At the mention of strange bones, Dr. Marx’s eyes lit with interest, and she managed to overcome her fixation on safe sex. “Strange bones?” She wheeled her chair and worked rapidly at her computer keyboard, staring at the records that came up on the screen.
“The county coroner said they had — well — scratches on them,” Elena explained.
Dr. Marx turned away from her screen and cast Elena a skeptical glance.
“He’s never seen anything like it, and we wondered whether McGlenlevie might have had some sort of bone disease?”
Dr. Marx scrolled through the file. “Nothing that he mentioned, and certainly no such thing would have been detectable in a routine physical examination. How long had he been dead? Perhaps the scratches were the result of wild animals attacking the corpse.”
“We don’t know how long he’d been dead, probably less than a month, and it’s unlikely that any wild animals got into the faculty apartment building.”
“He didn’t have a dog?”
“Not that we know of, and if he did, the dog would have had to dive into an unslaked lime and water mixture to get at the bones. No dog would have persisted, believe me.”
“Peculiar,” said the doctor. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Well, you can tell me his height and weight. As I said, we can’t identify a tub full of bones.”
“Five nine. One hundred and fifty,” said the doctor.
Elena nodded. “That fits. It must be him.”
The doctor then refused to answer any questions about Gus’s affairs with students, and Elena refused to answer any questions about her birth control practices. She accepted, reluctantly, a handful of literature on birth control and venereal disease, stuffing the material into her handbag. Couldn’t hurt to look it over, although she didn’t have a sexual partner at present. It had got so you hated to take on anyone new, there being no way to be sure what beds he’d occupied before yours. Toward the end of her marriage, when Frank turned mean about her promotion and she started hearing rumors that he had slept with a snitch-addict who turned tricks on the side, Elena had infuriated him by insisting that he be tested. He’d knocked her down, and that had pretty much done their marriage in. Too bad. It had been good in the beginning.
She hiked across campus to an appointment with Charles Venner, Director of the Herbert Hobart Computer Center, casting a jaundiced glance, when she got to the center, at a sign that said the architecture was inspired by Mart and Eric’s Variety Store in Miami Beach. The predominating colors were mauve, pink, and aqua, which didn’t look even marginally hi-tech. Nor did the astonishingly well-endowed secretary who ushered Elena into Charles M. Venner’s office.
“Here’s the policelady, Charlie.” The secretary smiled flirtatiously and received an answering look that was, in Elena’s opinion, seriously lewd.
Embarrassed, Elena glanced away, and the office decor caught her attention. The room was dominated by a huge cherrywood desk with carved tassels at the corners and in the center a basket of flowers inlaid in multicolored woods. Behind the desk, an incongruous mismatch, sat Charles Venner, or Charlie as his nubile subordinates evidently called him; Elena hadn’t seen any male employees.
“Welcome to the computer center, darlin’,” said Charlie Venner.
“Thanks, Mr. Venner,” Elena replied, none too pleased to be called darling by this short stranger, who roosted behind his ornate desk in his shirt sleeves, his muscles bulging, his brown hair curling energetically, and his brown eyes fastened on Elena’s body.
“Call me Charlie,” he insisted, staring at her breasts.
If she’d been headless, Charlie Venner wouldn’t have noticed. “I’m Detective Elena Jarvis.”
“Like that hair,” said the computer expert. “Native American, huh? Hispanic and Indian stuff is big around here.”
“It’s a French braid,” said Elena, wondering if everyone employed by the university was peculiar. Take Sarah, for instance. She seemed quite ordinary and proper, but if she really had tried to blow Gus up with a snail and later immersed him in unslaked lime, she wasn’t the All-American Girl either. “Mr. Venner,” she began.
“Charlie,” he corrected.
She frowned at him. “I’m trying to trace an order for unslaked lime through the computer system. It was placed by Buildings and Grounds in early April.” He’d gone back to staring at her breasts. “According to the company that processed the order, it was sent, but according to Buildings and Grounds, it never arrived.” Elena had to resist the urge to hunch her shoulders. “They had to reorder to get their lime. Mr. Montes of Building and Grounds suggested that the computer center could run the trace for me, tell me where the stuff went.” Now he was looking at her legs. She uncrossed them. “Are you listening to me?” she demanded.
“Well, sure,” said Charlie. “You want us to trace some order that never showed up. Could take a few days.”
“This is a murder investigation.”
“No kidding? You got a great little figure there, you know.”
“What?”
“The bod. Looks like you keep in shape. You run? Work out on the machines? Got some great machines here.” He pointed to a stationary bicycle and a complicated exercise machine that crouched in front of his brocaded draperies. The place might have passed for a ladies’ exercise club, but it certainly didn’t look like a computer expert’s office. His terminal was stuck off in a corner with a recliner stationed in front of it. “Wanna try one? People need to keep moving, do stuff to build the old muscles up.”
“I’m into home improvement,” she said.
“Home improvement?” Charlie Venner looked confused. “Like draperies and stuff?”
“Like gardening. Painting. Repairing my house.” Elena thought of the adobe patching and the whitewashing she hadn’t got to because of this case. “About the unslaked lime — “
“Oh sure. I’ll put someone on it. Leave your number and what you want us to find out for you. You single or anything? Unattached?”
“I don’t date people connected with a murder investigation.”
“Well, hey,” said Charlie, “it’s not like I’m a suspect. I never murdered anyone, right? Who got murdered, anyway?”
“Angus McGlenlevie.”
“Oh sure, the poet. I was never much on poetry, but I did like the title of his book.”
You would, thought Elena.
“We’re doing the grades right now. Takes up a lot of computer time.”
“Murder takes up a lot of police time, so I’d appreciate that information as soon as possible. Like tomorrow morning.”
Elena wrote out her problem but couldn’t get Charlie to look at the request. She had a dreary feeling that Charlie Venner wasn’t going to be a whole lot of help, and if the computer center wouldn’t help, who would? Sarah came to mind — if she knew about computers. But she was gone, and even if she weren’t, you couldn’t very well ask the suspect to mess with the evidence. If Charlie the Lech failed her, she’d have to call I.D. & R.
Elena met Leo at the car. His initial description of the remaining members of the English Department consisted mostly of four-letter words.
“Right,” said Elena, “but did they know anything about McGlenlevie?”
“Everyone thought he was an asshole.”
“Asshole? Was that the word they used?”
“Actually one guy used the term moral degenerate, and another one called him a blot on the university’s something or other.”
“Escutcheon?”
“Right. You college types are really impressive to us barely-made-it-through-high-school guys. Are you ready for the memorial service? They moved it to the presidential reception hall — for easier access to the bar, I gather.” He was extracting a camera from the debris in the trunk of the car.
“I’m ready for lunch. It’s almost two, and I’m starved.” She was disappointed that she wouldn’t get to see the chapel.
“We can eat free a
t the post-funeral cocktail party. One of the professors told me they have great food. He hated McGlenlevie, but he’s going to the service to get in on the food and booze afterward.”
Elena groaned. “You really want to hear President S. pray over a guy whose name he can’t remember?”
“No, but maybe the murderer will show up and we can get a picture.”
Elena knew that happened sometimes and hoped Sarah Tolland would stay away as a sign that she hadn’t really killed her ex-husband, no matter how it looked.
Twenty-five minutes later Elena was drinking a ginger ale, much as she’d have preferred a margarita, and eating her seventh canapé. President Sunnydale, who had indeed been visited by a hard-nosed faculty committee that demanded food and drink during the service, was still praying.
“Let us hope God has taken to his bosom our late brother, Angus McClean,” he said.
“McGlenlevie,” Dr. Stanley murmured.
Elena snatched a toast round heaped with pate from a passing waiter. She hated pate but was hungry enough to eat anything.
“God has called our brother home and is even now, we trust, enjoying the beauty of — er — Angus’ poetry.”
From what Elena had heard, if God was even now reading Angus’ poetry, Angus was about to get booted out of heaven.
“We can rest in the happy assurance that for all eternity our brother — er — Angus will be penning hymns of praise for the heavenly choir to . . . ”
Elena spotted the tray that held little pastries filled with something delicious and creamy. She swept off three and shared one with Leo. This was the most cheerful memorial service she’d ever been to. Everyone hated the deceased and loved the refreshments.
Thirteen
* * *
Friday, May 22, 10 A.M.
“Two guys lookin’ for a detective on the acid bath case, Elena,” shouted Harry Mosconi from the first cubicle on Homicide Row.
Elena slapped her telephone back into its cradle after a futile call to Charlie Venner at the computer center. Instead of running the requested computer check, he had left town, without leaving instructions for his staff. Elena looked up at the two men approaching, both short, both wearing light-colored suits.
“I’m Arturo Spengler, attorney for the Bonaventura family,” said the skinny one. He had a little clipped mustache.
Part Cuban? she wondered and considered answering him in Spanish just for the hell of it. Of course, New Mexican Spanish might be no closer to Miami Cuban Spanish than it was to Los Santos border Spanish. “Mr. Spengler.” She rose and shook his hand, noting the cut of his suit, which had probably cost twelve hundred dollars.
“And this is Mr. William Spozzo, a friend of the family.”
I’ll bet, thought Elena, who pegged him as muscle. “Are you a lawyer too, Mr. Spozzo?” she asked politely.
“Nah, and people call me Willie.”
Elena nodded and withdrew her hand from Mr. Willie Spozzo’s gigantic, broken-knuckled paw. He snagged a chair from across the aisle, and the two men sat down as she studied Willie with surreptitious interest. His neck was thicker than his jaw, which was thicker than the top of his head. From the shoulders up he looked like a triangle with the point lopped off. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”
Mr. Spengler adjusted the creases of his twelve-hundred-dollar, cream-colored suit. Mr. Spozzo forced his wide, muscular butt into the chair, and the trousers of his wrinkled fifty-five-dollar suit rode up at the cuffs, exposing socks so glowingly tangerine in color, Elena could hardly take her eyes away. If he made a hit and was seen doing it, the witnesses would remember those socks.
“Mr. Giuseppe Bonaventura — “ Spengler began.
Miami Fat Joe, Elena amended silently.
“ — wishes us to look into police harassment of his young daughter, Lili.”
“Ms. Bonaventura has accused us of harassment?” asked Elena.
“She called her father — naturally — after the third or fourth contact from you people.”
“Ms. Bonaventura discovered the body in an open murder investigation. Beyond her initial talk with us at the scene of the crime, she has refused to say anything. However, now that her lawyer is here, perhaps — “
“Miss Bonaventura has nothing further to reveal,” Spengler interrupted smoothly. “The man was, after all, only her volleyball coach. She had stopped by his apartment, I believe, to pick up the game schedule for next year.”
“That may be true,” said Elena, “but she had a key to his apartment.”
“Who says?” asked Willie.
“She dropped it on the table by the door, and her fingerprints were on it.” They had lifted Lili’s prints from the towelette packet for comparison. “There was no forced entry, and Mr. McGlenlevie was hardly in any condition to let her in himself.”
“No doubt the murderer left the door open,” said Mr. Spengler, “and she, worried when her coach did not answer, may have entered and picked up the key in passing. I hardly think that’s evidence enough to implicate her.”
“The fact is, Ms. Bonaventura was having biweekly trysts with her volleyball coach,” said Elena.
The two men exchanged an alarmed glance. “Miss Bonaventura,” said Arturo Spengler, “is known for her virtue.”
“Well,” said Elena, “you know how it is with the younger generation.” She smiled tolerantly. “And girls away from home . . . ” She let a friendly twinkle come to her eye. “We have several witnesses who are aware of Ms. Bonaventura’s sexual relationship with the late Mr. McGlenlevie.”
“You sayin’ she’s a suspect?” asked Willie. Spengler kicked him in the ankle.
“At this point, everyone connected with the late Mr. McGlenlevie is a suspect. Why, even you two gentlemen, now that you’ve appeared on the scene, would have to be added to my list.”
“We don’t consider that amusing, Detective,” said Mr. Spengler.
“I wasn’t joking, Counselor,” said Elena. “After all, Mr. Bonaventura might have resented what he perceived as a seduction of his virtuous daughter. He might have sent a family friend” — she nodded in pyramidal Willie’s direction — ”to defend his daughter’s virtue and reputation.”
“Hey,” said Willie, “I was in Miami.”
“And you, Mr. Spengler?”
Mr. Spengler gave her a cold look.
“Well, we can check the airline records,” said Elena, knowing full well that if Fat Joe Bonaventura had sent a hit man to put an end to Lili’s affair, the fellow could have come in on any of a number of small drug-running planes that darted around on the border. He could have entered Mexico and come across on foot, on a bus, in a car, on a rubber raft, or even on the shoulders of one of the men who daily waded across the Rio Grande, their necks encased by the legs of short- or long-term immigrants. The possibilities for entering Los Santos unnoticed were almost limitless.
“Mr. Bonaventura wants his daughter back at home.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible as long as the investigation is open and Ms. Bonaventura refuses to make a statement. Of course, she has a right to remain silent, as do you gentlemen, although we’d be delighted to take your statements as to where you were at the approximate time of death. Perhaps we could eliminate all three of you from our list. We always like to eliminate suspects in a murder investigation.”
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