Celt and Pepper

by Ralph McInerny

  “I find that you and Kilmartin were rivals for the girl who ended up as his fiancée.”

  “I am not going to sit here and listen to this.”

  “Would you rather go downtown?”

  “You’d arrest me?”

  “I hope that wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “You can, of course, get a lawyer.”

  Maloney’s injured incredulity only increased. Stewart laid out what had brought him to Maloney. The rivalry, knowledge of his fragile health, the call to Kilmartin, and the pepper spray on Kilmartin’s phone.

  “When the couple got to the office, they found no present awaiting them. The phone rang, Kilmartin answered. The pepper brought on the sneeze that took his life. Did you make that call?”

  Maloney decided that he wanted a lawyer, after all. He put through a call to the main building and learned that the university counsel was in Florida. Like the rest of the campus, the main building was depopulated during the midsemester break.

  “But I need a lawyer. The police are here demanding to look at confidential records.”

  A young lawyer named Laxalt was holding down the office during this fallow period. He responded with the zeal of the young, telling Maloney to say nothing until he got there. So for nearly fifteen minutes the three men sat in Maloney’s office awaiting the arrival of Xavier Laxalt. Phil took his cue from Stewart, who sat in calm silence during this hiatus. Finally a youthful face looked in.

  “Professor Maloney?”

  “Are you Laxalt?”

  “I am. And who do we have here?” he said to Stewart.

  As a rough guess, Phil would have placed Laxalt in junior year of high school. He was short, blond, and had the look of a choirboy. Stewart told him the purpose of his visit.

  “You’re arresting Professor Maloney?”

  “Well, the idea was to take him downtown for questioning.”

  “That would be the equivalent of arrest—from the point of view of perception.”

  “Now that you’re here, why don’t I just go on with my questions?”

  First Laxalt took Maloney out of the room, where their exchange was audible but not intelligible. Phil took the opportunity to hand Stewart the note Roger had received. Roger had advised using it or not at Phil’s discretion. Maloney’s attitude made the decision easy. The note was unsigned, in capital letters and printed on a laser printer.

  THERE IS A KEY TO KILMARTIN’S OFFICE IN MALONEY’S.

  Stewart read it, looked at Phil, folded the paper and put it into his pocket. Maloney and Laxalt entered stage left.

  “I reserve the right to stop these proceedings at any time,” the lawyer said.

  “So do I,” Stewart replied. “All right, this is why we’re here. Professor Maloney resented the popularity and fame of Martin Kilmartin. He had pursued Deirdre Lacey and lost her to Kilmartin. When Kilmartin and his fiancée were about to leave for their flight to Dublin, Maloney persuaded Kilmartin to come by his office here to pick up a going-away present. There was no going-away present in the office. While they were in the office the phone rang. Kilmartin answered it and the pepper with which the phone had been sprayed brought on the fatal sneeze.”

  Maloney laughed. “First, I did not call Kilmartin and ask him to come to his office.”

  “His fiancée says otherwise.”

  “She is wrong.”

  Jimmie Stewart got out the note Phil had given him and handed it to Maloney, but Laxalt intercepted it. He read it, then showed it to Maloney. Again Maloney laughed. “Of course there are keys to the offices here. But the dean has keys as well. So does campus security. I think the maintenance man of this building has keys—at least he can get into all the rooms. So can the cleaning ladies.”

  “Let me see your copy of Kilmartin’s key.”

  Maloney looked at Laxalt, who gave his assent. From a drawer, Maloney got out a box of labeled keys. He went through them casually the first time, then he spilled the box onto his desk and examined them all again. He looked at Laxalt. “It isn’t here.”

  “I wonder what happened to it,” Stewart said in tones meant to infuriate.

  “Oh come on,” Laxalt objected. “Professor Maloney is as surprised as you are.”

  “But I am not surprised.”

  Stewart fished a plastic baggie from his jacket pocket and held it up. In it was a labeled key—721—the number of Kilmartin’s office.

  “Where did you get that?” Maloney demanded.

  “From the glove compartment of your automobile.” Stewart slid open the bag and held it toward Maloney and Laxalt. “Perhaps you can detect the smell of pepper?”

  11

  Melissa was at first Skeptical and then annoyed when Arne told her what he had done, e-mailing her poem under his name and vice versa, to test Martin Kilmartin.

  “What a sneaky thing to do.”

  “It proved a point.”

  “Which is?”

  “For some reason he didn’t like me, and I think we know what the reason was.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” But the corners of her mouth dimpled in the beginnings of a smile. A smile that could have been a prelude to tears when she remembered that Martin Kilmartin was dead. Melissa could count the number of dead people she had seen—her grandfather, a classmate in high school who had been killed in an accident. But she had never known them in the way she had known Martin Kilmartin. At the wake she had sat stunned, in the back, out of sight of the Knight brothers. She had seen Deirdre come in before anyone else noticed her and it was like seeing a ghost. She realized that she had assumed that Deirdre too was dead.

  “Melissa, he gave your poem a D because it had my name on it. And mine got a B because he thought it was yours.”

  “What poem did you submit?”

  “I only wrote one.”

  “Melissa?”

  “I didn’t call it that.” He looked away. “I called it Love Poem.”

  “And it had that line?”

  He turned back to her and nodded.

  “You dope, do you think he forgot that line? After spending a whole class on it? Obviously your little joke didn’t fool him a bit.”

  “Then why did he give yours a D?”

  “That’s probably what it deserves. Arne, neither one of us is likely to become a poet. Tell me, how did you find out about those marks?”

  “I asked Professor Maloney to let me into Kilmartin’s office.”

  “And he did?”

  “I had to talk him into it.”

  Melissa was more shocked by this than she had been by Arne’s silly little trick. Maloney had a key to Kilmartin’s office and he had used it at least once since the murder, when the office was still technically sealed off as a crime scene.

  * * *

  Maloney was no comfort and Arne had become a stranger by what he had done. Brian had gone home to Midlothian and then joined his brother’s family in Sarasota. Melissa had only Roger Knight to turn to, and she did not do so reluctantly. Suddenly he seemed just the one to talk to in her present confusion.

  “Do you think someone caused Kilmartin’s death?”

  “Whoever sprayed pepper on his telephone and then called him up—assuming they are the same person.”

  “They would have to get into a locked office to do that.”

  “Locks have keys.”

  She wanted so much to tell him then what was weighing on her mind. But when she learned what Deirdre had said about Maloney’s call to Martin just before they were to leave for Chicago all reluctance left her.

  “He couldn’t have lost his key and gotten into his office that day.”

  “No, he still had his key to 721.” Roger had made popcorn when she arrived and poured her a root beer. Phil was listening to a game in the next room. Despite the fact that Phil was a private detective, and that Roger had helped him on his cases, there was a peacefulness in the apartment that made thoughts of one person plotting to take
the life of another seem unreal.

  “Having a key of one’s own gives, I have learned, only an illusion of privacy, at least so far as institutions go. A professor is assigned an office and given keys and doubtless thinks that he alone has access to his lair. But think of it. Each morning he arrives to a clean and sparkling office. Someone has been in to make it that way, the cleaning ladies. The custodian of the building has a master key, something you learned when Kilmartin’s body was discovered. What is that fellow’s name?”

  “Branigan. Yes, he has a master key. But a funny thing. The other day Mrs. Bumstead called on him to open her office and he came upstairs and found his master key was missing. Luckily, I came along and was able to let her in with my key.”

  “But normally he would have one. Campus security also has the right and ability to enter locked offices under certain circumstances. So there are many ways a private office is less than private. One thing we can rule out, however.”

  “What?”

  “That someone could have a copy made. No key maker would copy a Notre Dame key. I speak of course of those in the vicinity.”

  “But it is physically possible. I mean, a key maker could make a copy if he wanted to.”

  Roger nodded. “So we cannot rule that out. The problem with the locked-door mystery is that there are too many keys to the lock.”

  In a way this made it easier for Melissa, but even so she chose to convey the fact to Roger by an anonymous note rather than just tell him. THERE IS A KEY TO MARTIN’S OFFICE IN MALONEY’S. It was only the day after he received the note that Roger mentioned it to her.

  “A correct but potentially equivocal use of the apostrophe. The word ‘office’ is understood after ‘Maloney’s’ of course but most people would have made that explicit.”

  “So it’s saying that Maloney had a key to Martin’s office.”

  “That is why he was arraigned today and is at large only because Xavier Laxalt arranged bail.” Roger told her of the key to Kilmartin’s office that had been found in Maloney’s glove compartment.

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “Well, he could have. Lieutenant Stewart makes it sound plausible that a jealous Maloney exacted a cunning revenge. But I can understand why Laxalt dismisses the charge as unprovable. It isn’t as if a can of pepper spray were found in his briefcase.”

  “Did they look?”

  Roger was about to toss a handful of popcorn into his mouth but stopped. “Phil,” he called. “Did they check out Maloney’s personal effects?”

  “No physical evidence was found. Apart from the key.”

  “Not even in his briefcase?”

  “I don’t remember Jimmie mentioning a briefcase. I’ll ask him tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “All right, all right. Wait till there’s a time-out and I’ll call him.”

  Ten minutes later, Phil came in to say that Jimmie had not looked through the professor’s briefcase.

  “Who’s winning?” Melissa asked him.

  “We will. We’re behind, but we’ll win.”

  12

  All the while Deirdre Lacey was missing, Branigan kept thinking of that bearded biker at Fiametti’s across the state line. And then when he heard that a former husband of Deirdre had appeared in South Bend, frightening her, Branigan thought he knew what had happened. It was knowledge he would give anything not to have. He sure as hell wasn’t going to that lieutenant, Stewart, and tell him what he knew. All he had to do was imagine doing that and he could see how full of holes his story would sound.

  Because his whole story turned on Fritz slipping the master key from his ring in that minute or so when the buxom Millie was at their table, blocking his view of the bearded biker. They’d ask if he was sure he’d had the master key on the ring at the time? Yes. He had just been showing it—and showing off—to Fritz, telling him what a big shot he was because he could open any lock in Flanner. And when did he first notice it was missing? Telling about not having the key when he was asked to let Mrs. Bumstead into the office of Celtic Studies would make him look like a bumbling fool. The more he thought of it, his story showed what a jackass he was a lot more than it pointed the finger at Fritz as the one responsible for Kilmartin’s death and the disappearance of Deirdre. And then Deirdre reappeared, back for the funeral of Martin Kilmartin.

  Branigan stood in the back of Sacred Heart while the melancholy service was held. There were maybe a dozen people in the pews, so it was easy to notice Deirdre Lacey. Afterward, the casket was put into the mortician’s vehicle and the mourners followed it on foot as it drove slowly to Cedar Grove Cemetery, where the body would be kept pending a decision on whether or not Kilmartin would be sent home to Ireland for burial. That done, there was a reception in the lobby of the McKenna Center, and Branigan helped himself to the food, more or less ignored until Stewart came over to him.

  “What’s this about losing your master key?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “It was mentioned when we were tracking down those who had access to his office.”

  “I lost it, yes.”

  “Was it the replacement key you got from campus security that you used to open Kilmartin’s office when the body was found?”

  He nodded. “I still haven’t found my own key.”

  “I suppose it’ll turn up.”

  “I hope so.”

  Branigan felt relief when Stewart left him.

  * * *

  Later that day Branigan confronted Deirdre Lacey in the lobby of Flanner. He had been on the lookout for her since returning from the post-funeral feed, but when she arrived it was with Roger Knight, sitting next to him in his golf cart. Branigan watched them as they sat for a minute in the parked vehicle. Then Deirdre patted the fat man’s arm and leaned toward him as if to be kissed, but he just smiled and nodded and she got out of the cart. She came alone to the entrance of Flanner, head ducked down against the weather. Branigan jumped forward and opened the outside door for her and then followed her to the elevator, where he got in with her. This did not startle her, perhaps because she was shivering from the cold. She had a white woolen cap pulled over her head. Only when she unbuttoned the coat did her black dress indicate that she was in mourning.

  “Seven, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “As the custodian of the building I know names but not all the faces.”

  He turned so that the plastic ID on his shirt was visible.

  “Branigan. Well, I knew your face but not your name. I’m Deirdre Lacey.”

  “Oh, I know you.” Halfway up he said, “I met Fritz Davis at a bar in Michigan.”

  “That figures.” No surprise, no hesitation. She shook her head, mildly amused, and that was all. Branigan had expected a lot more reaction than that.

  “I heard you were scared of him.”

  “Did you?”

  “The campus has been full of rumors these past days.”

  “It looks deserted to me.”

  There was that in her manner that suggested she was the lady and he the menial and this exchange with him represented some kind of noblesse oblige. Branigan, who had convinced himself that he was as smart as any of these professors and in selected areas knew a helluva lot more than any of them, was irked.

  “I think your husband Fritz stole my master key. When we met, I told him about my job and showed him the key. The next time I had occasion to use it, it was gone.”

  “My husband Fritz,” she repeated. “Is that one of the rumors going about the campus?”

  The car stopped and the door slid open. The seventh floor. Branigan followed her out. She stopped and looked at him impatiently.

  “I think he stole my master key.” Didn’t she get it?

  “Have you told the police?”

  “Do you think I should?”

  She looked at him. “Well, you’re telling me.”

  “Look, I wanted to warn you. If the guy frightens you and if he’s got a
key to all the doors in this building, well, I thought you might want to take it into account.”

  She melted and put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. Of course. And I’m grateful.” She hesitated. “Look, wait while I check my office and I’ll go down with you.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  She opened the door and flicked on the lights as she went in. The switch might have turned on her scream. She backpedaled into Branigan’s arms and over her shoulder he saw the body sprawled across the floor. Branigan stepped around the young woman, who was babbling nonsensically, and looked down at the body. At first the beard made him think it was Fritz Davis, but when he eased the body over he saw it was Padraig Maloney. The cord of the telephone was still tight about his neck. But as the body of Deirdre went limp in his arms, Branigan heard a groan from Maloney.

  13

  “I would have come down for the funeral if only I had known in time, it’s just an hour from Midlothian.”

  Donald Weber stood in Roger Knight’s office, wringing his hands and emitting a kind of keening sound.

  “I didn’t realize you knew Martin Kilmartin that well.”

  “I didn’t know him at all. That’s just the point. It’s a matter of institutional solidarity.” Weber inhaled and then took the chair Roger had been urging him toward since his unexpected arrival. “The formality is all the more important when it is a question of someone like Kilmartin.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well,” Weber said, and sighed. “How can I put it so you won’t find it offensive yourself?”

  There was, Weber opined, a Notre Dame of legend, of tradition, of fierce loyalty. “The Notre Dame of which Malachy O’Neill was the epitome. Jim Elliot understands that, give him credit. He knows that in order for Notre Dame to go on being Notre Dame it has to develop within its tradition. Now what in hell do people like Sauer and Becky What’s-her-name have to do with that? They would be equally happy or unhappy at Meatball Tech, provided the salary was as astronomical as here.”

  What Weber meant was that there was excellence and then there was Notre Dame excellence. What he objected to was substituting generic excellence—conceding that was what the university was getting with these clowns, a questionable thesis Weber seemed ready to rebut—and an excellence peculiar to Notre Dame.