She explained that there'd been yet another threat by the killer. "Bill thought it was best if we went to visit my sister."
He hesitated and then whispered, "Two weeks?"
She shrugged. "At least. Or until they catch this crazy man. Or find out he's left town."
Breck's downcast boyish face and his tone were identical to those of her first husband when she'd told him she had to spend a week with her mother, who'd fallen and broken her hip. It had been the first time they'd be apart and the young man's face had revealed major heartbreak. Breck's eyes now mirrored the poor man's forlorn expression. This troubled and thrilled her.
They heard a voice outside.
In the backyard, Sarah Corde paced, speaking into her tape recorder like a Hollywood producer dictating memos. Tom, the familiar deputy guard, leaned against the fence rail, his head swiveling slowly like a scout's in an old-time Western as he scanned the horizon for marauders.
Breck and Diane stood in the dining room and watched Sarah silently. They stood one foot away from each other. Diane felt him touch her hair, the motion of his hand very gentle, as if he were afraid he might hurt her. She leaned her head against his shoulder then stepped away, both disappointed and grateful to hear him begin to speak suddenly about Sarah. "She's coming along remarkably well. What a mind! The stories she comes up with are incredible."
"I've given Dr. Parker four tapes already. Her secretary's transcribing the last of them."
He brushed his salt-and-pepper hair off his forehead in a boyish gesture.
"She's fortunate," Breck said slowly, his eyes playing over Diane's face. "She's got a superior auditory processing system. That's how I'm approaching her lessons, and it's working very well."
Diane had recognized something about him. If he had a choice between a ten-dollar word and a twenty-five-cent word, he picked the big one. "Fortunate" instead of "lucky." "Auditory processing," not "hearing." "Onerous." "Ensconce." With anyone else this habit would put her off; in Breck, she found it increased his charm.
No. His "charisma."
He continued to speak about Sarah. This was unusual and she sensed he was propelled by nervousness. In most of these after-session get-togethers--usually in the kitchen, occasionally in the woods--they spoke not of phonemes or the Visual Aural Digit Span Test or Sarah's book but of more personal things. The schools he had taught at, his former girlfriends, her first husband, Diane's life as the daughter of a riverboat worker, vacations they hoped to take. Where they wanted to be in ten years, and five. And one.
Yet the nature of these minutes they spent together was ambiguous. Though they talked intimately Breck had not kissed her; though they flirted he seemed bashful. Their contact was plentiful but often seemed accidental: fingers brushing when passing coffee cups, shoulders easing against each other when they stood side by side. She once shamelessly seated her breasts against his arm as she leaned forward to look at an article on learning disabilities. She thought he had returned the pressure but she couldn't be sure. In any event he neither backed away nor prolonged the moment.
She didn't know whether to expect a proposition or not.
A proposition she would, of course, refuse.
She believed she would refuse. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to leave. She now touched his arm and he swayed close to her and Diane sensed again the boundary between them that was continually being redefined. They were like teenagers.
Today she believed this barrier was clear and solid. Jamie was only thirty feet away, in his room, and although Bill was at work it wasn't unheard of for him to drop by at this time of day, stay for dinner then return to the office. She and Breck looked at each other for a long moment and she was vastly relieved when he looked at his watch and said, "Must depart, madame...." (She was also pleased that he said this frowning with genuine disappointment.) He gathered his notebooks.
That was when Diane kissed him.
Like a sly college girl, she glanced over her shoulder to make sure Sarah was out of sight then pushed scholarly Breck into the corner of the room and kissed him fast, open-mouthed, then stepped away.
Ohmygod ohmygod....
Panic bubbling inside her. Terrified--not that one of her children had seen, not that word would get back to her husband. No, a more chilling fear: what if he hadn't wanted to?
Breck blinked once in surprise. He put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her quickly to him. As he kissed her hard, his forearm was leveraged against her breast and his hand made one slow sweep along the front of her blouse then wound around to the small of her back. They embraced for a long moment then Diane willed herself to break away. They stood staring at each other, two feet apart, in surprise and embarrassed defiance.
He whispered, "Can I see you before you go? I have to."
"I don't know. The deputy'll be watching us like a hawk."
"I have to see you. Let's get away somewhere."
She thought. "I just don't see how."
"Look, I'd like to tape Sarah taking some tests. If you're not going to be back for a couple weeks I should do it before you leave. Maybe you could come with us to the school. We could have a picnic."
"I don't know."
"I want you," he whispered.
Diane stepped away, rubbed her hands together. She stared out the window at her daughter prancing about in the grass.
"Did I say something amiss?" Breck asked.
Oh, my. All these highfalutin' words, all these snappy things he does for Sarah, all the places he's been, and what is at the heart of it all--him being a man and me being a woman.
Do I want this or not? I just can't tell. For the life of me I can't tell....
But she said nothing. She kissed him once more, quickly, then led him by the hand to the door. They walked out to his car and she said to him, "It'll be a couple weeks at the most." In a whisper intended to convey grave significance she added, "I think it's for the best anyway, don't you?"
"No," he said firmly. "I don't."
The big problem with the My-T-Fine Tap was the dirty plate-glass windows. They let in bleak, northern, cool light, which turned the afternoon patrons all pasty and sick.
Also, sitting at a table you could look up under the bar and see the mosaic of twenty years' worth of gum wads.
Corde ordered an Amstel, so tired he wasn't even thinking it was a weekday, and Kresge said, "I just want to get this right. It's okay to drink light beer on duty?"
Corde changed the order to an iced tea.
They sat on stools upholstered in jukebox red vinyl, squinting against the glare. People used to tell Sammie to fill up the window with plants (they died) or blinds (they cost too much). He'd say it's an ugly room who gives a damn anyway. Which it was and nobody did so they all stopped complaining.
Corde asked, "What are we doing here?"
"Waiting for her," Kresge said, and pointed to the woman in her late fifties, slender, short, with foamy gray hair. She was walking through the door on the arm of an older man, balding and also thin.
"Hey, Wynton," the woman called. "How's Dark?"
"Tina, Earl, come on over here for a second."
The couple walked over and Kresge said to Corde, "They eat here 'most every day. She and Darla're bridge buddies." Kresge introduced Corde to Earl and Tina Hess. Earl was a lanky retiree of about sixty. His protruding ears and hook nose were bright with a May sunburn.
"What's that uniform you got yourself, Wynton? The school got you all duded up?"
"Got a new job."
"Doing what?"
"I'm a deputy."
"No kidding," Earl said. "Like Kojak."
"He's still got himself some hair left," Corde said. "But not a lot."
"We come for the tuna plates," Tina said. "You want to eat with us?"
Corde shook his head and turned the session over to Kresge, who said, "We've found ourselves a picture and we were thinking maybe you could tell us where it is, Tina." He turned to Corde. "Tina worked for Allied Offi
ce Supplies."
"Sales Rep of the Year fifteen years running. My last year I lost to D. K. Potts but only because he got himself the Instant Copy Franchises up in Higgins which are owned by the Japanese and I won't comment on that."
Kresge continued, "She's traveled all over the state. Knows every city, bar none."
"Three years ago I put a hundred thirty-seven thousand miles on my Ford. You ever put that much mileage on a car before she rusted. I should bet not."
"No, ma'am," Corde admitted.
"She didn't tell you about the transmissions," Earl said earnestly.
Kresge said, "We've got to find the building that's in the picture."
"That's a sort of tall order," Tina said. "Do I have to testify or anything?"
"No."
"I was hoping I would. You watch Matlock?"
"'Fraid I don't," Corde said. Kresge set the photograph on the table.
"Why's it wrapped up?" Earl asked, poking the plastic bag.
"Evidence," Kresge said.
"Why's it burned?"
"Was in a fireplace," Corde said. "You know where that is?"
"Not much to go on." Tina squinted and studied it. She held it toward her husband and he shrugged. Tina said, "No idea. Why you so interested?"
"It'd help us in an investigation."
She handed it back. "Sorry."
Kresge, taking the failure personally, said, "It was a long shot."
Corde kept the disappointment off his face. "Thanks anyway."
"Were you part of that layoff at Auden?" Earl asked Kresge.
"Layoff?"
"They let near to three hundred people go. Professors and staff."
Kresge whistled. "Three hundred? No. I left before that happened."
"After that professor killed that girl," Earl said, "a lot of people took their kids out. It was in the Register, didn't you read it?"
Tina said, "I wouldn't send my kids to any school that hired professors like that. I can't blame them." The couple wandered off to a booth.
As Kresge and Corde stood and dropped bills onto the bar Tina called from across the room, "Hey, Wynton, got an idea: Why don't you ask somebody in the Fitzberg C of C where that is."
"Who?"
"The Chamber of Commerce."
"That's Fitzberg?" Corde asked, pointing at Kresge's breast pocket where the burnt photo now resided.
"Sure, didn't you know?"
Kresge laughed. "Well, no. You said you didn't recognize it."
"I thought you meant did I know what street it was. Of course it's Fitzberg. What do you think that building is in the background? Fireman's Indemnity Plaza. Where else you think they have a building like that?"
Earl said, "Fitzberg's got a Marshall Field. Best store in the Midwest."
Dean Catherine Larraby walked in a slow circle around the perimeter of an oriental rug that had been acquired in 1887 by the then chancellor of the school, whose first visitor to tread upon the new carpet happened to be William Dean Howells. The august writer was lecturing at Auden on the contemporary novel. Dean Larraby mentioned this fact as she paced, her eyes on the frayed carpet.
Her visitor this morning wasn't as well known as Howells, at least not among literary circles, though the dean treated him more reverentially than if he had been the ghost of the eminent literatus himself.
She was speaking of Howells, of Dickens, of the school's tradition of academic excellence, of the number of Harvard graduates on the Auden faculty and vice versa, when Fred Barrett, a thick-faced, slick-haired businessman from Chicago, stopped her cold by asking, "What's with these murders?"
Dean Larraby, heiress to great administrators and greater scholars, overseer of this bastion of Midwest letters, smelled defeat. She stopped pacing, sighed and returned to her chair.
Here he was, another wealthy businessman, able to loan enough money for her to conceal from the Department of Education auditors the bum loans she and Randy Sayles had made, here he sat, a godsend, and yet she would now have to confess that yes a professor had killed a student, and yes that student's lesbian lover killed herself.
And that the professor had then murdered a colleague.
And that yes enrollment had fallen fourteen percent because of the whole damn mess.
He would then gather his London Fog coat and place his jaunty hat on his head and walk away with his five million dollars. And her job and the viability of Auden University would depart with him. The DOE auditors were due in three days. Barrett had been her last chance.
She sighed and said, "I'm afraid we have had some tragedies on the campus this spring. It's unfortunate. But you see why we need the money so desperately. Once we get this all behind us--"
Barrett asked, "This Professor Sayles is the one who called me. I come all the way from Cicero down here and I find he's dead." He had an accent that she couldn't place.
"I'm sorry if you wasted your time, Mr. Barrett."
He shook his head. "Not a waste yet. Let's talk about lending some money."
Hope glinted. She considered tactics for a moment then said, "You're familiar with Auden University?"
"Not really. It's like a college?"
The dean thought he might have been joking but she didn't dare risk a smile. She looked around the room for a moment, intuitively grasped that there was no irony in his question and readjusted her sales pitch. "I think it will be helpful to put the loan in context. Auden is one of the nation's premiere institutions of higher learning--"
"I'm sure it's a great place. How much do you want?"
Don't mince words in Chicago, do you? The dean sought refuge in the high-rise of papers on her desk. "I know it sounds like a lot. But I can't tell you how important it is to the school that we get this money."
Barrett cocked an eyebrow, which emphatically repeated his question.
Dean Larraby said softly, "Five million."
He shook his head.
"I know it's a great deal," she pleaded. The nakedness of her voice shocked her and she spoke more slowly. "But the school is in desperate straits. You have to understand that. Without--"
"It's too little. Gotta be ten million minimum or we don't even talk to you."
Dean Larraby believed she misheard the man. She ran through various permutations of his words. "You don't loan anything under ten million?"
"Not worth our while."
"But--"
"Not worth our while."
This was a predicament she had not counted on. "You couldn't make an exception?"
"I could maybe talk my associates down to eight."
She wondered if she was being naive when she asked, "Well, if we were to do business with you, would it be possible to borrow the eight and repay some of it early?"
"Sure. You can borrow it Monday and repay it Tuesday. A lot of my clients do that."
"They do?" Dean Larraby could find no logical reason for this practice and dropped it from her mind. She regained her stride. She lifted the school's financial statements from her desk and handed one to Barrett. He took it and flipped through the document as if it were printed in Chinese. He handed it back. He shook his head. "That does me no good. Just tell me, you want the money or no?"
"Don't you want to know about the fiscal strength of the school? Our debt ratio? Our overhead?" Dean Larraby, a liberal arts workhorse from the U of K, was proud of this financial knowledge she'd learned, this useful knowledge.
"No," Barrett said, "I want to know how much money you want."
"It sounds like you're just asking me to name a figure."
Barrett lifted both eyebrows this time.
She stalled. "Well, what's the interest rate?"
"Prime plus two."
"You should know there's a collateral problem...."
"We're not interested in collateral. We're interested in you paying us back when you're supposed to."
"We'll do that. We're trimming expenses and we've already fired three hundred and twelve employees. We've hired a
financial advisor and he's cutting--"
Barrett looked at his watch. "How much?"
The dean inhaled nervously. "Eight million."
"Done." Barrett smiled.
"That's it? You'd write a check to us just like that?"
Barrett snorted a laugh. "Not a check of course."
"Eight million dollars in cash?" she whispered. He nodded. "Isn't that ... risky?"
"It's riskier with checks, believe me."
"I guess we could put it directly in the bank."
"No," Barrett said cautiously, "that would be inappropriate." The big word stumbling under his urban drawl. When the dean looked at him quizzically he added, "What most of my clients do is keep it in their own safe and pay it out in small amounts. If you have to bank it make sure it's in different numbered accounts of less than ten thousand each."
"That's a rather strange requirement."
"Yeah, Washington comes up with some funny rules."
The dean's education was expanding exponentially. "Your business is headquartered in Chicago?"
Barrett said, "Among other places."
"And what line are you? Is it banking?"
"A number of lines."
Dean Larraby was nodding. "I don't suppose I should ask where this money comes from."
"Ask whatever you want."
"Where?--"
"Various business enterprises."
The dean was nodding. "This isn't illegal, is it?"
"Illegal?" Barrett smiled like an insulted maitre d'. "Well, let's look at the broad scenario. I'm lending you money at a fair, negotiated rate based on prime. You pay it back, principal and interest." His eyes swept up to a portrait of a sideburned former dean. "That doesn't sound illegal to me."
"I suppose not," she said. The dean looked out on the quadrangle then back to the William Dean Howells rug. She wondered if she should ask directly if she had just committed her school to a major money laundering scheme but decided it might be insulting or incriminating and the risk of either was enough to put the kibosh on the question.
She looked out the windows and saw a lilac bush bending in a spring breeze. This reminded her of Whitman's poem about Lincoln's death, and free-associating she recalled that the last time she cried was in college on the wet afternoon of November 22, 1963. She now felt her eyes fill with tears though this time they came from relief and, perhaps, joy.
She said, "I guess we have a deal."
Barrett kept a noncommittal, what-a-nice-office-you-got smile on his face. He said, "You go up to ten million, I'll shave the points to one and three-fourths."
The Lesson of Her Death Page 38