by Clea Simon
‘You believe me – that I didn’t have anything to do with him. Don’t you?’ Trista turned back and grabbed Dulcie’s hands, her blue eyes fierce.
Dulcie resisted the temptation to shake her friend off. ‘Trista, I meant to say.’ Her friend was acting so strange, Dulcie was a little afraid to confront her. ‘What you told me? The cops never mentioned murder. They never even actually said he was dead.’ She paused. ‘Right?’
‘Look, it’s more complicated than you know.’ Trista eyes could have shot sparks. ‘You’ve got to believe me.’
‘I believe you wouldn’t kill somebody.’ Dulcie was at a loss. ‘But maybe your imagination—’
‘Look who’s talking!’ Trista’s voice had become a hiss.
‘No, it’s not that I don’t believe you.’ Dulcie back-pedalled furiously, trying to figure out what had happened. ‘It’s just that you said murder. They didn’t. And there hasn’t been any kind of announcement – no student alerts or anything. Maybe . . . maybe he’s just a suspect in all of this?’
‘I think . . . well, I can’t explain here.’ Trista glanced around. The old clapboard had a cozy porch out back, and Dulcie was turning toward the door when her friend stopped her. Their colleagues were all still talking; nobody was paying attention to them. That didn’t seem to make Trista any more relaxed. ‘Not . . . in this building. Not today. Look, Dulcie.’ Trista bit her lip, nodding. ‘I can’t explain it all right now. I don’t have – I’ve got to talk to some people. Figure something out. Can you just – just don’t do anything, OK? And don’t say anything – to anyone.’
‘Uh, sure.’ Dulcie looked down. So did Trista. And as if she’d only just noticed that she had her friend’s hands in a death grip, she loosened it. ‘But Tris?’
‘What?’ Trista’s hands tightened again, just a little, on Dulcie’s.
‘I’ve already talked to Suze – and to Chris, of course. I mean, I told them what you said—’
A little squeeze. Dulcie fought the urge to pull away. ‘Can’t be helped.’ Trista turned one way, then the other, checking out their classmates. ‘Look, just, nobody else. I’ll explain. I promise.’ Another squeeze. ‘Please?’
‘OK.’ Dulcie wasn’t sure about any of this. But Trista was a friend. And whatever else was going on, Dulcie was pretty sure she was not a murderer.
‘Thank you, Dulce. It means the world to me.’ Bending slightly, she let go of Dulcie’s hands and gave her friend a quick hug. ‘Look, I’ve got a make a phone call – and I can’t do it here. Want to meet at the Brew House in fifteen? Double latte on me? I’ll explain everything. I promise.’
Dulcie responded with a weak, but well-intentioned smile. On top of everything, she still hadn’t had any coffee. At least she’d get to sit down with Trista and tell her what Suze had said. She’d have to find some way to soft-pedal Suze’s theory – that her friend was overreacting due to thesis stress – but she’d find a way. And so it was with a somewhat lighter heart that she watched her friend maneuver around the edge of the mulling crowd and slip out the front. And, with a sigh designed to breathe all the envy out of her body, she went in search of Martin Thorpe.
She found her adviser in the upstairs hallway, apparently on his way to the tiny office where, for all intents and purposes, he lived. Trying not to stare too jealously at the large mug of steaming coffee in his hand, she asked for a word. But instead of inviting her in, as was his custom, her balding adviser looked up with a start. ‘Miss Schwartz?’
‘Yes, is everything OK?’
He seemed as nervous as his students. Instead of ushering her in, he stood there, blinking.
Dulcie figured this was as much of a cue as she would get. ‘I was curious, Mr Thorpe, if you could tell me. I didn’t see Roland Galveston here today. Is he— Is everything OK with him?’
He blinked again, and Dulcie imagined a terrified rodent. Some kind of hairless mouse, perhaps.
‘Roland Galveston?’ she tried again, raising her voice slightly to make sure he heard. ‘Texan? New guy?’
‘What? Oh, of course.’ Another blink, and Dulcie turned to look at the wall behind her. Whatever the balding adviser was staring at, Dulcie couldn’t see it.
‘Who wants to know?’ The booming voice of Dr Coffin broke in, startling Dulcie, who spun back around. Thorpe actually jumped, his coffee sloshing over the brim of his mug, as the man himself appeared behind him. Coffin hadn’t left at all, Dulcie realized. He must have commandeered Thorpe’s private office the better to confer with the senior tutor – or to spy on the students. Now he stood in the doorway, behind Thorpe, who had turned to stare up at him, and glowered like a thundercloud. ‘Why are you looking for him?’
‘I’m Dulcie Schwartz.’ She gathered what was left of her shattered courage. He might look like some evil giant, but she had right on her side – and a minor mystery to solve. ‘Sir. And I’m not looking for him, I just . . .’ This was the part she hadn’t figured out yet. What to say that wouldn’t betray Trista’s confidence or get either of them in trouble. ‘I would like to speak with him.’
Coffin made a sound somewhere between a snort and a grunt. In happier circumstances, Dulcie would have seen him as a walrus. Here, he was just scary.
‘Excuse me?’ She called on her last ounce of nerve. A fair lady could be brave. Had to be, sometimes.
‘Well,’ he grumbled, ‘I assume it will soon be common know-ledge, what with your Facebooks and your Twitters. You may as well hear the truth.’
He paused. Dulcie suspected it was for effect, but it was almost more than she could stand. Trista had been right; Suze wrong. Roland had been murdered.
‘Is he . . . gone?’ Her voice squeaked, and she felt particularly mouse-like.
‘I’ll say.’ That grumble again. The hall walls began to spin. ‘And about time too.’
Dulcie grabbed at the frame of the door behind her for support. None of this was making sense.
‘At any rate, once we find him, this young man – I cannot call him a gentleman – will be called to account for his misdeeds.’ Coffin gestured, raising his hand to the sky – or to the dying light-bulb that flickered above them. ‘He has been a dark stain on the university’s history. The sooner erased, the better.’
‘So, he’s not – dead.’ Her voice was so low, she didn’t even know if he heard her. At any rate, he paid her no heed and kept talking, addressing the hallway as if it were the pulpit of Memorial Church.
‘To start with, that name? Roland Galveston? If anybody in admissions had been half awake, she or he would have recognized an obvious pseudonym.’
Now that the blood was returning, Dulcie felt a flush of irrational disappointment. She’d loved Roland Galveston’s name. It had been perfect for the cheery Texan.
‘He had not been graduated from Vanderbilt.’ Coffin was still talking, listing sins each greater than its predecessor. ‘We do not even know if he matriculated! Foolish of him, really, to have chosen a relatively respectable institution. So easy to check. And we have every reason to believe he is involved with the disappearance of the Dunster Codex.’
Dulcie stepped back – and into the wall. The way Coffin was looking at her, she was sure he suspected her personally of something.
‘Roland? A thief?’ Was this what Trista had been about to tell her?
‘We suspect he had an accomplice.’ Coffin’s eyes were as grey as his hair and as steely.
‘Here? In the department?’ She couldn’t help it. She’d been thinking of Trista anyway, and now – no. Not Trista.
‘Yes.’ Coffin was staring at her most intently. ‘Sound familiar?’
With a start, she saw what he was implying. ‘Me? No way!’ If she could have backed up more, she would have. But Coffin had either grilled her enough – or assumed that she was sufficiently terrified that she would confess without further prompting. The latter wasn’t that far off, Dulcie realized, and it was with great relief that she saw him lean back on his heels and then, with a
nother grumble, turn back into Thorpe’s office. Only then did she realize that her thesis adviser had already disappeared. It was not, she thought, a bad idea.
‘Coffee.’ She stumbled down the stairs and into the front room. The crowd had begun to thin a bit, but one look at her face and they parted to let her at a blessedly full pot.
She was pouring, already savoring the rich aroma, when the crowd closed back up around her. She heard Lloyd, her long-time office-mate and friend. Ethan, who, although clueless, was also guileless. She took a sip and relaxed. When she opened her eyes, Nancy was smiling at her. All would be right again with the world.
And then she heard a voice, female, that she didn’t recognize. Coming in a lull in the communal hubbub, it sounded as clear as an emergency broadcasting announcement.
‘What I want to know,’ the voice said, ‘is who would want to steal the Dunster Codex? From what I hear, that horrible old thing is haunted.’
ELEVEN
Dulcie was out on the street before she knew it, the concerned voices of her friends fading behind her. She knew she had blanched, had sputtered into the coffee, but she’d had no time to explain. Air had suddenly seemed more important than caffeine, and in the spring warmth, the crowded coffee room had become unbearably close.
Halfway down the block, she stopped to think. Haunted? Was the Dunster Codex haunted? Something had been tickling the edge of her mind since that horrible meeting, but she didn’t think that was it. She tried closing her eyes, but when she did all she saw was Dr Coffin’s face, stern and looming. Maybe it was that moustache. ‘But I always found grey so comforting. And whiskers!’ She opened her eyes to see a squirrel looking on suspiciously. If Mr Grey were here, his tail would be lashing in excitement, she knew. Esmé, on the other hand, would probably see the fuzzy rodent and then turn to bite Dulcie’s foot. Displaced aggression. Dulcie understood the theory, but that knowledge didn’t help her miss her gentle old cat any less.
‘Mr Grey, can you help me with this?’ Even though Esmé had shown signs of being able to communicate, Dulcie never thought of asking her for advice or aid. In life, Mr Grey had been a quiet cat, mature and contemplative. Since that awful day, nearly a year and a half before, his occasional presence had only become more so – and if the spectral cat’s advice was often cryptic, well, Dulcie was willing to overlook that. Or, to be honest, blame her own lack of comprehension. Esmé, though, would never be anything but a kitten to her. Especially, she thought ruefully, if Chris kept encouraging her worst habits.
This bright morning must not have been cut out for ghosts, however, because her plea remained unanswered. But she had other, more ordinary, sources of information. And so she took another sip from her travel mug for courage, hiked her bag higher over her shoulder, and headed off to meet Trista.
The Brew House was everything a student hang-out should be: cheap, accessible, and filled with friendly faces. Trista probably hadn’t counted on the latter when she’d suggested it, Dulcie decided, and so she waited outside for her friend. She’d quickly finished the departmental coffee, but she’d take Trista up on her offer. The Brew House double latte was more of a milk drink, anyway, she reasoned.
Ten minutes later, she was wondering if her friend had had second thoughts. Juggling her empty mug, she fished her phone from her bag. No, no messages. No missed calls, either. She started to type in Trista’s number – there had to be an explanation – when a pack of undergrads barreled into her.
‘Sorry!’ one of them had the grace to yell over his shoulder, as the five – or was it six? – hurtled down the sidewalk. Shouldn’t they be gone already? Dulcie wondered. Each year, they seemed to linger longer and longer into what Dulcie thought of as her private time: post-exams and pre-summer session. She turned to look into the coffee house. It was still crowded. Well, exam period lasted till the end of the week. Maybe some of the hunched-over bodies in there were studying.
‘Goddess be!’ Dulcie could have smacked herself. Almost did when she heard Lucy’s favorite exclamation come out of her mouth. Of course, she’d been waiting out here, when Trista must have been inside, buried in the mob. She waved through the window at the slim blonde.
‘Trista!’ Her friend hadn’t seen her and was staring into space. ‘It’s Dulcie!’ At that, the woman turned around, and Dulcie saw that, despite the resemblance, it wasn’t her colleague. ‘Sorry, I thought you were someone else.’
The young woman – almost a girl, really – kept staring. Dulcie shrugged. She hadn’t been that rude. Then she grabbed her bag and pushed by Dulcie, out the door. Dulcie watched as she hurried, head down, toward the corner. Exams were hard on everyone. She remembered them well. But Dulcie was willing to bet that it wasn’t academic worries that made that girl run so fast. That pale face had been splotchy, the nose red. That girl had been blinking away tears.
‘I wonder—’ But Dulcie shook off the thought. She had her own friends to worry about. Walking into the coffee house, she waited while her eyes adjusted to the lower light. Five dark heads were crowded around one small table. A paper slipped to the floor, and two of those heads bumped as they bent to retrieve it. Study group. Three other tables held laptops, but none of the heads bent over the keyboards – bent to avoid eye contact with someone who might dare to want to share their table – were blonde. Dulcie made her way to the back. Two more groups had grabbed all the seats, and none of their members looked familiar. On the remaining tables, three more singles hunched over papers or laptops – except for one man, whose face was planted in a book, clearly asleep.
Dulcie turned. She’d been wrong. Trista wasn’t back here. Unless – no, the bathroom key still hung from the side of the counter. And when Dulcie stepped back out into the sunlight, she saw no sign of her friend there either.
This was getting ridiculous. ‘Trista?’ Her call had gone direct to voicemail. Maybe that phone call Trista had mentioned was simply lasting longer than she had expected. ‘I’m at the Brew House? We were going to meet?’ She looked around. No sign of her friend on the street. ‘Call me.’
She clicked her phone shut. Trista had a poor sense of time. Dulcie should have known that ‘fifteen minutes’ really meant more like a half hour. At least.
Well, there wasn’t anything she could do here. And truth was, with the adrenalin surge from the meeting, she didn’t need any more caffeine. Trista would call her back. For now, she’d head to the library.
It was reflex, she knew that, heading to the library whenever things were going wrong. It wasn’t a bad reflex for a scholar; Dulcie had made some fantastic academic discoveries while fleeing the pressures of everyday life. The majestic granite building before her was as much a sanctuary as a workplace, she acknowledged as she climbed the stone steps: a hiding place where she felt safe. In truth, with its more than five miles of books stored primarily in its underground stacks, the giant library had more than a little in common with a rabbit’s warren. And she, Dulcie, was beginning to feel a little like a timid bunny.
For a moment she flashed on Mr Grey, and how he’d pounce on a rucked-up blanket, his feline instincts urging him to flush out any prey that was hiding in its tunnels. Maybe that’s what Esmé was trying to do – flush Dulcie out of her routine and into trying new things. The thought of her young cat warmed her; the little animal wasn’t trying to be disruptive. It was her nature to be young, playful, and fierce.
‘We can’t fight who we are,’ Dulcie murmured to herself as she dug out her ID. Flashing it at the guard, she felt her spirits lift. A different setting might help her to finally get through those hated essays. She might even take a break from that one collection and see what else she could read. All she had to find were one or maybe two more good literary examples. Never mind the beautiful spring weather, what Dulcie needed to get the sap flowing was likely right here in front of her.
‘Hey, darling.’ In true Mona fashion, the librarian’s greeting rang out through the entrance hall, almost deserted on this balmy day.
‘How’s that handsome man of yours?’
Dulcie felt herself blushing as she rushed over. Mona was a dear, but her voice was as large as the rest of her, and the two guards were making no effort to hide their broad grins.
‘Chris is OK,’ she said, more to Mona’s multicolored nails than to the librarian’s broad mocha-colored face. ‘We’re getting used to the new situation.’
‘Getting used to it?’ Dulcie looked up and saw concern dampen the grin. ‘Girl, you should be on your honeymoon with him.’
‘No, it’s great. Really.’ Dulcie cast about for a less sensitive subject. ‘How’re things by you?’
‘Well, you probably heard about the robbery, right?’ Even leaning close, Mona’s voice boomed.
Dulcie nodded. So much for getting away from her problems here.
‘They’ve had us going over the records. Who had access; who used that access. Royal pain.’
Dulcie had to smile. Of course, to Mona, it was a bureaucratic hassle. ‘I’m sure they’ll figure it out.’ A thought hit her. ‘Is it possible that it wasn’t stolen? I mean, if they’re checking records, maybe it was just . . . mislaid?’
Mona rolled her eyes. ‘With the security they have on that thing? No, I think it was spirited away.’
‘You mean, a professional job?’ Thieves had attacked the library in the past. While books might not have quite the cachet of art, there were collectors out there willing to put up money to obtain rarities.
But Mona didn’t even give her time to follow up on that though. ‘Pros? No, I mean magic, Dulcie. If you heard some of the stories I’ve heard . . . . Believe me, no collector would want that nasty old thing. It’s cursed.’
TWELVE
Dulcie let her smile fade as she descended into the stacks. It was a relief, really, not to have to pretend any more. Mona meant well, but all this talk about curses and hauntings just gave Dulcie the creeps.