by Gerald Elias
‘We can imagine how much you miss Aaron,’ Yumi said, steering the conversation in the direction she and Jacobus had predetermined. ‘He was such a … presence at the conservatory.’
‘Indeed,’ Sybil said, and she went on to relate some of their more glorious moments at Kinderhoek, rattling off the grand premieres, the intellectual adventures, the sumptuous parties.
‘Aaron could get a little naughty, though,’ she said.
‘Naughty?’ Jacobus almost jumped involuntarily at the word.
‘Yes,’ Sybil said. ‘You know, all those rich foods. All the wine. If not for that, he might still be alive. But he had to live life his own way, and who am I to say he was wrong?’
It wasn’t the kind of naughty he and Yumi were seeking to uncover, and it wasn’t perfect, but Jacobus didn’t know if there would ever be a more opportune opening.
‘Sybil, do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm Aaron?’ Jacobus asked, who already knew of several.
‘Why, no!’ Sybil exclaimed. ‘I can’t imagine such a thing! Why do you ask such a question?’
Jacobus laid out all of the troubling inconsistencies, as he had with Schneidermann. He did it as gently as possible, but hoped he would be as convincing. He avoided any reference of Schlossberg’s sexual predation. He didn’t see what purpose that would serve at this point. And he didn’t want to get kicked out before achieving what he had set out to do.
‘This is all so strange!’ Sybil said. ‘So strange and so … My life has been turned upside down, and now will it be turned upside down again? But be that as it may. It’s all too late. It’s time to move on.’
‘We – the county medical examiner, actually – wants to exhume Aaron and do an autopsy. So we – you – will know for sure. Have some closure. He’d like your consent, rather than having to order it.’
‘Exhume Aaron! Heaven forbid! This is too ghoulish! Poor Aaron. He always said he wanted to be cremated. That would have put an end to this. And I was all for it. To have his ashes scattered over his precious woods. But it’s his parents. They’re Jews, you know. Orthodox. The worst kind. They’re the ones who demanded the religious rigmarole. They would never agree to an exhumation!’
Yumi intervened.
‘We were hoping you, as his spouse, might make the decision. As you say, Aaron didn’t share his parents’ beliefs. Dr Dahl says it’s critical for an autopsy to take place as soon as possible for it to be of any potential value. What if you were to decide and then let his parents know after the fact? We were told that it would be permissible, in Jewish tradition, anyway, if civil authorities required it.’
‘I’ll have to think.’
Jacobus was about to say that time was not on their side, but Yumi was faster.
‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should go now and let you consider.’
Yumi helped Jacobus hop back into his wheelchair. They thanked Sybil for her tea and her time.
‘No!’ Sybil said, as they were almost out the door.
‘Why not?’ Jacobus asked.
‘I mean, no, I won’t wait! Go ahead and do the autopsy if that is what must be done. Aaron’s parents will no doubt be furious, but I’ll handle that. I’ve gotten used to their feelings about Aaron having married a shiksa, so one more tussle won’t make much difference.’
‘I appreciate that,’ Jacobus said and received a hug in return.
‘Well, I understand that you’ve also got other concerns than Aaron. That poor young lady – his chamber music student – my mind’s a bit of a fog, I can’t remember her name.’
‘Audrey?’
‘Yes, Audrey. Elwood told me she not only withdrew from the program, she’s actually gone missing.’
‘Do you have any idea where she may be?’ Jacobus asked.
‘Heavens, no! It’s terribly worrisome when someone disappears after another dies. I do hope she’s all right.’
When they were back in Yumi’s car, she said, ‘I had a chance to look at Sybil’s collection of old music. It’s amazing.’
‘So I’ve been told,’ Jacobus replied.
‘She even has a manuscript edition of the Four Seasons.’
‘Impressive.’
‘There was something interesting about it.’
‘No doubt.’
‘Not what you think.’
‘What, then?’
‘The score to “Spring”?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s missing.’
TWENTY
On the way back to the inn, Yumi dialed Moshe Schneidermann’s phone and put Jacobus on. Jacobus informed Schneidermann of Sybil’s consent to have Schlossberg’s remains exhumed and autopsied, and told Schneidermann to call Dahl immediately, if not sooner.
‘I’ll call him immediately,’ Schneidermann reassured Jacobus, ‘but I can’t guarantee it will be sooner.’
Jacobus then called Chase Anderson, who was at the community college, and asked him to invite Lucien Knotts’s culinary arts professor for a quick chat. Finally, he asked Yumi to call Connie Jean Hawkins to set up an appointment with Hedge that afternoon. He knew if he made the call himself, Connie Jean would hang up on him.
At the inn, Yumi escorted Jacobus to his room so he could rest until Anderson arrived. Jacobus, for whom hygiene had never been the highest priority, nevertheless craved the shower he had been prevented from taking because of his fragile ankle. He certainly wasn’t going to ask Yumi to assist him and settled instead for her handing him a wet washcloth.
‘Don’t forget behind the ears,’ she said, and closed the door behind her.
Only with the knock at the door did Jacobus realize he had fallen asleep with the now cold washcloth in his hand. He quickly wiped his face with it and said, ‘It’s open.’
‘How’re ya doin’?’ It was Anderson. He spoke somewhat sheepishly and Jacobus understood why. Jacobus had heard a second pair of footsteps, and they weren’t Yumi’s. He buttoned his shirt and sat up quickly.
‘I’ll survive,’ Jacobus said. ‘Pardon my appearance. Professor Shames, is it? I’m usually more sheveled. Thanks for coming all this way.’
‘No problem. Plenty of free time with spring break. Chase explained one of my students might be in a pickle.’
‘Maybe even a dilly of a pickle. It’s more about his girlfriend who dropped out of the conservatory. We’d like to find her to talk to her, but it seems the two gherkins have escaped the barrel.’
‘I wouldn’t worry too much about Lucien,’ Shames said. ‘He’s a little independent-minded, but he’s a good student.’
‘What do you mean by “independent-minded”?’ Jacobus asked.
There was another knock on the door. This time it was Yumi. Jacobus did the introductions.
‘Didn’t mean to interrupt,’ Yumi said. ‘I just wanted to let you know we’ve got a three o’clock appointment with Dean Hedge.’
‘I can’t wait,’ Jacobus said. ‘In the meantime, Professor Shames was about to tell us about Lucien Knotts.’
‘As I was saying,’ Shames continued, ‘he’s a clever boy, but he follows a different drummer at times.’
‘For example?’
‘For example, in the retail food industry it’s the law for restaurants to follow FDA regulations regarding what foods they may or may not serve to the public. It’s to make sure public health and safety aren’t compromised and also so that restaurants, which are held accountable, are less exposed to legal action if someone gets sick. It’s for everyone’s protection.’
‘Lucien disagrees?’
‘Not so much disagrees, but he seems to believe it’s more important to serve food that’s been grown locally without pesticides and insecticides for plant crops, or without hormones or feed fortified with antibiotics for meat.’
‘And there’s a problem with that?’ Jacobus asked.
‘There certainly is!’ Shames replied. ‘Here’s an example: It’s a lot easier for an FDA regulator to strictly supe
rvise the production of corn if it’s all grown the same way on a single ten-thousand-acre farm in Iowa and shipped under sanitized conditions than it is to have to supervise a thousand ten-acre farms scattered throughout New York and New England and have it delivered in the back of pickup trucks. Without oversight, how can you guarantee the food’s safety?’
‘Have you and Lucien argued about that?’ Yumi asked.
‘Yes, but on a friendly, scholarly level. I appreciate his passion, and it gets the other students involved. There are some groups here and there that agitate for local farming, but the future is in agribusiness. Only with agribusiness will we be able to solve the problem of world hunger.’
‘Have Lucien’s arguments about food ever gone beyond agriculture?’ Jacobus asked.
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ Shames replied.
‘Well, before farming, humans were hunter-gatherers, weren’t they? Has he ever talked about foraging, for example?’
‘Why, that’s very perceptive of you! Yes, he has! Glowingly!’
‘And?’
‘It’s absolutely ludicrous, of course. Our course is on culinary arts. The focus is on creative cookery and even our discussion of agriculture is on the periphery of the curriculum. If Lucien wants to study caveman survival, we have an excellent anthropology department. Young people,’ she said, as if that explained everything.
‘Yes, young people.’ Jacobus rubbed his sandpaper whiskers. He couldn’t remember the last time he had shaved. He wondered why he even bothered, since every time he put a razor to his throat he took his life in his hands.
‘Thank you, professor. You’ve been very helpful,’ he said. ‘I think I have to shave and get ready for another meeting now.’
‘Before you go,’ Yumi said to Shames, ‘I’ve got an academic problem you or Chase might be able to help me with. Totally unrelated. It will only take a couple of minutes. Is that OK?’
‘No problem,’ Shames said.
‘I got this email from our office manager,’ Yumi said. ‘It’s about the scheduling of a tenure hearing, I think, but I don’t understand what she’s asking for. It says, “Please go to H-T-T-P-colon-backslash-backslash-box-dot-Kinderhoek-dot-edu-backslash, and log in with your conservatory ID and password. Once you have logged in for the first time, Cbox will recognize your name so that we can invite you to see your folder with materials for the review. Please let me know that you have logged in to Cbox, and I can invite you to see your folder.” I have no idea what any of that means.’
Shames laughed.
‘They’re doing the same hocus-pocus at the community college,’ she said. ‘Most of our faculty can’t figure it out, either.’
‘I think there’s a computer in the hotel lobby,’ Anderson said. ‘What’s your ID and password?’
‘I don’t even know!’ Yumi said.
Anderson suggested that Yumi find that out at her meeting with Connie Jean and then he would be able to help her with the message. Yumi reasoned that she might as well just get the information from Connie Jean and avoid having to go through the whole exercise.
‘Why do they bother with this shit anyway?’ Jacobus asked.
‘They’re worried that someone could get your personal information that’s stored on the computer files. Your social security number, your financial records. They could steal your entire identity.’
‘I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,’ Jacobus said.
Yumi invited Chase and Arlene Shames to join Jacobus and her for lunch, but Shames had to leave to prepare midterm grades for her classes. Regarding Lucien Knotts’s whereabouts, she suggested that on Monday, the first day classes resumed, Anderson should come to her classroom and see if Lucien was there. If not, then they could start to worry. ‘Who knows?’ she postulated. ‘With the warm weather maybe they just went on a camping trip. It would be like Lucien to do something hippie like that.’
‘Couldn’t you just keep an eye out for Knotts yourself and let us know directly whether he shows up?’ Jacobus asked.
‘My classroom seats three hundred, Mr Jacobus,’ Shames said. ‘And I don’t take attendance.’
Jacobus asked Anderson to return to the inn after driving Shames back to the community college and meet him and Yumi there after their meeting with Hedge. Then he and Yumi went for lunch at Chops to strategize. The daily special was pot roast. The thought entered his mind, which he immediately tried to banish, that he might never have another pot roast, so he ordered it even though he wasn’t hungry. Why did that bastard Dr Simons have to mention anything about his ‘not insignificant growth’ if he didn’t know what it was? He would die of anxiety sooner than he’d die from the tumor.
Yumi hadn’t mentioned to Connie Jean that Jacobus would be accompanying her to the meeting with Hedge. They were banking on Yumi still being in the administration’s good graces. As an adjunct, she had judiciously avoided becoming enmeshed in the full-time faculty’s politics.
‘I guess they trust me because I’m kind of an outsider,’ Yumi said.
‘And you seem so innocent,’ Jacobus added.
At three o’clock they ascended the service elevator of the Lievenstock Administration Building, knocked on the door of Charles Hedge’s office, and entered.
‘What are you doing here?’ Connie Jean said.
‘I have an appointment with Dean Hedge,’ Yumi said.
‘I don’t mean you. I mean him!’
‘I’ve come to thank you,’ Jacobus said.
Connie Jean seemed flustered.
‘Thank me? For what?’ she asked.
‘For trying to prevent me from falling down the stairs,’ Jacobus said, hoping he sounded honest. ‘I appreciate it,’ he added for good measure.
‘Oh! Well, I’ll just tell him both of you are here.’
‘Thank you.’
‘What it is you want?’ Hedge asked after Yumi wheeled Jacobus in and seated herself.
‘Has your office ever received any sexual harassment complaints?’ Yumi asked. Though polite as ever, she was in no mood to waste time on subtlety.
Hedge chuckled. ‘Most of the time the faculty work those things out among themselves. You know how musicians are. Like musical beds.’
‘I don’t mean faculty.’
‘No? Who, then?’
‘We have some very troubling news,’ Yumi said. ‘We believe one of my students was molested.’
‘Oh, dear!’ Hedge said. ‘I can’t believe anyone on our faculty would be involved.’
‘Who said anything about faculty?’ Jacobus asked.
‘Well, I—’
‘What is the conservatory’s policy on sexual harassment?’ Yumi asked.
‘Zero tolerance! Absolutely. Ze-ro tol-er-ance!’ he repeated with slow emphasis, as if that made it more definitive. ‘We treat every accusation with utmost seriousness and conduct a full investigation. Any harassment whatsoever on the Kinderhoek campus is totally unacceptable. If a faculty member is found guilty of harassment, we impose strict penalties.’
‘What penalties?’ Yumi asked.
‘The first offense, we issue a verbal reprimand; if there is a second, a written censure, which is entered into that member’s permanent file; and the third time, the faculty member is dismissed.’
‘What’s your policy if a student plagiarizes?’ Jacobus asked.
‘Expulsion. There’s no room for cheating at Kinderhoek.’
‘So a kid copying a page from the biography of Luigi Boccherini is a worse offense than Professor Potentate groping a young girl.’
‘Don’t be absurd, Jacobus. There are levels of harassment. We’ve got it all spelled out in our policy statement. We would never—’
‘We believe my student did file a complaint,’ Yumi interrupted, determined to stay focused on their line of questioning.
‘If she did, it would have been investigated,’ Hedge said.
‘How do you know it was a “she”?’ Jacobus asked.
�
�Well, isn’t it usually?’ Hedge blustered.
‘We’d like to see the file,’ Yumi said.
‘What file?’
‘Of the investigation of my student’s complaint against one of your faculty.’
‘Not possible.’
‘Why not?’
‘First, because all records are fully confidential. Protects both parties. The mechanism we’ve put in place to handle sexual misconduct complaints stresses confidentiality. We want students to feel comfortable coming forward. If the students choose, the matter can be settled without the involvement of law enforcement. We investigate each case, which is heard by a special administrative committee. The findings remain confidential and are protected by privacy law.’
‘How convenient,’ Yumi said.
‘I wouldn’t take it that way,’ Hedge said. ‘And I don’t appreciate your cynical tone, Yumi. It doesn’t become you. Let’s say someone accused Mr Jacobus of having abused a student,’ he continued, sarcasm etched in his voice. ‘Even verbally. Though such a scenario is so unlikely as to be almost ludicrous, if outside parties were to have access to such an outlandish accusation it could affect his pristine reputation. His career. At the same time, we wouldn’t want the accuser’s reputation impugned, either.
‘Now, just for the sake of argument, if a complaint was in fact filed by your student, which is by no means a given – no, I don’t mean to question your student’s honesty – and if an investigation was in fact undertaken, then the conclusion must have been that harassment, in fact, did not take place. Otherwise, the faculty member would have been censured, and none of them have been.’
‘So you’re saying there’s been no inappropriate behavior by any faculty members toward students?’ Yumi asked.
‘None that’s been verified.’
‘And even if there was, you wouldn’t tell us?’ Jacobus asked.