He went back to the piano and sat on the bench.
“It all fits,” she said. “You killed the student for fooling with your wife. You cut off his hands, covered them in cement and crowned the rock garden with them as homage to his brilliance. There’s the DNA, the cement and the motive. So that wraps it up. The murder is laid right at your feet.”
To conceal the trembling she suddenly felt at her boldness, she reached for the mead but put the glass down without taking a sip, remembering the last time she’d mucked up the recipe. She’d had a headache for days.
Whittaker leaned forward in his seat, ignoring her accusation. “Do you know the origin of my name, Tosca?” He raised defiant eyes.
She was startled at the change of subject.
“It’s Anglo-Saxon,” he said. “The word ‘wite’ means a penalty or punishment and ‘aker’ means acre, in this case the word for the north or northeast area of a graveyard, where criminals and the indigent were buried. Thus, Whittaker. Ironic, isn’t it?” He went to the piano and began playing a sonata. “What would you like to hear?”
Nonplussed at his apparent indifference to her outright accusation that he was a murderer and determined not to let him off the hook, she asked, “So you agree that you did indeed kill your student, cut off his hands and bury his body?”
“I did not kill Paul. I did not,” he repeated emphatically, “kill Paul.”
“Haiden, you may take me for a gossipy, interfering neighbor, but you cannot dispute the facts. He’s in your garden, or at least bits of him were.”
“That may well be. I might as well admit it now, but I did not kill him.”
“Then who do you think did?”
“Monica.”
Tosca gasped. Monica a murderer? Surely not. That bubblehead who cared only for shopping and sex?
“Easy to say when she’s not here to defend herself.”
“Oh, she’s here, all right,” said Whittaker, smiling and still playing softly.
“Here? You mean her hands are in the garden, too?” Tosca’s thoughts flashed to her London newspaper and a blaring headline: Tosca Trevant Solves Three Murders!
“No, dear lady. No part of Monica is in the garden.” Whittaker reached out to the candle and lifted it up. “She’s in this bowl. “ As he smashed the candle back down, ashes and white pellets spilled over the rim of the bowl and onto the piano keys.
Tosca flinched at Whittaker’s sudden violence and the fact that Monica’s ashes were being desecrated. She took a deep breath and forced herself to stay calm. Maybe I should have listened to Thatch and stayed home. I really must learn to control my impulses, she thought, yet I don’t really feel threatened. Whittaker was believable when he claimed he didn’t kill his student. His tone was firm. But if he didn’t, what am I left with? That Monica did it? She’s dead. Now what?
“How do I know you didn’t murder Paul?” said Tosca. “You chopped off his hands. Your cousin told me you killed wild animals and hacked off their paws.”
The professor got up from the piano bench and sat down opposite Tosca. He said, “I only took their paws after they were dead. It was nothing.”
“You appear to continue the habit to this day.”
“No, no,” he said. “Paul’s were the first human hands I’ve preserved, but I didn’t kill him. How could I? He was my protégé. Brilliant. I would never have harmed him.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you killed Monica, too. In fact, I’ve written it all down. The story is going to be in my newspaper. Very soon.”
“You think you are so very smart, Tosca, but you are completely, totally wrong.”
“Then tell me the truth, Haiden.”
Tosca wondered how long she could keep this up. Each revelation and counter-revelation was beginning to tell more and more on her nerves.
“It wasn’t difficult at all,” he bragged, “at least, not after I was over the shock, had time to think and could focus on what to do. There was my reputation to consider, what was left of it. Monica, of course, was hysterical.”
“What happened?” said Tosca, almost on the edge of her seat.
“She called me one afternoon, screaming into the phone. ‘Haiden! Something terrible has happened!’ She was yelling so loudly I had to hold it away from my ear. She was practically incoherent and kept saying ‘Oh God, I don’t know what to do.’ I told her to calm down and stop crying. She really was annoying me, since I had almost finished composing a sonata. For once, I knew it was going to be excellent after so many failures. But she kept on shouting.”
“Haiden, I think he’s dead! What shall I do?”
“Who’s dead? Did you run someone over?” Whittaker counted the seconds of silence after he asked the questions.
Monica finally answered in that stupid little girl voice she used whenever she didn’t want to tell him something she knew would upset him.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s Paul.”
“Paul who?” But he knew. Instantly. The knowledge hit him like a block of concrete, and the familiar molten lava of rage surged through his veins. So she’d gotten her claws into him, too. He felt tears welling in his eyes. His beloved Paul. Whittaker shook his head. Impossible. He couldn’t be dead. His genius was just beginning to reach its peak. He was only eighteen and so full of joy and potential. After Paul’s latest triumph, winning the Borodin Music Award, the professor had felt like a proud papa. Monica must be mistaken.
“Haiden?”
Jolted back to his wife on the other end of the phone, he said, “Are you drunk?”
He knew his wife’s propensity for the bottle. He’d stopped going to the Barracuda Bay Club with her years ago, tired of dragging her, vodka-soaked, away from the bar when she could barely stand up. Made him look like a fool.
He could hear her sniffling. “No, I’m not drunk. Maybe a little. Oh, God, you have to help me.”
“What do you mean, dead?”
“He’s not breathing.”
“Did he fall? Where is he? Where are you?”
“Uh, in a motel. He’s in the bed.
Whittaker heard more sniffling and thought, of course the kid was in the bed. Where else would a guy be when in a motel with Monica? Maybe he was just sleeping or in a coma or something. Paul dead was unthinkable. Unimaginable. Terrible. It couldn’t be true.
“Did you call 911 or the front desk?”
“No.”
“Tell me where you are.”
“The Dew Drop Inn.”
“Where the hell is that? Never mind, I’ll find it. Room number?”
“Sixty four. Around the back of the motel. Oh, Haiden, don’t be angry. It’s not my fault.”
“Stay right there.”
Whittaker closed his phone. Not her fault? No, nothing ever was. But what had happened to his beloved student?
No time to think about it. Before getting in the driver’s seat, he went to a metal closet at the rear of the garage and removed a large beach blanket and a tarp. If Paul was really dead, he needed to be prepared to deal with the body or, he hoped, to ride to the emergency room.
On the road, Whittaker used the car’s navigation system to find the address of the Dew Drop Inn. Driving onto the mainland was easy, but, even following the car’s GPS directions, the route was taking longer than expected. Traffic on the northbound freeway was bumper to bumper. Four o’clock in the afternoon wasn’t the height of the rush hour, but these days, he thought, it didn’t make much difference what time of the day it was. Driving anywhere in the Los Angeles area was miserable.
“Come on. Come on. Move!” he muttered. He considered crossing into the car pool lane, which as usual was almost empty of vehicles, but he’d risk getting pulled over by the California Highway Patrol and wasting time. He could always say he had an emergency. Occasionally, a CHP officer would assist in such situations, leading the way with the motorcycle lights flashing. Yeah, that would be the icing on the cake all right. Step right in, officer. Here’s the body.
Finding the motel, the professor drove around to the back of the building and parked. Only two vehicles were outside other rooms, both pickup trucks. As soon as he got out of his car, the door to number sixty-four opened to let him in.
“Tell me exactly what happened, Monica,” he said, stepping swiftly into the room and closing the door. Not bothering to greet his wife or comment on her ragged appearance and pale, tear-streaked face, he added, “And spare me the sordid details. You were obviously in the middle of making love.”
Haiden walked over to the bed where Paul lay naked. Tears spilled down the professor’s face like a river, great splashes that soaked his beard. He sat down next to his student and held his hand, stroking the fingers. Was he really dead? He put his ear to the boy’s chest. No heartbeat.
“Jesus, you didn’t even cover him up.” Whittaker pulled the sheet over the corpse. Then he stood, wiped his face and stared at the body.
Monica squirmed as she sat in the only chair in the small motel room, her dazed eyes averted from the bed as her hands shredded the facial tissues she held.
“I don’t exactly know what happened, Haiden,” she whispered. “I swear it. One minute we were fine, and the next he was gasping for breath. He asked me to get his asthma inhaler on the nightstand, but it wasn’t there. He kept trying to breathe, making awful wheezing noises as if he’d been running. I looked under the bed, but I couldn’t find it.” Monica paused to wipe her eyes. “I told him I’d drive over to a drugstore and get him another one. I don’t know if he heard me because he wasn’t wheezing any more, and I thought he was all right. For goodness sake, he was a young kid. How could he be so ill?”
Whittaker tried to keep the look of disgust off his face. He needed her cooperation now. Wouldn’t do to have her suddenly take off.
“So?” he said.
“So I got dressed and went over to the motel office to ask the clerk at the front desk if there was a pharmacy nearby. He said there was one four blocks away.”
“I suppose the desk guy figured you needed to buy more condoms,” said Whittaker.
“Haiden, don’t. Please. I bought three different inhalers, since I didn’t know which one Paul used, and came back here.” Monica’s voice sank lower. “The sheets were all twisted up.” She shuddered. “He was lying there with his mouth open. His lips were blue, and he looked dead.”
“You’ve paid for the room for the night, I assume?”
“Yes, I paid cash,” said Monica without looking at her husband. “So what shall we do? Should we call 911, Haiden?”
“Of course not, you idiot. Do you know what this would mean to my reputation? Not that it’s great right now, but Jesus. Orange County’s premier composer finds his wife in a sleazy hotel with her student lover, who turns out to be dead. Nice headline.”
Breathing heavily as the full impact of the situation hit him once again, Whittaker paced the small room, hands clasped behind his back.
“It’ll be dark soon,” he said. “Then we’ll put him in your car. I don’t see any blood, so we don’t have to worry about the bed sheets. Wait here while I back your car up to the door.”
Obviously, burying Paul somewhere was the best idea, but where? A remote area. The desert was the obvious choice, like Anza-Borrego, where he’d camped with his dad as a kid. Well, he’d figure it out as he drove.What a mess. Stupid, stupid Monica.
Tosca hardly dared move as she took a small sip of mead and said, “Go on, Haiden. Tell me the rest of the story. I’m so sorry for your loss but what happened next?”
Puffing alarmingly, afraid he’d have a heart attack, he’d tried to roll Paul’s heavy corpse onto the beach blanket and tarp he’d brought but realized he couldn’t carry the youth himself. He needed Monica’s help. She was much fitter, and it was her fault. She’d have to carry the top half. He’d take the legs. All that tennis she played was finally going to come in handy.
“When I turn him this way,” Whittaker instructed Monica, “slip the blanket underneath, then I’ll roll him toward you. Oh, come on. The kid’s dead. There’s no blood. You killed him with your disgusting desires, and now you have to pay for them.”
Monica shook her head, still pale and reluctant to approach the bed. “He was dead when I got back.” She wiped her eyes.
“Stop whimpering, for God’s sake. You brought on his asthma attack. Now grab that beach blanket.”
After several minutes of pushing, pulling and wrapping, Paul Holloway was encased in the aquamarine terrycloth shroud and tarp. Not very appropriate for a burial, thought the professor, but the desert was sandy, and the beach towel was fitting enough for the gravesite he had in mind. How was that for irony?
Whittaker picked up the student’s clothes and shoes and made a bundle. He found Paul’s inhaler, which had fallen into the space between the headboard and the mattress, and told Monica to put it in her purse along with the other inhalers she had bought.
He went into the bathroom, grabbed a towel and returned to the bedroom to wipe off the room surfaces that he assumed Monica and Paul had touched, including the doorknobs, door frames, bedside tables, lamp switches and headboard. In the bathroom he cleaned off the sink and toilet seat, taking care to clean the underside of the seat in case Paul had touched it to lift it up. Next Whittaker checked the small trashcan – empty – and collected two glasses and the large flask Monica carried around with her, usually filled with her flavor-of-the-month vodka.
“I don’t suppose either of you got as far as taking a shower?”
When Monica offered no reply, the professor checked the bathtub. Good. They hadn’t turned on the faucets. Dry as a bone. The word brought him up short. Bone. Bones. Of course! Good lord, it had been so, so long. The present slipped away, and for a moment he was transported back to his childhood and his uncle’s ranch.
How exciting it had been, almost like a revelation. He couldn’t remember exactly where the idea came from, but it all made sense somehow. It was as if it was all pre-ordained, that he should be there, that the ranch be exactly as it was with woods and trails and small wild animals. Fanciful, but how thrilling that the reckless, glorious, erotic experiences that summer would be surpassed only when he began composing music.