AHMM, October 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  In time, we digested the facts and became distracted by other novelties from a world of atrocity. Still, a lingering nervousness afflicted us. Students avoided the strip of wood near the fatal ledge, and staff kept an eye toward dark corners of the parking garages. I, myself, became quite allergic to any mention of the case. As a general rule, I detest gossip and, like my colleagues, I was thoroughly sick of the campus copper, a rather pudgy, slow moving person, who'd been assigned to do our interviews.

  Steve was different, of course. A friend for one thing, a person of understanding. I feel I can trust Steve, though maybe not when he is at work. I must remember that.

  "I need your help,” he said one day. We'd taken our overpriced cappuccinos and were walking across one of the wide campus lawns.

  "Whatever I can."

  "I'm not getting any sense of our victim. No boyfriend—or girlfriend. Family in Minnesota and apparently not close. No religious affiliation, no clubs I can find, no close friends."

  "She was part time here, and I think worked at a couple of other colleges as well. That maybe didn't leave a lot of time for social life."

  "Right. Creative writing I and II on campus and a poetry seminar at the community college."

  "Extensive contacts there,” I suggested, “but it could have been anyone, right?” This is my hope; one wouldn't like to think anything else.

  Steve didn't answer. The investigators were playing everything cautiously, and there had been almost nothing in the paper beyond the fact of her death and expressions of shock and sorrow from the appropriate university officials. There was to be a scholarship fund, a memorial service. I'd volunteered to help with both.

  "Someone she knew then,” I suggested and he nodded.

  "No psychotic serial killer?” I hoped I sounded relieved. There had been speculation all round campus, overblown, but not entirely foolish after recent events.

  "Why we need your help,” he said.

  "I didn't know her well.” I realized that must sound defensive. How easily one looks suspicious in these circumstances.

  "I didn't think you did. That's our problem. Her big leisure occupation was writing poetry and stories. Not bad either, as far as I can see, but a solitary activity. We've reached a dead end with her contacts."

  "What about writers groups?” I do like to be helpful. “They're very popular with contemporary poets and writers."

  Steve perked up. “Tell me more."

  "Well, the creative writers would be a help there—they'll know of groups even if they aren't members. But it's pretty common. Writers get together regularly, read whatever they've been working on, and solicit comments. It's a way of getting feedback and constructive criticism without bothering one's nearest and dearest."

  Steve took out his little notebook and checked the names of our creative writing staff: two poets, one nationally recognized, a novelist, ditto, a decent essayist, and a rising short story writer. Then there were the adjuncts: genre novels, short stories, more poets.

  "I'm sure someone can help,” I said.

  Steve clapped me on the shoulder. “You are a font of wisdom,” he said.

  I heard the next week that he'd been haunting the creative writing department. Our genre writer was thrilled, our poets nonplussed, our essayist frosted.

  "Vulture,” Cynthia Mann said to me as we were exchanging one of the video carts. I'd been showing a rather slow Shakespeare I class the sleepwalking scene from Macbeth, and she had a video interview with Fay Weldon. “In for the carcass."

  "Excuse me?” What had I said? Oh, the reading. We were going to do a big poetry reading in Marjorie's honor and I'd asked...

  "I'm referring to the cop. Trolling through garbage."

  "Steve's an excellent officer,” I said. “We should be thankful we have someone literate on the case."

  "Better to put some beat cops around campus,” she said with a sniff.

  I was about to say that beat cops were hardly the solution for this case, but caught myself in time. I owed it to Steve to be discreet. “Maybe that would just fuel paranoia."

  She had opinions on that. To be expected, I suppose. Opinion is an essayist's stock in trade, but sometimes not as welcome in a colleague as in a column. I indicated vague assent and escaped.

  Steve called me several days later to ask if I would look at a list of names. Poor Marjorie had, indeed, belonged to a writers group, belonged, in fact, to two. Was that good or bad? One was a poetry circle of long standing. The other one for prose was something new for her. “About a year,” Steve said. “Never missed a meeting for either one. They considered her a good writer and pleasant but no one really felt they knew her. I'm still interviewing but no luck so far."

  I read over the lists. “I don't recognize any names. No one employed here. We can check the graduate students—"

  "Already done that,” said Steve, looking discouraged.

  "You said she'd been with the other group a year?"

  "That's right."

  "And before that? You say that she never missed a meeting; she seems to have had no other social life. Wouldn't she have been in another group? She's been writing short stories and little prose pieces for quite some time. I looked at her profile on our website,” I added quickly. It is amazing how a homicide investigation drives even a casual acquaintance to needless explanations.

  "Possible. We'll have to go back and ask about earlier groups. Do I have everyone?” He showed me the list.

  "You don't have Cynthia Mann—one of our ornaments."

  "She told me that she doesn't use a writers group. Never, ever."

  "Well, I may be wrong, but I seem to remember a piece she wrote some years ago. I don't much like her stuff, but this was an amusing thing about a writers group. Probably in the Chronicle of Higher Education; she has a forum there."

  "I'll check that,” said Steve. There was a little pause. I've been trying to decide ever since if it was for theatrical effect. “Did you happen to phone Marjorie Tellman the week she died?"

  "You know, I might have.” It's a fallacy of the sentimental sort that in retrospect one remembers all the trifles leading up to a disaster. “I had a book she wanted or she had one I wanted, I think."

  "She called you twice,” Steve said.

  "The phone company knows all. I believe we discussed a collection of metaphysical poets."

  "Yours or hers?"

  "Mine. I don't know what she did with it. It was a very nicely bound edition,” I added and immediately wondered whence came this irresistible impulse to embroider.

  "We'll perhaps find it for you,” he said.

  But, of course, he didn't. One reason was that John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets was still on my bookshelf, and the other was that Steve was deep in computer forensics. At least that's what he told me a week later. Steve's a worker—he'd been in and out of the building and around our department nearly every day, looking in to see me each time.

  I'd like to think it's just my new minted celebrity—did you know I was on Fresh Air as well as our regional NPR station?—but my colleagues have taken note. I tell them I'm something of an expert, but I'll have to have a word with Steve. I'm as willing to help as anyone, but really!

  "Are you making any progress?” I asked. We'd walked from my office to the terrace outside the coffee bar. Decorative reeds swayed along the edge of one of the big campus ponds, and several Canadian geese were monotonously honking back and forth, an effective white noise.

  Steve shrugged. “Her computer has disappointed me. All finished work. I'd hoped for letters, notes."

  "Ah, well, poets, God bless them, still love longhand.” I hoped he would not detect a certain relief.

  "School letters were typed—recommendations, that sort of thing. I haven't found any others."

  "And other writing groups?"

  "Yes,” he said, but nothing more, which made me think he had discovered something of value. He sat for several minutes in silence. “Why do people get kil
led?"

  "Sex or money,” I said promptly.

  Steve gave a kind of smile. Not his usual one, but what I now must consider his professional smile. “You've forgotten knowledge,” he said.

  "In thrillers, yes. The Man Who Knew Too Much and Journey Into Fear are classics of the type, but your ordinary day-to-day case—"

  I was set to elucidate. Most interviews focus on my admittedly sensational memoir, but sometimes we stray to professional preoccupations, and literary theory goes down much better when it's applied to the detective story or the spy thriller.

  "This is murder,” said Steve, “not a seminar."

  Did I detect a certain hostility? I hope not. I've enjoyed knowing Steve. “Of course. One gets carried away, a professional liability."

  He looked off into the reeds, where a redwing was clambering up and down in a purposeful way. “Were you ever at Tellman's home?” he asked.

  This required some thought on my part. “I believe I dropped her off once, maybe twice last winter. She had car trouble.” This is true. I never believe in lying unnecessarily, though necessity is indeed the mother of invention, literary invention, too, as I should know.

  "Would you have gone inside?"

  "No, just a lift home.” I wondered if they would be doing some elaborate new DNA testing. We are always in the process of growth and disintegration, shedding and rebuilding our cells, so that indoors is the very worst place for any crime. I would like to ask Steve about the forensics but do not feel I can. There's been a subtle change in our relationship. He still wants my advice on a different basis.

  "Perhaps I should have you look at something,” he said.

  We walked across campus to where his car was parked, his personal car, that is, not one of the campus cruisers. I was thankful for that. My genuine dismay and sorrow about Marjorie has lately been sliding into annoyance. Through no fault of ours, our department has been placed under the microscope.

  "I appreciate it,” said Steve, as if he could read my mind. “But this is an odd case. None of the usual motives seem to apply. She lived a very modest, isolated life, no money, no relationships, no nearby family. I have the feeling something less tangible than usual is involved in this one."

  We got in the car and he drove out of campus. By car, the route to Marjorie's rental is several miles of circuitous side roads. A trip on foot, now, is a different matter. Old logging trails through the woods take you straight to campus. I wondered if Steve knew that, but I didn't bring it up with him.

  Marjorie's house was one of the diminutive old eastern Connecticut capes: living room on one side, kitchen on the other, bath and bedroom behind. The neighbors kept chickens; a rooster was sounding off as we left the car. Steve handed me latex gloves and put on a pair himself, before he unlocked the front door. We stepped directly from the porch into the living quarters—a cold arrangement in winter. The place smelled closed up and damp, and I was thankful when Steve opened a couple of windows to bring in the warm spring air.

  The kitchen was predictably antique but tidy, and it, like the other rooms, had shelves of varying size and stability, all crammed with books and notebooks. A pile of hardback volumes was used as a bed table, and other heaps formed similar constructions in the living room.

  "I don't know what I'm looking for in all this,” Steve admitted, “but I have a strong feeling it may be in the reading material."

  "A life in books,” I said, and though a book person myself, that seemed a melancholy epitaph.

  "Perhaps you could help me take a look. You'd know if there's anything unusual."

  I thought this sounded irregular; I couldn't imagine that Steve had not explored Marjorie's library himself. I also thought of the piles of research papers, the stack of final quizzes, the imminent avalanche of exams awaiting me. I wanted to say, I'm not my sister's librarian, but I needed to know where Steve was going with this. “I can give you the afternoon."

  "I appreciate,” he said.

  The shelves contained the usual suspects: fat Norton anthologies, doubtless saved from grad school, scholarly editions of the classic American writers and Victorian novelists from both sides of the Atlantic; Russians in translation, right up through Akhmatova, French novelists through Camus, plus Derrida and the heavy theorists, these in dog-eared paperbacks. A Beowulf, lightly used; The Dubliners with what looked to be teaching notes.

  I was about to say I didn't see anything surprising when I picked up a copy of Cynthia Mann's latest book of essays.

  No surprise, really. She'd done a reading at the Coop and a lot of us went. What was dismaying was the vitriol of the comments penciled in the margins and even running down the table of contents. I had to put this treasure in Steve's hands.

  "Perhaps you'd better have a look at this. You'll hardly believe me when I say she and Cynthia always seemed to be on good terms."

  Steve took a glance at the volume and raised one eyebrow. “Not the only one,” he said. He had set several other books to one side. “Any of these from your department?"

  I looked at the titles. Four were current members, one was, I thought, a former adjunct. Marjorie's comments on the poets, in particular, were both obscene and intemperate. It was distressing and rather sad, too, but possibly useful, suggesting as it did, motivation.

  "Not really libelous here in her own copies,” I remarked. “Though she is very hard on Arnold's sonnets."

  Steve was noncommittal. We dismantled a coffee table of books in the living room without finding anything special, and we had emptied the bedroom bookcases and started on one of the bedside piles, when Steve held up a paperback in plain gray covers and asked, “What sort of thing is this?"

  It was a bad thing: my memoir in bound galleys. “That's what book publishers send out in advance to solicit reviews. Marjorie must have done reviews somewhere. There are a lot of small publications."

  Steve flipped through the volume, tipping his head to read the marginal comments. Was he putting this on for my benefit? After a suspenseful few minutes, he handed the book over. “What do you think?"

  "She clearly had problems,” I said. I do believe in taking the high road whenever possible. “It's rather sad."

  Steve shook his head. “Something's different there. Don't you see?"

  Oh, I did. Rhetoric and composition classes had not been wasted on me. In my colleagues’ works, she'd gone for invective, but she'd favored fact checking of the most pedestrian type in mine. “Poor Marjorie didn't have much grasp of the requirements of narrative,” I said.

  "She accuses you of falsifications,” said Steve. “Now why would that be if she didn't know you well?"

  Why indeed? “The Internet,” I suggested. “A font, an absolute font of material that can be misinterpreted. Not to worry."

  "No?"

  "Look, Steve, this is a major book. Someone crossing the t's and dotting the i's in wildest eastern Connecticut isn't going to affect anything."

  "It's the timing,” he said. “You explained to me the importance of your Oprah appearance. How it moves books and how books can be returned right up to the time they're sold and out of the stores—"

  What folly had prompted me to discuss the publishing business with my friend Steve, who was looking at me with regret but also with what I feared was professional interest.

  "The timing suggests trouble,” he reiterated.

  I had to agree.

  "And there's something else."

  Had I left something behind? Had my shedding epidermis or the tread of my foot betrayed me?

  "Marjorie Tellman ordered a new car the day before she was killed."

  Her overconfidence astonished me. That she should count on my compliance was enough to erase all regrets. “People do buy cars."

  "She made very little money as an adjunct instructor,” Steve said. “Yet, she planned to pay for the car outright—nothing expensive, you understand, but brand new. How do you think she would manage that?"

  "Clearly she was better
at saving than some of us.” I laughed. It is surprising how quickly even a six figure advance can dissipate.

  "I think she expected some money would come in."

  "Frightening poets with her devastating critiques? She was truly unreasonable about Arnold's work, and I hardly think one needs to go after mystery stories with so much critical apparatus! No, I don't see that. More likely a rich uncle."

  "You might say that,” and he looked at me.

  He was without proof, without the faintest shred of evidence, but I understood that he could still give me trouble. Though today had been informal, a request for help, a private conversation between friends, he had other resources, other options, less congenial colleagues. I had to act now, when he'd trusted our friendship—just as I had when Marjorie had presumed on an old acquaintance.

  Outside, I asked if he knew the old logging trails. “I have the feeling from reading her poems that Marjorie may have walked in these woods."

  Steve became attentive.

  "I wouldn't be surprised if there's a trail around here.” I started tentatively toward the backyard, awaiting his shout to stop, but he followed me through some viburnums and dogwoods well pruned by deer. Once in the trees, Steve looked up at the sun to get his bearings.

  "Campus must be in this direction.” He was interested now and moved ahead of me along a rutted track sprinkled with young maples and oaks. Oh, Steve! How could you be so foolish?

  I've had moments when I've regretted Marjorie, and I'll certainly regret Steve too. How often do you get such a friendly and literate officer of the law? I already envision a memorial service, which I'll surely help plan, for I'm developing a real taste for elegies and organ preludes and all the pomp of funeral rites.

  Copyright © 2009 Janice Law

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  Fiction: DEATH AT SYRACUSA by Marianne Wilski Strong

  It was a voyage of discovery.

  Had someone told me it would be, I would scarcely have believed them. I had survived the plague that had devastated Athens three years ago, as had my wife, Selkine, and my son, Diocles. I had seen the people of Athens grumble against Pericles, angry at the failure of his war strategy and forgetting, as ill and besieged people will, the glory he had brought to Athens.