by Donn Taylor
I pulled the lever that lowered the seat back, but nothing happened. I put my other hand on it and pulled as hard as I could. With a slapping noise, the seat back collapsed. I managed to wriggle out from under the steering wheel and over the flattened passenger seat to the rear door. Miraculously, that door handle worked. The door opened, and I tumbled out into the street.
While I brushed fragments of shattered glass off my suit and the crowd of onlookers gabbled, the truck driver made uncomplimentary remarks about my probable origins. To the best of my knowledge, he was misinformed.
He ended his diatribe with a reasonable question. “Where’ja learn to drive?”
I knew the answer but found it safer to say, “Ich spreche keine English.”
He looked puzzled. “What are you? Some kind of furriner?”
I said, “Je ne parle pas l’anglais.”
At that point, a policeman took me aside and asked if I wanted transportation to a hospital. When I said I didn’t, he jerked his head toward the accident scene, and said, “Okay, you hit him from behind. What’s yer excuse?”
“My brakes failed,” I said.
He gave me a look normally reserved for Iranian used car salesmen. “I’ve heard that one before.”
“I imagine people’s brakes have failed before,” I said.
“I’ll bet you was yappin’ on a cell phone,” he said.
“I’m not a ‘phoney,’” I said.
His facial expression filed a nonconcurrence, but he said nothing. Instead, he wrote a citation for following too closely and failure to maintain my vehicle.
When he asked where I wanted the vehicle towed, I told him Manny Clampett’s garage.
He waved to one wrecker among the flock that converged on the scene like buzzards. The wrecker driver winched what was left of my Honda up onto the flatbed of his wrecker. I knew the car was totaled. I’d been lucky to escape with bruises and wrenched joints.
The truck driver left after donating a few more dirty looks. His truck appeared no worse for the encounter. The crowd also drifted away. I leaned against a lamppost and felt in my pocket for my cell phone. It wasn’t there.
The policeman looked up from writing his report and spoke in a softer voice. “Lose yer phone? I’ll give ya one local call. What’s the number?”
I gave Dr. Sheldon’s number. The policeman punched it in and handed me the phone. He kept an eye on me so I couldn’t steal it.
When Dr. Sheldon answered, I explained what happened and asked if Mara would pick me up. He spoke a few words away from the phone, then said Mara was on her way.
Perhaps ten minutes later, she picked me up in her Buick and asked if I was hurt.
“Bruises only,” I said. “The luck of the Irish, I guess.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re not Irish.”
“I stole the luck,” I said.
Mara made no reply but drove grim-faced. She let me borrow her phone, and I called Manny Clampett to tell him the car was coming. He was as surprised as I was at the brake failure. He knew that I’m a fanatic about tires, brakes, and oil changes. That and Manny’s mechanical skills were the reasons my Honda had remained operational in spite of being old enough to vote. I gave him Mara’s cell number if he needed to call back.
In Dr. Sheldon’s room, the old lion greeted me with an anxious look. “Children,” he said, “President Cantwell is in serious condition in the hospital. He may not make it.”
I took a moment for silent prayer. Our president really wants to do right by the college, but too many people are pulling him in too many directions. He hasn’t yet learned to set a course and lead others to follow.
When I opened my eyes, I saw Mara’s lips form a silent “Amen.”
Dr. Sheldon launched into business. “Press, I don’t know what you’ve gotten into, but it looks dangerous. What can we do to help?”
I sank into the room’s one easy chair. “The answer to both questions is that I don’t know. The only thing certain is that I’ve made several people awfully mad.”
He laughed. “You have a talent for that. The question is who they are and how you’ve made them mad.”
I named Gordon Samstag, Steven and Brill Drisko, Emery Estes, Malcolm Combes, and Freda Broyles. “All by asking questions,” I said. “Every one of them has warned me off. What I really don’t understand is the harassment by tough characters that look like mob operatives.”
Mara was perched on a straight-back chair. “You’ve said all of those except Brill were in on that trip to Las Vegas several years ago. Maybe one of them got tangled up with the mob like last semester’s murderer did.”
“But which one?” I asked. “I can’t find enough evidence to justify suspicion.”
Dr. Sheldon harrumphed. “Let’s begin by listing the problems we’re trying to solve. The most pressing is Mara’s being charged with child pornography. Next is that journal claiming an illicit affair and a love triangle. That leads to the third, the unsolved problem of Mitra’s death.”
“I can see how the journal and the death could be related,” Mara said, “but I don’t have a clue how that stuff got on my computer. I always use that fingerprint security device Richmond Seagrave gave me.”
“I called Seagrave about that,” I said, and told them how a lifted fingerprint could fool the device. I also told how Bruno Pinkle tried to get into my computer and, when he couldn’t, left a strange CD in my desk drawer.
“What was on the CD?” Dr. Sheldon asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, and explained about persuading Ron Spencer to fingerprint it. “But Ron has disappeared. His own wife doesn’t know where he is.”
“That’s a great help,” Mara said.
I couldn’t think of any way to paint a rosy picture, but I wanted to leave her with a pleasant thought. “I still think there’s hope, Mara. Staggart and Pinkle tried to plant something on my computer, and they came back and took the hard drive. That time they brought Dogface with them.”
“That poor man.” Mara shook her head. “He looks like everything Staggart does hurts him, but he has to go along if he wants to keep his job.” She looked a question before she asked it. “Why could they get into my computer when they couldn’t get into yours?”
“I hide my fingerprint reader in a bookcase,” I said. “Where do you keep yours?”
Her face showed disgust. “On my desk. I didn’t know it could be bypassed.”
“Neither did I until Seagrave told me,” I said. “I just didn’t want the net administrator to know I had one.”
We hit a dead end with that, so we went on to other things. I briefed them on Elmo Koonz’s seeing “three guys” enter the Science Center the night Mitra was killed. And I repeated Malcolm Combes’ shocking admission of finding Mitra’s body. Dr. Sheldon exclaimed, “That yellow rat,” thus revealing that he’d been watching old gangster movies on TV.
“Now tell me what you learned from Freda Broyles,” I said to Mara.
She torched me with a blue glance. “Not until you tell me what Brill Drisko wanted with you.”
“Children, let us not squabble,” Dr. Sheldon said.
“All right,” I said. “Brill phoned and wanted me to come out to her house and talk.” Mara looked skeptical, so I added, “At least, that’s what she said. I told her I had to keep office hours, and she showed up there. She claimed she wanted me to ‘stop the investigation,’ and I told her I wasn’t investigating anything. She came back at me with my questioning Emory Estes about Jerry Vaughan’s crash. That was at lunch, so someone told her about it in a hurry. She said she didn’t want people to find out she’d been a showgirl, that it would ruin her marriage if they knew …”
“As if they didn’t already,” Mara said.
“My thought exactly,” I said, and ignored Mara’s raised eyebrow. “She said if I kept poking into things, I’d make somebody mad enough to do something about it. Then she stalked me and tried to bribe me with seduction …”
&
nbsp; “And you protected your virtue by running away,” Mara said.
“I backed away until I ran out of space,” I said.
“Children, let us not quarrel,” said Dr. Sheldon.
Mara would not be diverted. “When I saw you, she had her hands on your shoulders, and you were gazing into each other’s eyes.”
“You ought to commend me that I looked at her eyes,” I said.
“Children—” said Dr. Sheldon.
“You’ve been in that pose before—with your baby brunette,” Mara said.
It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t told them Elmo Koonz had seen Cynthia Starlington come out of the Science Center on the fatal night. But I said, “Don’t change the subject. I kind of pushed Brill back and said I had to ask questions because something was threatening my job. She said my asking questions threatened my job, that her husband was a trustee, and I shouldn’t keep making people mad. Then she left. I don’t know whether the bribe or the threat was dominant.”
Mara turned to Dr. Sheldon. “What do you think of Brill Drisko?”
Dr. Sheldon’s eyes twinkled. “I think there’s a lot of her.”
Mara made a face and spoke one eloquent word—“Men!”
Still twinkling, Dr. Sheldon said, “You don’t think Brill radiates intellectual brain waves?”
Mara sniffed. “The only brain wave she ever had was waving good-bye.”
“Don’t underrate her,” I said. “There’s a lot of cunning behind that showgirl exterior.”
Mara lapsed into iceberg silence, but Dr. Sheldon mused, “It sounds like Brill got spooked by Press’ questions about Jerry Vaughan’s crash. That means we have to keep looking into the crash, too.” He pursed his lips, then added, “I’ve tried researching Brill, but I haven’t found anything yet.”
“Start with Las Vegas,” I said. “We know Drisko picked her up somewhere out West, and we know he went to Vegas with the faculty group. It’s a guess, but it’s a start.”
Dr. Sheldon rubbed his hands together. “I’ll get on it.”
We both looked at Mara, who returned from her Arctic journey. “When I visited Freda Broyles, it wasn’t clear who was going to ask the questions. She called the police last night because someone was breaking into Mitra Fortier’s house, and she asked if it was Press and me. I told her I never heard of such a thing, which was true to the best of my recollection. I don’t recall that we discussed breaking into her house—we only did it. Then Freda launched into a tirade about how she felt obligated to protect Mitra’s reputation against the slanders that were going around.”
Mara turned to Dr. Sheldon. “Freda asked me straight out if I’d had an affair with Press and a confrontation with Mitra. I answered ‘no’ to both counts. Then she got emotional and started rambling about how ‘that policeman’ kept coming around and bugging her.”
A lock of Mara’s blonde hair slipped onto her forehead and she brushed it back—a reminder of the femininity that lay behind her fortress façade.
She continued, “Freda said Mitra became like a younger sister to her. That was after Faith died. The point is that they—Freda and Mitra—confided in each other. And when Jerry Vaughan died in that crash, Freda grieved along with Mitra. Later, Mitra said she didn’t believe the crash was an accident. She never said why.”
Mara flipped her unruly lock back with a toss of her head— another remarkably feminine gesture. I enjoyed watching it as she continued her story.
“Freda does know that Mitra met several times with Robert Lee, who is a CPA like Jerry was. Freda thinks Mitra was onto something phooey—her word—about Samstag or Drisko. And about two weeks ago, Mitra told her she’d found a lead about the accident. She only needed a few more bits of information, and then she was going to ‘shake down the rafters.’ But she never said whose rafters.”
Mara gave up the battle against her unruly lock and let it brush freely on her forehead. “When Freda didn’t know any more on that subject, I asked about the dresses she took from Mitra’s house. She gave me the same story about their belonging to her and her being a collector of Regency costumes. I asked her point blank what she knew about that alleged journal, and she said she’d never heard of it until it was mentioned on the news …”
“But it wasn’t mentioned on the news,” I said. “The news cited unnamed ‘police sources.’ I only know about the journal because Ron Spencer told me.”
“I threw that at her, too, and she said she must have heard it through the campus rumor mill. I couldn’t pin her down about it.”
Mara’s exasperation showed. “So I made a strong pitch that Mitra’s reputation wasn’t the only one involved—that you and I were still alive and having to live with slander. She looked away and said we’d have to live with the consequences of whatever we’d done. Then she stood up and said she had to go to class, which was a lie because classes don’t start on the half hour. Then she kind of walked me out the door. The last thing she said was something about letting sleeping dogs lie or we might wind up like Mitra.”
“Wow,” I said.
Dr. Sheldon stroked his chin. “So we end up with more mystery than we started with. And no new leads.”
“One.” Mara’s eyes blazed. “Freda denied knowing anything about Mitra’s ex-husband, but she did say Mitra was raised by an aunt—I have her name—who’s now in a nursing home in Cloverdale. I checked the phone directory, and there’s only one nursing home there.”
She gave me a scorching glance. “Press, do you think you can tear yourself away from Brill Drisko and your baby brunette long enough to join me in asking questions?”
I deadpanned my response. “Professor Thorn, you know that is a loaded question, which as a matter of principle I decline to answer. However, I will be happy to join your question-asking expedition. There is also one co-owner of the fatal aircraft who lives in Cloverdale.”
Dr. Sheldon laughed. “Nothing stuffier than a professor on his high horse. You two have fun, but be careful. There’s a lot that we don’t understand.”
Mara checked her watch. “Shall we catch a quick lunch at Goolock’s and then go?”
I nodded, and we rose to go. At least, she rose. I strained up into a standing position with every bone and muscle protesting. It took three steps before my legs responded reliably to commands. And as I straggled out to Mara’s car, a mood of foreboding dominated my mind.
I didn’t know what we would find in Cloverdale, but it had better be good if we were going to salvage our reputations.
CHAPTER 29
As I dragged my aching carcass in at Goolock’s, Mrs. Lee gave me a worried look but said nothing. Mara ordered her customary Reuben and Coke. For variety, I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich with my coffee. We’d hardly settled in before Mara’s cell phone rang. She listened briefly and said, “Thank you. You’re very kind.” She rang off.
“That was Pastor Tammons,” she explained. “He said he didn’t believe a word of the things being said about us, and he offered to be a character witness for us.”
“There are still good people around,” I said. “Unfortunately, they’re not in a position to help us.”
That optimistic comment ended conversation. Robert Sun Lee came directly to our table as we were finishing.
“There’s something I think you ought to know,” he said. “Those toughs that the police stopped here the other night ... I think they were here because of you, so I think you should know how it ended.”
“I never thought to ask,” I said.
Lee frowned. “They and the patrolmen were still arguing when that captain of homicide arrived—”
“Staggart?” I asked.
“That’s the one. He gave orders to the patrolmen, and they packed up and left. Then he jerked a thumb at the toughs, and they headed out in a different direction.”
I mused aloud, “Why was a captain of homicide giving orders to patrolmen who don’t answer to him?”
“Where’s your Army training?”
Mara asked. “A captain is a captain, and that’s that.”
“I suppose that dog-faced sidekick of his was with him,” I said.
“He was alone,” Lee said. “And he was alone when I saw him today. He had a police car pulled driver-to-driver beside an unmarked car. The other driver was one of the bad guys from the other night—the one that kept looking daggers at you.”
That was a shocker. I knew Staggart was corrupt, but I never thought he’d be connected to organized crime. Or was I wrong in thinking the mugs harassing Mara and me were from the mob? Could Staggart have deployed an undercover police unit for such a trivial purpose?
“So maybe you’re in more trouble than you know,” Lee said. “People say you’re trying to find out who killed Professor Fortier.”
“That’s the least of my worries right now,” I said. “We’re trying to clear our names of that story about an affair and a lovers’ triangle.”
“And that stupid pornography charge,” Mara put in, her eyes blazing.
“That may be true,” Lee said, “but it also matters what people think you are doing. Is there anything about the pornography or the affair that would provoke those men into following you?”
Mara and I exchanged glances. We had no answers.
“If you have any ideas,” Mara said to Lee, “I wish you’d tell us.”
“My only idea is to stay out of trouble,” Lee said, nodding toward the counter where his mother held forth. “My parents depend on me, and I’m putting my sister through college. I can’t help any of them if I’m dead.”
“What is threatening you?” Mara asked.
Lee looked away. “Nothing if I’m not involved. Some things I don’t know and don’t want to know. But I gave information to two people, and both of them are dead.”