Murder Misread (25 page)

Anne shrugged. “Don’t know
it. Though ten months sounds like a long time.”

“
Bad car accident, maybe?
Or maybe something mental.”

Anne’s mouth tightened.
“God, you’re blunt!”

“
Same to you, ma’am. Maybe
we should ask Bart about it.”

Anne blew a cloud of smoke
at the sunbeam. It writhed a moment, then dissipated into thin
ghostly traces.

Maggie asked, “Feel
squeamish about asking him?”

“
Most of
these people are
innocent
.”

“
Right. But one isn’t. One
of these secrets may have been the motive. On the other hand, if
you prefer, we could just tell Sergeant Hines.”

“
Even
less fun when
he
asks about things.” Anne crushed out the
cigarette. “I want to find out, damn it.”

“
Okay. Let’s ask. But
first, tell me about Cindy.”

“
What about
her?”

“
Well, as I say, there
wasn’t all that much in the folders. But a secretary might notice
more. I wondered if she might have the opportunity to blackmail
people.”

“
Cindy? Blackmail?
No.”

“
How can you be so
sure?”

Anne sagged in her chair
and picked up her empty mug. “I can’t, of course. Maybe I’m being
squeamish again. But—look,” she said with sudden decision, “let’s
go see her. That’s easier than explaining.”

“
On Saturday?”

“
She lives on the Cortland
Road. Had us out for a picnic once. Country place. It’ll be a nice
drive.”

“
Fine. Nora first, then
Cindy.” Maggie stood up and closed her briefcase. “We’ll use my
car, okay?”

“
Why not? Let me stop in
the bathroom first.”

Anne inspected herself in
the mirror as she washed her hands. She was surprised to see so
little difference. Her graying hair still swirled back from her
face, short and businesslike. Her dark eyes in their fan of
wrinkles looked tired, yes, underlined by blue pouches, and the
corners of her mouth were dragging a little. But there was no
visible sign of her inner shock. An Edvard Munch frozen scream,
walled over with thick numbness. And that numbness in turn walled
over with layers of little tasks. Wash the sheets, make the beds,
catch the killer. Busy busy.
Ne
te
foule
pas la rate
, don’t
overdo, don’t sprain your spleen. The French could be
graphic.

But what the hell else was
there to do? A sprained spleen was a small price to pay for keeping
that eternal scream at bay.

When she came out Maggie
was examining the departmental directory. “Just getting Bart’s
address,” she said. “If Cindy doesn’t know anything about him, we
can go see him too.”

“
Sounds
thorough.”

“
And we should come back
here for lunch. I told Nick to call me here if I wasn’t
home.”

“
Fine. Let’s get
moving.”

She suddenly found herself
scrutinized in that direct, disturbing way that Maggie had. “Do you
still want to do this, Anne?”

Anne sighed. “Look, I’m
tired, I’m miserable. But I’ve got to know why it happened. So
doing something feels better than staying here trying to stay numb.
It’s just that my brain wanders off sometimes.”

“
Your brain is doing fine.
Let’s go, then.”

Nora’s apartment was just
inside the city limits. The complex consisted of ten two-story
brick buildings set at angles to each other and pierced by open
stairwells. The access road wound among them, bellying from time to
time into parking lots. Tall trees thick with young foliage
surrounded the complex, but the few that grew nearer the buildings
were spindly, some with guy wires still attached to their slim
trunks.

Nora came to the door. In
jeans and a sloppy gray sweater, her gray-streaked hair tied in a
loose ponytail instead of its usual bun, she looked younger than
she did in her severe campus clothes. “Anne! How are you? And
Maggie.”

“
Hello, Nora.”

“
What can I do for
you?”

She was looking at Anne,
so she answered, “We wanted to talk a few minutes. Compare
notes.”

“
About—about what
happened? But the police are doing that. I’ve been talking to
Sergeant Hines and Captain Walensky both.”

“
Yes. They’re very busy on
this,” Maggie said. “But we thought if we compared notes we might
jog our memories. That would help them too.”

“
You want your memory
jogged.” Nora hesitated, then opened the door wide. “Fine. Not a
bad idea. Come on in.”

Maggie motioned for Anne
to wait. “We’ve heard about your gun, Nora.”

“
Yes. I figured that was
it. Come on, we’ll jog memories.”

They followed her into a
long white living room with a picture window at the end. Nora
grabbed a gray jacket from the charcoal tweed sofa and tossed it
into the dining area. “Sit down.”

Anne complied, sitting at
the other end of the sofa. Maggie was making a quick tour of the
room and stopped by an enormous framed print of a rune stone on the
side wall. “Love those,” she said to Nora. “So
mysterious.”

Nora nodded. “I like to
think one of my ancestors did it. A Norseman or Norsewoman chipping
those signs into the stone, long ago.”

“
Me too.” Maggie picked up
a photograph sitting on the table below the print. “I’ve got Viking
blood on my mother’s side. Always thought that was why I love to go
exploring. Family’s important, isn’t it?” She joined them, sitting
in a black chair at Nora’s end of the sofa.

“
Yes, I suppose it is.
Now, you said you wanted to talk about the gun.” Nora was sitting
on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward stiffly, hands clamped
together in her lap. But when she turned to Anne her eyes were soft
and concerned. “Anne, are you sure you want to do this?”

“
Truth is best, even if it
hurts for a while,” Anne said. “It’s what Tal stood for. And so do
I.”

“
And so do the rest of
us,” said Maggie.

Nora’s head snapped around
to stare at her. “Do we really?”

“
Of course. Though
sometimes it has to be balanced against other great abstractions.
Justice, mercy, love.”

“
Or your pocketbook? Your
summer paycheck?”

Maggie leaned forward too,
meeting Nora’s angry glare. “I’m not lying to protect Charlie
Fielding, Nora. I’ve told the truth as best I could, and I’m trying
to learn the rest of the truth. Are you?”

Nora’s glance fell. “Yes.
Yes, of course. I’m just saying you ought to think very hard about
what happened.”

“
I will. But what makes
you so sure Charlie did it?”

“
He was Tal’s rival. You
know that, Anne. And he tried to implicate me by using my gun! No
one else would have done that!”

“
Bart? Bernie? Cindy?”
Maggie asked.

“
There’s just no reason!”
Nora said. “I’ve been thinking about it, believe me! Right after
Tal—right after it happened, I checked my desk drawer. And that’s
when I realized there was a chance it had been my gun. So I’ve been
going over all the possibilities and nothing else seems reasonable.
No one would drag me into it like this!” Her voice had become
almost shrill.

“
Except Charlie?” Maggie
asked.

“
Yes. I wouldn’t have
thought it of him either, but –well, I embarrassed him once. He’s
been cool to me ever since.”

Anne said, “I told Maggie
about the Halloween party, Nora.”

“
I see.” Nora looked at
her clenched hands.

“
What was going on that
night, really?” Anne asked. “It’s the only time I’ve ever seen you
close to drunk. You must have been under some strain.”

“
Nothing special. Family—I
mean, the man I’d been living with had left, so I was
down.”

“
The fellow in computer
science?” Anne said sympathetically, and went on, encouraged by the
tiniest of nods from Maggie. “Ray something?”

“
Yes, that’s
right.”

“
I remember him. Seemed
pleasant, but you never know.”

“
No, you never do. Turned
out he just couldn’t understand commitments to anyone else. To my
work.”

“
He’d been with you a
couple of years, hadn’t he?” Anne continued.

“
More than that. Look, it
had nothing to do with Tal. Believe me, Anne!”

“
I believe you. But it led
up to your problem with Charlie.”

“
Only in a vague way. I
was feeling low about it, sure. And I drank more than usual and got
giggly, and Charlie was doing all those little Chaplin
tricks—”

“
Yes, I remember,” Anne
said. “He wasn’t a bad mimic, really. All the eyebrow-wriggling and
hat-tipping Chaplin did when he saw a pretty girl. And he’s usually
so shy.”

“
That was it!” Nora said
eagerly. “He’d always seemed half-terrified of me before, but he
put on that little mustache and hat and suddenly seemed to be
really flirting. And… well, I wasn’t feeling much like Professor
Peterson either. I had my old-fashioned blonde wig and a slinky
dress. And I started thinking that Charlie was probably lonely too,
maybe I should flirt back. So I got him to drive me home.” She
shrugged without unclasping the hands in her lap. “Well, he
switched right off. Even in my foggy state I could tell. Nothing
but monosyllables all the way home, and when I asked him if he
wanted to come in for coffee he practically pushed me out of the
car. By that time I didn’t care, but looking back now, I think he
was embarrassed. And I don’t think he’s ever forgiven
me.”

“
You seem civil enough to
each other,” Maggie said.

“
Yes, but there’s always
that undercurrent. As though he thinks I’m going to assault
him.”

“
And that’s why you think
he stole your gun?”

“
Not just for that, of
course.” Nora looked straight at Maggie. “Mostly because I saw him
take it.”

“
You saw him?” Anne asked
eagerly, and looked at Maggie with doubt for the first time. Had
she believed in Charlie’s innocence all this time because of the
unsupported word of that woman? A woman who had been poor murdered
Jackie Edwards’s roommate?

“
I saw him,” Nora said
positively. “Wednesday morning he opened the drawer, took something
out.”

“
That’s interesting,”
Maggie said. She was lounging back in the black chair, long legs
extended, ankles crossed under the edge of the coffee table. “You
were in the room?”

“
Yes. His excuse was that
he wanted to borrow a ruler. I was shelving books so I told him to
get it himself. It was in the same drawer. And then when Tal—when
it happened—I looked for the gun, and it was gone!”

“
Did you see it in his
hand?”

“
I—no, I
didn’t.”

“
Did you see the
ruler?”

“
Yes, but he had no reason
to hide that! He probably slipped the gun into his pocket so I
wouldn’t see it.”

“
Did you look for the gun
in your drawer right after he left?”

“
No. It never occurred to
me anyone would do something like that! I didn’t look until late
Thursday.”

“
Did you usually leave
your drawer unlocked?”

“
When I was in the room,
yes. I’d unlock it in the morning.”

“
Did you lock it when you
went to lunch?”

“
Yes. Well, usually. I’d
lock the office door.”

“
But not
always.”

Nora unclenched her hands
and gestured helplessly. “How could I know he’d have such a plan in
mind?”

“
You couldn’t, of course.
Did you lock it when you left your office for a few minutes? To go
to the ladies’ room, or to pick up your mail?”

“
I usually locked the
office door, not the desk,” Nora sighed. “All right, it’s true I
wasn’t as careful as I should have been. But it’s also true that
Charlie was rooting around in that drawer the day before the gun
was used!”

Anne didn’t know what to
think. Had she been right to believe Maggie? But even Nora admitted
that other people might have been in her office.

And of course, Nora
herself could have taken the gun at any time.

Maggie said, “Anne and I
have been thinking that Tal was a very curious person. He’d learned
my family connections just in the five minutes we talked. And we
thought he might have been killed because he’d figured out
someone’s secret. Something he wasn’t meant to know.”

“
Secret?” Nora’s hands
clamped together again.

“
Can you think of anyone
who has a secret? Someone who’d kill to keep it quiet?”

“
I—no, I don’t know
anyone’s secrets. Maybe Charlie’s got a secret. But why can’t it
just be rivalry? If Charlie felt threatened by my movie-star
impersonation, why wouldn’t he feel threatened by research that
contradicted him?”