Spring Break

by Gerald Elias

  ‘Cut the crap. Tell me what you found out.’

  ‘Among other things he checked out Wild Living. The big foraging book by Aaron Schlossberg?’

  ‘So what? If you ask Sybil, she’d tell you the book was a bestseller. We knew that Schlossberg was an expert, and we knew from Professor Shames that Knotts was into foraging.’

  ‘Yeah. But I went to the library and they had another copy. So I looked through it, and I was thinking about Schlossberg’s party that Lucien worked at, and guess what?’

  Just as Jacobus was about to curse at Chase for another “guess what,” the answer came into his head.

  ‘There’s a chapter on mushrooms.’

  ‘Not a chapter. A whole section.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Saturday, April 4

  Jacobus woke to an alarm clock ringing in the room next door and assumed it was morning. A light but steady rain slapped against the window. Mezzo piano. A historically informed rain. He started to get out of bed, but then realized he had no plan for the day beyond brushing his teeth.

  He felt that the key to the puzzle rested with Audrey Rollins. To find her he needed to find Lucien, and to find Lucien he needed Chase’s help. But Chase was in Plattsburgh visiting his mother and couldn’t do a damn thing until classes started on Monday. What would he do with time on his hands for an entire weekend? With the rain, wandering outdoors was out of the question. A concert? That jazz guy, Sumter, had mentioned something about a jazz concert. If Nathaniel had been there, maybe. Jacobus nixed the idea and went to the bathroom to wash.

  More talks with the faculty members? Maybe they could shed some light on Schlossberg. He dismissed that idea, too. Chances were he might divulge information he preferred to keep to himself.

  He filled the sink, pointing his index finger vertically downward in it so he would know when it might overflow. He rubbed cold water on his face.

  Plus, he was sick of conservatory politics. Of who was sleeping with whom. Of the ass-kissing for donations to construct a building as a monument to a family’s wealth. Of the guerilla warfare between the academics and the performers. Of the character-assassinating whispering campaigns. Of making art a quantifiable commodity, a subordinate to the strangling effect of mindless computerization. Of the foraging of wide-eyed students by predatory professors in order to satisfy their almighty artistic ego. And libido.

  Jacobus threw his toothbrush against the wall and heard it clatter somewhere on the tile floor. He should have waited until after brushing. Too late now.

  Returning to his bed, he called Yumi from the bedside phone. Maybe she could drive him back to the city and he could spend a pleasant weekend arguing with Nathaniel over bagels, lox, and the latest Balkan atrocities.

  ‘Good morning, Jake,’ Yumi said.

  ‘What are you doing today?’

  ‘I’m in New York.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I didn’t want to wake you. You seemed really tired. I’ll be back on Monday.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Ten thirty.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No. Speak to you later.’ He hung up.

  Next he called Nathaniel and was connected to his answering machine.

  ‘You’ve reached the home of Nathaniel Williams. I’m out of the country until April twenty-third, but if you—’

  He called his friend, Roy Miller, in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He lived only an hour north of Kinnetonka Crossing. Maybe Roy would pick him up and he could spend the weekend at his house and visit with his dog. He hadn’t been in contact with the Millers for over two months. They always liked to sit around and talk about things like steak and wood-cutting.

  ‘Hey, buddy!’ Miller said. ‘How have you been?’

  ‘Fine. How are things?’

  ‘Grandkids here this weekend. All ten of ’em. Jesus! They don’t give you a minute to breathe!’

  ‘Ah. How’s Trotsky?’

  ‘Lovin’ every minute of being the center of attention. They’re all over him twenty-four/seven.’

  ‘Great. How’s my new house coming?’

  ‘Last time I looked, pretty good. They’re behind schedule a little. You know, long winter. But it’s coming along. You’ll like what they’re doing.’

  Jacobus couldn’t think of anything to add.

  ‘OK. See you.’

  He got dressed with the intent of going to the lobby for coffee. He went to the elevator and pressed the down button, waited a few minutes and pressed it again and waited again. He heard someone walking towards him.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the someone asked.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for the elevator the whole damn day,’ Jacobus said.

  ‘Oh. It’s out of order.’

  ‘Why don’t they tell anybody?’

  ‘There is a sign on it, sir.’

  Now that he was out of the wheelchair, he could have taken the stairway, but instead Jacobus retreated to his room, fumbled for the doorknob, and closed the door behind him. Hours, or days, later, there was a knock on his door.

  ‘What?’ he called out.

  ‘Housekeeping. Do you need your room cleaned?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tomorrow then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you need anything?’

  ‘Yes. To be left alone.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Monday, April 6

  The ringing phone woke him.

  ‘I got him!’ Anderson said.

  ‘Who?’ Jacobus asked. ‘Who did you get?’

  ‘Lucien! Lucien Knotts!’

  ‘Knotts? Hmm. What Knotts?’

  ‘Mr Jacobus, are you all right?’

  ‘What do you mean, “Am I all right?” Of course I’m all right. All is right. Right is always right. What day is this?’

  ‘Monday.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Nine thirty.’

  ‘Morning?’

  ‘Yes. Mr Jacobus, do you need some help?’

  ‘Hold on.’

  Jacobus dropped the receiver on the night table and, with his foot, found his cane on the floor next to his bed. He hobbled to the sink in the bathroom, turned on the cold tap, and stuck his head under the faucet. Without drying himself off, he returned to the phone.

  ‘What do you mean, you got him?’

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I was just contemplating historically informed performance. Very deep. What’s with Knotts?’

  ‘Like we had planned. I’m outside his class and saw him go in. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘When’s your class?’

  ‘Not till this afternoon.’

  ‘Can you follow him without him seeing you?’

  ‘Like Bogie?’

  ‘Yeah. Just like Bogie. Call me back when you figure out where he’s staying.’

  Jacobus hung up and dialed Yumi.

  ‘This your day to teach at the conservatory?’ he asked.

  ‘Yep. Back in town. How was your weekend?’

  ‘Very relaxing. I might need you later. When do you finish?’

  ‘Three. Unless my two o’clock student arrives late, in which case I’ll finish early.’

  ‘That’s my girl. I’ll be in touch.’

  Jacobus cursed himself for the maudlin, self-pitying introspection that had consumed two days out of his life. He called for a cab and dressed hurriedly.

  ‘Take me to an electronics store in town,’ he told the driver.

  ‘Circuit Boys OK?’

  ‘Yeah. Fine. Whatever.’

  Within an hour, Jacobus was back in his room with a portable cassette recorder and a serendipitous chopped liver on rye from Bialy Stock that his nose had led him to next to Circuit Boys. He took a bite of the sandwich, the first solid food he had eaten in days, expecting to demolish it in minutes, but no matter how much he chewed, he seemed incapable of swallowi
ng.

  Disregarding his lunch and unforgiving stomach, he turned his attention to the recorder. The simple device was a reasonable facsimile of the one Nathaniel had given him a few years before, so with a little assistance from the store employee he had familiarized himself with manipulating the five buttons: Play, Stop, Forward, Reverse, and Record. Taking one more tentative bite of chopped liver to bolster his fortitude, Jacobus began recording his observations on the matter of the curious death of famed composer, Aaron Schlossberg, beginning with the evening of Wednesday, March 18 and the ‘Going for Baroque’ symposium. Jacobus had bought a six-pack of ninety-minute cassettes along with the recorder. That should be enough, he thought.

  Halfway through the second cassette, the phone rang.

  ‘—don’t – do!’ Anderson said.

  ‘What the hell are you saying?’

  ‘Bad connection.’ He repeated slowly. ‘I. Don’t. Know. What. To. Do.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Not far – Schlossberg – woods. Dirt road. If I follow, Lucien – know.’

  ‘Will you remember where the road is?’

  ‘What? Can’t hear.’

  ‘Will. You. Remember. Where. The. Fucking. Road. Is?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t need to shout.’

  ‘All right. What time is it now?’

  ‘Quarter of two. What – want me – do?’

  ‘Go to class. Then have a milkshake on me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s what Bogie would’ve done. I’ll call you later.’

  Jacobus, too agitated to return to his dictation, hid the cassette recorder in a drawer under his underwear, where he was confident no one would be tempted to look for it. With Yumi about to arrive, he washed his face and changed his clothes so she wouldn’t notice his standards for hygiene had sunk even further. He fidgeted until he heard her knock at the door.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.

  ‘Jake, are you OK? You look pale.’

  ‘Why’s everyone asking if I’m OK, damn it? Yeah, I’m OK. OK? What time is it?’

  ‘Three thirty.’

  ‘Three thirty? You said you’d finish at three.’

  ‘My student arrived early and was prepared, so I gave her extra time.’ Before Jacobus could bark his objections, she added, ‘Just like you would have.’

  Jacobus told her about his conversation with Anderson and they called him immediately.

  He whispered, ‘Can’t talk. In class. Done in fifteen minutes. Meet you outside the library,’ and hung up.

  It took them a half hour to get to the 4C campus. They switched into Anderson’s Gremlin, and drove back in the direction they came from, eventually detouring onto Sylvan Hollow Road, which led back toward the home of Sybil Baker-Hulme and the late Aaron Schlossberg. Jacobus sat in the front passenger seat with Yumi crammed behind him. About two miles before the house, Anderson stopped the car.

  ‘Here’s the turnoff,’ he said. ‘It’s not really for cars. It must be an old logging road.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Just a guess. I’ve seen dirt roads like this before that just go off into the woods. I read that the WPA used to build logging camps in the thirties. I think that’s why most of these trees look like they’re less than fifty years old and why there’s a lot of underbrush.’

  ‘Can you drive this jalopy on that road?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Lucien was able to get there in his car, and he drives a Ford Pinto.’

  ‘Let’s go, then.’

  Jacobus felt Yumi’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Wait, Jake. What if Lucien or Audrey are dangerous? And it’s starting to get dark. What if we get stuck on this road?’

  ‘“What if?” “What if?” All I’ve had for the last ten days are “what ifs”. I need to start getting a “this is.”’

  ‘So?’ asked Anderson. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘So let’s go.’

  The first hundred yards were passable, though still slick from the weekend rain. Then the road, or what was left of it, got rough. The Gremlin bumped up and down and jostled from side to side. Brush scratched at the sides of the car. Anderson expressed his fear of the disconcerting number of times the chassis landed heavily on boulders.

  ‘Shit! Sorry. Shit! Sorry.’ And on it went.

  Anderson stopped the car.

  ‘We here?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘We’re at a fork. I don’t know which way to go,’ Anderson said.

  ‘Figure it out,’ Jacobus replied. ‘You wanted to be a detective. Get out and detect.’

  Jacobus heard Anderson get out of the car or at least try to. The car door swung open and banged against a tree. Jacobus heard Anderson grunt as he slid out.

  He returned after a few minutes.

  ‘If we go left the road is dried out. If we go right there’s a muddy area about twenty yards from here.’

  ‘And you saw tire tracks past the mud?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘So then he must have gone left.’

  ‘Yep. That’s what I’m thinking.’

  ‘Good work, Sherlock. Get back in.’

  After bouncing along the left fork for another ten minutes, they arrived at a grassy clearing.

  ‘I see a cabin!’ Yumi said from the backseat. ‘A few cabins. The edge of the woods. Over there.’

  ‘And tire tracks in the grass,’ Anderson said. ‘Woo-hoo!’

  After all the noise of their thudding drive, when Anderson turned off the car’s engine they were blanketed by a startling, heavy silence. A ‘No Trespassing’ kind of silence.

  ‘What now?’ Yumi asked softly.

  ‘Is his car there?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Don’t see one,’ Anderson said.

  ‘Let’s go take a look, then,’ Jacobus said.

  Anderson led the way across the field. Yumi, arm in arm with Jacobus, followed. His cane helped predict his next step. Usually it landed on solid, grass-covered ground. From time to time it stuck in mud and he had to yank it out. By the time he had gone fifty paces his shoes were thoroughly soggy. But for a few birds and a chattering squirrel, all was quiet. Was that a distant tree branch falling, landing with a strangely hollow echo? Jacobus’s ears were on full alert.

  Suddenly he stopped. Dizziness overtook him, combined with a curious sense of well-being. Was it from concentrating too hard? His knees began to buckle. He felt Yumi shift her position to support his weight. The haunting opening melody of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet entered his consciousness for no apparent reason. Anderson was by his side in an instant to assist Yumi.

  ‘Jake, are you all right?’ Yumi asked.

  ‘I know this place,’ Jacobus said.

  ‘It reminds you of your home? Out here in the country?’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no. I feel like I’ve been here. I feel vibrations.’

  Two of the three cabins, overgrown with vines, were in a state of collapse. The third one, in the middle, was slightly better. Yumi and Anderson led Jacobus to that one. A pair of cracked, stone slab steps, no longer horizontal, led up to a low, uncovered porch that fronted the ramshackle cabin. Old floorboards, exposed to the elements for decades, flexed ominously under their feet. The accelerated speed of Jacobus’s cane tapping reflected his lack of faith in the porch’s ability to support their weight for any length of time.

  ‘Do you want to go back?’ Yumi asked.

  Jacobus’s mind, if not his balance, regained its equilibrium, though the sense of having been in this place before persisted. He felt weak but was not in pain.

  ‘No. I’m fine.’

  ‘Let’s get you inside and have a rest,’ Anderson said. He knocked on the door. ‘Looks like no one’s here.’ At which moment the front door creaked open.

  It was Lucien Knotts.

  ‘I think we’ve lost the element of surprise,’ Yumi said to Jacobus. Her humor was her signal to Jacobus that she needed to know if he was OK.


  ‘Hmm. No thanks to Sherlock,’ he said, reassuring her.

  ‘Can we come in?’ he asked Knotts.

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  The inside of the cabin was stuffy, smelling of mold and mildew, and of vestiges of acrid woodsmoke. Uninsulated wooden floorboards amplified their footsteps and the tapping of Jacobus’s cane. The cabin had retained the day’s heat, and it was actually warmer inside than out, even though the windows – panes long gone – permitted air and flies to enter and exit at will.

  ‘What do you want?’ Knotts asked.

  ‘To talk to Audrey,’ Jacobus replied. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘Ask your friends. This is a one-room cabin. Ask them if they see her.’

  ‘She’s here. First of all, when we were crossing the field I heard what I thought was a branch falling. But it wasn’t. It was a wooden door shutting. Obviously it wasn’t the front one because my friends had their eye on it. I also smelled the glorious aroma of eau de latrine when we were coming up the steps.’

  ‘And second of all?’

  ‘Second of all is that you didn’t ask us who we were. You knew. Audrey must have told you. Tell her to come in from the outhouse before she gags in there.’

  ‘What do you want with her? She didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Then she has nothing to worry about,’ Jacobus said, which was his hope if not his conviction.

  After a silence that was briefer than Jacobus expected, Lucien agreed.

  ‘We don’t have running water. You want a Coke?’ he asked. ‘Lukewarm?’

  ‘Maybe later.’

  Lucien went out the back door. Jacobus and Yumi sat in two rickety chairs, though how long the chairs would support them was questionable. When Lucien returned with Audrey, they sat on a tattered mattress on the floor. Anderson took a position by the back door in the event either Lucien or Audrey tried to flee, leaving Yumi to protect the entrance they had used.

  ‘What do you want?’ Audrey asked, echoing Lucien. She was more sullen, if that were possible, than she had been at the masterclass.