Veritas

by Anne Laughlin

  “Are you trying to destroy the college, Chief Sullivan? Because if so, you’re doing a good job of it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sally’s throat closed a little at the sound of anger in Beth’s voice.

  “I’ve just been contacted by the Center City Times. They want to interview me about our murderous college president. What else would I be talking about?”

  “I’m just not sure why you’re yelling at me.”

  “Because they got all the juicy details from you. Details, mind you, that I was hearing for the first time, such as Barrow having blackmail-worthy material on Landscome.”

  Sally could hear Beth take a big, shuddering breath before she went on. “I just thought it would occur to you to talk things over with me before you talked to the press, especially after the other night.”

  Now Sally was really confused. “Do you mean that because we slept together, once, I should discuss with you my actions and decisions as chief of police?”

  “What I mean is that this school has been skating on thin financial ice for several years now. The unsolved murder of a professor has not helped our recruiting efforts, and the news that we hired a president who murdered that professor is likely to severely damage our enrollment.”

  “Are you crying?”

  “Yes, I’m crying.”

  “I’m sorry, Beth. It would never occur to me that the college would need to manipulate the news about these deaths.”

  Sally could hear Beth take in a deep breath. “Being forthright with the press is not among my top values, especially right now. I’m seriously worried this is going to finish off the school, and the school is the only thing I’m worried about.” There was another pause. “It’s practically been my whole life.”

  “I can’t see how you’d have been able to keep this from the press, but I wish I hadn’t been the one to tell them. Are you mad?”

  “More worried than mad.” There was silence on the line, and then, “Will you still want me if I become an unemployed English professor?”

  “I thought you were only worried about the college?”

  “That’s what I’m used to—only being concerned about the college. But you are starting to mess up everything that I’m used to, Chief. Now, answer the question. Will you still want me without the titles and all that?”

  Sally wished they weren’t on the phone. Beth sounded as if she really believed that without a position as a dean or a professor, Sally wouldn’t want her. As if Sally cared about any of that at all.

  “Yes, I’ll want you. I’ll always want you, because I’m pretty sure you’re what I’ve always wanted.”

  “I’m very scared. I should tell you that, in case I wig out.”

  “Let me reassure you. Can I come get you tonight so we can spend some time together?”

  “That’s sweet. But I do have to work late. And then I’m going to go home and be miserable. If you keep this up it might be my last chance.”

  Sally smiled as she hung up. Beth cranky and miserable was still more wonderful to her than any previous girlfriend on her best day.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The clock on Sally’s nightstand read 3:20, five minutes later than the last time she checked. There was no end to the night. Between the excitement about the new relationship with Beth and the nagging feeling there were loose ends in the murder investigation, she simply couldn’t sleep.

  At 3:30 she gave up torturing herself and got out of bed. The files of both the Landscome and Barrow deaths were spread out on her kitchen table. She made a cup of coffee and sat to pick up where she left off the night before. She was slowly moving through every word in the files, hoping that at the end of the review she would be satisfied that everything that could be done to investigate had been done.

  It was getting close to time to shower and change for work when Sally came upon the report Jake and Ted had put together regarding sales of Walther PPKs. They had completed their survey of gun shops in the tri-state area, a task fairly quickly accomplished through e-mail requests and follow-up phone calls with non-responders. Jake had been thorough in checking the shops off his list, and at the end of his survey had come up with several hits within the broader geographical range of his search, but only one in their area of the state. There was a purchase ten years ago by a woman in Center City named Lois Brandt. Jake had checked the state database for the woman’s last known address and found it was the same one given by the gun shop owner. He’d found phone numbers for the two apartments located at that address, and neither was currently occupied by Lois Brandt. It seemed highly unlikely that this could have anything to do with the killings in Mount Avery, but Sally was inclined to run everything down. Their database resources did not give any further information on Lois Brandt, but maybe her old neighbors would remember something.

  After taking care of a morning’s worth of paperwork, most having to do with Landscome’s death, Sally drove to Center City. Her lack of sleep caught up with her and her head nodded once before she shook herself awake, alarmed when she realized she’d actually fallen asleep, for just a moment. She pulled over and closed her eyes, waking a full hour later, thoroughly disgusted with herself, like a drunk waking up with her head resting on the bar, life and merriment still going on around her with nothing but darkness inside. She recognized the feeling as the creeping tentacles of depression starting to get a grip on her. She roared back onto the highway, trying to outrun it.

  The last known address for Lois Brandt was not far from the university in Center City. Many of the houses on the street were divided into apartments, rented out to graduate students for the most part. Sally knew the chance of anyone remembering someone from ten years ago was remote, but she started at one end of the block and worked her way down. Because they were graduate students, many of the tenants were home at one in the afternoon. Most stared at her blankly when she asked her questions about Lois Brandt and whether anyone on the block or in the area might remember her. Toward the end of the street, one young woman was just heading out the door of a house as Sally turned into its walk. The woman stopped when she saw Sally’s uniform and waited for her to approach.

  “Good morning,” said Sally.

  “Good morning, Officer, what can I do for you?” Sally felt suspicious of her warm greeting. She was used to students of all ages adopting a bad attitude toward police. This woman, with her jeans patched with peace signs, Vote the Environment T-shirt, and orange hair would almost certainly be one such student. Instead, she sat on the front steps of the house and patted the space next to her. “Are you doing a door-to-door?”

  “Actually, I am. Has word gotten around so quickly?”

  The woman laughed. “No. But my dad and my brothers and sister are all cops, so I know all about door-to-doors. Generally, they hate them.”

  Sally took a seat next to her. “I’m Sally Sullivan, chief of the Mount Avery Police Department. And it’s good to meet someone who understands the job.”

  “I’m Diane Swearingen. How can I help you, Chief?”

  Sally told her exactly what she was trying to run down. Diane had only one bit of information to offer. “There’s a woman named Rosa DeLuca who owns a lot of the houses on this block. She lives the next street over. I can walk you there if you’d like. I go there every month to drop off my rent and I know from chatting with Rosa that she’s been here a long time and seems to know most everything about her tenants. Maybe she’ll remember something.”

  “Do you mind if we drive over? I don’t want to get too far from my squad.”

  Diane rode with Sally to Rosa DeLuca’s house and then walked off to class, leaving her contact information behind. The DeLuca residence was a three-story frame house with each level painted a different color. There was an unpaved side driveway that ended at the end of the lot line. The carport that stood there was festooned with a wild assortment of Mexican plates, string lights, lanterns, piñatas, statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe, flags and banners, and se
veral festival posters. There were no cars in the carport, just a number of picnic tables in the middle and folding chairs around the perimeter. Sally could see a middle-aged woman in the carport, holding a black trash bag and dropping cans into it. Sally approached her, holding out her identification.

  The woman stopped what she was doing and put a hand on her hip. “What? It wasn’t enough that you people had to come three times last night to harass us? We were doing nothing but quietly celebrating.”

  “Are you Rosa DeLuca?”

  “Like you don’t know.” Now the bag had been put down and both hands were on her hips. They were generous hips and easily provided a resting spot. The rest of her was equally well padded, but Rosa DeLuca was a beautiful woman. Her lush hair was rich and dark and framed a face with an elegant bone structure and large, very light brown eyes.

  Sally identified herself and made clear she was not from the local police department. “I was referred to you by one of your tenants on B Avenue who said you would be my best source of information about a woman we are trying to locate who may have lived in one of your buildings there.”

  “Maybe. Why are you looking for her?”

  “She’s not in any trouble. But she may have some information I need to help find someone else.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Lois Brandt. She lived here about ten years ago.”

  “Ten years is nothing. I feel like I blink twice and ten years goes by. And I have a very good memory. I’m most likely to remember tenants if they were trouble, though. I never forget those.”

  Sally gave Rosa the address they had on B Avenue for Lois Brandt and then joined her in the carport, where they sat opposite one another at a picnic table. Remnants of a rather large celebration were strewn about.

  “Lois Brandt. I think I do remember her. She was a graduate student like most of them, and the reason I remember her is that she was studying mortuary science. Is that what they call it? She was going to be a funeral director. But I don’t think she ever became one. I remember that she left suddenly, like she was running from something. Left her rent on the kitchen counter, which is more than most would do. It was the middle of the semester, so I know something must have happened. She was German. Maybe she had to go home.”

  “Is there anything else you remember about her, any particular friends, or types of friends?”

  Rosa stared at that horizon point most people look to when they’re trying to remember something, as if it were a teleprompter. “There was something, now that you mention it. I thought it was the mortuary science that made me remember her, but there was something else. I got a lot of calls from her neighbors, actually.”

  “What about?” Sally noticed Rosa had a smile forming at the corner of her mouth.

  “She was very loud when her girlfriend came over. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, I think so. They made a lot of noise when they made love?”

  “Who knew two girls could make such a racket?” Now Rosa leaned back, putting her hands to her lower back and stretching. “I think the neighbors complained so much because they didn’t like the girlfriend.”

  “Why didn’t they like her?”

  “I don’t know, really. I kind of liked her myself. People just assume that I am going to dislike the gay people because I’m religious, but I don’t care. If someone could make me scream like that, I wouldn’t care if it was a man or a woman.”

  Sally swung her legs over the bench and stood, ready to conclude the interview.

  Rosa continued. “I can’t remember her name, but I liked her because she was big like me, you know? Everything about her was big. Her voice, her body, her manner. She took up space and wasn’t shy about it, I remember that very well. I respected that.”

  Sally sat down hard. “Do you remember what this woman did for a living?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s all smart people around here. Too many brain cells, too much studying. That’s why they don’t like my family having get togethers here. We’re too happy!” She laughed.

  “Mrs. DeLuca? It’s important. Was she a grad student too?” Sally almost hoped that she would say yes.

  “No, no. She was older than Lois, a teacher herself. I think she taught at one of the colleges outside of town here, in the country.”

  “Mrs. DeLuca, do you have a computer in your house, connected to the Internet?”

  “Sure, for my son.”

  “I need to get on the Internet so you can help me. I need for you to look at a photo. Can we do that?”

  Sally had to boot up the son’s laptop and connect to the Internet. Rosa didn’t know the first thing about it. Then she typed in the Web address for Grafton College and clicked over to the faculty biographies. As soon as Delilah Humphries’s photo came on the screen Rosa shouted, “That’s her! Bigger, even, than before, but definitely her.”

  *

  Despite having a hard knot of fear lodged in her chest, Beth faced her first day as acting president of Grafton College with resolve. These first hours were so crucial—reassuring the board of trustees, the students and the students’ parents, managing the press. By three in the afternoon she was desperate for a break. She gathered up files and overstuffed her briefcase, planning to go home and work on through the evening there. She still had several conference calls to make with board members, as well as interviews to conduct with two recommended public relations firms. Both gave her preliminary assurances that the blow to Grafton’s reputation from hiring a murderous president could be kept to manageable levels.

  Beth was also reminded by Harriet Taylor, an encyclopedia of Grafton College history, that two other sensational scandals had touched the school in the past. Both seemed overwhelmingly bad at the time but were now long forgotten.

  “The first,” she said, standing at a window in Beth’s office, looking out over the campus, “occurred in 1895 and was a rather pedestrian story of adultery and divorce involving the president of the college, his wife, and one of the first female professors of mathematics in the country, the offending parties being caught in flagrante delicto in the president’s home.”

  “That was fairly stupid of him, don’t you think? Right there in his own house?”

  “Actually, it was the president’s wife who was found between the sheets with the mathematician. The husband returned early from a fund-raising trip and found them in the bedroom. No one was positive how the word of the tryst first got out, but the suspicion was that a student working in the yard may have witnessed more than he bargained for when he peeped into a window while cleaning gutters. In any event, the scandal raged and the wife, the president, and the mathematician were sent away at once. All parties, including the school, survived.”

  Beth wished her scandal was like that one. It would hardly cause a ripple. “Was the second tale more or less scandalizing?”

  “More, I believe, for as shocking as any act of lesbianism might be to the mind of a 1895 Methodist, it paled when compared to rumors of a Methodist dean taking his pleasure with undergraduate males, and covering up the repeated abuses through some arrangement with the president.”

  “Are you saying the dean was raping the students?” Beth was shocked.

  “I don’t think so. I believe there was some form of consent from the young men, in exchange for passing grades or free credits, or whatever. But they felt in 1910 as we do today, that it’s absolutely wrong for someone in a position of power, in this case a professor or dean, to have sexual relations with a student. But you add to that the incendiary fact that it was two men and it changes in character altogether. I don’t know why the reaction was so much stronger about male homosexuality than female. Perhaps it’s as Gertrude Stein said—people don’t really want to think about what two men do together.”

  “I don’t know that that’s ever really been true, no more so than people not wanting to really think about what Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas did together or, I don’t know, you and your husband, for in
stance.”

  “I beg your pardon.” Harriet looked over her shoulder at Beth.

  “I think the point is that the straight men in charge had a more violent reaction to men having sex with each other than they did when two women were caught. They simply didn’t, and probably still don’t take two women together seriously. But tell me how it was resolved.”

  “The dean, who was a Methodist minister, was discharged and defrocked. The students were expelled, and the president hung on until it became apparent that he had known it was going on for some time. That was the bigger scandal. I don’t know how much it affected enrollments, but they certainly survived it, and we will survive this.”

  Beth shook her head. “Harriet, I’m not ready to bury the college, but I do think there’s a big difference between now and a hundred years ago, or even twenty for that matter, largely due to the Internet. Now when something like this happens the news spreads like wildfire, and the distortions that occur are breathtaking. Already, one day after Landscome’s death, there are blog comments out there about him being blackmailed for a dozen different reasons, each more horrifying than the next. It’s crazy, but the people who will scrutinize how this came to pass will be wondering why we didn’t know about Landscome when we hired him. They’ll find it impossible to believe that such information was not obtainable, that we should have known it simply by Googling him. And I still don’t know what Barrow had on Landscome.”

  “The school will survive. I guarantee it,” said Harriet. As she left, Beth thought how very easy it was for Harriet to say it and then wash her hands of the mess.

  When she arrived home, Beth found her mother in front of the TV again.

  “Thank God for all the drama at your school,” Mae said. “It’s a lot more interesting than anything on the boob tube.”

  Beth whirled on her and flung her full briefcase at the front door, the bag exploding against it and papers and files pouring out in a huge jumble. Mae stood and leveled her gaze at Beth.