Death in Lovers' Lane

by Carolyn G. Hart

  Finally he looked up.

  It took me a moment to realize that the shine in his eyes was the glitter of tears.

  “Funny you asked if I had a kid.” Roughly he swabbed the back of his hands against his eyes.

  I stepped a little nearer.

  “My boy. Cameron Junior.” Rodgers looked up at me defiantly, as if I had challenged him. “He’s a good kid. He’s a hell of a kid.”

  I didn’t reply.

  There was no sound in that big, quiet, shadowy room.

  Rodgers slumped in the seat, misery in every line of his stocky body. “And he’s gay.” His face twisted. “And I know what’s going to happen to him, I know how he’ll be treated. Sometimes I think it’s God’s way of getting even, making me pay for—Leonard.”

  “What happened to Leonard, Mr. Rodgers?”

  “Oh, Christ, if we’d only thought…If we’d only thought!” He pushed up from the chair, walked toward me.

  He stopped a few inches away, folded his arms tightly over his chest. “You don’t know brutal”—each word was as slow and heavy as a dirt clod striking a coffin lid—“until you’ve lived in a fraternity house. Any guy who doesn’t cut it, everybody makes his life miserable, makes it hell.” His voice was as harsh as the clatter of metal in a salvage yard. “And all the guys, they have to fit in. Everybody’s macho, you know, making girls, scoring, getting drunk, raising hell. Leonard was already considered kind of a drip. He didn’t drink very much, and he never dated. But nobody thought he was gay.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “A bunch of us, we decided to spend the weekend in Saint Louis. Just for the hell of it. Do some bars. Pick up some girls. We ended up at a motel on the outskirts of town.”

  And now I knew why there was a weekend unaccounted for in the life of Darryl Nugent. “You saw Dean Nugent and Leonard.”

  “How’d you know?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. He didn’t care. It didn’t really matter. “Yeah, yeah, we saw them. And we thought about breaking in on them. We were so fucking mad about it. How could Leonard do this to us, make us all look bad? But we were kind of scared of the dean. So we planned it. On Sunday night, when Leonard got back, a bunch of us would go to his room, we’d find out what the hell was going on. So we did. Five of us.”

  He stared past me, his mouth trembling. “Like a pack of dogs. Like a mob. And once—oh God, I’ll never forget it—when the guys were yelling at him, Lenny looked at me, we’d been roommates once, but I didn’t want the guys to think I could be like that, so I just yelled at him too, like he was some kind of scum. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. The hurt. We took all his stuff and threw it out on the lawn and then we threw him out. The last time I saw him, it was about midnight and he was trying to cram everything in his car and we were yelling and swearing at him. And…” His voice shook. “Lenny…was crying.” Rodgers buried his face in his hands.

  I reached out and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  But it was no help.

  Nothing would ever help.

  Dusk was falling when I got back to the campus. And so was the temperature. It was going to get down below freezing tonight.

  I crossed the street from the J-School to Old Central.

  The wooden blinds were closed in the president’s office, but light filtered through the cracks. No light shone from the southwest corner of the second floor, the office of the dean of students. More had changed in twenty years than just the occupant. Now some schools and departments were headed by women. Not many. Middle-aged white men still rule academia. But the present dean of students, Charlotte Abney, was both a woman and black.

  I looked at President Tucker’s office again. It was one floor below Charlotte’s office and what had been Darryl Nugent’s office. Then I circled around the building.

  The bell tower rose into the darkening sky on the back side of Old Central. Lights glowed on all four sides.

  An eagle spread stone wings in the niche beneath the north window. No gargoyle.

  I didn’t remember reading whether the gargoyle had been smashed in its fall. I don’t suppose it was surprising the gargoyle had never been replaced.

  I completed my circle, then walked up the broad shallow stairs, pushed in one of the heavy oak doors. The building featured a central open marble lobby. Wide corridors led east and west. Ornate, heavily carved stairs led to the second and third floors. A skylight with green glass roofed over the third floor. On a sunny day, the lobby glowed as richly, as serenely green as shallow water in the Bahamas. At dusk, it was as murky as the dark depths of a pond.

  I had never been up in the bell tower. My steps echoed loudly in the hushed cathedral-like silence.

  I wondered if anyone else was in the building. Most office workers are well ready to leave their posts at five.

  It was this time of day when Dean Nugent was last seen in his office. Nugent must have been in an agony of distress—and apprehension. I doubted very much that Leonard had called, told him of the awful events at the fraternity house.

  Nugent and his youthful lover had parted in Saint Louis on Sunday. Leonard’s body was found Monday morning.

  The dean must have been stunned, bewildered. And frightened. What had happened to Leonard? And why?

  I reached the third floor and the door to the bell-tower stairs.

  I gripped the handle. The door opened.

  I was a little surprised at this easy access. Had there been discussion, wrangling by the Board of Governors? Views always diverge. Ask anyone who’s ever tried to run any endeavor.

  I could imagine the positions, sharply and angrily espoused:

  The bell tower must be closed to prevent future accidents.

  Closing the tower would be an admission of University culpability in Cartwright’s death.

  The bell tower was a campus landmark that alumni and students should be able to visit at will.

  A single tragic accident shouldn’t prevent the Thorndyke family from enjoying a treasured retreat.

  I started up gritty sandstone steps. Wall sconces provided a soft golden glow as I climbed.

  I found the answer to my question when I reached the square tower level.

  Iron bars stretched from the top to the bottom of the openings. No one ever again could fall—or jump—from these windows.

  I walked to the north window. The cold, damp air smelled fresh after the close, musty stairwell.

  I pressed close to the bars. A seventy-foot drop. When the window was barred only halfway, it would have been an extremely dangerous maneuver to climb over the bars and drape the green plastic lei over the gargoyle. The effort would require a student with no fear of heights and a gymnastic athleticism.

  I stepped back from the window. I knew now, of course, that Leonard Cartwright certainly had not been involved in a prank that went terribly wrong.

  No, Leonard had driven away from his fraternity house in tears and despair, his car jammed with his possessions, with no place to go, no one to take him in.

  I didn’t know what his family situation had been.

  Obviously, the idea of driving home, telling whoever waited there what had happened—and why—had been unendurable.

  I would never know where his odyssey led that night. I only knew that hours passed and toward dawn he finally came this way. Or had he come straight to the bell tower, spent his final hours pacing this high, bleak square, or huddled miserably against a cold wall?

  But, sooner or later, he’d come to this building where he’d worked, where he’d been happy, and walked up these stairs, passing the dean’s office, continuing his climb to the bell tower. He must have been exhausted, defeated, hopeless.

  There is no agony in life that is not at its worst in the hours before dawn. At a few minutes before six in the morning, he’d jumped. His body had not lain there long because blood still oozed from his crushed skull when Emmett Wolf arrived.

  Leonard jumped, but he had left someth
ing behind in this gray, square tower. Something that David Tucker found—and took.

  I looked around the flagstoned floor.

  A note? A last good-bye to his parents? Or to Dean Nugent?

  What else would Tucker have snatched up, taken to keep?

  It had been 1976, so I understood why Emmett Wolf thought of drugs. But Wolf didn’t know what had happened to Leonard that night.

  Yes, Leonard could have left a note—

  That’s when I heard footsteps coming up the stone stairs.

  The shadow came first, wavering, huge and distorted, in the golden glow of the wall sconce.

  David Tucker was a big man.

  He looked enormous as we faced one another.

  Tucker’s rounded head with its sparse tufts of gray hair seemed perched on massive shoulders, his throat hidden by a white silk muffler. He wore a navy cashmere coat. He stood with his gloved hands loose at his sides.

  He stood between me and the stairs.

  But the windows were barred. There could be no more “accidents” from the tower.

  He took a step toward me.

  I had trouble pulling my eyes away from his gloved hands. He was too big and too strong for me to elude. Should he move quickly, should those powerful hands seize my throat, I wouldn’t have

  time to get to my keys and the canister of Mace in my

  shoulder bag. My hand dropped to my purse and its catch. “What brings you up here, Mrs. Collins?” His tone

  was casual. His eyes were not.

  “I might ask the same of you, Dr. Tucker.” Yes, my voice was thin and tight. Without looking down, I unlatched the flap of my bag, eased it up and slipped my hand inside.

  “I saw you go up the stairs, Mrs. Collins. It seemed an odd time to visit the bell tower, when it’s dark and there is no one about.”

  There was nothing threatening in the words or tone, but the measured emphasis started my heart pounding. Yes, it was dark and quiet and no one would hear me if I cried out. Tucker’s mouth stretched in a sudden smirk of satis

  faction. He knew I was afraid. My fear amused him. That made me mad, and suddenly I wasn’t scared. “What did you take from the tower the morning Le

  onard Cartwright died, Dr. Tucker?” His eyes flared in shock. I added swiftly, “He left a letter, didn’t he?” “Leonard Cartwright died in a very sad accident.” “It was no accident.” “You can’t prove that.” It was as close to an admis

  sion as he would ever make. “Don’t count on it.” “In any event”—now his eyes watched me in

  tently—“what purpose would be served by making this kind of charge now? It would do nothing but bring unhappiness to Leonard’s family.”

  “And to the family of Dean Nugent.”

  He expelled a heavy breath of air.

  “You see, Dr. Tucker, someone always knows something. That’s what Maggie Winslow told me. And she was right.”

  He rocked back on his heels, jammed his hands in his coat pockets. “I suppose you’re pleased with what you’re doing, Mrs. Collins. Obviously”—he paused, then picked his words carefully—“if there is any truth to the gossip you seem to have dredged up, it would appear there was a reason for Dean Nugent to disappear. I have no personal knowledge of this, of course.”

  “Oh, of course not, Dr. Tucker.”

  I yanked my hand out of my purse. I held the Mace canister with my thumb on the button. I raised it until it was quite visible to him.

  He stared at the canister, inclined his massive head in a tiny nod. His eyes met mine. Byzantine eyes. For an instant, a chill smile touched his lips. “It’s been a pleasure talking with you, Mrs. Collins.”

  He turned away.

  I raised my voice. “What did Leonard’s suicide note say, Dr. Tucker?”

  He didn’t pause or look back.

  “Did he tell about his relationship with Darryl Nu-gent?”

  My only answer was the heavy thud of his footsteps, descending the stone stairs.

  I waited until the sound was gone.

  When I walked down the steps, I still held the Mace canister.

  Damn Tucker. What did he know? That he knew much more I didn’t doubt.

  As I crossed the darkened campus, listening uneasily for footsteps, I was aware that I didn’t know where to look next. I might be sure of what happened to Leonard Cartwright, but I still had no idea where Darryl Nugent went that March evening so many years ago.

  twelve

  have no Tuesday classes, but I got to my office shortly before eight. I had plenty on my mind. And I was coldly angry. David Tucker hadn’t quite made me look a fool, but he had intimidated me. When he’d turned away from me last night in the bell tower, it was as arrogant a dismissal as I’d ever received.

  I wasn’t through with David Tucker.

  I put my three folders, folders that were now getting dog-eared, on my desk; the Darryl Nugent file on top, the Murdoch file second, the Rosen-Voss file third.

  At precisely 8 A.M., I picked up my phone and punched numbers I was getting to know.

  “Office of the President.”

  Baker, that was his secretary’s name, Bernice Baker. “Bernice, this is Henrietta Collins in the Journalism School. As you will recall, I visited with Dr. Tucker last week. I just wanted to double-check. What time was it on Wednesday that he saw my student, Maggie Winslow?”

  “Oh, just a moment, Mrs. Collins. Let me look at his appointments…” A pause, then her smooth, muted, efficient voice continued, “At four o’clock,

  183

  Mrs. Collins. Is that what you needed?” “Yes, Bernice, thanks.” I nodded in satisfaction as I hung up. It wasn’t

  enough to order handcuffs, it wasn’t enough to interest Lieutenant Urschel, but it definitely proved Maggie had talked to Tucker.

  I flipped to a clean sheet in my legal pad and wrote:

  Cartwright—suicide. Note? Rug missing from Nugent’s office? How could Nugent have left the building without being

  seen? If he got out, where did he go? What does Tucker know???

  I took the legal pad with me and hurried to The Clarion morgue. I lugged the heavy volume of bound newspapers for March 1976 to a table at the back of the room.

  Leonard Cartwright’s accident was the lead head on Tuesday morning, March 16:

  SPRINGFIELD SENIOR DIES IN TOWER FALL

  But I’d already read these stories. My objective now was photos.

  A grainy two-column photo at the bottom of page I showed a stone gargoyle on the grass. The caption read:

  Student Prank Turns Deadly—Old Central’s famous gargoyle lies on the lawn, a mute reminder of Leonard Cartwright’s fatal effort early Monday to dislodge the statue, long the center of rivalry between engineering and architecture students.

  In the photograph, the gargoyle appeared to be undamaged. I had assumed, when I saw the stone eagle in that niche, that the gargoyle had been smashed in its fall. Apparently not. Perhaps the University (And who would that be? Tucker? The Board of Governors?) had thought it inappropriate to return the gargoyle to its place even though no future accidents could occur with the window completely barred.

  I wondered idly what had happened to the gargoyle.

  There was no mention of the disappearance of Dean Nugent in the Tuesday-morning paper. The desk obviously had decided the story wasn’t yet certain enough by the Monday-evening deadline.

  Beginning Wednesday, however, the focus shifted to the missing dean. Within the next week, I found photos of Old Central with an arrow pointing to Dean Nugent’s office, a front view of the main steps into Old Central, Nugent in his cap and gown in the previous year’s commencement procession, Nugent and his family at an Arts and Sciences picnic, and even a picture of the door to his office.

  But that was as close as I got to what I wanted.

  I was ready to shelve the volume when I decided to scan it quickly one more time. That’s when I found a small story on page 19 three days after Leonard’s de
ath and the dean’s disappearance:

  GARGOYLE TAKEN; RETURN REQUESTED

  University maintenance chief H. L. Thomas has issued a plea for the return of the Old Central gargoyle, which apparently was taken from the basement of Old Central.

  Thomas explained that the gargoyle was placed in the basement of Old Central after it fell from the side of the tower in the Monday-morning accident which claimed the life of Thorndyke senior Leonard Cartwright.

  It was discovered Wednesday that the statue had been removed from the basement. The granite statue weighs approximately forty-five pounds.

  The University’s Media Information Bureau declined to comment.

  It took half an hour to skim six months’ issues of The Clarion. The missing gargoyle was never mentioned again.

  I added the missing gargoyle to my collection of little mysteries involving the missing dean. But no matter what had happened in that deadly sequence of days twenty years ago, I could count on it that the dean hadn’t taken the forty-five-pound gargoyle with him when he vanished from Old Central. He hadn’t even bothered to take his own suit coat.

  College students have a taste for the macabre. The gargoyle could have ended up in a fraternity rec room. I shook my head. No. Word would definitely have gotten out. I shrugged. I doubted that now, two decades later,

  I’d solve the Mystery of the Missing Gargoyle.

  And it didn’t matter as much as another puzzle: the Mystery of Maude’s Missing Rug.

  Was Nugent’s secretary right and was an Oriental rug absent from its place in front of the fireplace on Tuesday morning?

  Or was President Tucker correct and the rug was among the dean’s personal possessions that were removed later in the week by his family?

  I’d hoped for a photograph of the interior of the dean’s office. It would have been a natural with a caption: “Dean Last Seen Here.” Obviously, The Clarion either had bowed to the dictates of taste, always doubtful, or to pressure from the University.

  But there was another possibility.

  All evidence, reports, or testimony which have been part of a court proceeding are, as a matter of law, part of the public record and, as such, are available for any reporter to see.