Curtains for Romeo

by Jessa Archer

  “You might want to update Delaney so she can revise her predictions,” I said. “In case you missed it, Travis was just looking at me as though I was a royal pain in his butt for talking to potential witnesses.”

  “Well, yes,” Paige replied. “There’s that. But you know that’s not the look I’m talking about.”

  I laughed. “What I know is that you and Delaney have overactive romantic imaginations. Travis and I are having dinner to catch up on the past two decades, not to reignite a flame. I’m a very different person than I was back then. So is he.”

  “We took that into account,” Paige said. “It could mean that you have very little in common now. Or it could mean that you’ve grown beyond all of the things that drove you apart back then.”

  “I don’t know whether to be disappointed or flattered,” I said. “Do the two of you really have nothing better to discuss than my mostly nonexistent love life?”

  Paige scooped up the last of the fudge sauce with her finger and gave me a little grin. “Of course we do. But we both thought you could use a little advice since it’s been…well, Dave was the last guy you dated, right? And that’s been…what? Seven or eight months.”

  “Oh, no!” I said in mock horror. “Has it really been that long? Now I’ll have to relearn everything I ever knew about dating.”

  “Yup. If you’re out of the game for more than six months you’re legally required to take a refresher course.”

  Paige’s phone buzzed with a text. I looked around for the waitress, who was nowhere to be found, so I scrounged around in my bag until I found enough cash to cover the bill and a decent tip.

  As we rounded the corner to the parking lot, we passed the waitress, who gave us a little finger wave. “Have a good evening!”

  Travis was leaning against his police cruiser as we approached. He nodded toward Paige, who was thumb-typing as she walked down the stairs and navigated around the cars.

  “How the heck do they do that? Nathan’s the same way. I’d faceplant right here on the gravel if I tried to type and walk at the same time.”

  I smiled, but gave him a look that let him know I understood exactly what he was doing. Change the tone, lighten the mood, cajole me into laughing with him. That was always Travis’s go-to move after an argument, especially when he was regretting saying something stupid. Sometimes this was followed by an apology, sometimes not.

  “I think they started issuing extra tech genes to all babies born after the turn of the century.” I unlocked the car and Paige slid into the passenger seat, still typing.

  Travis tapped my elbow gently as I reached for the door handle. “Hey. It was a good hunch, Tig. Sorry for being a jackass in there.”

  I waited a moment, just long enough to let him know that I agreed he had indeed been a jackass, and then said, “It’s okay. I would have called you about this, but I wasn’t sure myself until the waitress identified her.”

  He nodded. “But your other hunch? The one about Alicia and me? That one’s wrong. We weren’t—aren’t—dating. That’s more on me than on Alicia, though. After Nathan’s mom took off last year, Alicia seemed to think we were inevitable. Started showing up at the office with coffee or a surprise lunch. Made vague insinuations that she’d called in a few favors to get me this job. I did not encourage her, but I’ve learned not to underestimate Alicia. While I was off in Raleigh and you were out in California, she was building a network here. She’s kin to half the people on the island and in some sort of business deal with most of the others.”

  “She’s a reporter, Travis. For a tiny local paper. A person would barely be able to scrape by on a salary like that, so how is she making business deals?”

  “The job at The Clarion is more hobby than anything else. Gives her a credible excuse for nosing around in everyone’s business, scouting out investment opportunities. Her ex-husband scooped up some properties when they were priced rock bottom, and he was smart enough to sell before the market tanked. Alicia got half of that. But my point is, you can be sure she already knows you were here. She’ll probably know what you ordered, what you asked the waitress, and how much you tipped. I’m certain she’ll find out I was here, too. I don’t know what spin she’ll put on it, but trust me…there will be something in the paper tomorrow. Last time I pissed her off there was a week-long series about a juvenile crime spree. We’d had a shoplifter at Walmart and two bikes stolen from the middle school in a three-month period, and she turned it into a full-blown epidemic.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the warning. But if Alicia’s got her little spy network watching our every step, and if she can cause trouble for you with the city council, is Friday night a smart move?”

  “Come on, Tig. When have I ever claimed to be smart?” His grin slowly faded, and then he went on. “The goal here is not to give Alicia anything she can twist around to put you in legal jeopardy. Allegations of you interfering with a murder investigation could lead to problems for both of us. But…Friday night has nothing to do with my job or this investigation. I’m not willing to let Alicia Brown dictate my private life. Are you?”

  Travis raised his eyebrows with those last two words, holding my gaze. And even though I tried, I couldn’t help laughing. Yes, it had been two decades. Yes, both of us had undoubtedly changed in many, many ways. But some things remained the same.

  He’d known my answer would be the same exact thing it was back in high school.

  Alicia Brown could kiss right off.

  Chapter Eleven

  Thursday’s copy of The Clarion landed directly on top of Wednesday’s. Normally, there would have been a few chip bags and snack wrappers from the night before and the previous day’s coffee filter to separate the two. But Paige and I had both been too stuffed from our dinner at the Blue Lagoon to even think about snacking, and I had—unwisely, as it happened—grabbed the paper from the driveway first thing, before giving my brain the caffeine it so badly needed.

  I felt a twinge of guilt for not recycling, but I needed the catharsis of dumping coffee grounds on it, along with a hairball that Attila helpfully left me in the kitchen. “Maybe we should buy a bird. Or a hamster. Do you have a preference, Attila? It just needs to be something that requires newspaper to line the bottom of its cage.”

  Attila twitched his tail lazily at the sound of his name, and then, realizing that the silly human wasn’t saying anything of interest, closed his eyes and went back to ignoring me.

  Front page, lead story.

  Police Question Possible Suspect in Professor’s Death

  The article itself had been slightly more nuanced, but it included an interview with the waitress who had identified Melinda Barry as the woman who had dinner with Amundsen on the night of his death. Of course, the girl didn’t sound nearly as certain about Barry in Alicia’s coverage. Alicia also noted that the police had questioned a woman dining with her daughter, both inside the restaurant and later in the parking lot.

  Alicia’s “sources” had identified the diners as Antigone Alden, Amundsen’s replacement at SCU, and her daughter, Paige Alden-Padgett. The article went on to insinuate that I was questioning the staff about “summer resident and philanthropist” Melinda Barry Eastland. That was beyond annoying, because I hadn’t mentioned the woman’s name to anyone other than Travis. Melinda’s name wasn’t on the photograph, and the waitress hadn’t seemed to connect the face with a name, only with a previous customer at the restaurant.

  Police and Ms. Eastland were unavailable for comment, according to the article.

  Apparently Alicia hadn’t felt the need to seek comment from me. That was probably a good thing, since what I had to say to Alicia wouldn’t have been printable without a string of carefully placed asterisks.

  The logical assumption, given that I hadn’t mentioned Melinda Barry to anyone other than Travis or Paige, would be that one of them had leaked that bit of information. And Paige was out as a suspect, unless Nathan or her friend Delaney had The Clarion’s
NewsMaker Hotline on speed dial, which seemed a bit unlikely for sixteen-year-olds.

  That left Travis, which didn’t make sense either—partly because the article noted that the police had not commented and partly because he wouldn’t tell Alicia anything like that. This was, however, a classic Alicia maneuver. Plant a few seeds of distrust, then sit back and watch.

  I gave Paige a heads-up that our names were once again in the paper over breakfast. She muttered something that would have normally required a deposit into the swear jar, but given my own dark thoughts this morning, I let it slide.

  A text message from Tandy Mercer was on my phone when I finished showering. Please stop by Dean Prendergast’s office before class.

  The requested meeting might be about the stories I collected from Amundsen’s students, which I’d emailed to the dean last night. But either way, Dean Prendergast reads the morning paper, so it was inevitable that we’d be chatting about my trip to the Blue Lagoon.

  Having already set out clothes for the day, I snarled at the text and went back to the closet. No way was I wearing a skirt and heels, but I did exchange the jeans for a dressier pair of pants. I half expected Caroline to turn up in the living room and send me back upstairs to change before I made it out the door, much like she had when I was in high school. But Mom’s ghost was a no-show.

  Caroline’s absence was, oddly enough, the crowning touch on my bad morning. She had popped in at least briefly every morning since we moved in, and I guess I was getting used to her being around. That probably called my mental state into question even more than seeing the ghost in the first place. But it was true, nonetheless, and the thought that Mom might actually have moved on triggered a wave of grief almost as strong as the ones I’d felt in the weeks after she died. It kind of felt like losing her all over again. I put on some upbeat music and tried to keep my mind on other things. But I still had to touch up my makeup to hide the tear tracks when I pulled into the parking lot.

  Tandy Mercer was not at the desk. Maybe, just maybe, the universe was cutting me a tiny break. When I tapped on the dean’s door, however, it was Tandy who opened it. She gave my attire a quick up-and-down glance, sniffed once, and then stepped aside to let me enter.

  Marjorie Prendergast smiled up at me from the behind the desk and motioned to the same chair I’d occupied a few days before. “Antigone. Thank you so much for putting together the student memories about Jerald. That was such a big help. I think Martin Peele will actually be giving the eulogy, since they can’t get his group onto a flight until tomorrow afternoon. To be honest, I’d be inclined to just cancel entirely at this point if students could get their money back. This transit strike has wreaked havoc with each leg of the trip. But the theater in Rome claims the strike isn’t their fault, and they’ve incurred expenses, and…” She waved her hands dismissively. “It’s a disaster. Anyway, I forwarded your email to Martin, and again—thank you.”

  “It was no problem.” And it hadn’t been, although I really wished there had been a bit more gender balance in the students who responded. Theater classes often tilted a bit female in my experience, and that was definitely true here, but it was more like a sixty-forty split. Of the twelve responses to my request, however, ten were female. And one of the two guys was Ben, which really shouldn’t count, since I specifically requested his help, and he just repeated the stage-combat story he told me earlier, making it sound more like a joke than like an attempt to bolster Amundsen’s ego.

  Dean Prendergast sighed, and I could almost feel the temperature in the room drop as she changed the subject. “I’m guessing you’ve read the paper this morning?” When I nodded, she said, “What on earth were you thinking? If you believed Melinda Eastland was somehow involved, you should have come to me. Or at the very least, you should have taken it to the police, instead of going around making accusations.”

  “Whoa. That’s just…wrong. You’re basing your assumptions on that article, and as you noted the other day, Alicia Brown is an awful journalist. I haven’t made any accusations. All I did was take the cast photo from this past summer into the Blue Lagoon and ask if that was the same woman who dined with Amundsen. I didn’t even use her name. And…to be honest, I don’t think Melinda had anything to do with his death. She seemed genuinely shocked when I called to tell her about the memorial service.”

  The dean frowned. “She didn’t already know? That’s…odd. I could have sworn her name was on the list of people I asked Tandy to contact. I’ll have to send her a note of apology. After all she’s done for the theater department—the music department, too, actually—I really should have called her personally.”

  I took a deep breath, knowing that what I was about to say probably would make things more awkward. But the dean would find out soon enough anyway.

  “You can probably just tell her in person. She told me she was going to try to make the memorial service tomorrow.”

  Dean Prendergast visibly paled. “That’s not good. I’d hoped that all of this would blow over before she was back in town.”

  “Even if she wasn’t coming down from New Jersey, I think the police are going to have some questions for her. Like I said, my gut feeling is that she wasn’t involved, but she did apparently have dinner—and a heated argument—with Jerald Amundsen the night he died. The article in The Clarion may depict the waitress as being bit unclear about the identity, but she seemed quite certain when I showed her the cast photo.”

  “Did she say what they argued about?”

  “Something about signing a document,” I said.

  The dean sighed in relief. “Oh good. A business squabble, then. Given that it’s Jerald we’re talking about I was worried that it…might be…” She trailed off as she saw my expression. “You think they were having an affair, too?”

  “From what I’ve heard, they’d had an affair. Past tense. Amundsen seems to have traded her in for a younger model…possibly one of his students. There was apparently a fight between the two women at the theater last summer.”

  Dean Prendergast tried to look shocked, and failed miserably. I thought back to what my mother had said about her toying with the idea of firing Amundsen over exactly that sort of rumor.

  “Well, this probably won’t end well,” she said. “It will be a miracle if this doesn’t convince the Eastlands to revoke our lease on the Coastal Playhouse after this season. And revenue from those performances are a factor in the department’s budget. I’ll do my best to smooth things over, but you need to apologize to her, as well, for getting her involved in this in the first place.”

  The word apologize seemed a bit strong. For one thing, I certainly wasn’t the one who got Melinda Barry involved with the situation. The dean seemed to be ignoring the fact that the woman was seen by several people arguing heatedly with a man who is now dead. I didn’t even feel fully responsible for the publicity issue—Alicia Brown deserved a big heaping helping of blame for that.

  I had definitely intended to explain the situation to Melinda Barry, and to tell her that I didn’t really believe she had anything to do with the murder. But to be fair, I really couldn’t say with any certainty at all that the woman was innocent at this point. If I hadn’t been more or less forced to tell Travis about the situation directly, I would have spoken to Melinda after the memorial and asked her to voluntarily tell the police that she and Amundsen had quarreled the night he was killed. If she had refused, then I would have had no recourse but to report it myself. Aside from the cab driver, Melinda was quite possibly the last person to see Amundsen alive, and she might have information that could lead the police to whoever was responsible for the man’s death.

  But I supposed that I could, in good conscience, tell Melinda that I was sorry for the way things were handled. I hadn’t wanted either of our names in the paper.

  “Sure. Consider it done.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The warm weather of the previous day had vanished by the time I pulled into the lot outside t
he Coastal Playhouse. I wasn’t alone this time. Two students were with me in the Sonata, which now smelled strongly of pepperoni. Delivery isn’t an option that far out, so I’d had to stop in and pick up the pizzas before we left Caratoke.

  It had been a quiet ride, even though I tried to get a conversation going. I was pretty sure that one of the students riding in the back was a friend of Bethany’s, so it was possible that this was a united effort to give me the cold shoulder. Or maybe they were just nervous about talking to professors outside the classroom. After a few feeble attempts, I left them to their cellphones.

  Ben was already there when we arrived, helping two of the other students drag some of the larger branches and other debris into a pile near the trash bins. By the end of the hour, the deck that looked out over the sound was clear, and we’d even made a bit of progress nailing some of the loose slats along the railing back into place. I made a mental note to pick up some paint and brushes from the hardware store before the next class on Tuesday, although I thought there was a decent chance we’d be able to get back into Muncey Auditorium by then.

  Most of the students had a late-afternoon class or simply other places to be, so they headed back to campus as soon as I gave the okay. Ben and two of the girls who’d rode in with him didn’t seem to be in a big hurry to get back, however. The air was a bit chilly, but it was a nice afternoon and there was still pizza to be consumed, even though it was no longer exactly hot.

  I grabbed a broom and began sweeping smaller bits and pieces into a pile. As I bent down to scoop them into the dustpan, the afternoon sun glinted off the edge of one of the nails. For the most part, the nails I’d swept up were aged and somewhat rusty, but all of the edges looked as if the rust had been scraped away by something. That brought to mind the nail in the sign out front that snagged Ben’s finger when we were here on Tuesday. It had looked a lot like this one.