by Frankie Bow
“I’m afraid it is.”
Pat and Emma sipped their coffee serenely, clearly expecting to be included in whatever conversation my department chair and I were about to have.
Dan looked from Emma to Pat and back again. “I guess she’ll tell you all about it anyway,” he sighed. He stepped into my office and pulled the door shut.
“I just came from an emergency department chairs’ meeting. It’s about that incident at the breakfast for Jimmy Tanaka.”
“Is Stephen Park in trouble?” Emma asked eagerly.
“I think we’re all in trouble.”
Dan pinched his nose and tilted his head back. I handed him a tissue.
“Thanks. Sorry. Nosebleed. You going somewhere?”
“Me? Oh, the suitcase? No, that’s actually Jimmy Tanaka’s. Bill Vogel had Serena store it in my office.”
Pat stood and offered Dan his chair, and then perched on my desk. Dan nodded thanks and lowered himself gingerly, trying to avoid the crack across the seat.
“It’s a real skull,” Emma said, to help Dan along. “Right? The security people told Molly that. And Stephen didn’t have the permits—”
“Worse than that, Emma,” Dan said. “They ID’d the skull. It’s Jimmy Tanaka.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Well, first things first.” I picked up the phone. “I’m sure the police will want to take this important evidence off my hands.”
The nice lady on the phone didn’t seem to share my sense of urgency about Jimmy Tanaka’s suitcase. She took my message and assured me that someone would get back to me.
“I need a headline,” Pat said. “What do you like better? It Was Murder!, or Grisly Campus Find Identified?”
“Pat!” Emma gave him a shove. “Dan said don’t publish it!”
“I think I prefer the second one,” I said, “but when you say ‘grisly campus find identified,’ it could sound like you’re describing the campus as grisly.”
“I’m not going to publish it right away,” Pat said. “I’ll wait a couple days.”
“This is terrible,” I said.
“I know. I hate having to sit on a story.”
“I don’t mean about your story, Pat. Of course that’s important,” I added quickly, “but what about Stephen? It was bad enough when he was connected with a—a prank. Now he’s involved in a murder.”
“Eh, not your problem,” Emma said.
“It might be her problem. Everyone knows that Molly had a relationship with Stephen. So what about that plastic skull in your classroom?”
“It’s not just my classroom,” I said. “Rodge and Larry teach in there too. I have to follow up on that, though.”
“On the bright side, at least you don’t have to write that press release,” Emma said.
“I’m calling security right now,” I said.
I retrieved Officer Medeiros’s card from my wallet and dialed his direct number. The conversation was short and disappointing.
“So?” Emma said. “Did they look at the tapes?”
“Not yet,” I said. “They can’t find them.”
“Can’t find them!” Emma exclaimed. “What kine baboozes they got working up there in security?”
“Officer Medeiros has been nothing but professional,” I said. “I don’t think it’s nice to call him a . . . whatever you called him. You know what? I’m going to go talk to Stephen.”
“Molly, don’t be an idiot,” Emma said. “You don’t confront a murderer! Don’t you ever watch movies?”
Pat took Emma’s side at first, but after a perfunctory attempt to talk me out of it, they both insisted on coming with me. It was just Stephen Park, after all, during daylight hours. True, there was his temper tantrum at the dress rehearsal, but yelling at people was different from doing them physical harm. And Stephen Park couldn’t overpower a tightly capped pickle jar, let alone all three of us.
The theater department chair’s office reeked of Stephen’s Indonesian clove cigarettes, exactly the way it used to before the smoking ban. Stephen never thought the rules applied to him.
“Hi, Molly.” He sounded defeated. “Pat. Emma.”
Facing his desk were two orange plastic classroom chairs with chrome legs, the same style as my one beige one, but in better repair. I sat down in one. Emma and Pat did an Alphonse and Gaston routine over the remaining chair. Finally, Emma sat and Pat slouched against the electric blue cinderblock wall.
“You repainted,” I said. “That’s some color.” I thought it looked like it belonged in a 1970s preschool, not a university.
“The graduating seniors repainted my office as a going-away present,” Stephen said, then added, “We’re allowed to do that in the theater department.”
That was obviously meant to be a dig at the College of Commerce. I decided to let it go. Stephen clearly wasn’t in peak fighting condition anyway. He looked cadaverous under the fluorescent lights.
“Stephen,” I said. “Your angel? The one who was going to finance your movie? It was Jimmy Tanaka, wasn’t it?”
Stephen looked down at the papers on his desk and swallowed. He looked miserable.
“I didn’t kill him, Molly.”
“You know about the skull?” Emma asked.
Stephen nodded. “They had an emergency meeting for the department chairs. I had no idea. The way everyone looked at me . . .”
“There were terms that you couldn’t agree to,” I said. “That’s why the deal fell apart. Right? Okay, look. This is kind of my problem too. Thanks to you, our security people think I have something to do with this. Oh, did you know that one of your props showed up in the trash can in my classroom?”
“Yeah, they asked me about it when they brought it back. It was one of mine, but I don’t know how it got into your classroom. Is that why they think you’re involved?”
I restrained myself from vaulting across his desk and throttling him.
“Stephen, they think I’m involved because you told them that I was responsible for organizing the prop room! And now it turns out that Jimmy Tanaka’s skull might not even have anything to do with your prop room! So I’m in trouble for nothing!”
“Molly.” Emma patted my shoulder. “It’s okay. Breathe! Anyway, weren’t you the one who brought up the idea of the skull being from the prop room in the first place?”
“Okay, look,” I said. “Forget what you said to campus security. As long as you don’t say anything to the police. If they ask to talk to you, just lawyer up, okay?”
Stephen stared at his desk.
“What is it?” I asked.
Stephen flinched, but said nothing.
After a long pause, I said quietly, “You did not already talk to the police. Did you?”
Silence.
“Stephen, what did you tell them?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Oh.” I slumped with relief. “Well, that’s good.”
“I mean, I told them the truth.”
“You what?”
Emma placed her hands on my shoulders and eased me back down into the chair.
“All I told them was, I had had some business with Jimmy Tanaka years ago, but I didn’t know anything about this, you know, the murder. And they ordered me . . . they said don’t leave town.”
I felt protective and infuriated at the same time. It was a familiar sensation.
“Anyway,” Stephen said, “I don’t think I have anything to worry about. I mean, what’s my motive? Why would I hide Jimmy Tanaka’s decapitated head in a food tray?”
“It’s not a decapitated head!” I said, very calmly. Pat and Emma stared at me. I lowered my voice.
“There’s no such thing as a decapitated head,” I continued, in a soft and reasonable tone. “Decapitate means to remove the head. You can’t remove the head from a head. That doesn’t make any sense. What you want to say is disembodied head.”
“No, I don’t want to say disembodied head,” Stephen snapped. “That makes it sound like the head
is floating in the sky like a balloon. Decapitated head is common usage. Everyone says decapitated head.”
“Just because everyone does something doesn’t mean it’s right. Everyone is not an authority.” I paused. “Everyone thinks Andrew Lloyd Weber is a musical genius.”
Stephen blew air out, as if someone had punched him in the stomach. It took him a moment to regain his breath.
“Fine, Molly. Fine. Disembodied head.” He raised his hands and twiddled his fingers as he said it.
“Is there someone who has a grudge against you?” Pat asked. “Someone who knows about your history with Jimmy Tanaka?”
Stephen shook his head.
“We were at the dress rehearsal,” Emma said.
“You were there? Were all three of you there?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said.
Stephen rested his forehead in his hand.
“What did the students do to make you so upset?” Pat asked.
“Oh, they had been moving things around in the prop room. It was impossible to find anything . . .” He trailed off, avoiding eye contact with me.
On the way back to my office, Emma was the first to speak.
“So. Who thinks Stephen is guilty?”
“I feel sorry for him,” Pat said.
“I know, right? Especially after Molly got through with him.”
“No one has to feel sorry for him,” I said. “He brings it on himself.”
“You don’t think he did it, though?” Emma asked.
“No. I don’t. Stephen doesn’t have the stomach to decapitate someone. He couldn’t even stay in the kitchen when I cooked chicken liver.”
“I thought Stephen was a vegetarian,” Pat said.
“I think he is now. Can we walk faster? It’s starting to rain.”
“Oh, no,” Emma said. “I know what that does to your hair.”
“My hair? What are you talking about?”
“What? Nothing.”
We proceeded single-file under the huge monstera leaves that sheltered the footpath. With most of our groundskeepers furloughed, the endemic foliage has taken over our campus. My office building has been swallowed up by maile pilau, which is fine, as long as you don’t have to smell it.
“What if he did do it?” Emma asked. “If we didn’t know Stephen already, and all we saw was how he acted on the night of the dress rehearsal, I mean think about it!”
“How would he kill someone, though?” I asked. “I mean, Stephen?”
“I dunno,” Emma said. “By boring the victim to death with his plays?”
“How about your boyfriend Donnie Gonsalves?” Pat said. “Maybe he was the one who killed Tanaka.”
“Oooh, yeah, Donnie’s pretty fit,” Emma cooed. “He has that great body, and those arms.”
“Why are we talking about Donnie now?” I said. “Just because Donnie’s Drive-Inn and Merrie Musubis are competitors?”
“That’s a motive,” Pat said.
“No, it isn’t. You know, when I tell my students that the restaurant business is cutthroat, I don’t mean it literally.”
“What about the police officer?” Emma asked. “The one who found Tanaka, you know. And got pushed out of his job afterward.”
“After all these years, though?” Pat said.
“Yeah,” Emma sighed. “Stephen doesn’t seem like a likely suspect, but everyone else seems even less likely.”
And then I heard these words come out of my mouth: “I have to help Stephen.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Molly, you have to help me.”
Stephen Park stood in my doorway, his skinny frame silhouetted against the darkening sky.
“Stephen! What are you—”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve called first. I’m sure you have better things to do than . . . I’m sure you’re busy.”
He turned to leave.
“It’s okay. You’re here. You might as well come in.”
A birdlike whistle pierced the air.
“You have coqui frogs?” he asked.
“It’s recent,” I said. I stood to the side and motioned him into my living room.
When I first bought my house, there were only a few of the tiny frogs in the neighborhood, and their distinctive “peep PEEP” was tolerable. Now, the population had swelled exponentially, and coqui frog racket ruled the night.
“You have to disclose coquis to any potential buyers,” Stephen said.
“I know that, Stephen. Fortunately, I don’t plan to sell my ‘bourgeois little suburban house’ anytime soon.”
I closed the door behind him. Stephen looked even worse than he had earlier this afternoon in his office, if that were possible. He tottered over to the couch and hovered next to it. I poured two glasses of wine and brought them over. He waved his away.
“Fine,” I said. “More for me.” I sat down on the couch and gestured to him to do the same.
He sank down next to me and rested his bony elbows on his bony knees, radiating a kind of negative energy that sucked all of the life out of my living room. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket, pausing only when I caught his eye.
“Okay if I smoke?”
“No! It’s not okay to smoke inside my house. You know that.”
I don’t care what he says, clove cigarettes are still cigarettes. He withdrew his hand from his pocket and clasped his hands in front of him. I noticed a tremble in the slender fingers. For a moment I thought he was going to be sick, and hoped my leather couch was as easy to wipe clean as the saleswoman at Balusteros World of Furniture had claimed.
“Sorry, Molly,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m pathetic.”
“That’s not helpful.”
I wasn’t going to let myself get sucked into pitying him.
“Have you thought of any reason why someone would want to involve you in this?” I asked. “I mean, you obviously didn’t decapitate Jimmy Tanaka and plant his skull in the breakfast buffet.”
Stephen glanced at me and then back down at his lap.
“That’s sweet. You have faith in me.”
“Not really,” I said.
“The thing is, I don’t know . . . I don’t know if I killed Jimmy Tanaka.”
“What do you mean you don’t know if you killed Jimmy Tanaka?”
“I can’t remember,” he said.
I stared at him. “You can’t remember whether or not you murdered someone? How does something like that slip your mind?”
I scooted away from him, into the arm of the couch, as if that would keep me safe. I realized that letting Stephen into my house was a stupid thing to do. I imagined the story in the County Courier the following day: There were no signs of forced entry. It is believed that the victim let the killer into her home voluntarily.
Stephen stared into the middle distance. “You’re right,” he said. “My prop room is a mess. My life is a mess. All my department chair duties, my theater classes, the performances, my work with KidsPlay, it’s impossible to keep up with it all.”
“Well, no one forced you to agree to all that,” I said. “You can’t be everyone’s hero.”
“Just say no.” He stared at the floor. “I can’t do that. Turn people away. Just look after number one. That’s not me.”
“Stephen, why did you come here? What do you want?”
He leaned back and closed his eyes.
“Have you ever tried to function on no sleep, Molly? I mean, literally no sleep. Rehearsal ends, you get something to eat, then it’s time to get ready for a morning meeting.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know how you can do that.”
“So one night one of my students told me she had a prescription—”
“Oh, no! Stephen, tell me you didn’t—”
“It was magic,” he said. “Suddenly, I had all the energy I needed. I could go for days if I had to.”
“But things started to get out of control,” I said.
“It’s such a clic
hé, isn’t it?” Stephen sighed.
“You know, I’ve heard this story before, Stephen. Many, many times. From my students. But you?”
“Why not me?” Stephen said.
“I mean, that kind of thing happens to people with—”
I realized that there was no way to finish that sentence that I wouldn’t regret.
“When did you start?” I asked.
He laughed weakly and looked down at the floor.
“I don’t remember. That’s the thing. It’s like someone just ran a big eraser over parts of my life.”
“Were you using the whole time I knew you?” I asked.
He stared at his jittering knees.
“What about your teeth?” I asked. “Let me see.”
“Stop it. My teeth are fine.”
“You know, your skin looks—”
“I know. You don’t have to tell me. I have a mirror. Listen to me, Molly, did you ever notice any of this? Me having memory problems? Could you tell?”
“Memory problems. Yeah, funny you should bring that up. Do you remember what happened on my birthday?”
“Your birthday.” Stephen drew his eyebrows together, and his eyes lit on the second glass of wine on the table. “Is that for me?”
“I thought you didn’t want it. Help yourself.”
“Why wouldn’t I want it? Wait, what were you saying now?”
“My birthday, Stephen. Remember? You told me you’d made a reservation at Sprezzatura. I got all dolled up and waited for you, and you never showed up. Remember Tatsuya’s Moderne Beauty, before it closed? I had Tatsuya do my hair that night. It looked magnificent.”
Stephen was staring at me, his hand paused halfway to the wine glass.
“You were supposed to pick me up at six,” I said.
“But I—”
“You finally called at four in the morning. After I’d gone to bed.”
“I called you at four in the morning? What was I doing at four in the morning?”
“You’re asking me? You said you were busy and lost track of time. I was too tired to fight with you at that point. I think I just said something like, sorry it didn’t work out.”
I had probably said some rather less ladylike things as well, but if Stephen didn’t remember, I certainly didn’t have to remind him.
