Most interviews were, by necessity, conducted by phone. He was saving as much of the travel budget—and the time traveling would eat up—for the end when he would have narrowed the suspect list to two or three. With a little luck, he could persuade those two or three to come to him instead, and save the department’s bucks.
He finally decided to make an exception to head over to the Seattle area, where he’d been able to book appointments with ten alumni and former employees.
The first two interviewees admitted to having paid blackmail to King. Both were chagrined, a little pissed, but also resigned, which fit the pattern. Neither—if they were to be believed—had committed terrible offenses. One student had been allowed to take an exam early because of a family obligation and had then sold the questions and answers to several fellow students who proceeded to ace the test undeservedly. The other had worked in the café at the Student Union and had swiped some money—including tips that were supposed to be divided with other students.
Another had overheard enough interesting rumors to give Troy the name of a college grounds employee who might have stolen some pretty pricey equipment.
“He was paying King five hundred bucks a month, which had to have hurt. If I had gotten caught, I’d have gone on academic suspension and I would have been real unpopular around campus, but this dude would have lost his job and maybe gone to jail, too. He had serious reason to hate Mitch.”
Conveniently enough, that employee had recently retired from the Seattle Parks Department and still lived in Shoreline. He didn’t sound real happy to hear from Troy, but agreed to let him come out to the house.
In his mid-sixties, Leonard Hickman was one of those little guys who got smaller with age. It wasn’t hard to picture him twenty years down the line, wizened like an Egyptian mummy. His brown hair was mixed with gray in a crew-cut bristle. His eyebrow and nose hairs were damn near long enough to be braided, though, which occasionally distracted Troy from what Hickman had to say.
“It was bullshit!” he exploded. “That little scumbag had somehow manufactured evidence against me. We did have some equipment missing, and one of the other guys must have found a way to blame me. I didn’t see what I could do but pay the asshole for a few months until he was outta there. Then I planned to job hunt.”
“You didn’t consider going to the college administration and laying it all out?”
“Hell, no! Who’d believe me? A prissy ass college like that, the guys they pay to do the dirty work don’t get any respect. They wouldn’t have cared about truth. They’d have been happy enough to fire me.”
He reeked of bitterness, the smell so strong Troy was reminded of sweat socks long past laundry day.
“How many payments had you made before his death?” Troy asked quietly.
“Four. Two thousand dollars. He was killing me.”
He seemed unconscious of how telling that last bit was. He was killing me, so I killed him?
“I see that you did leave Wakefield College at the end of the academic year even though any threat from Mr. King was gone.”
Furious brown eyes met his. “I still had to think about which guy I worked with had set me up.”
If his side of the story was true, it would indeed be off-putting to head to work every day knowing one of the other guys was not only a thief, but had also thrown you under the bus to deflect suspicion. Or maybe to get a cut of the payments from Mitch King?
Now there was a thought. Just about everyone Troy had talked to said the same thing—I don’t know how he could possibly have found out/seen me/known. What if King’s scheme was even more sophisticated than Troy had guessed? What if he had a network of spies and therefore a payroll to record in that ledger?
Well, hell, Troy thought, what if I need to be identifying those subcontractors, too? Once they realized King had recorded their names and the less than admirable parts they’d played in his little business, some of them, too, would have had motive to eliminate him and make the damning ledger disappear.
He asked for more information, and elicited the names of two of Leonard Hickman’s fellow employees he had suspected—or had disliked most, it was hard to tell. It didn’t sound as if he’d gotten along well with any of his coworkers.
He blew up when Troy asked for his whereabouts the night of the murder.
“I was goddamn home and in bed with my wife where I belonged. You know, I was trying to help out here. I wouldn’t have talked to you at all if I thought you were going to try to finger me for killing the little creep.”
He crowded Troy over the threshold and onto the porch.
“May I speak to your wife?”
“We’re divorced,” Hickman snapped, and slammed the door. A dead bolt slid into place.
Golly gee whiz, Troy thought sardonically, I wonder why the wife didn’t stay with a nice guy like that?
Troy got back in his Tahoe and made a note to track down the ex. Glancing at the next address on his list, he set out.
This was a woman who had allegedly been at McKenna that night and yet somehow remained unknown to the police.
On the phone, Sally Yee sounded reluctant to talk to him, but after a long silence she’d said grudgingly that she could take a quick coffee break if he dropped by her workplace, which was a law firm. Ms. Yee, he saw with interest as he studied the brass directory just inside, had made partner at some point.
He was stopped by a guard. After a low-voiced phone call, he told Troy, “Ms. Yee will be down shortly.”
She appeared so quickly that she must have hustled. Troy’s first thought was that she looked way younger than he knew her to be. All the then-students were in the fifty-three to fifty-eight-year age range. Like Mitch King, Joe Troyer and Guy Laclaire, she’d been a senior.
In a stylish poppy-orange suit, she was still a beautiful woman, her skin smooth, her glossy black hair cut in a wedge that followed her jaw. Heels clicking on the marble lobby floor, she came straight to him.
“I wondered when you mentioned your name. You look a good deal like your father.”
He inclined his head. “So I’m told.”
“There’s a Starbucks halfway down the block. Or a Tully’s at the next corner.”
He wasn’t surprised. No block in downtown Seattle was complete without at least two coffee shops. God forbid workers had to stretch their legs to find a caramel macchiato or espresso con panna or whatever.
“Either’s fine. I’m not that much of a connoisseur.”
Starbucks was closest so that’s where they went.
He chose a breve, she went for something sweeter and creamier.
They sat at a small table in the rather dim back of the room. No near neighbors. “What’s this about?” she asked, brisk but wary.
He politely repeated some of what he’d said on the phone before he got to the point. “Another student says she saw you at McKenna Center the night of the murder, although it appears investigators didn’t have your name.”
“You mean I didn’t come forward.”
Yeah, that’s what he meant. He didn’t say anything.
He wasn’t surprised that a high-powered attorney like Ms. Yee hid what she was thinking and had the self-control to mull over what she wanted to tell him before she opened her mouth again.
“Yes. I went intending to swim some laps.”
Well, that was intriguing. She’d intended? “Do you recall what time you went?”
“Yes, I left my dorm room at one forty-five. It wouldn’t have taken me more than five minutes to walk to McKenna.”
He loved precise.
“It sounds like you didn’t stay.”
An emotion crossed her face that was surprisingly sharp, even if muted by time. “I’m surprised anyone saw me. I never even got inside the sports center.”
“Do you mind telling me why?”
“It didn’t have anything to do with Mitch King, which is why I didn’t bother speaking to investigators.”
“I’d sti
ll like to know. I’m attempting to put together the big picture. If I can get every single player on the board, then I’ll be able to see which pieces moved where.”
She nodded, understanding completely. She likely worked the same way when she planned a presentation to a jury.
Still, she hesitated for a moment. “What I’m going to tell you doesn’t reflect well on me.”
“If, in the end, it has no relation to what happened to Mr. King, I can promise that anything you tell me will remain confidential.”
Her mouth tightened, showing for the first time fine lines that betrayed her age. “Very well. It scarcely matters anyway, after so many years.”
He took a swallow of his drink.
She gazed down at hers. “I imagined myself in love with a young professor at Wakefield. I also imagined that he was in love with me. We had...relations.”
Troy tried hard not to give away his increased interest.
“That night, I had reached the outside door, which was well lit, when I glanced to one side and saw a couple in a clinch. I must have made a sound, because the man turned his head. It was that professor. He was being quite careless,” she added dispassionately, “because he was kissing another student. I’m sure you’re well aware that having sexual or romantic relationships with students is taboo for professors.”
“Yes.”
“He and I had been exceedingly cautious. So cautious the whole thing had begun to feel...sordid. But I was still in love, in that painful way a young woman can be.” She sipped her own coffee, then set it down. “I fled. There is no other way to put it. My heart was shattering.” She was trying to sound amused, but didn’t completely succeed. “It was all very dramatic.”
“Did you confront him the next day?”
“Not until the next semester. I’d already had my final exam for his class. When I did manage to be alone with him, he apologized, told me what a lovely young woman I was, but admitted he had fallen for someone else. He should have told me instead of allowing me to discover it that way.” She rolled her eyes. “As I said, none of this had anything at all to do with the murder.”
“Except,” Troy said thoughtfully, “that those two people might have gone into McKenna Center.”
“The woman didn’t. She fled, too. Which, in retrospect, seems rather sad. He’s the one who should have been ashamed.”
Yeah, he should have been. Troy wondered how many other female students the guy had seduced. And just think, he’d had another thirty-five years to enjoy the hunting grounds colleges offered to someone like him. Troy kind of hoped that he’d been shocked to discover one year that he was too old to appeal to the students anymore.
“I really need the names of both the student and the professor.”
Ms. Yee smiled wryly. “Yes, I imagined you would. Her name was Margaret Berlongieri. He was Stephen Coleman. I minored in Psychology and had a couple of classes with him. Abnormal Psych my senior year.”
Troy recognized the name. The elderly English prof, Herbert Wilson, had included Coleman on his list of teaching staff who were particularly athletic and also young enough to conceivably be interested in swimming or playing racquetball in the middle of the night. Coleman, Troy seemed to recall, was a weight lifter.
“I don’t think he stayed at Wakefield for long after you graduated.”
“No, I heard he took a job at Western. I wondered if he’d been forced to resign. I couldn’t imagine why he’d take that jump otherwise.”
Troy nodded. Western Washington University was an excellent state school, but it didn’t have the reputation Wakefield College did. Joining the faculty there was a step backward, not forward.
“Would he have gotten a job anywhere if he was fired for sleeping with a student?”
“Oh, if they didn’t have him cold, they might have encouraged him to resign with the understanding they’d stay quiet. They wouldn’t want him to sue, after all. Colleges don’t like to remind parents that things like this happen.”
Her cynicism didn’t surprise him, but her tone of disgust did. He’d have thought an attorney would get past that.
He thanked her, left his card and they parted ways outside her building. He had one more interview scheduled today and two in the morning, but he felt revved. In the past hour and a half, he’d acquired two excellent suspects: Leonard Hickman and now Stephen Coleman, two men who had had one hell of a lot more at stake than any of the students did.
Except possibly for Gordon Haywood, whose dreams of a political career would have depended on a sterling reputation.
Guy Laclaire would have dropped well down Troy’s list, if only he hadn’t bared a little too much anger to his daughter, and if he weren’t acting so damn edgy about where the investigation was going.
Troy had parked in a huge concrete garage half a dozen blocks away. By the time he located his Tahoe, he’d decided to find out whether Stephen Coleman had by chance stayed at Western Washington. Bellingham was only an hour and a half, maybe a two-hour drive north toward the Canadian border. Hey, Troy thought, he was the on the western side of the state already. He’d make time for the professor who’d had one hell of a secret—one right up Mitch King’s alley.
And he’d take the time to call Margaret Berlongieri if she was on the list that contained contact info.
He flipped through that folder first, only to find that Margaret wasn’t there. Another name for Madison to research, he thought.
It took him only ten minutes to find out that Coleman hadn’t lasted long at Western, either. It was always possible he’d risen again in the academic world—but somehow Troy doubted it.
Tracking him down was going to take time, which he didn’t have right now if he was going to make it to the Phinney Ridge neighborhood in—he glanced at his watch—fifteen minutes.
* * *
“YES, I’LL SEE what I can find out about this Margaret in the morning,” Madison promised. “It sounds like you made some really good progress.” She heard her own eagerness and winced.
Lounging at the far end of her sofa, Troy looked at her.
“You know I’m going to have to talk to your dad. I’ve put it off as long as I can.”
Unless he needed her to hunt through college archives for contact information on someone, he no longer told her the names of the people he interviewed. Tonight, his description of his three-day trip to Seattle had been especially bare bones. He hadn’t even said why Margaret Berlongieri was a person of interest to him. In fact, Madison noticed that a couple of vertical lines between his eyebrows seemed deeper than usual, making him look tired. He’d made the long drive back across the state this afternoon and had reason for fatigue. Madison had wanted to believe he was preoccupied with everything he’d learned, too, but now she knew better. Really, he’d been working his way up to telling her something she hadn’t wanted to hear. Was that the only reason he’d stopped by?
She wouldn’t let herself acknowledge the hurt. Dad was what counted here. Most of the time she was able to forget that Troy was a threat to her father. Right this minute, Troy felt like the enemy. Only by clutching at anger as a defense could she bear this terrible sense of alienation from him.
“You’ll just tell him his name has come up?” Her voice had come out sharper than she’d intended.
Troy’s expression became guarded. “No. I think the time has come for me to quit keeping secrets.”
Her breath stopped for long enough to make her dizzy. “You’re going to show your boss what your dad wrote?” she whispered.
“Yes. I’ll tell him Mom was reluctant to open it. Once she did, she showed it to me right away.”
“But you promised...”
His jaw tightened at her shrillness. “I’ve gotten far enough that your father isn’t the only, or even the most obvious, suspect. Not even given what Dad saw. That’s the best I can do, Madison. You have to see that.”
“I thought you wanted to protect your dad’s reputation, too.” She flung it at
him like an accusation. “Don’t you care about your father?”
“If this investigation has taught me one thing, it’s how damaging it is to keep secrets. I’m done with that.” Troy paused. “I hoped you’d understand.”
She sat frozen. “Will you tell Dad I’ve been working with you?”
He scowled. “Of course not! What do you think I am?”
The hurt blazed in her now. “Will you think less of me if I keep that secret?”
He looked astonished, as if only now did he realize he was dealing with something way more powerful than panic.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not the same thing.”
“Do you really think my father will see it that way?” She had fire and ice inside her now and didn’t know which would win. “That he won’t feel betrayed if he finds out?”
“How will he?”
“Because once I know...” Madison stopped, confused. “No, you’re right. I don’t have to say anything.” Dad and she could go on the way they always had—her mostly obedient and trying so hard to win her father’s approval. Grateful when he gave even a grain of it. Hiding resentment and her longing for something more.
Or she could finally speak out and risk losing him entirely. Risk being left with, for all practical purposes, no family at all. Unless Troy... But Troy wasn’t acting as if he wanted to be her family.
Her confusion increased. She knew the increased distance between them was her fault, but how could she trust that he would love her when she wasn’t even sure her own father did?
Am I that big a mess? she wondered, appalled.
The anger she had needed to protect her was gone, which was no surprise when it always had been a false front.
“You do what you have to.” The weariness was obvious in Troy’s voice now. He stretched and then rose from the sofa.
“It’s only nine. Do you have to go?” Oh lord, now she sounded pathetic. No, it could be worse—she could have begged him not to go.
“I need to hit the sack.”
Madison hated that she couldn’t read his face. His expression was closed down entirely, but not, she sensed, in cop mode. It was more as if she’d annoyed him. Or disappointed him.
Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead Page 21