Extra Credit (30 page)

Fred was moving toward the back door of the funeral home and out to a balcony that overlooked the river. We followed him and stood, clustered together, under the big yellow-and-white-striped awning that protected the wooden structure. I didn’t think it was fair to ask him at that time either, so we made small talk until Crawford decided that it was acceptable to bring him up to speed on the previous night’s adventures.

Fred raised an eyebrow, his forehead wrinkling like that of a shar-pei. “Really? She threw you in a van and took you to what? Turkey Mountain?” He shook his head. “Did I really hear all of that correctly?”

“Unfortunately, yes, you did,” I said.

“I assume nobody got hurt?”

I did a mental assessment of my physical state. “A little banged up from riding around in the back of a van, but other than that, feeling fine.”

“Where did they find the van?” he asked Crawford.

“Rest stop near the Bear Mountain Bridge.”

Fred closed his eyes and played out some kind of scenario in his head. “She must have been meeting someone. No way to get too far from there, at night, if you don’t have wheels.”

Crawford followed his train of thought. “Or she had another car stashed up there.”

Fred looked over the top of my head, and I turned around to see Max’s face in the glass of the back door. “Gotta go,” he said. “Keep me posted?”

He and Crawford embraced, something I rarely saw them do. “Will do, partner,” Crawford said and then took my hand, leading me down the side steps to the parking lot.

Once we were in the car, he stated what I was thinking. “You haven’t been there for her, at least not enough to satisfy her.” I started to protest but knew that it was a waste of breath. No matter what I felt, she was hurt, and like Kevin had said, it was up to me and only me to make sure that the situation was rectified.

He turned on the car, but we couldn’t go anywhere; the windshield was completely fogged up and opaque. “I know I’ve asked you this a million times, but why do you think you can get to the truth when no one else can?”

He
had
asked me a million times, but I still didn’t have a good answer. “Maybe because I was deluded so long by Ray that I want to make sure I always know what’s right? What’s true?”

“Or maybe you’re just nosy?” he asked, smiling.

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe you read too many Nancy Drew novels and think that the amateurs are smarter than the detectives?”

“Maybe.”

A small clear patch began to form on the windshield, starting at the bottom and slowly rising to the top. As it did, Crawford continued to put forth theories, some sort of on the money, others ridiculous. “Maybe you’re bored with teaching?”

“Most definitely.”

“Maybe you thought that when you married me life would be one constant episode of
McMillan & Wife
?” he asked, referencing a show from our youth in which Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James were married and solved crimes together.

“More like
Hart to Hart
,” I said. “You’re definitely more Robert Wagner than Rock Hudson.”

“Good point,” he said. The windshield was almost clear. “Leave it alone, Alison. Please. For everyone’s sake.”

I was tired, hungry, and very, very sad. I felt tears welling up but wouldn’t let them spring forth. “I will.” If spending time investigating things even tangentially related to me impacted my relationships this much, it would be wise to leave things alone. It was time to subvert my longing for excitement and answers and all things related to amateur sleuthing and go back to the life that I had, the one that was sort of boring but suited me—and him—to a tee. The life in which strippers took off your wallpaper and murders only took place during prime time on your favorite TV shows.

We were just about to put the car into
DRIVE
when his phone trilled. I waited while he listened, using few words to respond to the caller on the other end.

“When?” he asked. “Where?” He snapped his phone shut and put it back in his pocket. “Forget everything I just said. Change of plans.”

“What happened?”

“Sassy Du Pris was found at the bottom of a ravine by the Bear Mountain Bridge.”

I waited, knowing what was coming next.

“She’s dead.”

Thirty-Nine

See, this is why I don’t hike: You never know what you’re going to find on some densely wooded, deserted path. One day it might be an antique Indian arrowhead and the next a dead stripper. You just never know.

My plan to stay indoors and not venture out unless absolutely necessary was starting to look better and better.

The call had come from MacGyver, who figured we would want to know about Sassy’s untimely passing given the events of the night before. We were not far from the scene of the crime, as they say, so instead of going to get a slice of pizza before returning home, something we had planned originally, we headed north about twenty minutes and pulled into the very same rest stop where Sassy Du Pris had left the van, disappearing into the night without a trace. It was hard to know, given her straight trajectory down from the rock wall at the edge of the rest stop, whether she had jumped, fallen, or been pushed, but what was certain was that she had fallen a great distance, hitting rocks and tree branches on the way down, and had died almost instantly from her injuries.

You know you have been nosing around too much when you have a personal relationship with the medical examiner for the county. Mac McVeigh stood by the rock wall, looking over the edge, waiting for the crew that was transporting Sassy’s body back up the hill so that he could do what he needed to do to get her logged in and on her way to the ME’s office down county. He didn’t look terribly busy, standing and waiting, so I called out to him.

“Alison?” he said. “Now, what in God’s name is your connection to the deceased? Or were you and the husband out for a moonlit stroll?”

“Mac, you know me better than that. I don’t stroll in the moonlight if I can help it.” I peered over the side of the wall, where I spied a bunch of rescue workers struggling mightily with the stretcher that would carry Sassy up to the rest stop. If it weren’t such a macabre scene, I could have enjoyed the beauty of the night. The rain had stopped, and in its place was a hazy fog that danced along the teeny whitecaps of the Hudson.

Mac read my thoughts. “Gorgeous night. Just wish there wasn’t a dead body to keep us company in it.”

Crawford was talking with a couple of the responding county cops, listening intently. He walked over to me and filled me in on what I already knew, which was about the same as what the cops knew. “Hiya, Mac,” he said, shaking the ME’s gloved hand. “What are we thinking?”

“Hard to tell,” Mac said. “I’ll know more, obviously, when we get her to the morgue. Poor thing. It’s wet and cold. I hope she hasn’t been down there too long.”

Crawford filled him in on the timeline from the night before. Mac looked at me, his pale blue eyes wide. “Kidnapped? Alison, how do you get yourself into these situations?”

I smiled sadly. “That’s the question Crawford and I have been asking ourselves repeatedly over the past few hours. I’m afraid we don’t have an answer.”

Mac put a protective arm around me. “Someone needs to be your personal bodyguard.”

“Are you volunteering for the job?” I asked.

He laughed. “With bodies stacked up for me like pancakes at IHOP? Hardly.”

After much struggle, the rescue workers were able to get Sassy’s body up the hill and onto the pavement. Crawford asked me to wait in the car.

“Why?” I asked, but as I saw Mac start to unzip the body bag, the temporary klieg lights illuminating everything as if we were in an operating room and not on the top of a mountain at night, I had my answer. I dutifully walked back to the car and got in, facing away from the action, staring at the beautiful Bear Mountain Bridge in the distance, twinkling merrily on a night where death had taken center stage.

Forty

Another day, another round of research on Sans-a-Flush.

I know I had promised Crawford I wouldn’t do any more sleuthing but after seeing Sassy Du Pris’s dead body being hoisted up a hill, I just couldn’t resist taking one last peek into the world of porta-potties that my search engine could provide. Driving to work, I had heard an advertisement on my local sports radio station (a leftover preset from when Crawford had last used the car) about a company that will go through everything related to your identity or place of business and push down negative links that might impact your sales or revenue or anyone’s general impression of you as a person or company. I scrolled through a few pages and hundreds of links before I hit the jackpot.

Right there, in black and white, was news of Sans-a-Flush’s bankruptcy filing, a standard Chapter 11, back in 2003, less than two years after Chick’s departure. Seems like the company had gone down the tubes and fast after Chick had hightailed it out of New York for parts unknown. I wondered if the two events were related and if even a Chapter 11 filing meant anything beyond just bad money management by the extended Du Pris family, the ones who actually ran the business. Since I didn’t know anything about filing for bankruptcy, thankfully, I shot an e-mail to the director of the Business Department, Glen McConnon, who knew a little about a lot of things, making him the perfect go-to guy for this kind of question. I didn’t need to know the particulars of a bankruptcy filing, or at least I didn’t think I did, and I figured he’d be the best person to start with anyway, bankruptcy lawyers being in short supply here at St. Thomas.

I hit send and sat back, hoping that his response would come sooner rather than later. I also hoped that a scurrilous rumor about my finances—specifically a Chapter 11 filing—didn’t circulate around campus. Why else, in Glen’s mind anyway, would one need to know about bankruptcy? Too late. The message sent, I figured I would deal with that later.

I also sent Tim a message, thinking that as a hedge fund manager, and one with more than a passing acquaintance with the Stepkowskis and Du Pris families, he might have some information. Moments after I hit
SEND
I got an undeliverable-message notice in my in-box. I checked Tim’s e-mail address against the card he had given me when we first met and saw that I hadn’t mistyped it. I sent the message again. It came back undeliverable once again.

I pulled his card closer and studied the phone number, then punched it into my phone. A receptionist answered, using someone else’s name. “Tim Morin, please?” I asked.

“Mr. Morin no longer works here,” she said. “Can I direct you to one of our other fund managers?”

“When did Mr. Morin leave?” I asked.

“Two weeks ago,” she said. “Can I direct your call elsewhere?”

“No, thank you,” I said, staring at the phone. Not one word had been uttered about Tim no longer being at Westcore, and that certainly cast a certain light on the phone call that I had overheard at his house. Did Christine even know?

I put that aside for the time being, this new information being too much to sort through after the night I had had. I tried not to focus on how sleep deprived I was or the fact that Max was still in a snit over my not being as attentive to her as I usually am, an accusation that cut to my very core. Was there a kernel of truth in there? Is that why it hurt so much?

There were the unreturned calls and my not visiting her father before he died, and yes, I had been late to her birthday party—but was this the point we were at now? Every transgression documented, every minute late to an event charged against some mental friend calculator?

We would have to get through the funeral and the days following, and then we’d hash it out. This was my last mystery, I would tell her, and even if I tripped over another dead body—unlikely, given my profession—I would stay far away from any situation that held a lingering question, a mysterious subplot, or the hint of suspicion. I was hanging up my sleuthing shoes and calling it a day.

That would make her happy. Maybe.

According to the local news, Mac had turned in a swift pronouncement on Sassy: suicide. There had been a note and no evidence of foul play. She had jumped to her death from the rest stop and, according to a little tidbit Mac had read in her suicide note and shared with me via e-mail, done so in order to spend eternity with Chick, the only man she had ever loved.

So what we had was a case of unrequited love, two people hell-bent on getting some money and hightailing it out of Dodge. Seemed to me there were some missing details, but as I was done with my investigation for the time being—or forever—I would never be able to fill in the blanks.

Tonight was the night I was going to get out of here on time, pick up some dinner, and take a load off in front of the television. One night of no sleep was bad enough, but two? Things were going to get mighty dicey if I didn’t log in a good eight hours before the funeral the next day. I steeled myself for a day of teaching, preparing to leave my office for my first class. The phone rang before I had a chance to get out the door, and I picked it up, thinking it was Glen with an answer to my question about bankruptcy.

Christine. Oh, jeez. “Alison, Bobby just called me and told me about Sassy. Is it true?” She sounded more than a little relieved.

“It’s true,” I said. “Saw her body with my own eyes.” Sort of. Saw her body bag with my own eyes, but her body was definitely in there.

“God, I’m so relieved,” she said, and I waited for the questions about my well-being after having been kidnapped by her. They never came. Either Bobby hadn’t told her or she didn’t really care now that Sassy, her archenemy and burner-down of houses, was dead.

“She seemed to really love your brother,” I said.

Her gasp led me to believe that Crawford, your typical “just the facts, ma’am” kind of cop, hadn’t told her about the kidnapping. “You met her?”

I filled her in. Suffice it to say, she was horrified.

“But you’re okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Exhausted, but fine.”

“Oh, Alison, I can’t apologize enough for getting you involved in this whole thing. You must really think that my family is a bunch of cavemen.”