Revenge (13 page)

The dean laughs.
I
t’s the most genuine sound I think I’ve ever heard from him. “No, Claudia. I did not pick him on purpose. I took one look at the three dogs and he was the best.”

“What’s so funny?” I ask as they both chuckle.

Claudia’s smile fades as she looks at me and gives me a nasty smirk.

“Wizard.
I
t’s
Papa
’s nickname.”

“What a coincidence,” I murmur.

The dean waves his hand. “Life is nothing but a series of random incident
s
we cannot even begin to understand. And there are always patterns deeper than we can see.”

Oh, you can tell he
i
s a professor.
All that
blah blah blah
. My body is tingling with danger and all I want to do is to get away from these two people. Funny how I’m in a cage with three pit bulls inches away and more than twenty other not-so-safe dogs, but the beings I fear most are right here, standing tall on two legs.
 

I trust the dogs more than the peopl
e
.

“Can we go? I need to get to the spa for my threading session,” Claud
ia
whines.

The dean doesn’t answer. Just lo
o
ks at me and blinks. “You’ll take care of the adoption of the pit bull?”

“I’ll make sure Wizard ends up exactly where he belongs,” I assure him.

And with that, they leave.

My head starts spinning again.

By the time Adoption Day is over, twenty-three dogs and thirty-seven cats have been placed. It’s a banner day and we volunteers are exhausted.

“How does she do it?” Cindy moans, sitting at Minnie’s desk, the entire surface covered with paperwork. “I’ll never process everything and get it organized just right.”

I pat her on the back. “Just do your best.”

She brightens. “At least we have sixty pets with new homes.”

“Make that fifty-nine,” Marny says. “There was a problem with one of the pit bulls. We need to keep him to get some shots before he goes home with the Landau
family
.” Her eyes go dreamy. “Such a lucky dog.”

“Yeah. Lucky. He gets to go to his forever home and live with a bitch,” I mutter.

“Do they have a female dog?” C
i
ndy asks,.

“No. Just Claudia.”

M
arny giggles,
but her lower lip shakes a little. “She was so rude!”
 

“That’s how she’s always been. Even when we were little,”
I explain. Cindy and Marny are both from here, but they’re older than me. Old enough to be my mother, so they don’t know what Claudia’s really like.
 

“Well, I don’t know where she gets it. Her father was so suave and sophisticated.
G
enuinely nice, too.”

I stifle a
hmph
.

“Looks like Wizard needs a week before he can go home,” Cindy explains to Marny,
examining a file for the pit bull
.

My phone buzzes.

I
t’s a text from Effie. All it says is:

Can Carrie come over now?

Effie doesn’t quite understand this whole texting thing.

Hi Effie
, I text back.
T
his is me. Carrie. I am at the animal shelter and smell like pets. Still want me to come over?
 

Within a half minute she texts back:

I am at home and smell like gin. We’re a perfect match.

I laugh out loud. Effie’s turning out to be a hoot.

“
Go home, Carrie,” Cindy says as she yawns. Her words come out stretched like verbal taffy.
 

“I need to visit Minnie,” I say, frowning
a
t my phone.

Cindy’s hand touches my arm. “No.” I look up, and she adds, “Minnie’s sedated right now. I just got a call from Elaine. No need to visit her. Maybe tomorrow. Hopefully, the police will have found Amy by tomorrow.”

Alive
, I think. But I don’t say it.

I give Cindy and Marny hugs and walk out into the fresh air. It’s dusk, and the cooler nearly-nighttime air feels strange against my skin. Every day feels like a year lately.

And I still have to go visit Effie.

* * *

She lives about ten minutes away, in a tiny ranch house. It is neat as a pin, with lace curtains, lace doilies on every seat, on the armrests of the chairs and couch, and on the backs of al
l
the furniture where heads might rest.

It looks like a lace monster vomited in her house.

“My mother was Belgian,” she explains as she ushers me in. There’s a tea set and a bunch of cookies, cheese, and crackers on a tray on the coffee table. At the sight of the food, my stomach growls.

She gives me a quick hug, then sniffs the air. “You weren’t kidding. You smell like a muddy barn animal.”

I playfully sniff the air, too. “And you smell like a distillery.”

That makes her howl with laughter. The joke isn’t that good. She’s been drinking. A lot.

Ten minutes later my stomach is full, I’m drinking spiked coffee, and the world feels like someone’s turned it just enough that I get to feel some relief.
My chest relaxes. I’m filthy from Mark’s tackle this morning. I smell like wet dog. I am shaking on the inside from my weird encounters with Eric, Claudia and Dean Landau.
 

And yet this short time with Effie and I feel restored.

“Carrie, I didn’t invite you over to feed you cheese and talk abo
u
t doggies,” she says, reaching down in the crack between her chair and an end table. She pulls out a small folder and hands it to me.

Blueprints.

“What are these blueprints for?”

“The campus. Look at how it’s all structured.”

Why is she giving me blueprints? I’m not an architect. I couldn’t read a blueprint to save my life.
I
t’s just straight lines and scribbles.

Bzzzzz.

“Your ass is ringing,” she says dryly.

I giggle and grab my phone.

Where are you?
Mark’s text reads.

At Effie’s house
, I type back.

Effie Cummings? The police chief’s mom?
he writes back.

Yes
, I type.

K
is his entire reply.

“Was that Mark?” Effie asks, a coy tone in her voice.

“
Yes.”
 

“Elaine says you two are together.”

“Elaine just found out...” I look at the clock. “She found out about ten hours ago!”

“Ten hours is a week in Elaine Gossip
T
ime, honey,” Effie replies, pouring more gin in my coffee.

“Effie, why are you showing me blueprints?”

“Your dad knew these like the back of his hand, Carrie.
I
t’s what he did for a living at the university. He managed power systems, ordered large shipments,
coordinat
ed logistics, handled repairs—you name it. All the staff loved him because if you had a mouse in your air conditioner, you could call Joe directly and he’d send a guy to get it right away.”

“A mouse in your
what
?”

She laughs. “You think all we do is file paperwork and shuffle students around? Try managing broken pipes that burst all over a professor’s research lab. Or when an animal chews through an Internet cable. The Facilities department was one of the most important on campus, Carrie.
I
t’s not just professors who keep this place running.”

She ma
k
e
s
me feel proud of my dad. I’d forgotten that feeling. I’m so used to feeling shame and embarrassment for the mess from three years ago.

Tears fill my eyes. I reach for her hand.

“Thank you.”

She waves me off, emba
r
ra
s
sed by the show of emotion. “No need for thanks. I’m showing you the blueprints because there’s something I’ve never noticed before.”

We lean in. She points to a line.

“In the water rights fight the university was in a few years ago, we had new surveys done of the land.
T
hese just came out.
I
n fact, the only reason I have them is because one of the professors I work for is on the committee to fight for more water rights for
Y
ates.”

What do water rights have to do with my dad?
I wonder.
 

“See t
h
is line?” she points. “I’m
curious
where that goes.” She traces a line that runs from the chemistry building, across
a corner of the
campus, then off the map to the right. It heads tow
a
rd town.

“What is it?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “It could just be a pipe. Some sewer thing. Or maybe it’s something else. Water, gas...”

“Where does it start?”

Her eyes lock with mine.

“At your dad’s old office, Carrie.”

Tap tap tap.

The look Effie is giving me is so intense that when someone knocks on the front door, I make a little screaming sound.

She looks completely shocked.
Effie hurries to the door.
“Who would knock on my door this time of night?” Unlocking the many chain locks and deadbolts, Effie
opens the door then steps aside
.

There stands Mark, looking about as crisp and clean as a brown paper bag that’s been run over in a mud puddle twenty times then baked in the sun.

I
n other words: we’re a perfect match.

“Speak of the devil,” Effie says with a sarcastic smile. “Come in. You like gin?”

“
N
ot really,” he answers,
unsmiling
.

“Too bad.” E
f
fie pours him a cup of coffee. Actually, it’s more like she pours him a cup of gin with a splash of coffee thrown in for good measure. “Sit. Talk.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Blueprints,” I say. Mark nestles against me on the couch, his hip nudging me. We’re thigh to thigh, the long bones of our legs resting against each other. He smells like earth and dust, sweat and musk.

Like someone who’s spent the entire day doing nothing but chase other people.

“Blueprints? You majoring in architecture now, Carrie?” he jokes.

“She’s majoring in figuring out what really happened with her father three years ago, Officer Paulson.” Effie’s eyes narrow. Her tongue sounds like it’s coated with acid.

Uh oh.

Effie does not like Mark.

“
Yes ma’am,” he says with a clenched jaw.
 

“Not that you helped much with that,” she adds.

E
ffie’s not afraid of anyone, is she? I guess if my son were police chief, I wouldn’t be, either.

“
Carrie and I are working on unwinding the past, Mrs. Cummings,” Mark says, looking right at her. His body language is anything but deferential.
 

In other words, he’s not taking any crap from her.

I look back and forth between them, like I’m at a tennis match. There’s a lot of history here I don’t understand. Right now isn’t a good time to ask.

“Carrie,” Effie says in a boozy voice. “
Your father was the head of facilities.”
 

I see Effie has become Mrs. Obvious.

“Yes,” I say slowly.

“He was also the head of the exploratory committee that started looking into how water rights would affect the university,” she adds.

It feels like a cold finger runs up my spine. Mark’s brow raises.

“You take these blueprints and see where that line leads to. The dean doesn’t even know about these yet,”
Effie explains.
 

Mark gives her a sharp look. “Does the chief?”

Her mouth tightens like a drawstring purse. “No. And if you’re implying that my son would ever—”

“Not implying anything, Mrs. Cummings,” Mark says, genuinely surprised by her attack. “I was just asking to know whether I’d be the first to bring it to his a
t
tention.”

Her brow relaxes. Lips, too. “Oh,” she says in a clipped voice. Effie brings her coffee cup to her mouth and downs the entire thing in one big gulp.

“Why are you giving Carrie all of this information?” Mark asks softly, taking a sip of his own coffee. He turns away from Effie and makes a face in my direction. The coffee-gin is nasty.

“Because
that man is a cancer on the university community and I want him gone,” she says, pulling no punches.
 

“And by ‘that man’ you mean—”

“Landau. Scum of the earth.”

“Why do you say that?” Mark’s words come out with a mixture of pure
curiosity
and a ragged kind of rawness. I can’t tel
l
if it’s from the gin or from some deep reservoir of emotion.

“Do you understand what that man has done at the university? He’s a sociopath. Pure and simple. He fools people with
h
is charm and his awards. He gets these enormous government grants and spreads the money around, all while collecting information on people so he can blackmail them. He’s a sexual sadist and—”

“Wait. What?” Mark barks, flinching.

I
frown and give Effie the hairy eyeball. “Sexual sadist?” I squeak.

Her eyes shift from me to Mark, then back to me. “Ignatio
L
andau has driven off four different admins in nine years. Two men, two women. He’s an equal opportunity sexual
harasser
and he scares people. I’ve
never
seen Human Resources rush to hus
h
up former employees like I have seen them do when it comes to him.”

“When did he start w
o
rking here?” I ask.

“Nine years ago,” M
a
rk and Effie say in unison.

“Where was he before?” I wonder.

“A university in Mexico,” Mark says slowly.

Effie raises one eyebrow. “You know a lot about him for someone who’s just a cop on the force.”

Mark returns the eyebrow and ups the ante. “And you know a lot about him, too, for someone who is on staff and has no law enforcement position, Mrs. Cu
m
mings.”