Death in Lovers' Lane

by Carolyn G. Hart

  “I assure you, Dr. Tucker, I have no interest at all in hurting either the Nugent or the Cartwright families unless those terribly sad events are connected with Maggie’s murder. That’s what I’m looking for—the truth about Maggie Winslow.”

  The wet, cold air ruffled my hair, sent chills through my body.

  “Mrs. Collins, I solemnly swear”—the cadence was measured, the words spoken with great dignity—“that I did not kill Maggie Winslow to prevent her from writing about Darryl Nugent.”

  “Then you can tell me about the dean with no worry about my revealing what you say.” I met his gaze directly.

  Tucker’s face was bland, revealing nothing of his thoughts. I wondered if he was a chess player. Only his eyes were alive, calculating, processing, judging.

  Finally, he asked bluntly, “Are you an honorable woman, Mrs. Collins?”

  “I try to be.” My tone was weary. “Often, Dr. Tucker, it is difficult to know where honor lies.”

  His gloved hands closed on the oars. He once again jockeyed the boat until the stern faced north. He looked past me, out onto the choppy waters. “I found the envelope left by Leonard Cartwright.” His eyes were bleak. “It was addressed to Dean Nugent. Yes, I took it. But I didn’t even look at it until late that afternoon. As you can well imagine, there was much to be attended to. I debated opening it, but I wanted to know the contents. I wanted to know what had caused this tragedy. I felt it was my duty to know.” His face was as somber as this gray November day. “Thank God”—his voice was suddenly harsh—“I opened it. Thank God.”

  The boat rocked in the swells.

  He swung his massive head toward me. “Do you have any idea, Mrs. Collins, how destructive it would have been for the University if it were publicly known that our dean of students was involved in an affair with a student who worked in his office, and that, moreover, the affair led that student to such despair that he committed suicide?”

  Yes, I well knew what kind of havoc that story would have caused.

  He twisted to look at the opposite shore. Through the trees, we could see the sprawling redbrick complex of the library.

  “I have had one love in my life, Mrs. Collins, and that is Thorndyke University.” There were no defenses in his deep voice now. “I will admit that

  my first thought that day was not for Leonard Cartwright, not for his family, not for Darryl Nugent. My first thought was how to protect the University.” His big head swiveled back toward me. “And what is the University? It is the students first, the faculty second. So beyond my desire to keep scandal from damaging the University, I had to think about my responsibility to those entrusted to my stewardship. One fact was unequivocally certain: Dean Nugent had to resign.”

  I hadn’t looked past Tucker’s discovery of the note. I should have expected that raw emotion scalded everyone involved that day.

  “I had a short, bitter talk with Darryl on the phone. At first, he resisted. Darryl claimed it was all a horrible mistake, that Leonard obviously had been unbalanced. But I made it clear that Leonard’s letter was explicit, that I would, if need be, obtain the services of a private detective, that I had no doubt as to the truth of Leonard’s assertions.”

  Tucker bowed his head for a moment. Then, taking a deep breath, he lifted his head and met my waiting gaze, his eyes dark with anguish. “I told Darryl that I would come to his office about five-thirty. I promised to give him Leonard’s letter in exchange for his letter of resignation.”

  The oars squeaked in the oarlocks. Jerkily, Tucker pulled us away from shore. We had drifted into the shallows.

  “I arrived at his office at twenty minutes past five. I knocked. There was no answer. I opened the door. Darryl was hanging from the balcony.” Tucker looked profoundly weary. “You said at the outset that either Darryl committed suicide or I killed him. I’m afraid, Mrs. Collins, that both are

  correct. Darryl Nugent was an extremely proud man. His family was very important to him. His reputation was important to him. His position was important to him. I should have known he was distraught. I should not have attacked him so angrily. I’m an administrator. I know that every problem must be solved both in terms of facts and in terms of emotions. At a critical juncture, I failed to remember that I was dealing not only with the University—but with a man’s life.” There was no apology in his tone. There was only grim acceptance.

  “But, no matter what happens, it is always the University that comes first,” I said softly.

  His face was stubbornly, passionately defiant. “Yes. Yes. What would you have done? If I called in the police, the scandal would have been enormous. There would have been no way to hide it. The police would immediately have questioned the circumstances of Leonard’s death. And the Pierce family was considering a multimillion-dollar gift to the University. We would have lost it. I know that. Because I know the Pierces. And do you want to know how I felt as I stood there, looking up at Darryl? I was furious. I was enraged at his stupidity. At his selfishness! I think it was that fury which carried me through the rest of the day. I had to work fast. The cleaning crew starts at the top of the building and goes down. I picked up the chair—”

  Oh, yes, the Windsor chair, knocked over by Nugent’s final desperate kick, scarring the floor.

  “—and stood up and braced his body to take the pressure off the cord, then I worked the cord loose and let him fall. I rolled his body in the rug from the fireplace and tied it with the cord he’d used. I

  went out and checked where the custodians were, then I carried the rolled-up rug down to the basement. I hid it in one of the storerooms that’s never opened. About midnight I returned and got his body and the gargoyle. I drove to the boathouse. I unrolled the rug, shoved in the gargoyle, tied it all up firmly with a rope from my garden shed. When I’d rowed out to the middle of the lake, I heaved it all over.”

  The rowboat had once again drifted into the shallows. David Tucker lifted the oars. He rowed furiously, his head bent. When the boat bumped up against the pier, he held it steady as I climbed out.

  When I stood on the pier, Thorndyke’s president looked up and gave me a terse nod. “Now, Mrs. Collins, it’s your turn to make judgments.”

  thirteen

  UDGMENTS, they never come easy. Tucker knew that.

  But I needed to remember that David Tucker was a man accustomed to gauging the effect of his words, even if he claimed that on one traumatic day he had not done so.

  Judgments.

  My steps echoed hollowly on the pier.

  Dennis Duffy was waiting at the MG. “Shit, Henrie O, I’m colder than a witch’s tit in Siberia.” He hunkered on the running board, his arms wrapped tight against his body, shivering uncontrollably.

  “You’re in lousy shape, Dennis. Come on, let’s go.”

  But I was glad, too, as we sped along Lovers’ Lane, to leave behind the lake’s bone-chilling miasma, damp and cold and elegiac as a grave.

  “So what’s the deal?” Dennis groused. “Why, for God’s sake, did you and Big Butt tête-à-tête in the middle of that damn lake? And why did I have to serve as a frozen audience of one? What the hell’s the lake—” Dennis blinked, jerked his head toward me. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Christ.”

  204

  An unholy light flickered in Dennis’s pale eyes. “Nu

  gent.”

  Nobody ever said Dennis was slow.

  “Pretend this morning didn’t happen.” The MG curved in front of the library.

  Dennis twisted in the small seat. He hadn’t bothered with a seat belt. “Goddamn, what a story!”

  “No.”

  “No? Forget that, Henrie O. Goddamn. Hey, I can—”

  I jolted to a stop in the J-School lot and faced Dennis. “No way. You’re going to follow my lead, Dennis. I’m trying to find out the truth about Maggie. As far as I’m concerned and”—I measured the words—“as far as you are concerned, the past is past—if Tucker told me the truth.”

&nb
sp; “Henrie O.” There was real anguish in his voice. “What a hell of a story.”

  “I gave my word.”

  “He’s a golden-tongued bastard.”

  “I know that.”

  We slammed out of the car. Dennis was close at my elbow.

  I walked fast. “He didn’t toss me in the lake, Dennis. He could have.”

  “Yeah.” Dennis opened the back door. “But it was broad daylight.”

  “Nobody around.”

  “He’s not a man to take chances.”

  The warm, stuffy air of the J-School felt like a plunge into a spa.

  At the newsroom, Duffy grabbed my arm. “Goddamn, Henrie O. Please…”

  I shook my head. “Sometimes, sweetheart, people are more important than stories.”

  It didn’t play with Dennis.

  I held out a sliver of hope. Because it might be fatal to underestimate David Tucker. “Okay, Dennis, let’s put it like this: If I should die suddenly and questionably, get the cops to drag Lake Boone, with special attention to the central portion.”

  I left Dennis staring after me.

  I hoped I knew what I was doing.

  Although it would be of no comfort to me, should Lake Boone be dragged in the eventuality I’d described, the truth would finally be known.

  I wondered if David Tucker had an appreciation for the forensic capabilities of today’s police. It would take only a portion of the backbone in the neck or the skull to determine whether Darryl Nugent died from hanging or, for example, from a savage blow to the head.

  Time would tell.

  I was ravenously hungry. I wolfed a cheeseburger and chocolate malt at the Green Owl. The unceasing noise—voices, dishes, music—was a welcome antidote to that bleak meeting at the lake. I was back in my office by a few minutes before noon. I took time to type up a complete report of my talk with Tucker. Since it would only see light of day should something happen to me, I felt this was fair enough. Otherwise, I intended to keep my mouth shut, although I was in no hurry to share this decision with Tucker.

  There was, of course, the question of Kathryn Nu-gent. Didn’t she have the right finally to learn the circumstances of why her husband vanished?

  I would think about that later.

  Upon application to the court, a missing person can be declared dead. I assumed she had followed that procedure, for insurance and estate purposes.

  But there was still the open-ended loss of her husband. What was decent? What was right?

  I might still write about either the Murdoch or the Rosen-Voss case. Whether I did or not, I was determined that neither Thorndyke’s president nor the director of the J-School should ever think I’d succumbed to their pressure. But I couldn’t see anything positive to be gained by a late revelation about either Nugent or his young lover, Leonard Cartwright. Let them rest in peace.

  If Tucker was telling the truth.

  At this point, he was still on my list of those who might have killed Maggie, but he no longer got top billing.

  That left me with Maggie’s personal circle—Dennis Duffy, Eric March, Kitty Brewster—and with the Rosen-Voss and Murdoch cases.

  If Maggie’s killer came from her personal circle, it was quite an extraordinary coincidence she’d just begun to investigate the most famous unsolved crimes in Derry Hills. Moreover, I didn’t see any reason for a search of her apartment by anyone within that circle except, perhaps, Dennis.

  I put coincidences right on a level with magic tricks. I don’t believe in magic. I understand there’s more than meets the eye, and that, if you know where to look, you can beat the man in the cape every time.

  So—Rosen-Voss or Murdoch; Murdoch or Rosen-Voss?

  It had to be a toss-up.

  Maggie was last seen dining in the Commons, close to both the J-School and Evans Hall. Angel

  Chavez, that surprise witness in the Murdoch case, worked in the J-School. Stuart Singletary, Howard Rosen’s roommate, taught in Evans Hall. I knew that Maggie had talked with both of them.

  Singletary had no apparent motive for his roommate’s murder in 1988. Lieutenant Urschel obviously had found nothing to suggest Singletary might be guilty.

  So why did it spook Singletary when I’d gone to see him? He seemed uncomfortable about the way he and Howard met. Singletary was dating Cheryl Abbott then. Cheryl had introduced Stuart and Howard. Was Cheryl somehow involved?

  Singletary definitely was spooked.

  But Angel Chavez was worried. She wanted to know if Maggie had written anything yet about the Murdoch case.

  Once again I imagined Maggie leaving the Commons Wednesday evening, walking out into the dark.

  Stuart Singletary could have waited in the shadows near Evans Hall. He knew Maggie would be in his evening class.

  But Angel had access to the student files in the Journalism School, including class registrations. She could easily have determined where Maggie might be found that night. And Angel desperately didn’t want the investigative series to be written.

  I picked up the Murdoch file.

  “The scene of the crime,” Michael Murdoch proclaimed airily. He pointed at a marble bench near the reflecting pool.

  In summer, it would be an idyllic spot. Now, a sodden newspaper floated in the murky water. Scudding leaves mounded against the bench. Leafless tree limbs rattled like loose teeth in a bleached skull.

  Murdoch’s paint-spattered smock hung from his scrawny frame. The smock flapped open in front, revealing a purple velour jumpsuit. He stood with his arm outstretched, holding the pose, but he looked at me, his faunlike eyes sly and unwinking.

  “That’s where your father was shot?”

  “Yeah. Right in the kisser.” His arm fell and now he did look at the bench, his thin face suddenly malevolent. He bunched the smock back behind his arms and jammed his hands into the pockets of the jumpsuit.

  “It must have been quite a shock.” I kept my voice level.

  “Surprised the hell out of me. I never thought she’d have the guts.” Sheer admiration lifted his voice.

  “She?”

  Michael gave a high whinny of laughter. “My pinup gal of the year, my favorite dumb broad, good old Candy.”

  I suppose I must have looked blank.

  He stood straight, put his right arm in front, his left arm in back and gave a half-bow. “More formally, madam, my esteemed stepmother, Candace.”

  “She was acquitted.”

  “Yeah. Makes you believe there’s a God after all. That, or Candy sure had something on that gal who alibied her.” Once again his tone was admiring.

  “Do you think that’s what happened? Do you think the witness was lying?”

  He rocked back on his heels, eyed me quizzically. There was a sardonic glint in his eyes. “Lady, how

  many four-leaf clovers have you ever picked up?”

  “Is this the way you always discuss your father’s murder?”

  “I don’t”—his tone was abruptly mincing—‘discuss my father’s murder.” Then he looked thoughtful. “Funny thing is, you’re the first person to ever come right out and ask me about it. People get skittish when you’ve been involved in a murder. So how come you want to know about the old bastard’s bloody end?”

  “Mr. Murdoch—”

  “Michael. Please.” He gave a swift small smile that was oddly endearing.

  “Michael, will you be serious for a moment? I need your help.”

  “Serious?” His gaunt face was suddenly stern and old far beyond his years. “You want serious? You want to hear how many ways a man can be a bastard? Would you like that? Do you want to hear how he hurt my mother, made her cry? When I was a little kid, I’d lie in my bed and jam the pillow over my head so I wouldn’t hear her scream. She tried not to scream. Because of me and Jennifer, but he hurt her so bad, and the screams were awful—like an animal caught in a trap.”

  Michael’s long thin fingers bunched into tight fists. “Serious? You want to know what he did to J
ennifer?” Sudden bright tears glistened in his dark eyes. “My little sister. The last I heard she was drugged out in Chicago. I begged her to come home. Do you know what she told me? She said it was too late.”

  He strode to the bench, glared down at it. Suddenly, he was on his knees, his fingers scrabbling at one of the flagstones in the path that curved

  around hedges to lead to the terrace and the house, the very substantial house in one of Derry Hills’s finest neighborhoods, a house too far from its neighbors for cries to be heard.

  Michael was breathing raggedly as the stone worked loose. He grabbed it, stood, and flung it down with all his might. The stone splintered on the marble bench, leaving a thin white streak. Like a scar.

  “I see.”

  His chest heaving, he stared at me wildly, then, slowly, gradually, he began to calm. “No, lady, you don’t see. Just like you don’t understand why I like that bench. I can walk out here and look at it and I know the bastard’s dead. If you go close”—he took swift running steps, and pointed down—“and look really hard, you can see where blood seeped into the pores of the marble. He’s dead, dead, dead.”

  The branches creaked in the wind.

  “Did he abuse your stepmother, too?”

  “Oh, yeah.” But the emotion was spent. “Yeah But he finally went too far. That day, he killed her damn bird. Funny, after all the things he’d done through the years to Mom and Jennifer and me, and then to Candy”—his mouth slipped sideways in a peculiar smile—“Candy shot him because he killed her parakeet. It was vintage bastard. He took the bird and he broke its stupid neck and he put it on her plate at dinner. She came in and saw it and she dropped the platter—it was fried chicken—and she started to scream.”

  “None of this came out at the trial.”

  “Jesus, you think we were going to tell the cops? All Jennifer and I ever said was that we didn’t hear the shots, we didn’t have any idea what happened;

  no, we didn’t think Candy would have shot him, why

  would she?”

  “But if he abused your stepmother—”

  “Jeez, you find four-leaf clovers and you live in a cloister. How many abused women get off? Give me a break.” There was nothing endearing about his scathing look of disgust.