A Conventional Corpse

by Joan Hess

  In that classes were done for the day, I had no problem finding a metered space in front of the building. Old Main was the original landmark on campus, a two-towered brick structure that had initially housed all the classes in the early 1900s. As buildings went up, departments were dispersed, but the English department clung to the bitter end. My deceased husband had held his seminars on the first floor, and his dalliances in his office on the third floor. A lack of elevators and a preponderance of asbestos had led to Old Main’s condemnation, but generous alumni and a hefty contribution from the Thurber Farber Renovation Fund had restored the building and refitted the classrooms.

  According to Sally’s notes (which I would never, ever question), signings were to be in a room numbered 130. I walked up the brick stairs and paused to reconnoiter. I flipped a mental coin and went right. The room in question was most definitely locked.

  I headed up the high staircase to the second floor and what had once been the English department office. The stale smell of yellowing, ungraded term papers and half-eaten apples in wastebaskets indicated nothing had changed, despite the years’ hiatus to a hygenic space in a building on the far side of the campus. The department was continuing its struggle to convince its majors that Beowulf, Tom Wolfe, and Virginia Woolf could lead to academic, if not financial, security.

  The office was much as I remembered it, with a view across the campus lawn and a redolence of pipe tobacco, despite the campus-wide ban on smoking in public buildings. The aroma was pungent, sending me into an unwanted flashback of Carlton when we’d met at a party, found some inexplicable reason to pursue the relationship, drifted into marriage and parenthood—yet never achieved that most significant emotional cohesion that transcends mundane temptations. Carlton hadn’t, in any case; a snow-covered mountain road, a skidding chicken truck, and the presence of a distaff student had resulted in a scandal that the college had glossed over more deftly than a losing football season.

  I realized that I was standing in the doorway with a vacant expression. The young Hispanic woman seated at a desk in the center of the room gave me what might charitably be described as an inquiring look. Had her lip not been curled and her eyes narrowed, she would have been attractive. Maybe.

  “What do you want?” she said. “It’s after five. The office is closed, and I’m not here—okay? You wanna drop or add, call in the morning. Doctor Shackley is out of town, so don’t think you’re going to see him anytime soon. Not even the Dean’s gonna see him. Got that?”

  “I’m supplying books for the mystery convention,” I said mildly. “Will it be possible to arrange for help to transport the boxes from my car to the signing room?”

  “Do I look like someone who cares about this ridiculous thing? My job is to handle the department paperwork, keep Dr. Shackley’s wife out of the building, listen to the grad students gripe, and—”

  “A custodian, perhaps.”

  “Call maintenance,” she said with a shrug. “When, where, whatever. Don’t get your hopes up, though. I’ve been waiting for eleven months to get the photocopy machine fixed.”

  I shifted tactics. “Sounds like you’re having a bad week.”

  “No kidding. These professors, these students—all of them seem to think a degree in English literature should qualify them to realign the planets in the solar system, probably in alphabetical order. Go to the local bookstore and ask for a copy of a book by Hermann Hesse or James Joyce. If Disney hasn’t come out with the cartoon version, the best you’ll get is a blank stare. Why would anyone assume there’s the least bit of distinction in having read a bunch of dead authors? You know where it’s at?”

  I’d retreated to the point that my back bumped the door. “I suppose not.”

  “Stephen King, Danielle Steel, Michael Crichton, John Grisham. Those are living authors, and they write real books. I am so tired of all those calcified fossils.” She shoved a lock of black hair off her forehead. “Do you know that Azalea Twilight once lived in Farberville? Right here, not more than three blocks off campus.”

  “Yes,” I murmured, “I knew her.”

  “You knew Azalea Twilight? Do you know Jackie Collins?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry. Is there any chance you can arrange for some assistance from maintenance on Friday? I’ve been told I can start moving books in at four, but I’m going to need help.”

  “Call ‘em yourself, because like I said, I’m not here.” She pulled a gray plastic cover over her computer keyboard, punched several buttons on the telephone on a corner of the desk, and took a purse out of a drawer. “Now, if you’ll excuse yourself from my presence, I have better things to do than—”

  “I’m Claire Malloy,” I said with enough warmth to heat Belarus for the winter.

  “Look, I’m just the department secretary. I can’t fix the photocopy machine, dreg up some associate professor’s email, or deal with the plumbing in the faculty John. Right now, being pregnant and all, I’m thinking about puking in the nearest wastebasket. You want somebody to carry in boxes, that’s fine with me. This mystery convention is nothing more than one big pain in la cula. I’ve already got hemorrhoids. Carry in your boxes? I don’t think so.”

  This was not going well. “Do you have the extension number?” I asked desperately.

  “Yeah, but don’t get your hopes up that it’ll do any good.” She pointed at the ceiling. “See that sprinkler? Every day for two months it leaked. I thought about moving my plants under it. The ceiling grew mold and the floorboards began to buckle, but nobody did one thing about it until it dripped on Dr. Shackley’s wife’s silk blouse. You can imagine how that went over.” She stood up. “You’re welcome to call maintenance. Tell ‘em to fix the photocopy machine while they’re here, and take a look at the toilet in the faculty lounge. It runs, which is what I’ve gotta do.”

  She nudged me out into the hall, locked the door, and scurried down the stairs. I waited, feeling as if something catastrophic ought to occur; when nothing did, I wandered to the end of the hall and looked out the window at the crisscrossing sidewalks and newly-leafing trees. A few students were meandering homeward or toward the bars on Thurber Street, but without urgency.

  Resisting the temptation to visit Carlton’s former office, I went back out to my car. A call to Sally, however repugnantly cheerful she might be, would resolve the problem. If not, Caron and Inez would have to find a few minutes to help me with the boxes. The problem was far from overwhelming, and I could anticipate exceedingly healthy sales from the hundred-odd registrants. Sally had not overestimated the significance of the authors who were arriving at the end of the week. Allegra Cruzetti was the current golden child, and Laureen Parks showed up on the best-seller list on occasion; the others, with the exception of Walter Dahl, were mid-list but steady sellers. And I, a die-hard fan of the genre since the age of eleven, when Carolyn Keene and I first crossed paths, would meet them. In person. Caron wasn’t interested in where they got their ideas, but I was. Perhaps not on Olympus—but I wouldn’t rule it out.

  I may have been a bit giddy as I went back to my car and drove home. I went upstairs, imagining myself in a piercingly significant conversation with Dilys Knoxwood regarding the poisoned knitting needle in Sir Attenbury’s parlor, paused in the kitchen to stick a frozen dinner in the microwave, and headed for the bathroom.

  And saw the flowers on the coffee table.

  Flowers, in general, are good. These, in particular, were glorious: exotic orange lilies, birds-of-paradise, magenta-streaked orchids, feathery green fronds. These, in particular, were also very bad, since I could think of only one person who might have sent them.

  “Caron!” I called.

  She came out of her room. “They came earlier today. The guy in the downstairs apartment accepted them from the florist, then brought them up here when I came home. I didn’t know what else to do but tell him thanks.”

  “That’s all you could do,” I said as I sat down on the sofa and regarded the card held aloft
in a plastic fork. “Did you read it?”

  She nodded. “They’re from Peter.”

  “And?”

  “All the card says is ‘Love, Peter.’” Caron sat down on an armchair across from me and shifted uncomfortably for a moment. “I wish you’d tell me what’s going on, Mother. It does concern me, you know.”

  “I know it does, dear,” I said, sifting through my thoughts as if I might find a nugget of coherence. “Peter seemed to think he had the solution—mine and yours and his. We were very close to establishing a household to determine if he was right.”

  “A household?” Caron said carefully. “As in . . . ?”

  “Well, marriage, although I would have discussed it with you before I agreed to anything. You’re old enough to put forth your thoughts. I would have listened. You and I would have made the decision.”

  Caron swallowed. “When Dad died, you weren’t looking for my thoughts. You did all the prescribed hugging, but you might as well have been wrapped like a mummy. I know Dad was with a girl when he was killed in the accident. You’ve never told me how to deal with that.”

  “As if I knew,” I said as I went across the room and dragged her up for a bone-crunching embrace. She remained limp for a moment, then reciprocated with both vigor and tears. “I haven’t dealt with it, either,” I added. “I do know your father adored you.”

  “And maybe you, but not us.”

  Her perspicacity went well beyond her sixteen years. Unable to respond, I squeezed her until she whimpered in protest, then retreated to the sofa. “As for Peter,” I said, “when last heard from, he was in the company of his ex-wife, the lovely Leslie. Leslie has Russian wolfhounds. She is a loyal attendee of the opera season in St. Petersburg. She does something on Wall Street that makes her rich and successful. Peter’s mother adores her.”

  “You know who you sound like?” Caron asked as she flopped back across the armchair.

  “Who?”

  “Me, when I talk about Rhonda Maguire. Remember what you always say?”

  “This is entirely different,” I said. “It is not about infatuation and petty jealousy. What’s more, those flowers are the wrong color.”

  And they were, considering.

  Chapter

  2

  It may have been obvious that I wasn’t dealing especially well with any of my potential problems. Peter hadn’t bothered to call, however, and no plagues had rained on my apartment or bookstore (or on my parade, for that matter) by the next morning. Or so I thought, until noon, when the telephone rang and I discovered that I needed an industrial-strength umbrella.

  Sally wasted no time on idle remarks. “Oh, Claire! The most terrible thing has happened! I would rather die than tell you this!”

  It would not have been charitable of me to select the alternate option. “What’s wrong?”

  “Well, when I was walking home yesterday, I noticed a definite discomfort in my left leg. I finally took a look at it, and it was so swollen and pasty that I called the doctor. I’m in the hospital, Claire. It’s what they call a deep venal thrombosis—treatable, but I have to stay hooked up to an IV for the next few days. It could be as long as a week.”

  “You’ll be okay?” I asked.

  “I will, but what about the convention? Dr. Shackley is the sponsor, but he has no idea what’s happening. His secretary snarled an obscenity at me when I called her and asked that she update the registration list. Most of the files are at my office at home, but I’m restricted by an intravenous tube. Claire . . .”

  “What, Sally? I’m the bookseller, not the co-organizer. You promised me that all I’d be needed to do is sell books. I haven’t even read the schedule.”

  “Claire . . .” A haggard coyote could not have howled more despondently.

  I sucked in a breath. “Sally, there are plenty of other people on the committee who attended all the meetings and are more than capable of overseeing things. I’m really sorry that you can’t be there, but—”

  “There aren’t, though. I’ve been wracking my brain all night, but there’s not one person on the committee who’s familiar with the genre and these authors. Geral-dine can lick stamps. Earlene is keeping the books. Jordan suggested which wines to order for the opening night reception. Kimmie is stuffing packets. Not one of them appreciates the significance of the attending authors. I might as well rip the needle out of my hand and let an embolism do its dirty deed.”

  “Sally,” I began soothingly, “you’re—”

  “No, I’m not! If you can’t be bothered to do a few little things to see that everything runs smoothly, then surely you can take off an hour to attend my funeral. My condition is serious, you know; I could have a heart attack or stroke at any moment. Stress only serves to worsen my condition. My blood pressure has achieved a new personal best.”

  She sounded as though she’d already selected hymns and written an obituary for the local newspaper. To my dismay, I felt myself crumpling. “Look, Sally, you’ve done a super job organizing the conference. It ought to run as blandly as the cable weather channel. Authors have their schedules, as do registrants. No one needs to do anything else.”

  “I knew you’d come through for me,” Sally said with a snuffle of gratitude. “All you need to do tomorrow is make sure the authors are pleased with their accommodations at the Azalea Inn. On Saturday morning, you’ll introduce the panelists, pose a few questions to kick off the discussion, and keep things moving along. These authors are professionals, and may very well take over. At the picnic, you’ll introduce Dr. Shackley and let him thank everyone for attending.”

  “That’s all?” I murmured.

  “Oh, Claire, if I hadn’t known in my heart that I could count on you, I would have told the nurse to wheel me straight to the morgue! The very day I’m released, I’ll come by the store and treat you to lunch. I know where to find the most fantastic soyburgers in all of Farberville.” She re-snuffled. “I’m so totally devastated to miss the convention, but you can tell me every last thing these fabulous authors said and did.”

  She hung up before I could reply, although I had little to say. Sally was sincerely enthusiastic; the birth of a grandchild would have run a lukewarm second. I was looking at what might well be two thousand dollars of profit over the weekend. Welcome attendees and introduce panelists? It hardly compared to cutting off a pertinent digit on a hand, foot, or deposit slip.

  It did occur to me to find the pages Sally had left behind the day before and read them with a bit more attention. The authors were slated to arrive in Farberville at various times on Friday afternoon, as well as the groupies and aspiring authors who’d paid for the privilege of goggling at them. Caron and Inez would be busy, but once I’d transported books to Old Main, my first official obligation was not until five, when the Azalea Inn would host a wine-and-cheese affair to kick off the weekend.

  The Azalea Inn was a good choice for both hospitality and convenience to the campus. The original structure was pre-Civil War and rumored to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad that assisted run-away slaves moving northward. The existence of tunnels was a myth indigenous to Farber College, mostly utilized to coerce vacuous coeds into strolling along the railroad tracks late at night.

  As for the house itself, various generations had maintained, remodeled, and most recently seen commercial possibilities. It now had half a dozen bedrooms with private bathrooms. If the authors found it not to their liking, it was not my problem.

  No, my problem wandered into the store shortly thereafter. The curly brown hair was charmingly ruffled, the generous but not thick lips drawn in a grin, the glistening white teeth vulpine, the molasses-colored eyes as warm and enticing as pools of silken water. They’d lured me into delicious (and lascivious) adult behavior in the past, but today I wasn’t tempted. Not in the least. Cocker spaniels, perhaps—but Russian wolfhounds?

  “Hey,” Peter said. “How are you?”

  I forced a smile. “I’m fine, thank you.”
>
  He disappeared behind the paperback fiction rack. “And Caron?”

  “Fine.” I took a breath. “And your mother?”

  “Fine.”

  I waited to see if his face might surface above the lurid science fiction covers, then resolutely picked up the pencil and stared at the schedule. “It sounds as though everyone’s fine. I presume this means Leslie’s fine, too. I’d inquire about her dogs, but I can’t remember their names.”

  “Boris Goodenov and Prince Igor,” Peter said from the direction of the self-help books. “They’re fine, too.”

  “Be still my heart,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Excuse me?”

  I slammed down the pencil. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing at the moment, but I am not amused! Thanks for the flowers. A good time was had by all. No harm, no foul. Just leave—okay?”

  Peter stepped out from behind the rack. I would have preferred him to do so with a stricken expression, his eyes filled with tears, his mouth quivering with tongue-tied angst, but he was displaying none of the above. “I’ve tried to call you fifteen times in the last three months,” he said ever so coolly. “I wanted to explain things.”

  “And I didn’t want to hear it. You are free to do whatever you choose. In this case, you seem to have chosen to do it with your ex-wife. I’m not interested in explanations.”

  Despite a visible effort on his part to play the unfairly maligned hero, his eyes shifted away from me. Perry Mason would have zoomed in with an accusatory finger, nailed him, and left him whimpering in front of a jury of twelve angry men, one of whom would be toying with a neatly-tied noose.

  “It’s pretty complicated,” he said. “Any chance you can close and go to lunch? I’d like to tell you what’s going on.”

  “So I can agree to babysit the dogs while you’re on your second honeymoon in Jamaica? You made your decision three months ago, and so did I. Let’s just allow the relationship to die a dignified death. I’ll scatter the cremains along the railroad tracks when I have some spare time.”