At Field and Main, the traffic signal turned red, and I braked the Subaru. Making a left turn, a sleek pea-green BMW passed me, its driver hunched over the wheel, oblivious to the world outside the trajectory of her vehicle. I did a double-take as I recognized Rachel Thompson. For as long as I’d known her, the librarian had been driving a superannuated white Nissan. What was she doing tooling around in such an expensive car?
***
Sunnye waited by the cut-granite curb in front of the Enfield Inn, Trouble at her side. Christ, she looks tough, I thought, struck once again by how closely the novelist resembled her own protagonist. In jeans, leather jacket, and thick-soled boots, she was stripped down, ready for action. In my own teaching clothes and long wool coat I felt encumbered, and—god help me—more than a little bourgeois. I’m going to get a dog, I thought, though I’ve never wanted one. Not a Rottweiler like Trouble, but something just as edgy, just as fierce. A canine fashion statement. A Great Dane, maybe. Maybe a Doberman. Then I pondered feeding such an animal on an assistant professor’s salary. A miniature Bulldog? A Schnauzer? Maybe a scrawny little mutt from the pound?
***
We headed out of town to the address in Durham Mills I’d found in the college directory. Trouble slobbered over a dried pig’s ear in the back seat. Leaving the village and its precious little shops behind, we plunged into the miracle-mile chaos just outside of town where the primary commercial activity of the area occurs. Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Super Stop ‘N’ Shop, McDonalds: where anything you could ever possibly desire to purchase was available except for the truly unique, lovely, and delectable.
“Tell me about Peggy,” Sunnye demanded.
I took my eyes off the road to glance over at her. I’d had just about enough of Sunnye Hardcastle, Alpha female. I shook my head slowly. “I don’t get it, Sunnye.”
“You don’t get what?” She scrabbled in her bag and came out with a couple of foil-wrapped bars.
“I don’t get you.” I pulled into the left lane and passed a Volvo station wagon carrying a half-dozen thirteen-year-olds and their hockey sticks. “I don’t get what we’re doing here: you, me, and Trouble on our way to Peggy Briggs’ house. Yeah, she’s my student, and I should be—I am—concerned about her. But what is she to you that you should bother? You’ve never even met this girl…woman.”
She tipped one of the foil-wrapped rectangles in my direction. “Want a nutrition bar?”
A nutrition bar? Yuck. “No, thank you.”
She peeled a wrapper and held the sesame-seed-studded concoction back over her shoulder. Trouble mouthed it gently from her hand, then wolfed it down as if people food was a familiar treat. “But I think I have met Peggy. Isn’t she the one who freaked out the day I came to your class?”
“Oh…” I recalled the first day of the semester. “I’m surprised you remember that.” We stopped at a red light, and the Volvo pulled up next to us. I recognized a harried colleague behind the wheel. In the back seat one of the adolescent passengers, a girl with a blond pony tail, flashed us a rude hand sign. Without seeming to have noticed, Sunnye flipped an infinitely more obscene gesture. The wide-eyed girls consulted but couldn’t come up with anything to top it. Then they noticed Trouble glowering at them from the back seat, still chomping toothily on his goody, and their eyes swerved forward, suddenly intent on the back of the driver’s head.
“But, Sunnye,” I said, “that doesn’t tell me what you’re doing out here on a Friday evening.” I slid another glance at her, and couldn’t resist a dig. “Especially when you’ve got a dozen adoring Women’s Studies scholars waiting for you back in Enfield.”
She gave a short laugh. It sounded like one of Trouble’s barks. “Karen, I’ve gotten used to getting what I want when I want it and doing what I want when I want to. Right now I want to talk to Peggy Briggs about undertaking that research for me.”
“Uh huh,” I replied. “And finding a research assistant is urgent enough to warrant facing down a hostile stepfather, in a strange town, before dinner?”
She concentrated on peeling the foil wrapper off the second bar. “Well, I have to admit it, Karen, I’m curious. I’m a mystery writer, and it’s a bit of a mystery, isn’t it, Peggy’s disappearance?”
I consulted my years of teaching experience. “It is, and it isn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She took a bite.
“It’s a stressful and unsettled period, the college years. Every once in a while a student self-destructs and goes AWOL. Professors tend not to get involved—the deans handle it. But I wouldn’t expect that kind of behavior from Peggy. She’s older than the typical student, and more motivated. She knows this is her big chance. And…there’s Triste….” Concern for my student nagged at me.
Sunnye seemed to be more involved with her own thoughts than with my apprehensions. We cruised by the massive blue-grey facade of the Wal-Mart. “Besides, I’m ready for some action,” she mused.
Ah! That was it. Kit Danger, girl detective. I was worried sick that something horrific had happened to Peggy, but Sunnye was simply bored. Ready for some action.
“That back there at the college…that conference…” She waved a strong, slim dismissive hand. “That’s just…words. Nothing is really happening.”
“My colleagues would disagree with you, of course. The current mantra of literary studies is that discourse makes things happen. But I agree, what we’ve heard so far at this conference is largely derivative, mediated not only through language but through codified politico-linguistic theories.”
She gave me a condescending look. “Just when I start to think you might be a stand-up kind of gal, you go ahead and blather out bullshit like that. You sound just like a professor, you know.”
“I am a professor. That doesn’t make me a mushy-headed pedant, you know. That doesn’t make me an effete intellectual snob. That doesn’t make me a…wimp.”
“Of course not,” she replied, without conviction. “But I’m interested in the real world—not in ‘codified politico-linguistic’ theories about the real world. I might even get a story out of this visit to Peggy. God knows, I won’t at a dinner with English scholars.”
“Women’s Studies scholars,” I said. “Not English.”
The look she cast me made it clear that one set of academics was just as bad as the other.
I glared at her. “And are you saying that a story—a fiction—is real? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”
Abruptly Sunnye Hardcastle laughed. This time it was less like a growl and more like a genuine expression of amusement. “You are a fighter, aren’t you, Karen? I do like that in a person.” She scarfed down the final bite of her nutrition bar and winked at me. “Even if she is an effete intellectual snob.”
***
A half-dozen miles later, I turned west on Federal Road, past a row of abandoned brick mills, into a neighborhood of aging frame duplexes. Peggy’s mother’s house was shingled in green with two cream-painted front doors set off to one side on a narrow green-scalloped porch. A hot-pink child’s bicycle leaned against the railing. I parked in front of the house. Sunny and I got out of the car, leaving open a window for Trouble.
It was supper time and various cooking odors competed for our attention. “Liver and bacon,” Sunnye said, as we strode up the concrete walk to the front steps. “God, I haven’t had that in thirty years—maybe forty.” She pressed the doorbell, but I didn’t hear a ring. Sunny sniffed the air again. “And haven’t wanted it, either. What’s that other smell?”
I took a deep discerning whiff. “Meatloaf,” I replied. “The kind made with Campbell’s tomato soup.” The conversation in the car had altered something between us. Now we were a couple of working-class girls talking about dinner.
“Oh, yeah,” Sunnye said, “I remember that. You serve it with canned peas and instant mashed potatoes.”
I laughed. “And chocolate pudding made from a box.”
When no one answered the
bell, my companion pressed it again. No discernible ding-a-ling. She pounded on the door. It opened immediately. “Yeah?”
He wasn’t particularly tall, and what was left of his hair had gone grey, but he was a powerful man, broad through the shoulders, thick rather than flabby in the gut, and fit in the way a middle-aged man gets only when he works at it.
“Hi,” I said, “we’re looking for—”
But Sunnye overrode me. “Officers of the court.” She flashed her wallet open, then shut. “We’re here for a Ms. Briggs.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What’s this about?”
She gave him an enigmatic look. “That’s between us and Ms. Briggs, sir. Tell her we’re here, please.”
“I won’t tell that bitch nothing.”
“Sir,” Sunnye barked, “ask Ms. Briggs to come to the door.”
“Fuck you,” he snarled, and gave the door a vicious shove, but Sunnye’s heavy boot kept it from slamming shut.
“Sir, that kind of attitude will only get you trouble—”
From somewhere behind the man came a woman’s querulous voice. “Are they here about Peggy?”
Without turning to look at her, he ordered, “Stay out of this, Cath.”
“But it’s been almost two days—”
“Shaddup!” He raised a threatening fist.
“Watch out!” I shouted. “Here comes Trouble.”
Sunnye must have signaled to the dog. Suddenly he was bounding down the walk toward us.
The man’s eyes widened. His fist unclenched, transformed itself into a hand outstretched to ward off the dog’s attack.
“Please stand aside, sir,” Sunnye ordered, “and let us talk to the lady.”
The muscles in his face tightened, as if he considered resisting, but then, abruptly, he pivoted, shoved past the woman, and disappeared into the rear of the house.
***
Peggy’s mother was a smaller, plumper, more harried version of her daughter. Not only was she willing to talk, she was eager to talk. Someone had picked up Peggy and Triste the previous morning for school. Who? Some friend; she didn’t know who. Why? Something wrong with Peggy’s car; she wasn’t sure what. Neither of the girls had come home last night. She’d called Triste’s school. They told her that Peggy had come to get the child before bus time. That was it. No phone call. No nothing. She was worried half out of her skin.
Now I was worried half out of my skin. This was more than simply a student’s weekend escapade. She had her child with her as well.
***
Missing student aside, we still had to show up at the goddamned Women’s Studies dinner. At 7:25 Mai Thai was packed with students, townspeople, and conferees. Trouble followed us in the door. When Claudia saw us, she waved frantically from the long crowded table in the corner. “I was afraid you weren’t going to show,” she muttered as I pushed my way past her to the almost inaccessible seat to which she motioned me. I shrugged, and the conference director turned to Sunnye, for whom she had saved a prime outside seat. I squeezed into my chair, nodded at my neighbors, and tried to relax. The lights were dim, candles flickered, bead curtains clattered as waiters pushed through with loaded trays. The enticing odors of Asian cuisine whetted my appetite.
As my main course I ordered a double vodka martini, with coconut soup and Shrimp Pad Thai to follow.
At a corner table, a group of graduate students from the conference were on their second round of Tsing Tao. “Then I said to him,” a young man with straw-colored hair exulted, “put that in your pipe and deconstruct it!” A howl of laughter went up from the young diners. I sipped my drink and smiled. This was the post-theory generation of grad students, and their irreverence toward the intellectual pieties that bound their elders was refreshing.
All went well until we left the restaurant at 9:05. As Sunnye and I walked out the door, we were suddenly blinded by the glare of television lights. A heavily made-up woman I recognized as a local-news reporter stuck a microphone in Sunnye’s face. The novelist flinched. “Ms. Hardcastle, how does it feel,” the reporter blared, “to be a suspect in a real-life murder mystery?”
Chapter Seventeen
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Buzz off!” Sunnye grabbed my arm and pulled me out onto the sidewalk.
“What’s going on?” I queried, dazed by the lights, the camera, the action. Trouble skidded to a halt. His ears went back.
“I don’t have a clue, but these people are jackals. Let’s get out of here.”
“Ms. Hardcastle,” jabbered the pursuing reporter, “is there any truth to the rumors that you were seen with the Library Victim just moments before his death?” The Library Victim. Obviously those words had been media-mutated until they now boasted permanent initial caps.
Trouble bared his teeth. The reporter took a prudent step backwards. Sunnye straight-armed her way past the TV crew.
We hoofed it down Division Street, Trouble at our heels. I snatched a glance at my companion. She looked as bewildered as I was. I yanked Sunnye down an alley to where the Subaru was parked in the municipal lot behind Scoops Ice Cream Parlor. When we came within electronic range, I clicked the unlock button on the remote, we slammed into the car, and I threw it into reverse. The news crew halted at the end of the alley. We sped off.
“Whew! Close one.” Sunnye mimed wiping her forehead. “What the fuck was that about?”
“You really don’t know?” The reporter’s words were echoing in my mind: You were seen with the library victim.
“Not a glimmer. What did that bitch say? Something about a murder victim?”
“Yes, the guy in the library,” I mused. “Elwood Munro.”
Sunnye’s face went bloodless in the green dashboard light. “Munro? Did you say Munro?”
“Yeah. That’s the name of the guy who was killed in the library stacks.”
She stared at me. “That’s not what you told me yesterday. You said Tutu or something.”
“Tooey. Turns out that was an alias. His real name was Elwood Munro.”
“Elly? Shit!” she took a deep breath and held it for longer than seemed possible. Then she huffed it out. “Then I was talking to the victim. Elly? Dead? I can’t believe it!” Sunnye slapped the dashboard with the flat of her hand. “Oh, shit! I must have seen him just before…Oh, holy shit!” At our backs, Trouble rose, made uneasy by Sunnye’s distress. She turned around to soothe him. “It’s all right, good dog. It’s okay, sweet pup. Lie down again, you excellent boy.” Trouble subsided.
Traffic was scant at this time of night. I made the left at Field and Main without stopping—without even slowing. Suddenly maximum speed seemed like a good idea. “Sunnye, if you were with the victim that close to the time of his death, the cops must know—especially if the press does. Look, you’ve gotta go to the police, before they come after you. I’ll take you to the station.”
“No! I’m deathly allergic to cop shops. I’ll call them from the Inn.”
We cruised down Field Street, and I slowed to turn into the Enfield Inn’s circular drive. A male duo staked out the canopied doorway. The short heavy guy puffed on a cigarette. The tall one in the baseball cap checked the film in his camera.
“Shit! More reporters. Keep going.”
“Duck down so they don’t see you.” I accelerated past the sprawling white building, slamming my right arm protectively across her body, as if she were the toddler Amanda.
“What should I do?” she moaned, from her crouched position. For once, Kit Danger seemed to be at a loss.
“Come home with me,” I said. “You can call the police from there.”
Except for a minor skid on black ice, the drive home was uneventful. Sunnye told me about Elwood Munro. I’d never known her to be so talkative. “We belong to this group… Urban Explorers, we call ourselves. It’s a kind of a global network of…recreational infiltrators. We get together once a month, always in a different major city—New York, London, Paris, and we…explore.”<
br />
“Explore what?” I didn’t understand the evasiveness in Sunnye’s tone. Exploring sounded harmless enough. “And isn’t it prohibitively expensive if you have to hop between London and Paris to do it?”
“We’re all moneyed people.”
Moneyed people? “Elwood Munro was rich?”
“He had generous trust funds, or so everyone said.” But money was the least of Sunnye’s concerns. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw Elly in that library. A library, of all places. I couldn’t understand it—we always have backup, but he was on his own. He was…startled…to see me, too. We talked for a few minutes, then he…showed me around.”
“Showed you around?” I echoed.
“Around…the library. I left him in the closed stacks—”
“But they’re restricted to everyone but library personnel.”
“Yes, they are. Forbidden spaces—that’s the whole point. Infiltration. Incursion. Criminal trespass. It’s a kick. I’ve been everywhere. Kayaking storm drains in Minneapolis. Picnicking in a Bronx subway tunnel. Wandering through Paris catacombs—”
“But that’s—”
“Illegal. I just said, that’s the point. What’s the problem? We don’t do any harm. But if the press gets hold of this…”
“I was going to say—that’s dangerous.”
“That, too. I love it. And you can get in anywhere if you try. Think about it—windows, manholes, elevator shafts, ventilation ducts.”
“Christ, Sunnye, are you out of your mind?”
“It’s a hobby. And, besides, I learn a lot. I write it off as research expenses.”
Criminal trespass? Incursions? Cheap thrills for rich people. “So that’s how Kit Danger—”
“Knows how to get around, say, an abandoned industrial site. Deserted factories have a beauty all their own, stark and ruinous.”
“Abandoned factories? Storm drains? You sure don’t like to play it safe, do you?”
Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 05 - The Maltese Manuscript Page 14
