Let's Get Criminal (A Nick Hoffman / Academic Mystery Book 1)

by Lev Raphael

  The happy crowd entered and Stefan headed right for me, kissed me. “Sorry we didn’t connect. What’s up?”

  I wanted to pull him into a corner and blurt it all out, but especially share my anxiety, my frustration, my anger.

  I couldn’t do any of that right before a reading. “Nothing,” I said.

  “You sitting in front?” he asked, smiling. I nodded and he headed up to his seat. I followed, counting again. There were eighty-two people there, some standing at the back. Quite a crowd. I slid into the seat next to Stefan. From the corner of my eye I saw something red—it was Rose Waterman hurrying in, slipping into a seat at the back.

  “We’ll begin,” Lynn Broadshaw said, rising with what I suppose he thought was dignity. He just seemed ponderous and stiff to me. He read his introduction from a typed sheet, and I tuned out, feeling like I was at another boring department meeting where nothing got done, but tempers were lost about the wording of this or that minor document or statement.

  There was lots of applause, and Stefan walked up to the podium, laid a black binder down along with copies of his books. I knew he would decide what to read as he went along, sensing what might work or not, ready to experiment. I watched him as he adjusted himself, poured some water, chatted about his work. He was wearing black jeans and boots, a black and white Liz Claiborne polo shirt, and a black cardigan. He looked studious and sexy, but when he began reading, I tensed up.

  Something was wrong. Nothing major, but he was slightly off. I could feel it in his pauses. He smiled, and word followed word, but at the end of a sentence he’d be left unprotected. For a moment, there was nothing to hide behind. I closed my eyes, which he would think was my usual sinking into enjoyment, and I listened as carefully as I could, as if in those pauses I would hear a different voice.

  But that was a mistake, because I imagined Perry there like the Phantom of the Opera, his voice ringing out through the bookstore, majestic and threatening.

  I glanced around me. Everyone seemed rapt. It was what I’d often told Stefan: even his middling performance was better than most authors’ best. Only I could truly judge the quality of a reading.

  I missed the rest of the evening, lost as I was in worrying about how he’d react when I told him about Perry’s letter from beyond the grave.

  When it was done, and the applause over, Stefan was as usual swarmed by students and faculty wanting autographs or just to talk about him—and sometimes themselves. I nodded at him, gave him a thumbs up, and sidled away.

  “Great job! Great job!” Broadshaw was proclaiming to anyone who’d listen, as if he were Stefan’s agent, no, Stefan’s coach.

  Serena came over to where I stood near the doorway, glad of the fresh air when it was opened and closed.

  “He’s damned good,” she snapped out. “You’re lucky. Stefan’s handsome and talented.”

  I thought she was going to give me a macho slap on the shoulder, as if I’d just made a basket at the gym, but she just shook her head up and down in some kind of punctuation and headed out.

  The Malatestas were definitely avoiding me, at least Bill was. He was furtively engrossed in front of the Biography section.

  Before I expected it, Stefan broke away from the crowd and headed to me. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  “Aren’t we going out for drinks with—?” I gestured. Surely someone wanted to extend the evening in Stefan’s company.

  “Not tonight.” He took my arm and steered me outside.

  “Whose car? Doesn’t matter? Then we’ll take mine and I’ll drive you in tomorrow morning.”

  He nodded.

  I was surprised that he didn’t ask me a single thing about the reading, or even seem puzzled by my not mentioning it.

  We were quickly seated in my car and making the short drive home.

  “What’s the rush?” I asked, suddenly reluctant to tell him what had come in the mail for him.

  “When I got to campus, there was a message from some lawyer. I called between classes after I tried calling you back.”

  “And?”

  “It was about Perry’s will. There’s no next of kin. I’m his executor. And I have to make the arrangements for his burial.”

  We were at a red light a block from our house. There was no one behind us or stopped at any corner. I wanted to rush out of the car and run somewhere, anywhere, but I just put the car in park and buried my head in my arms on the wheel.

  12

  STEFAN ASKED IF I WANTED HIM to drive, but I managed to say no and pull myself together enough to get us down the street and into our driveway.

  Inside, stunned, I had several shots of Chivas in the living room while Stefan sat opposite me—calm, but determined. I showed him the letter from Perry, but he didn’t react the way I expected him to. I was astonished that he wanted to take care of the funeral arrangements.

  “But what about Perry’s wife?” I asked. “Ex-wife. Wives. Weren’t there two?”

  Stefan shook his head. “He made all of that up. The lawyer said there’s nobody.”

  “Then maybe Perry’s not really dead. Maybe he made that up too. It’s not like we saw the body ourselves.”

  Stefan went on, talking about the will, which apparently wouldn’t be probated for at least five months, the lawyer said. “That’s how long it usually takes around here.” Stefan fell silent, and his eyes closed a little.

  “You actually feel sorry for him,” I said. “I can’t believe this! He’s dead. ”

  “He was so miserable,” Stefan said quietly. “So lonely.”

  I didn’t buy that for a minute. For Perry to have forced himself between me and Stefan once again was vengeful and cruel. And canny. How many people know how to cause trouble after they’re dead? I shook my head. “He’s doing this—he did this to hurt me, to hurt us.”

  Stefan looked appalled. “No, Nick. He was lonely, there was no one else.”

  I wanted to throw my glass at Stefan, but my hands were so shaky I could barely pour myself more scotch. I would probably miss and break a lamp. “No one else?” I brought out, trying to keep my teeth from grinding. “You’re the only person in the world he could make his executor? He could have picked that lawyer, if he wanted to. Or Ann-Margret!”

  Stefan shrugged, and I felt lost in some European complication of manners and obligations that was really beyond me. Perry was his ex-lover, not even his ex-lover, but someone Stefan had slept with many, many years ago. There was no real connection anymore as far as I was concerned. But Stefan seemed to be acting the way he thought his European-born parents would want him to act, as a gentleman.

  “You think he was still in love with you,” I said. “You do, I can see it.”

  “I have an appointment for eight-thirty downtown. With the lawyer.”

  “About what?”

  “Reading the will.”

  The sound of it was so stiff and archaic. Did people actually read wills? I couldn’t picture it. Reading tarot cards, or palms—now that I could see.

  “What are you smiling about?” Stefan asked me.

  “Wait. I thought they read wills after a funeral.”

  “It can be before. You’re coming with me, right?”

  “Of course I am. Who knows what else that bastard was up to.” I wondered about that taunting line, “Expect something else.”

  The law firm’s office was a grand and glowing suite in one of the towers right near the wedding cake state capitol building. The office was so sheathed in marble and brass that even the large potted plants looked hard and metallic. The palette in the waiting room and beyond was gray and mauve, meant to be soothing and understated, I guess, but laid on with such singlemindedness that you might have been in a jumped-up Holiday Inn.

  A chilly receptionist took our names. She was in her thirties, sleek, blond, over-perfumed, and harmonized with her desk in some odd and disturbing way. Like they’d both been ordered as a matched set from an office supplies catalogue.

&nb
sp; We waited on an overstuffed mauve print velvet couch which was a soft and clinging trap. When Perry’s lawyer emerged from her sanctum, hand outstretched in welcome, we had to haul each other off the couch. June Baker blinked as if no one ever struggled to stand straight there. She had auburn hair pulled back and tied with an emerald green and black striped scarf that matched a Chanel-type suit. Good legs for an older woman, and clear green eyes behind large horned rim glasses that were almost campy. She wore large fake pearls at her throat, her ears, around her wrists, as if she were selling them on the Home Shopping Network.

  We followed her to a small sleek conference room with a view of the bulbous ungainly capitol dome. After a secretary brought us a tray with two china cups of coffee, we got down to business. She seemed trim and brisk, and because of the deep tan, I could see her at a local golf course on the weekends, chicly competitive. Her voice was as competent and unemotional as her handshake. It didn’t take long, because Stefan was not just executor, he inherited everything.

  Surprise, I thought.

  “Originally,” the lawyer explained, “the estate went to Yale University’s alumni fund, but there’s a codicil making Stefan Borowski the beneficiary.”

  “A codicil?” This was like a Victorian novel.

  “Yes, that’s when—”

  I cut her off. “I know the meaning. I wanted to know when it happened.”

  She handed over the will and I turned to the last page, which was dated and witnessed the morning of his dinner with me and Stefan.

  “What do you mean by his estate?” Stefan asked.

  She seemed to be doing some mental calculations. “Aside from personal property, etc., there are bank accounts, certificates of deposit, a little stock. Somewhere around one hundred fifty thousand dollars.”

  Stefan drew a deep pained breath.

  I slammed down the will. “What! Where the hell did Perry Cross get that kind of money!”

  Perry’s lawyer looked as decoratively blank as a chiffonier. If she knew, she wouldn’t say.

  Stefan was blushing from his neck to his scalp.

  “Do we have to accept this?” I asked.

  She smiled. “You’d like to challenge the will?”

  “That’s not what I mean. Couldn’t we give it away or something?”

  She pointedly looked at Stefan, whose eyes were down. “That’s for Mr. Borowski to decide.” She glanced discreetly at her watch.

  “So we’re done here?”

  She nodded.

  There was nothing in the will specifying the type of funeral arrangements, just that the executor make them. In the too-bright elevator, I announced, “We are not going to have any damned gravestone and plot.” I pictured Stefan dutifully bringing flowers there once a year, Perry haunting us for the rest of our lives, or as long as we lived in Michigan.

  Stefan shook his head like someone trying to clear his mind of the last song he heard on the radio before leaving home.

  Trying to change Stefan’s mood, I said, “To economize, we could put him in the backyard, near the gazebo.”

  It didn’t work, he still looked dazed.

  The elevator let us out in the building’s atrium, teeming with exotic plants and little waterfalls—all it needed were a few apes and squawking gaudy parrots. We passed the handsome Hispanic-looking security guard at his desk. He had a dark, broad, impassive face, but his eyes widened slightly as he checked Stefan out. I glared at him and he looked away.

  We headed outside to my car. “Cremation’s the only choice,” I said. Stefan winced, and I felt embarrassed because I knew the word “cremation” reminded Stefan of the extermination camps.

  “What about the ashes?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t give a damn about Perry’s ashes! Dump them in the river!

  Stefan grimaced. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Poetic justice,” I said.

  Driving off, I was silent, mortified by my flippancy. Stefan had more than once told me he would never be cremated, and if his parents or uncle specified that in their wills, he would disobey their wishes. “That’s what the Germans were going to do to them,” he explained.

  For me, it was clear. The idea of reducing someone to junk that filled an urn or box was no less repellent than imagining what happened inside a coffin, which wasn’t pretty either, but I didn’t want what was left of Perry to take up so much damned room.

  Now why didn’t I expect Detective Valley to be waiting at my office door? Why did I assume that what had happened at the lawyer’s office would only explode a bomb at Stefan’s feet and mine, leaving everyone else undisturbed?

  Valley was wearing the same suit, the same manner.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” he said.

  “Sure. I have a class at ten-thirty. That gives us time.”

  I opened the door and waved him inside, turning on the light. The boxes were still there at the side of Perry’s desk, and I cursed myself for not having finished the job immediately, when Claire first asked me. It still had to be done, and dropping Stefan off at his car after the lawyer’s, when I’d asked Stefan if he was planning to do it, since he was the executor, he said, “Don’t you think it’s a good way for you to finish all this?”

  “Finish it! The only way to finish this is to jump out a fucking window. It’s never going to be finished! And don’t tell me I’m getting emotional.”

  Valley was staring at me now in my office, as if I’d been speaking some of this aloud, or my face had been replaying the scene in the car.

  “Sit,” I said. And as if to mock me, he sat in Perry’s desk chair. “You still maintain that you and Stefan Borowski were,” he paused, “ ‘occupied’ at two in the morning of Perry Cross’s death?”

  “What is this?” I asked. “Are you reopening the case? I thought the paper said it was an accident.”

  He blinked but said nothing, waiting with exaggerated patience. He crossed his legs, the masculine way, and folded his hands in his lap.

  I tried playing his game, but I couldn’t keep quiet. “What’s the question?” I asked, giving in.

  “Was Stefan Borowski with you that morning from two to four a.m.?”

  “Of course he was.”

  “What if I told you that one of your neighbors, who has insomnia, heard a car drive out of your garage just after two that morning? Your neighbor remembered because of that train coming through.” He smiled. “Unless it was you going for a drive?”

  “Bullshit! Stefan was home, he was—”

  Valley pounced. “He was what?”

  I swallowed hard, shook my head.

  And though I should have been prepared, his next question made me feel like a Roman galley rammed at full speed. “Did you know Perry Cross was leaving your lover one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  The way he said “lover,” the word sounded like something criminal and cheap.

  I stood up. “I don’t have to answer any questions.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “Not now you don’t.”

  “What does that mean? Has the case been reopened?”

  “Everything looks different,” he said, “now that there’s a substantial sum of money involved. It’s a strong motive for murder.”

  I sank into my chair. He was right.

  “Are you still going to tell me that your lover didn’t know Perry Cross very well? Then why did Professor Cross make Stefan his beneficiary? And why did he change his will the morning he was going to have dinner with the two of you? Did he know he wouldn’t live much longer?”

  I tried to deflect him. “Why would anyone leave money to someone he thought wanted to kill him?”

  He smiled broadly. “Use your imagination. It sure points the finger, doesn’t it?”

  That’s right, I thought. Perry was giving us, giving me the finger. But then I rebelled. “Wait a minute. That’s pretty twisted, isn’t it?

  Valley shrugged. Then he leaned forward, eyes and face a little softer. “
It’ll be a lot easier for you to clear everything up right now, but if you and Stefan insist on not giving me any answers….”

  “You’ve talked to Stefan about this? When?”

  “I stopped by your house earlier. He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “He doesn’t have to!”

  “Not yet,” Valley said again. “Why won’t you tell me what the three of you talked about at dinner? Or what Professor Cross’s mood was? Why the secrets? It’ll all come out anyway, one way or another. You two were the last people known to have seen him before his body was found.”

  “Maybe you should ask around to see who else could have wanted him dead.”

  His face tensed. “Like—?”

  “You’re the detective. Detect!”

  He shook his head. “No one else inherited anything from Professor Cross, so why would anyone else want to kill him?”

  I refused to be drawn out any more. I just glared at him, wondering if I needed a lawyer.

  Valley shook his head disgustedly at my silence, and he left.

  I sank into my chair. Valley had seen the will. Which meant he probably knew that Stefan had lied to him and really did know Perry. Or if he didn’t know for sure, he guessed. Was the business about a neighbor a snare, or was it true?

  If I thought I’d be able to refocus myself and get lost in going over material for my first class, I was wrong. The morning’s surprises weren’t over.

  Serena Fisch came charging in a few minutes later, draped in some kind of mauve dress with shoulder pads and dolman sleeves that looked like a fancy straitjacket.

  “What is going on with Stefan?” she said, perching on the edge of my desk as if she were a moll. “Somebody who says he’s a detective has been asking questions in the department.”