Hula Done It - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,47

go. Easier said than done. So I ended up spending the entire day in my cabin, climbing the walls."

I set my flatware out, shook out my napkin, and dug in while Bailey scanned the cafe with wary eyes.

"I probably shouldn't be here right now, but one more minute in that cabin and I would have ended up in a rubber room. That cubicle isn't a stateroom; it's a prison. If I had claustrophobia, I'd never be able to survive."

If she had claustrophobia, she probably would have been advised to cash in her 401K so she could afford the cabin with the piano, flatscreen TV, Jacuzzi, and floor-to-ceiling glass wall with attached balcony. "I -- uh, I got a chance to talk to one of Professor Smoker's students today," I said as I chomped down on a pineapple chunk. "A woman by the name of Jen. I think you probably know her. Blond hair? Killer tan? She accosted you and Professor Smoker after his lecture yesterday?"

"Jennifer French." She exhaled a quick breath. "The bitch."

A waiter in a red vest and pressed trousers took my drink order and hurried off to fill it. "I got the impression from a brief conversation that she thinks the same thing about you."

Bailey leaned back in her chair, taking a moment to polish her glasses on her napkin. "You know what I wish? I wish the earth would open up and swallow Jennifer French whole."

"I heard she was yelling at you outside the infirmary last night."

"You heard? The whole ship probably heard!"

"What's her problem?"

"I gave her an F on a final exam last semester, and she won't let me forget it."

"You flunked her? You were teaching a course?"

"Yeah. For the past two years." She paused for the waiter to serve my iced tea before speaking again. "I was Professor Smoker's teaching assistant. Jen cheated on her final exam, so I flunked her. Well, we flunked her. She pleaded her case before the honor board, but they arrived at the same conclusion. She'd gotten hold of copies of past exams, so she knew in general what the final essay question would be, and that's cheating."

"A lot of colleges make previous final exams available to students. Where's the crime in that?"

"Professor Smoker never made his exams public. That's the difference. We have a strict code of honor at the university, and Jen violated it, so she got exactly what she deserved. An F."

Uh-oh. "Did that F prevent her from graduating?"

"Of course it did. But she's not going to lay that at my doorstep. It was her own fault. She tried to convince Professor Smoker to overrule the board's decision, but their ruling is always final. Not that that meant anything to her. Why do you think she's on this cruise? She wanted to get Professor Smoker alone in paradise so she could work on him to manipulate the board into changing its decision. Unfortunately, she made such a scene after the lecture yesterday that he told her not to approach him again until she grew up. She left in a huge huff, which is pretty typical behavior for her."

"And that's the last time they saw each other?"

"As far as I know."

But I wasn't so sure. "If you and Professor Smoker parted company while he checked out the golf simulators, they could have seen each other again." I looked her square in the eye. "It could have been Jennifer who confronted him at the rail. You said yourself you weren't sure if the person was a man or a woman."

"But..." Bailey's eyes widened in shock. "Are you implying that Jennifer might have killed Professor Smoker? Look, she may be a certifiable nutcase, but I don't think she's capable of murder."

"You'd be surprised who's capable of murder." I chased a shrimp around my plate with a fork, trying to look nonchalant. "I guess you knew Jennifer was sleeping with the professor."

Bailey's mouth tightened in what I gauged was either anger or pain. "They all wanted a piece of him. It was a constant feeding frenzy. They were always throwing themselves at his feet, and he couldn't say no."

Seemed intellectuals had trouble with the simple thiings in life, like one syllable words.

"But I can't believe she'd kill him over a freaking grade!" She propped her elbows on the table and braced her forehead in her palms. "What was the big deal? She could have signed up for another semester. Gone to summer school. Taken a course online. It wasn't the end