A Little Class on Murder (28 page)

“She was behind me. She called out once, but I’d told her we couldn’t be seen together on the campus. So I walked faster, then I cut across the avenue and hurried into the woods around Scarrett Pond.”

Scarrett Pond. Dark, dismal, and dank in November, a place of shadows and impenetrable shrubbery, saw palmettos, dwarf huckleberry, willow oaks, red cedars, and ringing the pond, the brooding, majestic cypress. Strange plants flourished there, blasphemy vine and false boneset, toadflax and devil’s walking stick.

“Did she follow you?” Annie asked.

Once again, Crandall looked to Tarrant for support. She took his hand and squeezed it.

But he wouldn’t look at Annie and Max and his voice was a mumble. “I heard her behind me, but I hurried and turned off to the right, a path that isn’t used much. She stayed on the main path and she called out for me.”

“You didn’t answer.” There wasn’t much inflection in Max’s voice, but Crandall flushed.

“I was upset.” He gave Annie a hostile glare. “I didn’t want to talk to her. And in a few minutes I heard her coming back down the path. I waited until there wasn’t any sound at all, then I went to the Union.”

Annie reached over and flicked on the heater as Max started the car. “Brr. Is there anything soggier than a steady November rain?”

“Frank Crandall,” Max replied crisply.

She grinned.

Max slowed, peering through the rain at a street sign. “Do I turn here?”

She checked the open city map on the seat beside her. “Right.”

Max shot her a bemused glance. “What’s that guy got? Why are women drawn to him like filings to a magnet?”

Annie knew better than to try and explain. Max would
never understand a sensitive face and pleated khakis. So she merely shrugged.

“He’s too much of a wimp to have done it himself,” Max said derisively.

“Maybe.” Annie wasn’t convinced. “But sometimes weak people will fight like demons when they’re threatened. Just like the killer in
A Murder Is Announced
. But Max, more importantly, if Crandall didn’t do it, he drew Georgia away from the building long enough for the murder to have occurred.”

Max nodded grudgingly. Clearly, he thought a noose would fit nicely around Crandall’s neck, but Max was always willing to be impartial, at least for a moment. “We’ve got options,” Max agreed. “One, Crandall killed him. Two, Crandall found him dead but is too scared to say so. Three, Georgia killed him. Four, unknown murderer entered after Crandall’s departure, killed Burke, got the files, and departed before Georgia arrived.”

Annie rolled the window halfway down and peered out. “This is it.”

As they ran through the rain, she heard him murmur, “Forty-eight seconds.”

That was how long somebody in a hurry, a real hurry, could make it from the second-floor faculty offices to Burke’s office.

Although it might take Norden a little longer.

But not if he’d hidden in the file closet.

A cheery fire blazed in the hearth. Victor Garrison was at his ease, a professor in his study, floor-to-ceiling bookcases filling two walls. It was a comfortable room, with two brightly slipcovered sofas, a Navajo throw rug, a dartboard on one paneled wall, a family portrait over the mantel. Garrison’s children looked bright and happy and his wife was slim and pretty with dark hair drawn back behind a green bow that matched laughing green eyes. Garrison glowed with good health and positive thinking.

“A little odd to be home on Friday morning, but I’m taking advantage of it.” He gestured at the legal pad on his desk, and
Max recognized that neat, precise writing. “Not, of course, a welcome break.” He shook his head solemnly, ruing the uncertainty and dark twists that life could take.

“Totally unexpected, of course,” Max said.

Garrison smoothed back his short blond hair. “Violence is
always
a shock, Mr. Darling. But unexpected? Frankly, I knew trouble was coming. I didn’t foresee the form it would take. But people have been known to dig their own graves. I think that’s what happened to R.T. Burke.”

“He brought it on himself?” Annie asked. “Is that what you mean?”

Garrison leaned back in his swivel chair. “It’s always a mistake to put someone who has no interpersonal skills in charge of a group. Now, we’re all quite willing to recognize Burke’s achievements as a newsman. He was quite skilled at investigative reporting, had the requisite qualities to excel there: persistence, quick intelligence, ability to marshal facts, aggressiveness, toughness, combativeness. But, as do we all,” and he offered a charming smile, “he had the defects of his virtues. He was not empathetic. He was impatient with failure, whether it be moral, intellectual, or physical. I believe this entire matter can be very simply put to rest, and that lovely child Georgia Finney released, if the authorities will only look at the principals involved, Charlotte Porter, R.T. Burke, Brad Kelly, and Emily Everett.”

Annie wanted to object to Emily’s inclusion as a principal, but Garrison barreled ahead.

“Burke made a serious mistake, a profound misjudgment of cause and effect, when he leaked that material on Charlotte to Brad.”

So Garrison tabbed Burke as the informant, no ifs, ands, or buts.

“He couldn’t know, because he hadn’t been here long enough, that Emily Everett adored Charlotte.” He gave a little shrug. “Though perhaps he can’t be faulted there. I’m one of the few who knew. Charlotte had gone to bat for Emily, insisted that the bylaws be changed and a part-time student be permitted to serve as president, ironically enough, of the Student
Press Association, the same group from which she was later to embezzle those funds. But the point is that Emily was from that time forward Charlotte’s partisan. I don’t suppose anyone had ever gone out of their way for Emily before. So, there is the background. Emily, a morose, unhappy creature, plodding along, doing her class work, working in the office, but remembering that moment of glory when she served as president of the group. What happens when that story comes out in
The Crier?
Emily must have been furious, both at Brad and at whoever gave him the information that hurt Mrs. Porter.” Garrison reached for his pipe, began to fill it. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know how she discovered Burke to be responsible. Perhaps she’d seen him recently in the confidential files. Perhaps it was simpler than that. She looked at who would profit from such a disclosure and came to the same conclusion I reached—R.T. Burke.”

“So she killed Burke and planned to blow up Kelly? Why did she get blown away instead?” Max asked.

“I would think Emily must have been very upset by the time she reached the
Crier
offices. And she couldn’t, of course, force Kelly to remain there, if he excused himself. Perhaps the bomb was set for a later time and she thought he’d be back and she’d be gone. Perhaps it wasn’t set at all but misfired, killing her. Perhaps she was in the act of setting it when it exploded. That is so often the way with bombs.” He smiled modestly. “I covered a good deal of that sort of thing in the seventies. Bombs are damn dangerous—especially to their makers. You remember that town house in New York?”

He flicked a lighter and lit the tobacco, and the woodsy smoke curled through the den. He smiled complacently.

“When you saw Burke Thursday—just before he was killed—did you accuse him of being Deep Throat?” Max asked swiftly.

Garrison puffed at his pipe and eyed them cautiously. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Darling, no.”

Annie looked at him in disbelief. “Didn’t the two of you talk about the leakage of information from the files?”

“Oh, of course. In a sense. Burke was busy playing sleuth.

He asked if I had done it. I said that was absurd. He seemed to accept that. Then he wanted to know who I thought might be behind it.”

“Surely this was the time for you to accuse him, wasn’t it?” Max demanded.

But Garrison was unruffled. In fact, he chuckled. “Disappointed in me, Mr. Darling? Do you know,” he sucked contentedly on his pipe, “I don’t seek confrontations. I’ve always thought it better policy to keep my own counsel. I don’t,” and his smile was satisfied, “tell everything I know, Mr. Darling.”

“Oily.” Max put the car in gear.

“Odious.” Annie searched in her purse for a tissue to pat against her wet hair.

“But such a tidy solution.” The car zoomed to forty-five and Max eased up on the accelerator.

“Certainly please our Professor Garrison, wouldn’t it?” Annie observed. “The devil of it is, he may be right. Max, was Burke really Deep Throat?”

From the fake leopard skin sofa with its two extra large downy throw pillows to the glossy white throw rug in front of the fireplace to the scented candle stubs lining the mantel, it had the air of a genuine love nest.

Kurt Diggs reveled in it. His suggestive glance stroked Annie, bringing a tight set to Max’s mouth. Diggs leaned casually against the mantel. His Levi’s fit like fresh snake skin, his magenta-striped sports shirt was unbuttoned to midchest. A heavy gold chain glistened at his throat. He held a whiskey glass in one hand and his eyes lingered on Annie.

“Don’t you ever drink before lunch, sweetheart? Drop around by yourself sometime and I’ll introduce you to its pleasures—and maybe some others too.”

Max looked like he’d enjoy twisting that gold chain right into Diggs’s windpipe.

Annie hastened to divert him. “My morning hours are all spoken for, thanks. And I don’t need whiskey to have fun. Too
bad you do. But speaking of pleasures—wasn’t Burke planning on shortening your list?”

Diggs grinned and his large, even, white teeth gleamed against his tanned skin. He took a swallow of his drink. “Yeah. Just shows what happens to do-gooders, doesn’t it? Jesus, he was hot to banish sin and lust from his department. Biggest prick I ever met. But it just goes to show, nice guys sure as hell finish last, just like they should.”

“Is that how you see him?” Max asked. “A do-gooder?”

“Jesus, did you ever
talk
to him? One goddamn platitude after another.” Diggs recited in a high falsetto, “ ‘Success without honor is the ultimate failure, a man’s word is his bond, a journalist must rise to a higher standard than the society he serves, the public’s right to know ends where the right to privacy begins, character is destiny.’ ” He took another stiff drink. “He made me gag.”

“What sayings do you prefer?” Max asked in disgust.

Those white teeth flashed again. “How about: ‘Shit happens’?”

Annie ignored that skirmish. “So you think impressing his values on the department mattered most to him. Would that justify in his own mind leaking those files to Kelly?”

Diggs arched a dark eyebrow. “Hey, I thought you had some brains. But I guess you’re just another pretty broad.” Annie reached out and grabbed Max’s arm. “Hell, didn’t you hear me? He was a goddamn crusader, lady. I kept expecting him to break out in that stupid song from
Man of La Mancha
.” He hummed a bar of “The Impossible Dream.” He downed the rest of his drink and laughed. “Hell, that’s rich. Burke as Deep Throat. No way. Not that Holy Joe prick. No way.”

It rained for two solid days, a sodden, gray world with the damp chill of coming winter. Gorgeous November days would come again with temperatures in the seventies, and Annie and Max were quite likely to play badminton on Christmas afternoon, but lovely weather was only a memory that Saturday and Sunday. Actually, Annie and Max both enjoyed rainy weekends. The homeyness. The jolly good-fellowship. Afternoon delight. Not, unfortunately, that the latter pastime seemed possible. There didn’t seem to be enough time between telephone calls. The weather, however, didn’t discourage wintering swallows. Annie insisted they visit the forest preserve despite the dripping skies when Ingrid called Sunday afternoon to report excitedly that the bird club had spotted a huge flock, five hundred strong, feasting on the bayberry shrubs. Max was moderately enthusiastic. It was to be admitted that he would have welcomed almost any outing at that point for some respite from the telephone.

Annie kept a record of the calls. Should one of her three most enthusiastic students demand an accounting of how extra credit was earned (and she conceded that these three would expect extra credit for their efforts despite the cancellation
of the class project as a whole), Annie intended to present the telephone log as clear evidence of who did what.

Then, rather as in the manner of baseball statistics, the log became a matter of fascination to her in itself.

The keeping of the log began at Death on Demand:

2:04
P.M
. Saturday
: “Where
are
those files? Surely the two of you in your journeyings yesterday did at the very least address this question?” Miss Dora’s crackly voice oozed contempt. “I have before me the list of those believed to have been in the building just previous to the explosion, but
not
accounted for in a class. It includes, as I would hope you know, Professors Moss, Garrison, Tarrant, Norden, Crandall, and Diggs; the victims, Burke and Everett; and that querulous infant, Bradley Kelly. It is, I hope, not superfluous to note that none of the above could have made provision for the files
after
the explosion.”

3:16
P.M
. Saturday
: “So disappointing when one’s picture of plucky young lovers disintegrates from the pressure of reality. In truth, reality often robs Cupid of his arrows, I’m afraid. However,” and Laurel’s voice cheered, “I feel confident that love—or perhaps the lack of it—may be the root cause of our tragedy.”

4:49
P.M
. Saturday
: “It’s just the same thing as when that peck of shrimp disappeared from Mrs. Fothergill’s shop. If I
think
on it, I’ll know what happened. After all,” Henny’s accent was quite crisp, “it all comes down to character, doesn’t it?”

The calls continued that evening at Annie and Max’s tree house:

6:42
P.M
. Saturday
: “Brad Kelly was seen on the main avenue of the campus late Wednesday night. When queried today, he said he was on his way to a second meeting with Deep Throat at Scarrett Pond, but no one showed up. He didn’t mention this, he said, at the press conference when he revealed his knowledge, however paltry, about the informant,
since nothing came of the second meeting. He did admit to seeing Mrs. Roethke running from the journalism building and thought it strange but was hurrying to reach the pond on time so didn’t stop to investigate. What does this signify?” A pause, and Miss Dora sniffed in disgust. “A woman of her age” (Annie knew Laurel would have found this reference quite offensive) “has
no
place in a drinking establishment frequented by students. Quite unseemly.”