Anne shook her head. “I don’t know. Tal didn’t mention it to me so I suppose the papers didn’t go into it.” She shivered and buttoned her jacket. It was cooling off. Hard to imagine straitlaced Bernie getting into any new troubles. She said, “I always thought of Bernie as the burnt child, grateful for a fresh start.”
“You’re probably right,” said Maggie. “But let’s not cross him off our list yet. Next is Cindy.”
“Cindy?”
“Secretaries are important people in departments. Why not consider her?”
“She was at a lunchtime meeting. I met her coming back.”
“Where had she been?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where did you see her?”
“Van Brunt. At about twelve-fifteen, just before I started across the gorge.”
“Mm. Not quite good enough,” said Maggie softly.
“I know. For me either,” snapped Anne. “Hines went over it half a dozen times with me. I’d phoned someone shortly before I left my office in Harper, but he wasn’t impressed.”
“There are a lot of phones on campus. And on College Ave., for that matter. You could have been anywhere.”
“Yes. Still, Cindy and I can vouch for each other up to a point.” Could it have been Cindy? Surely not.
“And the other people at her meeting will vouch for her.”
“Maybe.” Would they? Anne drained the bottle of wine into her glass. “Shall I get more wine?”
“No, thanks, I’m fine.” Maggie’s shrewd eyes were fixed on her, curious. Anne returned her gaze flatly, and finally Maggie said only, “Can you tell me anything about Nora?”
“Another hardworking young professor, like Charlie Fielding. Already has a book out. Development of social problem-solving, Tal said.”
“Family?”
“A younger brother in New York. She told me she raised him so the parents must be gone. And last year she had a live-in, a computer scientist. Brownell, some such name. He only came to a couple of departmental parties so I really don’t know him.”
“How about Tal? Did he ever mention that she had any problems?”
Anne shook her head. “No. That is—well, she and the computer fellow had a falling-out last year. At the Halloween party, I remember, Nora got tipsy, started chasing after Charlie Fielding. Scared the poor fellow to death. Don’t know if she ever got back together with her computer scientist or not.” Anne shifted on her chair. “The only other thing Tal mentioned about Nora was a student last year. Young man. Came into Nora’s office, apparently threatened her somehow. Tal and Charlie Fielding were talking in the hall and heard shouts. They went to see what was going on, saw an absolutely furious stringy-haired young man beating his fist on her desk. When they appeared she told him she’d talk to him when he’d settled down, and he left. But Tal said she seemed pretty shaken for a while after that. Even mentioned getting a gun. That kid must have threatened her.”
“A gun! That sounds serious. What was his problem?”
“She said it was a grade. But Tal said if that was all it was he must have had a drug problem too. He was too worked up for your standard grade complaint.”
“Even failing-this-course-means-I-can’t-graduate?”
“Well, in thirty years of teaching no one has ever seriously threatened me, even for that. But I suppose it’s possible.”
“Tal’s probably right, about the drugs.” Maggie pulled up one leg and propped her foot on the front edge of her seat. “God, these sunsets are gorgeous.”
Anne nodded. The sky in the east was dusky now, but in the west ragged ribbons of cloud blazed pink and gold in a last moment of glory before the night. Across the lawn the children were attempting to sing “Gonna Fly Now.” The world was turning. Other people’s lives rolling on. Only Anne sat stunned, rigid, trying to distract herself from the void with these silly speculations. “Et je voudrais mourir,” said Cyrano, “sous un ciel rose.” I’d like to die beneath a rosy sky. Well, you didn’t quite get your wish either, Old Nosy.
Maggie asked gently, “Have we talked enough for now?”
Anne swallowed more wine. Stave it off a few more minutes. “Let’s go on. Keep moving before I forget how.”
Maggie reached across the table and touched her shoulder encouragingly. “Okay. We’ve talked about Tal’s colleagues. About his work. Was there anything else he worried about?”
“Not really. Well, back fifteen years ago when he first became chairman, the department had serious budget problems. But he worked those out, and when Bernie became chairman everything was back on track.”
“Nothing recently?”
Anne shrugged. “Nothing big. I mean, a couple of times he said there was something strange going on. But if I pressed he’d say no, he was just getting old. Make a joke of it. And then of course he was always full of sympathy for students with problems. I think that’s how he—well, we’re talking about recently. Let’s see. Young woman with a knee problem last year, and another who lost both her parents in a car crash. Or little kids that he met when they came in for experiments. He loved to meet them in the halls, talk to them. Sometimes he’d come home saying that he should have been a classroom teacher. I’d have to remind him that he already was. He just got the kids ten years further on.”
“Practically his first question to me was about my kids,” Maggie said.
“Yes. That’s why he was in education; he thought kids were such wonderful people. Really got involved. I remember a couple of years ago there was a little girl in one of Bart Bickford’s childhood creativity studies. Jill Baker. Told a marvelous story about being chased by sharks, and about taking out her own eyeball to be a periscope, and having a magic word that made the sharks stop. Clever child. But a month later Tal told me he was still haunted by that story. I said why not? This Jill Baker may be the next Jules Verne. Though in fairness to Tal I should say that kids shared big problems with him too. They’d really open up to him. There was another little girl in Bart’s study. Frannie something. Can’t remember her name. She didn’t react much during the testing, and Bart’s student assistant was peeved. But Tal said she had such a sad expression that he sat down on the floor of the hall and explained to her that it was hard to think about everyday things when there are big problems too. Frannie agreed and told him very matter-of-factly that she had to think about dying. Turned out they’d just diagnosed leukemia.”
“God!”
“I think it was especially poignant to Tal because this was during his own chemotherapy. He cried about Frannie. And at about the same time the little Hammond boy was hurt by that hit-and-run. We all felt awful, but Tal was depressed for days.”
“Well, he’s right. Worth mourning.” There was a huskiness in Maggie’s voice.
“Yes.” Anne looked at the young woman across the table. Maggie’s leg was still pulled up, her elbow on the cocked knee and her hand propping her forehead. The mass of black curls shaded her face. Anne said, “Those kids are probably what upset him most, of all the things I’ve mentioned.”
“Me too.” Maggie straightened her leg and shifted restlessly in her chair. “It’s pretty shapeless, though, isn’t it? Stresses and strains in the department, but nothing that seems wildly unusual. I mean, hit-and-runs do happen. Prostitutes do have clients. And so forth.”
“Yes. Maybe we’re on the wrong track.”
“Maybe. You mentioned something to Walensky about Tal’s taxes.”
“Oh, the IRS thing. Yeah, we were out of the country at filing time so he applied to file late. Pretty automatic, we thought. But the IRS lost the application somehow, charged him with late filing. He had to go have the documents copied again. He was really angry about it.”
“Right. Still, it’s hard to see a motive there.”
“So we’re back to the department.”
“Right. Don’t see how we can avoid it. Well, tomorrow I’ll talk to Charlie again. He may have thought of something overnight. And I bet Cin
dy knows a lot.”
“She may. She’s a bright woman,” Anne agreed. She should talk to Cindy too.
Across the lawn the children were lively blurs in the thickening dusk. How often she and Tal had rested here, watching little Paul and Rocky, laughing together, sharing their days. She said, “You asked about his worries. But most of the time Tal brought home happy stories.”
“Oh, I know! I met him for a moment. And he made it joyful.”
“Joyful.” Yes. Tal made the world joyful.
Her knobby-nosed, brilliant Tal.
Suddenly Anne was blubbering, huge wet sobs ratcheting up from her gut one after another, on and on, swamping her with their primeval urgency. It was a long, long time before they eased a little and, exhausted and shuddering, she became aware of Maggie kneeling next to her, arm around her shoulders, murmuring and rocking her gently.
The children, she saw through filmed eyes, were sitting on the terrace in a square of light from the kitchen window. They were paging through their books again.
Above, the sky was black.
Friday
June 3, 1977
9
Charlie tilted up his chin. He scraped the razor along his stubbly neck and blinked sleepily at the sagging face in the mirror. Smile, Fielding. Ah, much better. Practically a Paul Newman. Suave, tough and handsome, ready to take on whatever the world threw at him, ready to take on Sergeant Hines or—
Hines. Oh, hell. Tal Chandler! Reality crashed in. Charlie’s early morning brain had sent him staggering into the bathroom on automatic, without reminding him of yesterday. Hard to believe when half the night he’d tossed and turned, battered by sorrow and fears, unable to forget. At last he’d dropped into fitful sleep. A couple of hours later the alarm had dragged him partway awake. Now, in a rush, the blessed numbness was shattered and all the horrors returned.
Tal was dead. His exuberant, challenging friend had been shot.
And whoever had shot him had left Charlie’s memo book nearby.
And Sergeant Hines suspected Charlie.
Who the hell had done it? Fully awake at last, Charlie swabbed the last flecks of foam from his face and put on his glasses. After dinner last night he’d tried to figure it out, making lists, puzzling over the million conflicting facts, trying to think of someone who might want to kill Tal. It seemed impossible that the friendly little man could inspire murderous feelings in anyone. But after a while some ugly possibilities occurred to Charlie.
Near midnight he’d finally admitted to himself that he was damned scared.
Some of the possibilities involved Tal knowing too much.
Which could mean that Charlie knew too much too.
Last night, for the first time in years, Charlie had gone around to lock all the windows, double-check the doors. The fragility of his paltry defenses glared at him. No burglar alarm. No gun. No Dobermans. In this development you weren’t supposed to need that kind of protection. Crime was a city problem, right? Murders didn’t happen in this town.
But one had. And Charlie was caught in the middle.
He’d been much too upset last night to work things out with Deanna, so he hadn’t even tried. Things were touchy with her right now. There’d been no open fight, but there were too many excuses about having to work on some project or other, about having to see friends. With anyone else he might have shrugged it off, a pleasant adventure gone stale. But he and Deanna had something special, something worth saving. Not just the shared interests—films, of course, and ice skating, and silly jokes, and Italian food. But most of all, together they were explosively sensual, somehow reaching and satisfying each other’s deepest needs in a way he’d never achieved with Lorraine. Away from Deanna he ached, incomplete, craving the scent of her hair, her clear honey-tan skin, her warm slender legs, her smoky eyes full of ancient wisdom and ancient hunger. She needed him, too.
But he’d have to have time to talk with her, to find out what the trouble was. At the end of the term he’d probably been distracted, inattentive. The worst thing he could do right now would be to throw this hideous new distraction into the mess. So he’d contented himself last night with tucking his favorite snapshot of her under his pillow. A foolish schoolboy move, maybe. He’d hoped he could soothe himself to sleep with the idea of seeing her soon, reassuring her, savoring that sweet silken body again. But his maverick mind kept cutting back to uglier things: the gray tweed on the trail, Hines’s flat questioning voice, Cindy’s taut little smile.
And now, awake at last, he could see that the image in the mirror had nothing to do with Paul Newman. Just ordinary Charlie Fielding, his doglike eyes weary and anxious behind the bravado of his aviator glasses.
He went to the bedroom and was opening his shirt drawer when the buzz of the doorbell sawed through the silence. Freeze-frame: Charlie bent, hand stretched toward the drawer. Then a rapid montage of last night’s fears tumbling back in. The murderer? Was the murderer at the door? Because Charlie Fielding, who knew too little, might guess too much?
Dad, of course, would have swaggered to the door cool as Bogart, could have stared down a platoon. But Charlie didn’t get the right genes, somehow.
Play to your strengths, Coach Wilhelm had exhorted them. Dry-mouthed, Charlie ticked through the possibilities. He could run out the back door to the patio. But no, because then he’d have to pass the front of the house to get to the street. Well, he could run through the kitchen into the garage. Leap into the car, gun the motor, and escape that way.
But to get from the bedroom to the kitchen and garage, he’d have to cross the front hall. And anyone standing at the door could see him through the glass.
He could use a bedroom window, crawl out through—
But it might not be the killer. It might be Hines, and trying to escape would be the dumbest thing he could do.
Charlie pulled his terrycloth robe tighter and belted it, wishing it were a bulletproof vest, a suit of armor, a Sherman tank. He pulled his hockey stick from the back of his closet, licked his dry lips, squared his shoulders, and swaggered quaking to the door.
“Maggie!”
“Hi, Charlie. Want to join me for breakfast? Or have you had some already?” She was wearing a red shirt under a slouchy denim jacket, and her smile was a splash of sunlight.
“Breakfast? Uh, sure.” His knees were wobbly with relief. He hung onto the doorknob as he stepped back to let her in. “Uh, I mean no, I haven’t had any.”
“Fine. I thought I’d go to Plato’s. They still serve breakfast, right?”
“Yes. My assistant eats there sometimes.”
“My God, Charlie! What in the world….” She had crossed the tiled entry hall and was staring into the living room.
Charlie stood his hockey stick in the corner, took a deep breath, and smoothed back his hair. Would she like it? “Movie collectibles,” he explained.
“God, it’s wonderful! Such memories!” She bounced toward the fireplace. It was flanked by bookshelves crowded with lamps, lunch boxes, dolls, autographed pictures, even a few books. On the walls above the bookcases, he’d hung framed posters: a fifties Superman with George Reeves, a more recent Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry, Rear Window, and a couple of smaller Chaplin lobby cards, Limelight and The Kid. Maggie, at the mantel, looked over her shoulder at Charlie. “These are real costumes?”
He’d hung a light blue pinafore and a cream-colored shirt neatly above the fireplace. Charlie nodded proudly. “Judy Garland wore the pinafore in The Wizard of Oz.”
“God! That’s practically sacred! And the shirt?”
“One of Valentino’s. Son of the Sheik.”
“Incredible!” On tiptoes, she scrutinized the shirt. “Where do you find these wonderful things?”
He shrugged. “Auction houses. Ads in collecting periodicals. Place in New York called Second Hand Rose.”
She moved along the bookcase, grinning as she recognized each toy. “A batmobile! I love it! And hey, you’re all set for the beac
h, aren’t you?” She gestured at the inflated vinyl Jaws shark and at the bright sand pail featuring Snow White and the seven dwarfs. “Oh, what’s this?”
“A music box. Here, I’ll wind it up for you.” He turned the little key carefully and set it down again. Mickey and Minnie danced to the tinkling tune of “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby.”
Maggie laughed. “I’m going to have to bring the kids to see all this! But I sent them off early with Liz because I wanted to talk to you before we hit campus this morning.” She glanced at him, the side lighting from the big glass patio doors picking out the strong bones of her cheek and jaw. “Hey, look, don’t let me hold you up. Why don’t you get dressed and I’ll just browse around until you’re ready?”
“Fine.”
Charlie hurried back into the bedroom. Surprising woman, Maggie. He was pleased at her reaction to his collection. Some people said, “God, you mean this trash is worth money?” and proceeded to tell him about all the childhood nightlights and lunch boxes they’d thrown out. Maggie seemed to understand instinctively, like Lorraine, like Deanna. Of course Maggie was married to an actor, that probably helped. Charlie fished his left shoe from under the bed and decided he would ask her about some of his ideas about Tal. She was sensible, not close-mouthed like Sergeant Hines. He wished he knew what Hines was thinking.
When he returned to the living room Maggie was lounging in his leather recliner, thumbing through a Laurel and Hardy book. The ankle of one long blue-jeaned leg rested on her other knee, the book braced on her thigh. Her bright smile flashed. “Two questions.”
“Okay.” He shrugged into the light jacket he was carrying.
She stood up and returned the book to its place in one fluid motion. “I figured out what most of the things are. But what’s the hat?”
He followed her finger. A spiffy 1940s style fedora. He said, “Al Pacino’s hat from The Godfather.”
Murder Misread Page 10
