Murder Misread (20 page)

Cindy said, “I’ll ring
him.” Her well-groomed fingers punched out a number on the phone.
The deliveryman studied the office as he waited, his lively brown
eyes sliding from window to cabinets to the three women. His gaze
lingered a moment on Eric the plastic head. The man looked familiar
to Anne. Probably one of the fellows who had delivered the filing
cabinets to the French Department last month.

Cindy replaced the
receiver. “Professor Fielding isn’t in. I can sign for it here, and
he can take it down to his office himself.”

“
Okay,” said the
deliveryman dubiously. He gestured at the box. “But it’s pretty
heavy.”

“
I see.” Cindy eyed the
hand truck and its load, then stood up and pulled her ring of keys
from the drawer. “Well, let’s take it down to his office. It isn’t
far. Be right back,” she added to Maggie and Anne as she hurried
into the hall. The deliveryman tipped the hand truck onto its
wheels and pushed it obediently after Cindy’s orange-and-white
figure.

“
Wonder where Charlie is?”
Anne exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“
He said something about
fixing some equipment this afternoon.” Maggie was flipping through
one of the file drawers behind Cindy’s desk. “A printer, I
think.”

“
Tal always hated working
with complicated machines. He said humans were unpredictable enough
without adding unpredictable equipment.”

“
Charlie’s a good
technician, though. Have you seen his house?” Maggie pulled out a
file and checked the name.

“
You mean that equipment
room he’s got? Yes. His office is full of equipment
too.”

“
Right. Actually, I can
sympathize. I like to tune up my car myself.” She was riffling
through the drawer again. “When you deal with people all day it’s
good to interact with something that obeys the laws of physics in a
straightforward way, without layers of psychology on
top.”

Cindy came back in, one
hand fluffing her curls. “Boy, Charlie’s getting low on space in
there. He’s got it organized, but that guy had to push his dolly
all the way back by the bookcase before he could unload the—hey!
What are you doing?” She darted across to Maggie.

“
Looking at my file.”
Maggie handed a manila folder to Cindy. “Wanted to see if my health
form was in there. I didn’t remember if I gave it back to you or
not. Will’s sniffle reminded me.”

Unsmiling, Cindy took the
folder, glanced inside, and said, “It’s there. All taken care
of.”

“
Okay. Thanks.”

Cindy said, “Next time
wait and ask me. These aren’t public files.”

“
Sorry, should have
thought.” Maggie snapped her briefcase closed, dark against her
bright red shirt. “Well, I’d better get out to the parking lot. Liz
should be here any minute with my runny-nosed son.” At the door she
turned back to Anne. “Maybe when Liz takes Will again after his nap
we can talk for a minute. Will you be finished here?”

“
Yes, in a little while.
I’ll probably go back to my office in Harper.”

“
Okay. I’ll find you.” She
disappeared down the hall.

Cindy replaced Maggie’s
folder and Tal’s in the file drawer, slammed it closed, and locked
it.

Anne picked up her pen to
sign Cindy’s forms and looked at the door Maggie had just gone
through.

With her
briefcase.

A briefcase containing two
folders from Cindy’s locked file.

She hoped they were more
informative than the math puzzle magazines that seemed to make
Bernie feel so guilty.

12

Anne finished signing the
stack of forms and trudged downstairs to the parking lot. She’d
drive over to her office in Harper to see if there was anything she
should be doing in the French department. One of her young
colleagues had had an offer from Princeton, another one thought he
might be able to get Jacques Derrida to come give a lecture next
year—all that had interested her earlier this week. Eons
ago.

She emerged into the
parking lot. Ugly utilitarian landscape spread around every
building these days. Well, probably wasn’t much better in the old
days. Before asphalt and internal combustion there was mud and
horse manure.

She saw Maggie standing
under the roof of the loading area, sliding something into her
briefcase and talking to the deliveryman who had brought Charlie’s
package. Anne waved, and Maggie ran down the two steps and across
to greet her. “Finished your paperwork?”

“
Only for the moment.
Cindy’s found an administrator who promises a new supply.” She
nodded at the deliveryman. “Did you find out anything interesting
about Charlie’s package?”

“
The invoice wasn’t very
specific. Look, here comes Liz!”

The red Toyota bearing the
babysitter and two children, one bouncy and one sullen, pulled up
near them. “All yours,” Liz called as she stretched across Will to
unlock the passenger door.

“
Okay.” Maggie opened the
door and unbuckled the child safety seat. “How’s
everybody?”

In the backseat, Sarah’s
brown eyes were wide with delight. “Mommy, there’s a waterfall
where Liz swims!”

“
Wim!” echoed
Will.

His mother lifted him
whimpering from the car, balanced him on her hip, and caressed
Sarah’s curls. Then Maggie pulled out the baby seat and said, “Have
fun, you two. You’ll be done in a couple of hours,
right?”

“
Yes. I’ll pick him up at
your apartment,” Liz said.

“
Fine. I’m sure he’ll
sleep; he’s fussy already.”

“
Wim!” insisted Will
tearfully. But the Toyota was already pulling away.

Maggie found a tissue and
applied it to Will’s runny nose. He twisted his head away in
annoyance.

“
Kids are such ingrates,”
Anne observed.

Maggie smiled at the tiny
struggling boy. “True. Their opinions are much bigger and stronger
than they are.”

“
Good thing we’re set up
to love the little critters,” Anne said. “When my kids were small I
remember marveling that any of us ever reach adulthood. Babies are
so low in social graces.”

As if to prove her point,
Will arched his back and reached for the pavement. “Dow!” he
demanded.

“
If I put you down, you’ll
just want to be up again,” Maggie reminded him.

“
Dow! Dow!”

She glanced around the
parking lot. No cars moved. She put the little boy down, and he
doddered a few steps away to celebrate his freedom. His mother
glanced back at Anne. “You know, Anne, I’ve been wondering if Cindy
couldn’t answer some of our questions.”

“
I doubt it. A few minutes
ago I asked her what she thought and she’s as lost as we
are.”

“
But she may know part of
the answer without realizing it.” Maggie’s eyes were following her
son. “Secretaries have a lot of information.”

“
Yes,” Anne grunted. “I
saw you making off with some of her information. Had a chance to
look at it yet?”

“
Nope. I was going to do
it while Will naps. But even so, if we could talk to Cindy while
she’s away from the office—” Maggie tensed suddenly. Little Will
had spotted the deliveryman at the loading dock and was toddling
full throttle across the asphalt toward him.

“
Da!” he
exclaimed.

Maggie started after him,
but before she reached him Will had charged up to the loading
platform, tripped on the step, and bumped his small chin. He began
to bellow, and the deliveryman scooped him up.

“
Hey, little guy, it’s not
that bad,” he crooned as Maggie and Anne arrived. Maggie reached
for him, but the boy turned away from her and buried his face
against the brown uniform. Maggie’s eyes met the deliveryman’s. It
was just an instant, but there was such profound eloquence in their
gaze that Anne realized suddenly that things were not what they
seemed to be. Recognition dawned.

“
Cyrano de Bergerac, I
presume,” she said.

Maggie grinned at her
ruefully. “Nothing like a kid to blow your cover. You’re right,
Anne. Meet Nick.”

“
Enchantée
,”
Anne said. “But what the hell is going on?”

“
Maggie said things were
serious here. I thought maybe I could lend a hand.” His voice was
different too, Anne noted. Pleasant, but definitely not Cyrano’s
rolling cadences, nor the working-class gruffness of the
deliveryman.

“
Tal acted some in
college,” Anne said. “And never lost his love of it. Thought your
Cyrano was great.”

“
Thanks.” Nick smiled. A
broad-built, pleasantly homely man, he was still cuddling his
little son against his shoulder. The boy’s sobs had waned to
occasional teary hiccups.

“
Well, I’m glad you’re
here,” Anne said. “We’re trying to find out what happened because
our two sets of hardworking policemen can hardly communicate. And
because I can’t bear not to try.”

“
I’ll do what I can,” Nick
promised.

“
You don’t want people to
know you’re here?”

“
Not yet,” Maggie
explained. “We’ll see if he can find anything by staying in the
background.”

“
Right. You were
practically invisible in that uniform.”

“
Invisible to you
professor types.” Nick smiled, and Anne was reminded again of the
dashing long-nosed Cyrano. “Not to my son. And one of the
custodians here had a few questions.”

“
Time to get you into a
new outfit,” said Maggie. “Hey, listen, since things have worked
out this way, why don’t you take Will to the apartment with you? He
can have his nap while you change.”

“
He’s ready for
one.”

“
Right. And I can check in
the computer room to see if the results of Charlie’s first studies
are in. It would be good to get that out of the way.”

“
Okay. Call me in an hour
or so.” Nick carried Will carefully to a U-Haul van parked near the
loading door while Maggie fastened the baby seat into the passenger
side. Will protested half-heartedly when his father buckled him in.
Maggie grabbed Nick’s big hand and squeezed it in farewell, and
Anne felt a sudden pang of rage that she could not squeeze Tal’s.
Unfair that the world had not called a moratorium on affection. It
rolled on callously, full of cute babies and people in love and
flowers and birds. It should be draped in black, as it was when
other princes died.

“
Are you okay?” Maggie
asked gently. The van had pulled away.

Anne looked up from the
pavement she’d been staring at. “No. I’m angry. I want
Tal.”

“
Yes.” Maggie hugged
her.

“
And if I can’t have him I
want the world to stop. I want all humanity in mourning. I want FBI
sharpshooters blasting down whoever killed him.”

“
I agree! But the best I
can do is talk to people. Steal folders.”

“
Are you going to read
them now?”

“
Soon,” said Maggie. “I
want to see if I can talk to a couple of people while they’re still
around the department. And I do have to check on Charlie’s
printout.”

“
I’ll come
too.”

“
Sure, if you want to, but
it may be dull. I’m going to the computer room first.”

“
Let’s go.” Anne hauled
open the steel loading door and found herself at the bottom of a
wide stair hall. She marched past the steps, energized by her
anger, and on through the fire doors into the white corridors of
the basement.

Maggie drew even with her.
“Fourth door,” she said.

The room was filled with
terminals, though few people sat at the machines. A big No Smoking
sign hung on every wall. Maggie checked a pile of printouts,
conferred briefly with a chestnut-haired young woman, then looked
back at Anne and made a sour face. “Computer’s down,” she reported.
“They say it’ll be back at work in a couple of hours.”

“
Tal used to go crazy
waiting for results.”

“
Yeah. But usually it’s
better to go do something else.” Maggie breezed back into the hall
and held the door for Anne. “Look, there’s Bart. Let’s talk to
him.”

Bart turned as they
approached, his heavy brow puzzled. “Oh, Maggie. And Anne! God,
Anne, how are you doing?”

The truth took too much
time. Anne said, “Not bad.”

His big face was contorted
with concern. “Listen, you know if there’s anything we can do—I
mean, Libby tried to call you, but the line was busy.”

She’d had the phone off
the hook. She said, “Sure, Bart, I know you’re there if I need you.
But there’s really not much we can do. Unless you can help us
figure out who did it.”

“
God, I wish I could!
It—well, I know it must make everything even worse, Anne, with the
detectives always asking questions. It’s hard even for me, and for
you, on top of everything….” He shook his head.

“
And the damn
reporters.”