mean, the police don’t think a stranger did it ? Do they think…one of the faculty did? Or a student?”
    “So I gather,” said C.J. “I guess burglars have a tendency to steal things and nothing was taken. And the method of killing was very…personal. We all got to spend a long time last night answering the same question. Basically,