Acid Bath

by Nancy Herndon

  “But I was talking about Sarah,” Karl resumed. “McGlenlevie took the car without her permission, got drunk, and then he didn’t run a stop sign; he ran into it, so I guess you could say he stopped. She had a Mercedes at that time. Sarah had to bail him out of jail and retrieve what was left of her car from the impound lot. She evidently said that if he ever touched another car of hers, she’d run him over. I believe she instituted divorce proceedings immediately thereafter.”

  Wonderful, thought Elena. We’re going to have to subpoena this man to testify. Later when she got home, she made notes on the conversation and called Leo.

  “Bingo,” said Leo. “She threatened to kill him and tried to kill him. Even with the shaky evidence on the actual murder, those two tidbits ought to give the jury plenty to think about.”

  Elena nodded glumly. She felt like a traitor, using Sarah’s friends and colleagues to convict her.

  “That computer rerouting you used to get me indicted?”

  “Sarah?” Elena had been putting on an old T-shirt of Frank’s when the telephone rang.

  “That’s right — Sarah. Well, there are a hundred engineers who can tell you I was giving a talk right here in Los Santos at the time that happened, people who were with me at the Marriott from quarter of seven to eleven-thirty that night, not just a few people, lots.”

  “Thank God,” said Elena.

  “Thank God? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I hope you don’t think I’m enjoying this.”

  “You don’t think I killed him?”

  “I wondered about it when we found him. I couldn’t help thinking about the snail thing, but Lord no, I don’t think you killed him. As Bonnard pointed out, it would take a crazy person to do what was done to the body.”

  “Bonnard? Why were you talking with him?”

  Jesus, Elena thought, I should have kept my mouth shut about Karl. “I met him during the investigation. Nice guy.”

  “Oh yes, he’s a wonderful person,” said Sarah bitterly. “While I was in jail, he was telling the dean that he should be appointed chairman in my place.”

  “Listen, I’m sure you’ve got that wrong, Sarah. I know he could end up with the job, but I don’t think he wants it.”

  “He wanted it three years ago when I got it, and he’s asked for it again. Actually — “ Sarah paused. “I’d never realized it before, but I don’t think Karl likes women.”

  “But he said flat out the first time I met him that you couldn’t have killed Gus.”

  “He did?”

  “Well, who can figure men?” said Elena. “They can be sweet as pie personally and complete bastards on the job. Anyway, thanks for the information about the computer.”

  “You’re welcome. My lawyer will probably shoot me for calling.”

  “I don’t see why. Anything that blows our case is good for you.”

  “Maybe.” Sarah sounded doubtful. “Has it occurred to you that someone is going to a great deal of trouble to make it look like I killed Gus?”

  There was a long silence; then Elena said, “Well, yes, now that you mention it. Can you think of anyone who has it in for both of you?”

  “I don’t think I have any enemies, but Gus must have had dozens.” There was a pause. “Well, I’ll hang up now.”

  “Wait, wait. What was the name of the engineer’s society?”

  “American Association of Engineers. Los Santos chapter. Jaime Esposito’s the president. Do you want his number?”

  “Sure.”

  Sarah gave it to her and hung up.

  Elena finished getting ready for bed and turned out her light, thinking about Sarah and Karl. Sarah had sounded genuinely shocked to hear that Bonnard had stuck up for her on the matter of McGlenlevie’s death. On the other hand, Elena had been shocked to hear that Bonnard was going after Sarah’s job. She shouldn’t have been. That’s the way men operated. Frank had turned into a real bastard as soon as Elena caught up with him in rank, although he still claimed to love her. Go figure. Maybe she’d just expected too much of university professors, thought they were above professional back-stabbing. Bonnard obviously wasn’t. In fact, he wasn’t at all the loyal department member he’d made himself out to be. He had acted as if becoming chairman in Sarah’s place would be a pain, not something he wanted. Why? She thought about it and decided that if he really liked her, he wouldn’t want her to know he was a sneak. But did he like her?

  Sarah said he disliked women. He’d certainly been nice to Elena — all those complimentary things he’d said about her becoming a detective, paving the way for other women.

  But what had he said about other women? He couldn’t stand his wife because she’d turned religious and embarrassed him in front of his colleagues. He’d been condescending about the Indian professor, said she wasn’t the best, although she tried. And Sarah — what did he really think of her? That she was unqualified when appointed chair. Elena shook her head, hating to think that any man that handsome could be as underhanded as Frank. Frank had once blown a case of hers when she was new in C.A.P. — deliberately blown it, she’d always thought.

  Then shrugging away the perplexing problem of men and their motivations, Elena turned the light back on and called Maggie Daguerre. Maggie might be able to give her some answers — not about Karl, but about that speech of Sarah’s.

  “Sarah said she was giving a talk to an engineering society during the time that unslaked lime was being rerouted. Any way she could have done both?” Elena asked.

  “Well — let’s see.” There was a silence, then: “There are a couple of possibilities. For instance, she could have excused herself to go to the john and logged into the university system on a pay phone. I could maybe trace that back, but the rerouting seemed to be done from a library terminal. I’d have to think about that. Also people would probably have noticed if she trotted off to the ladies’ room in the middle of her speech. Another possibility — she fooled around with the date and time on the computer. Changed it for the entry, then changed it back. Again I may be able to trace it.”

  “I thought her access code was canceled.”

  “Yeah, but not when this happened.”

  “So you think what she told me may not be significant?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know, Elena. You really want her cleared, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. On the other hand, I don’t want to be made a fool of.”

  “Tough spot to be in. I can search the computer files again.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  Thirty-four

  * * *

  Friday, May 29, 10:15 P.M.

  I hope I did the right thing, Sarah thought after her conversation with Elena. She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine, regretting the dinner she could have had with Colin Stuart. But if she’d done herself any good by getting in touch with Elena, it was worth it. Should she call her lawyer? Not tonight, she decided. She wanted to feel good about her action, or at least ambivalent, for a little while. And Bonnard sticking up for her with Elena. That was a surprise. But then he’d also offered to put up his house as bail collateral. As Elena so eloquently put it, “Go figure.”

  Sarah picked up the recent issue of a professional journal and began to read, forcing herself to concentrate. Colin had an article in it. Very good too. She’d probably never see him again after the weekend.

  Or maybe she would. In a burst of defiant optimism, she called the dean to invite him and his wife to dinner, then called the Camino Real and left a message extending the invitation to Colin. Now where should she take them? She certainly wasn’t going to cook. In fact, given the exploding snail incident, she doubted that any sensible person would want to risk having dinner at her table.

  Thirty-five

  * * *

  Monday, June 1, 10:40 A.M.

  In low spirits Sarah drove back to the university after putting Colin Stuart on a flight to Denver, where he would change planes and return to Se
attle. Given her situation and the possibility of Bonnard becoming chairman, she doubted that Colin would accept the offer of a visiting professorship, although the dean had liked him. She entered her office at the university to find Bonnard seated with a pseudo-casual air on the corner of Virginia’s desk.

  “My dear Sarah,” he said, looking insufferably sympathetic, “your legal troubles are obviously taking their toll. If there’s anything at all that I can do — “

  A scowling Virginia shoved the corner of the Out box into his haunch. As he shot off the desk with a surprised yelp, Sarah murmured coolly, “I expect to be able to function as usual, although, of course, I appreciate the offer, Karl.” What a hypocrite he was! They both were.

  “You’re very brave, but I’d have to point out,” he replied, hand hovering over the injured side of his buttock, “that it’s nearly eleven. You’re always in your office earlier than this.”

  “I’ve been entertaining a potential member of the department,” she retorted.

  “Over breakfast? Over the whole weekend?”

  Sarah experienced a flash of such anger that she could almost imagine wanting to kill someone. “I picked Professor Stuart up at the Camino Real, took him to breakfast, and put him on a plane. Are you suggesting that we spent the night together?” Her voice became colder and marginally louder. “Have you ever known me to indulge in such behavior? Or even heard rumors to that effect?”

  Karl, looking mildly offended, protested. “You misunderstood me, Sarah.”

  “Did I misunderstand your visit to the dean, about which I heard in detail?”

  “My offer was made out of consideration for you, Sarah, not any desire for your job,” he said stiffly as she whirled into her office and slammed the door. However, she then felt horrified at her own loss of control and wondered if what he said could be true and she was suffering from paranoia. She’d better go to the library, she decided. A few quiet, undisturbed hours in a carrel, working on her latest article might rid her of the uncomfortable emotions spawned by the conversation with Bonnard. Sarah prized a calm and orderly life, which was one reason that she had divorced Gus, the late master of emotional and psychic disorder. She took out the wide-brimmed hat that she always wore around the campus as protection against the intense, high-altitude sunlight of Los Santos, placed it carefully on her head, tucked a notebook computer into her briefcase, and reentered Virginia’s office.

  “I’ll be at the library for the next two hours,” she said, her voice quiet and controlled once more.

  “Right,” said Virginia. “I won’t tell Bonnard where you are.”

  “I don’t need protection from my own faculty, Virginia.”

  “Everyone needs protection from the knife-in-the-back types,” said Virginia.

  Briefcase firmly clutched in her right hand, Sarah walked down the hall, a new light in her eyes, for a vengeful and absolutely sound idea had occurred to her. She might, as her trial approached, actually become unable to fulfill her duties as chair. She might even be convicted. Justice did misfire occasionally, she conceded gloomily, and she could hardly run the department then, but Colin could. He’d make an excellent chairman, temporary or permanent. Excellent. She’d suggest that to the dean, if it became necessary. If Karl really wasn’t after her job, he wouldn’t mind. If he was, he’d hate it. He’d seethe with anger and frustration, which was just what he deserved.

  Sarah blinked, appalled at herself. She was turning into a person she hardly knew, much less liked. Vengefulness, paranoia — those were hardly qualities she admired. She’d have to weed them out. With that resolution foremost in her mind, she strode out of the building and made her way to the library, dodging busy sprinklers. Buildings and Grounds kept that St. Augustine grass, so foreign to west Texas soil, green and lush. Ridiculous. Desert landscaping would have been ecologically sound, but President Sunnydale insisted that they remain faithful to the vision of their benefactor, Herbert Hobart, late video-game king, who had left his entire fortune to found a university that looked like Miami Beach, yet faced, across the river, a Mexican city where he claimed to have enjoyed the best week of his life. Rumor indicated that part of that best week had been spent in a Mexican jail.

  There was certainly no accounting for taste, thought Sarah, but then no one had ever said the late Herbert Hobart wasn’t a full-blown eccentric, perhaps even certifiably insane. Any man who wanted to be remembered as having endowed a university whose avowed mission was the education of the very wealthy and only marginally intellectual was, at best, strange. While lost in these thoughts, she turned up the steps that led to the neo-Egyptian library, avoiding the braided-asp handrail and a cluster of students conducting a caviar-tossing contest, which involved pitching the oily roe into each other’s mouths. Sarah shuddered and increased her pace. Fortunately, she thought, brushing an errant fish egg from the lapel of her suit, one could count on finding few students inside the library. When she glanced up to favor the young contestants with a scowl, an apparition appeared before her, a bearded apparition carrying a backpack. Sarah pulled up in mid-stride, her legs beginning to tremble, her heart pounding.

  “Morning, Sarah,” said the apparition.

  Sarah Tolland, for the first time in her life, fainted.

  • • •

  She came to with the confused impression that she was being kidnapped — tied to a cot and loaded into a van while onlookers gawked but failed to come to her rescue as the doors to freedom slammed shut. Sirens whooped into an unbearable clamor, increasing exponentially the dull pain in her head, the vehicle lurched forward, and a sinister person who looked like Geronimo clad in white began to fiddle with bottles and needles, further adding to Sarah’s alarm.

  “Do you have any sort of heart problem, ma’am?” he asked in prosaic tones, relieving her mind somewhat, for she now realized that she was in an ambulance, not a kidnapper’s getaway vehicle.

  “I have a ghost problem,” said Sarah, her voice faltering as she remembered the cause of her fainting spell. She watched the medic exchange raised-eyebrow glances with another attendant, and then they mumbled between themselves about the administration of a sedative.

  “I do not need to be medicated,” she said. “I need to talk to the police.”

  “The police? Were you attacked, ma’am?”

  “Only psychologically. I need to speak to Elena Jarvis. She’s a detective in the Crimes Against Persons Division. If she’s not on shift at present, her home number is — are you taking this down, young man?”

  “No, ma’am. Maybe you could tell it to someone when you get to the hospital.”

  Sarah knew an uncooperative person when she saw one, and subsided, protesting only when they wanted to stick a needle in her arm. “Get away from me,” she snapped.

  “We’ll have to tell your family that you refused treatment,” Geronimo warned.

  “I have no family in Los Santos, and I don’t need treatment. I need to talk to Elena Jarvis.” She was whisked from the ambulance into the public hospital, complaining that, as she had insurance, she should have been taken to a private hospital — not that she needed treatment, just an aspirin and access to a telephone. No one paid the slightest attention to anything she said except the part about having insurance.

  “Herbert Hobart insurance,” she replied in answer to suspicious prodding. Evidently this hospital saw few patients who even claimed to have insurance. “National American Health Association. Where’s my telephone?”

  It was an hour and a half before they finished administering tests she tried to refuse. Then they installed her in a hospital room for observation. Only when she threatened to sue did they remove the restraints and provide her with a telephone. She immediately called Elena.