The Devil Makes Three (10 page)

Deciding I could wait to find out more, I followed his lead. “You could have picked a different subject though. I mean, criminology? How fraught with drama is that?”

“I suppose it felt macho at the time. Besides, I didn’t want to let my brother one-up me. He’d already done enough of that. And then there’s always the obligatory need for the youngest sibling to prove himself.”

“Oh? I’m not familiar with that need.”

We sat quietly for a moment, me wondering if he had been included or left out of the other brothers’ relationship. “At least you have other siblings,” I said. “Being the only living child sucks.”

“You lost a sibling?”

“My twin sister was killed when we were eight.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said after a moment. “That must have been quite difficult for you.”

I figured the conversation was over since we’d reached the subject of Maren. At least, it wasn’t anything I wanted to discuss. Standing up, I motioned to my paper still on his desk. “So I’ll come by after class and get your suggestions tomorrow.”

He nodded, somewhat thrown by my change of topic, but understanding enough not to press the issue. “Tomorrow it is.”

Leaving his office, I walked quickly, down the stairs and out into the fading light of winter.

#

I walked into the funeral home that night and set my school bag down on the desk, then collapsed onto the couch. Resting my head back against the cushions, I listened to the sounds of the building, long since settled on its foundation, and now simply creaking in response to the monotony of its existence.

“Gretchen? Are you sleeping?”

“No. Not at all.” I sighed and raised my head, eyeing my mother. She was a thin, frail woman, practically destroyed by the death of her favorite child. To this day it was evident by the pain in her eyes, every time she looked at me.

“Your father and I were wondering how things were going in your apartment.”

“Fine, why?”

She shrugged and shifted her weight on her feet nervously. “You just never say anything about it. You’ve never invited us over.”

“I’m never there, except to sleep.”

“That’s fine. I just thought it might be nice to see it sometime. It’s been over a year, after all.”

Why were people so interested in my apartment suddenly? First Corbin, and now my mother. Couldn’t they just leave me alone? Couldn’t I just have one place that was mine?

I narrowed my eyes and fidgeted with a pillow, the emotional intensity of the day making me grouchy. “Did your therapist put you up to this?”

Her eyes widened and her lips trembled. “What? How… why… Is it so wrong to want to connect with my daughter on some level? I’m concerned about you. You never do anything but work and go to school. You have no life. You have no friends and no dates. For all I know you’re living like a hermit. You have furniture, right? You’re not sleeping on the floor? I just want to know that my daughter gets taken care of. Is that so wrong?”

I sighed and laid my head back on the couch. “No. It’s not wrong at all.” Unless you’re simply trying to appease your guilty conscience for not giving me the time of day for 10 of the last 14 years, I thought.

#

Having gotten rid of my mother by passing her off to my father, I glanced at the clock. I had three hours to kill before it was safe to venture out into the cemetery. None of my homework appealed to me. I was pretty much caught up in my reading and had no impending tests. Instead, I decided to do a little research. Pulling out my computer I logged onto the Internet and Googled ‘Collin Cade’, since he seemed the most legitimate personality.

Nothing happened.

An obnoxious screen came up informing me that the page requested could not be displayed. Refreshing the screen did no good either. Closing out, I logged on once more, and the entire screen went an ominous shade of black.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked the machine, picking it up and shaking it, as if it would help.

It didn’t.

In frustration I shut down and restarted the computer. Nothing came back up.

My entire educational life flashed before my eyes. All my notes were on the hard drive. All my papers and all my study guides.

After about twenty minutes of futile tampering with my laptop, I tossed it aside on the couch and did some deep breathing exercises. It didn’t help much, other than clearing my vision that had darkened from a lack of oxygen. I was still royally pissed off and panicked.

Once my hands settled from their trembling rage I made my way over to the office PC. Logging onto the Internet I pulled up Google, but my heart was no longer in my task. After about twenty minutes of half-assed searching I had only found out slightly more than I had already known. He had graduated from the University of Texas then moved to UNLY. Inexplicably, he had come to Jamestown University after teaching there for only a year.

Shutting down the computer, I resolved to find out more later. The sudden departure from UNLY wreaked havoc with my imagination and I had to get up and move around or go nuts on the Internet, searching for an answer it probably didn’t have.

Why had he left? Had he not liked the school? The program? Or had the departure resulted from more personal issues? Personal issues that irresponsibly involved students?

With a vengeance I made my way out into the graveyard, anxious to work off a little energy. I made my usual rounds around the perimeter, making sure all was safe and abandoned, then scouted out the freshly covered graves. Tonight I intended to collect a watch and tie.

Pulling out the backhoe, I went through the motions of uncovering the grave and lifting the vault lid. Jumping down into the grave, I lifted the casket door quickly, raising my head just a bit too fast and smacking the back of it on the bottom of the 1,000 pound cement vault, hovering just above me. With a yelp, I dropped the casket lid with a loud crash and rubbed my head. Glancing up, I found the vault lid staunchly hanging in place. I had hit the lid hard enough to give myself an instantaneous goose egg, but hadn’t even budged it. With a grimace, I considered what would happen if one day the reinforced strap, holding it up, broke. Not only would I get flattened like a piece of paper, but my secret would leak out, like so much blood. At least I would be dead, rather than caught, I thought. 

Shaking off my injury, I seized the casket lid once more and pulled it open, this time careful to keep my head down. Glancing at the body, I muffled a scream and slammed the lid down, not caring about the noise.

Dazed and confused, I considered what had happened. Possibly, I’d received a concussion from the head injury. Last time I had seen Mr. Bennett was at the viewing the night before where he had worn a respectable suit, a gold watch and a designer tie. Deciding the watch and tie worth the possible disgust, I took a chance and opened the casket once more.

Nope. He was naked. I slammed the lid down and scrambled out of the grave, feeling not only guilty, but dirty. Robbing people in their coffin was one thing. Peering at them in the all-together was quite another. I certainly wouldn’t want someone busting in on me when I was nude. Having Corbin in my apartment while I slept was quite enough.

“Sorry.” I apologized pointlessly and climbed back into the backhoe, reversing my intrusion as quickly as I could. “My mistake.”

When I got back to the funeral home office, I dug around in the file cabinet, pulling out Mr. Bennett’s funeral plans. At the bottom a hand written note took up the margin, specifying that the deceased wanted interment in the nude. I also noticed that the billing address was a skin farm up in the eastern mountains. Well, I thought, he’s the first nudist I’ve ever met, and hopefully the last.

Chapter 10

In which Professor Cade feels uncomfortable.

The next morning I went to the mall as soon as it opened, forgoing sleep for a quick solution to my laptop issue. I still had visions of naked Mr. Bennett in my head anyway. The last thing I wanted was for the memory to transfer itself into my dreams. I really didn’t want to see a Martins-Bennett amalgam in my REM cycle.

Katie was on shift at PJ’s PCs, much as I had expected.

“Hey!” I walked up to the check-out counter where she stuffed money in the drawer.

“Hi. What’s up?”

“My computer broke!” I said, dropping it on the counter.

She looked at it hesitantly and narrowed her eyes. “What did you do to it?”

“I didn’t do anything to it!”

Shutting the cash drawer she picked up the laptop and looked it over. “It doesn’t look like it got dropped or anything.”

“It hasn’t.” Quickly I described what it did and she nodded. “Sounds like trouble with the hard drive. I’ll see what I can do. Do you still have your old model?”

“Yeah, but all my homework and stuff got saved on here.”

“Don’t you back it up?”

“Back it up?!”

She frowned and shook her head. “Relax. I’ll see what I can extract from the hard drive. But you need to start backing up your work.”

“Fine. Whatever. How long will it take?”

“Give me your number. I’ll call you once I’ve got something. And write down your email address. I’ll see if I can send you whatever I pull off the hard drive.”

I gave her my information and slunk out of the store. With irritation I wandered the mall, too worked up to go home and go to bed. I walked the stores for an hour or so, finding nothing of interest, then came out of the mall. The sky had turned a wretched shade of gray and a layer of fog surrounded everything.

Jamestown was a large city by my standards, but only a medium sized metropolis in comparison to the other cities in the nation. Situated in the valley between two mountain chains, it didn’t have the best weather in comparison to places like Arizona and California, but it wasn’t as bad as others, like Wisconsin. The worst part about it was the complete lack of predictability to the weather.

So far this winter we’d had little other than rainfall by way of moisture. Yet stepping out to the bus stop I could feel the temperature drop and knew the fog would soon turn to ice upon the roads. By the time I got to class it had started to snow. Sighing, I watched the pretty white flakes hit the ground and knew this meant a halt to my extracurricular financial activities, at least as far as the cemetery was involved. Snow simply had ways of collecting too much evidence.

It didn’t matter much though. Not like it had in years before. Now with the occasional job Corbin threw my way I made more than I ever had auctioning off the ill-gotten booty. I just had to keep up the delivery jobs and get rid of the few items of jewelry I had left and I’d be fine even if it snowed for the rest of the season.

#

My phone rang in between classes and I flipped it open, torn as usual when I saw that it was Corbin. “How do you know when to call me?” I asked, the question having crossed my mind on more than one occasion.

“I checked out your schedule.”

I stopped walking and braced myself against an exterior light pole, preparing myself for an explanation. “What?”

“On the university website.”

“I know where it is. How did you get in?” I asked, my tone becoming heated. “It’s only accessible to me.”

“No it’s not. It’s accessible to anyone with your student number and password. By the way, you really shouldn’t write those things down. Especially not all in one place. Anyone breaking into your apartment could find them.”

I did some heavy breathing, willing my heart rate back to normal. It didn’t work very well.

“Temptress?”

“Shut up. I’m trying to repress a very violent urge.”

“Repress fast. I’ve got a job for you and I realize it’s at the last minute, but you’re the only one available.”

“I’m not available. I’ve got class.”

“You can do it after class.”

I grimaced. “Why don’t you just do it yourself?”

“I would, but I’m out of town. I’ll get in later this evening, but I can’t just leave it sitting there that long.”

“Have you seen the weather lately?” I glanced at the surrounding mist and fat flakes falling like confetti. “No plane will land in this fog and snow.”

“I’m driving. I don’t take planes unless I have to. You can’t take a gun on a plane.”

“You’re driving? The roads must be like ice!”

“Hence the reason I’d prefer to end this phone call as quickly as possible. Please. It’s very important. And don’t forget those fantastic photos I have of you and your midnight financial escapades.”

“Oh fine. Where is it?”

“It’s close. I made them take it to you, practically. There’s an old frat house on the edge of campus that’s in disuse at the moment. It’s on the corner of Frankston and Kneel. Do you know where that is?”

“Yeah. It’s near my bus stop.”

“Good. Stop on your way to catch the bus and you’ll find it under the front step. It’s wrapped in a plastic bag so it won’t get wet.”

“When will you come by to get it?”

“You don’t work tonight, right?”

“Correct.”

“Then I’ll stop by your apartment sometime.”

“Will you be using the doorbell like the rest of humanity, or do you intend to simply ooze in under the door?”

“Wait and see.”

Snapping the phone closed I glared at it and thrust it back into my pocket. As appealing as the growing savings account was, I still felt an odd sense of foreboding every time an envelope was in my possession.

Class ran about ten minutes over, setting me loose at 5:10. Deciding it best to collect the envelope first I hurried out into the snowy campus to the old frat house before I went to see Professor Collin.

The frat house was not in disuse as Corbin had said, but I felt certain he knew that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have worried about his little envelope getting found. The frat house just wasn’t officially open. Somehow, someone had gotten hold of keys and it became a sort of unofficial commons for the campus elite. This made it a perfect spot to drop an envelope since many people came and went and no one would notice me particularly, even if it was being watched.

I cleared a spot for myself on the snowy steps and glanced around, wondering what sort of alibi I could give myself in this weather. Lacking anything better to do, I asked a passing student for a cigarette and got what I wanted.