Irish Coffee (11 page)

“I HOPE YOU REMEMBER ME,
Professor Knight.”

“Ah, yes,” Roger said. The fellow who had come half on the run to greet him when he entered the sports information office looked familiar.

“Anthony Boule.” The smile was replaced by a mournful expression. “I was a friend of Fred Neville.”

“Of course. You can show me his office. I have been asked to check his computer for any light it might shed on recent events.”

“The police asked us to keep it locked.”

“I am here at the behest of the police.”

A woman behind Anthony spoke. “Lieutenant Jimmy Stewart called to tell me you were coming.”

Anthony stepped aside and a lanky young woman stood and thrust out her hand. “Thelma Maynooth. I have the key.”

The two of them convoyed Roger to a door and Thelma unlocked it.

Anthony said, “I thought the police took the key.”

“This is a master key.”

“Some security.”

“Anthony, I could hardly turn over the master key to them. What if someone lost his key?”

“Who locks their door anyway?”

She ignored him. Her smile seemed to reveal more than the usual number of teeth. Something glittered at the side of her nose. It seemed to be a sequin. She turned and unlocked the door.

“If there's anything you need?”

“Thank you.”

Roger went into Fred's office with Anthony following. He called out, “Thelma, bring us coffee, will you?”

“Have you broken a leg?”

“Great kidder,” Anthony said. “What are you looking for?”

“I don't know.”

Anthony took the great hooded coat with Notre Dame Swimming lettered across its expansive back. It was something Phil had picked up for Roger, courtesy of Fred. It had seemed to have a new significance when he told Griselda of floating across the pool in naval boot camp. Anthony hung the jacket on a coat tree and pulled out the chair behind the desk. He looked at it and then at Roger.

“I'll see if I can find something more comfortable.”

“That will do.”

Roger lowered himself tentatively into Fred's chair, squeezing his bottom between its arms. “I may need help getting out of this.”

Anthony laughed, but it was not a skeptical laugh.

Roger swung the chair to the right and rolled up to the computer and turned it on. Thelma appeared with a cup of coffee and put it on the desk.

“Thanks a lot,” Anthony said.

“I am sure Professor Knight would prefer to do what he has to do alone.”

Good girl. She took Anthony's arm and led him from the office, pulling the door shut as they left.

It has been thought that graphology would go the way of other outmoded arts—plastering, bookbinding, calligraphy—with the advent of the computer. But then it had been thought that paper would become obsolete too and far more paper was consumed in the age of the computer than in the age of the typewriter. The typewriter had proved to be a personalized tool, at least when used by someone like Ezra Pound. His typewritten letters had been utterly distinctive, but then he had spelled words whimsically too. Each user of a computer tends to use it in his own way, if only in the naming of files. A feature of Fred's use was his eschewal of capitals and all punctuation other than dots in his e-mail messages. Roger began by scanning the files on the hard drive.
Egan
was there, doubtless the duplicate of the file he and Greg had found on the computer in Fred's apartment. A file named
ad meipsum
caught Roger's eye, and he called it up on the screen.

It was a diary of sorts, written in the manner of Fred's e-mail messages, block paragraphs preceded by a date.
12.©.02
marked the first entry, so the file had only recently been begun.

Roger pushed away from the computer and picked up the coffee he had been given by Thelma. As he brought it to his lips, he stopped, thinking of the cup that had been found on Fred's bedside table. But he sipped it with relish and put it on the desk, remembering Santander's identification of Naomi as the woman who had visited Fred's apartment during the days he had stayed away from this office.

“He was sure?” Phil asked.

“He didn't hesitate.”

“I have to let Jimmy Stewart know.”

“Of course. But I wanted to tell you first.”

“What led you to show Santander Naomi's photograph?”

“A hunch.'

“Thank God you had it. It may mean nothing, but it definitely takes Mary off the hook.”

Stewart came immediately to the apartment to hear the story of the identification from Roger himself. Then he fell silent.

“So what does it mean?”

“She falls into the category of the woman scorned.”

And Roger developed the thoughts that had been forming in his mind since leaving Santander. By Naomi's own admission, she had been holding Fred to an engagement that was at best equivocal. That had been one of the reasons for his and Mary's secrecy about their informal but far less equivocal engagement.

“He wanted to dump her?”

“He hadn't even proposed to her.”

“But the ring she was flashing for all to see?”

“She put it on her own hand. It belonged to her mother.”

Phil shook his head at the wiles of the woman.

Stewart said, “She left town?”

“She was on her way to the airport when she stopped to talk.”

“Roger, why didn't you tell me this yesterday?”

“One, it probably doesn't mean anything. Two, I thought of the effect on Mary if it became known that Naomi had visited him in his apartment.”

“She wasn't staying there, was she?” Stewart asked.

“No.” Roger paused. This had not occurred to him. “Her network owns several apartments in Hoosier Residences. She was coming from there when she stopped to see me.”

“You should have told me at once,” Stewart said.

“He's right, Roger.”

“Of course, he is.”

“You said she was on her way to Chicago? To catch another plane?”

“She mentioned Chicago as her destination. I suppose you could check that.”

Stewart said grimly, “I am going to check a number of things.”

“I'll come with you,” Phil said.”

So it had been a somewhat crestfallen Roger who had set off for the Joyce Center in his golf cart, maneuvering along the snowy campus walks. His only consolation was that in talking to Naomi his worst suspicions had dissolved. She had been forthright, telling him far more than she had to. She needn't have told him anything at all. But now, with Fred's
ad meipsum
file on the screen before him, he could imagine that her visit had been intended to allay any suspicions he might have had. She had provided him with what would have been her motive, a woman scorned. He remembered the expression on Phil's face. Naomi might very well be a wily woman indeed.

He scanned through other entries in the file and came to the last, dated the Thursday before the game Naomi was in town to cover.

Roger finished his coffee. The scene Fred described was vividly before him. He wished he had found this file before taking to Stewart. Here was something more for him to check out.

The door opened and Anthony looked in.

“Everything going all right?”

“Come in.”

“You sure?”

“Sit down.”

Anthony shut the door and sat across from Roger, bright-eyed and receptive.

“You knew Fred pretty well, I suppose.”

“We were colleagues.”

“What was there between him and Naomi McTear?”

“Naomi! He was going out with Mary Shuster.” Anthony added quickly, “I don't know how serious it was.”

“But you knew both young women.”

The corners of Anthony's mouth went down and his shoulders went up.

“Sure. Not all that well. Naomi was a pro and we dealt with her as one. Mary used to stop by at the end of the day to see Fred.”

“He never talked to you about them?”

There was a moment during which Anthony had the look of a man about to lie. But he thought better of it. “No. We talked about everything else, but not that.”

“His poetry?”

“Poetry?” A quizzical smile formed on Anthony's thin lips. The look of a man who thought his leg was being pulled.

“It doesn't matter.”

“Did Fred write poetry?”

“He was a man of many parts. In some ways a man of mystery.”

“You can say that again.”

AFTER SHE LEFT ROGER
Knight Naomi told herself that talking with Roger Knight was just a little insurance before she talked with Tom. She would be equally frank with him this time. Two days ago she had been in Nashville, having covered the Tennessee game. Tom had called and just barked an order into the phone.

“I want to talk with you, and I mean now!”

“Tom?”

“It sure as hell isn't that leprechaun.”

He slammed down the phone.

Naomi had been in the shower when the phone rang and she had wrapped herself in a towel and scampered into the bedroom, certain the phone would stop ringing before she got to it. If it was someone from the channel they would have called her cell phone so she had no idea who it might be. Once it might have been Fred. She had snatched up the phone to hear the irate voice of Tom.

What was wrong with him? It was one thing not to be an Irish fan but he seemed really to hate Notre Dame. It had been a mistake to introduce Fred to him.

“What a wimp,” he had said afterward.

“He is not.”

“God made Notre Dame Number One.” He said it with a sneer.

“Tom, he never said that.”

“But he thinks so, doesn't he?”

“Well, you're nuts about the Cubs.”

“It's my job.”

“And Fred's job is Notre Dame sports information.”

“It's not a job with those guys. It never is.”

Of course she knew what underlay his rage. There is no one more bigoted than a fallen-away Catholic and Tom had plummeted like Lucifer from heaven when he fell in love with a twice-divorced woman and had been told there was no way in the world he could marry her in the church. That had been Lucille, long an item in the past, but Tom's bitterness on that occasion had not gone away. He had been an irregular attendant at Mass before that, but then he had sworn he would never enter a Catholic church again. He seemed to think he was punishing the church. Ever since, his attitude had hardened. He was a small-bore version of Julian the Apostate, not content simply not to believe. He had to hate and oppose the thing he had left. And given Notre Dame's prominence in sports and the fact that it was the premier Catholic university in the nation, it followed as night the day that Tom must hate and loathe Notre Dame and everything—and everyone—connected with the university. All this had been clear as could be after the disastrous dinner at the Carriage House. Tom was programmed to hate Fred Neville.

“Where did Tom go?” Fred asked afterward.

“Loyola.”

“Ah.”

“No, that isn't it. He hates Loyola too.”

“He sounds so cheerful announcing games.”

“Some people do crossword puzzles.”

He looked puzzled. But games are not the real world, their rules are arbitrary and absolute. Tom could occupy that world as a substitute for the world in which the rules had bitten him. She was glad she didn't have to explain this to Fred, but it seemed clear enough until she tried to express it.

Nor did it harm her theory that Tom took every occasion to come to South Bend and root for Notre Dame's opponent. The Lady Irish had flattened the opposition when he was here the weekend before last. He had asked for the use of the second bedroom in the channel's suite.

“Unless three would be a crowd.”

“Tom, for heaven's sake.”

“Well, how serious is it?”

“I'll keep you posted.”

“Naomi, it would be the mistake of your lifetime.”

A mistake she was finding it very difficult to make, as it happened. If there had been any doubt in Naomi's mind it was swept away when Fred had told her about the other woman.

“Who is she?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Meaning anyone else would do?”

“You know I don't mean that.”

“You know I was a virgin, don't you?” Not wholly true, but this was love and war.

“Naomi…”

His moral sense was keen, his sense of honor wonderfully old-fashioned. It made him vulnerable to her unwillingness to shake hands and call it a day. In her darker moments she told herself that if she couldn't have him no one could.

It was Thelma the toothy secretary who had told Naomi about Mary Shuster, relishing the telling because she sensed that something had been going on between Naomi and Fred.

“Local girl?”

“Born and bred. Her father was on the faculty, she works in the registrar's office.”

Naomi did not want to see Mary Shuster, but she could not quell her curiosity. When she saw her at the wake she knew who she was and after the funeral, at the university club, she had made the great mistake of picking a fight with her. Roger Knight and the old priest, Carmody, had saved her bacon, but Naomi had lost points with herself and that was more important than what others thought. Even so, she had wanted to talk to Roger Knight before catching her plane. That, she assured herself, had not been a mistake. How nice it would be to have the big fat professor in her corner. Sitting in her rented car outside the Knight apartment, she pressed her cheek against the window and was mesmerized by the lightly falling snow. As if for the first time she realized that Fred was gone for good. South Bend would never be the same again.

She took her cell phone from her purse and put through a call to Tom. The time was given digitally on the phone. So much for her flight from South Bend.

“Well, you lucked out there,” he said.

“Where?”

“Fred.”

“Tom, what a terrible thing to say.”

“Or maybe not. You know you're in a bad spot, don't you?”

“I've lost the man I loved.”

He made an obscene noise with his lips. “Have the police talked to you?”

“The police?”

“Naomi, think about it. Others must have known he was trying to dump you.”

“Who told you that?”

“He did. The sonofabitch.”

“When?”

“It doesn't matter. Can't you see the spot you're in? I hope you can account for your actions in those days before the body was found.”

She sat in silence for a moment. “Tom, I can't believe we had the same parents.”

“Still wearing Mom's ring?”