Rhapsody in Red Page 4

  I was glad I hadn’t touched anything except the doorknob.

  He rubbed his chin and continued. “I guess you know we took the computers from everyone who might have been involved.”

  “When do we get them back?” I asked. I keep everything on hard copy, too, but I don’t like people fiddling with my things.

  “I don’t know.” A sheepish expression appeared on his face. “We searched your offices, too, you know.”

  “I heard,” I said. “Thanks for not tearing up the place.”

  He frowned. “The main people Captain Staggart is looking at are the ones in the science center building yesterday—you and Professors Thorn, Harkins, and Jessel. And Pappas, the janitor. He says he was downstairs.”

  I thought for a moment. “Actually, the murderer could be anyone on campus. For that matter, anyone off campus could walk on, kill Laila Sloan, and walk right off again.”

  Spencer nodded. “Staggart knows that. Today he’s trying to narrow the possibilities.”

  My skepticism set in. “That’s a big job. Eight hundred students and fifty-odd faculty. And he still can’t be sure about walk-ons.”

  “The critical time is the hour before you found the body. Several meetings were being held then, and the chief has given Staggart plenty of manpower to see who was where. He can eliminate a lot of possibilities.”

  As we talked, Spencer kept fidgeting and looking at the door.

  I decided to find out why. “Look, you’ve told me more than you probably should have. What did you really come to tell me?”

  Spencer looked at the door again, and his hands clenched into fists. My stomach muscles tightened, though my internal string quartet was playing a lullaby.

  “Staggart doesn’t like you at all,” he said. “I think he’ll pin the murder on you if he can.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Sergeant Spencer’s visit left me more determined than ever not to be distracted from my normal life. That included avoiding the kind of interruption Professor Thorn had brought. So I concentrated on reviewing my notes for my afternoon class.

  The phone rang. Another irritant. It was Dean-Dean, saying President Cantwell wanted to see me and Professor Thorn. He told me to bring her when she finished her afternoon class.

  “Doesn’t her office have a phone?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t answer it.” He made that sound like a criminal offense. “You’ll have to give her the message.”

  He could have sent a secretary or a student worker. Then I wouldn’t have to dismiss my class early to connect with Professor Thorn. But there’s no use arguing when Dean-Dean has made up his mind.

  Attendance was off a bit in my class, which was to be expected since the swarm of grief counselors gave a ready-made excuse to anyone who wanted to cut. I was teaching my specialty, Renaissance History of Ideas, and the subject for the day was virtue. Most educated people of that time, all over Europe, took that subject seriously and spent a lot of time discussing and cultivating the virtues.

  The assigned text was Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier and its idea of perfecting oneself like a work of art. Students raised on today’s “whatever” philosophy find that an alien concept. Some received it like I was a guest lecturer from the University of Pluto, but most perked up and listened. They were on the edge of their seats when I described the Platonic “ladder of love” and the courtier’s progress by willpower from the sensual love of his youth to completely cerebral love at the moment of his passing into the next world.

  By the time I finished, I’d forgotten my premonition and forgotten I was a murder suspect. My adrenaline was flowing like water through the floodgates at Grand Coulee. It’s moments like these that I live for. Musically, my emotions sought expression in something like the glorious Festmarch from Tannhäuser in full, triumphant brass. But my uncooperative hallucination played “Arkansas Traveler.”

  We can’t have everything, I suppose.

  I arrived outside Professor Thorn’s comparative religion class in time to hear her closing discussion. I confess I was leery of her Wiccan theology, but what I heard made me think we might find some common ground after all.

  A student named Arthur Medford was arguing that there was no such thing as objective truth: every person had his own truth, and it wasn’t the same as anyone else’s. Professor Thorn explained the difference between truth and individual perspectives, and then I heard the scratch of chalk on the blackboard. (She taught in one of the older classrooms, too.)

  Her voice came again. “Now, Arthur. Read what I’ve written on the board.”

  His voice: “‘Truth does not exist.’”

  Hers: “Is that statement true or false?”

  A ripple of slow laughter spread around the room, followed by Arthur’s voice, subdued with wonder. “Oh, I get it. It’s like . . . that statement has to be false in order to be true, and it can’t be both true and false at the same time.”

  Professor Thorn, approving: “Thank you for helping us settle that question. And that’s as good a time as any to dismiss. I’ll see you next Tuesday.”

  Her class straggled out with that dazed look students get when they’ve actually learned something. Professor Thorn came close behind, still fiery-eyed from the encounter.

  “Don’t they ever question that pop-culture nonsense?” she said to no one in particular.

  “The dean called,” I said. “The president wants to talk with us now.”

  “What about?” The blue eyes burned me again.

  “‘Ours not to reason why,’” I misquoted. “He didn’t tell me what it was about.”

  She gave me another hard look. “‘Theirs not to reason why,’ you mean. I hope it’s not ours.”

  Score another point for her. First she knew Marlowe, now she knew Tennyson. I’d have to watch my step around her.

  But I didn’t. I made a bad mistake. As I might have done with anyone else, I touched her elbow to move us in the right direction. I’d forgotten her aversion to being touched.

  Her arm jerked away as if she’d touched a hot frying pan, and she gave me a look that should have turned me into stone.

  “Don’t color outside the lines,” she said.

  All I could say was, “Yes, ma’am.”

  I should have left well enough alone. Outside, Professor Thorn walked steadily into the November wind, looking straight ahead. That and her fixed expression should have told me to keep quiet. But, stupid me, I tried to patch things up. Truth to tell, my adrenaline was still flowing from my class. So I complained about having to cut my lecture short.

  “I had to leave out the best part about the courtier in love,” I said. “Although Castiglione values cerebral love above physical love, he justifies kissing on grounds that the kiss is a mingling of souls. . . .”

  She gave me another gorgonizing look. “It’s more like a mingling of bacteria and viruses.”

  “You have to remember,” I said, still hoping to get out of the doghouse, “the germ theory of disease wasn’t invented until the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and viruses weren’t discovered until almost the twentieth. Those things weren’t known when Castiglione was writing.”

  “That’s why they had plagues.”

  For once, I was glad to arrive at the president’s office.

  We were greeted there by Mrs. Dunwiddie, whose official title is Administrative Assistant to the President and the Vice President for Academic Affairs. She appears to be a harmless person fighting a losing battle to remain middle-aged, but it’s still best to watch what you say around her. She ushered us into the president’s office and made her exit, shutting the door behind her.

  President Cantwell sat behind his desk, while Dean-Dean occupied a comfortable chair beside it. Professor Thorn and I were relegated to small hardwood chairs facing them.

  Dean-Dean spoke first. “I’ve been informed that both of you dismissed your grief counselors. Whether you make use of them, of course, is entirely your own decisi
on. . . .”

  He made it sound like it wasn’t.

  Then President Cantwell took over. “It was Most Unfortunate,” he said in full rhetorical mode, “Most Unfortunate that I was away on Business when This Terrible Thing occurred.”

  “How was the fishing?” I asked.

  The president spends most of his time away from the campus chasing money for the university, which is what university presidents are supposed to do. President Cantwell does a good job of it. But it’s also well-known that much of his time in absence is taken up with his true passion, fishing. He never goes anywhere without his rods and tackle box.

  He barked his reply. “I was meeting with an Important Person about a Donation for the new Fine Arts Building. I expect him to give at least a Million Dollars.”

  I didn’t ask on which lake the meeting took place.

  “Professor Sloan’s death is a Terrible Thing for the university,” he continued. “Just when we’ve Passed Through The Crisis and begun to Grow As An Institution, this Horrible Event threatens to Blacken Our Good Name. I am Greatly Concerned that it may hinder our Institutional Progress.”

  Professor Thorn moved restlessly beside me. She evidently didn’t know where this was going, but I was afraid I did.

  President Cantwell droned on. “It is important that each of us Put Our Shoulders To The Wheel and minimize this kind of Unfavorable Publicity.”

  When he paused for emphasis, I tried to visualize one person simultaneously putting both shoulders to the wheel without beheading himself. It seemed politic not to inquire how he thought this could be done.

  “Each of our faculty members have a Sacred Charge,” he said with questionable grammar, “to take Great Care of our actions. The reputation of our Fine Institution must not be Further Sullied.”

  Professor Thorn was less experienced than I in situations of this kind, and ventured a question. “What specifically have we done to bring any kind of discredit on the university?”

  I could have told her that was like Oliver Twist asking for more. President Cantwell and Dean-Dean bristled.

  The latter answered. “You must not take this as any kind of accusation, Professor Thorn. We only want everyone whom the police have named as suspects to realize their responsibility to minimize adverse publicity.”

  “We are on the Monthly Budget of More than One Hundred Churches,” President Cantwell orated. “You can imagine how they would react if we become known as a Habitat for Violent Crime.”

  I could imagine how they would react if the administration followed the consultant’s recommendation to establish coed dorms, but I thought it best not to raise that issue.

  Instead, I asked, “Who are the suspects? There must be a thousand possibilities.”

  Surprisingly, Dean-Dean actually answered. “Captain Staggart has narrowed the field somewhat. The athletic teams were practicing, and the coaches know who was present. The same applies to many student activities. Most of the faculty have witnesses as to where they were, and most of the faculty wives and female faculty attended a tea honoring Mrs. Cantwell.”

  I heard Professor Thorn breathe heavily beside me, and guessed she hadn’t been invited. She later told me she hadn’t. My mental warning flags flew up to full mast as I wondered how Dean-Dean knew so much about confidential police business and why he would bother telling us.

  “Some stories must still be checked,” Dean-Dean continued, “but Captain Staggart’s prime list includes Bob Harkins, the custodian Luther Pappas, Gifford Jessel, Brenda Kirsch, and, of course, you two.”

  “Why Professor Kirsch?” I asked. “She wasn’t in the science center at all.”

  Brenda Kirsch was a physical education instructor who’d once coached women’s basketball but now only taught courses. Her specialty was a workout of her own invention called “Hop-Bop”—calisthenics performed while loudspeakers blared rock music at top volume.

  “Uh . . .” For once, Dean-Dean looked embarrassed. “The ladies who put the tea together had the unfortunate impression that Professor Kirsch would be teaching a class. She was not invited and says she was alone in her office. She was also the person who recommended that we hire Professor Sloan.”

  “In summary,” President Cantwell concluded, “neither of you is Under Any Cloud with us. But we wanted you to understand the Full Implications of further Unfavorable Publicity.”

  “I understand perfectly,” I said. Professor Thorn nodded.

  President Cantwell stood. Dean-Dean ushered us out and closed the door behind us. In the outer office, Mrs. Dunwiddie showed us her special secretarial smile, which meant exactly nothing except that she was a secretary . . . uh . . . administrative assistant.

  Professor Thorn gave me a quizzical glance. “What . . .?”

  “Outside,” I said, cutting my eyes toward Mrs. Dunwiddie.

  As soon as we cleared the steps of the executive center, she stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

  “Welcome to the college faculty,” I said. “What this means is that the administration is frustrated out of its wits by events it can’t control. So it responds by transferring that frustration onto people it can control. Interesting psychological phenomenon, isn’t it?”

  Her face still reflected incomprehension. “They can’t possibly blame us for what happened.”

  “They actually don’t,” I said, “and if we walk a straight line for the rest of the year and all of this blows over, we’ll get our contracts renewed.”

  She exhaled disgustedly, clenched her teeth, and stalked off without further comment.

  I turned and headed back to my office. Gusts of cold wind sprinkled my face with grit, and my brain-based orchestra held forth with a cute pizzicato piece by Benjamin Britten.

  With pressure from the administration within the university and from Clyde Staggart without, it looked like my efforts to lead a normal life were doomed to failure. And that weird, invisible something I’d felt closing in on me before loomed nearer than ever.

  CHAPTER 6

  Friday had a heavenly beginning. Then it U-turned into a day straight from the pit.

  It began with a dream of my waking up with Faith the way we used to. In the dream I woke to early morning sunlight and Faith’s face close above mine. Unbound, her light brown hair cascaded about her shoulders and glistened in the sunlight. She gazed into my face, and her smile confirmed her delight in simply being with me. It was a delight I never understood despite the fact that her presence brought me sheer enchantment. I always felt guilty because I could never deserve love from such a delightful person.

  In the dream she sang to me softly and intimately, as she had in life, putting her own words to that sad song from the sixties, “What Now My Love.” I think she knew all songs as far back as they’d been having music. And they all pleased her, for her life consisted of music and me. To be held coequal with music seemed to me the ultimate honor.

  As I said, she made up her own words. She’d always begin, “Hello, my love . . . I’m glad to see you . . .” But after that she’d invent words fitting for that particular day in our life.

  I’ll never know what words she would have sung for that Friday, for the jangling telephone woke me into the emptiness of reality. No sunlight streamed through the windows. All that came in was the dim gray of a November dawn.

  I rolled over and uncradled the phone on the bedside table. Professor Thorn’s voice conveyed something close to panic.

  “Professor Barclay, I have to talk to you. Now. Something . . . something has come up.”

  I suppressed the impulse to suggest she swallow it again and be more careful what she ate. All I actually said was, “What has come up?” Silently, I awarded myself a medal for discretion.

  “I can’t tell you on the phone. Can I see you in your office?”

  “All right. I’ll be there at eight thirty.” It was easier to give in than argue, and my nine o’clock class would make a handy excuse for ending
the discussion.

  Friday was a blue-suit day this week, and I took time to ink in the frayed cuff with a Sharpie. I might be too cheap to buy another suit, but I didn’t want to look slovenly.

  I reached the office first. Its familiar smells of floor wax and furniture polish were soothing, though, surprisingly, I missed the random clicks of my absent computer.

  Professor Thorn steamed in with panic on her face and took the left-hand chair before I could ask her to. I took the right-hand chair, as I had before.

  “I need your help,” she said, her hands clasping and reclasping in her lap. “Captain Staggart thinks I killed Laila Sloan.”

  “Then you don’t need me. You need a lawyer.”

  Her jaw clamped and her blue eyes burned right through me. “I can’t afford a lawyer. I’m still paying off debts from graduate school.”

  “There are always public defenders—”

  She scorched me again with that blue gaze. “You can’t get a public defender till you’re indicted. You know that as well as I do.”

  “What does Staggart have on you?” I had no intention of getting involved. But if Staggart was after her, maybe he wasn’t after me. After all, she’d had opportunity to commit the crime. I had only her word on what she’d done Wednesday before she came to my office.

  She looked at the floor. “He found an e-mail on Laila’s home computer. It demanded that she break off her relationship with an unnamed third party and come back to me. And it said there would be unpleasant consequences if she didn’t.”

  “Did you write it?”

  She flushed. “No. But it appears to have come from my university e-mail account.”

  “Who do you think wrote it? And why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Laila. She has . . . had . . . a way of entangling people. But I don’t know why she would imply that kind of relationship with me.”

  I adjusted my trifocals and thought a minute while Professor Thorn’s lack of an alibi screamed in my head. Maybe she was more involved with Laila Sloan than she’d admitted. My arm still had bruises where she’d gripped it—through my overcoat, no less. The only good part of her story was that I wasn’t named in that e-mail. There was no reason I should be, of course, but I still felt relief that this was one campus mess I wasn’t a part of.