Hinton lowers her notebook to her lap and I wonder if she’s aware of her twitchy finger. “Do you have an address for Ms. Bennett?”
“Her parents live over in Elkins but I don’t think she stays there much. I think she lives mostly with her boyfriend.”
“His name?”
I shake my head. My interest in Karmen is purely academic. I know her personal life is turbulent and I’ve made a point of keeping my distance from it. I don’t feel the need to share any of this with the detective. Hinton must sense this—or she already has her answer and doesn’t really need it from me—and closes her notebook.
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Ray.” She rises and pats her pocket. “I’ll call you as soon as we’re finished with your phone.”
“Do you have Anna’s home number?” Jeannie asks.
“We do.”
Of course they do. I nod. They have my employment file, my fingerprints, my background check. Now they have my phone. Hinton is almost out the door when she stops, turning around like an old TV detective. She even starts with:
“One more thing. That book that the professor gave you. Is it a common book? Are there a lot of copies of it around campus?”
“No, I doubt it.” I almost say my usual disparaging things about the book and the movement it entails but I don’t. That abstract guilt comes over me. I don’t worry about speaking ill of the dead but I can’t bring myself to speak ill of the dead man’s book.
Hinton nods. “I’ll ask Mrs. Michener if anyone picked up the book. If you see Karmen Bennett around, have her call me.”
“Sure,” I say. I think we all know I’m lying.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Meredith doesn’t know where the book is.
“The last I saw it was when Anna and her cousin were leaving. Professor Fitzhugh-Conroy picked up the book and Anna told her to put it somewhere. Then they left.”
Hinton turns to Jeannie. “You had it? Where did you put it?”
Jeannie glances around and points to a file cabinet opposite my desk, piled high with blue shelf boxes. “There, I think. There were magazines there, too, I think.”
“Is it there now?”
She steps closer and shakes her head. “I don’t see it.”
“Nobody came to pick it up?” Hinton asks Meredith.
“Not while I was here, but I wasn’t in the office all the time.” She waits while Hinton turns her notebook over in her hands, probably waiting to see if the detective will write any of this down, but the pen stays capped. “I took some files downstairs, some applications that needed to be signed and some brochures I’d been asked to get.”
At Hinton’s urging she starts listing a dozen or so names in both the English and Fine Arts Departments. Ellis’s name is on that list. Hinton doesn’t interrupt her at the mention of his name but waits until she’s certain she’s given the complete list.
“So you did speak with Professor Trachtenberg Tuesday night.”
“I did.” She sounds surprised, as if it just occurred to her that this might be of interest to the police. “There’s nothing unusual about that. I speak with—I spoke with—Professor Trachtenberg often. He is the head of the department; he has a lot of influence on his students and their plans. We often discussed opportunities and programs that might benefit the students. He liked to be kept informed about any personal issues they might have.”
Hinton and Neighborgall stand quietly, letting Meredith talk. I want to shut her up. I want to warn her about nervous chatter, that it’s catnip to investigators and that nothing digs a hole faster than a babbling mouth, but Meredith becomes indignant, as only the innocent can.
“So yes, yes, I spoke with Professor Trachtenberg that afternoon but I’m sure I wasn’t the last person to do so. There were still plenty of people in their offices.”
She finally takes a breath, her argument made. Hinton doesn’t jump right in. Her voice stays soft and cool, as if she’s just shooting the breeze.
“Did you talk about Ms. Ray with him?”
“Anna? No. Why would I?” Meredith says. “I don’t think so. Well, he asked if she liked the book. I said she did. I think that was it.”
Hinton nods. “That book. Yeah, you don’t know where it is? You didn’t see anyone come in to pick it up?”
Meredith waves her hands over the piles of confusion that make up our workspace. “Nobody picked it up from me. Nobody came in asking for it, but I don’t lock the door when I go downstairs. There’s nothing in here to steal.” She laughs. “Nothing anyone could find at least.”
“So you didn’t see Karmen Bennett come in to get the book? Or her boyfriend?”
Meredith shakes her head. “I’ve never met him. I don’t think he goes to school here. So to answer your question, no. I didn’t see anyone come in for the book, but that doesn’t mean someone didn’t get it. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”
Hinton reassures her and thanks us. She taps her jacket where my phone must be hiding and promises to call me when they’re done with it. Neighborgall holds the door for his partner. A habitual gentleman.
When the door is closed and the residual energy of the police has scattered, Meredith falls back in her chair and sighs. “What is so interesting about that book?” I’m wondering the same thing when Jeannie posits her own opinion.
“I think they’re more interested in that girl, the waitress, who wanted the book.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say, still prickly and protective over Karmen, still touchy about that book, still not letting myself think about the fact that I’m ranking these in importance over the death of a coworker. “They can’t think Karmen had anything to do with Ellis’s death. Why would they? What could possibly be her motive?”
I see Meredith frown. “Well, I’m not saying it’s a motive but they are definitely interested in her because of her difficulties last year. You know she lost her scholarship, right?” I don’t. I didn’t know she ever had one but I know she’s struggled financially. Meredith nods. “I can’t imagine it’s anything she likes to talk about. Professor Trachtenberg failed her in two classes; he claimed she was too high to do the work and that she shouldn’t be in school if she was just going to party her way through it. He has—I mean, he had a bit of reputation for that. It cost her her scholarship.”
“That’s what the cops were asking you about?”
Meredith purses her lips. “I thought they were here to talk with you.”
“Yeah, Hinton was,” I say, “but I saw you and Neighborgall chatting nicely in the meantime.”
What is it about the presence of police that makes every subsequent conversation sound like an interrogation? Meredith must sense the escalation because she lets go of the arms of her chair and crumples a bit in her seat.
“He had a list of students he wanted to ask me about.”
“What about them?”
She sighs and looks straight at me, focusing on my face in a way that is less about me, more about not addressing Jeannie. “I don’t think we should discuss it.”
“I think we should.”
Jeannie leans against a file cabinet. “Don’t let me stop you.”
Meredith’s hands frame the arms of her chair, like she’s resisting the urge to grip them. Her tone is forced-friendly. “I appreciate your permission, Professor. And before you ask, yes, your name came up, too. Kenny”—she corrects herself—“Officer Neighborgall had a list of students who might be angry at Professor Trachtenberg or at the staff in general. Students who had failed out, who had lost their financial aid because of bad grades, who maybe didn’t get the referrals and recommendations they needed to get whatever was their greatest heart’s desire, that sort of thing.”
“Why did Jeannie’s name come up?”
“If I may be blunt, your cousin is a great deal like Ellis Trachtenberg in that
she never hesitated to come down hard on a student.”
“Am I supposed to be offended by that?” Jeannie asks. If her eyebrows get any higher, they’re going to vanish into her hairline. “I don’t think being compared to Ellis is an insult.”
“I’m not saying it is,” Meredith says in a tone that screams that’s exactly what she’s saying. “It’s just that you and Professor Trachtenberg probably cost more students their education than all of the other faculty combined.”
Oh, those are fighting words and Jeannie stands up to take them on. “I didn’t cost students their education. I’m not here to hand them a diploma for showing up. This is an institution of higher education. Knowledge is something you work for. I don’t hand out trophies for participation and neither does Ellis. Neither should any of the faculty.” Her voice rises as she marches toward Meredith’s desk. This has the feeling of an old argument because Jeannie sounds well-prepared. She rests her hands on the desk, ignoring the piles of paper, and leans toward my boss’s face.
“I know you enjoy sitting here and comforting the students when their feelings are hurt. You like enrolling them in those little contests and getting their work into those adorable local art shows and anthologies and I’m sure the students think you’re better than Grandma at Christmas.” Jeannie’s voice takes on that nasty edge I know so well. “But I’m here to educate them. I’m here to make sure they learn. And if they don’t do the work, they don’t get the grade. They fail. People fail, Meredith. In real life, people fail and they lose. And that’s life. And it’s not my job to make them feel okay about it. That’s not why I’m here.”
“You’re not here anymore.”
“No.” Jeannie laughs and straightens up. “No, now I’m at Penn State, where this kind of argument doesn’t have to happen, where students and faculty agree to treat higher education like the revered institution it is, not like a sleep-away camp.”
This is the closest I’ve seen my boss come to losing her temper and for just a second I wonder if she’s going to smack Jeannie in the face with the box of Glad freezer bags that’s sitting on the corner of her desk. Instead, she exhales, leaning farther back in her chair. She shrugs in a gesture of surrender and takes the high road. Well played, I think. Jeannie is itching for a fight and I know how well she can fight. Nothing takes the glory out of a victory like passive surrender.
I decide not to think about the fact that in insulting Meredith, she’s also insulting my job. Jeannie takes education seriously. It’s not an affectation. She demands a lot of herself and a lot of her students just as her mother, an English professor, demanded a lot of her. Considering some of the other traits and conditions we’ve dredged out of our gene pool, the demand for high academic standards doesn’t seem all that bad.
But I didn’t know she had failed that many students.
Meredith seems keen to make peace, although I give her credit for doing so with a twist. “To be fair, Professor Trachtenberg held the students to a higher standard than you did. He was quite a bit harsher than you were.” Before the comparison can be judged badly, she redeems it. “You at least gave the students a chance to make up the work. You seemed to judge them on their academic performance. Professor Trachtenberg had a tendency to take it a little too far.”
Jeannie nods, accepting the peace. “True. He always did get a little too bent about students getting high. My feeling was always that I didn’t care what state they were in as long as they did the work. He never could abide any kind of substance abuse.”
I almost snort at that. He hated substance abuse and wanted to go out with me? That would have been interesting. The little dust-up between Meredith and Jeannie ends with an awkward quiet that my boss covers with noisy paper shuffling. Meredith starts to say something about valuing students when the office door pops open once more.
“Am I interrupting?” It’s Charlie Ziglar, Ellis’s TA, looking like he’s spent the last three days sleeping at his desk.
“Hey, Zig.” Meredith smiles and waves him in. “How are you holding up?”
The slope of his shoulders and the stains on his shirt agree with his heavy sigh. “It’s been a long week. Everything is up in the air. Everything is a mess and on top of it all, every kid in school is having a complete meltdown.” He hands Meredith a thick file folder. “Here’s the amended schedule for the time being. Classes are going to resume on Monday; we’re working to cover all of Ellis’s classes. We’re still working to find the best way to make that happen.” He speaks as if he’s said these sentences a hundred times already. Meredith just nods and smiles and lets him ramble.
“We got it, Zig. Don’t you worry.” She puts the folder to the side. “We won’t let anyone freak out on you. We’ll get through this.”
She sounds so certain, so grown up, that even I fight the urge to choke up. Zig doesn’t stand a chance. Fat tears rise up in his eyes, spilling over when he nods. He stands there, big hands hanging down at his sides like he’s forgotten what they’re for.
Meredith speaks softly. “Has there been any word about arrangements?”
That’s what transforms his silent tears to a choked sob. He shakes his head and shoves his hands into his pockets. “They can’t make any arrangements until the investigation is over. They need his . . . They can’t release him until the case is closed. God.” The big hands come back out and cover his wet face. He looks like an enormous, heartbroken toddler who needs a nap and a hug. Jeannie steps up from behind him and rubs his shoulder.
He accepts the touch, nodding behind his hands and scrubbing the tears out of his red-rimmed eyes. He wipes his palms on his wrinkled shirt like he’s sick of finding them damp. It takes a long time for tears to dry up. When he looks over his shoulder to find his comforter, his eyes widen.
“Oh, oh. Hi.” He tugs at the tails of his shirt as he turns to face Jeannie. “Professor Fitzhugh-Conroy. Hi. I didn’t know you were here.”
Jeannie smiles and continues to rub his arm. “Hi, Zig. Good to see you.”
“You, too.” He says it quickly, automatically, and then fumbles. “Did you . . . are you here for . . . ? How long are you here? We don’t know when the funeral is. Have you been downstairs? I didn’t know you were in. Nobody said anything. I mean, it’s been, you know, but—”
Jeannie cuts off his disastrous train of chatter with a hand squeeze and a step back. “Actually I came in for another reason and it was just really bad timing.”
“Yeah.” He stares at her. “Yeah it is.”
It’s a strange thing to say and Jeannie just leaves it there as she backs away from him, closer to me. Zig nods and wipes his hands again on his shirt, mumbling something about getting back to work. He offers a mangled invitation to Jeannie to stop by and say hello. I’ve heard worse invitations in my life but not many. He tosses a grateful smile to Meredith and hustles out of the office.
“It must be a mess downstairs,” Jeannie says, shaking her head.
“It’s going to be a mess for a while,” Meredith agrees. “Ellis Trachtenberg is going to be tough to replace. He really was one of a kind.” We stand there in the awkward silence that’s becoming the norm for this office until Meredith taps the edge of the file folder against her desk with a sharp rap. “Unfortunately, that mess means we have a lot of work to do.” When Jeannie and I just stand there, Meredith drops the folder with a loud slap. She speaks slowly and clearly, like she’s speaking to children. “I’m afraid that means it’s time for us to get back to work. Professor? If you don’t mind, I really need Anna to get back to her desk. To work. Yes?”
“What? Oh yes. Of course.” Jeannie snaps to, pulling on her coat and grabbing her enormous purse. “I have a ton of work to do. I’ll call you later.”
Out of nowhere, the urge to make her stay blows in. I almost grab her hand. “Are you going to stop by downstairs? See your old stomping grounds?”
“No,�
�� Jeannie says, pulling out her phone and swiping it to life. “I have to check in with my TA. I haven’t even talked to Jeff since I’ve been here.” She glances up from her scrolling to smile at me. She whispers. “I’ll see you after work.”
I nod and hold the door for her. I feel stupid because I watch her walk all the way down the hall, her face down in her phone. I want her to turn around and wave or something. I don’t know what I want but I don’t want to see her go. It’s stupid because I’m going to see her again soon. She’s not leaving town; she’s just leaving my office. But still I watch her.
“I hope she can stick around for the funeral.” I say it out loud but not really to Meredith.
“That might be a while.” My boss seems to have lost the urge to get back to work now that Jeannie’s gone, because she’s still stretched back in her chair. “This investigation might take some time. It’s a horrible crime.” I nod and head toward my desk but Meredith isn’t done. “I’ve heard some of the details of the crime scene. Off the record, of course, but you know how it is. People can’t keep a secret, especially a grisly one.”
I hate that word—grisly. “Well, Hinton strikes me as pretty sharp. Maybe they’ll catch a break. I’m sure Ellis’s family would like to have this all behind them.”
“Your cousin will probably have to get back to work before then though. I suppose that’s for the best.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.” She smiles at me. “Just that I’m sure Professor Fitzhugh-Conroy is busy.”
Meredith isn’t trying very hard to sell that lie. “That’s not what you meant.” Her innocent gasp doesn’t work either. “Why would it be for the best if Jeannie isn’t here for the funeral? What is it with you and Jeannie? She’s not the first professor to get snotty with you.”
That innocence turns to indignation. “I get along with the other professors very well, thank you very much. I don’t consider ‘snotty’ to be an especially desired quality in a professional, particularly in an educator.”
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