An Educated Death (34 page)

"You knew we were there?"

"I didn't hear you come in," he said, "but I have sort of a sixth sense for when I'm being watched. I felt you out there. Who's this?" He pointed at Hennessey. "Your bodyguard?"

"That's right," I said, introducing Hennessey. "Don't you think I need one?"

"I'm beginning to think I need one, too. Donahue is pretty mad at me."

"You were pretty hard on him. Are you two usually like this?"

"Bill's okay most of the time. Big, affable Boy Scout type. It's this reproduction thing. The frantic pursuit of that mystical union between egg and sperm has made both of them nutty as fruitcakes. Kathy spends half her time weeping or reclining like an invalid and Bill's touchy as hell. They used to be sort of a fun couple before they became obsessed with ovulation. Their egg, their temperature, their sperm. I will spare you the clinical details but believe me, I've heard them. I know more about what can go wrong with the human reproductive system than a biologist." He shook his head sadly.

"Pardon me for saying this, but it's gotten so bad, and I've heard so much, that sometimes I go to take a leak and I stare down at the thing in my hand and I say, 'Well, John Thomas, what nasty little secrets are you harboring?' Look, you two want to sit down? There are chairs over here." He led us to some battered folding chairs, dropping into one and waiting for us to join him. I didn't mind sitting. I was having a little trouble focusing anyway. Visions of big, soft beds kept getting in the way. He crossed his legs and smiled, his good humor apparently intact despite what had seemed to me a dangerously provocative encounter. But I'd forgotten. Being provocative was his style. "Now," he said, "what can I do for you?"

"Yesterday when we were talking I asked if you knew where Laney went on Columbus Day weekend. We talked a lot about where she didn't go, but it was only after you'd left that I realized you never answered me when I asked if you knew where she did go. Do you?"

"I was hoping you'd miss that."

"Why?" Hennessey and I said together.

"What are you two, Siamese twins?" he said.

"Why?" I repeated.

"Because it was supposed to be a secret and I hate to tell secrets."

Like hell. He just liked to get the most mileage possible out of each revelation. It was more fun that way. "Where did she go?"

"You won't give up until I tell you, will you?" I shook my head. "Okay. She went to a country inn with a man."

"What inn?" I said.

"What man?" Hennessey said.

Hamlin just shrugged. "She didn't tell me. I don't think she knew. I mean I don't think she knew what inn it was. I'm sure she knew who the man was, but all she'd tell me was that he was someone she'd met here on the campus and everyone would be very upset if they knew what she was up to. She was very excited about her illicit little enterprise, but not so excited she lost her discretion. She said if people knew they'd gone away together, the man could get into a lot of trouble and would probably lose his job. She hinted that he'd been in trouble before."

"Was she in love with this man?" I said.

"Maybe, but I don't think so. I think she just got off on the fact that it was forbidden. That was the way she was. Laney loved breaking rules."

"I'm surprised she decided to have an abortion, then. Having out-of-wedlock babies is a good way to break the rules. And it sure is something parents can't control," I said.

Hamlin shook his head vehemently. "Laney wasn't a fool, Ms. Kozak. And she wasn't the type to cut off her nose to spite her face. She had no interest in doing something which would mess up her plans for the future. According to Josh, she was very angry when she discovered she was pregnant. He says she swore she would make the man pay." He shifted restlessly in his chair. This conversation wasn't exciting enough to hold his interest. "By pay, I think she meant literally, as in cough up the money for the abortion, not that she meant to get some kind of revenge. But who knows? She could be pretty mean sometimes. Really, I wish I could help you more but that's all I know. And I do have a lot of work...."

He trailed off hopefully, set his folded hands on his thighs like a good little boy, and sat watching us, the signal that his performance was done and it was time for us to leave. Except his audience wasn't finished.

"She never said anything that gave you an idea of the man's identity?"

"No. Never. And I was very curious, too. I tried to get her to tell me but she knew I wanted to know and that made keeping it from me all the more fun." He cocked his head sideways and grinned at us in a way that must have been adorable when he was younger, and now verged on pathetic, showing, as it did, the wrinkles on his neck and the loosening skin at the jawline. Peter Pan in his forties. "She did say something once, just to tease me."

"Which was?"

"She looked up at the sky one day and said it was just the color of his eyes. And that is absolutely all I can tell you." This time he stood up and ushered us to the door. "Do you think you can find your own way out?"

"Easily," I said, "we left a trail of crumbs."

"Then you should be fine, unless the rodents have eaten them. You certainly don't have to worry about maintenance cleaning them up. Sawyer's people all believe it's someone else's job." Hennessey held the door for me again, making me think he must have had a very nice mother to have learned such good manners, unless it was only that I was looking as feeble as I felt and he was afraid I'd collapse before his tour of duty ended, getting him into trouble with the irascible Rocky. Whatever the reason for it, I was grateful for the strong arm that helped me up the stairs and guided me back across the campus. Normally I might have bristled at the implication that I couldn't take care of myself, but not today. Today I understood all too clearly the meaning of the expression "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

He delivered me not to my office but to Dorrie's, where we found Dorrie and Rocky, Curt Sawyer, and another uniformed officer I hadn't met, standing around staring into a green plastic trash bag. Rocky greeted me with his characteristic friendliness. "How the hell did
you
know about this?"

"I don't even know what 'this' is, Rocky, but you can assume it's because I'm such a good detective." He really brought out the brat in me. "Have you found Carol?" I teetered past them and dumped myself onto the couch, curling into a ball as I watched the others with tired eyes. I felt like sucking my thumb, but as my mother told me often, big girls don't, so I supposed that big women, or cows, as Bill Donahue had called me, don't either. I noticed that Rocky was wearing latex gloves, giving his hands a pale white, eerie look, like they were swathed in condoms, as he plunged them into the bag and held up a dripping purple duffel.

"We found it in the pond," he said.

Maybe it was because things had been going so wrong, but to have one thing go right made me feel very happy. Officer Hennessey was beaming at me as though I were his own personal discovery, and even Dorrie seemed excited. "Probably nothing in here that's useful," Rocky said. "But we'll see what the lab turns up."

"There has to be!" I insisted.

He lowered the duffel back into the trash bag and started to close off the top. "Hey, wait a minute," Dorrie said. "You mean you're not even going to look inside?"

"We'll inventory the stuff back at the station and then send whatever's appropriate on to the lab—"

"No way," Dorrie said. I was so surprised I sat up. "No way," she repeated, "that bag isn't leaving this office until I know what's in it." She planted her hands on her hips and gave him a hard, level stare. I'd seen tougher men than Rocky quail before it—I'd seen CEOs of multimillion-dollar corporations lower their eyes and say "Yes, ma'am" like chastened schoolboys.

"For Christ's sake, Dorrie!" he exploded. "Will you just for once let me do my job?"

"If it weren't for Thea, you wouldn't have found it. Now let us see."

It sounded childish but I understood the impulse. It felt like it was 'our' find and we were all entitled to know.

Rocky puffed up his cheeks and let the air out slowly. His face was terribly red. "It's against procedure. I should be letting the lab do this," he said, "but I suppose there's no harm in taking a peek before we turn it over to them." He removed the duffel again, unzipped it, and spread out the contents on the trash bag. The officer, whose name tag said Liam Nance, made of list of the items as they appeared. It was not an exciting collection. A change of clothes, heavy sweater, toiletries, nightgown, a package of sanitary pads, a music player, some sodden cigarettes and matches, and a copy of
Moby Dick.
Laney Taggert had packed lightly for her final journey.

I don't know what I was expecting, but I was disappointed. I laid my head on the arm of the couch. My eyelids were slowly sliding down when Rocky suddenly turned to me and shot out one of his loud questions. "Okay, detective. What did you learn this morning, anyway? Anything to make the day worthwhile?"

"Not much," I muttered. "Kathy and Bill Donahue were upset with Laney because they are having fertility problems and they wanted her baby. They tried to talk her out of getting an abortion and apparently were so furious with her when she wouldn't change her plans that they refused to have anything more to do with her. I don't know if goes any farther than that—"

I would have gone on, but Rocky had turned on Dorrie. "Did you know anything about this?"

She had the grace to look embarrassed. She should have. If she knew about their troubles and hadn't kept an eye on the situation then she'd deliberately abandoned Laney Taggert to their less than tender ministrations. She nodded. "I knew they were seeing a fertility specialist. I'm ashamed to say I didn't realize it had become such an obsession that it affected their performance. But I should have been told. That's why we have Rita and Warren. I've been concentrating on admissions and fund-raising and the financial morass that Wingate left me. But I have no excuse, really...."

She picked up the phone. "Lori? Is Dave still around? Good. Can you send him in, please."

"Okay," Rocky said, "we're looking into that. What else?"

"There was an older man she was involved with. Someone here on the campus. She spent Columbus Day weekend with him at some country inn. And Russ Hamlin says the man had blue eyes."

"Well, that certainly narrows the field, doesn't it? All we have to do is investigate the whereabouts of every blue-eyed man on the faculty and staff and every country inn in New England. Or maybe New England and New York? Canada? Why the heck did the girl have to be so secretive? Why couldn't she have left us a diary or confided in a friend?"

"Because she didn't want us to know! And because she didn't have many friends. Her best friends were Merri Naigler and Josh Meyer. And Merri had her eyes on Josh," I said. "Laney Taggert wasn't an outgoing, confiding sort of person. She'd spent her life evading her controlling mother. She'd learned to be deceptive. Not many people keep diaries anyway, Rocky. If Laney had kept a diary, her mother would have read it." In the center of the room, Laney's sodden belongings were accumulating little pools of water.

"All right, smarty-pants," Rocky said, "so how would you find out where she went?"

"Was that supposed to be a compliment? You've finally noticed that I'm smart? Or have you noticed my pants?"

"Okay, Okay. I know you're smart," he said, grudgingly.

I snuggled deeper into the soft velour of the couch. I did want to be helpful, even to someone rude enough to call me smarty-pants—this business was bringing out the childishness in everyone—but I was terribly tired. I needed a little rest before I went back to work. "Talk to Merri again," I suggested. "Or Genny. Or that other friend I was supposed to see yesterday... I forget her name... something like a Russian gymnast... that's it... Nadia something. Go through her things again. See if you can find a business card, matchbook, shampoo or soap or stationery, anything to identify the inn."

I let myself drift away, let the hum of their voices become just a background. I was only dimly aware that Rocky had gone back to the pile and was looking at things again. "Matchbook," he said, picking it up and examining it. "Right. Here it is folks, the clue we've been looking for. New England Tractor Trailer School."

"Jerk," I whispered.

He picked up the soggy copy of
Moby Dick
and tried to thumb through it, muttering a running commentary to himself as he did so. "Goddamned thing's like a sponge. What's this? Sales slip for toothpaste. Dentist appointment. Maybe her dentist has blue eyes? This book is a frigging filing cabinet. Index card. Shopping list. A note from someone. Wait. Wait!" The second "wait" was loud enough to wake the dead, or at least, to wake me.

"Keep it down over there," I said. "Some of us are trying to sleep."

"Not anymore you're not," he said, waving a soggy piece of paper around, "we've got work to do."

"Let George do it," I said, closing my eyes again.

"I don't know who the hell George is," Rocky said, "but here's the name of the inn. It's called the Monadnock Valley House and it's in Oxton."

I knew I ought to be excited. It was a big break for us, but hot on the heels of the discovery my mind started generating a list of questions as long as my arm. Questions I was too sleepy to ask. "Wake me in an hour," I said.

The last thing I heard before I exited through the soft, dark doors of sleep was Rocky's querulous voice. "Can you believe this? How can she go to sleep at a time like this?" I didn't bother to wake up and tell him that sleep was one of the things I do best.

 

 

 

Chapter 18