Murder Misread (8 page)

“
Okay. He had a doctor’s
appointment this morning, regular checkup. Doctor said he was
absolutely fine. And Tal was trying to get last year’s taxes
straightened out. We were in France for spring break and sent in an
application for late filing. But some half-wit at the IRS lost it,
so Tal was busy making copies of everything he’d sent just to prove
we were law-abiding citizens. Aside from all that, just the usual
stuff. Getting the car washed, clipping the hedge. What everybody
does.”

“
Fine, Mrs. Chandler,”
said Walensky heartily. “Anything else?”

“
Got nothing to add now.
I’ll tell you when I think of something. Now, you’ll give all that
to Sergeant Hines too, right?”

“
Yes,” said Walensky
without enthusiasm. “We’ll cooperate, best we can. But be sure to
call on me if he gets obnoxious, all right? Both of
you.”

“
All right.” Maggie opened
her door and hopped out onto the blacktop, unfolding her long
frame, stretching. Walensky shoved the notebook back into his
pocket and climbed out too. Anne allowed him to hurry around to
open the door for her. Men like Captain Walensky functioned best
when they were being protective, and she needed him at his
best.

Inside the building, Cindy
looked up in surprise to see Walensky. When she heard the news, she
clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no,” she moaned. “Oh, no. Oh,
no.”

Anne didn’t want to hear
Cindy. She stalked over to the window. Parking lot view. Here came
the second car, the one with Charlie and Bart and Nora. Anne pulled
out a cigarette and lit it. But it tasted flat, tired.
Ereintée
, fagged out. A pun in
English. Tal would’ve liked it. She turned back to the
room.

Bernie Reinalter had
appeared at his office door and was staring at Walensky with barely
disguised shock. The department chairman was a tall, pale man with
fading blond hair. Silver hairs among the gold. His family was
Swiss, he’d told Tal once. Tal, who had done a stint as chairman
himself, grumbled about Bernie’s insistence on meeting deadlines
and budget restraints. But under Bernie the department had done
well enough, hiring some good people, winning expanded support for
the preschool lab facilities. We could do a lot worse, was Tal’s
judicious overall assessment.

Walensky was taking notes,
talking to Cindy. “Now, what time was this?”

“
It was late for Tal.
Nine-thirty, maybe. He’s usually in an hour earlier.”

“
And what did he
say?”

“
The usual hello, how are
things, very jolly—God, I can’t believe this!” Cindy was dabbing at
her mascaraed eyes.

“
Did he mention any
plans?”

Bernie Reinalter had
noticed Anne. The chairman strode toward her decisively but paused
before he reached her, with an awkward, helpless movement of his
well-kept hand. “Anne, I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can
do—”

She nodded curtly.
“Thanks, Bernie. I’ll let you know.”

“
Please do.” His hand made
another ineffectual gesture. This was something efficiency and
planning couldn’t fix. He looked back at Walensky. Anne ground out
the tasteless cigarette on the inside of the metal
wastebasket.

“
He was going to return
some books to the library after he checked his mail,” Cindy was
explaining. “Had a bag full of them. He dropped them on the chair
there and went into the mail room. I called after him that the mail
hadn’t come yet today, but he reminded me that he still had to pick
up yesterday’s. See, he’d left at lunchtime yesterday. And today he
had to go to the IRS office, he said.”

Walensky nodded, writing
it down. “And then what?”

Cindy glanced at the door.
Anne saw that Nora and Bart and Charlie were coming in, all looking
tense and drawn. Funereal faces: Nora’s smooth face tight with
worry, Charlie anxious behind his glasses like his favorite Woody
Allen, Bart enormous and sloppily mournful. Cindy nodded a greeting
at them and answered Walensky. “And then he came out, even happier
than before. Something about a publisher. That’s when he invited me
to lunch. I couldn’t go, but just then Professor Bickford stepped
into the office and Tal started talking to him.”

Bart Bickford nodded.
“That’s right. We walked across the hall to my office.” One beefy
hand was fidgeting with the button of his jacket. Twice as big, and
looked twice as haggard as anyone else. Suddenly Anne understood
his problem. Or a big hunk of it, at least. She crossed the room
toward him as Walensky asked, “Any special reason he went to your
office?”

“
I wanted some advice
about a grant proposal I’m writing.” His hands were in his jacket
pockets now, clenching and unclenching. Anne held out her pack of
Gauloises. Too quickly, his fingers sprang from his pockets,
twitched out a cigarette, snatched the lighter from her other hand.
“Uh… thanks,” he said when it was kindled. Didn’t seem to taste
flat to him.

“
Did he mention anything
that he was worried about?” Walensky asked.

“
No,” said Bart, exhaling
smoke slowly and ending with a little cough. “On the contrary, he
was very upbeat. Patted me on the back, told me I’d get my grant if
their committee had half a brain. Then he wanted to know if I’d
seen Charlie, and I said yes, maybe twenty minutes before. He’d
been rushing toward his office, said he was in a hurry.”

“
Yes, I was late to meet
Dr. Ryan,” said Charlie.

“
So Tal said not to
forget, noon at Plato’s, and zipped off. I figured he was going to
talk to Charlie.”

“
Now, about what time was
this?” Walensky asked.

Bart frowned, but Anne
noticed that his hands were moving more steadily now. “I can only
guess. I’d say nine-forty.”

Walensky’s light eyes move
to Charlie. “And did he find you, Professor Fielding?”

Anne inspected Charlie. A
shy young fellow, no taller than Tal, earnest and eager to please.
He looked sorrowful too, like Bart, but without suffering the added
edge of nicotine withdrawal. Charlie said, “Yes, he came into the
office while Dr. Ryan and I were discussing my research. I
introduced them. We talked for a minute, he invited us to lunch,
then off he went. To the library, he said.”

“
Did he give any
indication of his mood?”

“
Like everyone says, he
seemed very happy. The lunch was to be a celebration, he
said.”

Walensky peered at Maggie
Ryan. “Do you agree, Miss Ryan?”

“
Oh, yes, he was full of
enthusiasm.” Maggie had taken Anne’s place by the window. The
lights played in her black hair, cool blue fluorescent glints from
the room, and a bright warm edging of sunlight. “I don’t know what
he’s like normally, but today he seemed very bubbly. He was jumping
onto chairs, quoting Cyrano, bragging about how much better his
wife could do it.”

Anne’s heart squeezed
tight as a fist. What a ham Tal was. She could see him, swishing
his imaginary sword, telling them she could do Cyrano better. She
forced the image away and concentrated fiercely on Walensky’s
questions.

“
And what time was
this?”

“
Maybe a quarter to ten,”
said Maggie.

“
He was going to the
library?”

“
He said so. But when did
he talk to Nora?” Maggie asked.

“
Must have been around
then,” Nora said.

Walensky was dutifully
taking it all down. Probably none of it would help, Anne thought.
They should be out questioning people about the trails, about
strangers, about—but Hines was doing all that, she supposed. And of
course it was true that they ought to make sure it wasn’t somehow
connected with one of Tal’s projects, make sure it really was a
mugger.

Nora added, “He brought me
a cup of coffee.”

“
That’s right!” Cindy
exclaimed. “He popped back into the office for a cup of
coffee.”

“
Coffee?” Walensky asked,
looking around.

“
Right by the mail room
door.” Bernie Reinalter, eager to be of help, indicated the big
aluminum urn on a table by the door. Jars of instant coffee,
whitener, sugar, and tea bags were arrayed next to the urn, and
stacks of foam plastic cups.

Cindy said, “He asked me
if I wanted any and I said I’d just had a cup. Well, he said, he’d
save me some champagne instead. And off he went again.”

“
Did he usually bring you
coffee?” Walensky asked Nora.

“
It was a sort of joke,”
Nora replied. She spoke flatly, but a tiny flutter at the corner of
her eyelid betrayed her tension. “I’d complained once after a
departmental meeting that women made up forty percent of the
department but they were asked to get the coffee eighty percent of
the time. Tal overheard and told me Anne had made almost the same
observation about her department, so he was going to bring me
coffee eighty percent of the time. Reparations, he called
it.”

“
I see.” Walensky wrote it
down.

“
He spilled it,” Nora
blurted.

“
How do you
mean?”

“
Well, I opened the door
for him. He came in past me and put it down on my desk, and was
explaining something—the lunch at Plato’s, I guess. And he made a
big gesture and knocked the cup over. He rushed around and mopped
up the desk and even the drawers. He used the Kleenex I keep on the
windowsill. Very thorough. He said he’d get me another cup, but I
said not to bother. He promised solemnly to make it up to me at
lunch. Then he picked up the bookbag and rushed out.”

“
Was he sad?”

“
No, no. I mean—he was
sorry for spilling the coffee, but he was still cheery. Exclaiming
about how lucky he’d been not to knock it on the stack of student
papers I had sitting on the desk. Joking about what a clumsy old
codger he was, about how he’d mop up every drop. It was a very
upbeat kind of apology, if you see what I mean.”

“
Did he tell you what he
was celebrating?”

“
No, just that—” She
stopped abruptly and stepped back.

Anne had to step back too
as Sergeant Hines strode into the room, followed closely by Officer
Porter. The officer was carrying a large cardboard box and several
sealed plastic bags. Evidence bags, Anne realized with a tightening
of her stomach. She couldn’t see the contents clearly, even though
she was near as he rested his burdens on Cindy’s desk. Little white
plugs—cigarette butts. A little spiral-bound notebook. Something
else—was it a pipe?

Hines said, “Ladies and
gentlemen, I’d appreciate it if you could all go to your offices.
There are some items here I’d like you to try to identify, and I’d
rather have each person react individually.”

Maggie said, “I’m told my
office isn’t ready yet. And Professor Chandler’s is in the French
department across campus.”

Hines said, “I’ll be
talking to Mrs. Chandler at home later. Is there an office Ms. Ryan
can use?” Automatically, he looked at the right authority: Cindy,
not Bernie Reinalter.

She said, “Dr. Ryan will
be using the corner office in Professor Fielding’s wing. Room 104.
It’s empty, it’s just that the floor hasn’t been waxed. Might as
well use it.”

“
Fine,” Hines agreed.
“We’ll start with Ms. Ryan, then.”

Cindy selected one of the
keys in her desk drawer and handed it to Maggie, making a note on a
card. Anne was impressed that she had followed procedures even
under this pressure. The ideal secretary for Bernie.

Cindy was eyeing Porter’s
plastic-wrapped items on her desk, and Anne saw her lips curve a
little as Porter picked them up carefully. Had she recognized
something? Anne saw her gazing thoughtfully at the people by the
hall door.

“
Well, Charlie,” Cindy
inquired mildly, “did you drop something?”

6

Damn Cindy!

An adrenaline sweat of
rage, fear, and mystification flooded Charlie. In the murky swill
of his memory childish horrors stirred: Dad’s rigid accusing
shoulders, the fly on Aunt Babs’s dead staring face, Lorraine
naked, holding a white sock, eyes boring into him like Cindy’s now.
A Hitchcock moment, shocking ancient fears from sleep, even though
he’d half expected it. He’d glimpsed the little spiral-bound memo
book too, with its black-and-white Chaplin design glimmering inside
the plastic bag. Surprised, he’d reached in his jacket for his own
memo book. Not there. He’d slithered his fingers through his
pockets in desperate hope. But it was gone. No one else had a book
like that, not around here. But how could his book be in an
evidence bag? And then came Cindy with her insinuations, in front
of the cops, Tal’s formidable wife, the department chairman! What
the hell was going on?

Well, stay cool when
attacked, Coach Wilhelm used to say. No need to feel defensive
anyway. The explanation, whatever it turned out to be, couldn’t
hurt him. He tried to keep his voice light as he said, “Maybe I did
lose something. You’ve probably misplaced things yourself, Cindy,
sometimes.”

The skin tensed around her
pale blue eyes, but the little smile on her face didn’t change. He
noticed that Maggie was studying both of them with unconcealed
interest.