by Clea Simon
It was with a sinking feeling, then, that Dulcie heard the phone ring. Halfway to the living room, she had bowls in one hand, the takeout bag in the other.
‘Chris?’ she called. Their phone tended to migrate from the living room to the bedroom.
‘Sorry!’ he yelled back, and Dulcie heard water running.
Abandoning – for now – their meal, she went in search of the errant phone, finding it just as her boyfriend emerged from the bathroom. She smiled up at him as she reached for it. He’d washed his face, and his bangs were sticking up, making him look more than ever like an overgrown Dennis the Menace.
That smile disappeared when she picked up the receiver. There was nobody on the line. The phone was silent. ‘Hello? Hello?’
Chris looked at her, concern shadowing his face.
Dulcie shrugged. ‘Prank?’ She mouthed the word silently, then tried once more. ‘Is anybody there?’
She was about to hang up when a sudden sob broke the silence.
‘Hello?’ Dulcie stood up and, waving Chris off, took the phone into the kitchen. ‘Who’s there? Can I help you?’ At times of stress, even a doctoral candidate’s grammar might slip.
‘It’s me.’ The voice, thickened by tears, belonged to her buddy and classmate, Trista. ‘I didn’t know who else to call.’
‘Trista! Where are you?’ Dulcie had never heard her friend so upset. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m in trouble, Dulcie. Big trouble.’ Trista was usually the tough one of Dulcie’s crew; a Victorian specialist with a very contemporary edge. Right now, though, her friend’s voice sounded strangled, as if she’d been crying – or worse.
‘The cops think I murdered Roland Galveston.’
THREE
Fifteen minutes later, Dulcie was eating cold dumplings and barely tasting them.
‘Why did she call you, anyway?’ Chris had finished his share and for the first time ever hadn’t immediately gotten out the ice cream. Instead, he was sitting opposite her at their kitchen table, absently petting the kitten on his lap – and grilling Dulcie. ‘I mean, you’re not a lawyer. You’re not her mother.’
‘I’m her friend, Chris.’ Dulcie felt her throat threatening to close up, and she put down the rather leathery dumpling. ‘And this is – this is horrible. Roland was one of us – and he’s gone. Murdered, she said.’ She swallowed, hard. ‘Dead.’ It came out as a whisper.
‘I’m sorry, sweetie. That’s awful.’ Chris must have heard the tears welling up in Dulcie’s voice, and he abandoned Esmé to wrap his arms around his girlfriend. ‘Did you know him well?’
Dulcie shook her head. ‘He hasn’t been here that long. Hadn’t.’ The tense got to her, and she bit her lip. ‘And to think that they think that Trista . . .’ She shook her head. ‘She’s scared, Chris. I could hear it.’
‘I believe you, Dulce. And I know you care about her. I just meant, well, haven’t you had enough going on? This is terrible, I know, but if she’s in trouble – couldn’t she find someone else to call?’
Dulcie leaned back against her boyfriend with a sigh. He had never met Roland; he couldn’t entirely understand. And he liked Trista, she knew that. Plus, Trista’s boyfriend was his best friend and former room-mate. He was only being protective – and with reason. Not only was Dulcie in the middle of her thesis, she’d only recently recovered from a crisis with one of her students.
‘It’s just that . . .’ Chris let his protest trail off. He didn’t have to finish it. Dulcie knew what he meant. After the turmoil of the previous months, she was still a little off her game; the way those tears had sprung up so fast only proved that she hadn’t yet recovered her normal resilience.
‘I want you to take care of yourself first,’ Chris blurted out.
Dulcie nodded and looked down to see Esmé’s green eyes staring up at her. Maybe the kitten was hoping for treats, but Dulcie suspected something bigger. Something about those eyes – which as the kitten had matured had become the same color as Mr Grey’s – gave her courage. She began reciting the facts.
‘I know, Chris, but Trista is my friend. I have experience with the police. I know the ins and outs of, well, of the local justice system and the law school’s legal aid program. And –’ she swallowed – ‘I’ve also been accused of murder.’
‘Exactly,’ he murmured into her curls, but she had a sneaking feeling he, too, was looking at the kitten.
‘All the more reason for me to help her.’ Dulcie twisted around to peer up at her beau. Now that she had a project to focus on, her eyes were clear and dry. ‘Roland is – well, I can’t do anything for him now. But Tris isn’t a murderer, any more than you or I.’
With that, the kitten landed on the table, knocking over the dipping sauce and putting the conversation to an end.
Dulcie knew what she had to do, even if Chris didn’t want to let it – or her – go. ‘Sweetie, let me walk with you at least.’ He was finishing the clean-up as Dulcie donned her sweater. ‘I’ve got to be in the computer lab by nine, anyway.’
Dulcie glanced at the clock. ‘You just got home, Chris. Take some time for yourself.’ That wasn’t the issue, and she knew it.
Chris sputtered a bit, and then confirmed her suspicion. ‘But Dulce, Trista’s all the way in the Square.’
Dulcie would have given him a look – the look, as he’d named it, the one that ended all discussion – only she had to concentrate on the buttons. Her oatmeal-colored sweater, one of her mother’s more creative efforts, had become a favorite as the New England spring began to thaw the city, its nubbly texture making up for the fact that its buttons didn’t quite match up. When she was done, she looked up at her boyfriend. ‘Chris. I walk it every day. Besides, it’s still light out.’
He had no rebuttal to that, but he looked so miserable that Dulcie went over and kissed him again. ‘It’ll be OK. I promise. Besides –’ she headed toward the door – ‘I’m just a bystander this time. What trouble can I get into?’
As the door closed behind her, Dulcie heard a crash and then Chris’s voice calling the kitten’s name, frustration if not anger tightening his voice. ‘At least it isn’t just me,’ she said to herself as she headed off into the twilight.
Chris’s apartment – hers too for the last few months – lay in the bottom of Cambridgeport, an old neighborhood tucked into a bend of the Charles River. Once heavily industrial, a remnant of the college town’s blue-collar roots, the area was now largely residential, and as Dulcie walked by the former factories-turned-lofts and into an area of single-family houses, it occurred to her that she could almost forget that she was in a city. That, she suspected, was what Chris had been worried about. Quiet as it was, Cambridgeport still had an urban crime rate, and for all she knew, her colleague’s death could have been the result of random street crime. It was hard to be nervous, however, when she could smell someone’s lilacs in the cool, damp air.
As she walked, she tried to make sense of what her friend had told her. Roland Galveston wasn’t someone she knew well, but she certainly knew of him. The young scholar had come from Vanderbilt on a one-year fellowship, and Dulcie, along with everyone else in her department, had gone to hear his fellowship-mandated talk. Roland’s specialty wasn’t hers; he focused on the late Victorians, who had always seemed somewhat overwritten and, if she thought about it, constipated, compared to her own late-eighteenth-century writers. Still, he’d been a colleague – a young man of promise. To think of him gone, as dead – murdered – sent a chill down her spine. She wrapped her sweater a bit tighter and tried to focus, instead, on the problem at hand.
Her area of expertise – the great Gothic novelists of the 1790s – might not get the attention of the Victorians, but it didn’t have the rivalries either. And while Roland’s fellowship had come with some kind of cushy research job, she was out there teaching – spreading the word about her author. Crossing Brookline Street to walk on the sunny side, Dulcie relaxed a little and mulled over Trista’s words. Why wo
uld anyone want to kill Roland – and why would anyone suspect Trista? Galveston was a rising star. Of course, he’d have enemies. But murderous ones? Rivalries existed in the department. They always did, and the recent budget crunch hadn’t made things any easier. But people dealt with them in civilized ways. Back-stabbing was metaphorical at the university, and even at the worst of times it would not amount to more than some ill-founded rumor or perhaps a nasty anonymous note.
Maybe that’s what had gotten Trista in trouble, Dulcie thought as she made her way down the street. Maybe someone had spread a nasty rumor about her friend – not because of anything to do with Roland Galveston, but to hurt Trista. Only, murder was a pretty serious accusation to hurl at someone, wasn’t it?
Under ordinary conditions, Trista would have been laughing at the idea. Somewhat tougher than her curly-haired friend, Trista would have told Dulcie that it sounded ‘like one of your books, Dulce. Only, without a ghost.’
The breeze off the river was cool, even in the fading sun, and Dulcie shivered again, pulling the collar of the oatmeal sweater up around her neck. This wasn’t a story from one of her books. Dulcie not only had some experience with crimes at the university, she also knew a bit more about ghosts than she’d ever confessed to her friend. But this time, she hadn’t been given a clue as to what was really going on. All she knew was that one of her colleagues was dead. And when her friend had called, she hadn’t been laughing.
FOUR
Trista had dried her tears by the time Dulcie arrived, but Dulcie almost wished she hadn’t. The blonde Victorian had let her in and had been pacing since, despite her friend’s repeated requests for her to sit.
‘I can’t, Dulce,’ Trista had said, finally, when Dulcie had gone so far as to take her arm. ‘I’m just too freaked out!’
Dulcie looked at her friend, unsure of what to say. Trista had always been a bit of a contradiction. Most of the English department grad students were rather geeky. Dulcie knew that was one reason she was comfortable there, among bookworms like herself. And although the small department was prey to all the usual gossip and intrigues, it was usually a friendly place. If Dulcie hadn’t been a confirmed cat person, she’d thought, on more than one occasion, that she could easily see them all as dormice – burrowing away into some dark, private corner of a great library.
Trista, though, had stood out from the start. Visually, her short spiky bleached hair and figure-baring outfits were out of place among their rather shaggy and decidedly unfashionable lot. And her piercings – starting with the gold stud in her nose – tended to startle those who only knew her area of expertise. The contrast went beyond the visual: unlike most of their quiet colleagues, Trista had always been brash. A little louder, a little more outspoken than anyone else in the department, Trista scared a good many of their colleagues – the men especially. But Dulcie, who had suffered with her through qualifying exams and horrendous teaching loads, knew a different side of the slight blonde. Trista worked at her tough demeanor. If she was pacing, it was because she was terrified. Because she didn’t dare say so, and because she couldn’t make a run for it.
‘Tris, please. You’re making me dizzy.’ As much as Dulcie sympathized, her friend’s manic movement was interrupting her own thought process. ‘Please, sit here and tell me once again what happened.’
With a sigh that Dulcie hoped let off some of the pressure inside, Trista collapsed on the sofa. That she immediately picked up a pencil and began to twirl it between her fingers was annoying, but Dulcie let that go – for Trista had begun to talk.
‘You know about the Rattigan prize, right?’ The question was rhetorical, although Dulcie nodded anyway. Everyone in the department knew about the Rattigan – one of the few academic honors that still came with a substantial stipend. ‘And you know I’m almost ready to defend, right?’ Another nod. Trista had pulled slightly ahead of her friend in the race to finish her doctoral dissertation. ‘Well, that’s it.’
With that, she clamped her mouth shut, but not before Dulcie saw the telltale tremor in her lips. ‘Oh, Tris!’ Dulcie’s heart went out to her friend, and she moved closer just in time. Trista broke out sobbing once again, and Dulcie patted her back while she tried to piece everything together.
Trista, she knew, had been working all out through the winter, pushing herself past the point of exhaustion. Although her thesis wasn’t anything Dulcie cared about – something about architectural details in the mid-Victorian novel – Dulcie had been impressed by how comprehensive Trista’s research had been. She had gotten permission to read rare manuscripts – first drafts of books that were now long forgotten – and she had backed this primary research up with supporting material, from diaries to contemporary reviews. The Victorians, Dulcie knew this much, saved everything – and Trista had done her best to read it all, as well as keep up with all the modern scholars in her field. It had been an impressive feat, and anyone who looked over at the slight, pierced blonde and thought ‘airhead’ was going to have another thought coming once she published.
Trista started hiccuping, and Dulcie reached for the Kleenex. Publishing. That was key, but Trista seemed to have a clear road ahead of her. Once she defended her thesis, she could revise it – two university presses had already approached her, an almost unheard of bounty. And the Rattigan? Nothing in life was ever certain, but Trista was viewed in the department as the likely winner. In addition to the money – a rarity as the university increasingly shuffled to protect its dwindling endowment – the one-year post-doc that came with it was seen as a stepping stone to a tenure track position. And for Trista, Dulcie knew, it meant one more year in Cambridge, where her boyfriend Jerry was finishing his own graduate studies. It meant, in brief, happiness.
Trista’s hiccups had subsided, and Dulcie suggested tea. As she made her way into Trista’s kitchen, she added Roland Galveston to the equation. The newcomer was smart, sure, but had he been a threat to Trista? Academic positions were few and far between, but Dulcie didn’t think she was being too much of a Pollyanna to assume that there might be jobs for both of them.
As she waited for the water to boil, she forced herself to think rationally. That was, after all, supposed to be her forte. What were Trista’s chances – and how did Roland affect them? Not everyone became a professor, after all; Dulcie had heard of several doctorates and almost-doctorates who dropped out, overwhelmed either by the pressure or the tide of rejections. That didn’t mean the end of the world. Last fall, an all-but-dissertation had made a big deal about going on to business school, and a recent grad had landed a position with a ritzy New York auction house, appraising rare books. Dulcie rummaged through the cabinet, looking for clean mugs. Trista was dedicated. Smart. She was also a mess. Academia hadn’t been kind to her.
Was it the wrong path for her friend? No; she shook her head. Trista was no more likely than Dulcie to give up her dream of a scholar’s life. But would she have felt threatened by Roland Galveston?
If anything, Jerry had seemed more concerned about the newcomer than his girlfriend had, as the dashing Texan had shown what might have been more than a scholarly interest in his pretty colleague. Could that mean that Jerry . . .? As she returned with two mugs of peppermint tea, Dulcie realized she had to gather a little more info.
‘Tris, if you can, would you run through it again?’ She sipped her tea gingerly and still managed to burn her lip. Running her tongue over the tender spot, she thought about what Trista had already told her. Now that her friend had calmed down, she was wondering if she had missed something. ‘I mean, well, did they find – um – something?’
Another hiccup. ‘I’m not sure. There were two of them, both plain clothes. They showed up saying they had questions. Questions concerning “the late Roland Galveston”. And the way they looked at me was enough. Dulcie, I think they didn’t have enough to charge me, but was clear they thought I had done something. One of the cops was asking about the Rattigan, about my research habits.’ She took a swal
low of her own tea, oblivious to the heat. ‘He even asked about Jerry and our plans. Like, were we hurting for money.’
‘That’s crazy. Everyone we know is broke.’ It struck her that Tris still hadn’t answered her question. ‘But, Tris, do they even know—’ Dulcie was suddenly at a loss for words. ‘I mean, did they find a body or something?’
Another shake of the head. ‘I don’t know, Dulcie. I don’t know anything. All I know is the way they referred to him – to Roland – and then the way they questioned me. And they told me not to leave town.’
Dulcie was about to dismiss that as so much dramatic nonsense, when it hit her. Trista had to leave town – leave the state, actually. She was scheduled to give a lecture at Brown University in Providence in a few days. While Tris was hoping for the Rattigan, she couldn’t count on it, and such guest appearances were the academic equivalent of Broadway auditions. If nothing was certain, if Trista wasn’t being charged with anything, surely, the police would make an exception for that.
‘The Kiplinger Lecture?’ She didn’t have to say more.
Trista only shrugged. ‘I didn’t dare ask. I mean, it’s just a job. It’s not worth getting arrested over. Is it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Dulcie tried her tea again. This was getting serious. ‘Have you talked to anyone at the legal clinic? Do you want me to call Suze?’ Dulcie’s former room-mate would be graduating from the law school in a few weeks, but Dulcie knew she’d make time to help a friend.
If the friend wanted help. Trista only shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t, Dulce. I mean, what can they do?’
Dulcie opened her mouth – and then shut it. Trista was upset enough. ‘Why don’t we start at the beginning?’ she asked instead. ‘Tell me exactly what happened when the police came. Tell me what they said.’
Still sniffling, Trista ran through it all again. From the first knock on her door by the plain-clothes detectives to her panicked call. An ordinary Tuesday evening had been utterly destroyed. The whole visit – Dulcie did some quick calculating – had probably only taken about twenty minutes.