Grey Expectations (24 page)

The sound made Dulcie turn, but it was already too late. Rollie Gaithersburg – aka Roland Galveston – had taken off. Despite his sickly appearance, he was making good time, already disappearing down the street.

THIRTY-EIGHT

F
or half a second, Dulcie thought about running after the fleeing Rollie. In that time, he turned a corner and disappeared. She turned back to the blonde.

‘Hey, miss? Excuse me?' But she was gone, too, running toward the main street with a speed Dulcie was simply not up to matching. ‘What the  . . .'

Before she could even try to make sense of the odd behavior of those around her, her phone rang. She started after the blonde, planning on ignoring the insistent tone, when the realization hit her – it had to be Chris. He'd been so worried. She stopped where she was and dug in her bag.

‘Hi, honey! I'm alive and unharmed!' She meant it to sound jaunty, but the silence that greeted her was momentarily disorienting.

‘Um, Ms Schwartz?'

Dulcie looked at the phone. No, it wasn't Chris calling.

‘This is Cara, from English Ten?'

How embarrassing. ‘Sorry, Cara, I thought you were someone else. Look, I can't talk right now.' She looked up. The Trista lookalike had disappeared as well. Dulcie was a teacher, not a track star.

‘Never mind,' she said with a sigh, turning her attention back to her caller. ‘So, Cara, how may I help you?' Class had ended more than two weeks ago, and Dulcie had to struggle to remember the quiet girl who always came in late. ‘Is this about your final grade?'

‘Oh, no. You were more than fair.'

Dulcie felt a wash of relief. She hated disappointing students. Almost as much as she hated arguing with them.

‘I wanted to ask you about summer classes. I think I'm going to enroll, get a head start, and there's a course on the literature of the afterlife?'

‘The Dante.' Dulcie nodded. Not her take on the afterlife, but a good course nonetheless. ‘The instructor is wonderful, but it's a really compact course. Have you read
The Inferno
before?'

‘Well, yes, I mean, in translation, but  . . .'

As they talked, Dulcie started back toward the Square. Despite her frustration with how lunch had ended, as she walked she found herself relaxing. It felt good to have a normal conversation, a teacher-student interaction, particularly since this student was not asking for anything more than advice. Almost, Dulcie regretted not trying for a section in one of the summer literature courses. Teaching one of those would be more casual, and she could use the money.

‘Well, thanks, Ms Schwartz. You've been really helpful.'

Dulcie could barely remember what advice she'd given the girl, finally. Something about how rereading, about how it could be useful to get a fresh take on something you thought you knew.

Of course, revisiting an author could also take you the other way. Like, when you read something new by an old favorite and discovered that not only was everything you imagined wrong, but also that the person you'd been focusing on for years was a disappointment.

Dulcie felt her feet becoming heavier, until she finally stopped on the corner of Linnaean, where a bus stop offered a bit of shade from the midday sun. What was she doing, anyway? Her life was a mess. If Rollie wouldn't come forward to confess, her reputation was shot. Her thesis was in shambles. Her cat liked to bite  . . .

She sat down on the bench. Her cat. She'd said that to herself, and she'd meant Esmé. No wonder Mr Grey didn't visit any more. No wonder he'd chosen Chris over her. Only a year, and she'd already replaced him in her heart. It was all too much. Sitting at a bus stop on a busy Cambridge street, she put her head in her hands and let the tears come.

‘Miss?' The voice came from too far away. ‘Miss, are you all right?'

She looked up. A tiny figure, barely taller than the seated Dulcie, was leaning over, a concerned look in her wrinkled face. ‘Excuse me?'

‘I asked if you were all right.' Two dark eyes blinked behind thick glasses, reminding Dulcie of something. The red lipstick, applied like spackle, was distracting however. ‘I thought, perhaps, you might need some help.'

Dulcie smiled, despite herself. The idea of this tiny woman, eighty if she was a day, coming to her rescue brought home the reality of her situation. She stood up and dried her eyes. ‘I'm fine, thanks.'

The dark eyes blinked, their concern unabated.

‘Really, I've just had a difficult day. I guess it all got to me.'

‘Well, I can understand that.' The woman reached for two shopping bags that she must have put down when she approached Dulcie. ‘Mercury is retrograde, and that's especially hard for Leos like you. Remember –' she hoisted the bags and turned, addressing Dulcie over her rounded shoulder – ‘Mercury is the messenger. When he goes retrograde, it doesn't only mean that you may be misunderstood. You may be misunderstanding others as well.'

Before Dulcie could respond, a bus pulled up, brakes squealing. A flood of passengers poured out, and when they cleared, the old woman was nowhere in sight. Dulcie strained to see if she'd gotten on the bus, but it was too packed to reveal one tiny figure. She found herself alone as the bus drove off. Alone, but strangely comforted.

‘Mr Grey, did you send her?' She looked up at the cloudless sky. ‘Did you?' A faint breeze blew, thrusting a leaf against her ankle before it skittered away. Dulcie watched it with a feeling of awe.

Still, the old woman could have just been a local crazy. There was one way of checking. ‘Hi, Lucy, it's me.' It didn't pay to be grammatically correct with her mother. ‘Just checking in.'

She owed her mother a call, anyway. For all her scoffing, her mother's dream – er, vision – had actually come true.

‘Dulcie! What a surprise.'

So she wasn't too psychic, then. Or too worried. Dulcie chose to ignore that thought. ‘Yup, I wanted to tell you. Your vision? All that blood? It came true.' Hearing her own words, Dulcie hastened to add. ‘But I'm fine. Everything's all right.' That part wasn't necessarily factual – not for Professor Coffin, anyway – but it should serve to reassure a worried parent.

‘I know that, dear.' Assuming that the parent had been worried. ‘As soon as I'd had my yerba maté and thought some more about your reading, I saw that I'd misinterpreted everything.'

‘Oh?' Dulcie was in a mood to be amused.

‘Why, yes. I should have recognized the blood from the start. Especially when I turned over the ace of wands. It was the blood of childbirth. Of new discovery.'

Dulcie opened her mouth. No words came out.

Lucy didn't seem to notice. ‘You're on the edge of a great breakthrough, my dear. That's why you were covered in it in my dream.'

‘I'm on the edge of something, anyway.' Dulcie decided not to tell her mother about the more realistic manifestation of her vision. Why upset her?

‘Of course, birth can be painful.' Her mother wasn't even listening. ‘I remember when I had you, despite the blessed smoke your father kept blowing  . . .'

‘Mom,' Dulcie interrupted. Her mood was fragile enough. ‘Is Mercury retrograde?'

‘Why, let me check.'

Dulcie was a little surprised that her mother didn't know offhand, but she waited.

‘Why, yes, dear. It has been since Tuesday.' Her mother sounded unaccountably pleased by the discovery. ‘No wonder I've been fighting with Moonglow. You're so smart. You must have sensed it.'

THIRTY-NINE

I
t wasn't even one, and Dulcie felt exhausted. Conversations with her mother could do that to her, she thought, and then corrected herself. Finding a dead body could do that to her. She looked at her phone, now silent in her hand. She should call Chris, let him know that she was OK. He'd still be with his tutees, however. She should at least wait till half past. And if he wasn't going to be home  . . . By habit, she headed toward the basement office she shared with Lloyd. Maybe seated at her desk, with her notes around her, she could find a way to get back into her thesis – a way to incorporate that horrid new essay. At the very least, she should see if any of her other students had come by. She should never have blown off office hours without posting an alternate time.

‘It's not like they've got any pressing work,' she said to nobody in particular. The trees leading up to Memorial Hall were in full leaf now, and a grey squirrel had paused to watch her pass. ‘I'm the one who has to finish the grading.'

The squirrel looked at her expectantly, and Dulcie paused. Something about his manner, the sharp stare of his black beady eyes, made her feel he had a message for her. A warning, even. But he only chattered in an agitated manner. ‘What?' she answered, unable to get anything more from the beast. ‘So I like cats? Deal with it.'

That was it. Cats. Almost like a waking dream, a memory came to her: Mr Grey, outside and on the hunt. She saw him lurking, his plume of a tail lashing once, twice, and then a third time in his agitation. Then she saw him crouch and creep forward, a grey squirrel just like this one in his sights. Her beloved cat had made his way forward, placing himself between the small rodent and the only nearby tree. With a thrill of fear, Dulcie found herself holding her breath – and then, Mr Grey had lunged. Only, the grey predator had overextended himself. Even before he leaped, the squirrel seemed to know he was coming. With a quick feint to the right, the squirrel had sped left, ducking down to run
under
the giant cat's outstretched claws. Dulcie remembered laughing with joy as the terrified squirrel had scurried up the tree. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Grey!' She had scooped him up. ‘It's better this way. I promise.'

‘Now, what brought that on?' She found herself laughing out loud as she entered the building. It had never happened; she was almost sure about that. Mr Grey had been a house cat, not a hunter. ‘Must have been a dream,' she decided. The squirrel's chatter faded behind her.

Squirrels! She was still chuckling as she descended the stairs. Only when two shadows emerged from a doorway did she stop, a chill suddenly running down her back.

‘Um, hello?' She took one step backward, then another. ‘May I help you?'

Usually, this hallway was buzzing with activity. But it was spring, a Friday afternoon, and she could hear her own footsteps clearly on the old tile.

‘Hello.' The first man stepped toward her. He was wearing a suit and smiling.

To anyone else, Dulcie thought, he would have looked respectable. As Lucy's daughter, however, she had an ingrained distrust of white shirts and ties. Especially loud ties.

‘Please don't worry, miss. We've already checked in with security.'

She opened her mouth – and hesitated. There was a guard, upstairs. Not that he ever noticed much.

‘Actually, miss.' The other man stepped into the light. Another dark suit. Where ever they had bought them, neither had been properly sized. Fashion might not be Dulcie's forte, but she was reasonably sure jackets were not supposed to bunch up like that. ‘We
are
security,' the second man was saying. ‘We're with a special detachment of the university police.'

He pulled out a billfold that contained a badge, as did his partner. Advancing carefully, Dulcie took it. ‘Officer Read,' she read out loud. ‘Community-university liaison?'

‘Uh huh, and I'm Harris,' the first man said, holding out his badge.

Feeling a little silly about her hesitation, Dulcie waved it away. Rogovoy had said that the insurance company was pushing for an investigation, and she suspected he had relegated it to the back burner. It made sense that some extras had been called in. ‘I'm sorry.' She found herself breathing more normally. ‘I should have been expecting some kind of follow-up. It's just been a crazy day. How may I help you?'

‘We have some questions,' the second one – Read – said. ‘Is there a place we can talk?'

‘Sure.' She'd assumed they'd come to her office looking for her. Then again, perhaps they were just being polite. She unlocked the door and led them in to the tiny, book-filled room she and Lloyd shared. ‘Please come in.'

She turned to switch on the overhead as the two men crowded in. Rather to her dismay, Harris strode over to Lloyd's desk, pulled out his rolling chair, and sat down heavily without pausing to ask permission. Read, who in the light she could see was the slightly smaller of the two, headed toward hers, but she scooted around the big, metal desk and claimed it first, leaving him with the rickety, but perfectly adequate wooden chair usually occupied by visiting students. That was probably immature of her, she realized a moment later. After all, they were both taller than she was and more formally dressed. But when she thought about rising, about offering the officer the better chair, she just couldn't. Besides, Read seemed comfortable. He even tipped the chair back and put his feet up on her desk.

‘So?' She tried to smile as she moved a stack of books away from his feet. ‘I'm all yours.'

‘Thank you.' Read, across from her, smiled, revealing oversized canines. They didn't make him look particularly friendly. Then again, she'd thought Rogovoy was an ogre when she first met him. ‘We appreciate your time.'

‘No problem.' Dulcie tried to relax. She'd managed to salvage her day. Put the horror of the morning behind her. Just the thought of what she had seen – the blood, the still body – began to bring it all back. She shook her head. ‘But I don't think I know anything that will help.'

‘Sure you do,' Read said, his jovial tone startling her out of her reverie.

‘What we want to know is about the Professor.' The voice of the other man – Harris – was deeper, as befitted his size. ‘How well did you know him? What was your relationship?'