True Grey (24 page)

In response, Rogovoy fished something out of a folder he'd kept on his side of the table. A heavy plastic bag that he then pushed halfway across the table toward her. She looked down at it, and saw the missing address book inside, its scarred leather binding and one bent corner as familiar to her as any of Esmé's toys. Rogovoy then repeated what he'd told her on the phone. That her address book had been found on the floor of the suite bedroom. ‘Like it had fallen out of someone's bag, perhaps when someone knelt down to search for something. Or to hide.'

That was when Dulcie had lost it. The whole situation sounded ridiculous to her. ‘You can't really think I killed her and left, and then came back?' She looked from Rogovoy to the young cop and back again. Neither was giving her an inch. ‘What? I was so overcome by guilt I came back just to raise the alarm?'

‘Not exactly,' the young cop spoke. ‘We know that you were in the process of leaving when the senior tutor and your colleague were coming up the stairs to look for you. We are considering the possibility that you were going to call for help. Raise the alarm, as you put it. We are also considering the possibility that you had been there before, and that you came back to retrieve what could be seen as evidence.'

A
t that point, Dulcie had finally shut her mouth. ‘I don't think I should say anything else,' she said, once she could again summon words. ‘May I go?'

The city cop had nodded, and Rogovoy had heaved himself to his feet to escort her out.

‘There's something you're not telling us,' he said as he walked her down the hall. ‘And that's a mistake. I don't know if you're protecting somebody or if you think you know better, but, believe me, you really should talk to me.' He looked at her then, big eyes as sad as a spaniel's, and she was sorely tempted to spill it all.

It was a risk she didn't dare take. ‘I didn't do it, Detective Rogovoy,' she'd said finally, her voice falling to a whisper. ‘I didn't do
any
of it. I think someone is trying to set me up.'

‘And who would that be?' He leaned in, and in that moment she realized her mistake. She'd grown used to thinking of the detective as her friend, the gentle ogre. He was in cop mode, though. All he wanted was information, and Dulcie knew that anything she could say would only damn her further.

Besides, all she had were suspicions. ‘I don't know, Detective. I honestly don't know.'

Since they didn't seem to be charging her – goddess be praised – he had let her go then, along with all the usual warnings about how she needed to stay in touch and how they would likely have more questions. As soon as she was on the sidewalk, she realized how foolish she had been to go in there alone. She needed help. Legal help.

Suze answered on the first ring. ‘Legal aid.'

‘Suze, I've done a really stupid thing.' Walking down Garden Street, Dulcie confessed it all: from finding the manuscript page to going in to talk to the police without counsel. She'd been naive, she knew that. But Suze, she was sure, would commiserate.

‘You didn't tell anyone about the manuscript page?' That wasn't the response she anticipated. ‘And it appeared in your bag, when?'

‘This morning,' said Dulcie. Something was tickling at the back of her memory.

‘Did you leave your bag anywhere? You know, in a public place, unattended?'

‘No, I would never do anything so silly.' The words were automatic, but she could hear the sharp exhalation of breath over the line. Her former room-mate and best friend clearly thought she could do something even more foolhardy, and that she had.

‘Well, that's not useful,' Suze said after an overlong pause. ‘Nor is the fact that you didn't immediately go to the police with this. You're lucky they didn't search your purse.' She paused again. ‘Did you check to see if there was anything else in there? Anything potentially incriminating?'

‘Of course,' said Dulcie, making a mental note to do so at the next available opportunity. She opened her bag now, and looked through it. Pens, her pad – that was it. ‘But Suze, I don't know if the page was slipped into my bag. I think it was put into my desk. I picked up a pad from my office yesterday, and I had the strangest sense that someone had gone through my desk, you know? Also, I'm nearly positive that's where my address book was. Maybe someone went through my desk, grabbed my address book, and stuck this in my pad. Maybe I wasn't even supposed to pick it up.'

‘That's possible.' Suze sounded a little more optimistic. ‘And your office is probably more accessible, right? When are your office hours?'

‘This afternoon.' Dulcie looked at her watch. ‘In twenty minutes, actually.'

‘Oh,' Suze paused. ‘Well, who else has access to your office?'

‘I share it with Lloyd, Lloyd Pruitt. He's been in there and so has his girlfriend, Raleigh.' Suze knew Lloyd and Raleigh. They'd both been guests at their old apartment in Central Square.

‘And when are Lloyd's office hours?'

Dulcie thought a moment. ‘Thursdays, from one to three. So . . . before this all happened.'

There was quiet on the line, and Dulcie realized she was biting her lip. ‘Suze?'

‘I need to think about this a bit, Dulcie, and I want to talk to one of the partners here, one of the real lawyers. There's a lot about evidence that I'm not really up on, and they deal with this kind of thing all the time. It doesn't sound good, I won't lie to you. But in the meantime, maybe you can do something, too.'

‘Sure.' It sounded like Suze was calling in the heavy hitters. That had to be good, Dulcie told herself, trying not to feel even more terrified. ‘Anything.'

‘I need you to make a list of anyone who may have had access to your office at any point since the killing. Maybe you can find out if Lloyd had any visitors; maybe he left the door unlocked for some reason. It's all within the bounds of plausibility. But I also need you to prepare yourself for two possibilities.'

‘Yes?' Dulcie's mouth had gone dry.

‘One, that we may have to surrender this page to the police. It's too little, too late, and you definitely shouldn't go in alone, but it may still be the prudent move.'

‘Uh huh.' Dulcie closed her eyes, and immediately pictured Detective Rogovoy, shaking his head in disappointment. ‘And the other thing?'

‘The other thing is that this may end up implicating Lloyd.' Dulcie started to protest, but Suze cut her off. ‘If he's the only one who had access to your office and to your desk, you need to consider the possibility that he's more involved than you know. This is a murder investigation, Dulcie. We don't know who the cops are talking to – or who they suspect. But I can make suggestions about who you should or should not talk to, Dulcie. Right now, I don't think you can trust Lloyd.'

I
t was with a heavy heart that Dulcie walked back to her office. Lloyd, her friend and ally so often before, had become first someone she couldn't confide in and now – what? A suspect? Dulcie shook her head, then acknowledged the truth. Maybe not a suspect in the official sense, in the sense that the police would be questioning him. But he was someone she had to be suspicious about. Someone she needed to avoid talking to. She'd already had her doubts about his loyalty, but to imagine him actively betraying her was chilling.

Unless, the thought hit her with a happy jolt, he hadn't. Lloyd could be perfectly innocent of the whole set-up. Maybe he had left the office open – or let someone else, a friend, use their shared space for some reason. Dulcie found herself walking faster.

That could be it; suddenly it was all perfectly reasonable. Lloyd would have no reason to suspect anyone. Maybe he'd met a friend here. Maybe he'd run off to the bathroom while his friend waited. Not Raleigh, but . . . Rafe came to mind. Rafe, who Lloyd trusted, certainly enough to hang out in his office for a few minutes. Maybe Rafe had planted that page here. Or maybe he'd simply hoped to hide it, afraid for some reason to destroy it. Either way, if it had been stuck into Dulcie's drawer without Lloyd's knowledge, that would exonerate Lloyd. Suddenly, instead of dreading a meeting with her office mate, she was hoping he'd still be there. He'd explain. It was all so obvious, Dulcie practically ran the last block.

‘Don't lock up!' She called down the hall. Lloyd had his key in the door as he looked up.

‘Dulcie! You're early.' He checked his watch. ‘Unless this is off.'

‘No, no, you're fine.' Dulcie leaned on the door frame and tried to catch her breath. ‘I was hoping you'd still be here.'

Lloyd raised his eyebrows. Office etiquette called for each to vacate the tiny space when the others' students might come by. ‘Everything OK?'

‘Of course.' Dulcie spoke too quickly and saw the puzzled look on her friend's face. He didn't know anything, she was sure. And then, suddenly, she wasn't sure. Suze's warning echoed through her mind. She couldn't just ask. Too much was at stake.

Lloyd, meanwhile, was staring at her. ‘I mean, as much as it can be now,' she tried to cover. ‘I just . . .' She looked at the door, unsure how to continue. ‘You always lock this, don't you?'

‘Of course.' He was definitely looking at her funny. ‘Dulcie, is something wrong? Did something go missing?'

‘No, I mean, I don't think so.' She sounded inane, and she knew it. Getting information without giving any was more difficult than she'd thought. ‘I just thought maybe someone had been in my desk,' she came up with finally. It was weak, but it was better than asking outright. ‘Everything was . . . messed up.'

‘It's the mice, isn't it?' He was nodding. ‘I should have told you. I left a bag of pretzels in my desk last week, and something gnawed a hole. Left some – ah – souvenirs behind, too. I brought my lunch again today, but I've taken all my trash. I've been meaning to tell you, but with everything so crazy . . .'

‘Thanks.' She didn't know what else to say, and so she watched as her friend pocketed his keys. ‘You think of calling an exterminator?' It was the best she could come up with. Maybe he had let custodial services in. Maybe they had let someone else come in while they were working . . .

‘What? No way.' Lloyd turned back. ‘It was just a bag of pretzels. Not something worth killing over. But, hey, I've got section.' And with that, he headed down the hall.

‘It doesn't mean anything.' Dulcie was sitting at her desk, trying to decipher Lloyd's words. ‘He's a gentle guy. And I didn't ask him straight out if he'd let anyone in.' That was the crux of it. Dulcie couldn't figure out how to ask, not after she'd said that nothing was missing. To tell him about her address book would be to tell him too much. And to suggest that someone had planted evidence would be even harder to explain. Besides, she still wasn't one hundred per cent sure that it had happened here. No, she hadn't dropped her address book at Melinda's. She was sure of that, but she couldn't really be sure where she had last seen it. And, yes, her desk had seemed rearranged, but really, that could have been her memory – or the mice.

Mouse. Griddlemaus – Griddle
haus!
How could she have forgotten? She looked at her watch and tapped her foot anxiously. Her office hours were about to start. This early in the semester, she ought to stay here. Students had problems, and the sooner they were addressed, the easier the rest of the semester would be. Not to mention that she was on probation. Accessibility to her students wouldn't make or break her case, but if she ran out during posted office hours, it couldn't help.

Her office hours were supposed to last until four. The Mildon closed at four forty-five, which really meant fifteen minutes earlier, as the library staff started sorting and re-shelving the various effluvia of the days. Still, the Mildon was right across the Yard. She'd have time to run over and find out what Griddlehaus had been talking about. Maybe even read whatever he had found, if he hadn't already started closing down the archives. ‘Not that it matters,' Dulcie muttered to herself. ‘Because four o'clock will never come.'

Neither, it seemed, would any students. Twenty minutes later, Dulcie felt ready to pull her own curls out. After the tension of her interrogation, the quiet was, well, murder.

She looked up at the shelves before her, at the raking light coming in from that one high window. She'd watched that beam of light since it had moved from Lloyd's desk to hers in a slow, silent course. But even with its warm illumination, she knew she wouldn't be able to get any real work done. A week ago, she'd have been unaware of the beam's passage, reading her notes and looking up only when the occasional student came in, lost and a little scared.

A week ago, she'd had plenty of students. It had been all she could do to be gracious, when her own work had been trundling along so productively. A week ago, everything had been different. If only she had never heard of Melinda Sloane Harquist and her stupid book.

The light had reached her hands now, where they'd been drumming aimlessly on her laptop. But instead of warmth, the afternoon sun felt strangely cool. Like the brush of leather, she realized. Or the pads of a cat's paw, dabbing softly at the back of her fingers.

‘Mr Grey?' She looked up into the sunbeam, at the slow dance of dust caught in its light. ‘Are you there?'

Nothing, and she looked down at her fingers again, at the keyboard. She'd been wasting time, really. About to call up a game of solitaire. But she'd been thinking of Melinda, of how little she knew about her rival. With a silent nod of thanks to her feline guardian, Dulcie started typing.

‘
Melinda Sloane Harquist.
' She hit ‘enter' and waited while the screen before her filled with options. The first few clearly referred to different people: Dulcie doubted that her rival ran a used car dealership in Toledo or had died in 1898. Others were vague: Had the dead woman been selling a used Toyota? Had she been looking for a room-mate in the Tri-State area? It wasn't until Dulcie was halfway down the second screen that she found anything vaguely academic, anything she could positively link to the woman who had died.