. . . students who drove limousines.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. I hadn’t needed to go to Newark. All I’d had to do was grab that slacker Michael Columbo and ask him what was going on at T&G. I remember having seen him in a uniform and knew that he was working to make extra money. I also remembered the little T&G embroidered on his shirt pocket. Why hadn’t it occurred to me earlier? Oh, right. The black mold in my bathroom in the dorm was eating away at my brain cells. And I hardly ever slept because of the lumpy mattress on the twin bed. As a result of the mold and the exhaustion, I could barely remember my own name.
When I saw that Max was safely inside the building, I maneuvered my way through the downtown traffic, light at this hour, and headed back toward St. Thomas, a ride that would take about twenty minutes if the West Side Highway wasn’t too backed up.
Fortunately, the traffic gods were on my side and I sailed up the highway, getting back to school in record time. I attempted to angle into my usual parking spot, noticing too late that an orange cone had been placed where my car would normally go, obviously the work of the security department. I ran over the cone, dragging it underneath the car and wedging it between the undercarriage and the blacktop. Hearing the cone drag along the ground, and smelling the burned rubber when I got out of the car only increased my agitation. I got into a crouch and assessed the damage. There wasn’t any smoke, and nothing seemed to be smoldering, so I made the executive decision to leave the cone there until the morning when I could properly deal with the situation. It was dark, cold, and starting to drizzle. My best friend had seriously offended my sensibilities, yet had turned the situation around to make it seem like it was my fault. My other best friend, a man of the cloth, was a stupid, lying, Roman-collar-wearing dumbbell. I had many problems. The orange cone would have to wait.
I stood up, Michael Columbo’s handsome face at eye level when I straightened out, scaring the dickens out of me. I grabbed my chest. “Oh, God!”
He looked as startled as I did and he was the one who approached me. I could see where he was headed: the black Lincoln Town Car that I had pulled in beside and hadn’t noticed. “Sorry.” He was in a T&G uniform: black jacket, black pants, a uniform hat in his hands.
I grabbed his arm. “C’mere. I want to talk to you.” I frogmarched him in through the side door of the dorm, him protesting the entire time that he had to go to work. I checked my watch; it was eleven o’clock. “Why are you going to work so late?” I asked.
“I have an airport run.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “They’re late.”
“Kinda late to be going out, don’t you think?” I didn’t mean to sound judgmental but seeing the look on his face, obviously that’s the way it came out.
He looked at me, his baby face out of sync with his muscular man body. “It’s my job,” he said. “I have to work. Otherwise, I can’t go here.”
I put my hand on his arm. “I didn’t mean—”
He looked down at his feet. “I know. I would rather be in bed right now but this job pays well.”
“Did you get the job through Wayne?” I asked.
He nodded.
“When did you start?”
“Right before spring break.” He twisted his hat between his hands. “I drive businessmen to the airport and they tip big.” His eyes got wide. “Really big. If I didn’t have this job, I wouldn’t be able to stay in school,” he reiterated. “My parents lost most of my college fund when the market tanked. I had to get a job.”
“Where do you drive them? Kennedy? LaGuardia?”
“Kennedy or Newark. Most of the people I drive are flying internationally. Mostly Mexico and Latin America.”
“Do you only do runs for Mexican and Latin American trips?”
He shrugged. “Mostly. Sometimes my fares go to Europe. But those guys going south of the border make up most of their clientele.”
“Those guys?”
“Yeah, the businessmen that I drive. That’s most of the business. At least that’s what Wayne told me.”
That was odd. Why did the business cater to men going back and forth to Mexico and Latin America? I wished I had had this information before I had sent Max/Martha/Margaret on a wild-goose chase to find out information in Newark.
“Do you do anything else?”
“Sometimes I drop packages off at T&G.”
“Packages?”
“Yeah. I’ll meet someone at the airport, they’ll give me a package, and I’ll drop it off at T&G.”
I looked at him, the whole thing sounding kind of fishy. “Package? What kind of packages?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, getting indignant. “I just go where I’m told.”
“And where is it that you’re told to go?” I asked, getting equally indignant.
“I usually meet someone somewhere, give them the package, and drive off. It takes about ten seconds and I get fifty bucks.”
I stared at him intently, trying to discern whether he was as dumb as he sounded, completely naïve, or a slick operator. When he looked at me, his eyes suddenly wide, I had my answer. He was a little dumb, a lot naïve, and had been used by someone at T&G.
His shaking voice conveyed his panic. “Oh, wait . . . ,” he said, grabbing his head. He crouched down, putting everything together and not liking the way the puzzle was beginning to look. “Oh, no . . . I didn’t think . . . you don’t think . . .”
I knelt next to him and put my arms around his shoulders.
“I needed the money,” he said again, his voice sounding small and like a boy’s rather than a man’s. I heard a hitch in his throat as he stifled a sob. “I really needed the money. I didn’t think.”
There was nothing for me to say as he worked the whole thing out in his mind. He dropped his hat on the floor. “Should I go to work?” he asked.
I thought for a moment. “Call in sick,” I recommended. “I’ll call the detectives working the case. They’ll want to talk to you.”
His face went white. “I can’t talk to them. They’ll arrest me.”
“No they won’t,” I assured him, helping him stand up. “I’ll tell them what we talked about and that you didn’t know what was going on.” I gave him a quick hug. “Don’t worry.” Something occurred to me while I was looking at him. “You didn’t put one of those packages in Wayne’s room right before spring break, did you?”
I thought I was going to have to revive him when the reality of what he had done hit him. “Yes,” he croaked.
“Who gave you the package and told you to put it in Wayne’s room?”
“Mr. Grigoriadis. He said I would be doing him a big favor.” He grabbed his head again. “I used my master key because I thought I was doing the right thing. Mr. G. told me that Wayne needed what was in the package.” He closed his eyes. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“It’ll be okay,” I reassured him. “Did Mr. Grigoriadis give you all of your jobs?”
He nodded.
“Did you talk to anyone else at T&G about your schedule?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Oh, God, I am in such big trouble. How could I be so stupid?” He started talking to himself, as if I weren’t there. “I wondered why the money was good but I didn’t think about it. I should have known better.”
I gave him another hug but could tell that he was in for a sleepless night, particularly if the cops decided to question him tonight rather than in the morning. I watched him walk down the hall toward the stairs, his shoulders slumped, still muttering to himself about how he should have known that what he was doing wasn’t on the up-and-up.
He was a good kid and he had been taken advantage of by Amanda’s father. I thought of the two times Costas had dropped by and wondered why he had come to see Wayne. Hadn’t he known that planting the drugs in Wayne’s room—for whatever reason—would either scare him off or get him in trouble with the school? Or had he stopped by to find out if Wayne was truly in the weeds, away from sc
hool and, more importantly, Amanda? I decided that I would work this all out with Crawford, who was my first phone call when I got back to my room. But, first, I had to do my job, which was to find out if all was well in Siena Hall.
Bart Johannsen and his lacrosse stick were on duty as usual, but the dorm was quiet as it normally was at this hour. Bart was dead asleep, his head on the desk, one hand still holding the lacrosse stick upright. Neat trick. My limbs usually go slack when I fall asleep but I don’t have a possession as valuable as the mighty lacrosse stick. I ignored him for the time being, choosing instead to make sure the front door was locked before I called it a night. I went to the outer door and saw that someone had wedged a piece of wood under the bottom of the door, keeping it slightly ajar and making sure that anyone who entered wouldn’t have to ring the bell and wake up our fair prince sitting desk. I pulled the wood out, disgusted by the laziness of the staff, and walked back to the desk, knocking the wood lightly on Bart’s head.
“Hello?” I kept tapping until he woke up.
He finally jolted awake, the lacrosse stick clattering to the floor. He bent down and picked it up, the safety of the stick being his main concern. “What?” he asked, a little annoyed that he had been awakened.
I held out the piece of wood. “Did you know that someone propped open the door?” I asked. I dropped it on the desk for effect.
He rubbed his eyes. “No.”
“Well, you would have if you had stayed awake.”
He twirled the lacrosse stick. “Hey, get off my back. It’s late. I’m exhausted.”
“Something tells me you wouldn’t have trouble staying awake if you were on your way to a party,” I said. Gee—when had I turned into Sister Mary? I heard my voice and how I was talking to him and immediately toned it down. “Why don’t you take off?” I asked. “You do look a little tired.”
He looked at me like I was going to turn back into Mr. Hyde, but when he saw the concern on my face and my smile, he started collecting his books and his lacrosse gear.
“Thanks,” he said before heading up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
I flipped through the logbook to see if there were any wayward visitors whom I needed to see off when eleven hit. No Mary Catherine, which made sense because Michael was working. None of our other usual suspects—girls or guys dating someone in the building. But there was one interesting entry: Costas Grigoriadis. He had signed in at nine-thirty and hadn’t signed out. Had he come in and wanted to take Amanda to dinner, he wouldn’t have needed to sign in, he would have just waited in the lobby until she had come down. So, that meant he was somewhere in the building. Was he in her room? I called Amanda’s room and got her roommate, Shari.
“Hi, Shari, it’s Dr. Bergeron.”
She yawned. “Oh, hi, Dr. Bergeron.”
“I hope I didn’t wake you.”
Clearly, I had, but she was kind enough to pretend otherwise. “No, that’s okay,” she said.
“Is Amanda there?”
She yawned again. Got it. You were sleeping, I thought. “No, she’s out,” she said. “She’s sitting desk at Emanuelle tonight. One of the RAs needed coverage.”
So where was Costas? That didn’t make any sense. Shari yawned a third time, reminding me that I hadn’t responded. “Thanks, Shari. Go back to bed.”
Bart was long gone but I tried to call his room as well. There was no answer, leading me to believe that either Bart had immediately conked out upon arriving at his room or he had stopped somewhere along the way. I was too tired to try to find him. Instead, I went about locking up the building for the night. I looked into the TV room and saw that it was empty, despite the fact that the television was on. I wandered down the other end of the hall, away from my room, and checked the various rooms—the old dining room, another common room, and the room with an old piano in the corner—and saw that they were all empty.
I headed back to my room, and as I listened to my shoes make a clicking sound on the marble, I realized that Trixie wasn’t making a sound as she usually did when she heard me approaching. I put my hand on the knob, curious about the silence that greeted me. I had my keys in hand but it turned out I didn’t need them; the door was unlocked. I couldn’t remember if I had left it like that or not. When I opened the door to my room and entered, seeing Costas sitting in a chair in my parlor room, I only had one question.
“What did you do with my dog?”
When he didn’t respond, I repeated my question. “What did you do with my dog?”
Costas beckoned me to come into the parlor, but I stood in the doorway to the dorm, looking around to see if Trixie was anywhere in the suite. A quick look told me she wasn’t in the bathroom, and if she was in the parlor, she was drugged because there was no way she would have allowed Costas to come into the room without setting up a howl. A howl that even the comatose Bart Johannsen would have heard in the midst of his snore-filled slumber.
“I’m not coming in, and I’m not leaving until you tell me where the dog is,” I said, my panic increasing with the realization that she wasn’t in the room.
“The dog’s fine,” he said. “Come in. I want to have a little chat with you.” He remained in the chair. Had I had warmer feelings toward Costas, I would have warned him of the black mold that was probably eating away at the decades-old Styrofoam cushions inside the chintz upholstery.
“I can hear you just fine from here,” I said. “Talk.”
“There seems to have been some misunderstanding,” he said.
The strains of “Cracklin’ Rosie” filled my head and I attempted to stay with the conversation. After getting up as early as I had, and after what I had done all day, including the trip to Newark, I was exhausted.
When I didn’t answer, he continued. “You see, my daughter loves Brandon. She’s going to marry him in August, despite your attempts to break the two of them up.”
“She’s not sure if she loves him.” And I knew a thing or two about being married to a spouse who doesn’t love you. I was something of an authority on the subject.
“She does. She loves him very much. They’ve been together for four years and she’s going to be very happy. She’s going to have a very happy, very secure life,” he said. “Just like her mother.”
“She was in love with Wayne until recently. She’s a young girl and she’s very confused.” I leaned against the doorjamb. “Did you come all the way here to admonish me about listening to your daughter talk about love? Because that’s all that’s happened.”
He shook his head sadly. “If only that were the truth. You sent that woman to see us tonight. You want to know something. I’m just not sure what it is.”
“I want to know why you are forcing Amanda to marry Brandon. I want to know why two thugs from Newark, where your company is located, beat her up. I want to know why the bulk of your business comes from men going back and forth to Mexico and Latin America. And I want to know why,” I said, going out on a limb, “I found a brick of heroin in Wayne’s room when the strongest thing he’s ever had in his possession is pot.” I left out the fact that they were multiple bags of pot, but that didn’t seem to be a necessary detail. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Does that answer your question?”
“Those are just questions, not answers.” Costas leaned forward in the chair, his weight making it tip toward me slightly. I resisted the urge to tell him to be careful; if he fell flat on his face and busted his nose, it would give me a chance to hightail it out of the building and over to the security booth at the entrance to campus, not that the guys in there would be much help. Not when there were doughnuts to be consumed. Costas stood. “Let’s take a ride.”
I ran out into the hallway and headed to the side door. But Costas was faster than his stocky, Neil Diamond body would suggest and he was on me before I had a chance to get the door open, the old knob its usual cranky self, barely budging when I tried to turn it. He grabbed my shoulder and dragged me back into my suite, throwing me onto
the bed and slamming the door behind us.
I sat up straight and watched him as he paced the room. “How did you get in here?” I asked, gesturing around the room.
He smiled. “Easy. After that kid at the desk fell asleep, I went into his knapsack and took the master keys.”
I would have to have a word with Bart when this was over. If I was still alive. “What do you want?”
“I want you to stop interfering in my family’s life.”
“That would have taken a phone call, Costas. This is a little extreme,” I said, chuckling, but not feeling amused. I moved to the edge of the bed so that if I had to, I would be able to get off the sagging mattress quickly. Sitting in the middle of the bed would keep me entombed on the depressed, springless mattress.
He pointed at my face. “You’re very nosy.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And you’ve stuck your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
“Like where? Like where you had a young kid who needed money for school take drug dealers back and forth to the airport? Or how you had him act as an unwitting drug mule for you?” My voice was shaking, more from anger than fear. “Or like where you planted drugs in Wayne’s room to scare him off campus and away from your daughter? Is that where I’ve been sticking my nose?”
His face changed a few times, and it looked like he was deciding whether to go with indignant, denial, or straight to confession. But if he confessed, he was going to paint himself into a corner, because then he would have to make sure that I went away. Forever. I didn’t entertain that possibility as I pushed him on the details. “So, did you start with Wayne and then ask him for a recommendation for a patsy? Michael Columbo is a nice kid. You could have ruined his life.”
“Better his life ruined than my business go bankrupt,” he said, although that was no excuse for what he had done.
“You have Nicholas. You don’t need anything else,” I said, assuming that Nicholas had infused T&G with the cash it needed to stay afloat.
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