Killing Cassidy (19 page)

“Stravinsky's not all that far out, and I've never seen this particular work. We're going.”

Neither of us is given, usually, to unilateral decisions. We tend to defer to the other's wishes. Alan opened his mouth and looked at me, and then the light dawned.

“The trail.”

I grinned. “I hope. I found out yesterday that Dr. Boland's an opera lover. He especially likes modern stuff. IU Opera is not only terrific, it's close to Hillsburg. I'll bet he buys season tickets every year.”

“But, according to your theory, the man's on the run. Surely he won't take time to go to the opera!”

“Maybe not. But I'm betting he will. He'll think himself perfectly safe in a big, festive crowd. It's the gala opening, after all.” I expounded my theory that people don't change old habits. “It's worth a try, anyway.”

“It would be very much simpler to let the police track him down.”

“Yes, but we can't ask them to. We can't tell them what we know about Boland.”

“In fact, my dear, though you'll loathe my saying so, we don't
know
anything at all.”

“We know Boland is an opera freak,” I retorted. “And I intend to be here Thursday night, looking for him.”

Alan shrugged and capitulated. “
If
we can get tickets.”

That, I admitted, might require some doing. The season opener would have been sold out for weeks. As we strolled over the beautiful campus with its graceful stone buildings (“Indiana limestone. One of the best building stones in the world!” I bragged), I thought about ways and means, and Monday morning, back in our hotel again, I started making phone calls.

I was on the phone all morning, and by noon I had tracked down only one ticket, from a long-ago friend who was down with the flu and only too glad to get her money back. “If it were Puccini I'd have gone anyway, if I were dying. But Stravinsky …”

Alan was not devastated at the thought that he might miss the opera. “Don't worry, love. I can lurk about outside if the evening's fine, or in the lobby.”

“I'll keep trying, but—”

“Don't worry,” he repeated. “I didn't bring my dress suit, in any case.”

“Oh, love, almost none of the men wear black tie anymore, even for the opening. It's a great pity, I think, but I didn't bring anything fancy, either, so it's just as well.”

“You'll look lovely in anything you wear. Now, what's next on the agenda?”

“I want to look up Boland's academic record. Let's go over to the registrar's office and see if anybody I know still works there.”

“Why don't you go? I'd only be a nuisance, and I've hatched a few ideas of my own.”

“Are you going to tell?”

“No. If you're entitled to secrets, so am I. I will say only that I am beginning to work out the processes for investigation without benefit of authority. It isn't as easy as one might think. I have a new respect for your successes over the years, my dear.”

I grinned as he left. He was beginning to enjoy this.

I detoured, on my way to the university, to the building where Boland and Doc Foley had their offices. I wanted to see the dates on Boland's diplomas. I had an elaborate story prepared for his secretary, but as it happened, she was not in the office. The lights were on, the door was unlocked, and the phone was ringing. I assumed she had left for the usual reason and slipped cautiously into the back premises, finding Boland's private office easily. It was as I had thought. Dr. Boland had finished medical school over twenty years ago.

I got out with no trouble and went over to the registrar's office, where I thought at first I was going to have much less luck. The registrar himself, an old friend, had retired. His replacement was one of those shiny MBA types with the bionic personality. The title on his door was Director of Student Services. He was delighted to meet me. What a shame Mr. Resnick was no longer with the university. He would be sure to pass along my greetings the next time they got together. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Morton. His broad smile didn't reach beyond his mouth, and his handclasp was painful.

I certainly couldn't ask
him
to do a little unauthorized snooping.

I wandered, a trifle disconsolate, through the halls. The layout was very different from the way I remembered it. Offices had been reconfigured, new partitions erected, signs moved. Nothing is static in a university, but the changes made me feel lost and forlorn and very much a back number.

“May I help you?” The voice was young and bright and chirpy. In my present mood, I found it offensively condescending.

“I very much doubt it,” I snapped. “I was looking for someone I used to know, but it isn't important.”

“I still have trouble finding people myself.” The owner of the voice, an attractive girl—woman, I suppose—who couldn't have been more than twenty, giggled. “They moved everybody at the beginning of the semester when they changed everything around. Who were you trying to find?”

The child was trying to help. I struggled to control my surliness. “Sharon Clark. She used to be—”

“Oh, sure! This place would fall down without her. She's got a new office, around the corner down there. First door on the right.” She smiled and sped on her way before I could thank her and apologize for being rude.

The first door on the right around the corner opened on a small office, nice and private. Sharon was sitting at her desk, her attention on a computer screen, but she looked up when I appeared in the doorway.

“Well, good grief, you never know who's going to turn up! Dorothy, how
are
you? And what are you doing back in town, and how long are you going to stay, and when can you go to lunch with me?”

I laughed and sat down. “I'm fine, and I don't know for sure how long I'll be here, and any time you like, and how are
you?
”

“Busy, busy. My new boss”—she looked up at the door and lowered her voice—“is something else.”

“I saw him,” I said dryly. “Looks like a cross between Donald Trump, Attila the Hun, and C-3PO.”

“You got that right. In just about equal parts. So what have you been doing? You haven't come back to stay, then?”

“No, I'm pretty well settled down in England. You knew I'd remarried?”

“I heard, and I was thrilled.
Some
people around here got bent out of shape, because they liked the professor so much, but I said good grief, she's got her life to live, Dr. Martin wouldn't have wanted her to go on being lonesome forever. What's he like?”

“You'll find out when we go to lunch. Are you free tomorrow?”

“You bet. Noon?”

“We'll pick you up. Now, Sharon, I have to admit I didn't stop by just for old times' sake. I have an ulterior motive.”

She grinned. “You want me to look somebody up for you.”

“If you can. I don't know if he ever took any courses here, so you might not have a record. Do you have access to the Continuing Ed side of things?”

“Not officially, but I can get in if I have to.”

A little adventure a while back had taught me a thing or two about computers and those who operate them. “I'll just bet you can!”

She turned to her keyboard. “I don't suppose you have a social security number?”

“No, just a name. James F. Boland.” I spelled the last name. She typed it in, and I waited, actually holding my breath.

“Ah, you're in luck! A doctor, would he be? Medical, I mean?”

“Yes. You've found him?”

“There isn't much. He took a couple of CE courses a year, just keeping up with new developments, I expect. And he did take one credit course.”

That surprised me. “Really? What? Chemistry? Biology?”

“Music. A graduate course in opera history.”

Of course. His passion. I smiled to myself. He was probably a royal pain in the neck in the class, knowing more than any of the other students and very possibly more than the teacher. But I was very glad he'd taken the class, all the same. “A graduate course. So he would have had to submit his transcripts from his other education.”

“Yes. Of course we wouldn't have those. We don't keep any paper records centrally anymore. They'd be in the music department.”

I moistened my lips. “And I don't suppose you'd have any reason to look at them?”

She didn't even hesitate. “We do need, every so often, to check and make sure records are complete. The new director is very particular about complete records.” With a perfectly straight face, she picked up the phone. “Hello, Donna? This is Sharon. Hi. Listen, I'm going over some stuff, and I need to check some transcripts. Could you pull some files for me?” She was typing as she spoke, and I saw a list of names appear on her screen. “They're all graduate students. Gerald Bodine—okay, ready? Gerald Bodine, James Boland, Charles Hatcher, and Susan Miller. Do you want their ID numbers? No. Right. Okay, I'll send somebody over for them in—half an hour all right?”

She put the phone down. “I didn't want to make it obvious.”

“You're wonderful. I owe you one.”

“For what? If I should happen to have some students' files on my desk when you come tomorrow to pick me up for lunch, there's nothing unusual about that, is there? And if I should happen to need to powder my nose, and you should happen to notice something in one of the files, well, neither of us can really be blamed for that, can we?”

“Of course not. Can you take an extra-long lunch tomorrow? And where's your favorite place?”

I left feeling jubilant enough to smile brilliantly at the boss robot on my way out.

I
got back to the room before Alan and was just trying to decide whether to take a nap or study the case notebook when he came in.

“You look,” I said, “exactly the way Emmy-cat did that time she caught that disgusting rat half her size. Triumphant and smug. What's up?”

“I have spent a most productive afternoon, my dear.” He produced a paper bag of suspicious size and shape. “I looked more than slightly disreputable walking home with this. There is really no way to carry a bottle that does not make it look like a bottle. I did, however, refrain from drinking out of it until I returned. I felt a small celebration might be in order.”

“Well, you know I'm always ready for a celebration, especially when it involves Jack Daniel's.” Alan poured us each a small tot and we sat down around the small table. I raised my glass. “Very well, what are we celebrating?”

“The acquisition of knowledge.” He clicked my glass.

“Oh, you can be infuriating when you want to be!”

He smiled his catlike smile again. “Can I, my dear? That's very gratifying.”

“Okay, but I'm not going to tell you a thing until you tell me. As,” I added, “you are pining to do.”

“I am. It is, however, pleasant to be persuaded.” He took another sip from his glass and set it down. “I spent the time in your newspaper office.”

I waited.

“I find the local newspaper to be an interesting phenomenon. We do not, of course, have them in England. Aside from the odd local weekly—odd in both senses—we rely on the large national papers for our edification.”

“Yes, dear, I do know. I've lived there for some time, you may remember.”

“Indeed. I mention it only because I find it a pity that we have never adopted the notion of a daily local journal. Although the coverage of national news is somewhat sketchy and the world outside the United States appears not to exist for the editors of the
Hillsburg Herald
, it nevertheless proved to be a mine of information.”

“About—?”

“About the accidents.” He grew more serious. “You remember that we wished to know more about the accidents that befell Kevin. Or, more strictly speaking, the various incidents.”

He ticked them off. “The failure of the brakes on his automobile. The theft of his tricycle. The repeated failures of his telephone. The fire. His fall down the steps.

“The
Herald
prints, daily, a most useful report. I had noticed it whilst reading the copy this establishment kindly delivers to our door every morning. One can, by reading a good deal of very small type, learn about all the incidents requiring the attention of the police and/or fire departments on the previous day.”

I raised my glass. “So you looked up the things that happened to Kevin. Well done! I hadn't thought of that.”

His smug look intensified. He sipped his drink and then pressed his fingertips together in the tent formation that usually means he's about to deliver a lecture. “When one is handicapped by the lack of access to official police reports, one must make do.”

“You sound,” I commented, “exactly like Bunter pontificating to Lord Peter.”

He ignored me and continued. “Many of the incidents, of course, were not in the police-fire reports. In fact, I found only two there. The first, the brakes on the car, figured in a report of an abandoned vehicle. Apparently someone saw the car before it was towed away and reported it. And the tricycle was reported as stolen. That gave me dates for two incidents.”

“What about the fire?”

“If you remember, Kevin's phone wasn't working then. Apparently he never reported it later, either. At any rate, there was no record. So I then proceeded,” he went on, sounding for all the world like a police report himself, “to other sections of the newspaper.”

“And?”

“And I discovered two items of considerable interest. The first was dated two days after Kevin's tricycle was stolen. It was a syndicated column by a humorist whose wit, I fear, I was unable to appreciate. He went on for some time about small household disasters that certainly didn't seem funny. However, he did mention a persistent telephone problem that no one could diagnose.”