Death by Dissertation (24 page)

The blinking was a calculated appeal for sympathy—Wilda’s attempt to place herself in the category of the bereaved. This irritated me, and I spoke more sharply than I intended.

“You’re not certain, then, just who it was that frightened him?”

She shook her head; the whale and the bird danced. “Can I at least see them?” she asked suddenly, urgently, leaning forward in her chair, her eyes making direct contact with mine.

This was the moment I’d been dreading. Beside me, Rob shifted uneasily, then cleared his throat to speak.

“I should tell you,” he said, and the discomfiture he felt was obvious, “that I looked at part of one of the tapes, and I couldn’t tell who the woman was.” Rob’s cheeks had turned a fiery red.

Wilda had no immediate response. Staring stonily at a spot between Rob and me, she finally replied, “Won’t you at least let me verify that for myself?” There was a new note in her voice, a note of appeal.

Rob sighed, then spoke gently. “I’m afraid we can’t show them to you. We’ve turned them over to the police.”

The color drained from Wilda’s face as she stared incredulously at him. “You didn’t,” she whispered, trying to deny what he had told her.

“We had no choice.” Rob grimaced at the apologetic tone in his voice.

I could tell he felt guilty, nevertheless, in having encouraged her to talk, knowing all the while that the conversation would inevitably lead to this point. He glanced sideways at me and read the same reaction in me. My anger had begun to dissipate, and I had a little more patience with her. She’d had her comeuppance with a vengeance.

Wilda stood up and, with great dignity, labeled the two of us with a variety of adjectives and epithets at which I could only marvel. The woman was well acquainted with words that seldom found their way into a standard dictionary. My cheeks burning, I dared not look at Rob. When her breath—or perhaps her vocabulary—finally ran out, she announced that she would let herself out, turned quickly, and was gone.

Seconds later, Rob and I heard the door close, followed soon by the slam of a car door. An engine roared to life; the sound diminished as the car moved swiftly down the street.

“Whew!” I leaned into the sofa and turned to look at Rob. I felt rather displeased with myself, but I wasn’t ready to diagnose why.

Maggie came in from the kitchen.

“Did you hear?” I asked, not quite meeting her eyes.

“Yes,” she replied, her voice grim.

I detected little sympathy for Wilda in her expression, but I could tell, nevertheless, that she had found the whole episode distasteful.

Rob stood up from the sofa slowly, wearily, as if the physical effort pained him. In a voice that held no expression whatsoever, he announced, “I’m going over to my place for a while.”

Troubled, Maggie and I watched him walk slowly into the hall. Both of us wanted to go after him, but Rob needed to be alone more than he needed either of us right then. Seconds later the front door closed quietly behind him.

Maggie joined me on the couch. For a few minutes we sat there, saying nothing.

“I refuse to feel completely guilty,” Maggie finally said, her voice flat and uncompromising. “Lord knows, I don’t want to sound like some Puritan moralist, but the woman got herself into this, and she’s old enough to face the consequences.” She frowned. “So why do I feel grubby?”

“Well,” I drawled, as I did whenever I was uncomfortable, “with the advantage of hindsight, I suppose you could say we didn’t think this one completely through. Even in my favorite mystery novels, though, the detective often feels like a voyeur. It’s an occupational hazard, I guess.”

Maggie snorted. “Thanks for the deep analysis, Miss Marple.”

“You’re welcome, M. Poirot,” I snapped back.

Rob chose that instant to burst into the living room, waving several sheets of paper in one hand and a large book in the other.

“We’ve got another suspect!”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Rob’s announcement surprised both of us. I groaned. We had more than enough suspects to sort through, and here he was, claiming to have found another. Awaiting a response, he fairly danced with excitement, his earlier mood forgotten. Maggie asked him what he meant.

Before replying, Rob squirmed in between us on the couch and thrust the loose pages into my hand. He gave Maggie the large book he had been carrying. “Look at these,” he announced, “and tell me what you see.”

“This looks to be,” I responded, glancing over the pages I held, “some sort of alumni newsletter from”—I peered at the highly embossed letterhead, glinting in the light from a nearby lamp—“some prep school near Boston.”

“Maggie?” Rob asked.

“This,” she replied, opening the book, “is a yearbook, also from a school.” She turned to Rob. “Dare I guess that they’re from the same school?”

“Right,” he answered, his head bobbing in emphasis. “Now take a look inside them. Maggie, look for the senior class.”

I thumbed slowly through the ten pages or so of newsletter that I held, finding little of interest until I came to a section labeled “Alumni Achievements.” I skimmed through—the guys seemed a pretty accomplished lot—until I came to a name I knew.

“Dan Erickson?” I asked, puzzled. The entry congratulated Dan on his recent presentation of a paper at the Southern Medieval Association Meeting in Baton Rouge.

“Dan Erickson,” Maggie repeated, her finger pointing to a picture of a younger Dan in the yearbook she held.

“What does this mean, Rob?” I prompted, although I was beginning to suspect the answer.

“Now turn to the freshman class, Maggie,” Rob instructed.

She followed instructions, and there, in the class portraits, she found another familiar face—Charlie Harper’s. This was a younger, more vulnerable Charlie. He was beardless and looked nearly innocent in that picture, though the aspect of haughty superiority almost spoiled it.

Maggie leaned back, letting the heavy yearbook close in her lap. “So Dan and Charlie were in prep school together. Why does that make Dan a suspect?” Her tone had a strained inflection. She had gone out with Dan a couple of times, but nothing had come of it. I had sensed she was withholding something at the time, but I hadn’t felt I could press her for details. I wondered how she felt now.

Rob’s gaze bounced between Maggie and me. “Don’t you think it’s more than a little suspicious that neither Dan nor Charlie ever even mentioned that they had been in school together?”

I shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t know each very well. They were three years apart, and maybe their paths didn’t cross.”

Rob shook his head. “You don’t really believe that. The school wasn’t that big. There’s something peculiar about this. As much as Charlie liked to brag about this school, he never mentioned the fact that he and Dan went there together.” Maggie riffled the pages of the yearbook as she spoke. “You’re probably right, Rob. The whole thing does seem weird, but the question is, what are we going to do about it? Is one of us just going to march up to Dan and accuse him, simply because he and Charlie never told us about this?”

“I don’t know,” Rob groaned in response. “I was so excited by what I’d discovered that I didn’t think it through.”

“How did you come across this, anyway?” I asked.

He pointed to the newsletter in my lap. “That came in the mail today. I had never seen one before, and I just picked it up, out of curiosity. I was thumbing through it and saw Dan’s name. I thought I remembered that Charlie had some old yearbooks in the shelves in the living room. I checked the picture to be sure, even though the info in the newsletter made it pretty clear that their Dan Erickson was our Dan Erickson.”

“The question remains,” Maggie reminded us, “what are we going to do? Do we follow it up just to satisfy our nosiness?” Her tone indicated that she preferred not to do it.

I picked up the newsletter. “I think one of us—meaning me, I guess—should at least talk to Dan about it. Is that okay with you two?”

They both nodded their assent. I didn’t relish the task, but I figured it might be less emotionally wearing on me than it would be on either of them.

Maggie got up from the couch, dropping the heavy yearbook where she had been sitting. “Well, guys, I’ve got to get home and get to work.”

I walked her to the door. “Are you okay?” I asked as I opened the door for her. “Is it my turn to play Ann Landers?”

She turned to look at me. I knew something had disturbed her, but she smiled and touched my cheek, her hand lingering briefly. “I’ll be okay. One of these days, you and I will have a long talk about it.” She turned and walked down the sidewalk to where her car was parked.

I closed the door behind her, feeling slightly frustrated. I’d have to quell my rampant curiosity for the time being.

After dinner, Rob and I separated to work on our respective reading projects. Once again, I couldn’t concentrate on medieval English law; questions about Charlie and his connection with Dan kept interrupting. At this rate, I’d never make it through what was supposedly one of the seminal monographs on the subject. Instead, I immersed myself, for at least the fourth time, in one of my favorites, Dorothy Cannell’s classic
The Thin Woman
, where love and humor leavened the bad, and everything turned out right. When in doubt, reread a favorite mystery novel. That was my philosophy for reducing stress.

Tossing and turning in bed that night, though, with the world of Ellie and Ben left behind, I couldn’t keep my mind from returning relentlessly to the questions that had plagued me before. Could Dan really be involved in Charlie’s murder? Why would he kill Charlie and Whitelock? For the life of me, I couldn’t think of any plausible motive. I couldn’t see how he fitted into the elaborate web of blackmail and sexual antics that we thought we had uncovered. But I tried, until, at last, my mind turned completely to fuzz and I finally fell asleep.

Rob slept late the next morning, and I ate breakfast alone, after sleeping later than usual myself. I was relieved not to have to face him over the breakfast table. How was I going to find out what was on the paper he had hidden from Maggie and me? I didn’t want to sneak into his bedroom to look for it, and I still shied away from the thought of asking him point-blank.

Usually, satisfying my urge to poke into other people’s business didn’t matter all that much, because the people involved had been dead for many centuries. Trying to solve these two murders was different, however, the downside being that I had to ask uncomfortable questions of myself and of people I cared about. Maybe that piece of paper Rob had hidden didn’t really matter, I told myself, then resolutely put it out of my mind.

I took advantage of the quiet to make a phone call. I punched in the numbers and waited, praying that she would be there to answer.

“Hello!” her voice came clearly through the wire.

“Hi, Ernie, how are you?”

“Andy, my dear, I’m doing splendidly. Nothing else will do, you know that.” She laughed in my ear. “How are you doing, Andy? I hope you’re not out every night, attending wild parties and neglecting your work.”

“No more than I did when I was an undergrad,” I responded wryly. She knew what a stay-at-home dullard I was.

“How is Rob? Do you see much of him?” Trust Ernie to cut to the heart of the matter. She always seemed to know, no matter what.

I sighed deeply into the phone. “That’s what I’m calling about.”

“Tell me about it, my dear." I could see her settling into her chair in the kitchen, propping her feet up, and preparing to give me her full attention.

I sketched out the two murders and the circumstances of Rob’s staying with me for the time being. In some detail, I told her about his apology to me, after all these years, and his confession.

“I’m glad he has come to terms with his sexuality,” Ernie said. “And I’m glad that old business between you is finally out in the open. How do you feel about Rob now?”

“That’s what’s driving me nuts, Ernie! If anything, he’s more attractive now than he was when I realized I had my first crush on him. I spent a lot of time trying to hate him and to work out my bitterness over the way he treated me, but I couldn’t do it. He’s always been there, lodged in my head—and my heart—and now that he’s in my life again, I don’t know what to do with him. How can I trust him after what he did to me?”

Ernie was the only person, until I confided in Maggie, who had known what happened between me and Rob.

“Honey,” she said, “I know he hurt you badly, but you were both so young at the time. You’ve both grown and changed a lot since then, and if Rob tells you that he regrets what he did and that he still cares about you, I think you should listen to him, for once, with your heart and not your head.”

“But what if it doesn’t work out? What if he hurts me again?”

She sighed. “Andy, I know you’ve had some bad luck and you’re feeling gun-shy, especially after things fell apart with Jake. But you can’t turn away from a relationship out of fear that it won’t work out. There aren’t any guarantees, you know, but if you don’t risk anything, you don’t win anything, either.” She paused. “Some things you’ve just got to take on faith, and faith alone.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I replied. “I spent a long time nursing a grudge, and now that Rob has taken that away from me, I don’t know how to feel. Part of me—a large part of me—wants him around, so I guess I should just give in and go with the flow.”

“Then, basically, you called just so I could tell you what you already know.”

“Don’t be smug with me!” I laughed into the phone. My heart felt suddenly lighter. Talking with Ernie usually helped me sort things out.

Rob came into the kitchen at that moment and smiled a good morning at me.

“Ernie says hello,” I told him.

“Hello back to her, and a big sloppy kiss on the cheek.” Rob fiddled with the coffeemaker, and I wished I’d made him some coffee, he had been so good to me in recent days.

I repeated Rob’s message, and Ernie giggled.

“I think it’s time to say goodbye,” I said, “when you start giggling like a teenager.”

“Why don’t you give Rob a big kiss from me?” Ernie said and then hung up before I could think of a retort.