“She’s out in the field, ma’am,” said the receptionist in Crimes Against Persons.
“Well, I’m sure you can get her on a radio. This is an emergency. I’m Sarah Tolland, indicted for the murder of Angus McGlenlevie, and I’m in Thomason General. Have her call me immediately. Tell her — no, don’t tell her anything. I want to talk to her myself.”
Sarah lay in bed for another forty-five minutes, fuming, refusing sedatives, explaining that if her blood pressure was high, pure, unadulterated fury had caused the elevation.
“Sarah, what’s wrong?” asked Elena when she finally called. “Were you in an accident?”
“Gus is alive.”
“Now, Sarah — “
“I saw him in front of the library. And don’t treat me like one of the criminally insane. His beard was about three inches longer, he was dressed more or less in rags — but that’s nothing new — wearing a backpack, looking as if he hadn’t bathed in several weeks, but it was Gus.”
“Did he speak to you?” asked Elena cautiously.
“I don’t know. I fainted when I saw him and evidently hit my head as a result of the fall. When I came to, I’d been put in an ambulance, and he was gone, so I don’t know what happened to him after that, but I want you to come down here and get me out. Then we’ll look for him together.”
“Now, Sarah — “
“Elena, I’m accused of killing a man who’s alive, and I shall file suit against the police department unless you get yourself down here within fifteen minutes.”
“All right, all right, I’m coming,” said Elena, and she arrived in ten minutes, just as a frantic Sarah managed to get rid of a nurse who insisted on taking her vital signs for the fourth time. They wouldn’t give her an aspirin for her headache, and they wouldn’t leave so she could get her clothes on. They seemed to think that shining lights in her eyes and taking her blood pressure every ten minutes constituted acceptable medical attention.
“We had an assault,” Elena explained. “Some vagrant attacked a little girl in a park.”
“Don’t tell me about it,” said Sarah, who climbed out of bed and peered into the hall to be sure no more nurses were about to invade her room. Then she dragged her clothes from the closet. Her head ached abominably, but she was determined to find Gus before he could disappear again.
“Don’t you have to be released or something?” Elena asked doubtfully.
Usually a modest person, Sarah ripped off the hospital gown in front of Elena and began to climb into her underwear, then her light summer business suit. She stuffed her pantyhose into her handbag, slipped her bare feet into her heels, something she would never do under ordinary circumstances, and said, “Let’s go.”
Elena was three steps behind her and trying to catch up all the way down the hall. They picked up two nurses at the nursing station who sped after them crying, “You can’t leave the hospital, ma’am.”
“I’m accompanied by a police officer,” said Sarah, gesturing toward Elena. “This is Detective Jarvis. She arrested me.” Sarah didn’t bother to add that the arrest had been five days ago. The nurses, round-eyed, stepped back. “We’ll try his office and his apartment,” said Sarah as they whisked into an elevator. “That irresponsible, unprincipled psychopath, he probably set this whole thing up. I don’t know who the corpse was, but maybe Gus killed him.”
“Well, if he did, why would he come back?”
“Why would I come back if I killed Gus?”
“Just calm down, Sarah.” Elena patted her arm tentatively. “What did the doctors say about your injuries?”
“Everyone knows doctors are idiots.”
Ordinarily Elena would have agreed.
“Do you have a car? Mine’s still at the university.”
“Yes, sure, but I had to leave Leo behind at the park. Now we’re both without backup. I have to go — “
“Will you stop worrying about regulations? Just consider me your backup.”
“For God’s sake, Sarah, you’re accused of murder, and you’re a civilian. My considering you backup is even crazier than your thinking you saw Gus.”
“Oh, shut up, Elena. Where’s the car?”
By then they had moved from the cool hospital into the bright, hot sunshine. “It’s over here in the emergency parking area,” Elena mumbled. They climbed into an unmarked police car, headed toward the university, and stopped at the English Department, where Sarah demanded, “Has Gus been in?”
The secretary turned dead-white and rolled his secretarial chair backward until it collided with a file cabinet. “He’s dead,” said Lance Potemkin. “But you know that. You killed him.”
“I did not. We’ll try his apartment.”
Elena trailed her out of the Humanities building, wondering how Sarah could walk so fast in those heels. The woman must be going three or four miles an hour. She’d have blisters on her feet before they could cut across campus. Elena caught up, grabbed Sarah’s arm, and said, “We’ll drive.”
By a circuitous route among the palm trees, they reached the apartment building. “Take my space,” said Sarah. “You won’t get a ticket.” However, Elena later discovered that she had been given a ticket — for parking in a reserved spot without the requisite sticker. That’s what the ticket said. Violation number five, “Parking in a reserved space without the requisite sticker.”
“He’s on the fourth floor.”
“I know that,” said Elena. “I was the one who investigated the death.”
They took the red elevator and sprinted toward Gus’s door. Sarah pressed her finger firmly on his bell while she pounded on the door with the other hand.
“There’s no one home,” said Elena after a few minutes. She tried to move Sarah away, but Sarah wouldn’t be budged.
“This is my life, my career, my freedom. We’re damn well going to stand here until he opens the door.” Several minutes later he did.
“There,” said Sarah. “Is that Gus McGlenlevie or isn’t it?”
“Hey, babe,” said Gus. “Sorry I couldn’t go to the hospital with you. I realize I have a big effect on women, but you’re the first one who fainted, at least when she wasn’t in the throes of — “
“Oh, shut up,” said Sarah.
Elena was staring at him nonplussed. “Where the hell have you been, McGlenlevie?”
Gus beamed. “I’ve been white-water rafting. Come in, come in. I’ve been getting in touch with my male persona. A man needs respite from the company of women.”
“Oh yes? Who was putting pressure on you this time?” asked his ex-wife cynically.
“Well,” he admitted, looking ingenuous, “Bimmie was pushing for a wedding date, but that’s not the important thing. I’ve found the excitement, the primal energy, in male bonding — risking our lives, pitting ourselves against nature, men in the wilderness. That’s what I’ll call my next collection. Men in the Wilderness. You want to hear one of the poems I’ve written?”
“No!” they both said simultaneously.
Gus looked hurt.
“So when did you leave town?” asked Elena.
“Well — ah — May — I don’t know. It was the Wednesday after my last final.”
“He left before I did!” said Sarah, glaring at Elena.
“He did,” Elena agreed. “Did you leave your keys with anyone, Mr. McGlenlevie?”
“Sure. I lent the apartment to Howard Margreaves. I’ll never do that again. Look at the place. Its covered with dust, the bathtub’s a God awful mess, and he’s disappeared.”
The two women exchanged glances. “The dust is fingerprint powder,” said Elena, “and very likely he’s the corpse we found in your tub. What did you say his name was?”
“Margreaves.” Gus looked amazed. “I realized Howard was a little depressive, but I wouldn’t have figured him for a suicide.”
“And you’d be right. It’s not likely that he crushed his own skull and then dissolved his own body. He’d need some help for that.�
��
Gus’s eyes lit up. “Maybe you should tell me what happened — in detail. Every sight, smell, touch. I feel my male muse kicking in.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Sarah. “Are you going to cancel my arrest?” she demanded of Elena. “I’ve never even heard of Howard whatever his name is.” Her spirits soared. She’d have to call Colin with the good news — and the dean — and her lawyer. Maybe she’d celebrate — treat herself to a sinfully expensive new suit, give Karl Bonnard a terrible faculty rating so he wouldn’t get a raise — no, that would be mean-spirited. He had, after all, told Elena that Sarah couldn’t possibly have killed Gus, and he was right. No one had. Instead she’d celebrate by getting new stereo equipment for her car or giving a party — no, that was going too far. The last time she gave a party someone spilled red wine on her carpet. In fact, it had been Gus. “You psychopath,” she said, scowling at him.
Elena was marveling because ladylike Sarah Tolland had said “shut up” three times in the last half hour — once to Elena, twice to Gus. For Sarah that was probably a record.
Thirty-six
* * *
Tuesday, June 2, 3:15 P.M.
They were back in the interrogation room, Lieutenant Beltran behind the glass, chagrined that the woman they had arrested was now an unlikely suspect, Elena and Leo sitting on brown vinyl chairs, and the target of their questioning Gus McGlenlevie, who occupied the blue polka-dot sofa with his feet on the coffee table.
“Sarah probably did it,” said Gus.
“Oh, right,” Elena agreed. “She knocks on the door; this stranger opens it — or do you claim she knew this postdoctoral fellow in poetry?”
“She could have. Obviously Sarah had a thing for poets. She married me, didn’t she?”
Elena thought, Any woman can make a mistake. But she didn’t say it, since she wanted McGlenlevie’s cooperation. “So the idea is, she knocks at your door, this stranger answers, she thinks, ‘Oh, what the heck. Since Gus isn’t here, I’ll do this guy,’ knocks him on the head, drags the body into the tub, and spends a couple of days in your bathroom soaking him in unslaked lime, all this while she’s out of town.”
McGlenlevie shrugged. “If you wanted to, you could figure out how she did it. And if you’d arrested her before, when she tried to blow my head off with that snail, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Mr. McGlenlevie, let me put it to you this way,” said Elena, who was taking the lead in the interrogation. “Someone killed a man in your apartment, a man who was about your height. I assume he was quite a bit younger than you, but — “
“Not that much,” said Gus. “I’m a man in my prime, a man in touch with his male muse.”
“Right,” Elena agreed before Leo could intervene with a sarcastic remark. “Anyway, what I want to get across to you is that there’s a murderer out there, but Leo and I don’t think it’s your ex-wife, and if that murderer was after you, instead of your student, you could still be in danger.”
Gus went white under his male-bonding tan. “I demand police protection.”
“We’ll get to that later. Right now we want to figure out who to look for. Who might have had it in for you.”
“Why would anyone?” asked Gus. “I have friends everywhere.”
“Many of them females,” Elena suggested.
“I’m attractive to women.” He gave her a seductive glance.
She tried to look at least tolerant. If you liked big beards and bright blue eyes, he was O.K. in the looks department, but she wouldn’t have him if he came complete with a Mercedes and a designer wardrobe in her size. “Exactly,” said Elena. “Which means that there are men out there who may have grudges against you.”
“Oh, well, I — “ Gus looked taken aback. “I’ve just spent two weeks in exclusively male company. We got along famously.”
“You weren’t boinking their ladies,” said Leo.
“The act of love,” said Gus stiffly, “is a poetic experience. A gift. Boink is hardly the — “
“I apologize for Detective Weizell. He’s not a man with much poetic soul.” Elena shot a warning glance at Leo. “And so although your lady friends may be quite happy with you, their gentlemen friends, present or past, could be jealous, even enraged. You see my point?”
“Love and greed,” said Leo, “the two big motives for murder.”
“About that police protection — “
“In a minute, Mr. McGlenlevie. We need some specific information about the women you’ve had relationships with during, say, the last year.”
“The last year?”
His dismay at the prospect of remembering a year’s worth of lovers made Elena wonder how many women would be on that list. How many hours would checking McGlenlevie’s little black book entail? And would they be able to close the case before the person who killed Howard Margreaves corrected his mistake? Or was Margreaves the intended victim?
“I’m not one to kiss and tell,” said Gus, who didn’t look absolutely convinced of that precept.
“Let me help you along,” said Elena. “There was the captain of the volleyball team, Lili Bonaventura.”
“A charming girl,” said Gus.
“With Mafia connections.”
“What?”
“Her father’s Fat Joe Bonaventura, a Mafia don in Miami.”
“My lord, you think there’s a Mafia contract out on me?”
“Well, that’s a possibility. Old-fashioned father, violent colleagues.”
His tan disappeared entirely.
“But we’ve got no evidence against the Bonaventuras,” said Leo.
Elena, thinking of her vandalized living room, wondered if Fernie Duran had come up with anything about the Bonaventuras. She’d have to call him.
“It’s just one possibility,” Leo pointed out. “If we concentrate all our efforts there, someone else could get to you. So we need a list, see. Your best protection is for us to catch the killer.”
“Why, for instance, did you leave town without telling anyone?” Elena asked.
“I told you. Bimmie.”
“Betty Lou Kowolski, your fiancée?”
“Betty Lou! Can you believe I ever considered marrying a girl with a name like that? Bimmie decided it was time we set a date, and I, given my previous unfortunate experience in marriage to Sarah — well, I was having second thoughts about taking the plunge again.”
“Do you think Bimmie would have tried to kill you?”
“She’s strong enough. Wonderful muscles. In bed she’s an Amazon.”
Elena could see from the nostalgic gleam in his eyes that he was harking back to happier days with Bimmie.
“But Bimmie knew Howard. Why would she kill him?”
“The same argument could be used for Sarah,” said Elena.
“You seem awfully defensive about Sarah,” said Gus. “You’re not bisexual, are you? Or lesbian? I remember how much more sympathetic you were to her than me. I’ll bet you’ve fallen for Sarah.” He was regarding Elena with malicious glee.
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