Death in the Age of Climate Change: The Dome, The Stone, The Battery

By Miles Orvell

Professor Trevelyan, a distinguished academic approaching a mid-life crisis,  is pulled out of his comfortable academic life and into a vortex of mysteries involving climate change.  He teams up with the brilliant Philadelphia Detective Naomi Tanaka, whose Asian-American background and family history inspire her to work for justice.  Together, they encounter a world of kidnapping, murder, and violence. In the first story, "The Dome," Trevelyan discovers a ruthless scheme of global proportions that promises to save the world, providing a haven from the terrors of climate change--but only for the very wealthy.  In the second, Trevelyan and Tanaka track a murderer who seems fixated on Native American artifacts, and Trevelyan comes close to becoming yet another of his victims.  In the third, Trevelyan's friend, a chemist, is kidnapped on the verge of releasing his revolutionary invention of a new kind of battery that will transform electric vehicles.   Philadelphia and its neighborhoods are the background for these stories that find Trevelyan and Tanaka falling into mysteries and falling in love as they discover that climate change is not only changing the planet but changing human motivation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miles Orvell
• Release date: Apr 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224576326

Miles Orvell

Miles Orvell taught American literature and culture for many years at a major university and has authored several prize-winning scholarly books. These mysteries begin a new, post-retirement career, and were begun as academic satires, but they soon evolved into stories reflecting the conditions of climate change that affect us all. They are escape fiction dealing with the inescapable.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The Buddha—a light green plaster model about eight inches high—sat in Trevelyan’s office on the top of a low metal book-case for ten years, until one day it was gone. 

Professor Telford Trevelyan was, at forty-two, the author of three celebrated books—A Neurological Critique of Reader Response Criticism; The Criminal’s Guide to Urban Space; and The Culture of Empiricism: Epistemology and Experience. He knew his dress code was monotonous—dark blue everything—but he felt silly dressing in colors. He loved teaching and dreaded nothing more than the suppressed yawn, always poorly disguised, that would overtake a student's face during class.  He tried to avoid being cornered at cocktail parties, especially with non-academics, who would ask him—as they did all English professors—What's your favorite book?  Recently, feeling slightly burned out from his accelerated climb up the academic ladder, he’d begun to wonder if he was approaching a mid-life crisis. The main symptom was feeling simultaneously restless and in the doldrums, as if he was pacing the deck and waiting for the wind to pick up.   

He had seen a dozen students that day—some to discuss their paper topics, some to discuss their dissertation chapters, some to talk about whether they should go to graduate school, others to discuss dropping out.  It was the second week of the Fall semester, and everything was starting up very quickly.  After the last one left, he had sat down for a moment to clear his head and focus on the calming influence of the Buddha for a minute, as he sometimes did.  He usually wondered why and how people could meditate—really meditate—for days at a time, when all he could manage was about a minute.  What do you think about? he wondered.  He could never put his mind into anything resembling a trance or even a state of relaxation.  A minute was enough, really all he could handle.  And that's when he noticed that the statuette, the intended focus of his quasi-meditation, was missing.

The Buddha had arrived years ago at the end of a dinner out with a Japanese family who were celebrating their son’s graduation from college and invited several of the student’s teachers to a fancy Japanese restaurant.  The father commanded the son, in Japanese, to order more dishes, more drinks.  The son nodded obediently and ordered more dishes, more drinks.  They talked about wild monkeys in Japan, about the absence of squirrels, and about the meaning of rats in Japanese art. At the end of the dinner, the mother, who had been silent, rose bashfully and took out a bag of gifts.  With ritual solemnity and lowered eyes,  she proffered a scroll to one professor; another received a hand-painted fan.  Professor Trevelyan was given a statuette of the Buddha, and it had sat peacefully in his office—until it disappeared.

Trevelyan looked around the office, checking every visible surface.  Maybe he'd moved it and forgotten? 

That's when he noticed a tennis racket, in a red plaid zipper case, in the corner next to a chair. Inside the zipper case, written neatly in ball point pen, was the name of a girl, Trudy Winter, together with a phone number.  He recognized the name but struggled to remember the face from a couple of years ago.  He assumed one of his visitors had left it there, having borrowed the racket from Trudy.  He had no recollection of anyone walking in with a tennis racket, but there it was, and Trevelyan decided to call the number.  Trudy Winter? The name was edged with  a significance that kept slipping away.

A woman answered.  Was this a joke? she asked, nervously.  Trevelyan had heard that line in movies so many times, that he almost knew what was coming next.  Her daughter had been missing since last April, and she'd received tips—all of which turned to dust—many times before.  Yes, Trudy used to play tennis.  How did he get it? Could she come and pick it up? What could it mean? she asked in rapid succession.  The trauma of her missing daughter came back to the woman—Nancy Winter—in full force, and she gave Trevelyan a quickly abbreviated version of what had happened:  Trudy had been caught on a surveillance camera in Grandison’s, a flower store in Chestnut Hill,  buying a bouquet of blue flowers—they were later identified as Myosotis, or Forget-Me-Nots—and that, ironically,  was the last trace of her. What could the racket have to do with that day? Trevelyan wondered.

He felt he had to invite Nancy Winter to come and pick up the racket and at least tell her how it had landed in his office.

While speaking with Trudy's mother, Trevelyan was staring at the plaid racket cover, and when he got off the phone he noticed a small pocket on the outside with two tennis balls, relatively fresh-looking, and a receipt from a sports shop near campus for a can of Wilson tennis balls. It was dated the day before, and it was made out to Brandon Phillips, a student who had been in his office earlier in the day to discuss his essay on spiritualism in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle.   

Philips had written a clever analysis of the character of Holmes, arguing that the secret to Holmes's success as a detective—his powers of observation and deduction—derived from a spiritual force and that Holmes often entered a trance state as he sought to assemble seemingly meaningless clues, emerging with an almost clairvoyant sense of the logic of the crime.  Doyle had become convinced that contact with the spirit world was possible and vigorously promoted this view after 1918;  Phillips saw this later interest in spiritualism as prefigured by the detective's ostensibly higher powers.  In a neat twist at the end, Phillips discussed the Doyle-Houdini relationship and the conflict between them, for the world's greatest magician had proved repeatedly that spiritualists were merely tricksters—like himself; while Doyle, who had invented in Sherlock Holmes a genius of ratiocination, seemed insanely credulous when it came to spiritualist hoaxes.  Phillips portrayed the relationship between the magician and the author as a replication of Holmes and Watson, where Doyle became the credulous Watson to Houdini's rationalist Holmes. The essay had won the English Department's Wentworth Prize late last spring, and Trevelyan was intrigued by the student author and had finally gotten around to inviting him to his office for a chat about Doyle, one of his favorite mystery writers.  He was even more intrigued when he met Phillips, who was smart, slightly raffish, with a red kerchief knotted around his neck, and by turns respectful and impertinent, as if he couldn’t quite decide who he was. 

Now, he would invite Brandon back so that he could retrieve his—or Trudy’s—racket cover.  He knew he might be opening doors that were best kept closed, but he had to ask Brandon where he got it. 

That was tomorrow.  In the meantime, Trevelyan went home  to his apartment on the Parkway.  He parked in the underground garage and took the elevator to 16, where Mischa eagerly awaited him.  He had refused to give Mischa—a cream-colored miniature poodle—a shaved frou-frou look, preferring to let him evolve in the direction of a sheep dog, which was more to his personality—the dog's, and also Trevelyan’s.  He took Mischa for a walk on the Parkway, toward City Hall and came back twenty minutes later.  He had dinner watching Jeopardy!—correctly naming the four Bronte sisters in Final Jeopardy—finished cleaning up, and sat at his computer, where he was reading Kenneth Burke's Towards a Better Life.  Mischa lay on the rug, looking up at him.  You moralistic dog, he said in friendly mockery, echoing a line from Burke's novel, which he had been trying to read.  But honestly it seemed unreadable, and the line was gratuitously insulting to Mischa, who was moral, perhaps, but not moralistic, and whose front paws were casually and elegantly crossed, as usual.  Mischa hopped up on the comfy reading chair, where he sprawled happily and closed his eyes. Trevelyan too closed his eyes, wondering whether he should follow his new rule, which was not to read books beyond the point—or rather, more generously,  five pages beyond the point—where they had ceased to interest him. 

He got up and walked to the windows overlooking the parkway sixteen stories below him. Staring at the years ahead, he wondered if our better lives—all of our better lives—were behind us. Are we all, in the 21st century, as the waters rise around us, burying the sea coasts, drowning in an ocean of nostalgia.  Portland, Oregon, where air conditioning isn't needed, hit 112 in June.  Ocean condos collapsed in Miami beach.  Rain and hail were pelting the Northeast for a solid week. Germany and Belgium were flooded.  Every year there was another thousand year event.  Forest fires, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, drought in California, what else do we need?  One degree at a time, the earth was getting warmer. It was as unnoticeable as the change from day to day of a 12 year old on her way to 13. You don't see it happening, but it is.  You trust the world to more or less stay the same from one day to the next,  just as you trust the free market to decide your lives.  Freedom is sacred.  Die Free.  Live Free.  Don't let the Government control your life.  Don't let the Government get inside your head or your body.  No vaccines,  Covid or no Covid. You are heroes, don't give in . . .   Trevelyan was somewhere between outrage and resignation and needed a drink.

He went outside to feel the breeze on his balcony. There was a café table and two chairs, and a hammock in a swing.  He chose the hammock, which was in the shade.  He wanted to sleep, to dream of utopia and the better life.  Gently rocking in the hammock, Trevelyan was soon drifting on a rubber raft in a shaded backyard swimming pool, wondering how the world could be saved.  With an electronic switch in his hand, he could order up gentle waves, simulating a stream; he could command a wave that would travel from one end of the pool to the other, lifting him on his raft.  The waves got stronger and higher, and he held on to the sides of the raft, when suddenly, looking around, he realized that he was in the ocean and the weather was changing from a calm late afternoon to a cloudy, darkening twilight. It began to rain, and still he held on, as the raft was carried out to sea, with thunder and lightning blazing in the heavens;  he felt like the sailor in Homer’s Gulf Stream, in the middle of a storm, a boat on the distant horizon,  until he looked around and saw that he was drifting toward an island, which now seemed only a hundred yards away.  The raft landed gently on the beach, and Trevelyan got out.  Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, even Caliban, were all there standing quietly and smiling, waving their arms and dancing little steps of greeting.  Welcome, they said.  And Prospero announced:  The island you have reached is an experimental ocean safety haven, designed to appear when drifters at sea need help.  It is an imaginary island,  we’re sad to say, a mirage.  But even so .  At that moment, Trevelyan's cell phone rang: it was an automated message from the doctor's office reminding him of his appointment late the next day.   He would need to be at school early. Brandon was coming at 9:30.

CHAPTER 2

Brandon Phillips arrived the next morning, eager to retrieve the tennis racket.  He had a backpack slung over his shoulder, heavy with books and was wearing a black T-shirt with ominous white lettering:  Camp Crystal Lake.

Why don't you sit down? the professor said. 

Thanks.  Oh, I actually have a class in like 30 minutes.

OK, I just wanted to check with you on something.  He decided to put the Buddha on hold.  Did you leave this racket here yesterday? Trevelyan said, holding up the racket.

Phillips looked guilty, but said,  Yes, as a matter of fact.  I was going to stop by and see if it was here today.

So — it’s yours?  Trevelyan pressed.

Phillips looked down uneasily.

Kind of.  Well, I mean, I borrowed it.

Ah, I see, Trevelyan said.  Yes, I wondered, because the name inside the racket cover is not your name.

Right,  my girlfriend—last year, I mean—gave it to me, Brandon Phillips replied.

Would that be Trudy Winter?

Yes.  No— I mean I got it from Carol Richards.

She gave it to you?

Well, kind of.  I borrowed it. I still have the racket. 

Brandon was sounding confused, and they both knew it.

Do you know where Carol found it?

No idea, Brandon replied.  Wait— she was taking a tennis class I think, and at the end of the class, Trudy had left the racket in the locker room, last spring it was. I think that’s it.  Can I have the racket? 

Uh, not today, Brandon.  You know of course that Trudy's been missing for five   months.

Yes, of course,  he said, looking glumly uneasy.  After a long silence, I know.  It's been awful.

Yes, Trevelyan agreed.  I'm talking with her mother soon, and I wanted to show her the racket, so I'll hold onto it, if you don't mind.  Oh, and can you give me Carol Richards’ number?  She gave you the racket, remember?

Mrs. Winter knocked on his door at 10:30 the next day, right on time. Trevelyan thought she looked like an athlete, or former athlete at least, wearing blue jeans and running shoes, with a white summer shirt that hung out. She was in her early forties, had short grey hair and wore a locket around her neck.  She looked nervous and smiled sadly, and Trevelyan offered her a chair and some coffee. 

The racket was Trudy’s, Mrs. Winter quickly confirmed.

Trevelyan told her how it came into his office and asked about the tennis class.

Yes, she was taking that class last Spring and I think she would leave her racket in the locker room—they had a place for them—and it was toward the end of the semester that she disappeared—April 25th. 

Was Carol Richards a friend of hers?

I guess so. Her name came up during the investigation last spring.  Trudy didn’t talk much about her friends.  I only know that she was dating someone for most of that semester.  When we reported her missing, the police interviewed him—her boyfriend—but he told the police that he'd broken up with Trudy a couple of weeks before her disappearance. The police also told me that her friend Carol—that’s when the name came up— said she’d begun seeing someone else, someone in the Business School she had met in the B-School Library—no, the café, actually.  They never located that person, and the last we saw of her was the surveillance video in that flower store in Chestnut Hill. She was buying a bouquet.  Forget-Me-Nots.

I’m really sorry, Mrs. Winter, Trevelyan said.  What was his name— the boyfriend, the guy the police interviewed?"

Brandon something.

CHAPTER 3

Trevelyan felt he had stumbled onto something he wasn’t quite prepared for.  He held on to the racket, which had become a talisman of sorts, he thought, or a cursed object, he wasn’t sure which; and after Mrs. Winter left, he walked down the hall to his department chair’s office.  He wanted to see what he could find out about Brandon Phillips. 

As he knocked on the open door, leaning in over the threshold, he could see Tom Cantello working on the computer, looking up, and motioning Trevelyan into the office and pointing to the sofa.  Cantello, in his mid-fifties, tall, with dark hair and a Roman nose,  was meticulous about his office and there wasn't a paper on his desk,  just a couple of journals on the coffee table.  It was a large corner office, with a meeting table for eight, now holding about a dozen neatly stacked folders.  Cantello got up from his wooden desk, grabbed his coffee mug with the Shakespeare quotes on it, a gift from the English Majors Association,  and took a comfortable easy chair facing him. 

My dear Trevelyan, Cantello began.  What's up?  I've been meaning to see how the semester was going. We're two weeks into it, but it feels like summer is a distant memory.

Yeah, I’ve got something I need to talk to you about—kind of complicated, a student thing, Trevelyan began.

OK, sure— But how’ve you been? Cantello persisted.

He slowed down, realizing he couldn’t plunge right into it.  Some preliminaries first, please.   Oh, yes, sorry, he self-corrected.  Had a very good time at that conference last weekend.  Some funny moments—like when we had a big party in the ballroom and suddenly four mummers came in, strumming banjos and in full costume.

Oh, that conference downtown at the Marriott?  American Studies? Cantello, whose field was 18th century British said with slight disdain.

Yeah, they had to do it, Trevelyan replied.  The mummers had some opening patter, then they taught everyone from Kansas and California how to do the mummer’s strut, while they sang ‘When you’re smiling, the whole world is smiling at you.’

Local color.  Well, what they think is ‘local color’—the Program Committee.  I guess it's what people expect.  Philadelphia equal Mummers. Oh, and cheese steaks.  Did they serve them at the reception?

They did-—but wait a second, Tom, Trevelyan continued, suddenly recalling the reason for his visit. 

Before we get lost in this entertainment review, I need to pull things back to the here and now.  I need your help.  Can you ask someone to find some background on one of our students—Brandon Phillips?  And also on Trudy Winter?  That’s what I’m trying to find out— and how are they connected?  I had Trudy in a freshman class a couple of years ago, but have only a vague memory—pleasant, smart, confident, athletic, then I lost track.  She’s been missing since April.  Not a trace.  I just discovered that Phillips had her tennis racket— which he left in my office the other day. I don't know—things look a little off-kilter here, and I want to get my bearings.

That was Tuesday.  On Thursday afternoon, Trevelyan returned to the Chair’s office to see what Cantello and his staff had dug up.  It seems Brandon was a transfer student from Dade Community College in Miami, coming in with high scores and near perfect GPA.  He’d been at Fergus for a year. English major. 

Yeah, he won the department’s essay contest—last May. I was judging it this year. An essay on Sherlock Holmes. I asked him to come in so we could chat., Trevelyan said. 

Right, Cantello said.  He’s a few years older than the average student, it seems, and there are a couple of years that are unaccounted for in his record.  Plus six months in jail for a misdemeanor in North Carolina.

What?  Are you kidding? Trevelyan asked, incredulous. 

Yeah, theft.

Huh. And what about Trudy?

"OK, well, Trudy started as an English major, then switched to Environmental Studies. .  They were in the same class about a year ago.  She was in the Honors Program. 

Yeah, that was it—she was in an Honors English class that I taught.  Must have been her freshman year.

When she disappeared last spring, I was notified, Cantello declared, along with other chairs, and I know that the Care Team was alerted, did some inquiries, and came up with nothing.  I hear from Security that Brandon Phillips was questioned.  He said he'd broken up with her a few weeks before her disappearance, and that she was going with an MBA student. That checked out, apparently.

"Yeah, so I heard from Brandon.  Any trace of that MBA?

No, they’ve no idea who that is, which is very odd.  They must have kept it quiet.

CHAPTER 4

Trevelyan asked Carol Richards to come to his office the next day and she knocked softly on the half-open door as if she didn’t want to be heard.  She had texted that she’d be ten minutes late— her bus was stuck in traffic.  When she did walk in, she was breathless and apologetic.  She had on blue jeans and a pink shirt, top buttons open, long blond hair and wearing a nose ring the size of a wedding ring, which immediately made Trevelyan cringe in empathy, as he recalled the anesthetic he once was given—by injection—in that same place. 

Sit down, Carol. I wanted to ask you about Trudy Winter.

Trudy Winter?

Your friend?

Yes, of course— I was just startled. No one has mentioned her for a couple of months.

I just wanted to ask you how you happened to get her tennis racket, he asked, holding it up awkwardly, by the middle of the throat.

Oh my God!  Where did you get that?  I couldn’t find it.

Well, actually, Brandon Phillips  left it in my office, Trevelyan replied.

You’re kidding! Brandon?

Does that surprise you?

Well, yes, Carol responded.  Brandon was over with some friends for a party a few weeks ago—the first we had this year after Trudy went missing. We were so down. And it was I think a few days later that I was looking for it to loan to a friend and noticed it was missing.

He said you gave it to him, Trevelyan replied.

Huh.  Not really.

But what about the racket?  How’d you get it in the first place? Trevelyan inquired.

Trudy had left it in her locker. We were both taking the same tennis class last spring and when she disappeared, I took it home at the end of the semester, to hold for her, hoping. . .  well, you know.

Right.  Carol, was there anything about Trudy that you thought was at all strange? Any little thing that didn’t seem ‘normal’ in the time before she disappeared?

Not really.  I know she had stopped seeing Brandon.

Do you know why? 

Not really, Carol replied after thinking a moment. She said she really liked him but had met this very cool older guy at the Business School,  and he was charming, smooth, sophisticated, you know.

Did she mention his name?

Yeah, but I couldn't remember it when I talked to the police.  It just popped into my head a few weeks ago, actually, when I was watching something on TV, a talk show or something, and there was a guest by the name of Mark O'Neill.  A bell went off.  It sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. Do I know that name?  Then I remembered—that was the name of the guy Trudy mentioned, and he was getting an MBA here.

How did she meet him? Trevelyan inquired.