Death by Dissertation (8 page)

“Spare me the lame sports analogies, please.” I frowned at her, even while a certain organ did a flip-flop or two.

“When you get that sarcastic with me, I know you’re starting to feel better.” She had the nerve to grin at me.

“Bitch,” I said, without rancor.

She took my hand and led me out of the kitchen. “Yeah,” she replied, “and you’re the one who told him not to leave.”

As we came back into the living room, Rob looked up, hope naked in his eyes. He stood, and I held out a hand to him. I simply meant to shake his hand, but he, perhaps willfully, misinterpreted the gesture and threw his arms around me instead.

The warmth of his body coursed like an electric charge through me. I returned his hug, almost by reflex. I had to admit that he felt good in my arms.

I let go of him, and he understood. He dropped his arms and moved away. His eyes bored into mine.

“Can we start over, maybe?” he asked, his voice husky.

I nodded. “I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything more than that. Let’s work on being friends, okay?”

He smiled. “At least you’re talking to me.”

“You may have cause to regret that.”

“I’ll take a chance.”

“Good!” Maggie said briskly. “Now that we’ve done the drama-queen bit for the day”—Rob and I both threw her a look—“suppose you tell us, Rob, what the police had to say to you? Why did they think you and Charlie were lovers?” She sat down on the couch and patted the space beside her. Rob sat down, and I got comfortable in my chair.

“Someone in the history department told the good lieutenant that we were,” Rob said flatly.

Maggie and I looked at each other and said simultaneously “Azalea!”

Rob nodded wearily. “That was my guess, too. I know the woman despised Charlie, and she doesn’t seem to have much use for me, either, though I haven’t the foggiest idea what I’ve ever done to piss her off.”

“She knew you and Charlie were sharing an apartment,” Maggie said. “That was enough.”

Rob shrugged. “I guess so.”

“So how did Lieutenant Herrera broach the subject with you?” I asked. “Was he accusatory?”

“Not at first,” Rob answered. “He started off in a mild way. But the more we talked, the more insistent he became that I was deliberately misleading him about the true nature of my relationship with Charlie.” He shook his head. “I kept insisting that we were friends, roommates who shared the expenses, but Herrera just kept pushing at me. He didn’t seem to believe that two men in Montrose could live together and not be spending all their time in the sack.”

“Did he say that?” Maggie asked, appalled.

“Yes, more or less,” Rob said.

My hands clenched in my lap. Herrera had been polite to me. But now that he knew where I lived, he’d probably take the same tone with me if he questioned me again.

“I even offered to take him upstairs and show him our separate bedrooms,” Rob went on, “but he wasn’t interested. I could tell he didn’t believe me. Or else he’s intentionally misunderstanding the whole situation. I think he’s found his chief suspect, and he doesn’t want to look any further.”

“But what motive would you possibly have had for killing Charlie?” Maggie asked. “It makes absolutely no sense to me. You told me you and Charlie weren’t lovers, but I’m not sure how you can prove that to anyone else!”

Rob smiled sadly. “I did love him, in a way, as a friend, because he was the first person I came out to, five years ago. You’d be surprised how supportive and, well, almost tender, he could be. He cared about me, and he did his best to help me, even though he was ambivalent about his own sexuality. He could be nasty to almost everyone else, but he and I had a different kind of relationship. I didn’t try to make excuses for him. I know he could be awful, but I cared about him in spite of that.”

Maggie seemed willing to accept everything Rob said at face value, but I’d known him longer, and I wasn’t completely convinced. There was something hard to read in his expression when he denied having a physical relationship with Charlie.

Nevertheless, Maggie and I were both moved by his simple declaration of feeling for his friend. Charlie had been a difficult person to like, even to tolerate on occasion, and I doubted he’d have a more feeling or compassionate eulogy than the one Rob had just given him. I looked at him with a newfound respect. If he was being completely honest, he had most definitely changed, and I had to make myself realize it. I, too, had changed in many ways in the past ten years, and in my blind rage at Rob, I had denied him the capacity to grow and learn and to mature.

“Since I knew Charlie better than anyone,” Rob said, “and because everyone seems to think the two of us were having a relationship, I think I’m going to be an attractive suspect for the cops.” He took a deep breath. “And then there’s the fact that we had a big argument a few days ago, and more than one person must have overheard it.”

“What did you argue about?” Maggie asked.

Rob looked at her; he wouldn’t look in my direction. “I don’t think the subject of the argument is all that important. What is important, from the police’s point of view, is that I was just about ready to haul off and hit him, when someone walked in. Charlie could be a jerk, and he made me really angry that day. We were in the grad student lounge, not the best place to have an argument, but, of course, he probably did it on purpose, just to provoke me.”

“Oh, Rob,” Maggie said. “Did you say something stupid like, ‘I could kill you?’?”

He leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. “Of course I did. You and I know that it doesn’t really mean anything, but it’s the kind of stupid thing you say when you’re upset. And it won’t be long before the police collect that little tidbit and come talk to me again. It’s not bad enough that someone I cared about has been killed. There’s all this other stuff to deal with, too.”

Watching his face and the defeated slump of his body, I wanted to do something to help him, in spite of my reservations. Deciding to go with my heart and not my head, I reached over and squeezed his arm. “Maggie and I will stand by you. You didn’t kill Charlie, and they’re not going to be able to charge you with it and make it stick. If we have to, we’ll figure this out ourselves.”

Maggie echoed my words. As she spoke, I realized that this was what I had been thinking all along. Ever since reading that first Nancy Drew book when I was ten years old, I’d had a hankering to play detective. Reading hundreds of adult mysteries hadn’t changed that notion. I had always been curious about people and what makes them tick. That’s why I became so interested in history. I wanted to know more about people who’ve been dead for more than six hundred years.

Rob cheered up slightly. For the first time, his smile looked hopeful. “Well, then, where do we start? I owe Charlie that much.”

I leaned back in my chair and tried to appear as if I knew what I was doing. I looked to Maggie for assistance, but she wrinkled her nose and left me to pole the barge alone. “We should start with a motive,” I suggested, “although the police will probably start with opportunity. Who had a motive to kill Charlie? Admittedly, he made a lot of people angry. The things he would say sometimes and then get away with, just because people were afraid of him.” I shook my head, remembering. “But that’s not enough to kill him. So what other reasons could there be?”

Rob’s face clouded over.

“What is it?” I asked.

He hesitated. “I think Charlie was blackmailing somebody.”

Blackmail!
The word reverberated in my mind. Rob waited warily for a reaction from Maggie and me. Charlie could be loathsome, but blackmail was farther than I thought even he would go.

“Who was he blackmailing?” I asked.

Manifestly uncomfortable, Rob shrugged. “This is kind of hard to explain, partly because I haven’t had time to think it all through, but I think Charlie could have been blackmailing several people.”

“Why do you think that?” Maggie asked.

“This is where it gets complicated, I’m afraid.” His face scrunched up as he organized his thoughts. “There are probably a few things neither of you know about Charlie. He wasn’t easy to get close to.” Rob paused, sensitive to his understatement. “I felt sorry for him. He didn’t know how to make friends, with his attitudes and that godawful acid tongue.”

“But you, at least, got beyond that with him,” Maggie said.

He nodded. “Yeah, I did. When we were undergraduates together, even though he was a couple of years older, Charlie told me enough about his so-called family life that I could understand why he was like he was. His parents are wealthy, and he was the youngest of four sons. The other three all took business degrees and went into the family’s businesses, but Charlie was always the one who was different—a gay, liberal, brainy type from a conservative, wealthy Southern family.

“He came out to them when he was about eighteen. They had sent him to an exclusive prep school in Boston, and I got the impression from Charlie that something happened that forced his hand while he was at the school. He was never comfortable with being ‘out,’ though, and he never talked publicly, as far as I know, about being gay. If you cornered him, he might admit it, but most of the time, he just ignored the subject.” Rob shook his head. “I went through that stage myself, but Charlie was still stuck in it.

“Well, when Mom and Dad and all the big brothers discovered that baby Charlie was a faggot, all hell broke loose. For about a year, Charlie said, his life was sheer misery. Then, one of his grandmothers stepped in and somehow made the family see a little more sense, at least so they could get along. When Charlie decided he wanted to attend graduate school, after failing miserably at working in the family’s businesses, they finally gave in. After all, even they had to admit that being a college professor was respectable. And, of course, the fact that he was several states away didn’t hurt,” Rob observed ironically.

“Charlie never seemed to be short of cash,” I commented, “unlike the rest of us. It must be nice to have a rich family.”

Rob laughed. “Charlie didn’t need the fellowship he got to pay for his education. His monthly allowance was incredible. You should see his expensive computer system. And a fancy CD player, a VCR, and a video camera you could have used to film
Gone With the Wind
.”

When Rob stopped to take a breath, an idea surfaced, and I expressed it aloud. “But if he had a wealthy family and a generous allowance, he surely wasn’t blackmailing for money, was he?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think money was that important, because the people I suspect were his targets can’t afford large sums of money.” He paused. “No, what Charlie liked was the power trip, getting an edge over someone. That was the part of Charlie I disliked, and he knew that, so he tried to keep what he was doing from me.” He splayed his hands in an interrogative gesture. “I don’t know why, but I was the one person he actually tried to have a real friendship with.”

I wondered whether Charlie might have fallen in love with Rob, but now wasn’t the most tactful time to ask.

In an effort to console him, Maggie said, “You may never be able to explain these contradictions to yourself, Rob. Hold on to your memories of your friendship, and keep that separate from whatever else Charlie may or may not have done.”

Rob seemed comforted by Maggie’s words. “I suppose you’re right,” he sighed. “But the situation’s a real bitch.”

I nodded in commiseration, and Maggie squeezed his arm. I moved the conversation back toward motives for murder. “Rob, what proof do you have that Charlie was blackmailing someone?”

He rubbed his forehead with both hands before he answered. “That’s the problem, Andy. I don’t have anything substantive.” He clenched and unclenched his hands in his lap. “Everything is impressionistic, subjective.”

“Well,” I said, “if you can put your impressions into words, perhaps I can help you decide whether you’re right.”

“Okay, here goes. Do you remember hearing—right after the semester started, at our first department meeting—that Charlie had a paper accepted for the annual conference of the Societas Historiae Francorum?”

I nodded. “It was a big surprise. He crowed about it for a week.”

Rob leaned back into the couch once more. “Well, you know they never accept submissions from graduate students, and Charlie said some things which led me, in a vague way, to conclude that his good fortune was a little more than that. One thing he didn’t make known was that Julian Whitelock was on the committee that selected the papers that year.”

“And you think that somehow Charlie coerced Whitelock into making sure his paper was accepted?” This I found hard to believe.

According to graduate student lore, Whitelock’s reputation for contrariness was legendary. No one, not even the university president, could persuade him to do anything he didn’t want to do. Sometimes the man seemed to think he lived in the period that he taught, acting the part of one of the strong-willed Merovingian kings who usually got murdered for their pains. But then, Whitelock was a pretty big noise in the S.H.F., more or less the dean of the American school of Frankish history, so if anyone could get away with it, he could.

“Yes,” Rob asserted. His face had taken on a determined look I had once known well. Perhaps he knew more than he was willing to reveal at the time. How else could he be so positive? “Whitelock and Charlie were two of a kind in certain ways, it seems to me. They were always butting heads over something, and I think Whitelock would have tried to get Charlie kicked out of the program because they had such a hard time getting along. But Charlie was the most talented student Whitelock had had in a long time, so he was willing to put up with him.”

I still had doubts. “But what could Charlie have known about Whitelock that was worth blackmail? The end, in this case, must have justified the means for someone as ambitious as Charlie, because, in his field, giving a paper at S.H.F. is quite an achievement. What,” I asked again, “could Charlie have had on Whitelock?”

“From the remarks Charlie made at the time, I think he knew something about Whitelock’s private life which could cause a big scandal. I’m not quite certain what it was, but I think it had something to do with his sexual tastes.” Rob’s nostrils flared in disgust. “Charlie said something obscene, which I won’t repeat, about how Whitelock got his jollies, and believe me, if Charlie was right, Whitelock does not want it known."