Remember Me, Irene ik-4

by Jan Burke

  She laughed and put an arm around her husband. “Let’s take a hint, Pete.” She steered him toward the door, then called back to us over her shoulder. “Good night, Frank. Piano, piano, Irene.”

  Softly, softly. Sort of an Italian version of “take it easy.” Pete was muttering complaints as the door closed behind them.

  “You okay?” Frank asked.

  “Honest to God, I don’t know.”

  Charles Monroe picked that moment to come walking down the hall. “She wants to see you,” he said, as if the words were full of lemon juice. He kept walking, going outside before I had a chance to introduce Frank.

  “The asshole?” Frank asked.

  I scowled at him. He held up his hands in mock surrender and took a seat. “I’ll be right here if you need me,” he said, picking up the tabloid. “Reading about this boy who can see with his ears.”

  WHEN I GOT BACK to the conference room, it was clear to me that June Monroe had been crying, but her voice was steady as she said, “I want to talk to you, Irene, but I believe I’m all talked out for now. Can you recommend a good place to stay? I haven’t been in Las Piernas in years, but I figure a newspaper reporter knows her way around.”

  “I’d like it very much if you and Charles would stay at our house.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t impose. And Charles won’t be staying here at all; he owns his own business in Riverside, so he has to be there early in the morning.”

  “It wouldn’t be an imposition. We have a guest room. Please — unless you’d really be more comfortable in a hotel? I should mention that we have pets — two dogs and a cat—”

  “Oh, that wouldn’t be a problem. I love animals.”

  “You’ll stay with us, then?”

  She considered the offer for a moment, then said, “Thank you, yes, I will.”

  CHARLES WAS JUST ABOUT as pleased with the plan as he was with anything else connected with me that night. June merely crossed her arms and asked him to please open the trunk. He angrily obeyed, yanking the small suitcase out and setting it on the ground with a thump, then drove off without saying so much as good-bye to her.

  Frank pretended not to notice what had happened, helped her with her overnight bag, and struck up a conversation with her about the night classes she was teaching in Riverside — algebra and geometry for the adult education program.

  It was two in the morning when we got home. After a raucous greeting from our pets, everyone settled in for the night. Cody decided that June needed a big cat on her bed, which seemed to please her. I was grateful for that; he might have yowled all night if denied his preferences.

  Frank was in bed, drowsy, but waiting for me. He snuggled up against me, behind me, wrapped an arm around me. We talked for a while about the evening’s events.

  “Why did you let her son give you a hard time?” he asked.

  “He’s having a hard time, too. He just learned that his brother died.”

  “Didn’t appear to be grief-stricken.”

  “In his own way, I think he was. Even if I had felt like arguing with him, I wouldn’t have done it. It would have upset Lucas’s mother.”

  “I guess that makes sense. Still, the guy was an—”

  “Don’t say it.” I turned to my other side, so that I could look at him. “I don’t know why you’re upset with him. You’ve seen all kinds of reactions to death in a family — some people cry, some people get real quiet, some get angry.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. If I had met him under other circumstances, I might have seen it that way. But I just haven’t ever watched anyone act that way toward you. Not and get away with it.”

  I smiled. “I’m okay, Tarzan.”

  He laughed, then reached up and stroked my hair. “If I wasn’t so damned tired, I’d make you regret that remark.”

  I kissed him. “I’ll take a rain check.”

  I turned back into spoon position. He nuzzled my neck, then yawned. I listened as his breathing became deep and regular.

  That rhythmic breathing acted as a counterpoint to my troubled thoughts. It calmed me, kept me from dwelling on questions that could not be answered that night, kept me from worrying about June Monroe, Claire Watterson, and all the other wounded souls I could not heal. Holding me in bed that night, Frank was warm and solid, his simple act of affection as important to me as the beating of my own heart against his hand. “I like being married,” I whispered, thinking he was asleep.

  “Me, too,” he murmured against my ear.

  I WOKE UP almost as tired as I was when I fell asleep, and twice as cold. In the soft gray light of the approaching dawn, I saw that Frank had rolled to the other side of the bed, taking the covers with him. I lay there for a time, asking myself if it was worth waking him to reclaim the blankets; I decided that the possibility of my going back to sleep was so low, I would let him get away with the theft.

  I eased out of bed, wrapped myself in a robe, and stood there for a moment, watching him sleep. His big body was wrapped up in the blankets almost mummy-style, although the toes of his left foot peeked out. One arm held a pillow over the top of his head — something he does when he’s especially tired. Only the lower half of his face showed beneath the pillow. To anyone else, right at that moment, he probably would have looked kind of silly. To me, well, he was going to have to make good on that rain check.

  I slipped on a pair of jeans and a big sweater, put on a pair of running shoes; I thought I might take the dogs for an early morning romp on the beach. But as I approached the sliding glass door that leads to the backyard, I saw that June Monroe was sitting out on the patio, the dogs basking in her attention.

  I almost stepped away, but the mutts had heard me, and came running over to the door. I went outside.

  “Good morning,” she said. “This surely is a beautiful yard. Did you plant this garden?”

  “No,” I admitted, sitting down next to her. “Frank’s got the green thumb.”

  She looked out over the riot of crocuses, jonquils, daffodils, and other bulbs that were just coming into bloom and smiled. Deke nudged her hand and Dunk moved back and forth between us, vying for earscratching. “I’m surprised you can keep this garden with these two dogs back here.”

  “When we first got them, they nearly destroyed it more than once. Fortunately, we have a neighbor next door who thinks of these dogs as shared pets — he even helped us pick them out at the pound. He has a remarkable ability with them. I would swear to you that he just talked them out of ruining the garden.”

  “I believe it.”

  She looked weary; her weariness, I suspected, was caused by more than a lack of sleep.

  “Last night you said that Lucas lost his good reputation,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Because he was drinking?”

  She looked surprised. “Drinking? No, no. That came later.” She leaned forward, lowered her voice. “You don’t know about the scandal?”

  “No. What scandal?”

  “At the college. Lucas was accused of cheating.”

  “What? I don’t believe it!”

  “Well, that’s a good start then,” she said with satisfaction. “A very good start. I never believed he cheated on anything. He was too smart to need to cheat. But they kicked him out of that college anyway.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense.” The morning suddenly seemed colder. “Come inside, I’ll make some coffee and you can give this story from the beginning.”

  SHE TOOK A SEAT at the kitchen table. “When was the last time you saw Lucas?”

  “In about 1975 or ’76.”

  “Hmm. Yes, that was just before the whole mess happened. Things started getting bad in about 1977. Lucas almost had his master’s degree. He had just turned in his thesis. He was so proud of that thesis…”

  Her voice trailed off, and she looked away from me. I busied myself with the coffeemaker. When it looked as if she had regained her composure, I asked, “What was the thesis abo
ut?”

  “It was a study of one of the old neighborhoods in Las Piernas, how it was changing, what might be done to help make life better for the people that lived there. It was one of the neighborhoods included in the redevelopment plans.”

  “I suppose it makes sense that Lucas would choose something like that for his thesis topic. He was doing work with Andre Selman.”

  “Hmph. Andre Selman,” she said. “Someday the Lord just might teach me how to forgive that man.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not saying he’s responsible for everything that happened to Lucas. Far from it. Some of that started in our own family, and before our family. But Andre Selman caused a whole lot of trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “At first, he looked like a hero. Helped Lucas get a job on campus, teaching that statistics class. Took Lucas under his wing for the redevelopment study for Las Piernas. Told Lucas all this high and mighty stuff about how he was going to help Lucas go to a big university, get a scholarship — all on account of the work Lucas was doing for him with the redevelopment study. Even shared his office with Lucas; let him keep all his books and his work there. Lucas thought the world of him.”

  I poured two cups of coffee, gave one to her. “That must have been what was going on when I knew Lucas. If he wasn’t out in the field doing research, or teaching a class, he was in that office. He seemed happy with his work and with the project. Although now that I think about it, he did warn me not to become involved with Andre.” “That doesn’t surprise me. Lucas said that professor was always making a fool out of one woman or another.”

  I tried not to flinch. Failed.

  She didn’t notice. “Of course he was happy with Dr. Selman,” she went on. “Try to understand what that kind of attention meant to him. Lucas was the first person in the Monroe family to get a college education. His father, his father’s father, his uncles and great-uncles — none of them ever went to college. I was the first college graduate in my family, and there were days when I would have sworn to you that Lucas’s father married me because he wanted his children to go to college and thought I could get them there. Charles never did too well in school, not because he wasn’t bright, but because — oh, he just let things distract him. But Lucas, he was driven. He loved school, loved sociology. He thought he could make a difference in the world.”

  “I saw that when I was his student. You must have taught him something about teaching — he was very good at it.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly, “but I think he was just naturally gifted.” She looked away from me then, looked back out toward the garden. “Yes, he loved school…” Her voice trailed off. But when she looked back, her expression was one of indignation, not sadness. “You can imagine,” she said, “how shocked we were when he called up to say he was being kicked out of the college.”

  “What happened?”

  She shook her head. “You know, Irene, the biggest problem was that it took so long to figure out what really did happen. The trouble started when Lucas turned in his thesis, and this other professor, a Dr. Warren, convinced everyone on the committee that they should reject it.”

  “Wait a minute — Warren? Andre never got along very well with Dr. Warren. What’s the connection? And what was the reason for rejecting the thesis?”

  “He claimed that Lucas had cheated to make the data come out just the way he wanted it to — said Lucas had faked the numbers.”

  “I don’t believe for a minute that Lucas would have resorted to something like phony data,” I said.

  “Andre Selman said the same thing. Said there must be some mistake. Made a big show out of taking out the thesis and going over it and acting real surprised. In fact, when Lucas got called before the committee, he was real surprised, too.”

  “Why?”

  “It wasn’t his thesis.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “Oh, there was a thesis with ‘by Lucas Monroe’ on the front of it all right, even lots of pages in there that were from his original thesis — most of it, really. But mixed in with the pages Lucas wrote were ones that weren’t his.”

  “How could that be?”

  “Well, that was the question, of course. Andre Selman stood up for Lucas in front of the committee, went on and on about how he knew that Lucas did fine work and was honest and so on. Then he said, ‘Lucas, you must have your own copy of this thesis. Can you bring it in?’

  “And of course, Lucas says he doesn’t even have to go home to get it. Everything is in his office.”

  “Which is also Dr. Selman’s office,” I said.

  “Exactly right. Now what do you suppose he found there?”

  “It was missing.”

  She shook her head.

  “It was there,” I said slowly, “but Lucas’s own copy matched the committee’s.”

  “Yes.”

  “But he must have had notes, or some other way to prove—”

  “This is where they really did him dirty. This is how someone knew they could get away with this. Did you ever see Lucas’s handwriting?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t the best.”

  She laughed. “It wasn’t legible, you mean. He used to have trouble reading it himself. Couldn’t always make out his own handwriting if a week or two went by. So he had been typing up his notes since high school. And the same thing was true of his college work; he used to type almost everything. He’d take his notes and forms from the field and type them up. The good part was, it made him go over everything, organize it.”

  “I was talking to someone about this the other day. I remembered that he hated to write on the black-board,” I said. “He even typed up overhead transparencies to teach his stat class.”

  She nodded. “So going back to that day — he’s in this office, frantic. It’s like something from the Twilight Zone. He’s searching and searching for something to prove his innocence, and everything he looks at seems to prove his guilt. Things are missing, or they’ve been changed.”

  “Who had access to the office?”

  “Only a few people. The chair of the department, Lucas, Dr. Selman, another research assistant, and the custodians — who weren’t likely to be typing up fake pages to a thesis. Lucas said the chair of the department was in the clear as far as he was concerned. At first he was just plain puzzled. Figured somebody must have broken into the office. But of course there was no sign of that, and so the committee was growing openly skeptical about Lucas’s innocence.

  “So Lucas asked if he could talk to the other student who had access to the room. Nadine Preston was her name. Lucas was about to graduate — at least, that’s what everyone thought — and so, at Dr. Selman’s request, Lucas had been training this Nadine to take his place on the project. Did you know her?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Pretty little red-haired gal.”

  “Red-haired?”

  “Yes.”

  “She wear it in a bowl cut?”

  “Yes! I thought you said you didn’t know her?”

  “I didn’t. But I’ve seen a photograph of her. Quite recently.”

  21

  “DID YOU MAIL a set of photographs to Ben Watterson?”

  “Who?”

  “The president of the Bank of Las Piernas.”

  Before she could answer, Frank came into the kitchen. He was dressed for work, which reminded me that I needed to get myself into gear.

  “Good morning,” she greeted him.

  “Good morning,” he answered, and gave my shoulder a squeeze as he walked over to the coffeemaker.

  He looked between us as he poured a cup of coffee, then asked, “Are you going into work today, Irene?”

  “Yes, although I might go in a little late. June, what are your plans for the day?”

  “I guess the first thing I’ll need to do is rent a car.”

  “If you only need to get around town—”

  “No, I have things to do here, but I n
eed to get back to Riverside to… to make arrangements for the funeral and so on.”

  No one said anything.

  “Charles offered to drive back down here and pick me up,” she said. “But he works so hard and was up so late last night, I just hate to make him come all the way back out here. And the bus takes twice as long as driving. Besides, what it would cost to take cabs around town and then take the Greyhound home, I’d just as soon rent a car.”

  “There’s a rental place downtown,” I said. “I can drop you off on the way to work.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you have any other friends in Las Piernas?” Frank asked.

  “Other friends?” She laughed softly and shook her head. “No, not now. I moved away from here just after Lucas started college. Our old neighborhood doesn’t even exist anymore. I might be able to find some of the people I knew from the church. Some of those people might still be around here somewhere. I could find out where the church moved to, see if any of my old friends are still in the congregation. But I haven’t seen any of them in so long, I wouldn’t even know who to ask for.”

  “What do you mean, your old neighborhood doesn’t exist?” I asked.

  “I mean, you go to look for it, you won’t find it. It’s gone. You might find a lot of empty buildings and some vacant lots. That’s all. We used to live in a big old hotel that had been turned into apartments. The landlord let it get so run-down, I hated that place. It wasn’t the worst by any means, but it wasn’t where I wanted my children to live. Lord, how I wanted to move out of that old place.”

  “You worked as a teacher then?”

  “Yes, but that was before I had a permanent position. We moved a lot when the children were small. My late husband was a good man, but he had trouble holding down a job. And he wasn’t the money-saving kind, if you know what I mean. We never had the ends to pay the rent, nothing. By the time we were living here in Las Piernas — must have been when Lucas was six or seven years old — my husband’s health began to fail. A man can’t drink like that and not have some kind of problem. Soon as I’d get money saved, he’d go into the hospital. Even after he died, it took me a long time to pay off all the hospital bills.” She shrugged. “About the time I got free of that, I wanted to save for Lucas’s college education. As it turned out, I was able to move sooner than I planned. Lucas got those scholarships and Charles made up the rest of it.”