“Hey, handsome,” I said, sitting on the edge of my bed and pulling on a pair of black leather slingbacks. “Have dinner with me tonight?”
“If all goes well today, that is a distinct possibility,” he said cryptically, and I guessed that he was sitting beside Fred. “Can we play it by ear?”
“Sure,” I said, suddenly remembering something I wanted to ask him. “Hey, anything on that Jersey plate?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s back on my desk. I’ll bring it tonight. I can’t remember what it is right now, but I know I wrote it down. All I remember is that it’s a Greek name. Costas something or other.”
“Okay, bring it later.” I fiddled with the strap on my shoe. “I have a lot to tell you. I saw Wayne again.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. The bastard hit me over the head.”
“He what?” he called into the phone.
“You heard me. He hit me over the head.” I put on my other shoe. “And he’s in the convent.”
“He is?”
“Yep. But I’m guessing that he won’t be there for long now that I’ve smoked him out.”
“I’ll send another radio car down there.” I could hear him telling Fred the basics of our conversation. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Besides having a bump on my head and being incredibly pissed at Mr. Brookwell, I’m fine,” I said. “Oh, and I also had a chat with Mr. New Jersey.”
“We’ve got a lot to talk about tonight,” he said. “I’ll definitely find a way to get over there later.”
It took me several minutes to calm him down. He was more interested in finding Wayne and “tuning him up” than ever before, but I assured him that I was fine. We finally hung up and promised to talk after work. I headed off to class, crossing my fingers that I would see him later.
I entered the office area and was promptly ignored by Dottie; I assumed that we were still in a fight and that was fine by me. I reached around her and pulled a stack of papers out of my mailbox, the first paper being a pink-lined sheet from a message pad, which said in Dottie’s scrawl, “Go directly to Sister Mary’s office when you get in.” I knew Dottie was looking at me for my reaction but I remained impassive. But I knew this couldn’t be good. Mary generally leaves me alone, but my behavior of late, coupled with the fact that her sister and brother had come by campus the night before, could only indicate one thing: the jig was up.
I arrived at her office after doing a series of deep-breathing exercises as I traversed the stairs and the hallway one floor above. She was sitting at her desk, grading a paper for a student who obviously didn’t have a handle on whatever it was they were trying to present. She drew a big red X through one entire page and grimaced. She looked up at me when I cleared my throat to announce my arrival.
She waved a hand toward the chair across from her desk.
“Good morning, Sister.” My heart was beating so hard that I was sure she could see it through my blouse. I attempted to sit down gingerly, nearly missing the edge of it. I grabbed the arm and slid onto the wooden seat.
“Good morning, Alison.” She folded her hands on her desk. “Or should I say ‘Coco’?”
My heart went into my throat and I considered what to do. Deny? Too late for that. Call it a silly role-play that Crawford and I did to get in the mood? No, that wouldn’t work; she was celibate and I didn’t want to go there with her. I stared back at her, thoughts filing through my brain like a mental card catalog.
She stared back at me. “My sister, Geraldine, and her husband, Eben, took me to dinner last night and told me about a young woman, just shy of six feet with black hair and ‘sparkling’ blue eyes, whom they met recently. I think she was looking for a house in Scarsdale? And she’s got a niece in the school?” she said, looking up at the ceiling as if looking for the answer. “Yes, that was it.” She leaned back in her chair. “Apparently, she’s got a fabulous job, too. She’s a flight attendant for Air France.”
“Sounds wonderful,” I agreed. “She must have a lot of great stories to tell.”
Mary was silent but her gaze said it all. The smile slid from my face. I cleared my throat again.
“I don’t know what it is you’re trying to do, Alison, but you’d be best advised to stop. Immediately.” Her eyes went back to the paper she had been grading. “And now you may leave.”
I stayed rooted to the chair for a moment before I realized that the conversation, all of thirty seconds long, was over. I jumped up, losing my footing and crashing into the front of her desk, knocking over her statue of Jesus praying on the Mount, her cup of tea, and a family photo. I attempted to straighten everything up, an ill-advised move if I ever saw one. Mary looked up again and picked Jesus up first, ignoring the cup of tea spreading across the desk and creating a mess of the research papers she had stacked neatly on one side. After she had deposited Jesus safely onto the radiator behind her to dry, she looked at me, the red in her face going from the skin above her starched white oxford to the part of steel-gray hair. “Out!” she commanded and pointed at the door.
I stopped cleaning up the desk and left, not stopping until I had almost reached my office. I came to a dead halt right outside my office door and stood for a minute, not sure what possessed me to do what I did next.
I marched back to Mary’s office where it looked like the mayhem of the previous minutes had not transpired. She was exactly as she had been when I had first arrived, sitting at her desk grading the same paper. She was even putting a big red X through another page of the same kid’s work. It was like I had stepped into some kind of time warp. I walked back into the office and went for broke. “Why are you hiding Wayne in the convent?” I asked, asking the first of the questions to which the answers eluded me.
She looked up again. “Did you say something?”
“Why are you hiding Wayne in the convent?” I asked again, determined not to let her intimidate me into leaving.
Now she was the one scrolling through possible answers in her head. I could see her mind working behind her dead blue eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” I put my hands on the back of the chair on which I had sat minutes earlier, leaning forward and establishing my physical presence in the room. “I’ve seen him three times now, Sister, and last night, he even hit me over the head.”
“He what?” she said, reacting before she had a chance to rein it in.
“I’d let you feel the back of my head but somehow I don’t think you’d want to.”
“You’d be right about that,” she said, and quickly composed herself. “Alison, you need to leave this alone. For all we know, Wayne is on an extended leave of absence or a vacation.”
“Does anyone else know that Wayne is your nephew?”
“Everyone knows,” she said, unconvincingly.
“Then how come I didn’t know? How come I had to figure it out on my own?”
“Get out,” she said calmly.
“I’m not leaving. Tell me the truth.” I went for the family connection. “You owe it to your sister, Sister, to let the truth out.” Had I not been trying so hard to appear strong, that last sentence would have made me burst out laughing. Sister, sister?
She stood, as tall as I was in her sensible loafers. It was the clash of the tall girls. “Do I have to call security?”
Although my first instinct was to laugh—an image of Joe, all three hundred pounds on his five-foot-five frame, ambling in to remove me—I thought about the implications of being removed from my boss’s office by a member of the St. Thomas security staff. That would not be good. I took a step back from the chair that I was leaning on and gave her one last look. “I’ll figure it out, Sister. You know I will. It’s just a matter of time. And if Wayne needs help, you know that I can probably help him, too. Think about what’s best here.”
I didn’t think she’d take me down in a wrestling move but what she did next surprised
me about as much as if she had: she started crying. “Please leave,” she pleaded. “Please. Just get out.” Her voice cracked and a tear ran down her cheek and I immediately felt a deep shame, forgetting that it was her nephew who had gotten me a one-and-a-half-room suite on campus, had thrown a beer bottle at me, and had given me a near concussion. And that, ultimately, she was a big fat liar. But I’m a sucker for a crying nun, obviously.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and fled, running down the hall toward the stairs that would bring me back down to my office floor. I got back to my office, breathing heavily as I made it to my office door. I could feel Dottie’s eyes on my back and I took in one last gulp of air before going into my office. I had arrived just in the nick of time; my first class was starting in three minutes and it was clear on the other side of the building so I was going to have to hustle. Tomorrow, instead of slingbacks I was going back to clogs. Running around this campus in heels was ridiculous, but like many times before, I had opted for style over comfort. I grabbed my messenger bag, textbook, and a pen, and headed off, my face still red, my guilt complex in overdrive.
I got down to the first floor of the building, and seeing the hallways clogged with students in between classes, I decided to go outside to take a more direct route to my classroom. I hurried along the driveway that snaked in front of the building, slowed down by my slingbacks. I’m not that nimble in sneakers. In slingbacks? Catastrophe was right around the corner. I looked down at the river, hoping that it would bring me peace after my unfortunate encounter with Sister Mary. Instead, the sight of Amanda Reese in the parking lot between the building and the river, standing beside a late-model Lincoln Town Car, brought me to a complete halt. She was far enough away and distraught enough not to notice that I was standing about fifty feet from her, taking in her tearstained face. Her arms were crossed and she was talking to a young man in the driver’s seat of the car.
I watched for a few minutes, knowing that it would make me late for class. St. Thomas has a rule in its college catalog that I’m not sure is enforced at other schools but that states if a professor is five minutes late for class, said class is canceled. I teach a bunch of kids who would never crack a textbook at gunpoint, yet know about this arcane and ridiculous rule. I looked at my watch and saw that I had less than two minutes to get to my classroom but I couldn’t drag my eyes away from whatever drama was playing out in the parking lot. The man in the car got out and embraced Amanda, whose arms were crossed over her chest. I had been the recipient of a few of those hugs in my lifetime, mainly from my ex-husband. He would offer comfort and I would create a barrier between us. Amanda was doing the same thing. She continued sobbing while he held her, but she wasn’t comforted at all by the embrace.
Things suddenly took a dramatic turn when the presumed boyfriend, who I concluded was the fiancé, Brandon, broke the embrace and grabbed Amanda by the arm. I surprised myself by taking a few steps toward them and screaming, “Unhand her!”, which in my agitated state was the best I could come up with. The two of them looked at me but Brandon dropped his hand from her upper arm long enough for her to scurry away, up the hill, and past me, without ever looking at me or back at him. I called to her but she kept going, obviously not wanting to chat about this. I locked eyes with the boyfriend until he finally got in his car and drove off, leaving a cloud of exhaust in his wake.
This drama was far from over and was curious in nature; was Amanda ending her engagement to Brandon? I decided that I would delve into this later and headed off to my class, down the hall, around a corner, and in a dark section of the classroom building, where I saw a group of students clustered in the doorway.
“Sit down!” I called, skidding to a stop in front of the door, taking in their disappointed faces. I made it to my desk, where I put down my messenger bag and wiped my hand across my sweaty brow. “Essays, please,” I said, and watched as they filed forward to drop their papers on my desk.
I gave my lecture but my mind was on Amanda Reese.
Twenty
Crawford got away for dinner that night and that was the only thing that saved the day from being a total waste.
I had pissed off Max, made my boss cry, worn the wrong shoes (again!), and seen Amanda Reese in the grips of some kind of relationship drama. I had had enough for one day and was looking forward to seeing Detective Hot Pants, as Max refers to him, even if there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to show him just how hot I thought he was.
I was sitting on the edge of the desk in the lobby of Siena when I saw his car pull up. It was time for Bart Johannsen to kiss his lacrosse stick good-bye and come down to do his weekly duty at the desk. That lacrosse stick had seen more action in the past week than I had seen in the last month. I looked at my watch. Bart was now five minutes late.
Before Crawford made it to the door, Mary Catherine Donnery came bouncing up and pushed the buzzer. Crawford was right behind her and she turned, giving him a dazzling smile. I pushed the buzzer and watched as he held the door for her.
“Good evening,” I said, and nodded to Mary Catherine, who bypassed the desk and started up the staircase without signing in. Crawford watched her as she made it to the landing and then looked at me. “Halt!” I called out.
She turned and gave me a look. She leaned over the staircase and Crawford turned bright red as we both got an eyeful of healthy young boob, a crested mountain of pink flesh, cascading out the front of her tank top. “Is there a problem?”
I held up the log-in pad. Besides the exposed boob? Yes. “You need to sign in.”
“I do?” she asked. Crawford headed back toward the door so that he had no view of her at all. “Are you sure?” she asked sweetly.
“I’m sure.”
“Really sure?”
“Mary Catherine, what’s the issue? You know the rules,” I said, and waved the pad in the air to remind her.
“Yes, but Coco . . . ,” she started, and smiled again.
Oh, that. She wasn’t going to blackmail me with the Coco Varick cover story now that Sister Mary knew. “That’s over, Mary Catherine, and we’re back to house rules,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yes! I’m sure!” I said, my irritation getting the best of me. “Get down here and sign the flipping book!”
She flounced back down the stairs and peeked around the corner to smile at Crawford. “Okay. You don’t have to get mad.” She bent over to sign the pad while Crawford looked at the ceiling, assiduously avoiding seeing anything that he didn’t want to. “There.” She started back up the stairs and disappeared from our sight.
Crawford let out a sigh of relief. “And I thought it was bad when Erin wore her pajama pants to school every day.”
“Yes, underwear on the outside is definitely far worse,” I said, and got up from the desk. I gave him a kiss. “We have to wait a few minutes until Bart comes down to sit desk.”
“What’s she doing here every night anyway?” Crawford asked.
“My guess? Hot monkey sex with Michael Columbo.”
Crawford put his hands over his ears. “Stop!”
I put my arms around his waist, slipping a hand into the back of his waistband, careful to avoid the firearm that remained on his hip even though his tour was over. “Remember hot monkey sex?” I whispered.
He shook his head. “Nope.” He relaxed a little bit and let me kiss him. “Besides, I thought you had a hematoma?”
“It’s not so bad,” I said. “So, do you remember hot monkey sex?”
“No,” he said weakly.
But something told me he did. I kissed his cheek, letting my lips linger on his earlobe. The sound of a lacrosse ball bouncing off the wall one floor above made the two of us separate abruptly, and Crawford headed down the hall toward my room and away from the impressionable young eyes of Mr. Johannsen, who I was sure had seen and participated in much more elaborate public displays of affection than what we had just done. I saw Crawford stopped in front of the bulletin bo
ard outside the janitor’s closet, studying it with an intensity it didn’t warrant.
Bart threw himself into the chair behind the desk and flew back a few feet on the wheeled chair, his lacrosse stick stopping his backward progression. “I’m here,” he proclaimed, twirling the stick in the air.
“You know what to do, right?” I asked.
“I think so,” he said, pulling up close to the desk. It looked like it was the first time he had ever seen some of the objects on the surface. He held up a stapler and examined it curiously.
“Are you sure?” I asked, suddenly afraid to leave him. I wondered if he was a special ed student.
“I’m just messing with you!” he said, laughing uproariously. He slapped his hand on the desk. “This is my second year, Dr. Bergeron. I taught those idiots up there,” he said, using his lacrosse stick to point at the ceiling, “how to do this job.”
“That makes me feel so much better,” I said with just a trace of irony that I was sure was lost on him.
He finger-gunned me to indicate that he was on the job.
Crawford sauntered back down toward the lobby, looking more relaxed than before, and took a gander at Bart, who was happily twirling his stick and singing along to a song being piped into his ears through his tiny earphones. He bounced the lacrosse ball with his free hand in time to his song. We bid good night to him and went into the parking lot.
“Does St. Thomas have a special ed program?” Crawford asked, completely serious.
I laughed. “Uh, no.”
“Because that kid . . .”
“I know. I know,” I said, and took his hand. “Get used to it. That’s the kind of boy one or both of your daughters is going to bring home after they start college.”
He moaned. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said.
Once we were in the car, Crawford dug a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Here’s the info on that plate number: Costas Grigoriadis, 17 Pine Terrace, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.”
Final Exam Page 14
