“Really? Why not?”
“Your dog loves you. You wouldn’t want him to be all alone, would you?”
She was so close then. The chill seemed to highlight the scent of her floral perfume, and I leaned forward and kissed her again.
“Mm,” she said. She kissed me back. “And see, if someone killed you, you’d miss this, too.”
I wrapped my arms around her heavy sweater and pulled her close. We kissed again, standing in the clearing, and then Rochester started barking.
I pulled away from Lili long enough to say, “Rochester! Quiet!”
He didn’t shut up, and she stepped back. “Maybe he found something.”
I cursed the damned dog under my breath as I followed Lili to where Rochester was standing, by the bank of the creek, barking at something.
“It’s probably a squirrel or something,” I said.
He stopped barking as we approached, looking from me to Lili and back.
“I think he found the plant,” she said. “Look, don’t the leaves match?” She chucked Rochester under the neck, and he stretched his head back to give her easier access.
I held the photo up and we compared it to the plant. There were no flowers, but the stem and leaves seemed to match. Lili took a bunch of pictures.
We were just finishing when a man’s voice boomed out behind us. “This is private property, and you’re trespassing.”
We looked up at a tall, bald man in a camel-hair coat. Rochester began barking at him.
“Rochester. Shh,” I said.
“What are you doing with my daughter’s photo album?” the man asked. “Who are you?”
“You’re Barbara’s father, aren’t you?” I asked. “My name is Steve Levitan. I just took over the technical writing class she’s in.” I nodded toward Lili. “This is Dr. Weinstock, from the Fine Arts Department. I thought Barbara’s photos were so well-done that I showed them to Dr. Weinstock.”
“Your daughter has real talent,” Lili said. “I’d like her to take my photography course.”
“You shouldn’t be out here,” Seville said. “You aren’t part of that group of nature freaks, are you?”
“The Bucks County Nature Conservancy?” I asked.
“That’s the one. You’re here to keep screwing up my project, aren’t you?”
“Not at all.” I took Lili’s hand. “We just thought we’d come out to see the place where Barbara took her photos. We’ll go now.”
“You took over Barbara’s class. So you must have known her other teacher. Stupid old ex-nun.”
“Professor Kaufman? No, I didn’t know her. The department chair just needed a replacement quickly.” I started backing away from him.
“Not so fast.” He pulled a handgun from his coat pocket. “I know you. Barbara has been talking about you. You’ve been snooping into her professor’s murder.”
I thought the best defense was to play innocent. “Professor Kaufman? I thought she died from a faulty space heater.”
“Don’t try and fool me. You know exactly what happened to her, and to that jerk from the admissions office, and why. And you know what that means, don’t you?”
Lili looked at me and squeezed my hand. I could see Rochester tensed behind Seville. “I don’t know anything you’re talking about,” I said.
“It means I can’t let either of you leave here. ” He raised his hand and aimed at Lili.
29 – Surprises
Lili was fearless. She raised her camera to her eye and started snapping shots of Seville aiming at us. Rochester lunged at Seville from behind, and as he squeezed the trigger, the dog knocked him to the ground, so the bullet went wide. Seville dropped the gun as he fell, and it landed a few feet away.
Rochester was on top of Seville on the ground, the big man struggling to push the dog off him. “Give me your scarf,” I said to Lili. “And then call 911.”
She pulled her scarf off and I joined Rochester, kneeling on Seville’s back. I tied Lili’s scarf around his hands, behind his back, as she picked up his gun. Then she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed.
“Tell them to send Sergeant Rinaldi,” I said.
Seville continued to struggle, but with me sitting on his butt, and Rochester at alert next to his head, he wasn’t going anywhere.
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” Lili said.
“You were amazing. You aren’t afraid of anything, are you?”
“Spiders. Being stranded somewhere without a book to read. Getting a degenerative disease so that I become a prisoner inside my body. And a few more things, too.”
“But not men with guns.”
“I spent three months in Beirut as a photojournalist during the last civil war. I learned my camera can be a weapon, too. Once I knew that, I could face down anything.”
Seville tried again to push me off his back, but I sat fast. “Amazing. Beirut? Really?”
She nodded. “I did some freelancing for the Miami Herald. I was traveling with a reporter up to Hamra when we were stopped at a security checkpoint. They took away our passports and all our ID, confiscated the van we were driving in and took away our translator and our driver. They tried to take my cameras but I kneed the guy in the balls and he backed away.”
“See?” I said to Seville. “You got away lucky.”
“You’ll regret this,” he said, his head resting against the sparse winter grass. “I’m going to see you both behind bars.”
“There will be bars between us, but you’ll be on the wrong side of them,” I said. “I looked up at Lili. “So what happened?”
“They kept us in this dark room for two days. Only fed us a little water and some mushy rice. Finally our translator got word to someone in his family, who contacted the embassy, who sent someone out to get us. It was scary but it was also incredibly tedious.”
Seville gave up struggling and wouldn’t say anything further. It took nearly ten minutes for the first cop car to arrive. By then I had called Tony Rinaldi on his cell and explained to him where we were and what we were doing. He made contact with the patrol car, so the officer had already been briefed by the time he approached us across the open space.
He cuffed Seville and stood him up. “These people are trespassers and they attacked me!” he sputtered to the cop. “I demand that you let me go and arrest them.”
“Let’s go wait in the car until the sergeant gets here,” the cop said. “I suggest you folks warm up, too.”
I was shivering, and my pants were damp with the last snow from the ground. I was grateful to stretch my arms and legs and then walk to the BMW. Rochester jumped into the back seat without complaint, and Lili and I sat in front with the heater going.
“I’m sorry to have dragged you into this,” I said. “I never would have brought you out here if I’d thought we could get into trouble.”
“Sometimes I complain that the life of a college professor is boring and routine,” she said. “I won’t be saying that for a while.”
Rochester snored lightly on the back seat. I plugged my iPhone into the adapter for the radio and asked Lili, “Any kind of music you prefer?”
“Let me see what you’ve got. ” Our fingers touched as I handed her the phone. We listened to some country music for a while, then a couple of show tunes, until Tony Rinaldi arrived.
He came over to talk to us first, and we both got out of the car, leaving Rochester in the back seat. I explained everything that had happened. Then he went to talk to Richard Seville. After a long time, he came back to us. “Let’s recap,” he said. “You were trespassing, and Mr. Seville confronted you. You argued, and he felt he had to pull his gun to defend himself.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. “Is that what he says?”
“He is the property owner.”
“There are no posted signs,” Lili said. “Not a single no trespassing sign. So he can’t pull that nonsense.”
Tony nodded. “I agree. Which leaves us with things the
other way around. He shot at you, and you were defending yourselves against him. Since he’s the one with the gun, I’m likely to believe you. But unless you’re willing to press charges I can’t take him in.”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “But what about arresting him for killing Joe Dagorian and Perpetua Kaufman? He almost admitted it to us.”
“Almost admitting is like almost pregnant,” Tony said. “You don’t get a result in either case. But I’ve been doing some investigating myself. You know, that is my job.”
“Yes, I know.” Rochester forced his way into the front seat and looked through the driver’s side window at us. He barked once. I just looked over at him.
“I’m close to putting a case together against Seville,” Tony continued. “I can hold him on the assault charge until we get a judge and a bail hearing. And by then I hope to have a lot more to hold against him. I’ll work with Rick Stemper on charging him with both murders.”
While Tony and I were talking, Lili pulled a netbook out of her messenger bag and uploaded the pictures from her camera to it. “Give me your email address,” she said to Tony. “As soon as I can get a wi-fi signal I’ll email the pictures I took to you.”
Tony gave it to her. I had to promise to meet him at the Leighville Police Station the next morning to give a formal statement. He took custody of the book of Barbara’s photos, and let us go.
“I’ll drive you back to campus,” I said, turning on the car.
“We don’t have to head back so quickly,” she said. “You know anyplace around here where we could get something to eat?”
I thought of More than Chocolate, Gail’s café in Stewart’s Crossing. “You like chocolate?”
“You bet.”
Rochester went to sleep in the back seat, and I drove us down to Stewart’s Crossing. While we waited for our food, Lili opened her netbook and did some quick tweaking on the photos, then emailed them to Tony.
After a very nice dinner, I mentioned that we were so close to my townhouse, and asked if Lili might like to see it. I thought I was being very suave, but she saw right through me. “Only if the tour includes the bedroom,” she said.
“I can manage that,” I said, though I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I could. After all, it had been a long time.
We got back to the house, and Rochester went right to his bed in the kitchen and settled down. I guess he figured he’d earned a good long nap, and I agreed.
Lili and I went upstairs, and I did manage, well enough to satisfy us both. After we cuddled and dozed for a while, I drove her back up to the campus. Rochester chose to come along as our chaperon.
“It’s been a hell of a second date,” she said, as we pulled up next to her car in the faculty parking lot.
“In a good way, I hope.”
“A very good way. ” She leaned across and kissed my cheek. “Can’t wait to see what you’ve got lined up for date number three.”
I drove back downriver to Stewart’s Crossing, where I took Rochester for a long walk around River Bend, feeling very satisfied with myself. It’s not every day a man faces down death, catches a killer, and makes love to a beautiful woman, after all.
The next morning Rochester decided to take the day off and stay home. I figured he’d earned it. Instead of driving up the hill to the college, I stopped at the police station. Tony had worked most of the night, gathering evidence against Richard Seville, and the district attorney was preparing an indictment against him for the murders of Joe Dagorian and Perpetua Kaufman. I gave Tony a full statement of everything I knew, interspersed with a lot of questions.
He must have said, “I can’t put that in my report,” every time I mentioned something Rochester had done, though.
“You and your dog seem to have a knack for getting into trouble,” he said. “And if my chief ever figures out a dog is out-thinking me, then my job is on the line.”
“No worries. I think he and I have a woman to keep us out of trouble for a while.”
“You and the photographer? You could do a lot worse. She’s beautiful—and those pictures she took while Seville had the gun on you both? Amazing.”
“Yeah, the rest of the evening was pretty amazing, too.”
He raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything more. “Keep in touch,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll need more from you as the DA puts the case together.”
He opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out a bag of rawhide bones. “For the dog,” he said.
“Thanks. You ever need him to consult on a case, you just let me know.”
30 – Second Chances
The sun came out, and I drove up to Eastern with my windows cracked open. I knew that spring was still at least a month away, but a boy can hope. I had barely got my coat off in my office when Ike Arumba came to my door.
“I really want to thank you for what you did, Mr. Levitan,” he said. “The police have dropped all the charges against me, and Sally hired me to start working part-time at the admissions office. It means I’ll have to give up the Rising Sons, but there’s a freshman baritone who can take my place.”
“Congratulations, Ike. Remember Sally is giving you a second chance and you can’t make any more mistakes.”
“I’ve learned my lesson. I’m excited about getting back to work. Fortunately my course load is light this term and I can really get into it. Sally says I can apply for the assistant director’s job, too.”
“Well, good luck.”
Next in my office was President Babson. “I understand the police have someone in custody for Joe’s murder? And Perpetua Kaufman was murdered as well? It wasn’t just an accident with her space heater?”
I filled him in. “I think we’re going to need a press release. Shall I draft one?”
“Please. It’s sad, losing Joe, and Perpetua. I knew her for years, you know. And all for something so silly as a plant. ” He shook his head. “Let me know if you think I should address the press directly.”
“Will do. I’ll have the release for you shortly.”
I spent a while on the release, aiming for the right tone, trying to downplay Eastern’s role in the whole scenario. When I had gone over it so many times the words were swimming on the page, I gave up and emailed it to Babson for his approval. Then I went down to Sally’s office. “I understand you’re getting some more help around here.”
“Ike starts Monday, and I can feel the relief already,” she said. “I can see light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, the light is still a long way off.”
“And remember, sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is just an oncoming train,” I said.
She made shooing motions. “Go. I have work to do. ” As I was walking back to my office, I ran into Lou Segusi, from my tech writing class, in the hallway. I remembered I had promised to talk to him about his career prospects.
“So you want to be a technical writer?” I asked.
“I’ve got bigger problems. ” He slumped down in the chair across from my desk. “I’m in, like, huge trouble, and I can’t figure out what to do. You’ve been really nice and I was hoping maybe you could give me some advice.”
Rochester got up from his place by the French doors and walked over to Lou, sniffing him. Lou dropped his good left arm down and stroked the dog’s head, and Rochester sat down next to him.
“Is this about all the papers you’ve been writing?” I asked. “They aren’t all for you, are they?”
He shook his head. “It started last year. I can speed-read, and write really fast, so I was always finished with my papers super early, then just hanging around the dorm playing games and shit. One of my roommates asked me if I could write a paper for him. It was on Wuthering Heights, which I read in high school, so I was like, no problem, dude. It was just something to keep busy.”
“And against the college’s Honor Code and plagiarism policy.”
“Yeah, I know. But it seemed like no big deal at the time. Then he told a friend, and I wrote a pap
er for him. And before you know it, I had these guys lined up for me to write papers. Mostly guys from the football team, but eventually their girlfriends and their roommates and all. I made good money, and it was really interesting, you know? It was like taking all these extra courses. I looked at it like I was learning a lot myself, and getting paid for it to boot. That’s when I started to think about getting a job after graduation as a technical writer. You know, like, getting paid legit.”
As a teacher, the whole idea of what Lou had been doing was anathema. But as a smart guy who could write quickly myself, I could see his point. “So what happened? You broke your arm and you couldn’t meet deadlines?”
“More like my arm got broken for me,” he said, frowning.
“Someone broke your arm? Someone who got a bad grade on a paper you wrote?”
“I never got a bad grade for anybody I wrote for. This was different.”
I sat back in my chair, waiting for him to go on. “I had this crush on this girl. Desiree DiLiberti. Only she had a boyfriend, one of the guys from the football team. So I figured I would just give up. Then she came to me and asked me to write a paper for her.”
“Yes?”
“And we, kind of, you know, started fooling around in her dorm room.”
“In place of her paying you?”
“No! Not at all. I never even thought of that. I just thought, like, cool, she’s into me, too.”
“Let me guess. The boyfriend came in.”
“With one of his buddies. The two of them are always together. I swear, if it wasn’t for Desiree I’d think the two dudes were into each other.”
“Jose and Juan?”
“You know them?”
I nodded. “They do some work for the director of alumni relations.”
He slumped back in his seat, pulling his hand back from Rochester, who looked up and started sniffing Lou’s leg. “I am so screwed.”
“Who broke your arm?”
“Juan. Desiree is his girlfriend. Jose held me down so Juan could do it.”
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