True Grey (23 page)

‘Well, how can you be sure? If you are having visions, dear, that could mean there's a deeper connection.'

‘It's possible.' Dulcie could say that without telling an outright lie. After all, anything was possible. Then she paused. Her mother always talked about the connection between parent and child; now would be the time for her to ask about Dulcie's life.

‘Well, you just keep an open mind, dear.' It was not to be. ‘Now I'm hip deep in preparations for our next circle. And, yes, I do mean that literally, since we want to hold a water ceremony before it gets too cold.'

‘I wasn't going to question—'

‘No, of course not, dear. Everyone knows how gentle you are. Lovely to hear from you! Glad you're doing so well.'

As she stood there, holding the silent phone, Dulcie remembered one of her childhood fantasies. In it, she'd been stolen away from the most rational family in the world, and Lucy, for all her good intentions, was no more her mother than Lala was.

E
verything looked better on a full stomach, Dulcie told herself. But after talking with Lucy, Dulcie knew she couldn't bear to run into any of her students, and so instead of Lala's, she headed toward the Baglery. Besides, she rationalized as she walked away from Harvard Square, she was having a hard day. She deserved an eight-dollar sandwich that would take a while to chew.

Her mouth, of course, was full when her phone rang, but she reached for it anyway. It wasn't too late for Chris to join her, especially if he was already in the area. That last bite of bagel almost choked her, however, when she heard Detective Rogovoy's gruff bark on the other end.

‘Ms Schwartz.' He didn't wait for her to identify herself, undoubtedly part of his police training. ‘Glad I caught you. Finally.'

Dulcie swallowed with difficulty, the dry bagel still a lump in her throat. ‘Detective?' She reached for her diet Coke, as she counted back. Had she ignored one call? Two? ‘I've been meaning to get back to you.' She tried to sound optimistic. ‘Have you, uh, figured everything out?'

Another bark. This one sounded like a laugh. ‘I wish. No, I'm calling you again because apparently you no longer return calls. And, Ms Schwartz, I'm afraid I've got to ask you to come in again. There's been a new development.'

Dulcie put the soda can down and ever so briefly considered hanging up. It would be the wrong thing to do. She knew that. She also suspected it would be futile. It was, however, tempting.

‘Ms Schwartz?'

‘I'm here.' She couldn't help the heavy sigh that followed.

He must have heard it. ‘I am sorry, Ms Schwartz. I really am. I shouldn't say this, but I do feel like I've come to know you and, well, my daughters aren't that much younger than you.'

‘Thanks.' She felt surprisingly comforted by his words and found herself wondering what the bear-like cop would be like as a father. There were so few men at the arts colony that Dulcie hadn't been ostracized by her lack of a dad, but the idea still tantalized. Maybe, she decided, living with Chris was changing her ideas of family. Or maybe it was Mr Grey.

A loud clearing of the throat brought her back to the moment. ‘So, Ms Schwartz, when may we expect the pleasure of your company?'

‘May I finish my lunch first?' The idea didn't seem that scary any more. ‘My office hours start at two, but surely we'll be through by then.' The quiet on the other end brought some of her nerves back. ‘Won't we?'

‘The sooner you get here, the sooner we'll be able to figure that out.' The detective was back in police mode.

‘Figure what out?' Her mouth had gone dry again.

Now it was her turn to hear a bellows-like sigh come over the phone line. ‘We've been looking through the deceased's rooms, the ones she'd just moved into before the – ah – incident. And we found something that has been admitted into evidence.'

Dulcie waited. She had only been in the library, the outer room of the suite. There was no way this could be connected to her. ‘Something,' she paused, fishing for the right phrase, ‘that I might be able to help you with?'

‘You could say that, Ms Schwartz. At the very least, we need to go over your statement again. Basically, we'd like to know if you can think of any reason why we should have found, under her desk, a leather bound address book that seems to belong to you.'

‘E
xcuse me?' Dulcie was dimly aware of the voice on the other end of the phone, as Rogovoy went back over what he'd said. What she heard, however, were her own racing thoughts.

It was a set-up. It had to be. Dulcie knew there was no way she had brought her address book into Melinda's suite. In fact, the last time she had seen it was . . . She stopped herself. It had been in her desk. Only, when she had looked for it in the top right drawer, it had been missing.

Someone had taken it, she realized with a gasp. Someone had taken her address book, and at the same time planted the page of Melinda's manuscript. She was sure of it. She remembered going through her drawers, thinking everything was just a bit out of place. No, neatness was not her strong suit. Still, she hadn't put the grading form in the left-hand drawer. She
never
put the grading form in the left-hand drawer. It always went in the right, where she could pull it out when she needed to look up the procedure for filing the grades – and then she shoved it back. Only it hadn't been there. It had moved. And the manuscript page had been shoved down into her pad. And, clearly, her address book lifted.

‘Well, clearly,' she started to explain, ‘what happened . . .' She stopped herself cold.

Dulcie had been about to tell the detective all of this. About to explain her theory, with all the parts as evidence, when she caught herself. He knew her, he said. He had daughters her age, he said. But he also now had one piece of evidence that placed her closer to a murder victim than she had previously admitted to being. To tell him about the manuscript page was to give him another piece, a possibly damning piece. And for all she knew, all this talk of daughters could be a ploy to get her to confess.

Dulcie didn't buy into Lucy's paranoid world view. Detective Rogovoy might be a man, a man in authority, no less. That didn't mean he was ‘The Man' or inherently evil. However, her years here at the university had taught her to recognize what she didn't know. Chief among those things was what a father might act like, if that father were also a police officer, and whether Rogovoy's statement of trust was consistent with paternal behavior or simply a way of handling a suspect.

She also didn't know who had gone through her desk. Whoever it had been had not cared much about being found out. Perhaps he or she had thought Dulcie wouldn't notice. In all fairness, she realized, she almost hadn't. However, whoever it was had a clear intent: putting her squarely in the frame for murder.

‘I'll be down there soon,' she said, finally, and managed to get off the line. That was probably the best she could do, she realized. Afterward, assuming the police let her go after this interview, she would find out who was after her, and what other tricks he – or she – might have in store. The question was: how?

Taking another bite from her sandwich, she toyed with the phone. Chris would have ideas. Thanks in no small part to his academic discipline, he was a very organized and logical thinker. But she'd already left him a message. He would have called back if he'd gotten it. Unless – Dulcie didn't like to think about this – he was still angry. Once again, she found something stuck in her throat. Bagel, undoubtedly, she told herself as she forced herself to swallow and dabbed at her eyes.

Lloyd was off limits because of his faith in Rafe. This new information, Dulcie realized, might sway her office mate. After all, someone had gone into the visiting scholar's suite to plant evidence. Who better than the house senior tutor? Then again, Lloyd might hold firm. His loyalty was one of his better traits, one that Dulcie had relied upon in the past. No, she couldn't risk it.

Trista? Now that was a possibility. Dulcie was curious if the blonde Victorian had learned anything on her own, and this new info would certainly energize her. She wiped her mouth and reached for her phone again, only to have it ring in her hands.

This time, she looked at the caller ID before picking up. Not Chris, but not the police headquarters, either. Only after the third ring did she recognize the number: someone was calling from the office of the Mildon Collection.

‘Hello?' She'd never gotten a call from the Mildon. ‘Dulcie Schwartz speaking.'

‘Ms Schwartz! It is I, Thomas Griddlehaus!' The little clerk's voice was soft, and she thought he had his hand over the receiver, but his palpable excitement made even his whisper oddly distorted.

‘Mr Griddlehaus?' Dulcie paused, worried. ‘Is everything OK?'

‘Yes! Yes!' He was almost yelling, in a breathless kind of way. ‘I've found it, Ms Schwartz! I was filing the sequestered material. You know, the material I'd set aside for the unfortunate Ms Sloane Harquist? Well, I was looking through the pages, simply to make sure I filed everything correctly, of course, and I realized that we'd been looking at something incorrectly. You must come down here, Ms Schwartz. As soon as possible! I believe I've found the missing key.'

D
ulcie had rarely felt so torn. What she wanted to do was race down to the special collection and see whatever page or passage Griddlehaus had found, and then get right to work on it. What she had promised to do, however, was go talk to Rogovoy. She'd said she would. She'd been ducking the detective for days. And, considering that she seemed to be still under suspicion, it was the sensible move.

Or was it? A half-hour later, Dulcie wasn't so sure.

‘Someone must have planted it. Isn't that obvious?' Dulcie was nearly yelling. Not a good tactic when talking to the police, she knew. However, she had never run into such a ridiculous situation. She had come in determined to defend herself, Rogovoy's last words ringing in her ears. However, she'd been so distracted by Griddlehaus's news that she'd failed to come up with a reasonable explanation. ‘What's the alternative? That I killed her and left my address book in her room? I already told you, I think someone was in my desk—'

In front of her, Detective Rogovoy sat with a stone-faced young cop wearing the city of Cambridge's blue uniform. Rogovoy raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch. It was as much of a hint as Dulcie was going to get, and she sat back down.

‘Well, someone was. I can tell,' she said, trying not to squirm on the hard wooden seat. ‘And what you're saying doesn't make any sense.'

Rogovoy opened his mouth – then shut it. The presence of his stony colleague was clearly having a dampening effect on his usually more voluble self.

‘OK, then. Go back to the . . . the incident. You know the timeline.' Dulcie had a vague sense that she was digging herself in deeper. Unfortunately, she couldn't see any solution except to try to excavate a way out. ‘You know that when I showed up, she – ah, Ms Harquist – had been, well, gone for a while.'

‘And for the half-hour before the police were notified, you were . . . in the courtyard?' The other cop, younger than Rogovoy and leaner, sounded cool, like a shark. He looked down at a sheet of paper that Dulcie was sure he'd already memorized. ‘You were “hanging out” after your class?'

‘After my section, yes. Which I teach. I started to walk into the Square to get some lunch, and then I ran into a colleague and we returned to Dardley House.' Dulcie bit her lip. This young cop had a sharp-featured face and no familiarity with the trusting traditions of the university community. She turned toward Rogovoy. ‘The detective here talked to me right after. He took my statement.'

‘There are gaps,' was all her old ally said. His face, she now saw, was shut down like an old stone wall.

It was her own fault, Dulcie knew. She had arrived at the police station without a strategy – and without calling Suze. All she could think about was getting through this and returning to the Mildon to see what Griddlehaus had found. To make matters worse, she hadn't been fully focused on the questions the young cop had asked her. She hadn't seen the way the muscle on the side of his face clenched when she brushed off the timing discrepancy. And she hadn't seen the glint in his eye when he questioned her about Melinda's missing manuscript.

‘So, you never saw the dead woman's book?' His voice had been as flat as a rock, a very cold, flat rock.

‘No, never,' she had responded automatically. ‘I mean, yes, when I went in and found her, I saw it. I mean, before I found her. It was on the bookshelf. At least, I think it was. And then this morning—'

She'd caught herself then. She'd been about to tell them about the page that had appeared in her bag. The page that might implicate her. ‘This morning, I was wondering about it again.' Even to her ears, it sounded lame.

‘You were thinking about it,' the city cop repeated. Rogovoy shook his head, a barely noticeable gesture. It might have been unconscious, an expression of sadness or disappointment. She had always been a bad liar, she knew that. At that moment, however, she hadn't wanted to see his response as a sign that he knew she was holding something back. That he was disappointed in her. Rather, she took it as a warning – a subtle way of telling her to quit talking, at least while that other, sharper cop was there. That only made her more nervous.

‘You see, she and I are researching the same author. Were. That is, I still am, and her thesis would have been interesting to me, if I had read it.' The young cop turned toward Rogovoy then and nodded. They knew, then. They probably knew she was on disciplinary probation, too. ‘But I didn't. I was barely in there for a minute. Maybe even less.'