by Lev Raphael
Strolling over, enjoying the seventy-degree weather and the sunshine (which you never take for granted in Michiganapolis), I told Stefan that I agreed with him. I believed Priscilla must have been murdered, that she didn’t seem suicidal or even deeply depressed, just distraught over Chloe’s murder.
Ever careful, Stefan reminded me that Angie had only said there was a chance it was murder. “Why don’t we wait to hear what she has to tell us?”
Because it was after noon, Le Village was almost empty. The French name was as close as Michiganapolis got to a French restaurant, that and the interior, which was in country French colors of rose and apple green. All very restful, from the frilly cafe curtains to the delicately floral wallpaper. The menu was broad (Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Thai), the food tasty and relatively inexpensive. One of the waiters, Nguyen, seemed to dote on me and Stefan in his shy way, smiling whenever we were affectionate with each other.
He was there today, and waved us to our favorite corner table. I prayed that he wouldn’t mention the conference deaths. He didn’t.
“There’ll be three of us,” Stefan said, and Nguyen moved over another chair. His black pants and white shirt made me think of waiters in Paris.
Angie bounced in right after we were seated, and plopped into her seat, looking like a breathless, delighted Claudette Colbert.
“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” she announced.
Nguyen brought us tea and Stefan poured for all three of us. It was strong and hot.
“I’ve been talking to the Medical Examiner.”
“Margaret Case?” I asked. So that explained the phone calls.
“Right. That’s how I knew details about the way Chloe died.” She shrugged. “I dated her son Neil two years ago. We broke up, but it wasn’t nasty or anything, and since then, his mom’s been really nice to me. Hey, maybe she wanted him to date someone else!”
I didn’t tell Angie that Dr. Case had refused to talk to me about Chloe, or at least hadn’t returned my phone call. But maybe that was just because she was busy. Stefan was often reminding me not to take things like that personally, to remember that other people had lives, too, and crises, and family trouble, and illnesses, and crowded schedules.
I was jealous of Angie’s access and also felt stupid, because I’d forgotten to try getting in touch with Dr. Case again. But I was glad that someone knew more about what was going on.
We ordered, and Stefan said to Angie, “How could you find things out at all? Isn’t the information confidential?”
“It should be, I guess, but then people don’t always go by the book. It’ll be in the paper tomorrow, anyway. Most of it.”
I halted Stefan’s interrogation. “Listen, I don’t care about the ethics right now. What I want to know is why Priscilla’s death is suspicious.”
“Okay,” Angie began. “There were anomalies on the scene.”
“Anomalies,” I repeated, pouring myself more tea.
“Yeah. It’s definitely her gun—”
“I still can’t believe Priscilla owned a gun.”
Angie shrugged. “That’s no big deal. Lots of women do.” She picked up the thread: “And there was the gunpowder you’d expect to find on Priscilla’s hand, and for sure her finger was on the trigger.”
“But?” I asked.
“But the bullet’s angle of entry was off.”
Stefan asked what that meant.
Angie warmed to her theme, face beginning to flush. “See, suicides generally shoot themselves in the temple, or put the gun in their mouths. Shooting yourself in the heart is much less common, and the bullet didn’t seem aimed right. It came up towards her chest”—Angie demonstrated—”and not straight in.”
Our food arrived. We were sharing shrimp in a tangy sesame seed and orange sauce and shredded lamb sautéed with scallions. For a few minutes, we piled our plates with rice and vegetables, shrimp and lamb.
Then Angie continued, wielding a mean set of chopsticks while she spoke. “There weren’t any signs of a struggle, but the most compelling piece of evidence was the position of Priscilla’s body. She was in the passenger’s seat, not the driver’s seat. That only makes sense if someone else drove her to the parking lot.”
“I don’t follow,” I said, relishing my shrimp.
“Okay. Picture this. Why would Priscilla drive into the parking lot, park, then move over to the other side to shoot herself?”
Stefan had an answer. “Maybe Priscilla didn’t want to call attention to herself by slumping over onto the wheel after she shot herself, and getting the horn stuck. She wrote mysteries. That’s the kind of thing she would have figured out.”
Angie shook her head. “They tested that already. Even if you lay right on top of it, that’s not enough. You have to press down with your hand. Hard. So if a body fell on it, it wouldn’t have got stuck and stayed that way.”
We were talking about death and a body—the body of a friend—but I ate as if I hadn’t eaten all week.
Stefan sat back in his chair just as Nguyen came by to ask if every thing was all right. I smiled at him and said, “Perfect.” He thanked me and went back to the kitchen. We were all alone in Le Village, and it felt good not having to worry about being overheard.
“But what about the paperback of The House of Mirth?’ Stefan threw out to both of us. “If it was Priscilla’s book, whether there were finger prints or not, maybe she left it at Chloe’s body so people would know that she was going to kill herself.”
Angie frowned. “That’s kind of twisted, isn’t it?”
“Not really. The second Wharton book, Ethan Frome, which was in Priscilla’s car, points to suicide, doesn’t it?” Stefan was looking to me for confirmation.
I wasn’t sure. “The main character in Ethan Frome unsuccessfully tries to kill himself, so how does that make sense? Unless the book was there accidentally. I think Priscilla must have known something about Chloe’s death, or seen something that made her dangerous. The murderer assumed she’d be arrested—didn’t we all?—and would reveal what she knew. But who drove Priscilla to the parking lot, and why, and why would she let someone who was going to kill her drive her anywhere?”
“We haven’t gotten very far,” Stefan brought out gloomily, pushing some shrimp around his plate with his fork. “There weren’t any eye witnesses either time, and checking people’s whereabouts hasn’t helped the Campus Police, has it? What can the three of us possibly accomplish?”
Even though I felt wasted, the food had changed my mood, and I wasn’t ready to give up.
To Angie, I explained that I’d tried making mental lists of the suspects before, but it was obviously time to start over.
Munching on some lamb, Angie said, “Professor Fisch.”
Both Stefan and I came out with a surprised “What?”
Angie held her hands out as if it were obvious. “I’ve been wondering what her thing is with the conference. What’s she doing there?”
“She offered to help me, since she’s good at the detail work. There’s nothing suspicious about that.” But even as I said it, I thought about Serena’s growing involvement with the conference. She’d had a strong distaste for Chloe, which I explained now to Angie. It certainly looked odd, didn’t it?
“Wait a minute, Angie! Serena may have hated Chloe, too, but how did she know that Chloe was coming to the conference?”
Stefan disagreed. “She could have found out the same way Priscilla did, and sooner—through gossip, through a colleague, who knows. And the point is, could Serena Fisch kill someone, kill a colleague?”
“Definitely,” I said, remembering her quote from Conan. Then I told them about Joanne Gillian’s recent tirade.
Stefan said, “I forgot about her. You think she’s really nuts, not just rabidly conservative, and she has some kind of kink about lesbians.”
I glanced at Angie to see if she knew that Priscilla was gay; she seemed up to speed on that. I nodded at Stefan. “It’s
possible. She killed them both, and maybe Bob helped psych her up to it. He gets more creepy each time I see him. By himself, he seems decent enough, but he’s just a shadow around her.”
“But she’s on the Board of Trustees,” Angie said.
“She’s the chair, to be precise. Does that make her a good person?” I asked.
“No. It just means she has a lot to lose. She’s so visible.”
Stefan pointed out that a murderer might feel visibility was a protection.
The three of us had no trouble agreeing that egotistical and rageful Devon Davenport, whose pride had been hurt twice by Chloe, was as likely a candidate as Grace-Dawn Vaughan. It was Angie, though, who suggested that perhaps they did it together, since they seemed chummier than you’d expect from an editor and his author.
Having overheard Crane Taylor and Gustaf Carmichael reveal that they both hated Chloe, I assumed that only one of them could have killed her—but both could have been involved in Priscilla’s murder. Then there was Vivianne, Angie said. Hadn’t she been a little too cool about it all until Priscilla’s death?
I recounted my sad conversation with Vivianne at the back of the meeting room this morning at the Campus Center, repeating the last thing she’d said in French.
Stefan said it perfectly. “La main malheureuse?”
Angie wanted to know what it meant.
“Unlucky,” Stefan said. “It’s an idiom. Literally, an unfortunate hand.”
“An unfortunate hand,” I repeated, not having seen when Vivianne said it how the phrase might have been more revealing than she in tended. We all seemed to consider that, picturing the hand or hands that had struck down Chloe and possibly Priscilla as well.
Then I sighed. “Maybe Priscilla was killed because she knew who killed Chloe, but if she spotted the murderer, how did that happen, and where?”
Stefan asked me about Van Deegan Jones and Verity Gallup. “Didn’t you say that both of them have been looking uncomfortable or strange since Chloe’s death?”
“Furtive is more accurate.”
“Okay, furtive. Maybe they had some connection with Chloe—after all, Chloe’s been at lots of conferences and universities, I assume. Who knew how they might have run afoul of her?”
“The first night, Valley suggested that Chloe might not have been the real target, that maybe it was Joanne Gillian because of her homo phobia, and Chloe was killed by mistake.”
Angie said, “You mean there’s some Queer Crusader at SUM? As if!”
We all laughed, but it didn’t last long, because we were faced with our lack of real evidence. All we had were suspicions.
“We must be missing something,” Angie said. “But what? Where do the Edith Wharton books fit in? They have to be clues.”
Stefan eyed me challengingly, as if to say: Five years working on a Wharton bibliography, reading every word ever written about Wharton in all quadrants of the galaxy, and you can’t figure this out?
Cringing, I said, “There’s no real connection between the two books, except suicide, but it doesn’t work in Ethan Frome, and it may be accidental death in The House of Mirth. If someone’s trying to make a point about failure or missed chances, it’s pretty severe, don’t you think?”
“Fingerprints?” Angie asked. “What about fingerprints?”
“Valley told me that the fingerprints on the first book didn’t match anyone’s at the conference.”
Angie frowned. “They cross-checked with the registration list?”
I nodded, and Angie asked to see it.
“I gave my only copy to Valley.”
Angie frowned, tormenting a blob of rice on her plate with her chopsticks. “Is everyone at the conference registered?”
“They’re supposed to be, but I can’t remember. Serena’s the one who handled the registrations and made up the final list.”
Stefan said it before I could. “So the fingerprints on the paperback of The House of Mirth might belong to the murderer. We just have to find out who’s been attending the conference and didn’t get finger printed. Maybe there’s someone who doesn’t have a conference badge.”
I raised my hand. “I don’t. Does that make me a suspect? I didn’t register, and neither did Serena. I’ve never bothered even thinking about checking badges. Who’s going to crash a Wharton conference?”
Stefan said, “Who’s going to run amok at a Wharton conference and kill two people? Wharton has nothing to do with it.”
“Okay. Serena will know who else doesn’t have a badge. But will she tell the truth, or try to cast suspicion on someone else? We have to find Serena, or get the final list back from Valley. How about this: one of us heads back to campus to tag along with the garden tour and try to pick up anything we can about the suspects. Someone else should go check out the commuter lot and the Campus Center and examine the murder scenes again to see if something pops up—I don’t know, an idea, a possibility we haven’t figured out. And the third person should try to find Serena.”
“Where is she?” Stefan asked.
“I don’t know if she’s on the tour or not, but it’s doubtful she’d take it.” Stefan was looking kind of dubious, so I asked him what was wrong.
“Is any of this going to make a difference?”
“Well, maybe it’s all a wild-goose chase, but what else can we try? I’ve got to do something. This is my conference, and if I don’t help figure out why Chloe and Priscilla died, it’ll haunt me forever. Personally and professionally. You know what academics are like, Stefan. They’ll call it the Killer’s Conference or some shit like that!”
“I’ll do the tour,” Angie volunteered. “After I try contacting Detective Valley like we tried before.”
I said it made sense for me to look for Serena, and that left Stefan heading for the Campus Center. We agreed to rendezvous in a few hours back there.
We paid up, and Nguyen said with concern, “You look sad.”
I nodded. “I am sad.”
Outside in the small parking lot, Angie said, “There’s one more thing to tell you. I’ve been wondering if I might have seen the killer.”
10
STEFAN AND I were both speechless, but Angie wasn’t paying attention. Her eyes were turned inward, remembering. Traffic buzzed along Michigan Avenue behind us, and students filed in and out of the giant, gleaming Kinko’s next door. The day had turned even more beautiful, highlighted now by a light breeze.
“See,” Angie said, “I live in the neighborhood where Priscilla Davidoff did, near Blanchard High School.”
I knew that neighborhood: a mixed one of faculty and students, not as quiet or as pleasant as ours.
“And I share this house with three other girls, and we’re kind of across the street from Professor Davidoff’s house and just a few houses down. Two nights ago, the night Chloe was murdered, I was up late studying after I got back from the Campus Center. I got up from my desk to stretch, and I looked out the window. This car was pulling out of Priscilla’s driveway. It was pretty late, like three or four in the morning.”
“How do you know that wasn’t Priscilla?”
Angie shook her head, looking very definite. “It wasn’t her car. She had a VW Bug—I’ve seen her driving that. This was something much bigger, and expensive-looking.”
“But why do you think that might have been the killer?” I asked, starting to feel confused. “And which killer?”
“Whoever killed Professor Davidoff, if it was murder, was probably someone she knows well, since it’s doubtful she went to the parking lot at SUM with a stranger, right? And someone leaving her house that late probably also knew her pretty well.”
I was agog now because it made sense. “Did you see the driver?!”
“I wish.” Angie frowned.
“Priscilla may have been having an affair,” Stefan concluded. “An affair with someone who didn’t want to be recognized, or even risk being seen. Why else leave so late at night?”
“That’s kind
of what I thought,” Angie said. “And maybe her being dead doesn’t have anything to do with Chloe DeVore. Maybe that’s, like, a separate thing.”
“You’re right, Angie. It really could have been the killer you saw,” I said, as chilled as if the car had driven right past me. “But it could be anyone on the list—or at least any of the women on our list of suspects, I suppose.” Then a terrible possibility occurred to me. “No—it could have been any of the women at the conference! What if Priscilla was having a quiet long-distance relationship with some woman who showed up at the conference? Shit, this is impossible.”
Stefan threw in another monkey wrench. “Nick, how do we know that Priscilla wasn’t bisexual and trying to hide it? Look at all the lesbians abandoning ship and sleeping with men these days. The person driving away from her house late at night might have been a man.”
“You’re both jumping to conclusions,” Angie said confidently. “Why does it have to be an affair? Whoever was at Professor Davidoff’s house late at night could have been a friend.” She added a little vaguely, “A friend who had some reason to kill her.”
Having delivered herself of that analysis, Angie smiled at both of us, unlocked the door to her battered Honda, got in wishing us luck, and drove off.
Stefan and I walked back to the Campus Center along Michigan Avenue, which was bursting with students in shorts and T-shirts.
“Listen, Nick. Whatever Angie saw the other night, it’s tantalizing, but it doesn’t get us any further.”
“Why not? How about canvassing Priscilla’s next-door neighbors to find out if they saw who it was driving away that night? Even if the Michiganapolis police already asked, it can’t hurt to follow up.” I didn’t let Stefan object. “I’ll do it! I’ll say I’m a bereaved friend who’s desperate to know more about Priscilla’s death.”
Stefan stopped and looked me right in the eye. “That is a stupid idea.”
