A Trap for Fools

by Amanda Cross

  “Let’s just say I don’t like being manipulated and made to play the bright female detective for someone who may have underestimated just a bit how bright I can be when aroused. But never mind all that. Just do what I say. Or, if you’d rather not, I’ll do it. It would be a pleasure. But I rather thought you guys might like to break such a big and important case. Whatever you two say.”

  “And suppose we find he didn’t have an alibi. Suppose he left whatever meeting he was supposed to be at; what then?”

  “Then, gentlemen, I suggest we meet again and I’ll give you my theory. You can give me yours. We’ll decide then how to handle it. OK? Thanks for the toothpick.”

  And Kate, making what she considered a rather well-timed exit from the interview room and praying she wouldn’t fall down the stairs, had to face the fact that she was playing it exactly as she’d seen it on television. For Kate, following the recommendation of Paula Jordan, had caught a rerun of “Cagney and Lacey” the other evening while Reed was at some ceremonial dinner, a fact she intended to admit to no one, ever.

  Kate had to call the provost at home to request an emergency meeting over the weekend. But his wife told Kate he was in the office, and when she called that number she got his secretary, also working late. Administrators were a hardworking lot, one could not deny that. She asked the provost, when his secretary had put him on the phone, not to tell anyone, anyone, about her request for a meeting. She had thought of being more specific, but in the end decided not to be. She said she would wait for the provost to call back and tell her when he could see her. Then she put her, feet up and waited for Reed.

  Reed came home sometime later and when they had fixed their drinks and settled themselves in the living room, Kate told him about it.

  “What was Noble’s motive?” Reed asked.

  “Money. First, money for the university, which would give him power and a lot of credit in the bank of favors, and then, if I’m right—and I haven’t a modicum of proof—money for himself. It was easy enough to siphon off; all you really need is a lot of computer knowledge and falsified records. Who’s going to check on where a vice president in charge of internal affairs’ expenditures went, especially when they eventuate in tidy and very large gifts to the university?”

  “Why would he have asked you to look into this if he was the murderer?”

  “That’s the rub. Hard as it is for you and me, with our high but in no way exaggerated idea of my abilities to believe, he thought I’d muddy the waters and get the police off his back. And it worked, you know, up to a point. When I talked to the detectives yesterday, they hadn’t even checked his alibi for Arabella’s murder. He blacked his face for that one; I tell you. Reed, he’s a sinister type. I’ve always said administrators were, but I didn’t mean it quite so literally.”

  “I haven’t been married lo these many heavenly years without being able to follow your thought processes, or what masquerade as such. No, I’m not putting you down. Every good investigator in the world, criminal or scholarly, has to take a sudden leap—that is, if he or she is good at what they do. Without it, all you’ve got is a fact grubber, who is excellent as the right-hand man or woman if you’re working for a real police force or D.A.’s office. But in the end, it comes together in your mind or not at all. That’s true of detective work, biography, history, and even science, I think. So I’m not sneering, believe me. I just want to know when the whole thing shaped itself in your mind.”

  “When I can’t tell you, except that your suggestion about Adams’s office helped, I can tell you that. It suddenly came to me that we’d overlooked a very interesting thing about Adams: that he was writing about Arab culture and religion. Oh, I know I had seen his book, heaven help me, and I’d learned he had a chair, and even about the scholarly Dr. Jonathan Shapiro. But it didn’t click into place, not until that day in Adams’s office and then, interestingly enough, Mr. Witherspoon called, really because he’s lonely and wanted to have tea, but also because I think it occurred to him as to me that he’d ignored the Middle East aspect of the whole affair. Do you think I could learn to make thin watercress sandwiches, and we could have a proper tea?”

  Reed ignored this. “So you thought, cui bono?”

  “Yes I did. Not the Arabs; they had what they wanted, and must have been reasonable enough to let Shapiro be librarian of their collection, or else someone must have brought quite a bit of pressure. I daresay they’re somewhat accustomed to the fact that, in the United States at least, Jews have been among the most renowned Arab scholars. The Jews, who were setting up their own center of Jewish studies with their own money, clearly had nothing to gain. Adams certainly gained a lot, but someone had to murder him to prevent him giving the show away. What show? And why?

  “When you get a pattern, as you were just saying,” Kate gestured at Reed, “facts fall into place like a chorus line on cue, and they all start kicking their legs in unison. Adams had clearly got a subvention from the university for his sound but hardly exciting book. That’s not usual, not for a senior professor. He did get Shapiro that job. He did act on every occasion as though he could call the shots and wasn’t afraid that anyone was about to challenge him.”

  “You think he knew Noble was siphoning off a good part of the funds?”

  “I do. And I think the pressure had got a bit too much for Noble. If you want to know what else I think, I think Noble had me set up for the murderer. OK, maybe the brain is weakening. But I’m willing to bet, though we can never prove it, that a witness, perhaps Noble himself, was going to appear and say he saw me with Adams, arguing, on that Saturday. I bollixed that up by having so public an alibi, blessings be forever upon the young lawyer who had to put in billable hours even on Thanksgiving weekend. I shall go on humming Arlo Guthrie songs in pure gratitude for the rest of my life. Remind me to buy a record.”

  “Come back to earth, Kate. Why should Noble set you up?”

  “He needed someone. I’m not certain it was me and not Arabella or Humphrey, but I think he figured out that a racial element was the last thing he needed at the moment. Everyone quarreled with dear old Canny Adams, but he and I had locked horns more, and more publicly, than most. All the attention would have been on me and off him. He probably would have gallantly offered the resources of the university in my defense. When I spoiled that plan, he simply slipped into involving me, to attract attention away from him, in another way.”

  “What about Arabella?”

  “We’ll never know. Unless he agrees to tell us in some marvelous plea bargaining, or whatever it is the folks down at the D.A.’s office do; you ought to know.”

  “I’ll ignore that. Probably he knew Arabella saw him on Saturday. But why didn’t she say so right away? Do you think she was planning to tell you?”

  “I’m afraid she may have taken up Adams’s game. It’s odd how courageous and foolish people can be on behalf of others. Perhaps she figured she’d blackmail him into more scholarships for blacks, or something else, a black professorship, perhaps. I shall never forgive him for Arabella, which does her one hell of a lot of good.”

  “I still don’t see the sense in hiring you. But maybe you’re right. What do you think Adams was after this time that Noble decided was just too much?”

  “Let’s hope he tells us. My guess is—”

  At that moment the telephone rang. It was the provost. He would see Kate in his office tomorrow morning, Saturday, at ten. She promised to be there, and went to tell Reed.

  Reed said, “It’s no good saying be careful, I suppose, or asking to go with you.”

  “You can send out a search party when I don’t return.” Kate smiled at him. “Look under all the windows. But the provost’s office is on the ground floor; I checked.” Reed did not seem to find this overwhelmingly funny.

  Chapter Twelve

  If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With six
ty seconds’ worth of distance run,

  Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

  And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

  Nor was Kate overwhelmingly surprised to see Matthew Noble waiting for her as the bus deposited her at the stop nearest the university; not surprised, but disappointed. She had overestimated the judgment of the provost. Kate’s opinion of administrators, never high, sank a notch. She looked around her to see if there was any sign of Butler; she could see none, but she felt confidence nonetheless. She would not mention his presence to Noble—Butler had his job to think of—but it made her defiant manner to Noble easier to bring off.

  She had called Butler the evening before. “You on duty this Saturday, as always?” she had asked.

  “As always,” he had said. “You planning to fall asleep anywhere else I’ve got the key to?”

  “Just planning to confront Adams’s murderer,” Kate said. She told him who it was. “I’ll be taking a bus up to talk to the provost about him in the morning. I just thought, if you could see me, even if I couldn’t see you . . .”

  “Security’s got to be everywhere,” Butler had said. Kate was pleased to have gotten to know Butler, pleased, as academics often are, to have established a relationship with a working man or woman. Kate didn’t delude herself about the permanence of the relationship, or the depth, but she felt good, nonetheless, as when one is welcomed into their home by strangers in a foreign country.

  “On the way to see our second in command, I understand,” Noble said, as though he had been waiting for her to speak first. “Mind if I walk along with you?”

  “Not at all. Provided you don’t suggest that we enter any elevators, or in fact go anywhere above the first floor. I’m becoming acrophobic in my old age; how about you?”

  “I’m not acrophobic. Suppose you never make it to the provost’s office.”

  “Unfortunate for both of us,” Kate said, turning the corner to the street on which the chief administration building stood. “I haven’t left a sealed letter with my lawyer to be opened in the event of my death, but I have told my husband all about it, as well as the two detectives assigned to the case.”

  “They tried to look at my appointment book last night. I told them to get a search warrant.”

  “Unwise. Do you know that in 1980 police in large cities investigated more than a million crimes, but that only about fifteen thousand search warrants were issued? The niceties of the Constitution, especially the fourth amendment, are not always as strictly observed as one might wish.”

  “Did you read that fact or just make it up, a habit I suspect many women of indulging in with regard to statistics.”

  “I read it in a book some friends of mine are writing on the law; that section was on procedure. Would you like the reference?”

  “Let’s stop right here, Professor Fansler. I have a gun, and I’m prepared to use it, if only to shoot you in the leg. Gang wars are spreading, as you may have heard.”

  “Face it, Mr. Noble. Either you kill me, in which case you will certainly have a full-fledged investigation on your hands, or you wound me, and you’ll have me on your hands. I think you better give it up. Unless, of course, you’d like to come with me to the provost’s office, for which I am already five minutes late. And the provost was doing me a favor, seeing me on a Saturday; not very grateful of me to be late. Interesting, isn’t it, how few people are around the campus on a Saturday, even when it’s not a holiday weekend?”

  “You’re brave, for a woman.”

  “Actually, I’m not. In absolute contradiction to Freud, I have simply developed a very acute moral sense. And you offend it.”

  “I know you suspect me; I haven’t admitted anything. You’ve got it all wrong. Professor Fansler.”

  “Come along with me then to see the provost. You can give him your side of the story. But it might be a good idea to have police officers present, if you’ve taken to carrying a gun.”

  “That was just a bluff.”

  “Good,” Kate said. “You’ve no idea how relieved I am to hear it.” And she walked slowly away from him, turning her back, counting on Noble’s cowardice and Butler’s bravery. And, she added to herself, entering the building and knocking on the provost’s door, if that act was even half successful, you really have no idea.

  The provost rose to meet Kate with a mixture of worry and bonhomie.

  “You shouldn’t have told Matthew Noble,” Kate said. “I asked you not to tell anyone. He’s just threatened me with a gun. At least, I hope he hasn’t got a gun, and was just pretending.”

  “I wouldn’t have told him,” the provost said, “but he happened to drop in last evening, so I mentioned it in the course of things. When you said don’t tell anyone, I didn’t think you meant my own staff.”

  “That, unfortunately, is just what I meant,” Kate said. “You’d better sit down, this may take quite a while. And when I’m finished, you’d better put an accountant or an actuary to work pretty fast. That is, if you want to know what happened to a fair chunk of university money.”

  The provost sank into the chair behind his desk. Before Kate began to speak, she had time to observe that probably never, before or since, had she had an administrator’s completely undivided attention. She wished it could have been for a more scholarly purpose.

  When Kate left the provost’s office hours later, she looked somewhat anxiously for Matthew Noble, but he was not to be seen. She decided that if he intended to shoot her, always supposing he had a gun, he would not lack for chances no matter what she did. And if he had some other nefarious plan in mind—well, she intended to stay away from windows in his company. His must have been a nicely developed technique; pressure, perhaps, on the carotid artery or a blow on the side of the head, which would be smashed in the fall, or plastic over the face, and then out the window. Little problem with the light Arabella. But even with Adams, not too difficult, particularly if the blow was unexpected. Kate had taken the opportunity to observe Noble’s build with more attention than she had previously taken. He was large, and in excellent shape. Probably practiced on those machines they had now in health clubs; or perhaps he had a black belt. One never knew these days.

  Kate was walking toward a new apartment building into which, as she knew, Edna Hoskins had recently moved. She had not called ahead. She didn’t know if Edna was home, hadn’t decided until she had left the provost’s office that she was going to call on Edna. It occurred to her that it was not a terribly sensible thing to do, but she felt propelled and did not question the urgency she felt.

  Edna was home, and quite surprised to see Kate.

  “Come in and sit down. What a nice surprise. It never occurred to me you might be around these parts on a Saturday. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Don’t bother,” Kate said. “Didn’t Matthew Noble tell you I might be seen around these parts this Saturday?”

  “No,” Edna said, looking worried. “What do you mean?”

  Kate looked at Edna, who had sat down nervously in an armchair. The apartment was a lovely one, if you liked modem apartments; its large corner living room had windows on all sides, with a pleasing urban view and plenty of sunshine.

  “I’d like to see your apartment,” Kate said. “You said you’d invite me when you had finished fixing it up; it looks quite finished from here.”

  “What is it, Kate?” Edna said.

  Kate got up and began pacing the room. Edna seemed about to rise also, but Kate stopped her. “Don’t get up; just sit and listen. I’m trusting, you see, that you’re unarmed and aren’t going to attack me, but I’d be grateful if you’d stay where you are; just sit back and listen. No, don’t say anything, not yet anyway.”

  Kate crossed in back of the couch and leaned on it, facing Edna, “You’re the part I mind most. Being betrayed or set up by the likes of Noble is
upsetting, even threatening, but he never pretended to be a friend. I have a rather old-fashioned idea of friendship, and since it’s probably the only old-fashioned thing about me, I hate to see it undermined. I’d never really have taken on this job without your eager encouragement, without your clever warnings about the dangers to Humphrey and Arabella. I suppose when you went on about that you didn’t know you’d have to kill her and let Noble try to get Humphrey accused of her murder. Or did you? Tell me, did all this come as a nasty surprise, or was it part of the plan from the beginning?”

  Edna tried to answer, but cried instead. She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief, but the tears were not to be stemmed.

  “Perfect,” Kate said. “I never understood before why it annoyed male professionals so much to see a woman crying. I thought it was just because they were out of touch with their feelings and we wonderful females, used to nurturing and intimacy, were not so inhibited. But it’s a bit much, don’t you think, to cry over two deaths, one of which I shall be mourning until my death, when you had a hand in planning both? Or were you merely overcome with womanly surprise when you found out what Noble was up to? I do want an answer, you know, if you can manage to control your sobs.”

  “I don’t think you do want an answer,” Edna managed to say. “You’re just angry; I don’t blame you.”

  “That makes me feel better, it really does,” Kate said. “Never mind that we were supposed to be friends. That you led me on with a little charade of deception that would make John le Carré’s characters look like folks from a nursery rhyme. We women haven’t had a lot of professional women friends until rather recently, which may be why I resent this even more.

  “I know,” Kate continued, “you suspect I’m angry more for my own pride than the deaths, and you’re probably right. I’m angry as hell in my pride, and angry a lot deeper down about Arabella. Well, believe it or not, I’m going to stop talking in about two minutes, and I’d like to hear why you helped to set me up for this plot, and I guess I’d also like to know why you cared for me so little that I was worth faking a friendship for. I mean, if I’m that hateable, I’d like to know about it.”