Curtains for Romeo

by Jessa Archer

  The exchange was confusing, and apparently it showed on my face, because Paige laughed when she turned around to see me at the foot of the stairs.

  “He’s Nathan’s stepdad. I’ll be up in my room. I have homework.”

  Travis handed me the paper bag after Paige disappeared up the staircase. “A little housewarming gift. I wrapped it myself.”

  I looked inside and smiled. “Bartles and Jaymes. Oh my God. I didn’t think they still sold this stuff.”

  “They call the flavor Fuzzy Navel now, but I’m pretty sure it will still taste like peaches. Sort of.”

  I laughed, thinking of the many times we had carried a cooler down to one of the more remote stretches of beach where we were less likely to get caught for underage drinking. Travis usually had a few Michelobs and I’d had either Zima or the earlier incarnation of the little peach beauties in the bag, because I really didn’t like beer. That’s still true, with a few exceptions.

  “Is this a throwback to your lawless days, Chief Lamm?”

  “I’m just glad the stretch of beach where we used to go is out of my jurisdiction,” he said. “I’d feel like a total hypocrite patrolling it given how much time we spent down there.”

  “Would you like one of these?” I asked. “Assuming you’re off duty…”

  “I am,” he said. “As much as a police chief is ever allowed to be off duty, that is. But I didn’t even drink those nasty things back in the day.”

  “Well, you can hardly expect me to drink alone.” I grinned. “Come on back to the kitchen. We’ll compromise.”

  He took a seat at the kitchen counter while I poured two glasses half full of iced tea. Then I cracked open one of the wine coolers and topped them off.

  Travis gave the glass a skeptical look and then took a sip. A very small sip. “That’s actually…not as disgusting as I thought it would be. Sort of a southern spin on Long Island Iced Tea. And definitely better than drinking it straight from the bottle.”

  He looked around the kitchen, taking in the granite countertops and new cabinets. “I see Miss Caroline decided to modernize.”

  “That was the realtor’s idea. I was going to put it on the rental market. It’s a bit of a hike to the beach, but he thought it might pull in a decent income if we upgraded the kitchen and bathrooms, and put in a hot tub for the patio. I came out two weeks ago, gave the renovations a final thumbs-up, and started the paperwork with the rental agency. Then, three days after I get back to California, Dean Prendergast calls.”

  “Oh, yeah. That reminds me.” Travis reached inside the pocket of the jacket he tossed over the back of the barstool and extracted a narrow black notebook. “We should probably get the official stuff out of the way first, before your wickedly strong drink takes effect.”

  So I gave him an overview of my morning, the one class I’d been able to teach, and Ben’s guided tour of Muncey Auditorium.

  “We’d just finished, and I remembered that I needed a blackboard. Tech Support was supposed to bring me one of those SmartBoards, but it hadn’t arrived yet. Ben said they stored big stuff like that down in the trap room sometimes. He went into the wings and came back with the control for the trap door and the lift. When I pushed the button…” I stopped, making a sick face. “The poor guy. Do they know the cause of death yet?”

  “Nothing definitive. There were wounds to the head, but the medical examiner said that at least one of them could have been due to a fall.”

  “So…you’re thinking it was an accident?”

  He shrugged. “At this point, we don’t really know. It may be tough to pin down an exact cause of death since the body has been there for a few weeks. They keep the temperature down in the theater during break, or it would have been worse than it was. The other professor, Dr. Peele, said they used the trap room to store some of their old files. Gradebooks, stuff like that. I guess it’s possible Amundsen went down to get some stuff before he left town and tripped and hit his head. Or maybe Amundsen forgot he had the trap open and fell in?”

  “Not unless that happened a few seconds after he opened it,” I said. “The lift is operated by a single button. You push once. The doors slide back as the lift rises, so there would only have been a few seconds where the fall would have been far enough down to be fatal. If Amundsen fell in, someone would still have needed to close the trap door. And the controls were offstage. Ben had to go get them when he opened it earlier.”

  “Very good points. One more question. What days were you in town for that final interview?”

  “January 4th and 5th,” I replied. “The dean said she got the resignation email from Amundsen on New Year’s Eve, and things moved quickly after that. I had the first video interview on the 2nd.”

  “What about the earlier trip you mentioned—the one where you were finalizing things with the realtor? Were you alone? Did you stay here?”

  “December 27th and 28th.” I frowned, beginning to wonder where this line of questioning was headed. “And yes. It was just me. But I didn’t stay here. It felt…”

  I really didn’t want to explain that I’d booked a hotel room because the house felt haunted. It’s not that I was afraid of my mom’s ghost. It’s more that I was worried about what seeing her ghost said about my sanity.

  “Is there any particular reason why you’re asking me all of this?”

  Travis huffed out a short laugh. “Yeah. A certain reporter who was on campus today pointed out that you were probably in town the day Amundsen was killed. I told her that was stupid, because first of all, we don’t know exactly when he died, and second, you were called about the job after the guy resigned. But Alicia said maybe he’d changed his mind about leaving and you found out. And I don’t think she even knew about the earlier trip you mentioned…but this is Alicia. I’m sure she’ll dig around and find out.”

  “Okay, that’s just ridiculous,” I said. “Today was the first time I’d even seen Amundsen. And, yes, my job in California ended. But I can get another job, for heaven’s sake. Does Alicia seriously think I’d be willing to kill a guy to take his job, especially one that pays less than what I could probably earn in California? That I’d be willing to murder someone in cold blood for a job I hadn’t even considered as an option before Dean Prendergast called?”

  “There is absolutely no telling what Alicia Brown thinks. That hasn’t changed one bit since high school. I’m not taking her accusation seriously, Tig. Hell, I don’t even know if you could call it an accusation. She’s just stirring stuff up. Just Alicia being Alicia.”

  Attila wandered into the room, rubbing his side against the leg of Travis’s jeans.

  “Well, hello there, Attila,” Travis said, reaching down to scratch the cat’s head. “Nathan told me all about you. He says you like to terrorize that poor little puppy next door.”

  I snorted. “I think a solid case can be made that the dog is the actual terrorist in that scenario, but yeah…Paige says Attila has chased the little rat back into his own yard on a few occasions when he managed to get out.”

  “Nathan told me about that, too. He had scratches clear to the elbow last summer when he and Paige tried to break up one of their territorial disputes.”

  “So…Nathan is your stepson?” I asked. “Any clue why my mother didn’t mention anything about us to Paige?”

  He looked surprised. “None at all. I met Paige this past summer and I told Nathan we knew each other in high school, but I didn’t go into detail. I figured Miss Caroline would have told Paige…and you, for that matter.”

  “Nope. All she said was she knew his family and that he was a good kid. One more thing I’ll have to ask her.” I stopped and then said, “Umm…Paige. I mean, I’ll have to ask Paige.”

  “Well, your mom was right. Nathan is a good kid. He’s had a rough time, though. I met his mom when I was working in Raleigh. Thought I could fix her, I guess. But…she’s been in and out of rehab most of her life. Nathan’s been with me most of the time since he was six. Lor
i—that’s my second wife—she seemed to be okay with it at first, but I think she saw Nathan as competition for my time. She already had to share me with my job, which was bad enough.”

  I noted that he was using past tense, which probably meant wife number two was history. Or maybe he’d only meant that she saw Nathan as competition when he was younger? I really wanted to sneak a peek at his ring finger, but that would be a little too obvious, so I switched the subject a bit instead.

  “Is Nathan angry at Paige for not telling him she was moving here?”

  Travis shrugged. “I saw him for a total of five minutes, and he was shoving food into his mouth half of that time. He likes Paige a lot, but I don’t think they were…exclusive, were they?”

  “No.” I decided not to add that it had been exclusive on Paige’s end, quite possibly because Paige hadn’t found anyone she was interested in at her school in California.

  “So,” Travis said, “I take it Paige’s dad isn’t in the picture anymore?”

  For a moment, I debated telling Travis the truth. But that has never been something that comes easily to me, at least not when talking about Dominic. I had told exactly two people the truth, and one of them was my mother, so the only person still alive who knew the full story was Justin. And he kind of had to know, since it was his name that wound up on Paige’s birth certificate.

  Paige figured out that Justin wasn’t her biological father long ago—even before she was a slightly-too-old flower girl for Justin and Jacob’s wedding five years earlier. I simply told her that her biological father didn’t want a child and that I didn’t want either of us to have to deal with his negativity. The truth is, I have no idea how Dominic would have reacted to the pregnancy because I never for even one moment considered telling him. As soon as I discovered the business he was in, I broke things off.

  And when the pregnancy test came back positive two weeks later, I called Justin and proposed. I wasn’t worried in the slightest about what people might think if I was an unwed mother. My one and only goal was to do everything possible to keep Dominic Carbone from wondering if my baby was also his.

  Justin and I had a quickie wedding in Vegas and a fun honeymoon at a resort in Puerto Vallarta, which we mostly spent lounging by the pool making up fake backstories for all of the other guests. When we got back to Burbank, Justin had a blast picking out chic maternity clothes for me to wear. His friends threw me the most fabulous baby shower ever, and two months after Paige was born, we quietly divorced. No one seemed to wonder why. If anything, they wondered how we could possibly have failed to realize that Justin was gay.

  Dominic was back in New Jersey—his usual stomping ground—long before I was visibly pregnant. He’d only been in Los Angeles because things had gotten a little too hot in Atlantic City and his papa thought a little time in the California sun might do him good.

  I was actually naive enough to believe that Nic’s family fortune was from the small chain of restaurants they ran on both coasts. But it’s hard to amass a fortune as large as that of the Carbone family by selling pasta and cannoli. Guns, drugs, and sex trafficking are far more lucrative.

  None of this seemed like a good thing to tell an old boyfriend who was also a cop, however, so I stuck with my usual cover story. “We didn’t last long. Turns out he’s gay.”

  Travis’s eyebrows arched upward, and I paused, waiting. He was had never been judgmental on sexual orientation when we were dating, and I was really, really hoping that much still held true. Because otherwise, I’d have no choice but to boot him to the curb. Anybody who has an issue with Justin has an issue with me.

  But he just said, “I’m a little surprised you didn’t figure that out before the wedding.”

  “Well…he was very handsome, and he swept me off my feet. I guess that’s one thing Caroline and I had in common.”

  The handsome part was true for both Justin and Dominic, but it was Dominic who’d swept me off my feet. I was completely smitten, even though Marina—Dominic’s cousin and Stepmother #3—tried to warn me that Nic was trouble. In retrospect, Marina could have been a little more explicit on the kind of trouble. I’d interpreted her warning more as a caution to steer clear of a lady-killer, not as a warning that her cousin was a literal killer.

  “Hey, I’m not judging,” Travis said. “According to one marriage counselor, I have a bad case of white-knight syndrome. Always looking for someone to rescue.”

  “Well, you’re a cop. I’m guessing that’s pretty common.”

  He laughed. “True. But I should probably restrict my rescuing to the job. I’ve been known to rush in way too quickly. As my grandmother used to say, marry in haste, repent in leisure.”

  “Personally,” I said. “I repent nothing about my marriage. Justin is a wonderful dad, and we’re still best friends. He came down for Mom’s funeral. Helped me manage everything, thanked the neighbors who dropped off casseroles, even dealt with that horrible woman next door when she complained about all of the cars parked in the cul-de-sac.”

  “The dog’s mama? Yeah, she’s a real piece of work. It’s a rare week she doesn’t call the station reporting somebody for something. Nathan took care of her yard two summers back. She’s the only customer he’s ever dropped.”

  “I haven’t met her yet. I’m kind of dreading it after everything Paige and my mother—”

  Travis’s phone buzzed. He glanced down at the screen, and then answered. “Lamm. What’s up?” A short pause, then, “On my way.”

  As Travis stashed the phone and his little notebook back in his pocket, I got a very clear look at his left hand. No ring. But then, lots of married men don’t wear rings.

  “Duty calls,” he said, as I walked him to the door. “But maybe we could continue this over dinner Friday night?”

  Dinner for two? I wondered. Or are we talking a backyard barbecue, with the missus and kids?

  “There’s a great little place up in Corolla,” Travis added. “Then maybe a drive along the beach? That area has changed a lot in the past few years, but it’s still a real pretty drive.”

  Okay, that was definitive. “I’d love to.”

  “Great!” he said, grinning. “I’ll see if I can find a store that still sells Zima.”

  Chapter Five

  I emerged from the shower on Tuesday morning to find a message on my phone from the dean’s administrative assistant telling me that I wouldn’t be able to hold classes at Muncey Auditorium for the foreseeable future. They were shifting things around, the woman explained, trying to find vacant spots to place my courses. The message ended with a rather imperious command to stop by the dean’s office to pick up my new schedule before the first class of the day.

  I pulled my robe on and opened the door. A cloud of steam billowed into the bedroom and more or less through the apparition seated at the end of the bed.

  “I’m guessing the dean’s assistant isn’t exactly a people person,” I said.

  Caroline’s ghost gave me a grim smile. “That is an understatement, dear. If Tandy’s calling you before eight a.m., she’s got her panties in a bunch. Which is definitely not good.”

  “She’s acting like this is all my fault,” I said. “It’s not like I killed the man. I never even met him.”

  Caroline shrugged lightly. “Tandy Mercer is concerned with organization, not logic. Everything was in its place, but now she has to find new locations for you to teach. Ergo, it’s your fault.”

  “Mercer? Is that the same person—”

  “Who worked there when you were young? Yes.”

  I gave her an incredulous look. “How old is she? The woman was ancient back then.”

  “I believe she’s in her mid-eighties,” she said. “Someone suggested casually that she’d probably be retiring soon at a faculty event last year. The next day, he found that his campus parking permit had been revoked. Accidentally, of course. Do not cross her.”

  “Okay.”

  “The one thing I will say about the wo
man. She knows personal details about every faculty member. The dean and other administrators, too. But she doesn’t leak. She doesn’t gossip. She’ll make life hell for any faculty member she thinks is telling tales out of school. Southern Coastal University is her child and she protects it like a mama bear. She’s a bit like our crazy neighbor in that regard.”

  I pulled jeans from the drawer and started to tug them on.

  “What are you doing? I said not to cross her. If you go into the dean’s office, as a faculty member, wearing jeans…” Caroline shook her head. “Skirt and blouse, at a minimum. You can borrow my pearls if you’d like to win brownie points.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I am not,” she said emphatically. “She can make your life a bureaucratic nightmare. The last person who purposefully crossed Tandy wound up teaching eight a.m. classes every day for two solid years. And she lost her teaching assistant.”

  I stared at my mother’s ghost for several seconds, and then put the jeans back in the drawer. “Doesn’t SCU have a mandatory retirement age?”

  Caroline snorted. “You won’t be asking that after the first faculty meeting when a quarter of the professors doze off after the first ten minutes. Believe me, Tandy isn’t going away anytime soon. Rumor has it she drinks the blood of freshmen in her morning…coffee…so…”

  And then she was gone.

  “Fine,” I said. “Skirt and blouse. But no freakin’ pearls.”

  My first class didn’t start until ten, so I dropped Paige off at school and headed straight for Dean Prendergast’s office. Sure enough, the woman behind the counter was the same one I remembered from my childhood. Rail thin with a head of puffy white fluff, rimless glasses, and a dress that looked like a relic from the costume department of Father Knows Best. A black coffee mug with a red STOP sign on it was positioned to the right of her computer, sitting on top of a folded newspaper.

  It was hard to believe, but Tandy Mercer really didn’t look a day older than she had more than twenty years ago when I last saw her. That could be due to the fact that anyone over sixty looks ancient to a teenager, but it also had me wondering whether my mother was right. What exactly was in that coffee cup on her desk? Were there a few freshmen wandering around whose blood levels were a pint or two low?