Acid Bath

by Nancy Herndon

“Yes, yes, you’re going to tell me that it’s my fault because I smoked when Howie was little, but both Howie and I have been in therapy for that problem. Howie no longer blames me, and I — “

  “Look, Mrs. Margreaves, I wasn’t going to — “

  “I stopped when Howie was seven years old, and if you think that was easy — “

  “Mrs. Margreaves, your son doesn’t have a summer cold.”

  “Bronchitis. He has bronchitis. Oh dear. Perhaps I’d better come down myself. No one knows how to treat Howie’s bronchitis better than I.”

  “It’s not bronchitis.”

  “Pneumonia? Oh, dear Lord — “

  “Ma’am, Howie’s dead.” Elena would have liked to break the news more delicately, but she was afraid it might take another half hour before Mrs. Margreaves worked through her list of possible illnesses. “I’m afraid your son was murdered.” The flow of chatter from Mrs. Margreaves stopped abruptly.

  Elena gave the woman a minute to digest the news, then said, “I want to express my sympathy, Mrs. Margreaves, and also to ask if you can think of anyone who might have wanted to kill your son.”

  “Why would anyone want to kill Howie?” the mother said in a small, shocked voice. “He never did anyone any harm, just wrote poetry.” She sounded bewildered. “The only person I can think of who ever got mad at Howie was Howard Senior,” she added, as if that piece of information would nullify her son’s death.

  Mrs. Margreaves began to weep. Elena leaned her head onto her free hand while with the other she held the telephone away from her ear as she considered the possibility that Howie might have been killed by a disappointed and disapproving father. Lots of murderers turned out to be the victim’s relatives, not that Elena anticipated any help from Mrs. Margreaves if questioned on the possibility that her husband had killed her son. This family was sort of weird. The fiancée, however, might be a source of information. “Ma’am,” Elena began anew when the sobbing had abated, “do I understand that your son was engaged to be married?”

  “Yes, yes. To Marguerite Dubois. A lovely girl, although Howard Senior didn’t approve.” She sighed, the sigh probably expressing years of mediation between father and son. “Howard Senior said, ‘Why get engaged when you can’t afford to get married?’” She was sniffling quietly. “Poor Howie, you see, was paid practically nothing at that university, living in a slum. How can they treat their poets that way?” Mrs. Margreaves wailed. “It was probably some slum dweller, some minority person, who killed him. Don’t you think?”

  “I doubt it,” Elena replied, wondering if she should tell the mother that she was talking to a “minority person” and that Howie’s death might have been a case of mistaken identity. Would that make her feel better or worse? Elena decided to say nothing until they knew more. “I wonder if you could give me Ms. Dubois’ telephone number?”

  “You’re going to call her? That’s so kind of you. I suppose you work for the university. I didn’t mean to denigrate your institution. I’m sure it — “

  “I’m with the Los Santos police, Mrs. Margreaves.”

  “The police?” Mrs. Margreaves now sounded totally bewildered, as if it had never occurred to her that the police would be interested in her son. “To think that my sweet Howie should end his life mixed up with the police,” she said mournfully.

  “Yes, ma’am. If you could give me Ms. Dubois’ number.” Elena had written onto her notepad, “Howard Margreaves, Sr.,” and underlined it — the name of another suspect in a long, long list.

  Ms. Dubois answered on the third ring, and when Elena said she was calling about Howard, Ms. Dubois said, “I knew it. He hasn’t written in three weeks. You’re a girlfriend, aren’t you? He’s found himself a new — “

  “Ms. Dubois.”

  “Howard’s so susceptible. Such a romantic. He’s found himself a new — “

  “Ms. Dubois, I’m sorry to tell you that your fiancé is dead.”

  “Dead? Pneumonia?” asked Ms. Dubois. “His mother warned me.”

  “He was murdered.”

  There was a short silence, then an uneasy, tinkling laugh. “This is a crank call, right? No one, I mean no one, would murder Howard. Howard is not the sort of man who gets murdered.”

  “Well, we think that possibly the murderer killed him by mistake, but still, Ms. Dubois, we wondered if you could make any suggestions as to someone who might have wanted to murder Howard.”

  “I told you, no one would want to murder Howard.”

  “What about his father?”

  “That Philistine!” exclaimed Ms. Dubois. “The man thinks of nothing but his career. Murder would not advance his climb up the corporate ladder.”

  Elena thought about the state of Howard’s remains. Howard’s father was a scientist. Being a scientist, if he wanted to dissolve a body, couldn’t he have thought of something more scientific and less time-consuming than unslaked lime? It rapidly became obvious that Ms. Dubois had little to offer in the way of clues, so Elena said good-bye and began to check airline reservations from the East Coast to Los Santos for the time frame during which Howard Margreaves was killed: May 6 when he moved into McGlenlevie’s apartment to May 14 when Lili found and misidentified the body.

  There were no passengers from Murray Hill leaving from Newark or any other airports in the area. Of course, the murderer could, probably would, have lied about his or her home address.

  “Hang up,” said Leo, his shirt collar open, his face streaked with sweat. Elena hadn’t even seen him come in. “Gang action in Segundo Barrio. Three victims already.”

  Elena slapped down the telephone, scooped up her handbag, and sprinted after Leo, the murder of Howard Margreaves forgotten.

  “Bonnard wasn’t in his office, and I couldn’t find out anything about the Bonaventuras,” he called over his shoulder. “Maybe Frank was doing a number on you.”

  “Bastard,” Elena muttered. As for Bonnard, she was supposed to have dinner with him tonight, and he was going to be pretty surprised at the direction the conversation took. Elena had never Mirandized a date, but there was always a first time.

  Forty

  * * *

  Thursday, June 4, 7:15 A.M.

  Barefooted, damp from the shower, clad only in a terry cloth robe, and having awakened from a restless sleep not twenty minutes ago, Elena dropped the receiver into its cradle. The newsboy had skipped her house again, and she’d just had an irate conversation with the newspaper’s circulation department, much good that would do. Maybe tomorrow she’d get up early, catch him pedaling by her house without tossing her paper, and scare the hell out of him. She looked up and called Karl Bonnard’s number. No answer there. Bonnard had stood her up last night.

  Rubbing her hair dry with a ragged towel, she turned her thoughts to unslaked lime. Someone had rerouted that order, making it look like Sarah’s doing. Elena could understand that. The murderer wanted to shift suspicion away from himself — or herself. Maybe even had a grudge against Sarah. Or just thought her a likely suspect. To know Gus, to know Sarah, to have access to the university computers, the murderer had to be connected with the university.

  How many university people knew anything about unslaked lime? Bonnard didn’t seem a likely whitewasher. Scientists of other sorts maybe? No, she’d decided that Howard Margreaves’ father, if he’d killed his son, would have thought of something better than unslaked lime; so would a university scientist.

  Did professors whitewash their houses? Not likely, she decided. So who — well, someone from Buildings and Grounds. They whitewashed things. They ordered and used unslaked lime. They might even know a thing or two about computers, and Gus could have infuriated someone from Buildings and Grounds as easily as he did everyone else. Maybe he’d got his hands on someone’s wife or daughter — some Hispanic girl he’d forgotten about by the time Elena and Leo questioned him. But the girl’s father, husband, brother, or boyfriend wouldn’t have forgotten. So who? Probably not Hector Montes, the gu
y who had called her and brought Buildings and Grounds to her attention in the first place. Anyway, he was the only contact she had there. With luck, he started work early — before the heat got too bad.

  She dragged out her telephone book again and in five minutes found out that Hector Montes had never met Gus McGlenlevie and didn’t know of anyone in Buildings and Grounds who had. Mostly they took complaints from chairmen or other administrators, occasionally a problem at the faculty apartments, but then it was the wives calling usually. Most members of the faculty would never notice a guy from Buildings and Grounds unless he ran a power mower over their foot; that was Hector Montes’ opinion.

  Elena slumped against the headboard of her bed, where she had been sitting, clipping her toenails as she talked to Montes. Had the delivery of the lime been a fluke, some computer mistake, or some professor who wanted free lime and jerried the computer to get it? Was she back to the Bonaventuras? The only thing she’d gotten from pursuing that avenue was a trashed living room, and she wasn’t even sure of that.

  “Has anyone shown any interest in unslaked lime?” she asked in a last, feeble attempt to dredge up a lead.

  “Why would anyone — “ Montes paused. “Well, yeah. There was this one guy complained about the air conditionin’ in his office. Came over himself, followed me right out to the storage area, carryin’ this bottle of agua mineral con gas — mineral water. You know?”

  “I know,” said Elena.

  “I got kinda sick of all his bitchin’. You got moisture in the air, the swamp coolers don’t work so good. Nothin’ I can do about it, so then he bumps into this container of lime, an’ I tell him if he spills his fancy mineral water in that lime, it’ll boil right up an’ eat a hole in his leg. ‘No kiddin’,’ he says, real interested, so I tell him about unslaked lime. He’s the only one I can think of.”

  “Mr. Montes, you sweetheart!” cried Elena. “What’s his name?”

  “Wha’d you say yours was?” asked Mr. Montes, evidently turned on by being called a sweetheart.

  “Jarvis,” said Elena, grinning. “Jarvis-Portillo.”

  “Portillo? Say, that sounds good to me.”

  “Oh yeah? What about your wife and babies?”

  “Some babies,” he replied, disgruntled. “They’re wantin’ to go to college now — become bigger shots than me.”

  “Congratulations. Do you remember his name? The one who asked about unslaked lime — or what he looked like?”

  “Anglo. Good lookin’. A real prick.”

  Bonnard, she thought. “Name?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “If I got you a picture?”

  “Yeah. Probably. You come by with a picture, an’ I’ll take you out for a Tecate.”

  “You devil,” said Elena, laughing exuberantly. Bonnard. Ten to one it was Bonnard. This evidence wouldn’t convict him, but it would take her a step along the way.

  Forty-one

  * * *

  Thursday, June 4, 8:05 A.M.

  “Big doings at your place last night, huh?” said the desk sergeant as she passed through the reception area at headquarters.

  Elena stopped. “Nothing happened at my house, except I went to bed early, slept, and didn’t get my paper again this morning.”

  “You mean you didn’t even wake up?” Jaime McBain looked astonished, his round face split by a grin beneath a Pancho Villa mustache.

  “Quit fooling around, Jaime. What happened?”

  “Frank caught this guy in your back yard and beat him up.”

  Elena frowned. “What was Frank doing in my yard?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he come over to serenade you.”

  “Or steal my truck,” Elena muttered. “And the guy he beat up?”

  “Oh, you know Frank. He kicked the guy around some until he said he’d been hired by some new mob jefe, come to town to hassle you. Then Frank dragged him over here an’ booked him.”

  Had Frank been watching her house since the Bonaventuras destroyed her living room? Elena shook her head. You’d almost have to like the guy — unless you were a woman who could take care of herself and who was opposed to being slugged by her nearest and dearest.

  “I can’t believe you never woke up or nuthin’.”

  “Never did,” said Elena and headed upstairs.

  Forty-two

  * * *

  Thursday, June 4, 9 A.M.

  “Congratulations,” said Virginia as Sarah entered the office the next morning.

  “Why’s that?”

  Virginia looked at her in surprise. “The morning paper said that the charges against you have been dropped. Aren’t you pleased — or at least relieved?”

  Sarah felt a surge of anger. They hadn’t bothered to call her. After leaving her accused of murder when they knew she hadn’t done it, they hadn’t even bothered to call her. Just figured she’d read the good news in the paper, which she hadn’t. Unusual for Sarah, who always fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow and stayed asleep until it was time to rise, she’d lain awake for a long time, thinking about Karl Bonnard, and awakened several times during the night, uneasy with the bizarre possibility that a member of her faculty had committed murder and tried to frame her. As a result she’d overslept that morning and had to forgo breakfast and her morning paper.

  “Your lawyer called. Probably wanted to know where to send the bill.”

  “The city of Los Santos would be an appropriate recipient,” Sarah muttered, thinking of the twenty thousand dollars she’d paid the bonding company. And Formalee’s bill — God knows what that would be. Maybe she’d sue the city. “Is Dr. Bonnard back yet?” Sarah didn’t want to see him. She just wanted to know where he was — and that he hadn’t killed his wife.

  “As I told you yesterday, Dr. Tolland, he’s left town,” said Virginia angrily. “He wanted me to get someone to cover his class. I told him to do his own — “

  “Where did he go?” Sarah interrupted.

  “He didn’t say.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “Of course I asked. He hung up on me.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Sarah.

  “Well, it’s not my fault the man has no sense of responsibility,” said Virginia, her voice cross and snippy.

  “Of course, it isn’t,” Sarah agreed placatingly. “I wasn’t worried about his class, anyway.”

  “Why not?” Virginia looked indignant, but Sarah ignored it because she didn’t feel that she had time to smooth Virginia’s ruffled feathers.

  “I seem to remember Mary Ellen telling me that she was going to a religious retreat. Would you know anything about that, Virginia?”

  “Cloudcroft, New Mexico, but she’s back.”

  “She is?”

  “Yes, she called this morning to ask if I knew where Dr. Bonnard had got to. How’s that for odd? All I could say was, ‘He’s out of town and wouldn’t say where he was going.’ Imagine him thinking he could be chairman. He doesn’t even get his grade sheets in on time or his class rolls or his — “

  “Well, I’m going over to see her.”

  “Who? Mary Ellen? Dr. Tolland, you’ve got an appointment with Harley Stanley at ten o’clock.”

  “Maybe I’ll get back by then. If not, call him.”

  “What am I supposed to tell him? You know what a stickler Vice-President Stanley is for — “