Murder Misread (29 page)

Lucas had done a splendid
job on this film. No wonder it was taking the country by storm, so
that even in this shopping-mall theatre in a suburb of Syracuse,
Charlie had had to stand in line for an hour to get the tickets.
People of all ages had stood with him: several fond young couples
in denim, a silent silver-haired pair in pastel polyester, a
balding university type in an Aran sweater, a cowboy-booted young
father occasionally visited by spouse and small children. There
were lots of slightly older children doing the standing-in-line on
their own, if constant giggles and shoves and trips to the
restrooms or nearby shops, after instructing the next guy to “Save
my place, okay?” could be called standing in line.

The parking lot filled up,
the acres of varicolored enamel and chrome sparkling in the June
sunlight. About noon it had become warm enough even in the shade of
the mall arcade for Charlie to take off his windbreaker. He’d
noticed that the Aran sweater had come off too.

At last, he’d reached the
box office and obtained the precious tickets. He stood by the door
and waited. And prayed. Deanna had been skittish this morning. A
casual meeting would be best, he’d decided, and he’d lurked like a
lovesick adolescent near her apartment building until he saw her
come out. Alone, thank God. She was in jeans and a sunny yellow
T-shirt, walking purposefully toward the little crossroads shopping
center two blocks from her building. He fell into step beside
her.

“
Hi,” he said.

“
Oh—hi.” She was
surprised, smiling her shy smile, pleased yet hesitant. Go easy,
Charlie.

“
Doing anything special
today?” he asked.

“
I have to get some
groceries now.”

“
Yeah. Know what you mean.
Maybe this afternoon?”

“
No, I don’t think so.”
But her timid glance was desperate for his understanding. “I mean,
I’ve got so much to do.”

“
Deanna, hey, you know I
love you.” He swallowed, his palms damp. He rubbed them against his
jeans. “So if there’s a problem, we should talk about
it.”

“
No, that’s okay.” One
narrow shoulder shrugged, too casually. “I just can’t see you
today.”

“
Okay, look. No strings
attached, I promise. We’ll just see a movie at the Greenwood,
okay?”

“
You promise?” She wavered
a moment, glancing at him, then coyly down again.

“
Of course.”

But then she shook her
head at the sidewalk. “I’ve really got a lot to do.”

“
Star Wars
?”

That did it. Excitement
sparked in her eyes. Yet she protested weakly, “But it takes
forever to get tickets…. ”

“
You just get everything
done and show up there at twelve-thirty. I’ll have the tickets,
okay?”

“
Well, okay.” She looked
at the watch strapped onto her delicate wrist. “Oh, God, I’ll have
to rush!”

“
See you at
twelve-thirty!” He headed for the theatre.

She was a couple of
minutes late, but they were able to find seats in the last row, on
the aisle. He’d bought popcorn. Deanna had a bottomless appetite,
and popcorn was always an accompaniment of their movie-going.
Charlie didn’t mind. As a kid he’d loved popcorn too, and the
buttery smell of it was now half-nostalgic, half-infused with the
sweet electricity of Deanna’s presence beside him.

“
Oh, my God!” exclaimed
Deanna as a gasp ran through the audience. Amazing creatures filled
the screen. A silly honky-tonk tune was being played by big
fetuslike musicians dressed in black. A surly bartender served an
astonishing array of customers—God, what imagination had gone into
this! Charlie was amazed and delighted. Scaly creatures and slimy
creatures, one-eyed and many-eyed creatures, beaked and fanged and
cobra-headed creatures, gigantic insect creatures and manateelike
creatures, all huddled over bizarre drinks. An unpleasant human
with a blasted nose was picking a fight with Luke. Old Obi-Wan
Kenobi was talking to a hulking monster that seemed to be a giant
gorilla dressed in Yorkshire terrier pelts. But when the noseless
man swatted Luke across the room, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s laser sword
hummed and sliced off a limb. Deanna clapped both hands to her eyes
in delighted disgust.

Charlie could restrain
himself no longer. He slid his arm around her slim waist, slipping
his hand under her sunny T-shirt to the warm downiness of her skin
beneath.

“
You promised!” she
whispered fiercely, wriggling under his ecstatic hand. The popcorn
fell to the floor.

“
C’mon, you can see better
if you sit on my lap,” he murmured, and pulled her toward him. She
resisted sweetly, bowing her head and pushing against his arm. She
liked playing coy. But he understood her, loved her seductive
wriggles, loved the intoxicating little games she played. Something
clamped onto Charlie’s shoulder. Deanna twisted away from him, out
into the aisle. What the hell? Charlie leaned across her abandoned
seat, saw her running across the rear aisle toward the red-glowing
exit sign. But the grip on his shoulder had tightened. He looked
up.

The big balding man in the
Aran sweater was leaning across the half wall behind the seats, his
powerful hand pressing Charlie down.

Charlie didn’t think. He
dove down, wrenching free of the heavy grasp, and pitched himself
into the aisle like a runner from a starting block. Popcorn
crunched under his soles. He sprinted toward the door that was
still closing from Deanna’s departure. In the lobby he saw her
disappearing through the glass doors that led to the parking lot.
But as he approached those doors, thought returned and he
hesitated. Following Deanna was a reflex, like gasping for air when
drowning. But the big man was right behind him. He mustn’t lead
that brute to his darling.

But it turned out he had
little choice. The man caught him by the elbow but instead of
restraining him rushed him out the glass doors with the skill of a
professional bouncer. Charlie looked frantically around for her and
finally spotted the yellow T-shirt and bright brown hair. She’d
come on her bike. The man stopped him a few steps from the theatre
doors, and together they watched her speed across the parking lot,
standing up on the pedals for power, pumping hard to pick up speed.
Hurry, Deanna, Charlie urged silently. Get out of his sight. Had
she noticed the man behind them? Is that why she had
run?

Charlie wasn’t resisting
anymore, but the muscular hand still clamped viciously on his arm
as they gazed at Deanna’s slender retreating figure. Finally the
big man glanced at Charlie. “Tell me, Professor Fielding,” he asked
courteously, “how old is your little girlfriend? Ten?”

17

A huge stack of mail
awaited Anne inside the front door slot. She let Maggie and Cindy
pass, then scooped up the pile and took it to the kitchen table.
“Coffee’s in the cabinet over the sink,” she said, dumping the
letters down. Bills, notes. Maggie went to start the coffee, and
Anne pulled out French bread, cheese, and pât
é
.

Cindy spread her arms.
“What a treat! I’m usually the one to make the coffee. Occupational
hazard.”

“
Don’t crow yet,” said
Anne, slicing the bread. “Plates are in the cabinet up there. The
one next to the sink.”

Cindy sighed theatrically
and set the table. She had succumbed to urging from Anne and Maggie
to come by for a sandwich. “Okay, I’ve got to pick up some
groceries anyway,” she’d said. “And hell, you’re right. I keep
worrying about this mess too. It’s kind of good to talk about it
with somebody besides those wooden-faced cops.”

Anne put the
moutarde de
Meaux
and the little
cornichons
on the table, opened a
bottle of Beaujolais, and looked again at the pile of mail. She
pulled the tall kitchen wastebasket over next to her chair and sat
down. Cindy and Maggie joined her at the table.

“
Coffee’ll be ready by the
time we’re done,” said Maggie. “May I?” She brandished her
knife.

“
Sure. Dive in.” Anne
tossed a couple of flyers into the wastebasket. Much of the stack
seemed to be condolence notes. She set them aside to read
later.

Maggie put a slice
of
pât
é
onto some bread, hesitated, then
placed it on Anne’s plate. “Eat,” she commanded, cutting herself a
new slice.

“
God,
you’re as bad as my neighbors,” grumbled Anne, but she abandoned
the mail, speared a
cornichon
, and began
eating.

“
So,” said Cindy to
Maggie, “what are your questions?”

“
Well,” said Maggie, her
mouth full, “let’s see. We’ve probably said what we can for now
about Nora and her brother. And about Bart. You say Charlie’s
out—”

“
Right,” said Cindy. “You
say so too!”

“—
unless he was working
with someone else. So maybe we should talk about
Bernie.”

“
Bernie?”

“
Did you see him leave for
lunch, Cindy?”

“
Yep. At twenty of. He had
lunch at the faculty club with those Oriental computer
guys.”

“
And when did he get
back?”

“
He didn’t show up again
until two-thirty or so, just before you and all the cops
arrived.”

“
So the computer guys
alibi him.”

“
Yeah. Except—well, the
cops know this. He wasn’t supposed to meet them until
twelve-thirty.”

Maggie glanced up, alert.
“It took him fifty minutes to walk a quarter mile to the faculty
club?”

“
He always leaves early,”
explained Cindy with a shrug of her pink-checked shoulder. “Hates
being late, plus he loves his little glass of something before
lunch.”

“
That’s true,” said Anne.
“Bernie drinks a lot. Never shows, though. He just gets quieter and
quieter.”

“
More and more uptight,”
agreed Cindy. “Can’t imagine why he bothers. I like it to loosen me
up.” She saluted them with her wineglass and took a
swallow.

Anne asked, “Cindy, did
Bernie ever say anything about that problem he had in Iowa? The
arrest?”

“
No. Not to
me.”

“
Cindy, don’t be coy,”
said Maggie impatiently. “Did you learn anything about it, by any
other means?”

“
God, you’ve got me on
some kind of pedestal of nosiness!”

“
There’s a whole crowd of
us up here on that particular pedestal,” coaxed Maggie. “It’s a
good cause.”

“
Yeah, okay, I heard bits
of Tal’s conversation with his friend from Iowa,” Cindy admitted.
“But the case was dropped, you know.”

“
We know,” said Anne. “But
we still wonder what it was about. All Tal told me was that a
couple of prostitutes had accused him of being a
client.”

“
Well,” said Cindy. She
took another sip of wine, put the glass down, turned it a couple of
times with her fingers. “Well. It seems one of them mentioned
chains and whips.”

“
Oh, boy,” said Anne.
Clean, mild, uptight Bernie? “But of course the case was
dismissed,” she reminded them feebly.

“
And he’s been a good boy
for ten years now,” said Maggie.

“
Publicly, at least,” said
Cindy.

Maggie looked at her
sharply. “What do you mean?”

Cindy shrugged. “Nothing
serious. He keeps magazines in his bottom drawer.”

“
So what?” said Anne. “I
saw those magazines yesterday.”

“
He showed you?” asked
Cindy in disbelief.

“
No. Just thought he was
acting furtive about that drawer. So when he left I
peeked.”

“
Good for you,” said
Maggie.

“
But all he had was math
puzzle magazines.”

“
Oh,” said Cindy. “You
didn’t look inside, then.”

“
What’s
inside?”

“
Porn. Bondage. Just what
you’d expect if the Iowa story was true.”

“
Oh, boy,” said Anne
again.

“
He threw them away
yesterday,” Cindy added. “Anne must have scared him.”

“
Yeah.” Maggie had gobbled
her sandwich quickly and was now leaning back in her chair,
balancing her empty wineglass in both hands, frowning at it.
“Cindy, you have to admit, you’ve got a lot of dirt on these
people.”

Cindy nodded.

Maggie glanced warily at
Anne. “And so did Tal—”

“
Yes,” said
Anne.

Maggie’s gaze shifted back
to Cindy. “More than he kept in the official records. More than he
told his wife.”

“
Really wasn’t my
business,” Anne pointed out. “Things have happened in the French
department that I didn’t bother to tell Tal.”

“
Yeah.” Maggie was still
looking at Cindy. “And yet, with you, he never—?”

“
Never,” said
Cindy.

“
Of course he knew you had
no money.”