Murder Misread (28 page)

“
Tal knew,” said Cindy.
“He deleted that information from the file when he saw how edgy
Bart was. Decided to leave the note on hospitalization, but take
out the reason he was there.”

Maggie glanced at Anne.
Anne blew smoke from her nostrils and glared back at her. Maggie
shrugged and turned back to Cindy. “Okay. Now, what about
Charlie?”

“
Charlie doesn’t have
anything to do with it. You say so yourself.”

“
But this feud you have
with him,” Maggie pursued.

Cindy jumped up from the
swing and strode to the front door. “Just forget it. It’s over.
Charlie isn’t involved, you can prove that yourself.”

“
Could he have a
partner?”

Cindy shook her curls. “A
loner like Charlie?”

Maggie marched across the
porch to stand nose to nose with Cindy. “Cindy, there’s more, isn’t
there? Charlie is keeping quiet about you. Why? You’re refusing to
talk about him. Why?”

“
So we’re both playing
fair,” Cindy retorted. “It’s over. Forget it.”

“
What’s over?” demanded
Anne. “Why won’t you help us? Did you have an affair with Charlie?
Is that why Lorraine left?”

“
God, no!” said Cindy. Her
surprise looked real.

“
Well, what the hell do
you want us to think?”

Cindy tossed her head.
“Doesn’t make any difference what I want, does it? We’re all going
to sit around thinking bad things about each other until this is
cleared up.”

Anne leaned forward in the
swing and jabbed a finger at Cindy. “So help us clear it
up!”

Cindy looked at her and
shrugged helplessly.

Maggie was still studying
Cindy with narrowed eyes. She said suddenly, “You stole money from
the department, didn’t you?”

Anne exclaimed, “No! She
wouldn’t!” But in the same instant she saw terror flash through
Cindy like a current, and she knew Maggie was right. She stood up
and stepped closer to them. “What do you mean, Maggie?”

“
She embezzled it,” said
Maggie.

“
You’re crazy,” said Cindy
bravely.

“
But…” Anne began, then
the pieces slipped into place. Tal’s worry about Cindy’s gambling,
the effect on her family, he’d said. His zeal to get her into GA.
His worries about the department finances when he first became
chairman. Anne said, “Tal saved your job, didn’t he? These debts
you’re paying off—they’re to the department?”

“
Oh, God.” Cindy pushed
past Anne and went to stand at the end of the porch again, looking
out at the lake. Anne followed and leaned against the corner post
of the porch.

“
Is it the department you
owe?” Anne said insistently.

“
Not exactly.” Cindy’s
glance was almost amused. “First I owed Tal.”

“
Tal?”

“
And you, I suppose. He
never told you? See, he paid back the department money himself, got
the books straight. Then he had me pay him in installments. As soon
as my credit rating was back in shape I got a bank loan and paid
him off. I don’t owe you anything anymore. Nor the department. Just
the damn bank.”

“
Merde
.” Anne
stared out at the blue of the lake.

“
You didn’t know, Anne?”
asked Maggie.

Anne shook her head
slowly. “Not this part. How much did he—”

“
Sixteen thousand four
hundred and seventy,” said Cindy.

“
Merde
,
” said Anne again. Nine years ago,
that had been. He’d probably lifted it from his travel fund. She
remembered now, for two years she’d done the trip to Europe alone.
He’d said he was too busy now that he was chairman. He’d said he
would babysit Paul and Rocky while she went. Damn Tal, she wouldn’t
have screamed at him if he’d told her. Would she? Oh, hell, she
probably would have.

“
I told him he was a
bigger gambler than I was,” said Cindy.

“
Yeah. Yeah, he was.” Anne
looked down at her Gauloise. A long tongue of ash protruded from
the white stub.

“
Why?” asked Maggie, her
voice chilly as a north wind. “Why didn’t he fire you,
Cindy?”

Anne hurled the spent
cigarette on the gravel. “Because he’s a damn idiot romantic! The
grand folly, the grand gesture.
Quelle
sottise
!
Mais
quel
geste
!
”

“
No, seriously.” Maggie
was still staring at Cindy.

“
You think that’s not a
serious answer?” Cindy’s mouth twitched. Her secret out, she seemed
more relaxed. “Are you thinking up scandalous explanations, like
Anne? You think I turned on my bimbo charms and seduced Tal out of
his sixteen thou?”

“
Sounds more realistic
than Anne’s version.”

“
Well, it’s not,” Cindy
said. She looked from Maggie to Anne, rubbed her palms on her
jeans, and said, “Look, promise not to say anything about all this
to the people inside and you can come in for a cup of
coffee.”

Maggie said, “Shouldn’t we
finish talking out here? Because—”

“
Shut up,” snapped Anne.
This half of the truth she knew. “We’re going in.”

Maggie glanced at her,
eyebrows lifting. “Yessum,” she said.

Anne followed Cindy and
Maggie through a neat living room with a flowered sofa to the big
sunny kitchen-family room that ran across the back of the house.
Three children were flopped on the gold carpet before a television
cartoon program. “Mark?” said Cindy. “Want you to meet someone from
the department. Maggie Ryan.”

The children sat up and
looked around. A man with reddish-brown hair turned his wheelchair
to face them. He smiled warmly with the unscarred half of his face.
“Hi,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“
Hello.” Maggie stepped
forward without hesitation and took his hand. “Glad to meet you,
Mark.”

“
Anne!” He’d spotted her
behind Maggie. “God, that’s rough, about Tal.”

“
Yeah. Thanks, Mark.” She
took his hand next. His blue eyes were sad and steady. Behind him
the gaudy cartoon sputtered and danced. “Nothing to do about it,
except find out who did it.”

“
Yeah.” He squeezed her
hand. “And go on. That takes some doing too, going on.”

“
One thing at a time,” she
said. Her eyes stung. Still holding Mark’s hand, she looked
defiantly at Maggie.

Maggie was standing very
still, checking over the room with a swift glance: the cheerful
curtains, the worn chairs, the geraniums in the window, the girl
who had moved to her father and was hanging on his shoulder, the
framed velvet square thick with decorations, including a
Distinguished Flying Cross and two Purple Hearts. She met Anne’s
gaze and gave a tiny nod.

“
Cream and sugar?” asked
Cindy brightly from the kitchen end of the room.

They had their coffee.
Maggie didn’t question Tal’s motives again.

16

The smell of sweat,
buttered popcorn, minty chewing gum. A flickering, tiny figure,
graceful in white, pleading, “You’re my only hope.” Charlie sat
very still in the last row, half in a trance. The film was
splendid: action-filled, visual, imaginative. And beside him
Deanna’s warm presence filled him with excitement and
well-being.

But his trance kept
dissolving as uglier thoughts intruded. Tal’s murder. Hines’s
interrogation. And that copy of
Screw
, sent to him as though someone
thought he’d know about the ad. Walensky had questioned him closely
on that point when he came to pick it up, but Charlie had finally
convinced him that, since he’d had nothing to do with the ad, the
sender must have been guessing. “Maybe everyone in Laconia who
works with children got a copy,” Charlie suggested. “Maybe someone
just wants it investigated.”

“
Well, they got their
wish,” Walensky said. His Burt Reynolds face looked old, crumbly.
“We’ll put a watch on the post office box, see what turns up. Of
course this kind of investigation is tough. Like drugs. The
perpetrator gets a whiff that there’s official interest and all the
evidence goes down the toilet before we arrive. You understand? I’m
telling you not to talk about this to anyone.”

“
Okay.”

“
This whole case is a can
of worms.” Walensky paced over to Charlie’s window and scowled at
the bushes and parking lot below. “Hines bullying his way around
the campus upsetting everyone; the dean screaming for us to arrest
someone, anyone; the press hounding us—” He shook his head. “Well,
tell me right away if anything else comes up. I’ll leave word to
put you right through.”

“
Okay. Should I tell Hines
too?”

Walensky looked at him
coldly. “You don’t give a damn about your department, do you? You
think the press won’t be dancing if you give them that ad in
Screw
? And telling Hines
is the same as telling the press.”

“
Yeah. Okay. I see. But he
hasn’t given the newspapers a whole lot.”

“
Not yet. He’s playing by
the rules so far, not giving out details. But the reporters already
know there are leads pointing to the university. Some secretary
starts spinning stories and it hits the fan.”

“
Okay. But I don’t want to
hide anything from the investigation.”

“
You’ve told me, and Hines
will learn what he has to know. We’ll get the Chandler killer,
don’t worry.” He paced back to stand in front of Charlie’s desk.
“God, I thought this place was going to be peaceful! Might as well
be back in the Bronx.”

“
Do you think the killer
might have sent it?” Charlie asked, still brooding. “Because he
took my memo book and dropped it near, uh, the body. Maybe this is
more of the same.”

“
Maybe.” Walensky nodded
curtly. “I’ll drop a few careful questions to Bart Bickford and
Nora Peterson, see if they received copies of this beauty. Only
thing is, the envelope is postmarked New York City.”

“
Lorraine?” Charlie
blurted. “But it’s been years! Why would she suddenly start
hassling me now? And anyway, she wouldn’t kill Tal, and anyway, how
could she kill him long-distance from Queens?”

“
Right, that’s what I’m
saying. Either the killer moves fast, or there’s two of them,”
Walensky said. “Now, this Ryan woman. She’s from New York,
right?”

“
Yeah. But she just
arrived yesterday, just met us!”

“
She was here before.
She’s a cool one,” Walensky said. “I worked with the prosecutor on
that Triangle Slasher trial because a couple of NYSU kids were
victims. He said the defense really raked Ryan over, practically
called her a hooker. He said it shook her up but she hung in
there.”

“
Good. She’s really trying
to help,” Charlie said.

“
Good.”
Walensky tucked the
Screw
and its envelope inside his gray jacket and
headed for the door. “Well, better get at it. Lot of work to do on
this. God, what a can of worms!”

Charlie shifted in his
seat. This suburban mall theatre was fairly new, with bristly
cherry-colored upholstery that prickled through his thin shirt. It
was packed full of people, dim dark shapes before him. Behind his
seat, a low wall separated the rows of seats from the rear cross
aisle that led to the lobby. The red glow from the exit sign made
Deanna’s hair shine.

On the screen Luke
Skywalker and Threepio sped across a striking desert landscape in a
battered land-rocket, searching for the runaway Artoo Deetoo. The
audience was rapt. But Charlie’s unhappy thoughts reeled
on.

After some serious
reflection, he’d called Lorraine in Queens, to no avail. Not home.
And the message he’d left at her office was still unanswered. Not
that he’d been near a phone recently to receive a message. Nor had
Maggie. This morning he’d tried to find her too, to probe
cautiously if she’d learned anything new. But she wasn’t at her
home number, nor anywhere in the department. Even her babysitter
and the children were out somewhere. So he had no leads at all to
find Maggie and—

A huge fearsome creature
loomed abruptly over Charlie. The audience gasped, and Deanna
gasped too. Bless George Lucas. Charlie’s worries dissolved. He
picked up her hand and was again ensnared in the magic of Deanna
and the film. The towering on-screen figure held its ax high.
Threepio had fallen off the cliff, and the creature was whacking at
Luke Skywalker. Now Luke was down too.

“
Oh, no,” moaned Deanna.
She sat erect and tense in her seat, her hand slipping from his to
cover her mouth, eyes glued to the screen. He loved that about her,
her ability to lose herself completely in the story and images. Her
bright brown hair caught the flickering light of the screen,
glinting now golden with the desert sand, now red in the alien sun.
He picked up her hand again.

On the screen Alec
Guinness, dignified and kindly, had taken over. He was kneeling by
the stunned Luke Skywalker, reassuring the nervous little Artoo
Deetoo robot. Reassuring Deanna too. She relaxed, tugged her warm
hand from under Charlie’s, and dove it into the popcorn. Damn
Guinness. Charlie glared at the screen a moment, then was caught up
again. What a superb actor! His lines were pure exposition, about
the history of the Jedi knights and the Force, yet Guinness gave
them such weight and sorrow that they seemed profound.