Death by Dissertation (23 page)

Surely, once Herrera investigated the connection between the journal entries and the activities on those tapes, he’d have to concede that Rob and I hadn’t manufactured Charlie’s journal. And the more he dug into the truth behind the tapes, he’d also have to see that other people had powerful motives for murder, motives that went beyond mere financial gain.

Herrera sat back on the couch, his shoulders drooping tiredly. “I don’t know whether to thank you or tell you to go to the devil. I’m not looking forward to questioning the mayor’s daughter.” He stared at Rob and me. His fellow officer, who had been unobtrusively taking notes in the background, couldn’t help staring himself.

“You’re welcome,” I said, trying to lighten up the situation. “I guess.” Herrera focused his attention on me for a moment. Then, to my relief, he grinned. He stood, and the other policeman followed suit. “Let’s have a look at that computer,” he told Rob. “We’re going to have to take it in for evidence.”

“Sure,” Rob said. “Follow me.”

The rest of us trooped after him in silence.

Upstairs in Charlie’s bedroom next door, Rob, wearing a pair of latex gloves the lieutenant gave him, quickly disconnected the computer’s components and helped Herrera’s companion—whose name turned out to be Eddy Brown— box it up. Rob also collected all the floppy disks and stored them safely in a special tray Charlie had for them.

Officer Brown and I took the two boxes and the container of disks and headed down the stairs. Rob and Herrera, empty-handed, followed us to the car. Brown quickly made out a receipt for the computer equipment and disks, and Rob signed it. Herrera and Brown bade us goodbye and left.

Rob and I walked slowly up the sidewalk to his apartment, where he turned off the lights, set the alarm, and locked the door while I waited. Once we were again inside my half of the duplex, he headed immediately for the couch and plopped down. Leaning weakly against the back of the couch, he smiled. The lines were erased from his face for a moment, and he looked about fifteen and totally carefree.

“What a relief!” he said.

“What’s a relief?” I asked. “The fact that the police are gone?”

“Partly. But now that they’ve got Charlie’s computer and his journal, and those videotapes, surely they’ve got to see that someone else besides me had the motive to kill him.” He frowned. “I might have had a reason, if I’d known about the will, but why would I have murdered Julian Whitelock? It just doesn’t hang together. Maybe the police will figure that out now.”

“I think you may be right,” I said, “but don’t get your hopes up too soon. Herrera isn’t going to mark us off the list just yet.”

Rob nodded. “I guess not. But at least we’ve given him more to think about.”

“Yep, and I hope he runs with it. But it’s not over. You and I know that we’re both in the clear, but someone else—someone we know—is still guilty. And that someone has done his or her damnedest to implicate us.”

“And that pisses me off,” he said. “I’m not going to sit back and let the police come after me. Herrera can’t ignore all this other evidence and try to make me the guilty one, just because of Charlie’s will. We can’t let up on snooping until this is all settled.’’

That I could certainly agree with.

The phone rang, and we both started uneasily. I got up to answer it.

“Let me speak to Rob Hayward,” a voice said abruptly, almost before I finished saying “hello.”

“I’m afraid you have the wrong number,” I replied. Rob’s presence at my place was still technically a secret, although at least Bella and Bruce knew about it. The caller was female, but she was certainly not Bella.

“Andy, I know Rob is staying with you, so please don’t waste my time with subterfuges. Could I speak to him, please?” She practically spat out the final word.

“Might I ask,” I replied icily, though by now I had recognized the voice, “who is calling?”

“Wilda Franken,” she responded, exasperated with the delay.

I placed a hand over the receiver and turned to look at Rob curiously. “Wilda Franken wants to talk to you. Are you up to it?”

“Might as well.” He got to his feet.

“What does she want?” I whispered, as Rob took the receiver from me.

Chapter Twenty-One

Rob’s tentative “hello” was apparently all Wilda needed to launch full tilt into her tirade. Standing near him, I could hear the strident tones of her voice, but I couldn’t make any sense of the words.

His face took on an appalled look. “Just a minute,” he said, then covered the receiver with one hand. “She wants to talk to me about the tapes,” he hissed. “What are we going to do?”

I should have known Wilda would take the direct approach. “Good—she doesn’t know the police have them.” I paused, thinking quickly. “Tell her to come on over.”

Rob gave me a glance of mingled alarm and amazement before he put the phone back to his ear and posed my suggestion. He waited briefly, gave her the address, then replied, “See you then.” He replaced the receiver in its cradle.

“Lord, Andy,” he said, grimacing, “what are we going to say to her?” He dropped onto the couch beside me.

“I guess we’ll think of something. Maybe Maggie’ll have some ideas. She should be here soon.” I had suddenly remembered that I’d invited her to come over so we could all discuss everything. Boy, did we have a lot to tell her now!

Right on cue, the doorbell rang.

“Your timing,” I told Maggie as I waved her into the living room, “is impeccable, as always.”

Rob patted the couch. “Come and settle down. It’s battle stations all around.”

“What on earth are you two talking about? Have you been drinking?” Maggie peered at us as she got comfortable on the couch beside Rob.

“No, but that doesn’t sound like a bad idea, right about now,” I laughed, settling into my chair. “Were about to be visited by our favorite Marxist.”

“Good grief,” Maggie sputtered, almost coming up off the couch in surprise. “Why the hell is she coming here?” There was no love lost between Maggie and Wilda.

“She wants,” Rob replied flatly, “to talk about the videotapes.”

“Okay,” Maggie said. She rolled her eyes. “At least she’s being direct. I’m not sure the word subtle was ever in her dictionary.”

Rob and I laughed.

“Be that as it may,” I said, “I suppose we ought to think about how we’re going to deal with her. She’ll be here soon.”

“And you were the one who wanted her to come!” Rob groused. “Think of something!”

“Do you want me to disappear upstairs?” Maggie asked. “Having too many people here might make her balk.”

I shrugged. “Who knows? It might not be a bad idea if you hid in the kitchen. She already knows I’m here.”

Rob agreed. “To play it safe, I guess you should hide. Both of you, for that matter. I’ll talk to her by myself—there’s no need for you two to be involved.”

Maggie and I looked at each other, united by a common thought. Wilda had such a powerful personality, she could run right over Rob, who might not have the emotional energy left to deal with her.

I shook my head. “No, Rob, I think it’s better that you and I do this together.”

Maggie nodded, and I could see that Rob was relieved.

A few minutes later the doorbell rang, minatorily it seemed. Maggie grabbed her purse and fled into the kitchen. Rob opened the door to admit an impatient Wilda. He led her into the living room, where I waited.

“Good afternoon, Wilda,” I said, standing up.

If the woman was disconcerted to find me included in her business with Rob, she gave little sign other than the curt acknowledgment of my greeting.

As I motioned for her to be seated, the sudden hostility I felt was like a fourth person in the room. As Rob and I sat down on the couch, Wilda chose my chair.

While I waited for her to initiate the conversation, I gazed at her, not bothering to conceal my curiosity. The hostility I sensed had eased my tension; now I felt calm and detached.

Wilda’s hair, barely shoulder length, was spiked around her face, more from agitation than artifice, I suspected. Her outfit, a relatively tame skirt and blouse, in a blue reminiscent of Caribbean water, might have been her Sunday-go-to-meeting suit, if she’d ever had one.

As always, her earrings intrigued me. She had the most outlandish collection I’d ever seen, and some of them were so large and heavy, I marveled that she didn’t step on her earlobes when she walked. She wore a whale, about five inches long, hanging off one ear, and a bird, approximately the same size, in the other. I had noticed this particular combination before but had no idea what kind of bird it was. I was certain it was a politically correct endangered species.

“I hadn’t expected to talk to anyone other than you, Rob.” Wilda’s voice was low-pitched and rough around the edges.

He didn’t flinch at the accusatory tone. “Andy knows as much about all this as I do.”

“What do you want for them?” she asked abruptly, startling Rob, who didn’t know how to respond. “I’m willing to negotiate.”

“For what, Wilda?” I replied neutrally.

She gave me a look that would have impaled a butterfly on a mounting board. I could almost feel the prick of the pin, but that only strengthened my resolve.

“For what?” I repeated when she failed to answer.

Wilda’s eyes narrowed. “The damn videotapes. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You must have them, here, somewhere.”

The faint stress she laid on the word “here” convinced me suddenly that Wilda had been the intruder in Rob’s apartment. She was almost as tall as Rob and certainly as muscular. In his exhausted, drugged state that night after Charlie’s murder had been discovered, Rob had observed nothing about his attacker; there was no reason that the person couldn’t have been female.

Though now I was furious, I decided to set the woman’s mind at rest on one point. “We have no intention of blackmailing you, Wilda.”

Now that the issue had been broached, some of the tension went out of her body. “How can I be sure of that?” she asked warily.

“What could you possibly do for me that would make it worth my while?” I asked, and finally she flinched. The note of dismissal in my voice caught her on the raw.

Rob had been momentarily forgotten, for this had become a contest of some sort between Wilda and me. Rob seemed more than willing to let me fence with her. He stared at his hands nervously.

Wilda had no answer to my question.

“There’s nothing I—or Rob—want from you,” I continued calmly, “except information.”

Again a razor-sharp look was directed my way, but this one found no target. “What kind of information?” she asked.

“How did you know about the videotapes, for example?”

For whatever reason, Wilda decided to cooperate. Perhaps she felt she had little left to lose. “Julian called me that afternoon—the same day Charlie Harper was apparently killed.” Her eyes flicked toward Rob, and I was unsure whether they looked at him with pity or contempt. “Julian was terribly upset. He said Charlie had come into his office, carrying on about some article of Julian’s that had recently been published.”

“Did Dr. Whitelock tell you why Charlie was upset?” Rob asked bitterly, no longer content to be a mere observer.

Wilda smiled grimly. “He was upset because Julian had plagiarized his work, or so Julian said.” She laughed, contempt dripping from the sound. “Julian wouldn’t admit it to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had stolen someone else’s work. He was desperate to publish something. He’d been demanding more of a raise than the university administration, or the history department for that matter, was willing to offer, and he needed ammunition.”

Wilda had gotten pretty close to Whitelock, and pretty quickly, I decided. I nodded to encourage her. “What then?”

“Then Julian informed me that Charlie claimed to have videotapes of our... the time we spent together.” She paused and looked musingly into space. “Julian said Charlie had done some house-sitting for him, and I suppose he must have had a set of keys made so he could sneak in and out whenever he wanted.” Her tone had grown angry as she contemplated again what had been done to her.

Ordinarily, I would have sympathized with her anger over such a gross violation of her privacy, but distaste for the woman’s recent activities tempered that sympathy. I didn’t care what kind of sex games she liked to play, but I thought she was pretty stupid to become involved with someone like Julian Whitelock.

The man had played her for a fool, and I doubted she even realized it. Whitelock had quite openly detested the politics she espoused, and either Wilda was simply an opportunist, riding the leftist, academic bandwagon, or she just plain didn’t have the common sense God gave a rock. I figured on the latter alternative as the kinder interpretation.

“Were you on campus the night Charlie died?” I asked.

“Yes, I attended the reception in the library, and I was there pretty late.” Realizing the implication, she shifted uncomfortably.

Although I sensed that she might be less willing to answer further questions, I pressed ahead. “Did you have any more contact with Dr. Whitelock after that one conversation, the day Charlie died?”

She frowned. “I managed to calm him down that day, but he called me again the next afternoon, and he was nearly hysterical again. I knew Julian was seeing another woman—or women. It didn’t take long to discover that his appetite was voracious. But I’m not sure who he was seeing.”

But I’ll bet you’ve got a pretty good idea, I thought shrewdly.

Right then, her skin looked as if the blue of her dress had bled into it. “Julian had apparently talked to his other... er... friends, but he didn’t mention anyone by name. I think he must have called them, too, to warn them about the videotapes.”

Just as I’d thought.

Wilda continued without prompting, her eyes staring unseeingly at my Monet print over the fake fireplace. “Julian was frightened—of someone or something. The first afternoon, he was merely upset. The next day, he was terrified.” Her tone had grown bleak. “He wasn’t making much sense, making strange comments about graduate students and the past returning to haunt him. He even said something about not being able to get his typing done any longer.” She shook her head. “I didn’t have much chance to calm him, because someone must have knocked on his office door. He just told me abruptly that he had to go, and he hung up.” She blinked rapidly, perhaps to forestall the onset of tears. “That was the last time I talked to him.”