Death by Dissertation (21 page)

But no copy had surfaced, oddly enough. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but the lack of a copy seemed strange. Most graduate students at the dissertation stage were obsessive, to say the least, about not letting anything happen to their work. Surely Dunbar would have had another copy somewhere.

But not if Margaret had hidden it away, claiming it was lost, perhaps intending to use it, at a later date, as her own.

I turned this thought around and around, and the more I considered it, the more attractive—and plausible—the idea was. According to Dr. Logan, Philip Dunbar and Julian Whitelock had not had much contact once Dunbar had reached the dissertation stage. Whitelock had been afraid of his brilliant student, who apparently had seen little reason to have his erstwhile advisor oversee his work through its various stages. Beyond Whitelock’s signature on the form that registered his topic with the university’s graduate studies committee, Dunbar could have avoided contact with his professor until the dissertation was ready for examination.

As cantankerous as he could occasionally be, Whitelock wouldn’t have refused to pass his student’s dissertation, if the student was as brilliant as Dr. Farrar claimed. The other members of Dunbar’s committee wouldn’t have let Whitelock turn down a good dissertation if they felt it warranted their support. Besides, they probably would have welcomed the opportunity to score a few points off the old bastard. Whitelock hadn’t been any better liked by his peers than he had been by most of his students.

It was possible that Whitelock hadn’t seen the dissertation and didn’t know much about it. Margaret could have hidden it away these four or five years, intending to claim it as her own work when a sufficient amount of time had passed.

I knew little about the woman. She had been a graduate student long enough to pull it off, if that was indeed what she intended to do. By asking some discreet questions, perhaps I could discover just what the members of the history department had known about Dunbar’s dissertation.

“Guys, you’re not going to believe some of this. It just gets curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say.”

Maggie and Rob looked up at me and frowned.

“All right, all right,” I muttered. “I’ll wait till you’re finished.”

I didn’t have to wait long. In less than ten minutes, Maggie had spread out our scribblings so that we could all see them. She and Rob sat together at the table, and I stood behind them and read over their shoulders.

Eager to hear their reactions, I pointed first to the entry about M and the dissertation. “What do you think about this?” I waited while they read.

“Damn!” Rob said. “Plagiarizing someone else’s work. Could that be what he was talking about? Who’s PD, by the way?”

Briefly, I told them Dr. Logan’s story about Philip Dunbar and his missing dissertation.

Maggie looked at Rob, then at me. “So you think Charlie found out that Margaret had a copy of the dissertation—if, indeed, she did have a copy?” she asked, the doubt strong in her voice. I nodded, and she continued. “So then Charlie would have threatened both of them, because if Margaret was going to try to pull this off, Whitelock must have known about it. Was she sleeping with him, too? Geez!”

“So she murdered Charlie,” Rob summarized, “and then she killed Whitelock when he threatened to turn her in to the police. It sounds plausible to us, but do you think a jury would buy it? I mean, would they really accept scholarly theft as a motive for two cold-blooded murders?” He shook his head. “As opposed to inheriting a multimillion-dollar estate? I don’t know.”

“I’ll admit it would probably sound a bit incredible to a lot of people, but a persuasive D.A. could make it stick,” I argued. “And, besides, most people probably think university types are strange anyway, and they might believe a psycho academic could do anything.”

Maggie laughed. “And despite what people think, ‘psycho academic’ isn’t redundant.”

“Okay, okay.” Rob held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Sorry.” I grinned. I indicated the rest of the pages. “So what else did we find?”

Of the entries which Rob had deciphered, most were simple records of meetings between J and A. Azalea certainly seemed to be the companion of choice.

One other entry was more interesting.

A and B sought me out for another conversation, in which A kept digging, trying to force me into giving myself away. This time, the remarks were more threatening in nature, but I mollified them, temporarily, with protestations of innocence. I gave A a rather silly clue to think about, and that should keep her mind busy for a while. I need to watch them more closely from now on.

“Who are A and B?” Rob asked. “Is Bella or Bruce working with Azalea, for some ungodly reason? That one really gets me.”

“Who knows?” Maggie shook her head. I could tell by the distaste in her voice that, although Bella irritated her, Maggie didn’t like to think she was connected with something this awful. “Maybe kinky sex just makes strange bedfellows, if you’ll allow me the pun.”

Rob and I groaned.

“Anyway,” Maggie continued, ignoring us and leafing through pages, “I’m not sure the rest of this is much help. At least now we can add Azalea, Wilda, and Margaret to the suspect list.”

“How much of this journal did you print out, Rob?” I asked, thinking there must be more than the few pages we had.

He watched me with narrowed eyes. “I printed everything in that subdirectory. It’ll take me a while to see whether there’s anything more on the hard drive and to go through all the floppies Charlie had.”

A pretty neat evasion,
I thought. Maybe he should be in law school instead. Maggie made a face. She knew how to use a computer, but she wasn’t terribly fond of anything mechanical. “Better you than me.” She stood up. “I’m ready to eat. How about if I run down to the grocery store and buy some stuff for lunch? It’s on me.”

While Maggie was gone, Rob excused himself and went upstairs to his temporary bedroom. He didn’t reappear until Maggie returned half an hour later. We enjoyed the graduate student equivalent of the yuppie power lunch: ham sandwiches, potato chips, and more Diet Cokes.

As I munched, I asked a question that had been puzzling me. “How did Charlie manage to make those videotapes?”

Rob set down his sandwich and swallowed carefully. “I don’t know for sure,” he replied, “but I’ve been thinking about that too. You know Charlie did some house-sitting for Whitelock?”

Maggie and I both nodded.

“Well,” he went on, “I think Charlie must have had copies of Whitelock’s house keys made, because I found some unfamiliar keys on his key ring when I had to borrow his car one time. I asked him about them, but he just shrugged it off, saying they were from his house in South Carolina. But they disappeared off the key ring not long after that.”

Rob took a sip of Coke before continuing. “While he was house-sitting this summer, Charlie took me over for a look through Whitelock’s house. You know, just a tour, nothing else.” He glanced from me to Maggie. “There was a room upstairs, right next to Whitelock’s bedroom, that was locked, and Charlie said he didn’t have a key.” Rob’s nostrils flared in disgust. “I imagine that’s where Whitelock had his playroom. Charlie must have found the key somehow, and I bet he probably found some way to set up a video camera in there. He spent almost two months in that house last fall during Whitelock’s sabbatical in France. Who knows what he could have done in that time?”

“Did Whitelock have an alarm system?” Maggie asked.

“No,” Rob replied.

“Then, if Charlie did keep a key,” Maggie speculated, “he could have gotten in and out of the house when Whitelock was on campus. Pick up a tape, set up a fresh one. But how did he get it to record at the right times?”

“Voice-activated camera,” Rob responded grimly. “That camera can do just about anything, except wash the dishes.”

“There’s another explanation, though,” Maggie said, staring off into space. “Maybe Whitelock himself made the tapes. I wouldn’t have put it past him.”

I nodded, considering the idea. “That sounds plausible to me. I guess Charlie could have found the tapes, then either stole them or made copies.”

Those two explanations were probably as close to the truth as we’d ever get. Only Charlie and Whitelock knew for sure, and they couldn’t tell us. If the police had discovered any information, I’d be willing to bet they weren’t going to share it.

In silence, we finished our lunch. Once we had cleared the table, Rob departed to use Charlie’s computer for a while, and Maggie and I reluctantly agreed that we should try to get some legitimate work done. In other words, it was back to our reading lists for both of us.

Maggie paused as she was going out the door. “By the way, Andy, do you have the library’s copy of Stenton’s Anglo-Saxon England? It’s checked out, according to the library computer, and of course, they’re not allowed to tell me who has it. I put a hold on it, but who knows how long it’ll be out.”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t have it. I’d like to get ahold of it myself, because it’s on my list, too.” As I spoke, I had a quick flash of something in my mind. What was there about that book? Something nibbled at the edge of my memory, then it was gone.

“What is it, Andy?” Maggie watched me with sudden concern.

I shook my ahead again. “There’s something teasing my memory about that book, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it is.” I shrugged. “I guess I’ll think of it eventually. In the meantime, if you do find out who has it, remember I’d like to get it when you’re done.”

Maggie nodded, curiosity in her eyes, but evidently she decided there was no point in questioning me further. She bade me goodbye and walked down the sidewalk to her car.

With Maggie gone and Rob working at the computer next door, I settled into my chair and picked up my turgid treatise on medieval English law.

That lasted about five minutes. I simply didn’t have the willpower to force myself to concentrate on writs of right and writs of novel disseisin. I thought about the paper Rob had hidden. That really bothered me. I needed a distraction, so I pulled one of my favorites by Elizabeth Peters from a nearby bookshelf and spent several hours cavorting with the Emersons in nineteenth-century Egypt.

Rob dragged in around six o’clock, looking worn out and thoroughly disgusted. “No luck, huh?” I asked. For a moment my conscience bothered me about having a good time reading a mystery novel while he had sweated over Charlie’s computer, but I remembered that he was hiding something from me, and I stopped feeling guilty.

Wearily, Rob shook his head. “Whatever Charlie did with the rest of his so-called journal, I don’t know. Those recent entries were the only ones I could find. Maybe that was all he had. Maybe he just started keeping it this semester. Who knows?” He leaned back into the couch and tried to relax his shoulders.

“Oh, well,” I comforted him, “what we have is enough to keep the police busy for a while.” Except for what you’re hiding from me.

“You realize, don’t you,” Rob asked, “that we should’ve called Herrera already?”

What is it that you don’t want me to know? I asked myself. And why can’t I just come right out and ask you? Because, I answered, I want to trust you, and I don’t want to hear an answer that would let me down.

Ruefully, I nodded. “I thought about that—fleetingly, I’ll admit—but it’s Saturday night, and he’s probably enjoying some time off. Surely it can wait till tomorrow or Monday.” I tried to put it out of my mind.

Since Rob had cooked for us twice already, I thought it was my turn. My specialty was hamburgers, and hamburger meat was relatively cheap, as were instant mashed potatoes. I had one last package of hamburger meat in the freezer, and I thawed it out in the microwave.

Rob didn’t complain about my cooking, and after we ate, we went to our rooms. He hesitated a moment over his “Good night, Andy,” and I knew he wanted something more from me than just a return of his good-night wish. But I only muttered, “Good night, Rob.”

I almost asked about the piece of paper, but, unwilling to face a confrontation, I turned and went into my room and shut the door firmly behind me. I rummaged through my videotapes and decided to watch
Bringing Up Baby
for the umpteenth time. Maybe Grant and Hepburn could take my mind off things.

I laughed, as I always did, at this wonderful movie, but the romantic aspect of it hit me more forcefully than usual. I really was hopeless in some ways, because I secretly expected life to be like one of my favorite movies. I wanted Cary Grant to come along and sweep me oft my feet, with witty dialogue, wonderful clothes, and lots of money.

Is Cary Grant waiting for me in the room down the hall?
I wondered. Hell, I didn’t know, and I was too confused to figure it out.

I rewound the tape, put it back on the shelf, then stripped off my clothes and got in bed.

The next morning, when I woke up, the house was quiet. I had slept better than I expected, given the mood I was in when I tried to go to sleep. By the time I finished my shower, I heard Rob stirring about in his room. I went down to cook breakfast.

About the time I had breakfast ready, Rob appeared, holding the Sunday paper. Neither of us was a chatterbox, for which I was grateful. Facing him over the breakfast table every morning would be more than a bit disconcerting. As we settled down to eat, each of us took a favorite section of the newspaper. Rob laughed over the comics, and I leafed through the book section, looking for reviews of mysteries.

I put aside the book page, disappointed to find no mystery reviews, and picked a section at random as I finished my toast. I grimaced—it was the society section—but shrugged and decided to look through it anyway. I would read even the cereal box if that was the only thing available. At least the society pages beat the cereal box—just barely.

I turned the page, shaking my head over the extravagance of the clothes I saw in the pictures. Not for the first time, I wondered how much money was really raised for charities at some of those events. As my eyes swept over the few photographs on the next page, they lighted upon a familiar face, then widened as I read the caption beneath it.