Murder as a Second Language (28 page)

He didn't look all that terrified, but he got up and said, “I will not follow you, Mrs. Malloy, as long as you promise to tell me if you find Miao. I am so worried that I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, I cannot study.”

“I will let you know that she is safe. It's up to her to decide if she wants you to know where she is. Also, stay out of Gregory's office. Do we have a deal?”

It took him a moment to realize that he was supposed to shake my outstretched hand. His grip was firm, very firm. He took out a notepad and wrote down a telephone number. “Please call me. I need to know that she is unharmed.” He walked across the grass and around the corner of the building.

As I walked back to my car, I saw a black car in the far corner of a student parking lot. Jiang had gone in a different direction. There were three or four other cars in the lot. I stared at it, but my laser vision needed to be recharged. I got into my car and drove toward Thurber Street. It was time for lunch.

I parked behind the Book Depot and went in through the back door. Jacob's head swiveled when he spotted me, but he merely raised an eyebrow and turned the page of the book in front of him. I sat behind my desk and flicked a paper clip in the direction of the wastebasket. I felt strangely gratified when it dropped in the basket. I took another one out of a holder and tried again. This one went sailing to the left. The next one was worth two points. I was lining up my next shot when Jacob cleared his throat.

“We received a catalog from a small mystery press,” he said. “I put it aside for you, since you like that sort of thing.”

“You mean mindless, escapist fiction in which people do more than make significant small talk riddled with symbolism and relive their imaginary childhood in ghettos? I'll take the catalog with me and look at it later. Would you please go to the front of the store and see if there are any black cars parked in the vicinity? I don't care about the make or model, as long as it's black.”

“As you wish.” He turned around and did as I'd requested. A minute later he came to the doorway. “There's a black van in the alley beside the furniture store. Two women, possibly mother and daughter, are watching men struggle with a long sofa. It's a hideous shade of mauve.” His lips curled briefly to indicate he meant to be funny. “A black sedan is parked in front of the beer garden. Those are the only two, Ms. Malloy. Is that all?”

“Yes, Jacob, that's all.” It seemed as if every third car in Farberville was black. I came up with a plan to force the driver out of his car, if indeed he was watching me. If it proved to be Jiang, I wouldn't take responsibility for what happened. I went out the front door, stopped under the portico to look in both directions, and began walking briskly up Thurber Street. I crossed the side street and continued at the same pace, despite the dire possibility of sweat in the near future. Halfway up the block, I cut into an alley that would take me behind several restaurants to a narrow street. The Dumpsters reeked of rotting meat and produce. I sucked in a breath when I saw a rat dart into one.

When I reached the end of the alley, I glanced back. A figure lurched behind the garbage bins, redefining the art of Dumpster diving. I felt charmingly nefarious as I walked up a narrow street lined with decrepit rental houses on one side and parking lots on the other. A gray-haired hippie lying in his front yard offered me a beer, but I declined. The music drifting out of open windows was from the 1960s and early '70s. The scent of marijuana smoke was in the air. I'd entered a time warp.

I made sure the figure dodging between cars in the parking lots kept up with me. I stopped to chat with a woman in a long skirt and bare feet, who was nursing her baby on the steps of her front porch. We agreed that it was a wonderful day for all creatures under the sun. When I was nearly to the corner, I abruptly turned and went through the back door of a restaurant. The kitchen staff ignored me as I hurried through them and found a booth in the back of the room. I picked up a menu and held it up to cover most of my face.

Showtime.

 

15

“Today's special is grilled tilapia with rice pilaf,” a waitress said. “Comes with choice of soup or salad. Soup of the day is creamy mushroom.”

I lowered the menu. The man who was following me was not in sight, but I expected him any moment. “A cup of the soup and iced tea,” I said to appease the waitress. The restaurant was busy with the lunch crowd. I was lucky to have found an empty booth. I raised the menu to nose level and watched the front entrance. A trio of women came in together and found a table. Patrons were eating, talking, and texting at the same time. I was not impressed. Boys in frat T-shirts spotted friends; chairs were borrowed from other tables to accommodate them. Waiters and waitresses wound through the narrow paths with laden trays and weary smiles.

Maybe I'd made a mistake. The figure in the alley could have been planning to urinate when he saw me. The figure in the parking lots could have been shopping for a new car radio. Or he could have failed to see me come into the restaurant. My incredibly clever ploy wouldn't work with a dimwit. I was about to give up on him when I heard a commotion in the kitchen. Several seconds later an olive-skinned man came out of the small hall and stopped in the doorway. He was in his twenties, with a small mustache, black hair, and dressed in a brown sports jacket. Caron and Inez would be madly jealous of his long eyelashes.

I put down the menu and waved at him. “Over here. I saved you a seat.”

He gave me a startled look. I waved again and repeated my invitation for him to join me. He was clearly unnerved. In other circumstances, I would have felt sorry for him. He glanced back at the kitchen and then at the front entrance. I waited to see which way he would bolt. Odds were equal. He'd encountered a problem in the kitchen, but the door that opened onto Thurber Street required artful navigation between the crowded tables and the stream of waiters. He finally gave up and came to the booth, his lips clamped together and his dark brown eyes too bright for my taste.

“Sit,” I said, indicating the opposite side of the booth. “You must be exhausted after all that dashing and ducking behind cars.” I held out the menu. “Hungry?”

He stared in response. If he wanted to sit and pout, I would at least have a chance to eat lunch. When the waitress appeared, he shook his head with the ferocity of a tiger ripping flesh off his prey. She glanced at me as she backed away. He still had not spoken when she returned with my soup and tea.

“He want anything?” she asked me.

“It doesn't seem like it, but go ahead and bring him a glass of water. He looks as though he needs to cool off.” I looked across the table at him. “Do you speak English? My Arabic is rusty, and I was never able to learn Farsi. I had trouble with calculus, too. You're probably quite proficient, since it's part of your heritage. Didn't the Arabic scholars develop the decimal system in medieval times?”

“I have no idea.” He had a British accent, to my surprise. “I studied bacteriology at Oxford.”

“Oh.” It took a minute to process this. “Then why have you been following me for the last few days? Shouldn't you be hunting for wild berries that cure cancer or dissecting cows' brains?”

“Only on weekends. What makes you think I'm following you, Claire?”

I did not care for the informal use of my name. “Mostly from watching you in my rearview mirror. Are you going to claim you always come into restaurants through their kitchens? That by some great cosmic coincidence, my car appears in front of yours no matter where you're going?”

He pursed his lips. “An acquaintance asked me to see what you've been up to, that's all.”

“What about my tires? Was that a harmless prank?”

“You shouldn't make wild accusations without proof.”

I wanted to dump the soup in his lap. “What's your name, and who's this acquaintance of yours?”

“My name is Rashad, and my acquaintance prefers to remain anonymous.”

“Are you a hit man?”

He smirked. “No, I'm a graduate assistant. It's not nearly as lucrative.”

The waitress was less leery as she put down the bill, but she didn't linger or ask me if I wanted a refill. I put my forearms on the table and leaned forward. “Okay, enough baloney. I want to know who this ‘acquaintance' is and why he or she thinks I deserve all this attention. Does it concern the murder at the Literacy Council on Monday night? Abetting a felon is a felony. The two of you could end up in adjoining cells.”

“All I know about the murder is what I read in the newspaper. The police haven't made any progress.”

“They don't give hourly press conferences or post reports on the Internet. If this doesn't have anything to do with that, then what does it have to do with? Yes, I may be poking around to assist the police. That's all I've been doing. If there's some major international plot to launder billions of dollars or blow up buildings, I don't know anything about it. Got that?”

He took sunglasses out his pocket and put them on. “I'm so glad we had this little talk, Claire. I'll pass along your statement.”

“Do that, and stop following me!” I was thoroughly exasperated. I gauged whether or not there was enough tea in the bottom of my glass to emphasize my point. There were people in the booth behind him. I didn't want to nail one of them with a stray ice cube.

“Keep your eyes on the rearview mirror.” He put a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Allow me to treat you to lunch.” He made his way to the front door and turned in the direction of the Book Depot.

I dug out my cell phone and called the store. When Jacob answered, I said, “Go across the street and get the license plate number of that black car. Quickly, before its driver returns.” Jacob sighed as he acquiesced. I ended the call and punched Peter's number. I failed to exhale until he answered. “What's up, Claire?”

“Not much, if you exclude the conversation I just had with a man who followed me from the Book Depot to a restaurant on Thurber Street.” I recounted what I could of the encounter. “Now he's walking to his car parked by the beer garden. Brown jacket, black hair, average height, sensational eyelashes. Send a patrol car to pick him up.”

“And arrest him for what? “

“I'm not a police officer. You're the one who should figure out what law he's broken. How about stalking me? That's a criminal offense.”

“There's a difference between stalking and talking, or even tailing someone. He didn't threaten you. The only time he's approached you is when you invited him to sit down at your booth. You're welcome to present it to the DA. He leaves early on Friday afternoons, so you'd better call quickly.”

“You don't care that this … this man … this foreigner who could be working for some terrorist outfit, for all we know—you don't care that he's watching me? You won't even ask Homeland Security about him?” My voice was rising, but I couldn't control it. “Don't be surprised if you find me in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor! That's if you find my body at all! Maybe I'll be checked luggage on a flight to Pakistan! You know how much I hate camels!” I had pretty much everyone's attention by now. Their expressions ranged from amusement to alarm. My waitress held a fist to her mouth, and her eyes were filled with tears. I waved the twenty-dollar bill at her so she'd be distracted by the possibility of a big tip. My other hand held the cell against my ear while Peter sputtered and stuttered.

He finally calmed down. “Do you want me to send a patrol car to pick you up?”

“No, I want you to send a patrol car to pick up Rashad. Haven't you listened to anything I've been saying? He admitted that he's been following me. Oh, and Jiang admitted to the same thing, but he promised to stop. This man implied that he has no intention of stopping.”

Peter was quiet for a moment. “All right, I'll send a car. If we can locate him, I'll have him brought in. Go back to the Book Depot—take the sidewalk, not the alley—and drive straight here. I'll have our sketch artist waiting. Work with him until you're satisfied, and I'll have flyers printed for all of our patrol officers and campus security. We can bring him in for the slightest traffic violation, and I can assure you that he'll commit one.”

“It's comforting to know we're that close to totalitarianism.” I told him I'd see him within half an hour and left the twenty-dollar bill on the table. As I walked down Thurber Street, I struggled not to glance over my shoulder. I'd already embarrassed myself in the restaurant; I didn't want to look as if I'd just broken out of jail. The black car was no longer parked across the street. Scowling, I went into the Book Depot and headed for the tiny restroom. I washed my hands and face, but I still felt grimy. I desperately wanted to know who'd persuaded him to follow me.

I wadded up the paper towel and dropped it in the wastebasket, confident that Jacob would empty it within minutes of my departure. He ran a tight ship. My casual approach to paying bills, reading invoices, replacing files, and returning calls to publishers' reps must have kept him from sleeping well at night. His waking hours were haunted by the specter of me coming into the bookstore and undoing his meticulous system. I stopped in the doorway to the front room in order not to cause him distress.

“Did you get the license plate?”

He handed me a piece of notepaper with a neatly printed line of letters and numbers. “The driver appeared about ten minutes ago and drove away.”

“Describe him.”

“Average size, black hair, brown jacket.”

Even though the police hadn't arrived in time to grab Rashad, I had his number—if only that of his license plate. “Thanks, Jacob. I'll see you later.”

He twitched. “Later today?”

“Monday or Tuesday.” I went out the back door and drove to the PD. If Rashad was behind me, he was keeping a discreet distance. Jorgeson came out of his office as soon as I was inside. He clasped my hands and said, “Ms. Malloy, I am deeply disturbed about this man.”