The Upstaged Coroner

by Paul Austin Ardoin

  “We got here too late,” McVie said. “It’s way too crowded now. I thought we’d hit right before the rush.”

  Three young men, two in jeans and hoodies and one in a tight muscle shirt and shorts, ran from their table toward Micah’s Deli. Laughing, they almost knocked the lunch tray out of the hands of a young, curly-haired woman in a gray nidever forever sweatshirt.

  “That’s Emilia,” Fenway said, motioning to the woman who melodramatically sighed, looking after the three men, while pointedly ogling the one in the muscle shirt.

  “Who?”

  “The woman who plays Emilia in Othello,” Fenway said. “You’ve seen her, right? She’s good, although Professor Cygnus sure tore into her yesterday.”

  “Oh, right.” McVie squeezed his eyes shut, thinking, then opened them again. “Denise, right? Denise—uh, Delatasso.”

  “Impressive, Craig. You know the names of all the girls in the play, or just the pretty, talented ones?” Fenway’s tone was teasing, but she couldn’t keep a faint brushstroke of jealousy out of her voice.

  McVie looked at Fenway out of the corner of his eye.

  She said, “We should go talk to her.”

  “Yeah,” McVie said. “We can salvage something out of this trip.”

  Fenway nodded. She saw Denise stop and consider the large table that the three young men had just vacated—one of the few empty tables in the student center—but the tabletop had cups, trays, napkins, and dirty plates all over the top.

  McVie swooped behind her. “Hi, again,” he said. “Here, let me clear that for you.” He scooped a couple of plates onto a tray and lifted it off the table.

  “Oh!” Denise said. “Sheriff! I didn’t see you there.”

  Fenway went around the other end of the table. “Hi,” she said. “I don’t think we met. I’m Fenway Stevenson.”

  “The pleasure is mine,” Denise said. “Are you an officer, too?”

  “The county coroner.” Fenway picked up the other two trays.

  “Oh, of course!” Denise said. “The recent election. How perfectly silly of me.”

  Fenway fought the desire to roll her eyes at Denise because it was almost like she was faking a British accent through her grandiose word choice. She steeled herself for the conversation. “Don’t apologize for not following politics,” Fenway said, stepping over to the trash and dumping the contents of the trays. “If I weren’t running, I’m not sure I’d have followed it myself.”

  When Fenway turned back to the table, McVie was sitting across from an uncomfortable-looking Denise, a steaming rice bowl sitting between them.

  “I guess this is about Jessica,” Denise said as Fenway slid into the seat next to the sheriff. “It’s tragic what happened to her.”

  “Did you know her well?” McVie asked.

  “Not as well as I might have liked,” Denise said, tearing the paper off her chopsticks. “Certainly some of the other students knew her better than I did.”

  “Like who?” Fenway asked.

  “Amanda, for one, obviously.” She took a bite from her rice bowl.

  “Obviously?”

  “Of course. She worked in The Guild office. She put in far more hours than any other student. A regular Girl Friday.”

  McVie smiled. “How many hours did Amanda put in?”

  “At least twenty or twenty-five every week. She wanted to go on the London theater trip, and working for The Guild not only gave her enough money to go, but also cut her ticket price in half.”

  “In half?” Fenway said.

  “The lodging and the activities in the u.k. Not airfare. Still—hotels, theater tickets, classroom events—it’s all quite expensive.”

  McVie nodded. “Six thousand dollars, right?”

  “Assuming you aren’t one of The Guild’s lucky employees, yes.”

  “So for Amanda it was what? About three grand?”

  “Given what I know of the program, that sounds about right.”

  “Did you want to go?” Fenway asked.

  Denise crinkled up her nose. “I enjoy performing in the Bard’s great plays, but attending eighteen theater productions in a little more than a fortnight? That’s not exactly my idea of a pleasant summer vacation.” She sniffed. “Especially not with the great Professor Cygnus ejaculating his self-righteous Shakespeare interpretation all over his fellow travelers.”

  Fenway almost laughed out loud but suppressed it. “So it’s like one of Professor Cygnus’s Shakespeare classes, but compressed into three weeks?”

  “That’s correct.” Denise ate another bite and swallowed thoughtfully. “I must admit that I’m surprised that Professor Cygnus is leading it this year.”

  “Really?” McVie said. “He seems like this Shakespeare stuff is the only reason he gets up in the morning.”

  Denise smiled. “It certainly is. I just didn’t realize that it was more important to him than spending time with his wife.”

  “His wife?”

  “Surely you’ve discovered by now that the professor’s better half was diagnosed with leukemia a few months ago.” Denise looked from McVie’s face to Fenway’s. “No? My understanding is that she has about a year to live, perhaps less. If it were me, I’d rather spend those three weeks in the summer with my dying wife instead of a busful of entitled, rich theater snobs and nineteen-year-old students. Students who’d rather drink cellar-temperature ale at a pub than sit through a lecture with some of the greatest Shakespearean actors of our time.”

  McVie leaned back. “He didn’t have a backup? He didn’t want Jessica to go in his place?”

  “To lead the theater tour? Good heavens, no. I’ve always had the impression that enduring a Shakespeare play would have been Jessica’s embodiment of hell.” Denise laughed. “Jessica made the excuse that a responsible adult had to stay to attend to The Guild’s day-to-day functions.”

  Fenway put her elbows on the table. “Xavier isn’t traveling to London, either, is he?”

  “No,” Denise said. “There are six students going, and they seem to be Cygnus’s pets.”

  “Xavier’s not one of his pet students?” asked McVie.

  “Just because he was cast as the lead? No. He’s the best actor—male actor—in the play, but you can certainly tell that he doesn’t subscribe to Cygnus’s more, shall we say, creative interpretations of the text.”

  McVie leaned forward. “Creative interpretations?”

  “Surely you’re familiar with the more controversial elements Professor Cygnus puts in his Shakespeare plays? I thought that’s how Nidever found its place on the literary map.”

  McVie grinned. “Do I look like I’m familiar with the literary map?”

  Denise’s eyes raked McVie’s torso and arms. “I’m sure I don’t know, Sheriff. Don’t judge a book, and all that.”

  “So,” Fenway said, trying to mask her annoyance, “tell me about these innovative interpretations that Professor Cygnus does.”

  “Certainly,” Denise said. “Perhaps his most famous—or should I say infamous—interpretation came last year with The Merchant of Venice production.”

  “He won a West Coast Theater Educators’ award for that, right?”

  Denise nodded. “I was a sophomore when I went to see that, and I couldn’t wait to be in his play this year.” She looked at McVie. “Do you know the play?”

  “Uh—no, I don’t think I do.”

  “That’s the one with Shylock and the pound of flesh,” Fenway said to McVie.

  “And The Quality of Mercy,” Denise said, a little too dreamily for Fenway’s taste. “I must say that even though I’m not too keen on some of the things he does, Cygnus possesses an unequaled ability to pull beautiful emotional performances from students with absolutely no acting experience. The woman who played Portia—she and I have shared several literature classes—folds in on herself, she’s so introverted. When she speaks in class, it’s only at the behest of the instructor, and even then a more mousy, whispery voice you’d be
hard-pressed to hear again. And yet, the way that woman commanded the stage—unbelievable.”

  “So,” Fenway said, trying to keep her on track, “what made the production of The Merchant of Venice so infamous?”

  “Of course. I apologize; I get carried away every now and then,” Denise said, putting her hand on Fenway’s elbow. “It was the monkey.”

  “Oh,” Fenway said, “I think I heard someone mention that.”

  Denise nodded emphatically. “There’s a scene where Shylock’s daughter—oh, her name is Jessica too, just like Jessica Marquez!”

  “What about the scene?”

  “Shylock bemoans the fact that Jessica has left him. He feels completely betrayed. He goes on and on and on about how she’s rejected him, her own flesh and blood, her own father, and she’s gotten a pet monkey.” Denise cleared her throat. “It’s where Tubal says to Shylock, ‘One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.’ And Shylock responds, ‘Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.’” She stopped, looking pleased with herself. “Now—most interpretations just have Shylock performing the speech. It may be metaphorical—Jessica’s new husband could be a monkey in Shylock’s eyes, I suppose. Most directors assume that Jessica is simply frivolous, and gets a pet monkey because it’s something her father never let her have—or perhaps she just told him she got a monkey to spite him. He’s not the greatest father in the world, and maybe Jessica knew that it would hurt him more that she traded her mother’s ring for a monkey than that she married a gentile.”

  “So how did Cygnus interpret it?”

  Denise guffawed. “Our dear professor procured a live monkey. He contacted a local wildlife rescue organization and eventually persuaded them to lend The Guild one of their capuchin monkeys. He insisted that Sarah have that infernal monkey on her shoulder the very next scene she was in.”

  “Sarah?”

  “Oh—Sarah Harding.”

  McVie’s brow furrowed. “Sarah Harding. That name sounds familiar.”

  “She was a senior last year—she played Shylock’s daughter.” She shook her head, perhaps in disbelief, or maybe in shock. “She’s simply a wisp of a girl, ninety pounds soaking wet.”

  “Was there an issue with the monkey?” Fenway asked, hoping the exasperation didn’t creep into her voice.

  “Only that Professor Cygnus made her bond with the monkey,” Denise said. “And by bond, I mean he insisted she take it home. When the wildlife organization objected, he refused to give the monkey back. But the truly nefarious part is that he didn’t tell Sarah that they objected. Of course, she got into a huge fight with the professor—her apartment didn’t allow pets—never mind a capuchin monkey. If she had known the wildlife organization objected, she would have given it back gladly. Instead, the very first night she took the monkey home, she got arrested.”

  A look of dawning comprehension came into McVie’s eyes. “Of course. That Sarah Harding.”

  Fenway felt the shock on her face. “You didn’t arrest her, did you?”

  “I didn’t, but I had to run some interference between that wildlife preserve and the university.”

  Denise frowned.

  McVie folded his arms. “Listen, it’s not like I could do anything about it. Morris was their property—”

  “Morris?” Fenway said. “Morris the monkey?”

  “—and the wildlife organization insisted on pressing charges.”

  “For taking home a monkey?”

  “For stealing an animal worth fifteen thousand dollars,” McVie said.

  “What?” Fenway said. “Why in the world would they agree to let a fifteen-thousand-dollar monkey perform in a Shakespeare play?”

  “Professor Cygnus can be charming,” said Denise. “Besides, the monkey seemed to enjoy performing.”

  “You mean to tell me,” said Fenway, “that even after all that, they still let him use the monkey?”

  “The university provided a large donation to the wildlife organization,” said McVie.

  Fenway shook her head.

  “And the monkey performed wonderfully,” Denise said. “Well-trained. They had a little speech at the end about endangered wildlife and they had donation boxes in the lobby.”

  Fenway looked at McVie, who shrugged.

  “At any rate,” Denise said, “apparently it was the first Merchant of Venice production in over two hundred years that had used a live monkey, and it even got a write-up in the l.a. Times. It was a big deal. People were writing in to tell The Guild how much they loved or hated the monkey, Sarah even had her picture in Theater Now. She got that role on Until Proven Guilty because of that exposure.”

  “Wait—Sarah Marie Harding?” Fenway cocked her head at McVie. “You arrested a famous actress?”

  “Correction,” McVie muttered. “I worked out a politically charged situation to free a famous actress. Who wasn’t famous at the time, I might add.”

  “How well does Cygnus know Jessica Marquez?” Fenway said, a note of double entendre in her voice.

  Denise’s laugh turned into a giggle. “The great Virgil Cygnus and Jessica Marquez?”

  “It’s not such a strange concept. Older men go for younger women all the time.”

  “A tiresome trope, indeed,” Denise said, “but, alas, it’s an open secret that Cygnus is having an affair with Leda Nedermeyer.”

  “Leda Nedermeyer?”

  “She’s nothing less than the head of the Nidever English department,” Denise said. “‘If the stacks are a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’,’ as the literature majors say. It’s true that Professor Nedermeyer is a younger woman, of course, but Cygnus is sixty. She’s in her late forties.”

  “So basically robbing the cradle.”

  McVie, tight-lipped, said nothing.

  Fenway tapped the table. “He started the affair even though his wife was diagnosed with cancer?”

  “No, no,” Denise said. “This is not a recent development. In fact, to hear Jessica tell it, Professor Cygnus and Professor Nedermeyer have been having an affair for more than a decade.”

  Fenway’s eyes widened.

  “So,” McVie said, “you think there was absolutely nothing happening between Jessica Marquez and Virgil Cygnus.”

  “Nothing,” Denise said. “She’s quite the gossipmonger about him, as well, and in my experience, the other woman does not gossip about her beau.”

  “Fair enough,” said McVie. “So was Jessica Marquez seeing anyone?”

  Denise squinted. Fenway saw it in her eyes—she knew about Jessica’s affair with Xavier.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t think anyone’s privy to this knowledge, but I entered in The Guild office one day and Jessica and Xavier were engaged in, uh, sexual congress.”

  “It’s always a shitshow when Congress gets involved,” Fenway deadpanned.

  “No, I meant—”

  “I know,” Fenway said. “I was making a bad joke. Had you heard that Xavier and Amanda are dating?”

  “It is true that I have seen the two of them together, and it doesn’t surprise me that they’ve been intimate. Let’s put it this way: Amanda gets assigned a lot of hours when Xavier is free.” Denise rested her chin in her hand. “And Xavier is never there observing when Desdemona and Emilia rehearse their dedicated scenes.”

  “So how did you walk in on them?” McVie asked.

  “It was during rehearsal for a scene between Desdemona and Brabantio.”

  McVie leaned forward. “Who?”

  “Sorry. Amanda’s character—Desdemona—and the young man playing Desdemona’s father. So I wasn’t in the scene. I went to retrieve some flyers from the office—I planned to put them up in the Java Jim’s over off University Avenue—and when I opened the door, the two of them were positioned in flagrante delicto, on top of the desks, ‘making the beast with two backs,’ as Iago w
ould say.”

  “I see.” McVie looked over at Fenway. “Are you aware of any others?”

  “Any other paramours, you mean?” Denise took another bite.

  “Friends, lovers, enemies, whatever.”

  Denise chewed for a moment, a thoughtful look on her face.

  “What about this woman?” McVie said, taking his phone out and showing Denise the picture of Rose Morgan.

  Denise swallowed and looked at the picture. “Well, I don’t think Jessica was bisexual, if that’s what you mean.”

  “We were told they were friends,” McVie said. “In fact, if you’ve just seen this woman around, that would be great for us to know.”

  “I can’t be absolutely certain,” Denise said. “I’ve been by the office a couple of times when visitors have been in whom I failed to recognize. She looks like a woman who was in there.”

  “When was this?”

  Denise shrugged. “I don’t recall. Perhaps two weeks ago. Perhaps a month.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “It’s a big campus, and I’m sorry to say I don’t always pay attention to everything. It’s one of my flaws. Apparently I’ve been in three different classes with the woman who plays Bianca, and I didn’t recognize her.”

  “Okay,” McVie said. “Fenway, you have anything else for Miss Delatasso?”

  Fenway shook her head and had a thought.

  “Oh—sorry. Just one more thing. Do you own a Kendra Quinlan top?”

  Denise laughed. “One of those famous two-thousand-dollar blouses with that gaudy logo on all the buttons? Heavens, no. I’m afraid you’ve identified the wrong student actor.”

  Fenway cocked her head.

  “By that I mean it isn’t me who has the expensive clothing.” Denise lowered her voice. “I know that Amanda has been pinching pennies to go to the theater tour in London, so I’m not sure what she’s doing with such an expensive blouse. I assumed she purchased it at Goodwill, or perhaps she has a rich uncle who prefers buying her expensive clothes for her birthday rather than a theater trip. Who knows? If you want my opinion, she looks hideous in it—as if she’s about to purchase a minivan and join the Junior League. I’m sure she only wears it because she wants people to think she has more money than she does.”