Stages of Grey

by Clea Simon

  Dulcie shook her head. It would be too much trouble to explain the commune. ‘I can’t imagine you have much privacy here.’

  A sputtered laugh. ‘Much? Try none,’ she said. ‘Believe me, we all know each other’s business. That’s why you can’t bother getting jealous, especially of someone like Heath. It’s bad luck.’

  With that, she batted those large, dark eyes. ‘He’s just another spangly bit of flash, really. All peroxide and banter.’

  Dulcie smiled back, enjoying the implied sisterhood. It had been a while since Dulcie had had this kind of girl talk. Not that Trista didn’t welcome it, but this woman’s flirtatiousness felt somehow less aggressive than her blonde colleague’s.

  Then again, Dulcie thought, a pang of disloyalty biting in, she might feel different if she had to work with Avila, day in and day out. In fact, she thought, as the other woman pulled what looked like a gold lamé sock down over her head, that might be the point. Was this woman downplaying the rivalries that might have heated this small room? Had someone resented the pretty newcomer for claiming Heath’s attention, even briefly?

  Avila talked about Heath in an almost disparaging tone. He was ‘just’ an actor, but so was she. And while she dismissed his affections as so much froth, she had clearly been enjoying them, back in the hotel lobby. Plus, if the handsome star really could help an aspiring actress’s career, well, Dulcie had to wonder. Could Avila have been the one to stab Amy?

  The other woman had started singing to herself, and Dulcie found herself staring at her bare back as she sorted through the clothes. Thinking about how those pinking shears had cut right through the sequins.

  ‘What is it?’ Avila was standing before her in purple satin. ‘You look like you’ve seen Hamlet’s father.’

  ‘I was wondering about Gus. About the time he lashed out at Amy.’ Dulcie was covering, but it made sense. ‘Cats can be very territorial. Do you think he felt Amy was invading his space? Threatening in some way?’

  She was fishing for a reaction, but Avila took it with another shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe? But it wasn’t like he was shy, you know? He liked to sleep right on Roni’s desk. He had a thing for paper, and she was always pulling papers out from under him to enter them into the computer. I mean, she had to, and he didn’t care.’

  ‘So maybe it was Amy he had a thing against.’ Dulcie didn’t want to think that of a cat. However, it seemed like the only logical conclusion.

  ‘Cats.’ Avila gave up the satin with a sigh and reached for her sweater. ‘Who knows?’

  The visit hadn’t turned up Gus, and Dulcie was beginning to think the cat was indeed gone. Still, she decided to stop by the theater office one more time, if only to confirm what Avila had said. But Roni was out, and the office was locked shut when she came by. After a bit of thought, she opted to leave a note. Dulcie didn’t want to push, but it would help her clarify things. She didn’t think that Roni would forget to check on their email list program. In fact, that might be where the other woman had gone, but she did want to make sure. Besides, she assured herself, it was in the theater’s best interest to deal with something that could potentially alienate the customer base.

  Pulling her yellow legal pad from her bag, she leaned against the door to write. Roni, she jotted, sorry to have missed you. Her students, Dulcie knew, would find such an opening as dated as, well, carrying a yellow legal pad. But it was just such occasions that made her glad to keep some old habits alive.

  Wanted to follow up … She paused, wondering how to phrase it. After all, Roni was understandably nervous about anyone else finding out. About that computer thing, she wrote finally. There, now she could ask about Gus – in a friendly way. And someone else we both care about.

  ‘And who could that be?’ Heath had come up, quiet as a cat, and was reading over her shoulder.

  ‘Do you mind?’ she snapped, pulling the pad toward her.

  ‘Whoa, sorry.’ He backed off, hands up in surrender. ‘It’s just that Roni’s a friend.’

  ‘A friend?’ Somehow, Dulcie didn’t think Heath had women friends.

  ‘A good friend.’ Heath nodded vigorously, shaking that blond mane. ‘I know she’s been shaken up by all of this. I want to protect her, you know?’

  ‘Well, I’m not attacking her.’ Dulcie looked at the man, wondering. Was it possible that he didn’t know that the office manager had a crush on him? Maybe he could be friends with a woman – provided he wasn’t attracted to her. ‘In fact, I’m trying to help. I’m a friend, too.’

  He stopped then, taking her in with one long, appraising glance before nodding. ‘I’ll see she gets your note, then,’ he said finally, holding out his hand.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Dulcie ripped the page free and, folding it in half, slid it under the door. ‘Roni knows how to reach me.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘Why would a cat attack somebody?’ Dulcie couldn’t help but voice the question out loud. Lloyd, sitting across from her, looked up. ‘Somebody who hadn’t done anything to him?’

  Dulcie didn’t mean to obsess about Gus. She’d tried to distract herself by calling Detective Rogovoy. He needed to know about the possible hacking of her email, and she was determined to bring up all the possible murder weapons she was finding, no matter what Chris had said. But the detective had been out, and leaving a message had been unsatisfying. So she had tried to take heart from Doug’s words – that the silver-grey cat had simply returned to a former home – but that just raised more questions about the theater’s feline mascot.

  ‘You also mean a healthy, normally well-behaved cat?’ Lloyd added quietly. ‘Because, Dulcie, some cats are simply mean.’

  ‘Lloyd! Gus wasn’t—’ Dulcie stopped herself, reminding herself that her office mate’s allergies had undoubtedly prevented him from understanding the finer nature of felines. And, in truth, she didn’t know what Gus was like. All she knew of him was what she had seen in those brief moments in the theater and then, later, in the alley. ‘I don’t think a cat who performed voluntarily would have been so badly socialized. After all, the company was quite happy to have him there.’

  ‘Some of them were.’ Lloyd put down his pen, all semblance of trying to work discarded. ‘But how much contact did they really have with him?’

  Dulcie shook her head. From all she’d gathered, Roni was the most involved with the mysterious cat. ‘Maybe I should try Roni again,’ she said, as much to herself as to Lloyd. She picked up her phone and began to dial.

  ‘Maybe,’ her office mate said, his voice low, ‘you should be focusing on your own work?’

  She paused. Lloyd was right. He was watching her now, concern clouding his round face. It was funny, she thought, how different people looked, once you knew them. Heath Barstow, for instance, had lost his golden aura rather quickly. Whereas Lloyd – pale, balding, pudgy Lloyd – could not be more dear to her. Besides, he was trying to work, and the unspoken rule in the tiny basement room was that when both were present, phone conversations should be taken outside.

  Closing her phone, she pulled her latest pages from her bag. At the very least, she could go over Thorpe’s notes.

  What you need to address is the question of Authorship. That was what her adviser had written on top of the first page, the word ‘authorship’ underlined twice. No wonder she preferred to focus her attention elsewhere. This was Thorpe at his most dense. As far as Dulcie was concerned, she had answered the question of authorship. No, she didn’t yet have a name to put on the mysterious genius who had penned both The Ravages of Umbria and the fragmented work in the Mildon. What she did have was a strong sense that they were one and the same, an unheralded ‘she-author’ who had begun her career, and presumably her life, in England and then moved to the fledgling United States some time in the early 1800s.

  What was most annoying was that Dulcie felt sure she had proof of this, too. Skimming down that first page, she saw what Thorpe had clearly chosen to ignore. Textual comparisons,
repeated phrases and motifs that carried through from work to work. Evidence, hard evidence, repeated here and elaborated on from the earlier parts of her thesis in progress. Had Thorpe even read this chapter? Had he looked at her previous work at all?

  With a sigh of frustration, Dulcie pushed the pages back into her bag. What was the point in writing more when her adviser wouldn’t even read what she had done? Some of the problem, Dulcie knew, was because of her latest paper. The piece that was waiting on publication had been done under the auspices of Professor Showalter. Thorpe’s response had been to ignore the work – almost to pretend it didn’t exist. Once it was published, however, it would be different. If it ever got published …

  ‘Lloyd?’ Her long-suffering office mate looked up at her. ‘Do you ever think, maybe, the whole process is broken?’

  ‘Constantly.’ He bent back over his book.

  ‘Sometimes, I think I’m never going to finish my thesis.’ Dulcie kept talking anyway. She needed to get this out. ‘That I’m never going to get another thing published at all.’

  ‘Oh, bother.’ Lloyd ducked down, his head disappearing behind his desk. For a moment, Dulcie thought she had finally gone too far: she had forced her friend to hide from her. Before she could apologize, however, he popped back up – a smile on his face and an envelope in his hand.

  ‘I meant to give this to you as soon as you came in,’ he said, reaching over his desk to glide it on to hers. ‘It came into the departmental offices right after you left this morning, and Nancy thought you’d want to have it as soon as possible.’

  ‘Is it …?’ Dulcie grabbed the missive and tore open the envelope. Dear Ms Schwartz, We were quite interested to read … ‘Yes! They’re taking it.’ She quickly skimmed through the rest. ‘Pursuant to revisions, yeah, yeah, yeah …’ She looked up. ‘Lloyd, it’s Chicago. They’re interested in my new proposal.’

  ‘Still feel hopeless?’ He was beaming broadly, all bother at her interruptions seemingly forgiven. ‘Still want to quit?’

  ‘I never wanted to quit.’ She was tempted to throw something at him, but this letter was too precious to ball up into projectile. Instead, she lay it flat on her desk – as flat as she could, considering the piles of paper underneath – and read it through once more. For a letter from one group of English language scholars to another, it was amazingly opaque. ‘There’s something here about coordinating with my departmental chair, but that’s fine. I need Thorpe to be a little impressed with me, and if this doesn’t prove the validity of my authorship argument, I don’t know what will.’

  ‘Authorship, huh?’ Lloyd sounded amused, and Dulcie realized that she hadn’t voiced her latest problem out loud. ‘Is Thorpe still going on about that?’

  ‘Yeah.’ It didn’t bother her quite so much any more. ‘You have any ideas?’

  ‘I’m wondering if you might circumvent the entire issue. Reject the very idea of authorship.’

  ‘Uh-oh.’ Dulcie sat back. ‘Are you getting all postmodern on me, Lloyd? Because my entire thesis is based on identifying The Ravages author.’

  He chuckled, shaking his head. ‘No, actually it’s not, Dulcie,’ he said, his voice gentle. ‘It’s based on a body of work. Who wrote it might not even matter, except as a construct. Take The Metamorphosis, for example—’

  ‘Oh, please, not more of that.’ Dulcie didn’t think she could deal with this kind of analysis right now. ‘Look, Lloyd, I know you’re trying to be helpful. But you might as well say that, I don’t know, that The Ravages wrote themselves. Or that my cat really writes my work when I’m asleep each night.’ She paused. That was an intriguing idea. Only Esmé, she was sure, would demand credit. ‘Or that Gus was behind what happened over at the URT …’

  ‘Dulcie.’ Lloyd’s tone let her know she was going too far. ‘I know things are topsy-turvy there, but—’

  The ringing of her phone interrupted them.

  ‘Sorry.’ Dulcie reached for it. Had Roni gotten her message? ‘I’ll call her right back.’

  ‘No, Miss Schwartz.’ The voice was gruff and decidedly male. ‘You will not. At least if you are talking about who I think you’re talking about.’

  ‘Detective Rogovoy?’ With one hand over the receiver, Dulcie looked up at Lloyd. ‘Um, I’m in my office. May I call you back?’

  ‘There’s really no need, Miss Schwartz.’ The deep voice was so low and grumbly today that Dulcie wondered if the university detective had a cold.

  ‘But I have some new—’ She didn’t get to finish.

  ‘In fact, I’d rather we didn’t hear from you for a while.’ Rogovoy kept talking, his voice rolling over hers. ‘Except for one thing. Would you answer one question for me, Ms Schwartz?’

  ‘Sure.’ She had so much to tell him. Lloyd, meanwhile, was quite openly staring. At least she wasn’t disturbing his work. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you know what “leave it alone” means?’ It wasn’t a cold that she heard in his voice. It was more like a bark. ‘As in, leave the solving of a major crime to the professionals, Ms Schwartz.’

  ‘But I didn’t …’

  ‘You’ve been calling the theater, Ms Schwartz.’ The detective didn’t let her finish. ‘You’ve gone by. Asked questions.’

  ‘I was asking about their cat, Detective Rogovoy.’ She had to make him see. ‘Their cat, Gus. He’s a Russian blue. A short hair, though even a long-haired cat in this weather—’

  ‘Enough, Ms Schwartz.’ The voice on the phone had gotten quieter. ‘I, well, I believe you. Not that anyone else would.’ Dulcie had the distinct impression that this last bit was to himself. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘How can it not …?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter because you’re interfering in what is still an active investigation. Yes, even if you’re only asking about the cat. People are talking about you, Dulcie. We’ve had complaints.’ A sigh like an ocean wave broke over the line. ‘Please, Dulcie – Ms Schwartz. Leave this one alone. I’m sure the cat will be fine without you. Okay?’

  ‘But I’ve managed to find out some—’

  ‘Okay?’ There was thunder in that voice.

  ‘Okay, Detective.’ She felt the weight of her assent. ‘I will.’

  ‘Thanks, kid.’ And he was gone.

  ‘The police?’ Lloyd asked as soon as she’d hung up.

  Dulcie nodded, too disheartened to answer. ‘I guess I better get to work. Appropriate revisions and all that.’

  ‘At least you know it’s been accepted.’ Lloyd was trying, she had to give him that.

  ‘Yeah, I think so anyway.’ She didn’t have the heart to wade back into all that bureaucratese. ‘All I have to do is rewrite it, figure out the authorship – and not think about one poor cat who may be lost in the Cambridge winter.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘Wait, Rogovoy was asking about authorship?’ Dulcie climbed the steps from her office, the reception getting better as she surfaced.

  ‘No, no, that was the letter. And Thorpe.’ Dulcie had been hoping they could meet for lunch, but the downside of Chris not working nights was that his days were busier. She had reached him on his way to a tutorial in the Quad, less than a quarter of a mile – but an unbridgeable distance – away. Well, the plus side was that she could go back to the Mildon. ‘Rogovoy was warning me off going back to the theater.’

  ‘But you told them about the email virus, right?’ Yelling – possibly about some sporting event – was audible over the line.

  ‘I did. Chris, are they playing Frisbee?’ Dulcie remembered her own undergraduate years as being full of books and late-night talks. ‘Aren’t they freezing?’

  ‘Last game before the big storm.’ Chris, who clearly had different memories, was laughing, but Dulcie gasped. ‘What is it, Dulce?’

  ‘We’re getting a storm?’

  ‘Nor’easter.’ Chris sounded resigned. ‘It is January, Dulcie.’

  ‘I know, but …’ She swallowed the lump that had risen into her
throat. ‘Gus, Chris. A cat, out in a storm.’

  There was quiet on the line. Dulcie waited. She didn’t have to spell this out, not to Chris.

  ‘Look, honey. Why don’t I meet up with you after my students take off? We can do a search – not in the theater, but outside. If he’s still inside, he’ll be fine. And if we are just searching the alleys, then we’re not bothering anyone. Okay?’

  ‘Chris Sorenson, I love you.’ She could feel tears springing into her eyes. ‘Yes, that would be great. In fact, I think I’ll call Roni and tell her. Gus is her cat, basically, so I’m sure she’ll want to help. Maybe she can get more of the URT folk to join us.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, Dulce.’ Her boyfriend’s voice had become cautious. ‘Maybe we should stick to just us.’

  ‘But it gets dark so early these days.’ Dulcie’s mind was racing. ‘And if we can get more people – especially people who Gus knows, so maybe if we call to him, even if he’s scared …’

  ‘Dulcie, think about it.’ Chris sounded serious. ‘You were just warned to stay away from the theater.’

  ‘But you just said it, Chris. We won’t be looking in the theater. We’ll be outside …’

  ‘Don’t you see, Dulcie? You didn’t talk to the police. You only talked to people in the theater.’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘So one of them dropped a dime on you, Dulcie.’ Chris’s voice was clear now, and his words sent a chill down Dulcie’s spine. ‘One of them told the police that you were out of line.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘Does it even matter who said what?’ Dulcie collapsed into her seat. ‘I may never know.’

  ‘The Philadelphia bequest?’ The little man gently placed a page in front of her, as if offering solace.

  ‘That, too.’ With an overly dramatic sigh, Dulcie reached for the page in its protective coating. ‘And, that’s what I should be focusing on, Mr Griddlehaus. Thank you.’