Gus looked alarmed. “You’re right. My God, you’re right.”
Elena hoped she’d just given his male muse a swift kick in the balls.
As the door closed behind Gus, Leo began to laugh. “You devil,” he murmured.
“What did I do?” she asked innocently, then sobering, turned to Beltran. “We’re going to have to drop the charge against Sarah Tolland.”
“Give it a few days,” he said. “If we drop it, we have to reveal that McGlenlevie is back.”
“Listen, she’s got a real shark for a lawyer. We’ll be hit with a suit we don’t even want to think about if we leave her hanging in the wind a day longer than we have to.” She knew she was pushing her luck with Beltran, pointing out that he had been wrong. “If we’re going to keep the identity of the victim quiet, we need to let her know she’s off the hook and ask for her cooperation.”
“She might still be guilty,” said Beltran.
“Hard to see how,” said Elena.
“Two days won’t make any difference. She doesn’t have to know — “
“She’s the one who saw Gus. She called me from the hospital.” The two men seemed to have forgotten that.
“God,” Leo muttered. “We’re back to square one on this thing, and half the suspects have left town. Lili Bonaventura, for instance — she’s long gone, and probably all those other girls he was getting it on with. But maybe not the Bonnard woman.”
“She’s at a religious retreat,” said Elena, thinking that if Karl were the murderer, which she could hardly believe — well, hell! Maybe she owed Mrs. Bonnard a call and warning that an attempt might have been made on Gus McGlenlevie’s life. Still, Bonnard had showed no signs of jealousy. And Gus didn’t seem to think the man knew about the affair. Elena wondered if she could have been that stupid about Bonnard.
“I guess we start all over tomorrow,” said Leo, “but, by God, I’m going home to bed. I’m tired. I’m tired of this case. I’m tired of that dumbass McGlenlevie. I’m just plain tired.”
Elena wanted to get home too, but the thought of home reminded her that as soon as Sarah was publicly cleared, Lili Bonaventura became a suspect again. And the Bonaventuras — She sighed, wondering which room they’d trash next. Assuming they were the ones who had broken in the last time. I should have been a schoolteacher or a rock star, she thought irritably. Either one would have pleased Mother.
Thirty-seven
* * *
Tuesday, June 2, 7:20 P.M.
Sarah Tolland was angry. All day she’d waited to receive word that the charge against her had been dropped. She’d called her lawyer three times, and he’d said, “The legal system moves slowly, Sarah,” or something equally frustrating. It seemed to Sarah that, as her lawyer, he should have been giving the legal system a nudge.
And even if the courts were slow, Elena could have called to apologize. The police hadn’t identified the body correctly, much less the murderer. Surely they didn’t think she’d kill some stranger just because he was in Gus’s apartment. She considered calling the police to point out to them the illogic of their position, but didn’t; her lawyer wouldn’t approve of such an expedient.
Instead she called both newspapers and three TV news departments to inform them that Gus was alive. That ought to get some action out of the authorities, she had thought smugly as she enjoyed a container of yogurt at her desk. Herbert Hobart was, as far as she knew, the only university that had yogurt machines in all the buildings — Greta Marx’s innovation. The doctor had confided to Sarah at one of the president’s cocktail and prayer fests that the consumption of yogurt would combat vaginal yeast infections among the female student population and thus save her, Dr. Marx, numerous time-wasting consultations that distracted her from her more important mission, the promulgation of safe sexual practices. Sarah hated to get cornered by Greta Marx. The woman always had something embarrassing to say, especially when she was drunk.
At six o’clock Sarah had rushed home to turn on the local news in the hope of hearing that the accusation against her had been withdrawn. Instead she heard that Howard Margreaves was now thought to be the acid bath victim instead of Angus McGlenlevie. Who was Howard Margreaves? And why had he been in Gus’s apartment? Nothing was said about her. Evidently she still stood accused.
She snapped off the news and went into the kitchen to see what frozen delight she could dig out of her freezer. Sarah ate regularly, cooked seldom, and took no interest in food unless it was served to her in a good restaurant, where she could enjoy a meal without preparing it or cleaning up afterward.
Chicken and herb sauce. That ought to do. She took the little tray out of its box, locked it in the microwave, and set the controls. Just as the timer dinged, her doorbell rang. Impatiently she removed her TV dinner from the oven and returned to the living room to peer through the peephole, where she spotted, of all people, her ex-husband. “Go away,” she ordered.
“Come on, Sarah,” said Gus. “I’m here to apologize. O.K.? I’m taking my life in my hands even being outside my apartment, so open the door, will you, before someone kills me in your hallway?”
Sarah debated briefly, then unlocked the dead bolt and took the chain off. “I really don’t want to see you, Gus. I’d be perfectly happy if I never had to see you again,” she said, closing the door behind him and relocking it.
“Why are you doing that?” asked Gus.
“Doing what?”
“Locking me in here.”
“You idiot. Do you still think I tried to kill you?”
“Well, there was the snail,” said Gus defensively.
“Gus, if I wanted to kill you with a snail or any other way, believe me, I could figure out how to do it, and I wouldn’t be satisfied with any substitute victim that I’d never seen before, much less heard of.”
“Well, I guess I do believe you, Sarah, and I am sorry they arrested you. I know you wouldn’t kill Howard.”
“Who was Howard?”
“My postdoctoral fellow.”
“You have a postdoctoral fellow? What does he do? Experimental poetry?”
“No, actually, Howard rather liked the traditional forms. He — “
“It was a joke, Gus.”
“Making jokes is unlike you, Sarah. You’re not going to become hysterical, are you?”
Sarah gave him a long cold look and said, “Before you leave my apartment, Gus, maybe you’d be so good as to explain why you left town without telling anyone where you were going. You didn’t tell the apartment superintendent; you didn’t tell Mr. Potemkin or your chairman; you — “
“Say, you needn’t act so high and mighty. It could have been a professor in E.E. that tried to kill me.”
“What?”
“Bonnard.”
“Why would Bonnard want to kill you? I don’t think you’ve ever met the man.”
“Exactly,” said Gus. “I never have. Otherwise, he’d have known who he was hitting on the head when he killed Howard.”
“All right, but why would he want to kill you?” She stared at Gus. “My lord, you seduced Mary Ellen. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, I’d hardly call it seduction,” said Gus. “She needed kindness — a sensitive lover.”
“And she picked you? I realized she must be having psychological problems when she joined that strange religious sect, but — “
“Actually, it’s quite an interesting group,” said Gus. “Overly strict in some matters.”
“Like sex,” Sarah suggested.
“Yes, but very interesting. They believe in psychic powers, faith healing. I’ve never — “
“Are you saying you seduced Mary Ellen as a sort of research project?” Sarah interrupted. “Are you going to write a new poetry collection called Sex Among the Fundamentalists?”
“Probably not,” said Gus. “I’m currently interested in male bonding, the male wilderness muse.”
“Oh, spare me,” said Sarah. “I can’t think of a sin
gle man who would want to spend more than ten minutes with you.”
“Well, you’re wrong. I’ve just returned from a white-water rafting trip. All male. We spent ten days together, communing with nature, pitting ourselves against — “
“I don’t want to hear about it, Gus. It doesn’t interest me any more than Erotica in Reeboks did. However, I will suggest to you that if you’re experimenting with homosexuality and you write a book about it, Harley Stanley is going to see that you’re denied tenure. Oh, he wouldn’t admit that it’s because you’re gay — “
“I’m not gay. How could you even think that?”
“Why wouldn’t I think it? Maybe you’ve run out of girl students, so you plan to try boys.”
“Well, Sarah, except for that obnoxious policewoman, nobody has ever suggested that I might be bisexual, much less homosexual. You of all people — “
“ — know that you’re promiscuous — blatantly, multitudinously promiscuous.”
“I don’t know why I bothered to come up here to apologize to you. Here I thought we had an amicable relationship.”
“After being arrested and spending a night in jail — “
“I’d love to hear about the jail part.”
“I’m sure you would. Now, go away, Gus. And don’t come back.”
“All right, but would you mind calling me in about three minutes to see that I got back safely?”
“Yes, I would mind. There’s the telephone. If you want someone to check on you, call your fiancée in the designer jogging suit.”
“I do believe you’re jealous, Sarah.”
“And I do believe that you’re a fool. Now do you want to use my telephone or not?”
“Oh, forget it.” Gus stamped to the door. “How do I get out of here?”
“Take off the chain. Unlock the dead bolt. If you don’t have the same safeguards on your door, you ought to. Especially if someone wants to kill you.”
“You’re right,” said Gus, looking alarmed. “If Bonnard or the Mafia — “
“The Mafia?”
“It turns out that one of my friends is the daughter of a Mafia don.”
Sarah started to laugh.
“It’s not funny. There might be a contract out on me.”
“You’re right,” she gasped, still laughing, “in which case, if someone comes around with a submachine gun, I’d just as soon they didn’t spray my apartment with hundreds of bullets.”
“Well, look, since you know about these dead bolts and things, could you call someone to — “
“No, I couldn’t, Gus. We’re divorced. You’re on your own. Good-bye.”
She brushed past him, turned the dead bolt key, unchained the door, and swung it open. “Good-bye.”
“Check the hall first.”
“Check the hall yourself. As I said, I don’t want to be killed by someone who’s already made one mistake.”
Gus edged cautiously out of her living room and then sprinted for the elevator. Sarah slammed the door behind him and locked up. Angus McGlenlevie had more gall than any three obnoxious men she knew. She went into her kitchen to retrieve the rapidly cooling TV dinner. Oh well, she thought, it’s not going to taste much worse cold than it would have warm. She poured herself a glass of white wine, put a rough-weave place mat and a napkin on her teak table, dumped the chicken onto a plate, carried it with silverware to the dining room, and sat down to eat while she considered the possibility that Karl Bonnard might have attempted to kill Gus in a fit of jealousy.
Suddenly she remembered what she had forgotten in the shock of discovering that her ex-husband was still alive. She had been arrested, not just because they thought she had a motive, but because there was evidence pointing to her — the initial appearance that she had left town after deleting her forwarding address from the computer, the unslaked lime rerouted from Buildings and Grounds and sent to her. Those things didn’t just happen on their own. Someone had to tamper with the computer. Someone who understood computers. Someone who hated her. Not just Gus or Margreaves — but her!
Sarah laid down her fork because her hands were trembling. Bonnard! Who wanted to be chairman. Who at university functions treated his wife with a rather ugly disdain. Who, when Mary Ellen joined that sect, talked about it to everyone, as if his wife had entirely lost her mind. Yet even considering that strange passage in her life, Mary Ellen Bonnard had not seemed insane. If anything, her religious foray seemed to have tipped Karl toward neurotic behavior.
Furious, Sarah took a bite of her lukewarm chicken in herb sauce and a sip of wine — contrary to her mother’s fixed principles, that anger was unbecoming in a lady, and eating while angry caused gastric disorders, not to mention lines in the face. In defiance, Sarah took another bite. And two large gulps of wine. Bonnard could have done it. Killed Gus — or tried to. Framed her. Rushed off to offer himself to the dean as the obvious person to take over her job. Of all the vicious, unprincipled, underhanded . . .
Sarah looked down at her plate in surprise. She had bolted the whole unappetizing puddle of herbed chicken and drunk all the wine. Just as her mother had warned, she felt the onset of an unladylike gastric upset. Another of her mother’s precepts was that respectable people did not approve of or give in to violent impulses. Such doings were entirely the province of the lower classes. Sarah’s mother was a terrible snob. But was she right? Now that Sarah had calmed down somewhat, her anger quenched by stomach acid, the idea that one of her faculty members could have killed his wife’s lover and framed his chairman seemed bizarre. She’d never really liked Karl Bonnard much, and he had certainly proved himself to be no friend of hers, but that didn’t make him a murderer. Just an opportunist.
Then she remembered that Bonnard had called the department that morning, having already missed one appointment, and informed Virginia that he’d have to be out of town for a few days. Had he heard that Gus, his intended victim, was still alive? If Sarah had seen her ex-husband on campus, others must have. Maybe Bonnard had left town in a panic. And where was Mary Ellen? Still at that religious retreat? Bonnard might be following her there with the idea of killing her so that she couldn’t reveal her liaison with Gus and thus Bonnard’s motive for murder. Sarah couldn’t believe she was having such thoughts. If Gus hadn’t mentioned the affair, she’d have thought that anyone accusing her colleague of murder was crazy.
As she rose to carry her plate, goblet, and silverware into the kitchen, another thought bobbed up. Maybe Gus had lied about the Bonnards. Maybe he’d killed Margreaves himself. And what were the police doing? Who did they think had killed the poet? Surely not her? Still? But if they suspected Gus, why were they letting him run around free? And if they suspected Bonnard, why weren’t they protecting Gus — and Mary Ellen?
Sarah decided to call the Bonnard house to see if anyone answered. She got the answering machine, with a message that no one was available to take the call. She tried three times during the evening, the last at 11:30. Still no one answered, and she couldn’t be sure what it meant.
The last time Sarah had seen Mary Ellen, she’d said that she planned to spend several weeks at a religious retreat in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. Perhaps she was still there, but Sarah had no idea how to reach her, and now that she thought of it, she didn’t know what she’d say to Mary Ellen. In order to warn her against Karl, Sarah would have to reveal that she knew about the affair with Gus, if there had been an affair. Such a conversation would be horribly embarrassing.
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