Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 05 - The Maltese Manuscript (20 page)

Now I was worried half out of my skin. This was more than simply a student’s weekend escapade. She had her child with her as well.

***

Missing student aside, we still had to show up at the goddamned Women’s Studies dinner. At 7:25 Mai Thai was packed with students, townspeople, and conferees. Trouble followed us in the door. When Claudia saw us, she waved frantically from the long crowded table in the corner. “I was afraid you weren’t going to show,” she muttered as I pushed my way past her to the almost inaccessible seat to which she motioned me. I shrugged, and the conference director turned to Sunnye, for whom she had saved a prime outside seat. I squeezed into my chair, nodded at my neighbors, and tried to relax. The lights were dim, candles flickered, bead curtains clattered as waiters pushed through with loaded trays. The enticing odors of Asian cuisine whetted my appetite.

As my main course I ordered a double vodka martini, with coconut soup and Shrimp Pad Thai to follow.

At a corner table, a group of graduate students from the conference were on their second round of Tsing Tao. “Then I said to him,” a young man with straw-colored hair exulted, “put that in your pipe and deconstruct it!” A howl of laughter went up from the young diners. I sipped my drink and smiled. This was the post-theory generation of grad students, and their irreverence toward the intellectual pieties that bound their elders was refreshing.

All went well until we left the restaurant at 9:05. As Sunnye and I walked out the door, we were suddenly blinded by the glare of television lights. A heavily made-up woman I recognized as a local-news reporter stuck a microphone in Sunnye’s face. The novelist flinched. “Ms. Hardcastle, how does it feel,” the reporter blared, “to be a suspect in a real-life murder mystery?”

Chapter Seventeen

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Buzz off!” Sunnye grabbed my arm and pulled me out onto the sidewalk.

“What’s going on?” I queried, dazed by the lights, the camera, the action. Trouble skidded to a halt. His ears went back.

“I don’t have a clue, but these people are jackals. Let’s get out of here.”

“Ms. Hardcastle,” jabbered the pursuing reporter, “is there any truth to the rumors that you were seen with the Library Victim just moments before his death?” The Library Victim. Obviously those words had been media-mutated until they now boasted permanent initial caps.

Trouble bared his teeth. The reporter took a prudent step backwards. Sunnye straight-armed her way past the TV crew.

We hoofed it down Division Street, Trouble at our heels. I snatched a glance at my companion. She looked as bewildered as I was. I yanked Sunnye down an alley to where the Subaru was parked in the municipal lot behind Scoops Ice Cream Parlor. When we came within electronic range, I clicked the unlock button on the remote, we slammed into the car, and I threw it into reverse. The news crew halted at the end of the alley. We sped off.

“Whew! Close one.” Sunnye mimed wiping her forehead. “What the fuck was that about?”

“You really don’t know?” The reporter’s words were echoing in my mind:
You were seen with the library victim.

“Not a glimmer. What did that bitch say? Something about a murder victim?”

“Yes, the guy in the library,” I mused. “Elwood Munro.”

Sunnye’s face went bloodless in the green dashboard light. “Munro? Did you say
Munro
?”

“Yeah. That’s the name of the guy who was killed in the library stacks.”

She stared at me. “That’s not what you told me yesterday. You said
Tutu
or something.”

“Tooey. Turns out that was an alias. His real name was Elwood Munro.”

“Elly? Shit!” she took a deep breath and held it for longer than seemed possible. Then she huffed it out. “Then I
was
talking to the victim. Elly? Dead? I can’t believe it!” Sunnye slapped the dashboard with the flat of her hand. “Oh, shit! I must have seen him just before…Oh,
holy
shit!” At our backs, Trouble rose, made uneasy by Sunnye’s distress. She turned around to soothe him. “It’s all right, good dog. It’s okay, sweet pup. Lie down again, you excellent boy.” Trouble subsided.

Traffic was scant at this time of night. I made the left at Field and Main without stopping—without even slowing. Suddenly maximum speed seemed like a good idea. “Sunnye, if you were with the victim that close to the time of his death, the cops must know—especially if the press does. Look, you’ve gotta go to the police, before they come after you. I’ll take you to the station.”

“No! I’m deathly allergic to cop shops. I’ll call them from the Inn.”

We cruised down Field Street, and I slowed to turn into the Enfield Inn’s circular drive. A male duo staked out the canopied doorway. The short heavy guy puffed on a cigarette. The tall one in the baseball cap checked the film in his camera.

“Shit! More reporters. Keep going.”

“Duck down so they don’t see you.” I accelerated past the sprawling white building, slamming my right arm protectively across her body, as if she were the toddler Amanda.

“What should I do?” she moaned, from her crouched position. For once, Kit Danger seemed to be at a loss.

“Come home with me,” I said. “You can call the police from there.”

Except for a minor skid on black ice, the drive home was uneventful. Sunnye told me about Elwood Munro. I’d never known her to be so talkative. “We belong to this group… Urban Explorers, we call ourselves. It’s a kind of a global network of…recreational infiltrators. We get together once a month, always in a different major city—New York, London, Paris, and we…explore.”

“Explore
what
?” I didn’t understand the evasiveness in Sunnye’s tone. Exploring sounded harmless enough. “And isn’t it prohibitively expensive if you have to hop between London and Paris to do it?”

“We’re all moneyed people.”

Moneyed people?
“Elwood Munro was rich?”

“He had generous trust funds, or so everyone said.” But money was the least of Sunnye’s concerns. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw Elly in that library. A
library
, of all places. I couldn’t understand it—we always have backup, but he was on his own. He was…startled…to see me, too. We talked for a few minutes, then he…showed me around.”

“Showed you around?” I echoed.

“Around…the library. I left him in the closed stacks—”

“But they’re restricted to everyone but library personnel.”

“Yes, they are. Forbidden spaces—that’s the whole point. Infiltration. Incursion. Criminal trespass. It’s a kick. I’ve been everywhere. Kayaking storm drains in Minneapolis. Picnicking in a Bronx subway tunnel. Wandering through Paris catacombs—”

“But that’s—”

“Illegal. I just said, that’s the point. What’s the problem? We don’t do any harm. But if the press gets hold of this…”

“I was going to say—that’s
dangerous
.”

“That, too. I
love
it. And you can get in anywhere if you try. Think about it—windows, manholes, elevator shafts, ventilation ducts.”

“Christ, Sunnye, are you out of your mind?”

“It’s a hobby. And, besides, I learn a lot. I write it off as research expenses.”

Criminal trespass? Incursions? Cheap thrills for rich people.
“So that’s how Kit Danger—”

“Knows how to get around, say, an abandoned industrial site. Deserted factories have a beauty all their own, stark and ruinous.”

“Abandoned factories? Storm drains? You sure don’t like to play it safe, do you?”

She laughed. “You got it.”

“And that’s how you came to know Elwood Munro? Through this…hobby?”

“The guy’s a master. He’s got…he
had
…more balls.… One time he got into a closed tunnel in Grand Central Station by crawling down an active elevator shaft.” She shook her head. “I just can’t believe he’s gone.”

“Hmm.”
Balls
. I thought about all those stolen books—and all the risks he must have taken in heisting them. Elevator shafts? Hmm.

“That’s why I couldn’t believe he was infiltrating something as tame as a library. What for?”

“Books.” I was starting to put two and two together: A secure library. A master infiltrator. Ventilation ducts. Elevator shafts.

Stolen books.

“Like I said, I left Elly in the closed stacks and came back up to the reception. He was fine, but he didn’t have any
books
. He said he was just going to…to poke around a little more.”

Poke around. Trespass. Break and enter. Steal books.

Fun and games.

“Sunnye, how well did you know Elwood Munro?” An early skunk waddled across the road. I slowed to give him plenty of space.

“Not what you’d call
well
. It’s not as if we were friends, or anything. He was simply an…associate in…extra-curricular adventure. And a damn good one, too.”

I weighed telling the novelist about Munro’s
extra
-extra-curricular adventures, but was overcome by a sudden attack of discretion. Elwood Munro stole books. Sunnye Hardcastle collected books. Was it possible their association had something more to it than mere
adventure
?

***

It was after ten when we turned into my driveway, and dark in the way it gets in the deep country, thick and plush like black velvet. I braked at the kitchen door. At the sight of my little house, warm and safe, I felt the final dregs of the day’s energy evaporate. Home at last. “God, I’m beat,” I said, extracting the keys from the ignition.

“Me, too,” my companion replied. For a change the glamorous Sunnye Hardcastle looked every bit her fifty-some-odd years. Confrontation with Peggy’s angry stepfather. Escape from the jackal press. News of a friend’s murder. And, to top it all off, dinner with Women’s Studies faculty. Kit Danger had had a stressful day.

“I’ll make a pot of chamomile,” I said. “You call the police. Then we’ll turn in. You can have my daughter Amanda’s room. You’ll be safe. Those reporters will never think to look for you here.” I switched off the headlights and opened the door.

An intensely bright light flared, trained on the car. I squinted and raised my arm to shade my eyes. Sunnye blurted out, “What the hell?”

“I
thought
you might bring her here,” said Lieutenant Charlie Piotrowski, frowning at me from behind an industrial-strength flashlight. Then he looked over at Sunnye. “Massachusetts State Police, Ms. Hardcastle. We need you to come into headquarters with us. We have a few questions for you.”

Sunnye seemed shocked into silence. The only response was a low growling sound from somewhere deep inside the car. Charlie swept his light into the back seat of the Subaru just as Trouble reared his ugly head.

***

The following morning Charlie and I met for breakfast at the Blue Dolphin Diner. He’d spent the night interviewing Sunnye Hardcastle. After the sharp words we’d exchanged as his officers had loaded Sunnye and her dog into a patrol car, I wasn’t at all certain he’d ever again spend the night with me.

Charlie was on his way to some official function, wearing full-dress uniform. When I saw him waiting for me in a back booth, I was unexpectedly thrown off balance by the authority of the man: insignias, medals, gun belt, gun. All right, so I knew just exactly what lay underneath that dark blue wool; nonetheless, in uniform, at six-foot-three and close to two hundred and fifty pounds, Lieutenant Charlie Piotrowski of the Massachusetts State Police Department of Criminal Investigation, Homicide Division, was all cop. Intimidating as hell.

I slid in across from him and attacked before I lost my nerve. “I’m really angry at you.”

“I could tell.” He smoothed out the
Globe
he’d been reading and folded it. “I’m pissed at you myself. Like I said last night, you had no business aiding and abetting a homicide suspect, especially after I explicitly told you to stay away from the investigation.”

“You think I’ve forgotten that?” I looked him straight in the eye. “What I want to know is, where the hell do you get off
telling
me anything?”

He hesitated, gave me a sober look. Then he reached across the table and took both of my hands in his. “Let’s not do this, Karen. I don’t want to screw up what we—”

But I was in full spate. “You explicitly told me not to have dinner with a distinguished conference guest? You explicitly told me not to help a celebrated author escape persecution by the press?” A waitress approached, coffee pot in one hand, orange-banded decaf pot in the other. Hearing the tone of my voice, she halted. I pulled my hands away, and snatched up a menu. “Cheddar omelet and sausage,” I informed her, without opening it. “Rye toast. Marmalade, if you have it.”