by Clea Simon
‘You can’t know – you weren’t there.’
Dulcie’s mouth went dry. This was no longer a game of make-believe. ‘I was, Rollie.’ She swallowed, hoping that would help the nausea. ‘After.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He was staring at the table now, shaking his head slowly. ‘There was no other way. I mean, he was after me, and – and I thought it wouldn’t hurt.’
‘Wouldn’t hurt? You stabbed him! Stabbed him in the belly so that he bled out all over the conference room!’ She was standing now. Shouting. ‘You killed him, and you thought it wouldn’t hurt?’
‘What the—? Dulcie, what are you talking about?’ Rollie was standing now, too. Over behind the counter, the sandwich guy looked mildly interested. ‘Professor Coffin? He’s dead?’
‘You didn’t know?’
He shook his head, his mouth hanging open.
‘You didn’t—?’ She didn’t know how to ask, suddenly. The man who had collapsed in his chair in front of her looked pale and stunned. Ready to faint. The world was turning. Nothing was making sense. She sat down as well, and for a moment, they both just stared, blinking.
‘I didn’t kill him,’ Rollie said, finally, as the color began to return to his face. ‘I didn’t kill anyone, Dulcie. You’ve got to believe me. What happened was horrible, wrong, but not— All I meant was: I gave in. I did what he wanted.’ Rollie had lowered his voice, but he was speaking with such urgency that even through the fog, Dulcie heard every word. ‘He wanted me to do something for him. Something he couldn’t do himself.’ He paused to swallow, then looked up to meet Dulcie’s gaze. ‘He wanted me to fake some documents for him, Dulcie. Professor Coffin was blackmailing me.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
‘He was – what?’ Dulcie knew she’d been in shock earlier. She hadn’t realized it had affected her hearing. ‘Rollie, what are you saying?’
But her forlorn companion had questions of his own. ‘Someone killed Professor Coffin? And you thought – you thought—’ He pushed his chair back with a loud scrape and ran off to the little café’s restroom. Even before the door stopped swinging, the sound of retching began.
Dulcie, on the other hand, found her appetite returning. Her ruse had worked. She’d elicited a confession. Problem was: that confession raised more questions than it answered. Finishing off the bagel and lox, she licked her fingers with satisfaction and tried to digest the new information. Trista had known that ‘Roland Galveston’ was a fake. And Coffin had, too, for some time before Wednesday’s announcement. Now Trista was missing and Coffin was dead – Dulcie quickly moved beyond that thought – and something even stranger was going on. She looked up as her former colleague emerged from the bathroom, his face pale and shiny.
‘Are you OK?’ He might be a fraud. He had certainly done illegal things. Right now, however, Dulcie just saw a sick young man – one whom she did not believe could have committed murder. ‘Do you want some water?’
‘Had some, thanks.’ He sank into his chair. ‘I’m sorry. That was just a shock.’
She watched him, wondering if he was going to say more.
‘But, I mean, I can understand why you – well, why you thought maybe . . . But no. I did what he wanted, but I thought he’d turned me in anyway. I knew he’d blame it all on me, so I split. I packed up my office – everything that mattered to me – and took off. I didn’t think, well . . . you know.’ He looked up. ‘What happened?’
She told him in the barest detail possible, not wanting to relive that awful discovery. Still, she saw him turn alternately red and then pale again at her story, but he stayed in his seat.
‘You found him?’ he asked, when she had finished. ‘This morning?’
‘Yeah.’ Her own voice had grown soft.
‘Wow.’ He grimaced, and Dulcie made a decision. She wasn’t psychic, no matter what Lucy said. But she did trust her instincts. Rollie had gotten caught up in something, something bad, but he wasn’t a bad person.
Before she said anything else, though, she had one more question. ‘Rollie, tell me, why did you call me today? Why did you wait so long?’
‘It’s only been, what, two days?’ He scratched his head.
‘Three.’ She counted backwards. ‘I called you on Tuesday.’
‘You’re right. I’m sorry, I should have called you right away.’
That wasn’t really what she meant. She’d been thinking that if her ersatz classmate had decided to disappear, she wanted to know why he had surfaced. For now, though, she’d let him run with it.
‘I mean, I didn’t want to get you in any more trouble. I figured once I was blown, it would all become clear.’ He was getting some color back. Confessing seemed to be good for him.
Dulcie, however, was only growing more confused. ‘Trouble – me? Wait.’ She latched on to the one thing she knew something about. ‘You knew you were going to be exposed?’
‘Yeah, some guys came around. Acted like cops, but they weren’t. They were way scarier. Maybe FBI; maybe, I don’t know, something worse. I don’t know what was going on with Coffin. I didn’t know if he didn’t like my work, or had just decided I was too dangerous to have around. But he must have told them something. They had a lot of questions, and they were throwing around the wildest accusations.’
Trista. This sounded like her visitors. ‘Did you talk to Trista about this?’
‘Excuse me.’ They both looked up. The counter guy was hovering, holding a wet rag in his hand. ‘You guys done?’ They looked around. The café was empty.
‘Don’t you have bagels to bake or something?’ Dulcie did her best to sound authoritative – and like someone who might actually buy another overpriced sandwich. ‘Cream cheese to churn?’
In response, he pointed to a sign: NO LOITERING, it said. Below it, smaller letters read: Be courteous. Twenty minutes per table, please.
‘Courteous, indeed.’ It was the best she could muster. They both stood, and she reached for Rollie’s arm. ‘Wait, I’ve got more questions.’
He nodded. ‘I could use some air, anyway.’
The sun was hot, reflecting off the Mass Ave sidewalk as if it were a mirror, and Rollie led them down a shady side street. For a moment, Dulcie felt a pang of fear. She’d believed him when he’d said he hadn’t killed Coffin. Still . . . as they continued walking, it was enough to make her hesitate before her next question.
‘Over here.’ He gestured to a weeping willow, and she froze. He didn’t seem to notice and went to sit on the top of a low garden wall. Taking a deep breath, she joined him – keeping a little distance between them. ‘You wanted to know more, right?’ He broke the silence. ‘About, well, what I did?’
She nodded. ‘You said “trouble”. You got me in trouble?’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry.’ He kicked at the dirt. ‘Really. You see, when Coffin first told me he wanted me to fake someone’s ID, he told me to fake Trista’s. I think he knew we were friends – knew we knew each other, anyway. But . . .’ He kicked the dirt again.
Dulcie didn’t need to examine the stones for what followed. ‘But because you were friends, you didn’t want to get her in trouble. Me, on the other hand . . .’
‘I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would come to anything, really. I mean, you’re a straight shooter and . . . and . . .’
‘I wasn’t your friend.’ She let that one stew for a while, before curiosity got the better of her. ‘How’d you do it?’
He shrugged. ‘It was easy. I work in documents, remember?’
‘Yeah, but, the university ID number, all of that?’
‘You know how you leave your bag when you go into the Mildon?’
She nodded.
‘Coffin started having his staff Xerox the IDs. He said it was for extra security. Nobody was supposed to say anything about it.’
‘That’s illegal.’ She heard how silly that sounded. ‘I mean, all of it is, but copying our IDs?’
Rollie shrugged, and Dulcie followed the thought f
urther.
‘But, wait, if he had copies of lots of ID cards, why did he want you to fake Trista’s?’
‘I don’t know.’ Rollie shook his head sadly. ‘Maybe because we were friends. Maybe it was his way of punishing me further. He even had me slip something into her bag . . .’
‘Wait.’ As much as she didn’t want to interrupt Rollie, something was pushing at the edge of Dulcie’s consciousness. ‘If Coffin wanted fake IDs, that meant he was looking for a fall guy – fall person. He set me up, with your help. Professor Coffin must have staged the theft of the Dunster Codex.’
‘The what?’
She looked at him with disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about that, either.’
‘No, what happened?’
She closed her eyes and thought back. Coffin had told them all about the theft at the meeting on Wednesday morning. According to Trista, the cops – or whoever they were – who had questioned her about ‘Roland Galveston’ had come by Tuesday night. Dulcie herself had called Rollie later that night, and he had already disappeared. It was possible.
She filled him in, watching his face as she talked. He looked shocked, but she had to be sure. ‘That wasn’t why you bolted?’
‘No, it was those guys.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘They were scary.’
There was something else, something he wasn’t telling her, but right now Dulcie’s head felt full to bursting. She stood up. ‘I’ve got to think about this, Rollie. I mean, my name was used. I’m now a suspect – they think I stole the most valuable manuscript in the Mildon collection.’
‘Second, after the Wetherly.’
‘To Hades with The Wetherly Ghost.’ She was fed up. ‘I don’t care if Paine read it every night to go to sleep. I don’t even believe that story.’
‘You would if you could read that letter—’
‘And, and—’ She was about to tell Rollie off, only pausing to see if she could find an appropriately biting aphorism. In that moment, she saw she needed him. His testimony could clear her name. Could she march him down to the university police? ‘Look, Rollie. You’ve got to make this right. You’ve got to confess.’
‘I know, Dulcie. I know. I did drop a dime to the police, to put people on the alert about, well, the fake IDs. I mean, I wasn’t specific. I didn’t want Coffin coming after me, but—’
He stopped, staring. His eyes were fixed on a point beyond Dulcie, back at the corner from which they had come. She turned. There stood a young woman. A blonde, waifish, whose the studs caught the light. The student who looked like Trista. She had stopped as well and seemed to be staring back.
The sound made Dulcie turn, but it was already too late. Rollie Gaithersburg – aka Roland Galveston – had taken off. Despite his sickly appearance, he was making good time, already disappearing down the street.
THIRTY-EIGHT
For half a second, Dulcie thought about running after the fleeing Rollie. In that time, he turned a corner and disappeared. She turned back to the blonde.
‘Hey, miss? Excuse me?’ But she was gone, too, running toward the main street with a speed Dulcie was simply not up to matching. ‘What the . . .’
Before she could even try to make sense of the odd behavior of those around her, her phone rang. She started after the blonde, planning on ignoring the insistent tone, when the realization hit her – it had to be Chris. He’d been so worried. She stopped where she was and dug in her bag.
‘Hi, honey! I’m alive and unharmed!’ She meant it to sound jaunty, but the silence that greeted her was momentarily disorienting.
‘Um, Ms Schwartz?’
Dulcie looked at the phone. No, it wasn’t Chris calling.
‘This is Cara, from English Ten?’
How embarrassing. ‘Sorry, Cara, I thought you were someone else. Look, I can’t talk right now.’ She looked up. The Trista lookalike had disappeared as well. Dulcie was a teacher, not a track star.
‘Never mind,’ she said with a sigh, turning her attention back to her caller. ‘So, Cara, how may I help you?’ Class had ended more than two weeks ago, and Dulcie had to struggle to remember the quiet girl who always came in late. ‘Is this about your final grade?’
‘Oh, no. You were more than fair.’
Dulcie felt a wash of relief. She hated disappointing students. Almost as much as she hated arguing with them.
‘I wanted to ask you about summer classes. I think I’m going to enroll, get a head start, and there’s a course on the literature of the afterlife?’
‘The Dante.’ Dulcie nodded. Not her take on the afterlife, but a good course nonetheless. ‘The instructor is wonderful, but it’s a really compact course. Have you read The Inferno before?’
‘Well, yes, I mean, in translation, but . . .’
As they talked, Dulcie started back toward the Square. Despite her frustration with how lunch had ended, as she walked she found herself relaxing. It felt good to have a normal conversation, a teacher-student interaction, particularly since this student was not asking for anything more than advice. Almost, Dulcie regretted not trying for a section in one of the summer literature courses. Teaching one of those would be more casual, and she could use the money.
‘Well, thanks, Ms Schwartz. You’ve been really helpful.’
Dulcie could barely remember what advice she’d given the girl, finally. Something about how rereading, about how it could be useful to get a fresh take on something you thought you knew.
Of course, revisiting an author could also take you the other way. Like, when you read something new by an old favorite and discovered that not only was everything you imagined wrong, but also that the person you’d been focusing on for years was a disappointment.
Dulcie felt her feet becoming heavier, until she finally stopped on the corner of Linnaean, where a bus stop offered a bit of shade from the midday sun. What was she doing, anyway? Her life was a mess. If Rollie wouldn’t come forward to confess, her reputation was shot. Her thesis was in shambles. Her cat liked to bite . . .
She sat down on the bench. Her cat. She’d said that to herself, and she’d meant Esmé. No wonder Mr Grey didn’t visit any more. No wonder he’d chosen Chris over her. Only a year, and she’d already replaced him in her heart. It was all too much. Sitting at a bus stop on a busy Cambridge street, she put her head in her hands and let the tears come.
‘Miss?’ The voice came from too far away. ‘Miss, are you all right?’
She looked up. A tiny figure, barely taller than the seated Dulcie, was leaning over, a concerned look in her wrinkled face. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I asked if you were all right.’ Two dark eyes blinked behind thick glasses, reminding Dulcie of something. The red lipstick, applied like spackle, was distracting however. ‘I thought, perhaps, you might need some help.’
Dulcie smiled, despite herself. The idea of this tiny woman, eighty if she was a day, coming to her rescue brought home the reality of her situation. She stood up and dried her eyes. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’
The dark eyes blinked, their concern unabated.
‘Really, I’ve just had a difficult day. I guess it all got to me.’
‘Well, I can understand that.’ The woman reached for two shopping bags that she must have put down when she approached Dulcie. ‘Mercury is retrograde, and that’s especially hard for Leos like you. Remember –’ she hoisted the bags and turned, addressing Dulcie over her rounded shoulder – ‘Mercury is the messenger. When he goes retrograde, it doesn’t only mean that you may be misunderstood. You may be misunderstanding others as well.’
Before Dulcie could respond, a bus pulled up, brakes squealing. A flood of passengers poured out, and when they cleared, the old woman was nowhere in sight. Dulcie strained to see if she’d gotten on the bus, but it was too packed to reveal one tiny figure. She found herself alone as the bus drove off. Alone, but strangely comforted.
‘Mr Grey, did you send her?’ She looked up at the cloudless sky. ‘Did you?’ A faint br
eeze blew, thrusting a leaf against her ankle before it skittered away. Dulcie watched it with a feeling of awe.
Still, the old woman could have just been a local crazy. There was one way of checking. ‘Hi, Lucy, it’s me.’ It didn’t pay to be grammatically correct with her mother. ‘Just checking in.’
She owed her mother a call, anyway. For all her scoffing, her mother’s dream – er, vision – had actually come true.
‘Dulcie! What a surprise.’
So she wasn’t too psychic, then. Or too worried. Dulcie chose to ignore that thought. ‘Yup, I wanted to tell you. Your vision? All that blood? It came true.’ Hearing her own words, Dulcie hastened to add. ‘But I’m fine. Everything’s all right.’ That part wasn’t necessarily factual – not for Professor Coffin, anyway – but it should serve to reassure a worried parent.
‘I know that, dear.’ Assuming that the parent had been worried. ‘As soon as I’d had my yerba maté and thought some more about your reading, I saw that I’d misinterpreted everything.’
‘Oh?’ Dulcie was in a mood to be amused.
‘Why, yes. I should have recognized the blood from the start. Especially when I turned over the ace of wands. It was the blood of childbirth. Of new discovery.’
Dulcie opened her mouth. No words came out.
Lucy didn’t seem to notice. ‘You’re on the edge of a great breakthrough, my dear. That’s why you were covered in it in my dream.’
‘I’m on the edge of something, anyway.’ Dulcie decided not to tell her mother about the more realistic manifestation of her vision. Why upset her?
‘Of course, birth can be painful.’ Her mother wasn’t even listening. ‘I remember when I had you, despite the blessed smoke your father kept blowing . . .’
‘Mom,’ Dulcie interrupted. Her mood was fragile enough. ‘Is Mercury retrograde?’
‘Why, let me check.’
Dulcie was a little surprised that her mother didn’t know offhand, but she waited.
‘Why, yes, dear. It has been since Tuesday.’ Her mother sounded unaccountably pleased by the discovery. ‘No wonder I’ve been fighting with Moonglow. You’re so smart. You must have sensed it.’