Murder Misread (11 page)

“
Not at all, Miss Ryan.”
Walensky, baggy-eyed and drooping, seemed older than when he’d
first appeared just an hour ago. “Just wanted to apologize for the
city police. Hope they haven’t been hassling you too
much.”

Charlie said, “They’ve
been asking about my damn memo book when they know I was with
Maggie and couldn’t have done it.”

“
Christ,” Walensky
growled. “Just filling up their files. I might be able to stop them
if I could prove it was suicide, but they’ve got this idea it might
be homicide and so my hands are tied.”

“
Well,” said Maggie,
“Charlie’s memo book was found at the scene of the crime. They have
to ask. As soon as they find out who did it they’ll leave us
alone.”

“
If
they find out,” Walensky
corrected her. “Now, you’ll tell me if you think of anything that
might throw light on this. Anything about his enemies, or about
worries that might lead to suicide?”

“
In fact,” said Maggie,
“we were just wondering if someone in this department might have
something to hide. Professor Chandler was so curious and sociable,
he might have learned something that someone didn’t want
known.”

Walensky’s brows bunched
skeptically. “This is a campus, Miss Ryan, not a hangout for
criminals. I say that, and my job shows me the worst of
it.”

“
That’s true, I’m sure.
You probably spend most of your time on parking violations instead
of grand larceny.”

“
Yes. And if it turns out
not to be suicide, damn it, we should be hunting down in Sergeant
Hines’s town, not up here on the hill.”

Charlie thought of his
memo book, of someone deliberately leaving it to point blame at
him. Maggie’s idea made a lot more sense than Walensky’s. Whoever
dropped his book in the gorge was someone from this
department.

Unless it really had
fallen from his pocket somehow….

Maggie was standing up,
folding the pizza box, cramming it into Charlie’s wastebasket.
“Well, I’m going back to my desk before they want to question me
again,” she said. “I’ll be next door in 104, Captain
Walensky.”

“
Okay, fine,” he
nodded.

“
But we should all
probably be thinking about the possibility that someone from this
department had a reason to kill Professor Chandler,” she added
gently. “Because in my experience, professors can be just as
naughty as any other group of people. They just use bigger words to
explain it.”

She bobbed her head
politely to Walensky as she went out.

7

Anne stood at the window
of her living room, gazing at the back lawn, bright green streaked
with long shadows in the late sun. Tal had mowed it a few days ago
and it looked neat enough, although it was already spangled with a
few yellow dandelions.
Dent de
lion
, lion’s tooth, from their jagged
leaves. But they were not lionlike, not regal. They were sneaky
little weeds with long strong roots. No matter how often you
decapitated them some sprang back, eager as students in
September.

“
So this is a pretty
generous policy,” observed Sergeant Hines from the sofa. Anne
glanced over her shoulder at him. His long legs were angled wide to
fit behind the coffee table, knees far apart as he leaned forward
to inspect the papers he had fanned out before him. Porter,
standing at the end of the table, gazed down at the papers
too.

“
TIAA-CREF is supposed to
be a good program,” said Anne.

“
So would you say you’ll
be pretty well set now?”

Well set! If she weren’t
so tired she’d be angry. She said, “Sergeant Hines, I was already
pretty well set, as you put it. I’m covered by exactly the same
program as Tal when I retire. The house has been in my name for
several years. I’ve got a good job, with tenure. Whatever comes to
me now is not going to make a hell of a lot of
difference.”

“
What are your plans for
the money?”

“
No plans.” She looked
back out the window. Some prewar designer’s idea of Tudor.
Pseudor-Tudor, Tal called it. Dark oak woodwork around the diamond
panes framed the late-afternoon lawn, the evergreens at the back
property line, the metal swing set left over from when Paul and
Rocky were small. “Probably save it for my children,” she told
Hines. “I haven’t thought much about it.”

“
Yes, of course, Mrs.
Chandler.” She heard him rustle the papers behind her. Out on the
lawn, a flock of starlings landed and marched across the grass,
glossy black in the sun, searching for grubs or whatever unpleasant
thing it was that appealed to starlings.

When Hines spoke right at
her elbow, she jumped. “Nice yard. Did your husband take care of
it?”

“
Most of the time. I’d do
it if he was busy or feeling sick. And of course if there was a
major project like planting a tree, then we’d get someone with the
right equipment to come in.” She looked sideways at Hines. He was
inspecting the yard with his flat intelligent eyes, his chocolate
skin picking up a sheen from the reflected sunlight. “Not a very
complicated yard,” she added. “Mow the lawn every week or two and
hack down the bushiest bushes a couple of times a year. We never
had time for flowers.”

“
Vegetables?”

“
No. We go to the farmers’
market.”

“
Still, it’s fun to do it
yourself. Nothing like a tomato still warm from the garden.” Hines
turned back into the room. “Well, are we done?” he asked
Porter.

“
For now.”

“
Mrs. Chandler, I
appreciate your help very much. We may have to come back to you if
new questions develop.”

“
Please do. I want to
help,” said Anne. Not that she thought they’d find anything now. If
they were asking her about insurance it showed how far they were
from a solution. And she hadn’t heard for hours from Walensky.
Maybe he was following up an idea somewhere. He knew more about the
campus, after all. But she suspected he was off somewhere
tut-tutting. She led the way to the other end of the living room
and into the little hall. “Do you have everything?”

“
Yes, we’re all packed up.
Will you be all right, now, Mrs. Chandler?”

“
I can call Laura Brand
next door if I need anything.” Laura had already been over twice,
first to ask what she could do and to invite Anne to dinner. Anne
had refused. But soon Laura had come back with a casserole from her
own freezer.

“
Good,” said Hines. “Be
sure to do that. And call me if you remember anything at all that
you haven’t told me.”

“
I will. Thank you,
Sergeant Hines.”

She closed the dark oak
door behind him and leaned her forehead against the varnished wood,
her hand still on the knob. God, the house seemed empty. She was
exhausted and at the same time numb, distant, as though it were
someone else’s eyes that felt sandy, someone else’s legs about to
buckle, someone else’s grief trying to storm its way in.

Maybe Laura Brand was
right, maybe she should eat something.

Or drink
something.

She went into the kitchen
and opened the refrigerator. There was the white burgundy she and
Tal had started last night. A new label, not great but okay. She
poured herself a glass and took it in to sit on the sofa, with a
vague plan of organizing the facts she knew. There were the
insurance papers spread all over the coffee table. Dollars and
cents, the prize money for reaching this age or that age, for
having a partner who reached this age or that age. She’d have to go
through the motions, she supposed, file for benefits. Benefits!
Cindy would help. Cindy understood all that trash, or at least
could send her to the right administrator.

The house seemed so
empty.

At Van Brunt Hall, she
hadn’t had time to talk to Cindy. When Hines had gone haring off
after Charlie Fielding, both Walensky and Bernie Reinalter had
descended on her, full of useless solicitude. She’d taken a cup of
coffee for politeness’ sake while she waited for Hines to finish
with Charlie, then left it behind, undrunk, in her eagerness to
join Hines when he finally reappeared. Hines and Porter had taken
her to Tal’s office. Not the big corner one he used to have. The
new Meredith professor had moved into it. But Tal had shrugged. “So
now I’ve only got one window for looking at the parking lot,” he’d
said. “That’s more than enough. The important thing is
bookcases.”

And he did have plenty of
bookcases. She’d looked them over carefully, searching for
something that would jog her memory, or for something unusual,
something that didn’t fit with the projects he’d shared with her.
But nothing stood out. It was his familiar collection of books,
classic volumes on perception, language, testing, education,
reading. Ranks of journals on the same topics lining the lower
shelves. She went to the shelf nearest his chair. “These are new,”
she said, looking at the crisp bindings, the unfamiliar titles. But
the names were all reasonable additions:
Eye Movements and Psychological Processes, Cognitive
Development, The Psychology of Reading.

Determined to find
something that would point to his killer, she’d flipped through his
notes, his mail, even the stack of mimeographed bulletins. All the
usual. Announcements of lectures, of new textbooks, of conferences.
Requests for letters of recommendation, for reprints of his
articles, for his assistance on committees. Nothing odd. She’d
shaken her head, suddenly weary. “Nothing,” she said. “Exactly what
I would have expected yesterday, before anything
happened.”

“
Well, thank you for
looking it over, Mrs. Chandler. Now, I’d like to speak to the
others here, and see you at home later. Would about five o’clock be
all right?”

It was more command than
request. Anne said, “Of course.”

“
Do you have a car
here?”

“
Yes, at my building.
Harper Hall.”

“
Did you drive your
husband to campus this morning?”

“
Oh, I see what you’re
asking. No, we took both cars today. He stopped off for that
checkup first, and I drove straight to my office. His is probably
in the parking lot here. Black Volks bug.”

Hines wrote it down.
Walensky said, “I’ll be happy to drive you home, Mrs.
Chandler.”

She wasn’t about to be
carried home like some invalid, but she’d allowed Walensky to
trundle her off as far as the Harper parking lot because she
thought Hines would be more efficient with him out of the way.
She’d driven home numbly, occasionally aware that she’d just done
something reckless, such as making a turn without really checking
the traffic. But there were few cars on the road at intersession
and she was lucky.

Once home, she’d made some
calls. She’d called her secretary, only to find that Cindy had
already spread the news. She’d called Rocky in Chicago and Paul in
Houston. Shocked and disbelieving, Rocky weeping, they’d promised
to come. She’d called a funeral director. Then Laura Brand next
door had appeared with her casserole. Finally, Hines and Porter.
They’d stayed a long time, asking about Tal’s life, touring the
house with her and looking over his den with special care. As they
checked through the rooms she realized that Hines was inserting
other questions, finding out where she’d been all day, what she’d
been doing. And he’d been interested in every detail of those
bankbooks and insurance policies. It was his job; she shouldn’t be
angry. But how the hell could he be challenging her? She, who had
lost…. And besides, it was wasting time. Pointless. Frittering away
hours they needed to catch a killer.

But at last they were
gone.

And the house was very
empty.

She knocked back the rest
of her wine and went out to pour herself another glass.

Couldn’t face that damn
casserole, she decided as she returned the bottle to the
refrigerator. But maybe some cheese. She hadn’t bought any bread
today, but there was a half box of crackers left over from an
end-of-term party they’d given two weeks ago. Better eat them; they
were already going stale. She sat at the kitchen table and made
herself cut a few slices of cheese. What she ought to do was
organize the facts she knew. Maybe in black and white something
would leap out at her. Maybe she’d notice something that a stranger
like Hines wouldn’t. She got a pad of paper and placed it by her
chair. Then she crossed the kitchen to turn on the radio. The
cheery young voice that couldn’t quite pronounce Mussorgsky was
annoying, but the well-worn music,
Pictures at an Exhibition
, filled
the empty air. Helped keep feelings at bay.

Okay. What were the facts?
Time: just before noon. Place: lower gorge trail. People in the
area at the time: could be anyone, really, unless they could prove
they were elsewhere. But she knew some. Nora, Charlie, Bart,
Maggie. That student, Dorrie.

She stared at the list.
Now what?

Mussorgsky marched on
through the exhibition.

It was a relief when the
doorbell sounded. Maybe Laura Brand back with dessert.

But, astonishingly, it was
Maggie Ryan. She stood on the porch, each hand holding a child’s.
Little girl about four, toddler not much over a year. All three
with black curly hair and blue jeans.