by Donn Taylor
It was Threnody Harkins, and the set of her jaw told me this was no social call.
CHAPTER 24
I’d never thought much about Threnody except that she came from a good Northeastern family and pronounced monosyllabic words like school and pool with an extra syllable. For a woman named after a funeral dirge, she’d always seemed fairly cheerful. But the look on her face as she stood in my doorway told me I’d have to revise my opinion.
Threnody was an attractive brunette, somewhere in her middle thirties, with an olive complexion and dramatic amber eyes. As always, she was immaculately dressed: a businesslike maroon jacket dress with the skirt covering the knees—stockings, of course, and pumps with medium heels. She carried a coat with an ocelot collar over her left arm and a stylish purse in that hand. Add hat and gloves, and she’d be dressed for a formal tea.
For all of her femininity, though, she was sturdily built and athletic. Everyone knew she lifted weights, and she’d earned a formidable reputation on the racquetball court. The few males foolish enough to play her came away regretting it.
She looked at me now with an expression most people reserve for fire ants.
“Come in, Threnody,” I said. “How can I help you?” I was glad to be standing behind my desk.
She marched up to the desk and pointed her right index finger at my face. “Why are you trying to ruin my husband?”
Her gaze of amber fury never left my eyes, and her finger remained pointed at my face.
In such situations, I find a convenient refuge in becoming officious. So I adjusted my trifocals and said, “The intention you attribute to me, Mrs. Harkins, is quite foreign to any I have ever entertained. Why don’t you sit down and explain what we’re talking about?”
Her finger did not move. “Don’t pull that stupid professor act on me, Preston Barclay. Answer my question.”
“For heaven’s sake, Threnody.” I raised my hands, palm upwards, in front of my shoulders in what is commonly called the French salute. “I don’t have a clue. Would you mind explaining?”
I knew exactly what she meant, but I wasn’t about to admit it.
She simmered for a few moments, then lowered her pointing finger and found her way to a chair. She perched on its edge, hands clutching and unclutching the purse in her lap. Her ocelot-collared coat still hung from her arm but now dragged on the floor. I hoped she didn’t send me the cleaning bill. Though she’d calmed down a bit, I kept the desk between us.
She glowered at me and said, “You’ve been digging up dirt on my husband and I want it stopped. He’s under enough strain already with the police searching his office and our house, frightening our daughters to death. Why do you want to drag out that old court record for everyone to see?”
That jolted me like catching hold of an electric eel. I hadn’t heard about any court case, old or new. Until then I’d wanted only to appease the woman and get her out of my office. Now I had to find out what she knew that I didn’t.
“Old court record?” I said. “Which one?”
She blinked, and her mouth hung open. “Oh, my,” she said, “if he’s lied to me again . . .”
“What would he have lied about?”
“He only told me about one court case. If there’s more than that one—”
“Which one did he tell you about?”
“The one Laila tried to blackmail him with. The larceny.”
“That’s when she got convicted and put on probation?”
“She and all of her gang. She was eighteen, but the others were still juveniles. Their records were expunged when they met the terms of their probation. That’s why I said—”
“Laila tried to blackmail Bob with that?”
She spread her hands in resignation, the coat still on her arm and her purse resting in her lap. “She tried to involve him in something new—said if he didn’t, she’d tell the college administration he’d been convicted of larceny. And she’d tell me about their involvement and the other sordid things she’d gotten him into. They committed God-knows-how-many larcenies and burglaries, but they only got convicted of one.”
“Did Bob agree?”
“He did not.” Her jaw set. “He came to me and confessed. He asked my forgiveness for not having told me about the relationship and their string of crimes. And I forgave him—though not before I made him sweat. Then he asked what he should do about Laila. He never was any good at decisions, and he can’t stand confrontation.”
“What did he do?”
Her eyes took on a faraway look and a smile crept onto her lips.
“He did nothing. If he had, he’d only have gotten in deeper.” She sat very straight in her chair. “I went to see Laila in her office and told her a good, whopping lie. I said Bob had told me all about their relationship before he married me, and I married him anyway. Then I said if she didn’t leave my husband alone, I would personally tell the administration about her criminal background and the scheme she’d tried to blackmail Bob into joining.”
“What scheme was that?”
She laughed, a cruel laugh I hope never to hear again. “I don’t know. Bob didn’t understand it himself. But I never let her guess that. And I did one other thing while I was at it.”
“What was that?”
She showed a self-satisfied smile. “I slapped her face. So hard it snapped her head around. And I said if she didn’t leave my husband alone, I’d . . . I’d come back and kill her.”
For the first time, she sat fully back in her chair, satisfaction still written on her face.
It wasn’t written on mine because I was having trouble keeping up. It didn’t help that my internal orchestra was playing the can-can theme from Offenbach’s Gaîté Parisienne.
Threnody’s words “leave my husband alone” echoed in my head, along with the fragments “ter leave h” and “y husband” on the paper scraps we’d found in Laila’s house.
“Did you ever write Laila about this?” I asked.
“Of course not.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not that foolish.”
“Did Laila ever write you or Bob?”
Now she looked concerned. “No. Why do you ask?”
I made a hasty excuse. “Someone told me the police found torn paper fragments in Laila’s house. One had the word ‘husband’ written on it.”
She frowned. “Were any names mentioned?”
“None that I heard. In any case,” I lied, “my information is third-hand.”
She moved again to the edge of her chair. “Now you have to tell me about the other court case you mentioned.”
Another hasty excuse. “It must have been one of those other larcenies. I heard the court threw the case out before trial.” It pricked my conscience that lying came more easily with every whopper I told. Practice makes perfect, I guess. But in deference to my conscience, I made a mental note to chastise myself sometime in the future. Far in the future, I hoped.
Threnody sighed. “I’m glad it wasn’t something Bob didn’t confess. It’s a terrible thing to learn your husband has lied to you.”
“I can imagine,” I said. That seemed a safe comment.
Her eyes narrowed again. “You still haven’t told me why you’re digging up dirt on my husband. What have you got against him?”
“Nothing.” For once I could tell the truth, though not all of it. “Everyone in the science center that afternoon is under suspicion for Laila’s murder. I’ve heard Captain Staggart wants to pin it on me. Since I didn’t do it, I’m trying to find out all I can about Laila, hoping I’ll find evidence to point in another direction. That’s what led me to Bob, among others.”
“What others?”
“I’d rather not say. Anyone in the science center that afternoon.”
“What will you do with the information about Bob?”
“Nothing if he’s not the murderer.” I saw no reason to tell her that Mara and Dr. Sheldon knew all that I did.
“Bob is not the murderer,” she said. “He�
��s a big man, strong as an ox. But he’s soft inside. He doesn’t have the stomach to kill anything.”
She was probably right, and I felt sorry for Bob. As a teenager in Laila’s hands, he’d shown less backbone than a mud pie. He apparently wasn’t showing any more under Threnody’s management. I remembered then that he seldom opened his mouth in faculty meetings. I saw him now as a man who could manage nothing more resistant than the chemicals in his lab.
Except in a fit of fury. When I told him about his photo with Laila, he’d have hit me if I’d been standing close enough. No, I couldn’t scratch Bob from my list of suspects. Not yet, anyway. Then I remembered something else.
“That faculty trip to Las Vegas—did you notice anything about Laila then?”
Threnody looked thoughtful, then shook her head. “Laila paired off with the other single woman, Brenda Kirsch. We didn’t see them again except once or twice in the casino.”
“Did any member of the group win or lose an unusual amount?”
She thought again. “No one bragged or complained about it. I won a little, Bob lost a little. That seemed to be the story for everyone.” She stood. “I have to drive Amy and Suzie to their piano lessons. Will you promise you won’t hurt Bob with any of this information?”
I decided it was safe to come out from behind my desk. “If he’s not the murderer, he has nothing to fear.”
She walked up to me and offered her hand. “I’ll take that as a promise, Press.”
I accepted her handshake. She had the firm grip of a man, no doubt from her weight training. That sparked another idea.
“There is one question,” I said, prolonging the handshake. “Threnody, where were you at the time of the murder?”
Her grip tightened on my hand till I thought she would wrench it off. The amber eyes again blazed with fury, and she gritted out the words through clenched teeth.
“That’s for you to find out.”
She did not merely release my hand. She threw it down with a violence usually reserved for snakes. Then she swept out of my office with a most unladylike curse, the ocelot-collared coat still hanging from her arm.
I slumped at my desk with my head in my hands. I’d made another enemy, and the information received brought me no closer to finding the murderer.
The phone rang. It was Mara. An angry Mara.
“Someone stole the warning I showed you this morning,” she said. “He broke the lock on my desk drawer, but he must have used a passkey on the office door. How is it with you?”
“The same,” I said. “No marks on the office door, but the desk drawer had been jimmied. How about your stalker?”
“Still not definite. I caught him watching me once today, but he didn’t follow. Too much is happening too quickly, Press. We need to talk. Seven o’clock at Dr. Sheldon’s?”
Her voice trembled with suppressed anger, but for once the anger wasn’t directed at me. I hoped she’d forgotten my lunchtime brush with Brenda Kirsch.
“Seven o’clock sounds fine,” I said, and we broke off.
Then I remembered it was Wednesday, and my ancient malaise moved in. It smothered me in a blanket of black muslin that chafed my psyche like sandpaper. I sat there brooding over my failures until evening descended into dark. If I was going to make my seven o’clock appointment with Mara and Dr. Sheldon, I’d better go home and grab a sandwich.
I followed the narrow walkway down the hill, grateful that night hid my despair from the eyes of others. I dreaded returning to my dark house and silent piano, but facing its emptiness was something I couldn’t escape.
I opened the storm door with one key, the heavy inner door with another. The hinges squeaked, and I made a mental note to find some graphite. I closed both doors behind me and moved into the hall.
A shadow with upraised arm appeared on my left. The arm descended and something hard struck a stunning blow above my temple. Pain flashed through my head and neck, and some distant part of me knew I was falling. Then my inner darkness engulfed the entire world, and I knew nothing at all.
CHAPTER 25
The drummer was a lunatic on amphetamines, performing madly on an ensemble Gene Krupa would have envied—snare drums, cymbals, bongos and basses, with assorted triangles, tabors, and timpani thrown in. He must have had eight or ten arms like Shiva the Destroyer, for the world had never heard a drum solo so frenetic.
No, I was wrong. There were two eight-armed drummers, wildly out of sync with each other, both utterly mad and both sent by Shiva to destroy my five heads.
No, I was wrong again. It was Shiva who had five heads, so maybe I was Shiva, bent on destroying myself. All of my heads ached and felt frozen, as if I’d somehow landed upside down in an iceberg.
“Press, wake up.”
The voice came from beyond the mad drummers’ pummeling. I didn’t answer. I was too busy being destroyed.
The iceberg changed position on my heads and the voice grew insistent. “Press, wake up. We have to get you to a doctor.”
The drums kept pounding.
“No doctor.” My words came from deep beneath the ice. “Just need to get out of this confounded iceberg. You have the key?”
“The key to your survival. Like getting you to a doctor.”
The voice had lost patience. I didn’t see why. I had no classes until morning.
“Press, you idiot, don’t be stubborn. Wake up.”
The voice was Mara’s. I reached up to feel my heads and found only one. That was one too many. A bowling ball kept bouncing around on the inside, and the drummers kept pounding on the outside. With an effort, I opened my eyes.
I lay on my back in the entryway to my house, a pillow from the living room couch under my head. Mara sat cross-legged beside me, leaning forward to replace the iceberg on my head with a colder one.
I heard myself ask, “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at Dr. Sheldon’s.”
“So are you,” she said. “Be quiet and help me get you out to the car. You need a doctor.”
That was the last thing I needed. “No doctor. Need sleep.”
“Let’s see the doctor. Then you can sleep all you like.”
“No.” I closed my eyes. “Sleep first, then doctor.”
She protested more, but gave in when she saw I was going back to sleep anyway. She helped me up and steadied me as I staggered into the bedroom and flopped on the bed. I didn’t like sleeping in my suit, but asking her to help me take it off didn’t seem appropriate. The last thing I remember, except for the mad drummers’ pounding, was a blanket being laid over me and the iceberg returning to my head.
After several decades of nonexistence I woke in pre-dawn darkness. The clock’s luminous dial showed five thirty. My head still ached, throbbing now to the deliberate beat of a bass drum attuned to my pulse. But the demented drummers had gone back to their asylum. An easy chair across the bedroom held the shadowy form of Mara, curled up in a blanket. When I groaned up into a sitting position, the ice pack fell off my head.
That woke Mara, who stretched and asked, “How do you feel, Press?”
I took inventory. “My head aches, but I’ve worked through headaches before. What happened?”
“When you didn’t show up at Dr. Sheldon’s, I came to check on you. The front door was standing open and you were lying facedown on the floor. Someone had slugged you good. The knot on your head looked like an ostrich egg. I turned you over and iced you down. You wouldn’t let me call a doctor like a sensible person would, so I decided to wait it out until morning.”
“I didn’t need a doctor,” I said. “I’ve been slugged before.”
“Sure. Another average day in the life of a history professor.”
It seemed too ungrateful to say she needn’t be sarcastic. Thanks to her keeping the ice on me, the lump on my head was no larger than an agate. So I didn’t say anything.
“You’d better call the police,” she said. “Your house has been broken into and you’ve been assa
ulted. That’s two felonies, and no telling what comes next.”
“So I should tell the police someone didn’t like our investigating Laila’s murder? You know where that would lead. We’ve committed a few felonies, too.”
“We haven’t bashed anyone’s head.”
“That won’t make any difference. To police, a felony is a felony. Besides, it looks like somebody is getting desperate. As you said, we must be getting close.”
She didn’t answer, but looked off into space in the dark bedroom. My internal musicians turned off the bass drum and changed to Chopin’s saccharine-sweet “Raindrop” Prelude. The monotonous repeated note throbbed in rhythm with my heartbeat.
After awhile I said, “Thank you for all you’ve done, Mara. Give me a couple of minutes for a shower, and I’ll fix us some breakfast.”
She sprang to her feet and her blanket fell to the floor. “No, you won’t. And don’t you dare turn on a light. I’m already compromised, with my car parked in front of your house all night. I have to get it out of here before your neighbors wake up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think of that.”
Even in the dark I could see her chin lift. “You’re lucky you can think at all. Now don’t move until you hear me drive away. After that, you can turn on all the lights you want.”
She moved quickly through the dark house, grabbing her coat from another chair and disappearing toward the entryway. I heard the front door open and close. The house seemed suddenly empty again.
With Chopin’s repeated note still throbbing in my brain, I groped my way to a front window and watched as she opened her car door. Quietly, so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. She left the interior lights on long enough to put her key in the ignition, then eased the door almost shut until the interior lights went out. She was using all the tricks to keep from drawing attention. Everything went well until she turned the ignition.
Bright light flashed under her front wheels and a loud boom rattled my windows. Red smoke billowed from the car’s hood. Mara leaped from the car and looked back and forth as if wondering which way to run.
