Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “I want,” she said softly.

  At her echo of what he’d said, Troy gave her a sharp look, but he couldn’t tell if she’d meant it the way he had.

  It only took him a minute to dump some charcoal in the grill and light it. Then he led the way to the garage.

  Because of the lack of windows, he’d added some expensive lighting as well as heavy-duty wooden shelving units. The kiln sat at the back, near the door into the house, while he used a large, sturdy table planted by the garage door to knead the clay, glaze, do any other hand work. The wheel occupied the middle of the open space.

  Delight lit Madison’s face and she immediately began examining the pieces he’d thrown that were in various stages of completion on the slatted wooden shelves. Recently thrown and drying were in one area, footed and waiting to go in the kiln were in another. Fired but not yet glazed, glazed but not yet fired, and finally the completed pieces that he was satisfied with but hadn’t yet sold or given away.

  “I haven’t done much these past few weeks,” he said, feeling self-conscious. Much? How about nothing? Zero. Zilch. He’d spent as many evenings as possible with Madison rather than alone out here concentrating on his hobby, which he knew full well was more of a stress-buster than a calling to high art.

  “These are amazing.” Madison had reached the finished pieces and picked up one of a set of cereal-sized bowls. She was delicately stroking the rim. He’d glazed them in a rich plum color that shaded into royal blue on the outside. The shape was pretty ordinary, but he’d been pleased with the glaze—something new he was trying.

  “Would you like to have them?” He reached for a box and the bubble wrap he kept handy.

  She gaped at him. “But...you can’t just give them to me. Surely you could sell these.”

  “Maybe.” He shrugged. “I told you I give away a lot of what I make. I’m not trying to make this a profession.” He frowned then set back down the bowl he’d picked up. “I guess the colors don’t go in your kitchen, though, do they?”

  “I want them, anyway.” She snatched up a sheet of bubble wrap. “You can’t take them back.”

  Troy laughed and helped pack the four bowls. “You know,” he said, “I made a vase that would look great on your kitchen windowsill.” He turned. “It’s here somewhere.”

  “There.” She pounced. Sure enough, she’d spotted the exact piece he’d been looking for. It was a perfect column with the faintest flare to the lip, glazed in a dark cherry-red with a hint of a crackle. “Oh, my God, Troy! It’s gorgeous!”

  “And yours.” He took it from her hand, wrapped it, too, and inserted it in the box beside the bowls.

  Madison made him promise not to give her one of his teapots but begged to see them. He located the ones that were finished but that he hadn’t yet taken to the gallery downtown. These were more whimsical than his other work, with lots of curves and glaze jobs that included polka dots and swirls in bright colors. They were selling as fast as he could turn them out. In fact, the gallery had left him a message a week or two ago asking for more. While he was thinking about it, he packed the two and tucked that box under his arm while Madison carried the one that held her goodies. Her head was swiveling all the way to the door.

  “You ever tried throwing anything on a wheel?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not very artistic.” Her forehead puckered, as if she didn’t like what she was thinking. “I didn’t bother with art classes in high school or college.”

  Both set down their boxes on the kitchen counter. “Who says you aren’t artistic?” Troy asked. “You’ve got great color combinations in your house. You’ve created a warm atmosphere with, I don’t know, a good flow. That tells me you have an eye. If you’d like a lesson or to play around out there, just let me know.”

  She was quiet while he went and checked the coals, then came back in and got the chicken out of the refrigerator. He popped a couple of potatoes in the microwave. When he got out a cutting board and started pulling veggies out of the crisper drawer, Madison offered to help. He set her to work cutting chunks the right size for skewers, which he planned to grill, as well.

  “Dad didn’t think I was artistic,” she said suddenly.

  Troy turned, not liking her tone of voice.

  “I sort of remember Mom putting my drawings and paintings on the refrigerator when I was little.”

  Troy nodded; his mom had done that, too.

  “But once I overheard them talking. Dad said ‘I guess we know one thing she won’t be when she grows up.’ Mom asked what, and Dad said an artist. We always had to do art projects at school.” She glanced at him and he nodded. Every kid did. “When my teachers took them down and gave them back to us, I started throwing mine away. Neither of my parents ever noticed. Although...” she hesitated “Mom might have been gone by then.”

  “Damn,” Troy said. He crossed the kitchen in one long stride and gathered her into his arms. She let the knife fall with a clatter onto the cutting board. “Why do you love that son of a bitch?”

  She stayed stiff. “He’s not. It isn’t wrong to encourage your kids to focus on the things they’re good at. That’s what he was doing.”

  Was it? Troy didn’t see it that way, but he could tell he’d violated the unspoken pact. Her dad was off-limits to him.

  He slid his hands up and down her upper arms. “Kids should be allowed to try everything and determine for themselves what pleases them, what they’re good at, what’s worth doing even if they’ll never set the world on fire at it. That’s what I’d do with my kids.”

  “You’d lie to them?”

  “No.” He nuzzled her face then let her go. “You can say, ‘Wow, look at those colors.’ Or ‘You’re getting a lot better at that.’ You’re proud they’re trying and happy they’re having fun.”

  Her head was bowed, but finally she raised her head and he saw the turmoil in her brown eyes. “That’s what I’d do, too,” she said quietly. “But...I do believe he loves me.”

  Troy barely hesitated. He’d heard the one phone call. He had also heard everything she had said about her father—and everything she hadn’t said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “I think he does, too.”

  Her smile was pained but grateful. “Thank you, Troy.” She rose on tiptoe and kissed his jaw, which had to be getting a little scratchy. “Hadn’t you better turn the chicken?”

  “Oh, hell!” As he raced for the barbecue grill, the laughter that followed him sounded happier, more like his Madison.

  It didn’t dissipate the ache in his chest or his fear. Because if it came down to her dad versus him, it would be no contest—Dad would be the winner hands-down.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MADISON ASKED HIM to take her home shortly after dinner. He couldn’t tell if she was nervous he’d try to sweep her upstairs to his bed, or whether she really had things she needed to do. She had kissed him good-night with all her usual responsiveness and shy hunger though, so Troy didn’t let himself brood about it even if she was pulling back a little.

  A glance at his watch told him he could still make a couple of phone calls. He had a suspicion both Senator Haywood and Holly Cromer were waiting tensely for their phones to ring.

  He waited until he’d gotten back to his place and poured himself another cup of coffee—with plenty of cream. Then he called Ms. Cromer first.

  She answered, voice curt. “What is it you want, Detective Troyer?”

  He’d explained in the message that he was investigating the murder of Mitchell King. No need to repeat that information. “Answers,” he said simply.

  She gave a laugh that was more of a gasp. “Do you need me to tell you what a creep he was?”

  “You aren’t the first to tell me that. Ms. Cromer, was Mr. King blackmailing you?”

  “Yes. Yes, he was. Are you asking if I was glad to find out he was dead? I’m ashamed to say I was.” Anguish transferred all too well over the airwaves. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was.”<
br />
  “I’d appreciate it if you would share what he was blackmailing you for.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve long since come out. I’m lesbian, Detective. I...hadn’t altogether admitted it to myself back then, and the idea of telling my parents was beyond awful. They are quite conservative. I dated through high school and college and even giggled about boys when I called home and talked to Mom. But my junior year I fell for a woman. A senior. We became lovers, although we were very careful to be sure no one else knew.”

  Troy had heard that before. “Yet somehow Mr. King found out.”

  “Yes. I think he must have followed me, which means he suspected. We met... Well, it doesn’t matter. He described what he’d seen in enough detail that I believed him. He threatened to let my parents know.”

  “Would they have believed him over you?”

  “He’d seen a scar on my butt. The idea that he’d seen me naked at all would have horrified them beyond belief. I could have made up some story about him walking into the shower room or something, but I couldn’t seem to think clearly, I was in such a panic. And he wasn’t asking for that much money. I thought it was worth it, that there was no way he could pursue me after college. So I paid,” she said bleakly.

  She, too, had paid fifty dollars a month. She’d had enough in her account, she explained, that she had offered to pay the entire amount for the rest of the academic year right then, up front. She had wanted it to be over with.

  “He turned me down. He said he thought it was better if I had a little, regular reminder of what I had at stake. Meeting him monthly was humiliating.”

  That, Troy guessed, had been the point. Maybe King had believed he could control his victims better if they had to present themselves with their payments at his summons, but mostly, Troy suspected, he had enjoyed seeing their helpless frustration and rage. However friendly that monthly exchange had been, he’d been needling them and they knew it.

  Until the night he died, had it ever crossed his mind that, if you waved a red cape often enough, sooner or later you’d be gored?

  Troy asked about the night in question, only to learn that Ms. Cromer had taken her only two finals for that semester early so that she could go home to attend her grandmother’s funeral. A friend had called her the day after the murder, at which point she’d felt the knee-buckling relief.

  “It’s none of my business,” he said, “but I hope your parents accepted you when you did come out.”

  “No,” she said. “They didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry.” He thanked her for her frankness, ended the call and shook his head over the grief he’d heard in her voice there at the end.

  It reminded him too much of Madison’s and made him think again that he’d been even luckier with his parents than he’d known. Which made how he’d been treating his mother seem pretty damn childish, after she’d given him nothing but unfailing acceptance his entire life.

  Frowning, he flipped to a new page in his notebook and dialed the phone.

  The first words out of Senator Haywood’s mouth were, “I met you at the college president’s reception, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, sir. I was attending both as liaison for the police department and because my father, Joseph Troyer, was a Wakefield grad who had put something in the time capsule.”

  “If you had questions, why didn’t you ask them then?”

  He smiled grimly. “Because I hadn’t yet overheard talk about several people who were at the gym that night and chose not to come forward to speak to the investigators. There was a lot of gossip that weekend, you know, some of it quite interesting.”

  “You’re implying there was talk about me.”

  Troy straightened, finding the quiver of suppressed fury in the senator’s voice interesting. More than interesting. So far, all the blackmail victims had talked about Mitch King and their own mistakes with an air of resignation. Some still felt shame, maybe, and the residue of dislike for the little worm who’d capitalized on their private actions. But flat-out anger and fear were long gone, maybe only because of the years, maybe because their long ago mistakes were now irrelevant.

  A U.S. senator, though, was in a different place. Politicians could mostly shrug off the admissions that they’d smoked marijuana a time or two in college, had burned a U.S. flag, been unfaithful to their wives. But what if the young Gordon Haywood had done something different and less likely to evoke sympathy in his supporters? Cheating or stealing might not go over so well with the straight-laced far-right crowd. Given the way he ogled women, Troy didn’t figure it was likely Haywood had flirted with homosexuality, but you never knew. That would go over even less well. Or drugs, something more serious than weed. His crowd wouldn’t like that, either.

  “We have become aware that Mr. King was blackmailing fellow students,” he said flatly. “Your name has come up in that context, Senator Haywood.”

  “What an absurd accusation!” he snapped. “This sounds like a political attack to me.”

  “I can assure you that I have no political agenda, sir,” Troy said in his best, expressionless cop voice. “As I said, you were seen having occasional conversations with Mr. King in a way that suggested you may have been making payments.”

  “I think I’m entitled to know who told you something so ridiculous.”

  “I can’t tell you that, Senator. Let me assure you that my only interest in calling you is to gain a better picture of Mr. King’s character and habits. Other Wakefield graduates have been honest with me about paying him off, and even told me why they felt compelled to do so. After thirty-five years, any lapses they made at the time have become irrelevant. I can assure you complete confidentiality.”

  “I scarcely knew Mitchell King,” Haywood ground out, “and I can assure you I committed no offenses that I would have paid blackmail to keep secret. Good night, Detective Troyer.”

  He was gone. Troy ended the call himself and set down his phone. Once again, he had to do battle with the instinctive dislike he felt for the good senator. Even accounting for that, though... It was hard not to think Haywood had responded too vehemently to relatively mild questions.

  Even more interestingly, he hadn’t expressed any surprise at the information that King had been a blackmailer. No “What the hell?” Or “You’re kidding. Really?” Troy’s gut said Haywood wasn’t surprised.

  Oh, yeah, he’d been paying Mitch King off, just like all the others. Troy would have liked to know what his particular peccadillo had been, but really it didn’t matter. No, what did matter was finding out where Gordon Haywood had been between 1:30 and 2:15, the window during which Mitchell King had been bludgeoned to death.

  Apparently Guy Laclaire wasn’t the only alum angry at any suggestion he had paid blackmail—or done anything worth hiding.

  * * *

  COME MORNING, TROY sat down with the chief and his lieutenant to update them on the investigation.

  “The progress you’ve made is impressive,” Chief Helmer said. “I want you to keep at this with everything you’ve got. I’m authorizing a travel budget that would allow you, for example, to sit down face-to-face with Senator Haywood if necessary.” He hesitated. “I hope it goes without saying that I also have faith you won’t cause a PR nightmare for this department.”

  “I’ll be cautious, sir.” A faint smile crooked Troy’s mouth. “I think it’s safe to say that the senator won’t go to the press. The only danger from him comes if we go public regarding our desire to talk to him.”

  “And will that become necessary?”

  “I don’t think so.” Troy explained his reasoning and belief that he might be able to pinpoint Haywood’s whereabouts the night of the murder from other sources. “Normally too many students would have been asleep for that to be possible. But this was the second night of finals week and most were awake. Unlike many seniors, Haywood lived on campus. In a single, but it was part of a suite of other singles centered around a common sitting room and kitchen. I
’ll talk to the residents of other rooms.”

  He was dismissed with a nod. A couple of hours later, Troy had completed an ultimately useless interview with a long-time college employee—now retired—who lived only a couple of blocks from Troy’s childhood home. On impulse, he decided to stop by for a quick visit with his mother. New guilt, he supposed, from last night’s reflections.

  He was still a block away when he saw her standing outside the gate on the sidewalk. Maybe the mail had just come. But in the length of time it took him to cover the short distance, Mom didn’t move. She had her back to him, as if she was staring at something up the block. Disturbed, he saw how stiff her posture was and that her arms were crossed so tightly they’d pulled her shoulders into a hunch.

  When he cruised to a stop at the curb and turned off the engine, she wheeled to face him, her face alight with alarm.

  He jumped out. “Mom?”

  “Troy?” Her voice shook. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just thought I’d stop and say hi. What are you doing?” She sure wasn’t grabbing the mail or newspaper, because her hands were empty.

  She backed away, through her open gate beneath the white-painted arch covered by picture perfect roses, back into the safety of the yard. “I... Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  She wore athletic shoes, not her rubber gardening clogs, and she radiated distress.

  “Mom?” He stepped forward quickly enough that she couldn’t escape him. He gently took her elbows in his hands. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course I’m...!” Her mouth worked. “I’m...” And then she shuddered. Her face crumpled. “I’m...” Her last attempt came out as a despairing whisper, just before she began to sob.

  He wrapped his arm around his mother and held her as she wept against his chest. God, she was so much more fragile than he’d remembered. When he ran his hands over her back, he felt her spine and ribs in a way he was sure he never had before.