by Donn Taylor
So I sat at my desk and sought in vain for some way to rebut the rumored affair. You can fight an accusation if you know its basis, but how can you fight it if you don’t? I must have sat for forty minutes or more as the day declined toward winter evening. Then high heels clicked in the hall, and a distraught Cynthia Starlington catapulted into my office.
“Press, I need help.” Her voice was almost a sob.
“What is it, Cyn?” I rose and came around my desk. “Sit down and tell me about it.”
I mainly wanted to get rid of her because I had enough problems of my own. But letting her talk might calm her down, and I could shoo her out of the office so I could get on with my worrying.
Cynthia hung her ocelot-collared coat on my coat rack, then turned to face me again. She wore a loose-fitting figured blouse with a lot of brown in it, the perfect complement to her olive complexion and flowing brown hair. The winter chill put a pleasant color in her cheeks, matching the light tint of her lipstick. With her entry, my internal musicians settled into the now-familiar liquid tones of the clarinet. They played something slow and easy from the big band era. Its languid movement contrasted starkly with Cynthia’s frenzied entry.
She made no move toward sitting down, so I had to remain standing.
Anxiety was written on her face. “The police have questioned me again, Press. They think I murdered Professor Fortier.”
“Have they said that?” I asked.
“Their questions pointed to that. They’d found that letter where I wrote that I meant everything I’d said, and they kept waving it in my face.”
“They’re trying to panic you into saying something they can use against you.” Secretly, I felt glad the police suspected someone besides me. “How did you answer them?”
A frown creased her forehead. “I admitted writing the letter but said I had no intention of doing anything beyond that. They kept asking, and I kept saying the same thing over and over.” She paused, thinking. “They did ask one other thing—if I was jealous of your ... romantic relationship … with Professor Fortier.”
My temper flared. But I suppressed it and asked, “What did you tell them?”
“The truth—that I’d never heard of anything between you and Professor Fortier.” Her dark eyes asked an unspoken question.
“There never was anything,” I said. “I don’t know where they got that stupid idea.” But I’d better find out pretty quick.
“I didn’t think there was,” she said. A smile flickered across her face and was gone. “Oh, Press, you’ve got to help me prove I didn’t do it.”
Alarm shot through me. “Hold on, Cyn. How on earth can I do that?” I was doing a lousy job of getting rid of her. She was like a hurt child. A beautiful child.
“Why …” Her dark eyes widened. “You’ll prove I didn’t do it by finding out who did. That’s what you did with that Wiccan last fall.”
“Former Wiccan,” I said. “We just got lucky.”
A smile formed at the corners of her lips. “I know better than that, Press. There’s not another professor on this campus that has your brains.”
“I could name several,” I said. All of them were smart enough not to become pariahs. But Mara Thorn’s brilliance stood out above them all. She’d solved problems last fall that I couldn’t begin to solve.
Cynthia’s voice rose to near panic. “You’ve got to help me, Press. I don’t know where else to turn.” Under her dark gaze I felt the full impact of her beauty.
“No promises,” I said, “but I’ll see what I can do.” That seemed vague enough to be safe.
“Thank you, Press.” She smiled and her eyes sparkled. “I knew I could count on you.”
With one step, she closed the distance between us. She stood for a moment gazing into my eyes. I grew increasingly aware of her delicate perfume. Then she put her arms around my neck and kissed me.
The liquid clarinet moved again to the forefront of my consciousness.
Cynthia kissed the same way she’d done her schoolwork as a student—thoroughly and with great attention to detail. I confess that I gave it equal attention.
After a while, she stepped back and gave me a shy glance. “I might as well tell you, Press. I’ve been in love with you since that first day in your class ten years ago.”
I hope I didn’t look as stupefied as I felt. “I ... I never had any inkling of that, Cyn. I’m glad you kept it to yourself. Just knowing it would have been awkward …”
“That’s why I never told anyone. You were married, and everyone knew you and Faith were head over heels in love. If she were ... still here, I’d never have taken this job.”
I felt increasingly stupid. No, terrified was a better word. Conflicting impulses battled each other in my mind. On the one hand, I was too much aware of Cynthia’s closeness and soft femininity. On the other hand, the twenty years’ difference in our ages posed an apparently insurmountable barrier. And all the while, that soft clarinet in my mind played its seductive melody.
“I ... I don’t know what to say,” I stammered.
“You don’t have to say anything, Press.” Cynthia’s smile hovered close before my face. She seemed as calm now as she’d been distraught when she came in. Then her smile gave way to deep seriousness. “I believe in you, Press. I know you’ll find the murderer.”
I wanted to say that I’d only committed myself to see what I could do. But I couldn’t say anything. Cynthia’s sudden change of mood had me too confused.
Just as suddenly, her smile returned. “I’m glad I waited for you, Press.” She touched her left forefinger to her lips and then touched it to mine. “I know you’ll find him.”
Before I could reply, she whisked her coat from the coat rack and was gone. So was the soft clarinet music, for my internal orchestra sounded the opening chords of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4.
It occurred to me that I’d done a lousy job of getting rid of her. Instead, I’d let myself get halfway committed to doing two things I’d had no intention of doing before she came in. And there was no telling where either one of them would lead.
“Professor Barclay.”
I looked up and found Sergeant Ron Spencer standing in the doorway.
“My wife said you called,” he said. “It seemed just as quick to come by on my way home.”
“I’m glad you did,” I said. My mind shifted out of stupefaction and back to business. “Bruno Pinkle searched my office earlier today—legally, of course—but after he left I found a CD in my desk that wasn’t there before.”
Spencer looked skeptical. “You’re saying he put it there?”
“I’m saying only that it isn’t mine, and it wasn’t there before. I don’t want to touch it, and I’d hoped you could find out what was on the disk.”
Spencer frowned. “You’re suggesting that Pinkle planted some kind of false evidence on you. That will be hard to prove, and I’m not sure I’d like to try.”
In the past, he’d always maintained good eye contact, but now his gaze focused on my face below eye level.
“All I’m asking you to do is check the fingerprints and learn the content of the CD,” I said. “Pinkle wasn’t wearing gloves, and I haven’t touched the thing.”
Spencer looked pained. “You’re asking me to investigate a fellow officer. I won’t do that unless you file a complaint against him.”
“You know what will happen if I file a complaint. Word will get to Clyde Staggart, and the evidence will disappear. This has to be kept quiet until too much is on record for it to be suppressed. Or do you want to help them frame me?”
“You don’t have to put it that way, Dr. Barclay.”
I admit I’d given Ron an unfair shot. He’d been one of my better students. Last fall, he’d played along with Mara and me, heard the murderer’s inadvertent confession, and made the actual arrest. Only a few days ago, he’d warned me that Staggart had assigned Pinkle to get me indicted. But now, I was straining his friendship to the limit
by asking him to take my word over that of a fellow policeman.
If he had looked pained before, he now looked like a man suffering Comanche hospitality. Like hot coals poured onto his abdomen.
“All right,” he said at last. “I’ll take the disk and have it fingerprinted, and I’ll find out what’s on it. Beyond that, I won’t make any commitment.”
“That’s all I ask, Ron,” I said. “Let the evidence lead wherever it will.”
While he watched, I used the erasers of two pencils to lift the offending disk’s plastic casing out of the drawer and onto the surface of my desk. From another drawer I took a Ziploc bag full of rubber bands and dumped the rubber bands back in the drawer. I again used pencils to slide the encased CD into the Ziploc bag.
“There’ll be plenty of my fingerprints on the bag,” I said. “But headquarters should have them on file from last fall.”
Still gazing somewhere below my eyes, Spencer nodded and zipped the bag shut. “I don’t understand the game about this CD,” he said, “but you ought to know that I’m having a harder and harder time believing you.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“The business about you and Professor Fortier.”
My stomach tensed. “What business? I found her dead in her office. That’s all.”
His lips drew tight. “That’s far from all, according to her. She kept a journal.”
I stood stunned into silence while Spencer fixed his gaze on my face. I finally managed to stammer out, “A journal?”
“A journal in Professor Fortier’s handwriting.” Spencer’s jaw tightened. “I managed to get a look at it in the evidence room. It tells of her ... uh ... romance with you going back for years—several years before your wife died, as a matter of fact.”
“That can’t be,” I said. “Nothing like that ever happened.”
His gaze stayed focused on my face, still somewhere below the eyes. “Like I said, Professor Barclay, I’m having a harder and harder time believing you.” He waved the Ziploc bag with the CD inside. “But I’ll go with you this far. The physical evidence will tell its own story. We won’t have to take anyone’s word for that.”
When he left, I had the feeling I’d lost a good friend.
CHAPTER 19
Sergeant Spencer’s news of a journal by Mitra Fortier had stunned me so much that I forgot to ask details of its contents. Mitzi had been Faith’s friend and confidante, but she’d never sent so much as a flirtatious glance in my direction. So what was this nonsense about the journal of an affair? I couldn’t fathom it. Nor could I fathom Cynthia Starlington’s unexpected declaration of love. The two hitting in quick succession had me totally confused.
So I sat and brooded. The more I considered the idea of a journal, the less sense I could make out of it. So I shifted into worrying about Cynthia. Of course, I was attracted to her—what male wouldn’t be? And her kiss awoke impulses in me that I thought had died with Faith.
As I remembered the kiss, my internal musicians gave a reprise of that soft clarinet—a pleasant memory.
I didn’t love Cynthia. But if letting her love me would make her happy, why not go along with it? So what if I was twenty years her senior? Why shouldn’t I seek happiness for whatever years were left to me?
Before my imagination gained control, reason crept in like a rancid tide. I knew very little about Cynthia. Her emotional tirade directed at Mitzi Fortier was hardly a good character reference. All I knew of Cynthia’s years between her graduation here and her return as faculty was that she’d earned a doctorate in philosophy. But I did know that her words this afternoon weren’t entirely truthful.
It might be true that she’d been in love with me from her first day in my class. But she’d also said, “I’m glad I waited for you, Press.” She’d given me a truly remarkable kiss. And it could possibly be true that she had waited for me.
But she’d been practicing while she waited.
My internal clarinet departed its lower register with a long Artie Shaw-style glissando that hit the keynote a quarter tone flat.
Feminine heel-clicks in the hallway startled me out of my brooding. Had Cynthia come back for another installment? Half of me hoped she had, and the other half wanted more time to think things out.
Neither half got its wish, for the woman who stood in the doorway was Mara Thorn. Surprisingly, my gloomy mood vanished—perhaps because I was glad to see her or, perhaps, because my cerebral orchestra changed to a feisty trumpet concerto by Telemann. The feistiness fit Mara’s personality, and I found myself smiling.
But Mara wasn’t. Her eyes focused below mine the same way Sergeant Spencer’s had, and her voice came as hard and metallic as her blue steel gaze.
“Dr. Sheldon is fed up with that assisted living place, and I’m taking him to Goolock’s for supper. He has new information and wants you to join us.”
“I’ll be there,” I said. I should have known better than to ask my next question. “Say, is something wrong with my appearance? You’re looking at me the same way Sergeant Spencer did.”
Mara’s eyes became the acetylene torch she’d shown me several times in the past. “You’re going to get looks like that until you wipe the lipstick off your face. Whose lipstick is it? The brunette bombshell that massages your back publicly in the campus grill?”
I took out my handkerchief and wiped my lips with it.
She burned me with another glance. “How do you always manage to get it on your teeth?”
“What do you mean ‘always’? It only happened once before.”
I knew what she meant. During our investigation the previous fall, a female suspect tried to bribe me with a kiss. The evidence of it had incensed Mara so much that our partnership almost ended before it began. Mara thought I’d been pursuing pleasure while she risked her job by searching the suspect’s office.
“You mean once that I know of,” she said, “and that’s once too often.”
“It could have been twice,” I said, “except that you don’t wear lipstick.”
Her acetylene torch became a blast furnace. “That is a dead issue, Professor Barclay.” She pointed a finger at me. “Now. Can you contain your libidinous impulses sufficiently to continue this investigation, or shall I tell Dr. Sheldon you’re too busy with personal affairs to participate?”
No one in this world is more stuffily officious than an angry professor who’s trying to be impersonal. I didn’t dare tell her that. Her blast furnace had scorched me enough, and I had no desire to see if she could generate a supernova. So I made another mistake just as bad.
“All right,” I said. “So she kissed me. And what’s going on with you and your used car salesman?”
“Not anything you imagine,” she snapped. “Either join Dr. Sheldon and me or not. I don’t care.”
With that, she pivoted and swept out of the office.
I retreated to my desk and rested my head in my hands. Mara was the closest thing to a friend that I had on this campus, and I’d hurt her by reminding her of our one kiss. Despite all the rumors, that was the only time we’d “colored outside the lines,” to use Mara’s phrase. It happened in our darkest hour, when both our futures hung on what happened in the next ten minutes. She’d kissed me not as an enticement but in appreciation of what we were going through together.
Now I had tarnished it by giving it a meaning neither of us intended. That made me question my feelings toward both Mara and Cynthia. I was still pondering when the phone rang.
My daughter’s voice sounded tense. “Daddy, I had to let you know what’s going on.”
“What is that, Cindy?” I could tell it wasn’t going to be good.
“You remember that the university administration refused to do anything about the Residence Life Groups’ stealing our newspapers ... ” She paused, apparently to see how I would respond.
“I remember.” I also remembered advising her to stay out of the conflict.
“Well,” she continued, “M
ark and I organized a demonstration protesting the administration’s failure to act. More than five hundred students joined us ... ”
“I imagine that made you as popular as a polecat in a polling booth.”
“That’s the understatement of the year, Daddy. Some of the Residence Life crowd yelled insults and began pushing some of our people around ... ”
“Did your crowd do anything to provoke it?”
“Nothing at all. Mark and I had briefed everyone that we had to be above reproach. We carried signs with slogans like, ‘Punish theft, not free speech.’ But there wasn’t one word to provoke trouble.”
“Some people regard disagreeing with them as sufficient provocation.”
“I can’t help that,” Cindy said. “All we were doing was exercising our right to free speech and peaceable assembly.”
“What is your administration doing about it?” As if I didn’t know.
“Six of us—including Mark and me—have to face a disciplinary hearing tomorrow. We’re charged with ‘hate speech’ and ‘inappropriate conduct.’ They said our actions constituted a ‘clear and present danger’ to everyone on campus.”
I could have told her something like that would happen. But I only asked, “Do you need a lawyer?”
“They won’t let us have one, Daddy. They said this is an administrative procedure, not a court of law.”
I’d heard that dodge before. “That’s correct as far as it goes, Cindy, but the law can come into it after the university makes its administrative ruling. Have you ever heard of CIRCA—the Council for Individual Rights on Campus?”
“The what?”
“Council for Individual Rights on Campus. It’s a non-profit organization that helps students defend their constitutional and legal rights. They’ve straightened out quite a few situations like yours. Contact them.”
I heard Cindy draw in a breath. “I don’t think we need them yet, Daddy. Mark and I are ready to defend ourselves before any fair-minded group.”
“It won’t be fair-minded, Cindy. You need to contact CIRCA right now.” I gave her the URL for the organization’s website.