An Educated Death (29 page)

"I'm fine," he said. "Hungry, though. Once we get you out of here we are heading straight for the nearest diner and I am going to eat two lumberjack specials."

"This isn't exactly diner territory, Lemieux. If the houses and cars are any indication, around here they go for presentation rather than substance. Besides, you'll get fat."

"And then you won't love me?"

"And then you'll break the bed. I'll always love you, thick or thin. Anyway, I can't go anywhere until I've had a shower. And I don't have any clothes."

"Break the bed, huh? Now, there's a challenge. Once you're back on your feet that's exactly what we'll do."

"We're going to break the bed standing up?"

He nodded approvingly. "You bet. Meanwhile, I can help you with the shower," he said, leering and twirling an imaginary mustache.

"Fine. First I have to get rid of this." I held out my hand, which was still attached to tubes and bottles. I rang for the nurse, who came, protested briefly, and finally liberated my hand. I also persuaded her to give me another one of the detestable johnnys to wear like a robe so I didn't have to do the clutch and shuffle if I wanted to get out of bed. Some hospitals—and I spoke from a wealth of experience—even gave out robes these days.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, gathering strength for the long trek across the room, when Rocky burst on the scene, shouting as usual. "Now they've broken into your car," he said. "Right there at the police station. Makes me look like an idiot. What did you have in there that someone might have wanted to steal?"

A word popped into my head. Bombastic. That was it. It wasn't that Rocky was perpetually angry, he just had a bombastic style. "My briefcase, I suppose. I hope you have it?"

"Of course I have it. Who's this?"

"My personal bodyguard. Detective Andre Lemieux, this is Sedgwick Police Chief Rocky Miller."

Andre grabbed Rocky's hand and pumped it. "Thanks for calling me, Chief. She's a handful but I'd hate to lose her." Over Rocky's shoulder he made a face at me. Andre knows exactly how I feel about references that fall into the "little woman" or "my girl" category. He was doing it on purpose. He says I'm cute when I have steam coming out my ears. I'm like the woman in
Bull Durham.
I think cute is for baby ducks and kittens, not grown women.

It was clear that I wasn't going to get my shower for a while so I got back under the covers and waited while they went through the rituals of male bonding. It was worse in this case, of course, because they also had to do "cop bonding." These guys have a real affinity for each other. They'll even tolerate a complete asshole if he's a fellow cop. Or so I claim. Andre says I'm wrong but the evidence is all on my side.

When they'd gone through an appropriate amount of ritual, Rocky turned his attention back to me. "So, Thea, how are you feeling?"

"Like I've been worked over with a rubber hose. The doctor said it was something called water hemlock? Then she lectured me on being careless with wild plants as if I'd gone crawling through some swamp to find the thing and then eaten it voluntarily." I don't suffer fools gladly and my time in hospital emergency rooms has caused me to relegate most doctors to that category. They tended to treat me like a steak, which offends my dignity, even though today I did feel a little bit like a Swiss steak after it's been pounded.

"Laura?" he said. "She didn't mean anything by it. She's just not a very happy person."

"I gathered. Did you find Carol Frank?"

He shook his head. "She never came home."

Just a few words and I was dumped off the raft of happiness I shared with Andre and back into the murky world of Bucksport's problems. I felt like someone had dumped ice water on me. I knew, with a certainty I couldn't explain, that he never would find her. Not alive, anyway. "And she isn't coming home, either," I said. "She's dead. Because she came to talk to me."

"We don't know that," Rocky said.

"I do."

He gave me a funny look. "What did she tell you?"

"We went over it all last night, Chief. She didn't tell me anything new. She was unsure about patient confidentiality, particularly where other living people were also involved. When we got to the part about who Laney might have slept with, other than Josh, she got nervous and thought she ought to consult Bucksport's lawyer again. We were just beginning to negotiate that delicate subject when she was called away to deal with a student emergency. She was supposed to get back to me after I came to see you, but, as you know, I never went back to Bucksport. Did you check on those grounds and buildings employees yet?"

"I've got someone checking this morning. Meanwhile, we need to figure out why someone wanted to kill you. I talked to that guy, Chris Fuller—the one who threatened you—but he was home sick all day yesterday, according to his girlfriend and his mother. A peculiar ménage."

At that point, the cop at the door ushered Dorrie in. She was carefully dressed and made up, as always, but the strain was beginning to show. She looked every year of her age and more. She came straight to me and took my hand. "I'm so sorry, Thea. This is all my fault. I should have let Rocky handle this. It's all falling apart anyway. Maybe if I hadn't tried to keep things quiet none of this would have happened." Her voice shaking, she broke off and stared at Andre. "Detective. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ignore you." They shook hands and she immediately switched her attention back to me. "This is an awful thing to ask, after what you've been through, but can you come out to Bucksport today? If you're well enough, I mean. Peter's coming, and Curt. We need to talk about where to go from here. Rocky and I've been discussing it. We think if you keep on... talking to people... maybe the killer will... oh, God, how can I ask you this?"

She turned on the chief. "Rocky. This is a stupid idea. We can't ask her to come back... to... to put herself in danger again. It's inhuman! I can't believe I listened to you for even a minute, that I even considered asking Thea to risk her life to protect the reputation of a school. This whole business must be affecting my judgment." She hunched forward, burying her head in her hands, the picture of mortification.

"She'll be perfectly safe. I'll have an officer watching her every minute," he said.

"You arrogant bastard!" Andre said. "First you don't want Thea involved because she's just a woman and can't handle it, and now you want to use her as bait? I guess people don't matter to you, is that it? Whatever works to solve the case? Well, you can forget it. There's no way she's setting foot on that campus again. Not if you surround her with an entire army."

"Oh, she can handle it. She told me so. Said she'd probably solved more murders than I have. If she hadn't been so sure of herself, none of this might have happened. If she and Dorrie hadn't been so sure of themselves... if they'd just let me handle it in the first place—"

"You would have swept it under the rug, let that girl's killer walk away, and preened smugly about your low crime rate," Andre said.

It was really a very short leap from macho bonding to bulls in rut, each of them equally certain they knew what was right.

"You thought it was an accident," Dorrie began. "You would have let the killer get away."

"And that would have been the end of it."

"You can't know that," she said.

"If you hadn't brought her in to stir things up, everything would have been fine," he interrupted.

I took a deep breath—a breath that was a painful reminder me of what I'd just been through—and plunged in, cutting her off. "Hold it, all of you! Rocky, you said treating it as an accident would be the end of it. The end of what? A problem for Dorrie? A troublesome investigation for the Bucksport police? What about the victim here? What about Delany Taggert? Doesn't she matter?"

I thought about Laney's father, Jack, his anguished face, the big hunched shoulders, the dejected slump of his body, and heard him tell me that while his daughter hadn't been very likable, it was just a phase she was going through. I heard the love in his voice. Her father had loved her and so, in his own frenetic way, had Josh Meyer. Screwed up and manipulative though she might have been, she shouldn't be discarded like an old tissue. If we in the education business had any basic duty at all, it was to remember that each of our students mattered, and to treat them that way. It was Dorrie's concern about doing things right, about taking all the necessary steps to oversee and protect the students, that had brought me into this in the first place.

I wasn't sure what she wanted, or what she and Rocky meant by using me as bait, but I had enough concerns of my own that I wasn't ready to quit and walk away. Because I knew so much about it. Because I hate it when someone tries to intimidate me and scare me away. Stubbornness is one of my acknowledged character flaws. I saw this as
my
job because I'd begun it. Things were terribly wrong at Bucksport. I needed to finish gathering my data and to have a serious discussion about the results with Dorrie and her staff. Not without a cop at my side, though. I'd learned my lesson.

"No one seems to be thinking about Laney," I repeated.

"Of course we are," Dorrie said with undisguised irritation. "If you leave us, we'll still muddle along on our own and we'll get the thing done. I'm sure we're capable of getting to the bottom of this."

I thought about Bill and Kathy Donahue, still in charge of a dorm full of students, and Dorrie's ignorance of the serious nature and extent of their neglect, including Laney's long unresolved roommate conflict. I thought about Carol Frank's remark regarding Laney's promiscuity and the unaccounted-for weekend, the suggestions, increasingly plausible in light of Carol's reaction, that Laney's secret lover had been someone on the Bucksport faculty, and wondered how diligent Dorrie would be in pursuing the facts. So there was still my job to be done—a job I had by now invested a lot of myself in.

Then there was the other side. Wasn't this only a small piece of my life? Andre didn't want me to go back to a place where I might be unsafe and he'd have to worry. He didn't want to have to go through the agony of seeing me sick or hurt anymore. I looked at him, painfully conscious of his opinion of what I should do, and of the wonderful comfort I'd derived from his presence by my side. He wasn't going to like what I was about to say. I only hoped I could make him understand. "I've got to go back. I can't leave the job half-done. Dorrie needs me."

Andre's expression didn't change, but his eyes were angry. I put a hand on his arm. "You know how it is, Andre. It's the same for you. I can't let someone try to kill me and walk away from it."

He pulled his arm away and held it stiffly by his side. "That's exactly what you should do," he said. "That's what a person with any sense would do. It's time to hand this over to professionals."

We might have been alone in the room for all the difference Rocky and Dorrie made. Our eyes were locked. This wasn't really a conversation about what I was going to do next. It was about the nature of our relationship. About control and respect and giving each other space and supporting each other's work and all the things we struggled with. About the difference between caring and control. About how much space you can give someone else and still get what you need from the relationship.

About not just loving each other but respecting what we each did and understanding the demands it placed on us. What you can give up for love and what you can't.

Twice lately I'd had to live with the heart-stopping fear that he was in danger and risking death because of his job. It had focused my love and my fears very clearly, but it had never occurred to me to suggest he quit and find something safe to do. Being a cop was what he did. Would he give me the same understanding?

I didn't know how he was going to react. At the moment when I needed him most, I was taking a position that might drive him away. He couldn't help feeling protective. He didn't want to lose me, couldn't bear to see me hurt. I'd already put him through a lot of that and now I was asking for more. "If you were in the middle of something and things got rough, you wouldn't walk away. You'd seize it in your teeth like a pit bull and hang on until the thing was solved," I said.

"I'm a cop," he said. "It's my job. It's Rocky's job. Let him do it. Please, Thea..." his voice sank almost to a whisper. "Do you remember what you said when we were in San Francisco? About David. About letting yourself care about someone. About not being able to stand the pain of losing someone again?" He waited until I acknowledged that I remembered. "Well, it goes both ways. This is the third time I've stood by your hospital bed and waited to see if you'd be okay."

"The first time you thought you were waiting to question a careless drunk—"

"Twice, then. Look, this isn't about keeping score. I just can't stand the idea of losing you. I can't go through this. It's not that I want some sweet little stay-at-home woman. I just can't take this... this terrible fear that one of these days I'm going to get a call and find you dead! You're not even a cop. You're a consultant to all these nice private schools. I don't understand how you keep getting into these situations. You want a lot of slack, I'll give you a lot of slack. I don't complain when you work too hard or are away a couple nights a week or fall asleep over dinner. All I'm asking is that when things get too dangerous you back off and let the professionals take over. Is that too much to ask?"

Andre angry is something to behold, and right now he was angrier than I'd ever seen him. His sallow skin was flushed, his eyes narrowed, his mouth a thin, hard line. I was panting from the intensity of my own feeling. Every breath hurt like hell and I was too aware of my stomach threatening to be sick again. I loved this man and I knew that what he was asking was reasonable. I also knew there was no way I could make him understand that this wasn't just a job anymore. It was personal. Someone had tried to kill me. If I was going to let them intimidate me, if I was going to give up and go home and be safe because things had gotten scary, then I might as well just give up and become the sweet little housewife that part of Andre wanted.