by Donn Taylor
“I’ll keep checking,” Morley said. “Meanwhile, Press, take care of yourself. People involved with dirty money play rough.”
After we rang off, I sat there wondering what to do next. Then Mara’s cell phone rang again.
Cindy’s voice came through as sweet as ever but tinged with worry. “Daddy, I had to call and check on you. I’ve been worried.”
“I’m okay, Cindy,” I said, “but how did you know to call me on Professor Thorn’s phone?”
Her voice had steel in it. “I got no answers on your landline and only voice mail on your cell phone. So I called your next-door neighbor.” She sucked in her breath. “He said he saw you drive off with a blonde, so I tried Professor Thorn’s number.”
“How did you get that?” I asked. “She only gives that to friends.”
“She gave it to me last Christmas when we all had dinner together. She said we both were fighting Establishments, so I should call if I needed advice.”
“I’ve been worried about your situation,” I said, eager to change the subject. “How’s that going?”
“You don’t get off that easy, Daddy.” Her voice rang with resolution. “The TV is saying awful things about you and Professor Fortier and that Professor Thorn. I don’t believe a word of it, but I had to call and see how you’re doing.”
Her tone said she had to know if I’d cheated on her mother.
“I swear to you, Cindy, there’s not a word of truth in it. But trying to disprove it is something else again. We’re working on it, but we haven’t gotten very far.”
Cindy’s voice stiffened. “Who is that ‘we,’ Daddy? You and Professor Thorn?”
“That’s right,” I said. “We’re the two people who’ve been lied about, so we’ve joined forces to try to disprove the lies.”
“And where are you now, Daddy? I know you’re not at home.”
“I’m in a motel in Cloverdale.”
“And where is Professor Thorn?”
“She’s in the same motel. She’s on the third floor, and I’m on the second, so turn off the suspicions.”
Cindy’s voice half-sobbed. “I have to believe you, Daddy. I have to believe none of that ... that awful stuff is true.”
“Look, sweetness,” I said, “you know how I loved your mother, and I hope you know how I love you. I could never betray either one of you.”
Even as I said it, my conscience stabbed me for imagining a fling with Cynthia Starlington.
“All right, Daddy.” Cindy’s voice softened. “You know that I trust you.”
“You may have to, honey,” I said. “I don’t know if we can disprove those stories. But how is your situation?”
She gave a sad laugh. “We’re in limbo, but that beats being convicted without hope. The Council for Individual Rights on Campus has threatened the university with a lawsuit on our behalf. Mark Weston says if it goes to court, the university will be the laughing stock of all academia. But so far there’s been no response. All we can do is wait.”
I thought Mark was too optimistic. Time and time again, universities have proved shameless in enforcing political correctness. They no sooner lose in court than they figure some other way to deny the same basic rights to students or faculty who don’t have the approved politics.
But all I said was, “We’ll hope the administration does the right thing.”
We said we loved each other and rang off.
My heart went out to Cindy. In spite of the scripture Pastor Tammons cited, at times like these, I find it hard to believe God is actually working in the world. Nevertheless, I suppressed my skepticism and prayed for Cindy. This time, my prayers didn’t bounce back from the ceiling.
I woke next morning to gray overcast skies and winds that whistled in the electric wires outside my window. I showered and shaved.
Afterwards, Mara and I returned to the café where we’d eaten the night before. The middle-aged waitress had been replaced by a tall, thin woman equipped with a voice like a buzz saw. Mara ordered eggs, bacon, and toast while I splurged with an order of two eggs, bacon, and a full stack of pancakes.
The waitress cranked up her whangy voice. “Grits?”
“Half a dozen,” I said.
She squinted one eye. “You don’t count ’em, Sonny. You gets three spoonfuls on yer plate. Don’t you know nothin’ about civilization?”
“I’m culturally deprived,” I said.
The waitress continued honking. “You must be that man from Mars what Hildegarde was telling me about last night.” She sniffed twice. “You don’t smell like him, though. She said he smelt like he hadn’t took a bath since the planet was formed, but you smell almost human.”
“Thanks for the endorsement,” I said.
Mara intervened. “Could you put in our order please? We have to go to work.”
The waitress departed, muttering something about “not from Mars, no matter what she says.”
Mara graciously avoided comment until our food arrived. The food itself was delicious, further proof that the diet police had not yet destroyed the cuisine of Cloverdale.
Mara seized the check and settled it, probably to preclude any further byplay between me and the waitress. As we left, the waitress muttered something about “... no man from Mars.”
I suppose you can’t satisfy everyone.
We crept back to Overton City on roads that were icy but drivable.
In late morning, Mara’s cell phone rang. I answered, and Dr. Sheldon’s great voice boomed in my ear. “Press, have you heard anything from Freda Broyles? She seems to have disappeared.”
“No contact for a couple of days,” I said. “Mara visited with her yesterday morning. What’s going on?”
His voice showed concern. “We don’t know. Weldon Combes called me and asked if you or I knew anything about her. He had to be desperate to call me. How should I know where she is? She didn’t show up for classes this morning. She wasn’t at home, and he couldn’t find anyone who’d seen her since noon yesterday. He’s worried she might have suffered the same fate as Mitra Fortier.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know anything about it.”
He sighed. “All right. But there’s good news, too. President Cantwell is out of danger. He’ll be weak as fleas on a field mouse, but he’ll pull through. And I found some information on that research project. When can we get together?”
I thought a minute. “How about tonight? This afternoon I have to rent a car and pacify my insurance company.”
“Tonight’s fine,” he said, “but not here. This confounded place is driving me nuts. How about your house?”
“Okay by me, but maybe you should talk to Mara about it.” I handed her the phone. Her past avoidance of my house had bordered on phobia.
She said yes and handed the phone back to me. “The rumors can’t get any worse,” she said, “and, at least, we have a chaperone.”
I asked if she knew anything about Freda Broyles’ alleged disappearance.
She frowned. “Nothing. I leaned on her conscience for letting Mitra’s fantasies ruin our reputations—that was before Dean-Dean suspended us—but it didn’t seem to make a dent in her.”
I considered Freda’s horned-toad physique. “If you did make a dent in her, would it show?”
Mara’s chin raised that eloquent fraction of an inch. “That is a most unkind remark, Preston Barclay. What if she’s tried to complete Mitra’s investigation and gotten herself ... into real trouble?”
“I sit corrected,” I said. The customary cliché was “stand corrected,” but Mara had corrected me for using it while sitting the night we raided the executive center.
Her eyes never left the road, but she showed the flicker of a smile.
She dropped me at my place around noon and headed out toward hers. But instead of calling the insurance company, I called my list of suspects. Ralph Dornberg had denied knowing anything about Dustin Industries, so I began with Emory Estes.
Before
he could try to sell me a car, I asked, “What can you tell me about Dustin Industries, Incorporated?”
“About what?” He sounded surprised. “I never heard of it.”
“Don’t you own stocks?” I asked.
He grew wary. “They’re my business and not yours. Press, you’re already in trouble. You could get hurt worse than you are now.”
Before I could reply he said, “I hear you smashed your car. I can make you a real good deal on a replacement.”
I said I’d think about it and hung up.
Next I called Steven Drisko and asked the same question. “What do you know about a company called Dustin Industries?”
He answered without hesitation. “Not a thing, Professor Barclay. Or maybe I should say former Professor Barclay.”
“Thanks for the optimism,” I said. “You know nothing about Dustin Industries?”
His voice remained even. “Nothing at all. But I’ll have some of my people look into it. Call me tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll tell you what they found. Meanwhile, take care of yourself. I hear you had an accident.”
He broke the connection. Thus far I was getting nowhere, but out of sheer stubbornness, I placed a long-distance call to Gordon Samstag and asked the same question.
Samstag said he was sorry about my accident and it wouldn’t be proper to discuss my suspension before the administration acted on it, but he would be in Overton City tomorrow and we could talk about Dustin Industries then.
“Could you tell me something now?” I asked.
“Better we talk about it in person,” he said. “One-thirty in my Overton City office?”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“However,” he added, “you’d be much wiser to let this rest.”
“I’ll see you at one-thirty,” I said and hung up.
Then the doorbell rang. I dragged over to answer it and found Manny Clampett on my doorstep. I invited him in, but he said he had to get home to Mama if he wanted to keep peace in the family. Then he added, “I thought you might need these things from your car.”
He handed me the papers from the glove compartment, the fingerprint reader I’d also stashed there, and my voice recorder he’d found on the floor—the recorder I’d needed so badly in Cloverdale. He also handed me my cell phone, smashed beyond use.
Sic transit gloria technicae, I thought. But I said, “Thank you, Manny. You’ve really gone the Second Mile.”
“No, I ain’t,” he said. “Your place is only half a mile off my route home.”
Okay, so Manny doesn’t register on allusions. He’s a great mechanic, and I’m grateful to him for keeping my Honda running ten years past its forecast demise.
“We got good pictures of what was done to your brake lines,” he added. “Call me when you needs ’em.”
I thanked him, and he departed on his connubial peacekeeping mission.
I spent the next hour wrangling with my insurance company. The claims adjuster showed no interest in someone’s tampering with my brakes. The upshot was that because I carried no collision insurance for my antiquated Honda, the only settlement would be medical expenses, of which I had none unless I put in a claim for Mara’s bottle of liniment.
“Thanks,” I said.
“For what?” Puzzlement showed in his voice.
“You’re the first person I’ve talked to in three days that hasn’t asked me about Mitra Fortier.”
He began, “Say, I wondered about that—”
I hung up on him.
I tried to call Sergeant Ron Spencer about the CD Bruno Pinkle planted in my desk, but I again got his distraught wife. She hadn’t seen or heard from him in three days.
I told her that if I saw him I’d tell him to call home. Then I worried about Ron. He’d been a good friend, and I hoped my giving him that CD hadn’t gotten him into trouble. But there was nothing I could do about that now.
Next, I called a car rental to arrange for temporary wheels. By then, the winter night was descending and the rental agent, like Manny Clampett, wanted to go home to Mama. So he told me to call back in the morning. Where I wanted him to go had nothing to do with Mama, but with admirable restraint I refrained from advising him of that preference.
That done, I contemplated a change into my blue suit. It was too dirty from the wreck, so I stayed in the brown one. It was disreputably wrinkled by now, but it would have to do.
Somewhere in there, I realized my internal orchestra had been shut down for several hours—a welcome relief from distraction.
Afterwards, I dined on the customary ham sandwich and coffee while trying to make sense of all that was happening. As a historian, my stock in trade was sifting through reams of data until I found a pattern. But in this case I had reams of data with no apparent pattern. There were incomplete sub-patterns, of course. The most serious was Jerry Vaughan’s and Mitra’s interest in Dustin Industries just before their murders. Yes, murders. I agreed with the police about Mitra’s death, and after hearing Joe Cochran’s story, I had no doubt about Jerry’s. The missing links in that pattern had to wait until Leonard Morley learned more about Dustin Industries. My interim hypothesis was that Gordon Samstag, Steven Drisko, or both were deeply involved. I had no evidence to involve Ralph Dornberg and Emory Estes.
Mitra’s journal presented a more pressing problem. It was flagrantly untrue, but completely damning for Mara and me. We now knew about Mitra’s fantasy life, but our two witnesses— three counting Freda—refused to come forward. Because this was not a court case, we could not subpoena them and compel their testimony.
So as the temperature fell in the Midwestern winter night, I could only hope Leonard Morley would find the key to Dustin Industries or that Dr. Sheldon’s research on Brill Drisko would turn up something helpful on the two murders.
On the problem of the journal, I had no hope at all.
CHAPTER 35
Mara and Dr. Sheldon parked in front of my house at six-thirty. He again showed his fierce independence by wheeling himself up the walk to the front door. There he turned himself around with a triumphant flourish. While Mara held the door, I wheeled him backwards up the one step and across the threshold into the entryway. Mara hung his hat and their topcoats beside mine on the coat rack, and we proceeded into the dinette with Dr. Sheldon leading the way.
The dinette had originally been a full-size dining room, but they had to expand the living room to make room for Faith’s Steinway. The living room received the outside wall and windows, and the dining room became the dinette, an interior nook between the living room and the old-fashioned spacious kitchen. It was a cozy fit for tonight’s business session.
When we were seated on three sides of the table, Dr. Sheldon said, “Mara told me about your trip. I’m sorry you found no help on the suspensions.”
“What about Freda Broyles?” I asked.
“I’ve told all I know. She didn’t show up for class this morning and wasn’t at home, so Malcolm Combes phoned around and found that no one had seen her since noon yesterday.” He rubbed his palms together. “Your suggestion to check on Brill Drisko in Las Vegas has borne fruit.”
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Mara said. “What about her?”
Dr. Sheldon showed the smile he uses when he’s posed a question no one can answer. “None of the current entertainment websites proved helpful.”
“Brill has lived in Overton City for more than two years,” I said. “For Las Vegas, you’d have to find a historical site or an archive.”
The leonine brow furrowed. “That is precisely what I did, child. It’s called ‘Vegas Historical Review,’ but it did not immediately solve the problem because I did not know the lady’s maiden name.”
“If she ever qualified for one,” Mara said, looking at me.
Dr. Sheldon ignored her comment. “But I did know the lady’s husband’s name. So I searched under his name and ... Voila!” He waved his hands like a stage magician. “I found he’d married one Brill Kramersdo
rf about three months after that faculty trip to Sin City.”
“So that gave you the lead you needed?” Mara asked.
He frowned. “Unfortunately, no.” He brightened again. “But I returned to the Vegas Historical Review site and found they had archives in depth. Drisko must have met the lady during the faculty trip, so I chose that week and perused photographs of the various shows.”
He shook his head. “That site dealt in more flesh than the Fort Worth stockyards, and I looked through most of it without finding what we were after.”
“I’m sure that pained you deeply,” Mara said, “but you did find Brill?”
“That I did.” Dr. Sheldon showed a self-satisfied grin. “The photo showed her as the star of what I would euphemistically call a burlesque show. There was no mistaking her with those tight peroxide curls. But you’ll never guess her stage name …”
“I won’t even try,” Mara said.
“You have to understand the pictorial presentation,” Dr. Sheldon continued, careful to build suspense. “With one hand she held some kind of fan that covered the essentials, more or less. With the other hand she pointed a forefinger at the camera and her viewers. And she glowered as if she were daring her viewers to do I-don’t-know-what. The photo showed her stage name—Ruby Conn.”
I groaned. “That’s terrible.”
Dr. Sheldon smiled in satisfaction. “If you think that’s terrible, just wait: The caption under the photo said, ‘Don’t cross me, Caesar.’”
I groaned again. “That’s the worst pun I ever heard.”
“Almost as bad as some of yours,” Mara said.
“Let us stay focused on our research, children,” Dr. Sheldon said. “So now we know Brill Drisko is a former burlesque queen. The place where she performed was owned by a gentleman named Guido Stefano, who is reputed to be involved in various illegal activities in Vegas. And there were a few hints that before she became a star, Brill had a second job in an escort service.”
“No wonder she didn’t want me looking into her past,” I said. “It seems Steven Drisko bought himself a bundle of trouble. At last week’s reception, she had quite a time with younger trustees who hadn’t brought their wives.”