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

by Lev Raphael

  “It’s been very painful,” he said heavily. “Do you remember, a few years ago, the Paul de Man scandal?”

  Of course I did. The famous and highly respected Yale professor was revealed to have published anti-Semitic newspaper articles during World War II, in Belgium. It was an international scandal.

  “Wait,” I said. “The articles are something de Man wrote?” Suddenly I thought of Chuck Bayer prying about Perry’s “stuff.” If he knew that Perry Cross had managed to get hold of more of de Man’s Nazi propaganda, no wonder he was interested. But—“No, Nick, this isn’t de Man’s, but it is Nazi writing, from a German newspaper published in Alsace-Lorraine in 1944. The same horrible cliches: Jews as rats undermining pure Aryan culture, und so weiter, and so on. Madness.”

  I realized that the dates I had found at the back of Perry’s copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich must have referred to these articles. “But why did Perry have them, and who wrote them?”

  “The first question I cannot answer, but the second—the name is clear enough. Rosa Wassermann.” And he spelled it out for me. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Oh my God! That could be Rose Waterman! She’s SUM’s Provost.”

  “She may also be an ex-Nazi,” he said quietly.

  “Wait. If she was trying to hide her identity, wouldn’t she have changed her name to something completely different?”

  “Who knows? Maybe she couldn’t let go of it completely, let go of her self so she just made it sound more English.”

  I couldn’t believe it. All the times I’d felt weirded out by Rose’s accent—I wasn’t completely off-base. I did some quick figuring. “She was in her late teens then. How’d she get anything in print?”

  “That I don’t know. But it’s not so amazing. Maybe her father was a Nazi Party official. Shall I bring these up to you or mail them?”

  “No. Put them in a safe place, and wait.” I was so wound up by this discovery, I almost forgot to thank Stefan’s father. I did, and I also apologized: “I’m sorry you had to read that crap.”

  “I’ve lived through worse,” he said, and wished me luck.

  I called Sharon immediately, and thankfully got her at home. She had to urge me to slow down.

  “So however he got the stuff,” she finally said, “Perry was probably blackmailing Rose. And didn’t you say she’s about to retire? What a time to have your past exposed.”

  “You think Rose killed Perry Cross?”

  “Of course, Nick. Don’t you? Think of the exposure, the public humiliation, the headlines, the news reports. Maybe she even got into the country by lying, what if she’s some kind of war criminal?”

  I sighed.

  “Nick, you told me that Rose works late on campus. She could have been there. Maybe she was even meeting with Perry that night, who knows?”

  “But if he was pushed, or tripped or whatever—? She’s not a strong woman.”

  “Physically? You don’t know that. You don’t know what she’d be like with her reputation at stake.”

  The money. Was that where Perry had gotten so much money? From blackmailing Rose. It was common knowledge at the university—and a cause for envy—that her salary was well over a hundred thousand. Administrators’ salaries were published every year in the student newspaper. Could all of his money have come from her?

  I asked Sharon what I should do next.

  “Gee, Nick, I’m not sure. I didn’t think we’d get this far.”

  “What! Are you joking?”

  “Seriously. I didn’t.”

  “So all that business about Agatha Christie and investigating was just to keep me busy?”

  “Well, partly. You were so miserable. You needed to be doing something to stop feeling so hopeless.”

  I had to admit to her that it had worked fairly well. “But what did you think was going to happen with Stefan?”

  “I didn’t think, much. I hoped it would sort itself out. But you’ve done a great job, Nick, really you have.”

  “Well, I did find the stuff about Rose.” I was still having trouble envisioning Rose as a murderer, or at least Perry’s murderer.

  Why didn’t I feel a true sense of triumph and discovery? Something was missing.

  “What do I do now, Sharon? Contact the killer?” Despite myself, I started laughing—it sounded so melodramatic and stagy, a weird parlor game: Contact the Killer.

  “It’s not funny, Nick. You have to be very careful. I think you’ve done more than enough. You should call the Campus Police, call that detective and tell them what you know, tell them everything.”

  I heard Stefan’s car driving up, told Sharon I had to go, promising that I’d be careful, very careful.

  16

  I RAN TO THE FRONT DOOR and pulled it open before Stefan could ring or let himself in. I hugged him fiercely.

  “I was worried about you! Are you okay?”

  Stefan held me for a long time before he said, “I’m fine.” And then with a slight laugh, he said, “Can we go inside?”

  Stefan hung up his jacket and led me to the kitchen where he made us both two very strong cups of coffee. “Sit down,” he said. He was leaning back against the sink. “I think I know who killed Perry Cross.”

  I burst out with, “You’ve been sleuthing too?”

  Stefan scowled. “What do you mean?”

  There was no way I could take it back, so I had to explain everything, or almost everything about my search to find out what happened to Perry Cross the night he died. I didn’t tell Stefan I had been shaken by wondering if he was the murderer.

  All of that took us through more coffee, a quick dish of spaghetti carbonara, and a slice of cheesecake each. Stefan kept shaking his head at each new turn of my investigation. And he laughed, he did laugh, mostly with me, though occasionally at me, I have to say. He seemed charmed when I told him I was worried he’d be arrested, and a little annoyed, too, especially that I’d seen his father.

  “He was very helpful,” I said, not adding that his father had guessed I was worried that Stefan had killed Perry. There was so much to feel guilty for: wishing Perry was dead, hiding information from Valley, not being completely honest with Stefan.

  “You and Sharon are amazing,” Stefan said more than once, and I beamed, choosing to take it as a compliment.

  I wound up with the translation and Sharon’s conviction that Rose Waterman had killed Perry.

  “But you don’t seem to think so,” he observed.

  “No. My money’s on Serena. She hated Perry for taking the job she wanted, the job that was rightfully hers. And look how she sort of threw suspicion on Rose, and tried to get me thinking about Rose.”

  “That feels like a cliché—bitter single woman full of twisted passion, etc., etc.” Stefan shook his head, deeply dissatisfied.

  We were loading up the dishwasher when I remembered my laundry. I scurried into the laundry room and took the sopping gym togs out of the washer. Stefan followed, stood in the doorway, smiling benevolently as I threw them in the drier. I forgot my laundry loads at least once every few weeks, and I was too sensitive for a joke about it, especially now, so I bristled, feeling very defensive.

  Stefan said, “You haven’t asked me where I’ve been. I was talking to Bill Malatesta. He’s convinced that Broadshaw did it. And doesn’t that fit with the way Broadshaw threatened you in the steam room at the gym?”

  I went back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. “Broadshaw,” I said, picturing how intimidating he had looked doing his bench presses. He would have had no trouble overpowering Perry, knocking him out, heaving him into the river.

  “Because of the harassment?”

  Stefan came to sit by me. “If Mrs. Broadshaw knew, she wasn’t going to say anything, and Betty and Bill wouldn’t either, so Perry was the only threat.”

  “Blackmail.”

  “Probably. Bill thinks so.”

  “God, they should have called him Double Cross.”<
br />
  Stefan checked his watch. “I have to leave soon. I’m doing a guest lecture tonight, for one of the graduate students teaching creative writing.”

  “But—”

  “It’s all over. We’ve done enough. Tomorrow morning we call our lawyer, and then we call Detective Valley and whoever else we have to. Let them figure it out.”

  “And spill our guts? You’re not afraid?”

  He stared at me. “Afraid of what? We have all this information—somewhere in there is a killer.”

  “But you’d have to tell them everything.”

  “So what?”

  “Everything, Stefan. Not just your relationship with him, but going out for a drive, being there with him on campus late at night. Add all that up with the inheritance, and it’s not pretty.” And because his face was so blank, I stumbled on: “It even looked bad to me—”

  “No!” Stefan clapped his hands together in discovery. “You really thought I could have done it! I don’t believe you.”

  I flushed and looked away.

  But he was standing right in front of me now. “You don’t trust me. You think I could have killed him. You think I could be a murderer.”

  “Well, you lied about Perry all those different times! That’s what they do in your family—they lie, they lie about the big things!”

  He shook his head, looking completely disgusted with me. “I don’t believe what you’re saying.”

  He stalked off to the bedroom. I heard a closet door violently pulled open, some shoes thrown, drawers yanked open and shoved back in. Then water running in the bathroom sink, the bathroom door shut hard, opened a minute later, the pipes working. Stefan soon disappeared out the front door without saying a word. Why did he have to? The whole house vibrated with his rage and betrayal.

  But I didn’t trust him, not entirely; how could I? And that distrust in addition to my fear for him had been enough to propel me into this crazy hunt for a murderer. I couldn’t stop just because Stefan or Sharon said I should. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to depend on Detective Valley or any cop to find out the truth, when Stefan was a sitting duck: no alibi, the opportunity to do it, plenty of reasons, all those stupid lies about how well he knew Perry, and being Perry’s only heir.

  Hell, we were both in trouble. I was the one who had told Detective Valley that Stefan and I were in bed early that morning.

  How could a lawyer explain that in court? “Anti-homophobic rage?” What would they call it, The Cappuccino Defense? Puh-leeze.

  I stomped into my study, pulled out the faculty directory, and dialed Rose Waterman’s home number. Her answering machine message was curt and anonymous—giving just her number, not her name. And tonight that seemed significant to me. I left a message asking her to call me, hung up, but kept staring at the phone.

  I checked the listings for the president’s office, and dialed the number listed under her name, but which was probably her secretary’s. No answer, no tape. But at the bottom of the page was a handwritten phone number with the same first three digits as Rose’s office number, though the rest was different. The number was in Stefan’s writing. Could that be a direct unlisted line to Rose’s office? Stefan did have occasion to talk to people I would never call.

  There was a good chance she was working there tonight as usual. I dialed. Someone picked up at the first ring, as if they’d been waiting.

  “Yes?” The woman’s voice was low, suspicious.

  “Rose?” I asked.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Nick Hoffman.”

  “How did you get this number!”

  “It was in our book, Stefan had it—” I shook myself, shook off the fearful explanations that I had no need to give. “I wanted to talk to you,” I said, my voice steadier.

  There was a painfully long pause. At last: “Why?”

  “It’s …” How was I supposed to do this? Plunge right in, or hint, or toy with her?

  She sounded sharper, angrier, when she went on. “What is this about? Why are you calling me here at night?” She made me sound like a crank caller.

  “It’s about Perry Cross,” I said carefully. But before I could think of how to proceed, I heard some kind of crash, as if something fell or was broken, and the phone fell, bouncing and thudding.

  Then the line went dead.

  My first thought was that she’d slammed down the phone, but when I went into the kitchen to try calling on Stefan’s line I got a busy signal, and the operator said there was trouble on the line.

  Trouble. Rose was seventy. What if she’d collapsed because of my call? Now what? Think, Nick, think. Call 911? But I didn’t know if something had actually happened or not. Why wasn’t Stefan here? I had to decide on my own. I looked down to see that I had somehow brought the faculty directory with me as I roamed through the house, so agitated I hadn’t realized I was twisting it like a towel. I let it drop to the floor in the hallway and raced to the phone to call the Campus Police. I gave them the location on campus where I thought something might have happened, my name, and then I grabbed a jacket from the front closet. So what if I was wrong? So what if it was a false alarm and I got bitched at by the cops, or wound up in the newspaper?

  Five minutes. At night, with no traffic, I could get there in under five minutes. I jumped into my Cutlass, screeched out of the driveway, and tore off down the empty street, imagining the neighbors complaining to each other about “all those damned teenagers.” I heard sirens but didn’t see anyone behind me. The light changed just as I got to Michigan Avenue and I made a gut-wrenching left turn and headed for the closest campus entrance. But I had to slow down as soon as I entered campus—the roads were too twisting, and there wasn’t enough light. When I made the right onto Jackson Drive, which led straight to the Administration Building, I could see flashing lights and a small crowd, with more people running across the Administration bridge.

  I parked as close as I could get and then ran over the dry lawn to a scene as eerie as a UFO landing in a movie. There was too much light here—strange light from the flashing campus police cars and ambulance. People’s clothes flashed and changed colors as if they had their own weird life and meaning. It was breezy, and dead leaves hissed along the concrete paths radiating out from the spot where there was already some kind of cordon.

  I drew closer, and heard someone say, “Look!” I looked up and saw a broken window in the top floor of the Administration Building, the jagged bright hole like the aftermath of a rocket attack on that temple-like ornate structure. I thought of Ceausescu’s overthrow, and the ravaged buildings of Bucharest. A short dark girl being hugged by a girl almost twice her height was sobbing quietly, “I saw her fall, I saw her fall.”

  And when I got nearer, where three policemen stood holding back the growing crowd of students, I saw the evening’s centerpiece: Rose Waterman lay there, limbs sprawled as widely as if she’d been trying to form a swastika. There was blood under her head, her back, her legs and arms. So much dark blood on the light-washed concrete that I wavered, and thought I might faint.

  “Nick!” Stefan was breaking away from a knot of stunned-looking students. I grabbed him, suddenly exhausted. I felt wrenched out of my own life, completely disconnected, except where my body touched Stefan’s. People milled about us, talking loudly now, telling each other what they knew or thought they knew.

  “I was across the river,” Stefan said, breaking away gently so he could point. “Over in Fisher doing my lecture.” That was where most of the EAR night classes were held; the building was almost directly opposite the Administration Building. “A woman in the class screamed, and we rushed to the window. I didn’t see anything, but she did. They all ran out, and I called 911 in the hallway.”

  “I was talking to Rose,” I said quietly, so no one else could hear. “I was on the phone with her at her office.”

  Stefan looked incredulous. “What the hell for?”

  “It’s not my fault!” I hissed, moving furthe
r from the crowd that had swelled to several dozen. “I couldn’t let it go, I wanted to talk to her.”

  The police were busy getting statements now, pulling students aside, taking things down, and when one approached me, I said I had been on the phone with—I couldn’t say her name, I had to point.

  “I called the Campus Police when the line went dead, and came over.”

  The campus cop was lanky and blond, dark-eyed, and looked so uncomfortable in his crisp uniform that he might have been doing all this on a dare. He dutifully took my name, my phone number and address, but thankfully didn’t make a big deal out of what little I had to say. “We’ll contact you,” he said, moving on with his pad.

  “What now?” I asked Stefan, who started to lead me away from the lights and noise and horror. Halfway across the bridge, I turned back, and Stefan did too. I gasped and pointed up at the building. Why hadn’t I noticed this before?

  “Nick, what’s wrong?”

  “Look! If she didn’t do it, she must have seen who did,” I said, pointing up to Rose’s office window. “She’s here every night. Her window has a perfect view of the bridge. If the night was clear and you were there, you could see whoever killed Perry.”

  Stefan glanced up and then back down to where we stood. He moved to the railing, turned, and leaned back, eyeing the Administration Building whose massive pillars were bathed in light as if they were part of some holiday celebration. Absurdly, I remembered a Bastille Day we’d spent in Paris, and historic images projected on some building near the Place de la Concorde.

  “You’re right, but wouldn’t the police have asked her if she saw anything?”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to tell.” I felt cold, jammed my hands into my jacket pockets, and started to walk off.

  “Wait.” Stefan caught up with me, slipped his arm into mine, and we got to the other side of the river like that. “I don’t have any notes in that classroom,” he said. “We can head home. I’m sure class is over tonight. My car’s behind Parker. How about you get yours tomorrow?”