by Lev Raphael
“Bullerschmidt knows we would go beyond the university and generate as much adverse publicity as possible for SUM. They’re terrified of looking bad, not being bad.”
“Good line.”
He nodded. “So. How do we find out more about Bullerschmidt and Delaney?” he asked, setting down his knife and fork.
“Polly’s our only hope. She was definitely not telling us the complete truth. Maybe we can squeeze it out of her.”
“How?”
“Threaten to hire a psychic to jam her alpha waves?”
The phone rang, and Stefan reached for it. “Hi, Lucille. Now?” He glanced a question at me and I nodded. “Sure. We’re just finishing lunch.” He hung up and said she was coming over in a few minutes. It seemed odd that she had called first, since we had gotten into the habit of simply crossing the street and knocking on each other’s doors.
Stefan and I put the dishes in the dishwasher, and I set water to boil to make some instant espresso with Cafe Bustelo. Lucille soon joined us at the kitchen table, where we hunched over our very sweet and strong espresso like conspirators, though I had to remind myself that she was as much a suspect as anyone else. Still, the idea of her killing Delaney when she was so fond of him seemed extremely implausible. Yet I could feel that wading through the very unreality of the situation, generating endless spirals of speculation, was helping me begin to recover from the shock.
“Detective Valley was extremely rude to me last night. That man yanked my chain,” she said. “And this morning, too. He’s convinced I killed Delaney, or that Didier did.”
“Maybe both,” I suggested helpfully.
Lucille gave us a grim smile. “Yeah, maybe both. I bet that bastard would love to nail an interracial couple for murder. You can just smell it on him.”
Before either of us could ask her where she’d been the day before, she said, “I was at the library most of the afternoon, and never went back to my office, just to the lot behind Parker to get my car. I was working in the stacks, and who the hell knows what the time was exactly. I can’t remember if I met anyone, so that’s no alibi.”
I asked, “Did you take out any books?” That would have left at least some record of when she’d been there and left. Or would it?
She shook her head, looking fretful and annoyed. “But it’s crazy to think I’d kill Delaney,” she said, her voice thickening, and she dragged a red bandanna from the pocket of her jeans skirt to blow her nose. “Delaney was a wonderful, kind boy. And smart. He was writing a brilliant paper on Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Elie Wiesel’s Night, comparing the effect of extreme deprivation and trauma.”
It sounded fascinating, but I wondered if her thinking of Delaney as brilliant wasn’t her own projection, and if the paper idea wasn’t hers as well. Or even Bill Malatesta’s—after all, he’d accused Delaney of plagiarism. Maybe it was true.
“Didier thought he was wonderful, too, all the times we had him over to dinner. Delaney wasn’t any threat to our marriage,” she added, as if answering an unspoken charge.
As Lucille seemed to edge closer and closer to tears, I could tell Stefan was getting uneasy. His face had taken on a kind of tense vagueness. Maybe he was thinking about how our relationship had been threatened a couple of years before when someone from his past almost came between us. “I’m going to do a little yard work,” he announced. “I need to be outside.”
Lucille was so wrapped up in her sorrow she didn’t notice the unusual briskness with which Stefan spoke and the way he practically fled the room by the back door.
“I was so fond of Delaney,” Lucille said, shaking her head and clearly fighting back tears.
“How much?”
Her head jerked as if I’d slapped her. “We weren’t sleeping together, if that’s what you mean,” she said sharply. But then her voice melted. “Lord, I wanted to. But something didn’t seem quite right.”
“He was your student.”
“You think I could forget that? But he was Delaney,” she said, sounding a little like an adolescent girl mooning over Leonardo DiCaprio. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me, Nick. It’s been a hellacious year. Moving to Michigan, Didier immersed in his book, me feeling so unpopular in EAR. Why I ever thought academia would be a good environment, I don’t know. After all the venality in publishing, I had these romantic fantasies about a world dedicated to knowledge and learning. I should have just gone running with the bulls in Pamplona.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve been wondering about my future here even if I do get tenure.”
Lucille frowned and took my hand. “But you’re a shoo-in, aren’t you? If they want to keep Stefan here, they can’t let you go.” I pulled my hand away, and she apologized. “I didn’t mean you don’t deserve tenure for yourself—just that—”
I cut her off. “I know what you meant. And it’s the truth. I got this job because of Stefan, even though I’m a good teacher. But no one in EAR believes that or even cares.”
“At least you haven’t gotten hate mail.” She drained her cup and asked for more. I put up the hot water again. Thinking about what her time at SUM had been like, I understood how vulnerable she had been. Still….
“Has there been any more hate mail?” I asked her.
Lucille shook her head. “I suppose the brick was what it was all building toward. Oh, God, what a gross pun! Sorry.” I was about to ask her something else when she went on: “Nick, you said that Delaney was my student. He really wasn’t anyone’s student. He’s not like anyone else I’ve ever met. But to tell you the truth, sometimes he bothered me. I mean, something about him bothered me.” Hands folded, face composed again, she seemed to be tallying it all up right there with me. “I guess you’d have to say he was seductive.”
“No guessing about it! Those tight jeans—sitting with his legs wide open in that Come-to-the-Cabaret pose?”
She chuckled. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
Was I remembering it differently now that he was dead, or had Delaney’s murder freed me to recollect him with more honesty? “Yes, it was,” I said. “Other people talked about it, too,” I said, remembering Bill Malatesta, though he himself wasn’t averse to lighting the charm incense. “The way Delaney dressed and held himself, the way he looked at people, it was too much. He probably couldn’t help it. He was like a character Elizabeth Bowen writes about somewhere: ‘He’d play a kitten up if we had a kitten here.’”
She frowned. “Bowen? Didn’t she write The Death of the Heart?”
“Yes—that’s the book! I read it in college.”
“And you can still remember it?” She shook her head admiringly. “I’m scared of you.”
I grinned and once again felt myself lucky to have found someone in EAR I could be friendly with. That is, when I wasn’t suspecting her or her husband of murder.
“Nick. There was something murky about Delaney, I’m sure of it. More than just free-floating seductiveness.”
“He did have a weird smile.”
“Right. That smile, that smile. It was the only thing that didn’t fit him well, and—”
I waited for Lucille to say more, but she looked uneasy. Should I prompt her, or let her bring it out at her own pace?
“Sometimes he said things that were—well, offensive isn’t the right word.”
“Things like?”
She shrugged, looking away from me. “Oh, like saying that Didier was so famous already for a book that hadn’t even been published, and how that was overshadowing my career as a teacher, a very fine teacher. It upset me.”
“Jeez.” I didn’t feel my hair stand on end or a sudden chill, but something pretty close to both of those. “That’s the same kind of thing Delaney was trying with me. How Stefan was so well known that I was in his shadow. It only happened twice, but it made me miserable, and Stefan and I got into a nasty argument the other night.”
Lucille and I stared at each other, recognition growing between us like two victims
of real estate fraud or some other malicious con game.
“He wanted you to be jealous of Stefan,” Lucille said.
“And he wanted you to be jealous of Didier.”
“But why?”
I echoed that, and then, unbidden, I told her Delaney’s creepy story about his parents, his “detective work” in ferreting out his mother’s secret life.
“Shit! Are you serious? He told me I was the only person he ever shared that story with!”
“Same here,” I said, realizing that we had both been victims of some obscure plan that could have hurt us very badly. “I guess it was his party piece,” I mused, though that didn’t at all seem to capture Delaney’s smiling insidiousness.
“But why was he slinging that bullshit, if it was bull? Trying to get our sympathy? I confess, it worked on me.”
I shook my head. “It put me off. And why would he need sympathy when he had his looks working for him overtime?”
“He was beautiful,” Lucille agreed. “Sometimes he’d be talking, and I’d end up staring at his lips, or his hair—or something else!—and I’d miss what he was saying.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d seen him in the showers at the Club, and he’d been even more desirable than she knew. “But was he really smart, or were you just dazzled?”
“He got accepted into the Ph.D. program, didn’t he?”
“Lucille, you know as well as I do that EAR needs a constant supply of cheap labor to teach courses the faculty doesn’t want. People who won’t get decent jobs when they’re done, if they get hired at all. The department keeps stringing them along whether they’re really capable or not—EAR can’t afford not to. But forget that for now.”
“Wait,” she said. “Why did Delaney switch from History to EAR? He never mentioned it to me, and I never asked.”
“I don’t know.” We sat there with our brows as furrowed as if we were on opposite sides of a very challenging chess game. Suddenly I was recalling Stefan’s sleepy question from the other night: Who would want to kill both Delaney and Jesse Benevento?
“Jesse Benevento was taking a class with Delaney,” I said.
“And?”
“Well, isn’t that a connection? What if one of the students in that class hated them both—maybe Delaney was giving the student grief, and—and—” Lucille looked at me, but I said, “I don’t know.” I shifted gears. “You spent a lot of time with Delaney, right? Was there anything else about him you picked up, anything that might explain why he was killed?” I knew Valley had probably asked the same question, but I doubted Lucille felt as comfortable talking to him as she did with me. “Do you know how he was able to afford membership at the Club?”
Lucille blushed a little. “I bought it for him, since he was complaining about getting out of shape and how bad the facilities were at the men’s IM.” Defensively, she said, “He was only a graduate student! You know how expensive it is to join. And I felt so grateful to him because he was so warm and concerned when I told him about the hate mail. Didier was just ranting about going to the police, but Delaney made me feel better. That was what counted. He didn’t get all macho on me. I hate that.”
The kettle boiled, and I made her another cup of the instant espresso.
“This is pretty good. I could live off it,” she murmured, taking the cup from me. “Didier plays all smooth and relaxed, but that’s not the whole story. He can be mean when he’s pissed off.” As soon as she said it, she brought her hand up in front of her mouth as if the words were still hovering there and could be grabbed and crushed. “He didn’t kill Delaney. I wasn’t saying that.”
I nodded.
“No, really, Nick. He didn’t. He can lose his temper, but that doesn’t make him a killer.”
Not necessarily. Losing your temper was the first step. Lose it precipitously enough, and who knew what could happen?
“Oh, shit, Nick. You’ll never believe me now.”
Since she was so open, I was tempted to ask her more about her private life then, and probe a little more deeply into her relationship with Delaney, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know anything beyond what Didier had already told me. Before I could figure out where to go next, the doorbell rang, and I heard shouting. “I’ll skin you alive, you sons of bitches!”
Juno Dromgoole had come calling. Lucille and I leapt up as she started beating on the door like a Japanese demon drummer. Stefan tore in from the backyard, wiping his hands on his jeans. “I heard that lunatic from out back. Let’s call the police.”
But I sprang down the hall to the front door and wrenched it open, surprising Juno in mid-rant. She stalked into the foyer, red-faced, surveying me with wild-eyed disgust, hands on her hips. Lucille and Stefan warily joined us, and taking in their presence behind me, Juno cried out, “I knew it! Conspirators! You’re all in this together!”
Stefan moved behind her to shut the door since our neighbors weren’t fans of theater of the absurd, and I noted that even playing Medea, Juno looked sensational. She wore a tight-waisted black satin blazer over a black body stocking and silver stiletto heels, with a candelabra’s worth of silver dangling from each ear and her wrists, and draping her neck.
“We’re all in what together?” I asked, as we stood awkwardly by the door.
“Trying to frame me for Delaney’s death!”
To his credit, Stefan turned red. He and I exchanged a wordless question: Invite her in or kick her out? I nodded to the living room, and when he reluctantly headed there, he brought us along in his wake, though Lucille and I held back from crowding Juno lest she decide to pummel one of us in her lip-trembling fury. She and Lucille settled on the couch a safe distance apart.
“Juno,” I said, “Detective Valley asked me who I saw at Parker Hall when Delaney was killed. I was just telling him the truth.”
“You’re all trying to frame me,” Juno growled. “Especially that summer stock detective. He’s persecuting me. Of course I was in a hurry to leave Parker Hall early last night. I had a date, didn’t I?”
“A date?” I repeated idiotically, I’m afraid.
“Yes,” she hissed. “A fucking date. Does that surprise you?”
Actually, it did. I imagined her romantic life was more along the lines of a search-and-destroy party.
“Who with?” Stefan asked.
“Delaney—and he never showed up.”
The three of us gaped at each other, and then at Juno. And now, despite being perfectly groomed and coiffed, she appeared to crumble. “I didn’t kill him,” she wailed. “I was fucking him! Why would I want to kill him? How many juicy twenty-six-year-old studs do you think I can get without paying for it?”
I whispered to Stefan, “Straight people have such strange mating habits.”
Lucille eyed Juno as coldly as Alexis had ever looked at Crystal on Dynasty, and I was thankful we weren’t near a reflecting pool or any other small body of water, because I’m sure they would have gone tumbling in.
She could kill Juno now, I thought. Maybe not intentionally, but in a building, turbulent rage. Then Lucille surprised the hell out of me. As if determined to master her jealousy or whatever else Juno’s confession had triggered, she moved down the couch and drew poor Juno into her arms. Juno didn’t resist, but started ululating so piteously I was glad we didn’t have a dog. Lucille rocked her, and through sobs, Juno told us her story.
“I met him at that student bar in town,” she wailed. “The really louche one in a basement. Earlier in the semester. There was a punk band playing, Smegmathon Gang Bang or something like that.”
The image of Juno at any student hangout cracked me up, and I tried hard not to show it. She would have terrified the undergraduates.
“Delaney stood me a drink. I returned the favor. And the next evening he called.” Red-cheeked from crying, she raked us with her glistening eyes. “How could I say no? It’s not as if he was in my class or anything.” Lucille winced at that. “We fucked only a few times—and then he
played me like a fish. He wouldn’t return my calls. That’s what made me so desperate this year.”
Stefan mouthed, “Yeah, right,” to me, as if Juno wasn’t always nasty, but Lucille caught it and silently admonished Stefan.
“Busy boy. Was he screwing anyone else?” I asked. Lucille let her go, and Juno sat back away from her, perhaps embarrassed by her outburst.
Desolate, Juno said she didn’t know. “But he must have been. The boy was insatiable, not just for sex, but for praise. God, it was wonderful. But exhausting. I had to tell him what a good lover he was, how gorgeous he was. How could he ever doubt it?” Then, eyes gleaming, she held her hands an improbable distance apart. “And, my dears, he was—”
“Whoa!” Lucille said. “Don’t go there, girlfriend.”
Juno shrunk back into herself, looking as hurt as if we’d rejected a gift she’d picked just for us. Clearly she wanted to brag about her experience as much as lament it. I was torn between morbid curiosity and disgust.
The phone rang in my study, and I went off to screen the call, aware that I hadn’t played any of yesterday’s messages yet. It was someone claiming to be a reporter from the Michiganapolis Tribune. “Professor Hoffman? I wonder if you’d give us a comment about the arrest of William Malatesta for the murder of Delaney Kildare?” I angrily grabbed the receiver, sure that it was a hoax and ready to blast whoever was calling.
“Who the hell is this?”
“Oh, you’re in, professor. Great!” I recognized the voice: Brenda Bolinksy, a reporter I’d met last year. “So, any comment? Yes, it’s true. Malatesta denies it, but there was some blood found on the front seat and driver’s floor mat of his car, and it matches the murder victim’s.”
I had trouble even managing a “No comment.”
“Did you know Malatesta? Was he a student of yours? Was he prone to violence? Do you think drugs were involved? Was sexual harassment a factor?”