Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 05 - The Maltese Manuscript (14 page)

“But—” I suddenly remembered that I’d seen the victim in the library the previous evening at the Hardcastle reception.

“Schultz, can I give you a hand with that?” Charlie bent and tackled one of Schultz’s bootlaces with the aplomb of a professional shoe salesman. He was dismissing me.

Oh, well, I’d tell him later. He’d hear about Tooey’s presence from a hundred other reception attendees, anyhow.

I climbed the stairs and pushed through the glass-and-iron front doors, making my way through a cluster of students gawking from the library steps. “Sweet Jesus, look at that!” gasped a tall thin blond guy in a red-and-blue parka. A crime scene van had pulled up in front of the building, joining an ambulance, a half-dozen police patrol cars, Charlie’s red Jeep, and two other haphazardly parked unmarked cars. “You think somebody’s dead in there?” Technicians, a man and a woman in grey coveralls, began unloading ominous-looking steel cases from the rear of the van. A buzz of speculation spread through the crowd of students. It wouldn’t be long before the news whizzed across the snowy campus and reached the conferees. Then an actual homicide investigation would intrude into the world of academic make-believe.

Chapter Twelve

Back in Emerson, I peered into lecture halls. The Postmodern Detective and the Demise of Evidence had attracted a serious, middle-aged audience. The group at Death and Deviance: The Aesthetics of Sexual Violence was young and stylish. A handful of aging feminists attended Mommy and Me: Domestic Ideology and the Rise of the Housewife Sleuth. None of the topics appealed to me. I headed for the women’s room.

It was a nineteen-thirties bathroom, immaculately maintained. The taps were chrome with white ceramic hot-and-cold buttons centered in four-prong handles. Miniature black-and-white tiles formed an octagonal pattern on the floor. Hospital-green blocks topped by a black border mounted the wall beneath a long beveled mirror. A faint scent of face powder and cashmere sweaters lingered ghost-like in the air. In front of the mirror, Sunnye Hardcastle was applying bright-red lipstick. Trouble skulked under a pedestal sink. As the door slammed behind me, the big dog raised a lip, displaying efficient teeth.

The novelist must have had built-in radar for crime. “Did you hear sirens, Karen? Sounds like something’s going on out there.”

I closed the door to the stall and spoke from behind it. “There were a couple of police cars over by the library.” I was stunned and disoriented by what I’d seen, and mindful of Charlie’s charge to keep it to myself.

“What? Some kid have an overdue book?” The words were tight, as if she still had her lips stretched for cosmetic application.

It didn’t require a response, and I didn’t give one. The click of the lipstick closing announced the completion of Sunnye’s toilette. When I came out of the stall, she was standing with her hand on the doorknob, deep in thought. Trouble bared an eloquent fang. The snarl came with a deep, low rumble. Sunnye jerked at his leash, and he subsided.

“You particularly interested in Death and Deviance, Karen? If not, I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee somewhere away from…this scene.” She gestured toward the hallway and the lecture halls beyond. “Most of what I heard this morning was total crap, but I really liked your talk. I have a paying proposition for you.”

In light of Amanda’s upcoming grad-school expenses, the word
paying
rang with a bell-like resonance. “Bread & Roses,” I said. “It’s right across the street.” For at least thirty seconds, I forgot poor Mr. Tooey-Munro and all the shock and suspicion his death was about to let loose on an unsuspecting campus community.

“Let’s go,” Sunnye replied. She opened the door. Trouble led the way.

***

The town roads were not as well plowed as those on campus, and, having jaywalked across Field Street, we clambered over a three-foot heap of snow to get onto the sidewalk. In wool-and-down-garbed Enfield, my black-leather-clad companion with her big Rottweiler drew immediate glances, then recognition. We were stopped twice for autographs on campus and once on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop. “Let’s get a table in back, so people will leave us alone,” she said, once we’d purchased coffee in tall white mugs. On the bentwood ice-cream chair, she positioned herself with her back to the room. Trouble prostrated himself at her feet. Through plate glass I had a view of the campus entrance gate. A convoy of three state-police patrol cars entered, lights flashing, sirens doused. Two coffee-drinkers with Banana Republic shopping bags abruptly ceased talking and stared out the window, gaping at the patrol cars as they turned up the library road.

Then Sophia Warzek, the Bread & Roses baker and my former student, came out from behind the counter and approached us. She smelled of vanilla and almonds. Her pale hair was pulled back with a thin black ribbon, her blue eyes alight with curiosity. “What’s going on over there?”

Sunnye snatched up black-framed glasses and twisted in her chair, just in time to glimpse the last of the police cars. “Whoa,” she said, “I knew something was coming down.”

I told Sunnye and Sophia about Tooey’s death; the news would be all over town in an hour or two anyhow. The name meant nothing to either of them. But, then, suddenly, I recalled Sally Chenille’s account of Sunnye’s conversation with “Potato Face.” I paused, undecided about whether or not to inform the writer she’d actually been talking to the victim.

But Sunnye was in full novelistic mode, fascinated by the story of murder in the stacks. “Good God,” she said, “I have a homicidal imagination, as you know, but I couldn’t have dreamed this one up.” She tipped her glasses down on her nose and gazed at me over the rims. “This is out of my ballpark—it’s so damn Agatha Christie. But…” Her eyes narrowed. Her right forefinger twitched on the ceramic cup handle. Trouble growled. For one brief moment I thought I was taking a mid-morning coffee break with Kit Danger.

“Hey, Sophie,” came a whoop from behind the counter. “The oven!”

“Yikes!” Sophia hastened back to the kitchen. The acrid smell of burnt scones wafted through the air.

I was thinking about how, at least according to Sally Chenille, Sunnye had gone off somewhere on her own last night with the victim, Bob Tooey.

***

News of a death in the stacks began circulating during the conference lunch hour. Conferees were shocked, then titillated, by the delicious irony of a homicide (because what else could it be with all those cop cars—and a crime-scene van!) during a crime fiction conference. Much nervous repartee was bandied back and forth over the Faculty Commons’ grilled chicken and Caesar salad.

Claudia Nestor joined me at a corner table, her tray loaded with a mish-mosh of vegetarian selections. “Did you hear anything about a death in the library?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and scatty.

I nodded, solemnly.

“It’s just terrible. Terrible.” The stress was back in her face again, muscles tight, lips thin. “Why do these things always happen to me?” The left eye twitched.

“To you?”

“Do you think they might cancel the conference? I’ve been trying to get Avery Mitchell for over an hour, but he’s not taking calls.”

I sighed. Yes, of course, it was all directed at her. “I don’t know why they would, Claudia,” I replied. “It’s not as if the death had anything to do with the conference. The…er… victim wasn’t a participant, was he?”

“What was his name? I’ve been working on this thing so long, I think I’ve got the registration list memorized.”

I told her.

“Bob Tooey? Robert Tooey? No, doesn’t ring a bell. So, Karen, you think we should just plan on going ahead?”

I shrugged. “It isn’t even certain that it’s homicide. He looked as if—”

Her fork halted, a cube of tofu halfway to her mouth. “How do you know what he looked like?”

“Ah, someone told me,” I said. “It looks as if he might simply have fallen—”

“Oh, well, in that case—”

A deep voice interrupted us. “May I join you?” Dennis O’Hanlon was still in undercover-scholar garb, only today he had taken some fashion tips from fellow conferees: grey jacket, black sweater, black jeans. A hot-looking Young Turk of a professor. He wasn’t wearing his nametag, however, and I couldn’t recall his scholarly alias. “Oh, hello, Professor, er…”

“Mark Slade,” he replied, sliding his tray onto the table, retrieving his tag from a breast pocket, and sticking it to his lapel. “We spoke last evening at the reception.” He’d chosen the blackened Cajun catfish special with rice and beans. It smelled…fishy. I pushed away my turkey on white, the least offensive lunch available. After what I’d seen that morning, I wouldn’t be able to eat for a while.

“Yes, I recall our conversation, Professor…Slade.” Dennis had the kind of eyes that saw everything and expressed very little. “And you work on…?” I couldn’t resist baiting him.

“The public execution as performance art,” he replied, without missing a beat.

Claudia leaned across the table, hand extended. “I’m Claudia Nestor, conference director. It’s nice to meet you, Professor Slade, but…” she puckered her brow, “…I don’t recall the name—or your topic—from the registration list.”

“On-site registration.” The ersatz professor shook her hand and grinned. “Didn’t know until the last minute if I could get away or not.” His green eyes crinkled. “These four-course teaching loads are hell.”

“Mount Helen College?” Claudia persisted, studying his name tag. “Do you know June Landow in Women’s Studies?”

“Vaguely,” he replied. “I’m a newcomer.” He inclined toward her. “And, by the way, terrific conference, Professor Nestor. Too bad it has to be marred by the sad event in the library this a.m.” His smile was meant to distract. Not that he needed to use it for that purpose. Dennis was so damn plausible as a scholar, I almost believed in him myself.

Then I was struck by a totally off-the-wall idea. If Dennis could so convincingly create a false academic persona, why couldn’t Bob Tooey have done the same? I could easily check on that. I had to get to my office, and my computer, right away. I pushed back my chair. “Listen, suddenly I’m not feeling so well. Think I’ll take a bit of a break before the next session.”

“But Kar—” Dennis halted. “—Ah, Professor Pelletier, that is. Although I do hope first names are okay with you. I’d love to have a chat about your work.” His gaze was direct and meaningful. “Seriously.”

“Later,” I said. I wanted to get on the Internet right away, and, in the face of a possible murder, Dennis’ investigation into book theft didn’t seem quite so pressing. “We’ll talk later.”

The sun pouring in the high windows of the Faculty Commons was strong and springlike, in spite of the eight inches of new snow. The large room was packed with conference goers, swelling out the usual ranks of faculty members. Each of the round tables held eight diners, and mouths were busy with more than turkey sandwiches and blackened Cajun catfish. As I rushed toward the French doors leading to the Commons foyer, I caught snatches of gossip about the “library murder,” along with speculation on whether or not the conference would continue, given this shocking event. Passing a group of administrators, most likely working on damage control, I heard Harvey O’Hara’s voice ring out in what I supposed must be the official line.

“After all,” the Director of Public Affairs announced, during an unanticipated lull in the babble, “it isn’t as if he were really one of ours.” Then he glanced around, embarrassed by his own callousness.

I stopped dead in a shaft of light from a window by the door, and delayed synapses connected in my brain.
Stolen books. A body in the library.
I almost turned back to Dennis, but more synapses hooked up, and I thought again. He was investigating the book thefts for the college, but murder was the more pressing crime. If the stolen books, and the manuscript, of course, had anything to do with the death in the library, Charlie Piotrowski, not Dennis O’Hanlon, was the person to talk to. I’d told Charlie weeks ago about my collision with the book thief, so the idea of a…what had Dennis called it?…a
biblioklept
…wouldn’t exactly be news to him.

I hesitated. It was all pretty wild speculation, a link between book theft and murder. One of my brainstorms. Charlie would probably tease me about my habit of fictionalizing. I should do some investigating first before I talked to him.

In my office I turned on the computer and clicked on the Internet. Up popped an e-mail from the president. In a campus-wide broadcast Avery announced the death of the researcher.

The identity of the deceased
, he wrote, carefully not calling him a victim,
remains undetermined. Although we are shocked and saddened by this occurrence in our midst, we can take at least a pittance of comfort in the fact that the deceased is not a member of the Enfield College community. Every possible effort is being made by police and college officials to verify his identity. Meanwhile, students, faculty, and staff may remain assured of the safety and security of the Enfield campus
.

I sighed. Had Avery seen Bob Tooey’s poor, pale body? The man had been a human being. Very much “one of ours.”

I deleted the president’s e-mail, called up the computer search engine, accessed the Lake Superior College website, and clicked on the link for the English Department. Professor Bob Tooey’s office phone number was listed along with other contact information. I dialed it and let it ring four, five, six times. Just as I was about to hang up, a male voice answered. “Professor Bob Tooey, English. May I help you?” He sounded out of breath, but healthy, and very much alive.