Celt and Pepper

by Ralph McInerny

  Sitting in his basement lair in Flanner, flaked out in his easy chair, ignoring the issue of Sports Illustrated in his lap, he resolved to tell the police what he knew about Fritz Davis and how he had lost his master key to the Flanner locks. He was as certain as anything that Fritz had taken it from his ring when Millie blocked him from view, but how could he prove it? Meanwhile, the police seemed to think that Professor Maloney was behind the thing. Well at least they were onto a bearded man, even if it wasn’t Fritz Davis.

  The following morning, he unlocked his basement door and turned on the light and there was Fritz Davis, standing with booted legs apart and his arms hanging at his side.

  “How did you get in here?” His voice trilled like a frightened woman’s. Fritz held up a key.

  “You’re right. It works. I opened the outside door and then came down here to wait for you.”

  “What do you want?”

  “That’s the question I ask you. Millie says you’ve been looking for me.”

  Branigan wanted to get out of there, but his legs wouldn’t work in reverse. He went to his desk as if routine could somehow neutralize the scare of having this guy in his office. “I’m not looking for you.”

  “I thought maybe you figured out how you lost this.” He tossed the key and Branigan flubbed the catch. It jangled on the concrete floor. “I thought maybe you might point the finger at Fritz.”

  Branigan looked at the key on the floor. It looked like an orphan, all alone, off his ring. He stooped to pick it up and Fritz caught him in the behind with the side of his boot. The kick actually lifted Branigan off his feet and he sprawled across the floor. He felt a booted foot press down on the small of his back. That took his mind off the pain in his rear. His wrists were bound before he even thought of struggling. His ankles were bound next and then he was flipped onto his back. Fritz looked down on him with an evil smile.

  “What’s the number of Deirdre’s room?”

  “Look on the first floor.”

  A kick in the side. “She’s not on the first floor.”

  “There’s a list of occupants on the first floor! Alphabetical.”

  “She under Davis?”

  “Lacey.”

  “Don’t leave,” Fritz said and went out the door.

  Branigan waited a minute and then managed to sit up. His ankles were bound with telephone cord. The instrument had been tossed into a corner and the lengthy wire that enabled Branigan to use the phone either at his desk or carried to his easy chair had been jerked free.

  He began to work his ankles and wrists, more in frustrated anger than hope, and his bonds seemed to loosen. Telephone cord wasn’t meant for such a purpose. Within a minute, he had his ankles loose enough to ease one foot shoeless from the wire. He stood and then, eyes closed, in order to concentrate, worked on his wrists which were out of sight behind his back. Within minutes he was free. He took the cord and put it back into the phone and into the wall jack and heard a buzz. But when he stared at the instrument, he didn’t know what number to call. What was Stewart’s number? Campus security? Ha. And then he thought of Roger Knight and began flipping through the university directory. He punched in the numbers carefully, aware that his breath was coming in great heaving exhalations. His eyes went to his door.

  He played out line as he went to the door, making sure it was shut tightly, locked. Fritz no longer had the key. Or did he? It was not on the floor. Of course he would need it to get into Deirdre’s office.

  “Hello?”

  “Professor Knight?”

  It was. In a burst of words he tried to tell Roger Knight of his predicament. He had been beaten and tied up. Fritz Davis had gone up to Deirdre’s room.

  “Fritz Davis?”

  “He stole my master key. He had it all along. He has gone up to Deirdre’s office.”

  “Stay there,” Roger Knight said, and hung up.

  * * *

  There are minutes in a man’s life that seem as long as hours, even years. Cowering in his basement office, knowing his door gave him no protection against Fritz Davis, Branigan yet remained where he was like a mesmerized chicken staring at a line. Could he trust Roger Knight to sound the alarm? He thought of the fat professor in his golf cart letting Deirdre off in front of the building on the day of the funeral. Hardly a model of strength and agility. The phone was in front of him, and the directory, he could call others. But his mind was now filled with the closet in the corner. It seemed an island of security compared to the vastness of his office. He crossed the room, let himself in and then closed the door on darkness.

  He felt invisible there in the closet. Who would look for a grown man in a closet? He refused to admit thoughts of his wife and children, unable to bear the thought that they might witness his humiliation. He could have wept when he remembered being kicked and bound and left lying on his floor by a bearded maniac.

  My God, he had gone upstairs to Deirdre’s office. It hadn’t occurred to him to call and alert her. But Davis might have been there already by the time Branigan got free. These thoughts added to his sense of total inadequacy. He was a prisoner in the building of which he was caretaker. He had been manhandled by a half-human biker who was now doing God-knows-what upstairs. He had to do something. He turned the knob of the door and pushed. Nothing. He wriggled it, twisted it, pushed, shook it. Nothing. My God, he was locked in the closet. He slumped to the floor and, in the dark, wept.

  17

  Roger had alerted Phil and Jimmie Stewart when he received the call from Branigan and then got to his feet, put on his huge winter coat, and pulled its hood over his head. Carefully he went outside and across the icy walk to his golf cart. Soon he was crunching through the snow on his way to Flanner. The sound of a siren growing ever louder suggested that his call had had the desired effect. When he got to Flanner, cutting through by the North Dining Hall and then taking the diagonal walk to the front door, he could see several patrol cars clustered in the lot to the west of the building.

  “He isn’t there,” Phil said, emerging from the stairway door when Roger entered.

  “How about Deirdre?”

  As if in answer, the elevator doors opened and two police officers came out with a struggling bearded man in a leather jacket between them. He glared at the Knight brothers and then was hustled off toward the back exit.

  “Book him,” Jimmie called after them.

  “What’s the charge?”

  “Breaking and entering.” Jimmie held up a key. “The guy had a master key to the building.”

  Roger persuaded the two of them to accompany him down to Branigan’s quarters. They weren’t inside the room for a minute before the muffled sounds from the closet drew their attention. The door opened easily from the outside and a bedraggled Branigan stumbled into the light.

  Jimmie had Branigan tell his story first right there where the events had happened. He disconnected the cords from his phone to show what Fritz Davis had tied him up with. Jimmie’s brows lifted, doubtless when he thought of Maloney’s story about being attacked and nearly choked to death with the cord from the phone.

  “Why didn’t you report the loss of that key?”

  “I should have. I was going to. They knew about it at campus security.” But the thought of deflecting blame did not hold him. “My God, I wish I had. Maybe none of this would have happened.”

  The problem with that, Roger reflected after he had driven his golf cart back to the apartment, is that there were too many keys around, as Jimmie Stewart had already observed. And one had been found in the glove compartment of Maloney’s car. The least puzzling thing of all was how anyone had gained access to the offices in Flanner.

  The case against Fritz Davis built slowly in the following days. He was linked to the Dixie Motel by a timorous Plaisance, he had left his mark all over Deirdre’s apartment when he tore it up, apparently looking for the money. The money that Deirdre had put in her car trunk and from which it had been taken.

  “That
’s not true,” Deirdre said, when Phil and Jimmie were going over events with her at the Knights’ apartment. She had moved in with Melissa again and was only doors away.

  “Oh, I put the money in the trunk and of course it wasn’t there when you looked. But I had taken it and, when Martin and I went to Flanner that day, that awful day, I brought the backpack along and put it in my office. I thought it would be as safe there as anywhere.”

  “Where did the money come from?”

  This was a touchy point. “He must have stolen it.”

  “Had he stolen before, when you were with him?”

  “Yes.”

  Under Jimmie’s gentle urging she came up with a town in Wisconsin where Fritz had held up a convenience store.

  “He nearly choked the clerk to death. I talked him into just tying him up and getting out of there.”

  Jimmie checked out the town and sure enough such a robbery had occurred there seven years before. This had the effect of making Deirdre an accessory to the crime, but Jimmie didn’t press the point.

  Roger said, “You’re not suggesting that he stole three hundred thousand dollars from a convenience store?”

  “There were others.”

  Once her tongue was loosened, Deirdre told it all. There had been a veritable crime wave through Wisconsin and southern Minnesota as Frtiz built up their nest egg. Deirdre seemed not to realize that she was incriminating herself as much as Fritz Davis.

  “So the three hundred thousand was accumulated loot.”

  Deirdre nodded. “Twice stolen, since I took it from him.”

  “Why?”

  “Spite. Anger at the way he treated me. Mad at myself for being so stupid. I never spent a dime of that money. But I could never think of a way to get rid of it that wouldn’t cause more trouble.” She paused and a pretty smile momentarily rode her lips. “Oh, I guess it was a bit of a nest egg too.” The smile went. “I had been wondering how I could tell Martin about it.”

  “But you never did.”

  “Oh no! I could never think of a convincing enough lie.”

  The postponed question had finally to be put, a question to which Jimmie had already obtained the answer.

  “The days after you fled Melissa’s, you went to Niles and stayed in a motel there?”

  “I wanted to be close enough to South Bend to be able to hear the local news. It was so frustrating that there was nothing about Martin’s death, I mean the how and why of it.”

  “You stayed at the Bluebird?”

  Deirdre did a slow double-take. “Did I tell you the name of the motel?”

  “And Fritz Davis was also staying there.”

  There are silences and silences. From the kitchen where he had been following this exchange, Roger became aware of the beating of his own heart. How in the light of this could Deirdre retain her role as injured bride-to-be?

  “He told you that, didn’t he?”

  “Is it true?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was calm. Roger slipped out of the kitchen into the living room, insofar as three hundred pounds of human flesh can be said to slip from one place to another. Deirdre seemed paler than when she had first arrived. She sat primly on the edge of her chair, hands in her lap, looking in turn at Jimmie and at Phil.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I knew he had brought about Martin’s death.”

  “Did he admit it?”

  “I didn’t accuse him! My God, I was living in terror all those days. The past came back to me as if nothing had intervened. And of course there was Bobbie.”

  “Bobbie?”

  “His girl. My replacement, I suppose you could say. Had I been like her? That was the question that ate away at my insides. I imagine this vacant-eyed girl, looking dumbly at the television screen, reading magazines from the supermarket checkout counter, jumping when Fritz told her to jump. I tried to imagine Martin Kilmartin finding such a creature attractive and I could not. I began to think that God had spared him, taking him when he did.”

  “Did he carry you off to Niles?”

  “Oh no, no. He followed me there, as I learned. After I had checked in, he and Bobbie came to the door of my unit, and before I could do anything about it, they had forced their way in and set up camp.”

  “What was the point?”

  “The money. He wanted his money back.”

  “And you gave it to him?”

  “I did.”

  “We can’t seem to find it. Of course, he denies that there was any stolen money he knew about.”

  “Of course.”

  “Any idea what he might have done with it?”

  “Have you found Bobbie?”

  “Describe her for me, will you?”

  “When you find her, you might ask her if they’re married.”

  18

  Melissa had agreed to let Deirdre have the extra bedroom in the apartment she shared with two other graduate students—each unit had four bedrooms—in part because there seemed no way to refuse the request when Philip Knight had made it. It was like doing a favor for Roger. Deirdre she could tolerate at best. She had shared the general female disbelief when Martin Kilmartin was drawn to her. That this master of lyric excellence should find Deirdre attractive went beyond the usual mystery of male/female attractions. Both a literal and a metaphorical ocean separated the two, or so it seemed to Melissa and Mrs. Bumstead when they discussed the matter.

  “You know who is just as nuts about her,” Prudence said, hunching a shoulder at the door of the director’s office behind which Padraig Maloney ate his heart out for the attentions of Deirdre.

  “Men. They are a mystery.”

  “There’s not much mystery here,” Prudence said, and narrowed her eyes significantly.

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

  At least she hadn’t thought so until Prudence Bumstead suggested it, but afterwards she found it consoling to believe that Deirdre’s appeal was to the libido, to the animal in men, and that, when sated, would lead to her dismissal. Except that there was no diminution of Martin Kilmartin’s interest in the special student. Doubtless he had never met anyone quite like her. Neither had Melissa.

  “What did you do after getting your B.A.?” Melissa had asked.

  “Came to South Bend.”

  “You mean you just got your degree?”

  “I was a late student.”

  “What did you do before you went back to school, work?”

  “A little. We traveled.”

  That’s all. “We traveled.” It suggested affluence, the leisurely circumnavigation of the globe to ward off boredom. Melissa didn’t believe a word of it.

  “Bunk,” Prudence said, when Melissa relayed the information. “She’s a honky-tonker.”

  “A what?”

  “Eric? My son.” This was the nineteen-year-old spook with green and yellow hair of whom nonetheless Prudence was proud. “He sees her in those places across the state line.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It sounded far-fetched to me too. But I had him come in and take a good look and he said, yeah, that’s her.”

  “Do you think she takes Martin to such places?”

  The “places” in question were haunts of what snobs on the faculty would call the underclass, the misfits and losers of the world who gathered in the semi-lit places and drank and fought and raised hell.

  “Not unless he rides a motorcycle.”

  “A motorcyle?”

  “Eric called it a bike, but he didn’t mean a bicycle.”

  “She goes there often?”

  “I didn’t say that. It isn’t as if Eric hangs around such places.”

  Amazing. So amazing she talked about it only with Prudence Bumstead, retaining the fiction that Eric was an Eagle Scout who happened to peek into a den of iniquity and spot Deirdre and then withdrew immediately to report to his mother.

  That had been just before Martin Kilmartin announced to the surprised celebrants at the faculty
party that he intended to marry Deirdre. Melissa had learned not to knock Deirdre to Arne any more than she would have to the smitten Padraig Maloney.

  So, when Philip Knight asked her if she could put Deirdre up in her apartment after what had happened to Martin, Melissa had said, sure, of course. And it had been no trouble. Deirdre almost immediately went off to bed, wanting the solace of sleep, and the next morning Deirdre was gone. But now she had returned and again Melissa was asked to give her refuge.

  “Until my roommates get back anyway.”

  This time Deirdre was more company. She had been hiding in a motel in Niles during these past days.

  “But I had to come back for Martin’s funeral.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s so difficult to believe that any of this has happened.”

  Deirdre was Cinderella, returned to her humdrum world after a glimpse of a wholly different life. One thing they agreed on, whoever had attacked Branigan had earlier attacked Padraig Maloney.

  “His mistake was being in my office,” Deirdre said.

  “What was Branigan’s mistake?”

  “Just knowing me is dangerous with Fritz on the rampage.”

  Not all that reassuring at the time, but then Fritz was arrested in Flanner and taken off to jail.

  “Now it’s safe to go home,” Deirdre said.

  19

  The first class of the second semester met on Tuesday in the third week of January. Those who had spent the holidays elsewhere returned to a campus where much had happened and stay-at-homes like Melissa and Padraig Maloney were kept busy recounting the events that had taken place between semesters on the all-but-deserted campus. Now that Fritz Davis had been arrested and brought before a judge for a preliminary hearing and a trial date set, the local paper and the campus Observer were able to employ their customary omniscience in discussing what had happened.

  “The victim was on the faculty?” asked the cultural editor of Padraig Maloney.

  “A visiting professor. From Ireland. A poet, a famous poet.”