Third Degree

by Maggie Barbieri

  Crawford read the note, his eyes growing wide. “When did you get this?”

  “Today.” I popped an olive in my mouth. “It’s the third one of these that I’ve gotten. The first one encouraged me to ‘get up’ or ‘get it up’ or something like that. The second one was shorter but equally cryptic.” I looked around for the waitress. “We need bread,” I said to myself. I was starving.

  “You’ve gotten three?”

  “Yes,” I said, distracted. I couldn’t remember if our waitress was the actress-model who looked like Tyra Banks or the one who looked like Halle Berry. I finally grabbed a busboy and asked him for a basket of bread. “And butter!” I called after him.

  “This is disturbing,” he said.

  “It is,” I agreed, my mind on a completely different topic. “You’d think that they’d give you bread and butter automatically.”

  “No, not the bread situation. The notes.” He flipped the note over. “Did you try this number?”

  I looked at him as if to say, “what do you think?” “Nobody answers.”

  “That’s weird.” He sat back in his seat. “This is concerning.”

  I looked at Crawford and was momentarily stunned by just how adorable he really was. Especially when he was concerned about me. What in God’s name was wrong with me that I couldn’t commit to this guy? “You think?” I knew it was, but I was trying to downplay my reaction. I’ve been through a lot during my time with Crawford and I was loath to think of our relationship spiralling into one where I continually played the damsel in distress. This situation, I thought, called for practiced nonchalance.

  “Uh, yes.” He downed a bit of the glass of merlot that he had ordered. “When did the first one come?”

  I thought back. “A few days ago?”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “So much has happened, Crawford. I can’t remember a lot since Carter’s death. It’s been a blur.”

  “What about the second one?” he asked. When I shrugged, he asked, “Did you tell Detective Madden about this?”

  Thankfully, the busboy came back with a big basket of bread but only two pats of butter. I grabbed his arm. “We’re going to need more butter.”

  Crawford waited before asking me again. “Did you tell Detective Madden about this?”

  “No. I never want to see her again, let alone talk to her. I don’t think she needs to get involved.” I put forth my lavender-scented note card/good penmanship theory.

  “I don’t agree. And I want to see the other notes.” Crawford looked around the restaurant before returning his gaze to the car across the street. “What else has happened since I entered my self-imposed exile from you?”

  That was an interesting way to put it. “Not much.” I dug through the bread basket for a roll. “I went to Carter Wilmott’s memorial service. Ginny Miller was there.”

  Crawford raised an eyebrow.

  “She was actually in her car across the street, but she was looking for something. Or someone. I followed her to the Stop and Shop.”

  Crawford didn’t take his eye off the window but his exasperation with me and my handling of the situation was palpable. “You didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “I hope you didn’t try to buy cold cuts.”

  “I didn’t. But I made quite a scene, if I do say so myself. And I prevented an old lady from knocking an entire display of Goya garbanzo beans to the ground.” I slathered some butter on my bread and shoved it in my mouth. “Good bread.”

  Crawford stood up abruptly, knocking my drink into my lap. Now there was a first. I’m usually the one knocking things over. He ran from the restaurant and out onto the street, his long legs a blur as he ran across the street, against the light and toward Kevin, who stood on the other side by his sensible and energy-efficient Honda Fit.

  In mufti, Kevin looked like a normal, everyday denizen of Greenwich Village. Even up close, nobody would have had any idea that he was a man of the cloth. In his baggy jeans, hipster T-shirt with a slightly ironic saying on it, and Puma sneakers, he could have passed for a bike messenger, barista, or young dot-com executive. But I knew the truth. And I also knew that if Kevin was under deep cover, as he appeared to be, something was seriously wrong. I exited the restaurant, promising the hostess that we would return, but probably with an extra diner in tow, and headed across the street.

  Eighteen

  “How did you find me?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t hard, Kevin,” I said, as if I had had anything to do with it.

  Crawford graciously acknowledged my noninvolvement by not making an issue of it. “What’s going on, Father?”

  We were back at our table at the Riviera, me starting my second martini, Crawford having switched to coffee, and Kevin with an untouched chardonnay in front of him. I had finished the basket of bread and was waiting for my entrée. I raised an eyebrow at Kevin, who remained silent. “Well?”

  Kevin took a deep breath, seemingly marshaling his courage. “I’ve been accused of ‘inappropriate behavior’ toward a student.”

  I was more comfortable with the “priest on the lam” charade that I had conjured up; in that fantasy, Kevin had gotten tired of the Catholic Church and pastoring to a bunch of uninterested college students and was living the life he had intended to live with a wife and twin sons. “Inappropriate behavior?” That was startling and discomfiting, to say the least.

  Crawford was able to remain impassive, a gift we did not share upon hearing unsettling news. “Tell me what happened.”

  And Kevin did. A sophomore whom Kevin would not name had been seeing him for counseling for several months for a problem he would also not name. Kevin had helped the student as best he could, but he could sense that the situation this student was in was worsening and that this person was in serious trouble. He wanted to alert the kid’s parents, the school, or anyone else who might be able to help further, but this suggestion sent the student into a rage that Kevin never anticipated.

  “And the next thing I knew, I was in Etheridge’s office being put on notice and told that I had to vacate the premises immediately while the situation was under investigation.” He rolled up the end of the tablecloth and worried it between his fingers. “Remember, Alison? That was the day I saw you in your office.”

  I did remember. What we thought was an innocuous meeting turned out to be much more. “They can’t do this to you, Kevin.”

  He smiled at my naïveté. “They can, Alison. And they did.”

  Crawford jotted a few notes into the notebook he kept in his jacket pocket at all times. “What can we do to help, Father?”

  “Well, you can start by calling me Kevin.”

  “Okay. Kevin.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything you can do to help. I’m playing a waiting game right now and Etheridge holds the key to if and when I can return.” He looked at me beseechingly. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Alison.” He looked at Crawford, his eyes sunken beneath giant dark circles, then back at me. “You believe me, right?”

  “Of course I do,” I said. I did. Kevin was a lot of things—terrible homilist, lover of all things Broadway, and shitty driver—but he was true blue. And he took his vows very seriously. I had once seen a fellow professor make a pseudopass at Kevin, but he had shut her down in the kindest and most delicate way possible. It was clear that he wasn’t interested and she got the message—loud and clear.

  Crawford stretched his long legs to the side and reviewed his notes. “What else can you tell us?”

  “Nothing,” Kevin said. “Well, I should say nothing without compromising this person’s privacy and my vows. What someone tells me in confidence remains in my confidence. You know I can’t reveal anything else, Bobby.”

  Crawford nodded. He did know.

  Our food arrived but I was the only one who dug in. Kevin pushed his French fries around on his plate, and Crawford only picked at his meat loaf. I came up for air and asked Kevin who he was stayin
g with. He was vague. “A friend.”

  “Anybody I know?” Realistically, I knew that Kevin must have other friends—I had actually met a few—but I liked to think that I was his only true friend.

  “Somebody from the seminary.”

  “And he lives down here?” I asked. “How come you can’t get a gig like that?”

  Kevin smiled. “Long story.”

  Without pouring on too much of the guilt, I asked Kevin why he didn’t let me know that he was leaving.

  “Not enough time,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his hands over his eyes, exhausted.

  Crawford gave me a tight smile that indicated that I was not to go any further with this line of questioning. I concentrated on my chicken and waited, hoping Kevin would take the conversation in a new direction. He didn’t. We sat silently, eating our dinners and trying desperately to pretend that we were just three friends out for a leisurely and enjoyable dinner. Although I ate, I felt as if I had a large pit in my stomach when I finished, and I declined the server’s offer of coffee or dessert.

  Kevin looked at me suspiciously. “Are you all right?” He knew that I ended almost every meal with dessert so not having it was definitely a bad sign.

  “I just don’t feel like it,” I said, the enormity of the situation coming down on me. I resisted the urge to cry; Kevin looked so dejected and I knew that this charge of impropriety was weighing heavily on him. His wan pallor telegraphed that he was dying inside. I leaned over and wrapped my arms around him. He leaned back in and a little sob escaped his throat. I held on to him a long time, until I was sure he had stopped crying and then held him at arm’s length. “You let me know what I can do to help.” I pushed his shaggy blond hair off his forehead. “And remember, Etheridge is a tool.”

  Crawford signaled for the check. “You like that word, huh?”

  “It seems like an appropriate designation for him. My other nicknames have never done him justice.”

  We parted on Seventh Avenue South, Crawford promising Kevin that he would make the parking tickets go away if Kevin agreed to find a legal spot for the Fit in the next few hours. As we drove back to the Bronx, I asked Crawford if he had any thoughts on Kevin’s situation.

  “It sounds pretty serious,” he said in his usual understated way.

  “Yes, but do you think they can really let him go?” I asked, in no mood for understatement. I wanted Crawford’s emotional intensity in response to the situation to match my own and that just wasn’t going to happen, no matter how hard I pushed.

  “If he’s guilty.”

  “Well, he’s not guilty and you know that!” I said, a little louder than I intended. Crawford flinched slightly. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “He’s not guilty.”

  “Right,” he said, pulling off at the exit for the precinct. “He’s not guilty.”

  But he didn’t sound convinced and I was too tired to pursue the subject. I told him where my car was and he pulled up alongside it. He sighed. “You have a parking ticket, too.”

  I got out and plucked it from under the windshield. Crawford opened his window and I dropped it in his lap. “Take care of this for me?”

  He gave me a little salute. “You got it.”

  I leaned in and gave him a long, lingering kiss on the mouth in full view of a pair of uniformed cops who were starting their shift and walking their beat. They gave Crawford a sidelong glance, one of them uttering a muffled, “You go, Detective.” Blushing, Crawford pulled back and told me to drive safely. I watched as he drove off down the street, waiting until he was out of sight before starting for home.

  I checked my phone for messages when I got in the car and saw that I had a message from Max. I need 2 talk 2 u soon was all it said in typical cryptic, yet dramatic, Max fashion. I flipped my phone closed and threw it onto the passenger seat, making a mental note to carve out a piece of time during the evening to call her and find out what was so urgent.

  My mood on the ride home fluctuated between overwhelming sadness and intense hatred toward Etheridge. How could he take the word of a student over that of Kevin, a trusted and loyal employee? It didn’t make sense to me. But once I regained my emotional equilibrium, it occurred to me that Kevin was in a “guilty until proven innocent” situation and nothing he could say at this point would change that fact. I pulled into my driveway feeling an urge to throttle Etheridge—a feeling I was well acquainted with—along with an urge to shout Kevin’s innocence from the rooftops, one that I suppressed.

  I went around back and noticed, once again, that the screen was ripped. Max. I didn’t see a car, but that didn’t mean anything. For all I knew, she had taken the train and walked here from the station. She had left me the urgent message and had obviously come here to talk to me; not finding a way in, she used her usual mode of entry. In the darkness, I could make out a lawn chair parked under the window. It was pitch-dark now and I regretted not having put on the back light so that I could find my way into the house. I hadn’t anticipated being gone as long as I had and never guessed that it would be almost nine o’clock by the time I arrived home. As my anger flared in the form of a deep flush to my cheeks, I unlocked the back door, throwing it open and entering the kitchen in a full rage.

  “Max!” I called. Upstairs, I heard Trixie’s muffled barks, coming from somewhere directly overhead, meaning that she was in the guest room. She rips the screen and she locks up my dog, I thought. I fumbled for the kitchen light preparing to lambaste Max as soon as I located her. But my next words were drowned out as a piece of tape was slapped across my mouth and a hood was thrown over my head. After that, I was flung over the shoulder of a very large man, I guessed by the cloying smell of musky aftershave and the size of his broad shoulders, who carried me out into the dark night.

  Nineteen

  The basement was dark and musty, but with the hood off my head, I could tell it was also filled with priceless antiques, the kind you don’t regularly see at the places I shop. Although my hands and feet had been bound while I was in the vehicle that had taken me here, they no longer were. I had looked around for a pit, not unlike the one in which Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs had kept his victims, imploring them to put the “lotion on its skin” so that he could keep his ultimate skin jacket soft. I was relieved to not find one. What I found was a giant slop sink with two empty cans of Benjamin Moore paint in it, a small bathroom with a toilet (thank God) and a full roll of toilet paper in it, and a full-sized Jenn Air refrigerator fully stocked with soda, juice, and by golly, chardonnay. I was sitting in an original Chippendale chair, having exhausted myself looking for a way out, drinking a glass of dry, oaky chardonnay from a crystal goblet that I had found in what appeared to be an original Louis XIV china cabinet. I didn’t know where I was or who had brought me here, but I did know that I was extremely pleased that I had left a deep scratch in the top of the mahogany dresser on which I had leaped, trying to find a window to break.

  It hadn’t taken that long to transport me to this place, just a few minutes. So I knew that I was probably still in the village proper, and if I had to guess, I was sure that Ginny Miller had something to do with this. Heck, maybe I was even in Ginny Miller’s basement. But as I took in all of the antiques and paintings—was that an original Georgia O’Keeffe over there by the Stickley end table?—I wondered how Ginny Miller had acquired such taste and class. She was an oncology nurse and her husband a civil servant. They probably did well but not well enough to have a treasure trove of rare, and very old, furniture. And my general consensus is that people who wear spandex generally don’t have a ton of antiques in their basements. It wasn’t a proven theory, okay, but it was a guess that seemed to hold true.

  When it came right down to it, this dark, musty, and cobweb-filled basement was almost nicer than my living room. It certainly didn’t belong to Ginny Miller, driver of a beat-up Subaru and hider of recyclables.

  I put my head between my knees trying to figure
out my next move. I suddenly had an upside-down yet full view of a collection of antique fencing sabers behind me. I jumped from the chair, pushing it aside, and grabbed a long and pointy foil.

  I had been kind of a shy and moody teen, so in an effort to connect me with other shy moody teens, my mother had enrolled me in fencing classes in Elmsford, not far from where I grew up. Every Tuesday, from four in the afternoon until six, I would advance, rapelle, lunge, and do a bunch of other things long forgotten in a white jumpsuit and face mask. I was a fair to middling fencer and did not make one friend. But I did fall in love with Gilles, my very French and very married fencing teacher who always called me Abigail and was not attracted to me in the least, and I never competed in any fencing competitions. Generally, fencing class had been a giant waste of time. But I did learn how to manipulate a foil and that had made my mother somewhat happy. I gripped the foil in my hands and lunged forward. Yes. This would do the trick. I still had my old moves even if it felt as if I’d dislodged a vertebra in the process.

  Movement overhead, along with the sound of muted and muffled voices, put me on high alert. I stood at the bottom of the stairs, hiding behind the giant mahogany dresser, and waited while I heard someone unlock the door and start down the stairs. As the sound of the footfalls got closer, I lunged out from behind the dresser and posed with my foil. Instead of shouting “En garde!” out came “Lydia!” and I was surprised and then not surprised that my captor was Carter’s widow.

  Lydia grabbed her chest, almost losing her breath at the shock of seeing me jump out from behind the dresser with her antique foil. “Oh, Alison. Put that thing down,” she said. “You scared the life out of me.”