The Hanging

by Wendy Hornsby

  “What happened then?”

  “Nothing. I left.”

  “Was there a fight?”

  Sly dropped his head, as if chagrined. “No. I just left.”

  “But you were angry?”

  Sly nodded.

  “You must have said something.”

  Still looking down, Sly shook his head.

  “You didn’t say something like, I’m going to get a twelve-bore and come back?”

  “Not to him.” Sly’s face when he leveled his gaze on Thornbury was flushed with embarrassment and maybe remembered rage. “I was too mad to say anything. I was afraid I’d start crying, okay? So I just left.”

  “Did you go back later?”

  Max put a hand on Sly’s arm as a caution to be careful.

  “I never saw him again.”

  “How did you feel when you heard Dr. Holloway was dead?”

  “How did he feel? Sounds like a question from Barbara Walters,” Max said, taking Sly’s arm and rising. “Sly has told you what you wanted to know, and now you’re fishing. Come on son, we’re finished here.”

  We walked out.

  “We could do that?” Sly asked ten minutes later as we were shown to a table in the Italian restaurant in the Village. “Just walk out?”

  “Absolutely,” Max told him. “Unless they tell you you’re under arrest, they can’t make you stay. Remember that. And remember to keep your mouth shut.”

  “And memorize my lawyer’s phone number,” Sly said, grinning, finally.

  “Where is your phone?” I asked him, thinking about the hang-up call I’d had that afternoon.

  He shrugged. “Probably in the gallery somewhere.”

  I excused myself and called Lew, asked him if anyone had seen Sly’s phone. He was still on campus, waiting for word from Sly, so he said he’d go take a look around. Like a lot of kids his age, Sly had no land line, anywhere. Without his mobile phone there was no way to contact him, and with all that was going on in his life, that would be a problem. I told Lew where we were, and he said he’d call back if he found the phone.

  Max pulled out the network contracts for me to sign before there was any food on the table to soil them. Then he called a courier service to come and pick them up.

  We were still looking at menus when Roger walked in, looking for us. Without preliminaries, he pulled out the fourth chair at our table and sat down.

  Roberta, the owner, brought him a menu. She asked, “Your usual wine, Roger?”

  “Please. A bottle and three glasses.” He looked at Sly. “What are you drinking, kid?”

  Once Roberta was on her way to fill the drinks order, I said, “So, Roger, why don’t you join us for dinner.”

  “You really pissed off Thornbury,” he said, eyeing Max.

  “He knows the drill,” Max said. “If he’s pissed off it’s just for show.”

  “I’m not sure. He’s pretty frustrated,” Roger said. “To hear him tell it, he spun his wheels all weekend trying to contact people; no one seemed to be home. Or, home to him. He couldn’t even get hold of Hiram Chin until this morning. He thinks he’s being stonewalled.”

  “Do you think he is?” I asked.

  Roger held up his hands. “A campus can be like a big family. Tough for an outsider to get inside, if you know what I mean. Protective.”

  “Not that the insiders don’t eat each alive from time to time,” I said.

  “Like a family,” Roger said.

  We ordered. Just as soup was being served, the courier arrived. Max gave him detailed delivery instructions and sent him away with the packet of contracts. While Max was busy, I caught Roger’s eye.

  “That license plate number I gave you?”

  “Where were you when you called?” he asked.

  “Up north, in Gilstrap.”

  He stole a quick glance at Max and said, “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Maggie?”

  I looked across the table at Sly. “Yes?”

  “Did you go see her?”

  “Eunice?” When he nodded, I said, “I did. First thing Saturday morning.”

  “And?”

  “Sly, honey, Eunice has been on drugs for so long her brain is fried. We didn’t have much of a conversation.”

  “She say anything about my father?”

  “No. But she did say she had other children. If that’s something you want to pursue...”

  “Maybe.” He looked down into his soup. “Sometime.”

  Lew came by to drop off Sly’s phone.

  “You left it out in the courtyard,” Lew told him, referring to the small patio outside the student gallery. “I hit your number on my phone and followed the ringtone, and there it was, sitting on the edge of a planter.”

  “Thanks, man.” Sly, seeming lost in thought, looked at the face of the phone for a moment before dropping it into his pocket. I knew that this young man who had never had much that he could call his own did not lose track of his possessions. Certainly never one as important to him as his telephone.

  Sly gave Lew a quick summary of what had happened at the police station and reassured him that everything was all right. He also apologized for worrying him.

  “Stay for dinner?” I asked him.

  “Thanks, but I have stuff to do. Another time.”

  “I should charge you rent for office space,” Roberta joked as she refilled wineglasses. “Who else you got coming by?”

  “You just never know,” I said, chuckling. You just never do.

  Chapter 15

  Tuesday morning I was up and dressed before the sun, though we would never see much of it on that stormy day. Rain poured down my front windows in sheets; the deluge had begun. I had an early class to teach, a four-hour workshop from eight until noon. Because of the rain, I needed to leave home a full hour earlier than usual in case mud or rock slides sent me off on a long detour.

  Before I left, I called Ida Green, the producer from the network news division who had been trying to reach me. My neighbor, Early, had come over the night before with a message from Ida. She wanted me, as an old friend, she said, to sit down for an interview with one of her people to talk about finding Holloway. In exchange, she’d let me promote my project.

  Early told me that Ida would be in the studio by 4:00 A.M. to send a live feed from Burbank to the morning news broadcast in New York, so it wasn’t too early to call her. Talking about Holloway for public broadcast was not something I wanted to do, not yet, anyway. But as a courtesy, I told Ida that if she cleared it with Lana, I would. At some point, we might need to use Ida’s people or facilities, so it was best to start off as friends.

  Ida told me she was taking a film crew to the college. They would be taping a statement from Hiram, and she wanted me to walk her news person through the crime scene and give an interview, on campus. I told her I would be available after 1:00, giving myself time to find lunch after class. She said she would call my mobile when they finished with Hiram and were ready for me.

  “Don’t dress like a schoolmarm,” she said. “Wear some color.”

  I was wearing jeans and a navy sweater over a light blue oxford cloth shirt. Schoolmarmish or not, I wasn’t going to change clothes.

  My trip to campus was uneventful, leaving me with a full quiet hour and a half to myself before class started.

  For the short films they were working on, my students had finished their shooting scripts and storyboards, edited a brief teaser for their pitch sessions, and were in the process of actually shooting their main footage. We were going to look at a few of the students’ rough cuts and critique what they had done so far. When they were able to articulate what worked and what did not work in other people’s projects, they would have better insight for critiquing their own. Or so I hoped.

  I was in my little office off the studio classroom, poring over a day planner trying to figure out how I was going to juggle teaching, the network film project, and Mom’s needs for the next few months, when Kate
walked in.

  “I saw your car in the lot,” she said, handing me a cup of cafeteria coffee. “Have a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  I turned my chair around to face the chair she pulled up. She sat, stretched her legs out so that she could rest her feet on the arm of my chair, and took the lid off her own coffee.

  “The memorial is tomorrow at noon,” she said. “The notice went out on campus email last night. Did you see it?”

  I hadn’t checked my campus email the night before or that morning.

  “Hiram wants to hold it on the quad in front of the Taj, but in this weather, that’s just dumb,” she said. She looked tired. “I’m negotiating with Coach to let us use the big gym. It’s basketball season and he’s worried about what all those wet people and chairs and high heels will do to his floor. Too bad for him because I can’t think of an alternative venue.”

  She told me about some of the details of the service, for which she had no enthusiasm.

  “In Park’s honor, tomorrow all classes will be cancelled and all offices will be closed so that everyone who wants to, or is afraid not to, will be able to attend the service.”

  Curious, I asked, “Who would be afraid not to attend?”

  “Sly, for one. Roger hopes you’ll be there to look after him. With all this talk on campus, Roger thinks Sly should show up wearing a brave face. If he doesn’t, talk could just get uglier.”

  “I’ll see what Sly has to say,” I said, making no promises.

  She sighed. “The exec committee met yesterday. Human Resources will post a search notice for both the president’s position and the academic vice president’s as soon as they get job descriptions written. The process can drag on for months, but we’re hopeful we can fill both slots before graduation.”

  “Do you think Hiram Chin will apply?”

  She raised a palm. “Don’t know. At the meeting, someone asked him that and he was noncommittal.”

  “Could he make it through the normal process and get hired here?”

  “Depends, I suppose, on the curriculum vitae he submits and the way he handles the mess when Park’s private fund-raising shit hits the fan.”

  “That’s coming?”

  “Joan Givens showed her evidence that Park was soliciting donations to the board members you met Friday, Tom Juarequi and Melanie Marino. They listened to her, but they asked her to keep a lid on it until they can make inquiries,” Kate said. “Whatever that means. She thinks they want to bury the issue along with Park, but she promised them that if they don’t act appropriately, she will go to the authorities. So, what happens, I suppose, depends on what the Board does. Or doesn’t do.”

  I took the lid off the cafeteria coffee and tried it. It wasn’t bad, except that Kate had added milk and sugar, the way I used to dose it when we still lived together in college. I now preferred black. But, it was hot and my office felt damp and chilly, so I drank some, thinking about what she had said.

  “Kate?”

  She looked up out of her own reverie.

  “Saturday, Hiram Chin showed up at that very posh party Jean-Paul took us to. He’s a neighbor of the host; Broad Beach.”

  “Holy crap,” she said. “If he can afford to live there, what’s he doing here?”

  I chuckled. “You can afford to live on Broad Beach, even if you don’t. So what are you doing here?”

  She gave me a little self-deprecating smile. “Point taken.”

  “Anyway.” I scooted my chair closer to hers and lowered my voice. “Hiram seemed pretty upset about Park’s death. He asked if it was a suicide. I think he was relieved when I said I didn’t think it was.”

  “Really?” She thought that over. “He was more worried about suicide than murder?”

  “That was my impression. But I didn’t use the M word, so maybe his assumption was that it was either suicide or an accident.”

  “Interesting.” She took her feet off my chair and rose. “Did you tell Roger?”

  “The Roger who is not investigating a murder?”

  “Bullshit.” She dropped her empty cup into the trash. “You knew he couldn’t stay away. Any more than you can.”

  She took a deep breath. “I need to get productive. I’ll talk to you later.”

  At the door, she turned and smiled at me. “God, Mags, it’s so good to have you around. The man you’re replacing for the semester told Lew that he’s not well enough to come back; he’s retiring. Lew is going to put in a request to hire a full-time, tenure-track replacement. Will you apply?”

  I shook my head.

  “This has been interesting,” I said. “And I’ve loved seeing so much of you, Kate. I like the kids. But last night I signed a deal with my old network. If things work out, it may lead to something more permanent.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  I laughed, a reaction to the flash of chagrin I suddenly felt.

  “Kate, I signed to make a film about Park Holloway. When it comes out, I doubt I could get hired here on a bet. And chances are, after the broadcast it might be better for you if people on campus forget we’re friends.”

  “Oh bite me,” she said, wrapping me in a hug. “They’ll just have to get over themselves.”

  I looked at the wall clock as the door closed behind her. Something Kate said; I needed to talk with Joan Givens. There was still time before class. I grabbed my umbrella and walked over to the Foundation office.

  Joan was working on a flyer for an upcoming fund-raiser when I knocked on the jamb of her open door. The sound startled her.

  “Maggie,” she said, looking up, smiling. “Hi.”

  “Have a minute, Joan? I have a favor to ask.”

  I told her that I would be making the Holloway film, and asked her to speak to me about his fund-raising efforts.

  “Do you call that deep background?” she asked.

  “More like a starting point,” I told her. “Later, maybe as early as the end of this week, I’d like to get you in front of a camera.”

  “Oh, wow.” She laughed softly to herself, looking out the window at the rain as she made her decision. Then she turned back to me and pointed to a chair, an invitation to stay.

  “I was going to say that I needed to run your request past the college administration first,” she said. “But at the moment, I don’t know who that would be. Hiram?”

  She shook her head. “I’m an army brat. When men reached the end of their enlistment, we used to say they had wheels. Right now, that’s the best way I know to describe Hiram; he has wheels. So, yes. But let me explain why.”

  Joan was smart, and conscientious. She truly cared for the college community. She said she would talk to me on camera about Holloway’s secret slush fund, as she called it, because she was afraid that the Board of Trustees would do their best to sweep it under the carpet to save themselves and the college from embarrassment. But word was already out among her best donors that they may have been cheated. Joan depended on their generosity to fund scholarships and programs like theater productions and student publications that could not survive on their allotted college funds alone. To keep her donors from decamping, she wanted to reassure them that no one, not even the college president, would ever get away with misusing them or their donations.

  “Do you know who Jacob Riis was?” she asked.

  “The nineteenth-century muckraker?”

  She nodded. “He said the best way to stop corruption is to expose it to the full light of day. I agree. If Park Holloway did something that was corrupt, he must be exposed, no matter what happened to him.”

  “You’re brave, Joan,” I said.

  “Not really.”

  She opened a drawer and removed the same thick file she had taken to the meeting with Holloway on Friday; I recognized the notations written on the front.

  “When we heard that Park had gone to David Dahliwahl for money, Bobbie Cusato and I began making calls to our donors. Thirty of them—our thirty most generous donors, b
y the way—told us they had been solicited by Park. We asked them to document the requests by writing us a note, and if they had sent money to give us a copy of the cancelled check.”

  Joan began taking letters out of the file. She made two piles, one for letters with copies of cancelled checks stapled to the backs, one for those that did not.

  I counted the checks, a baker’s dozen. It wasn’t the number of checks as much as it was the total amount of Holloway’s score, something in the neighborhood of four hundred thousand dollars. The checks were all made out to The President’s Fund and deposited in the Seacrest Bank.

  “I’ve never heard of this bank,” I said. “Is it local?”

  “No. I checked it out. Maggie, it’s an offshore bank.”

  “Why am I not surprised? Did you show any of this to the police?”

  “No. I left that to the Board of Trustees for the time being.”

  “Kate must have said something to Roger.”

  “You’ll have to ask them about that. He knows, of course, that Park was raising money because Kate is on the list of people he tried to tap. Both she and Bobbie turned him down. But the details, like the bank, I haven’t said anything about that until now, except to a couple of Board members.”

  “Marino and Jaurequi?”

  “Yes.” Lines appeared between her brows for a moment and then she said, “I forgot, you met them.”

  “You introduced us,” I said, looking through the letters.

  “Joan, Holloway asked Kate and Bobbie for money last fall, but some of these checks are more recent.” I held up a check with a February date. “Everyone wasn’t asked to donate for the sculpture. Here’s one earmarked for a special speakers’ fund, three others to buy new adaptive fitness equipment for disabled students. And so on. Did he actually pay for any of that?”

  “He bought the bronze bowling pin,” she said, wrinkling her nose as if an unpleasant odor had wafted in.

  “I know what the asking price was for that,” I said. “But do you know what he actually paid?”

  “No, and the gallery owner won’t say. But she’s ready to deliver it.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”