Meadowlark

by Sheila Simonson

  Bianca placed the whiskey glass on the trolley and walked to the French doors. She stood there, staring out at the brilliant afternoon with her back to us. Thinking again, no doubt.

  Keith sobbed. I soothed. Off in the kitchen, I heard Mike's high excited voice asking questions. There were a lot of questions to ask.

  When Dale finally arrived, he came to the front door, just like the florist. Del let him in. Jay was with him, and Lisa Colman and another deputy. They forged right in after the briefest of exchanges, so it was clear that Del hadn't tried to explain anything.

  When the doorbell rang, Keith grabbed my hand. His was hot and damp. I didn't try to pull away.

  Lisa marched right up to us. "Keith McDonald, I'm arresting you for the attempted murder of William Johnson and Jason Thirkell. I should warn you that other charges are pending. You have the right to remain silent..." She had the Miranda warning letter perfect.

  As she recited the familiar words Jay caught my eye. Keith was still holding my hand in a desperate grip. Jay raised an eyebrow. I grimaced and sat still.

  I did see Keith McDonald in handcuffs, though there were preliminaries. Bianca told the detectives she had called the family lawyer. Lisa asked her to call again. Keith stayed silent. It was all very proper.

  The Wallaces and Angie filtered back into the living room, drawn by the anticlimactic drama of the arrest, and eventually Lisa, Dale, and the anonymous deputy went off with Keith. Somebody rescued the hothouse flowers from the front hall. The phone rang--one of Bianca's sons. She withdrew to her suite to talk in private. I had no idea what she was thinking, and I didn't want to know.

  Jay had stayed behind when the police left. "So what happened?" he asked. "Obviously something did."

  The question--Mike's question, too--triggered a babble of explanation. Everybody talked including Mike. Everybody except me. I just sat there on my perch and shook.

  Jay came over and stood behind me. He rubbed the back of my neck with a warm hand. It felt good but didn't stop the shaking. After a few minutes, he walked around and sat where Keith had. Then he pulled me down onto his lap and wrapped both arms around me. That did help. I burrowed in his chest.

  "My wife needs something hot to drink," he said. "Hot and sweet."

  Marianne broke off an indignant comment on Keith's character. "I'll fix tea." I thought I might be forgiven, eventually.

  The explanations went on. I burrowed and shook. I suppose I looked foolish. Jay and I are the same height, so my knees and elbow were sticking out at odd angles. I didn't care. I kept my eyes shut tight and thought about all the awful things that could have gone wrong.

  But nothing had. Keith was in custody.

  Marianne brought the sweet tea, which I dutifully drank, and I finally stopped shaking. By that time, as they say, Jay was in possession of the facts. When I had stopped jittering, he boosted me up and stood beside me, arm around my shoulders.

  "I'm going to take Lark home now." He fished in his pocket. "Mike, here are the keys to the Toyota--that crummy car parked in the front drive. Will you move it out of the way? I can get it later." He tossed the keys and Mike fielded them.

  "The reception," I mumbled.

  "Home," Jay said firmly.

  "I'm coming back."

  He gave me a squeeze. "I can't stop you, if you insist, but you're coming home now."

  "There's no time!"

  "Nonsense. It's only three."

  I couldn't believe it. I checked my watch. He was right.

  Jay looked around. "Coat? Purse?"

  Angie went off to find my things. When she returned, she helped me into my jacket and draped my handbag over my shoulder by the long strap. "I have a message for you from Frank Hrubek."

  "Oh, Frank. God, I should have asked..."

  "He'll be fine, Lark. He's a tough old bird."

  I heaved a sigh. "That's a relief. I was so scared."

  "All of us were. Anyway, Frank said to tell you thanks."

  "That's the message?"

  "No. The message is 'Plan B.' He said you'd know what he meant."

  I gave a shaky laugh. Our contingency planning was going to pay off.

  Chapter 18

  For reasons best known to himself, Jay didn't take the faster Ridge Road home. Perhaps he wanted to talk. If so, he must have found my dazed silence annoying. We were entering Kayport before I came out of my preoccupation sufficiently to ask about Jason and Bill.

  Jay geared down at the first stoplight. "Bill's a little better. The doctors think he'll be partially paralyzed, though."

  I swallowed nausea. Bill was the classic innocent bystander. The light changed, and Jay eased down Main Street past my darkened bookstore. "Jason regained consciousness right after you called me from Clatskanie, and he was able to give Dale a fairly coherent statement."

  "And?"

  He grimaced. "He and Bill saw McDonald with Mary."

  "In Seaside?"

  "Yes. They also saw Hugo speak to McDonald outside the candy shop. They weren't close enough to hear what was said, but Jason says Groth was angry."

  "Wow! Why didn't they say something sooner?"

  "Jason claims he didn't think much about it until Mary disappeared. McDonald was always fooling around with women students. And Jason didn't like Groth."

  I digested that. "But Bill and Jason told the police they hadn't seen Hugo at all the day he was killed. Why did they lie? Was Jason blackmailing Keith?"

  We rolled past the hospital and out onto Highway 101. "Jason insists he just talked to McDonald. The kid's smart. He isn't admitting anything, and maybe he didn't ask for money, but I suspect McDonald interpreted what Jason said as blackmail."

  "Was that enough to charge Keith?"

  "Enough to suggest he tampered with the pickup, anyway. We found a witness at the college. She saw McDonald hanging around Jason's rig Friday afternoon. She took the ballad class last term, so she's sure of the identification."

  "Student or staff?" Staff members often took classes.

  "Student. Another groupie," Jay said wryly. "Still, she thought McDonald's behavior was odd. There have been car burglaries, most of the faculty are long gone by four on Friday, and it was a student lot. If she hadn't recognized McDonald, she would have called security."

  We were both silent, I thinking about the difference that call might have made.

  "A damned shame she didn't call it in." Jay shook his head sadly. "Dale got a preliminary report on the pickup. The lab says the line that carries fluid to the power steering was cut."

  "But Jason drove all the way home and a long distance on that back road before the wreck."

  He shrugged against the shoulder harness. "It was cold out. The line wasn't severed, just slit. The fluid dripped out slowly."

  "But wouldn't he lose his steering?" I'm a willful car moron. I don't want to know what goes on under the hood.

  "No, darling, he wouldn't," Jay said with elaborate masculine patience. "Just the power steering. It was probably sluggish well before they reached the worst of the curves, but Jason might have made it off the mountain if he hadn't been speeding. And if the road surface had been dry."

  "Then the wreck wasn't inevitable."

  "No."

  "Keith was just hoping?"

  "I don't pretend to understand McDonald's mental processes."

  I had spent some effort that afternoon trying to understand Keith's mental processes. "It sounds half-assed to me."

  Jay passed a dawdling senior in a long Lincoln. The needle dropped back to fifty-five. "Keith is half-assed."

  "Of course, it would have worked if you hadn't insisted on searching for the pickup."

  "True."

  "Keith is capable of forethought. He planned a quiet escape from the farm for this evening. He had it all set up. Then he saw Hrubek and heard Dale was coming, and he took Hrubek hostage."

  Jay made a clucking sound. "English majors--creatures of impulse."

  "Cut it out." I brooded
. "I told him I thought they'd just charge him with manslaughter if he surrendered peacefully. He believed me, I think. Did I..." I started to ask whether I had lied to Keith and discovered I didn't care. I groped for words. "I didn't jeopardize anything, did I?"

  Jay glanced over at me. "Only your life, my sweet. I wish you'd stop doing that."

  "He was going to slit Frank Hrubek's throat!"

  He said gently, "You did what had to be done, Lark. Don't worry about it. Let the lawyers figure out what the charges should be."

  "Mary..."

  "Mary can probably give Dale some idea of McDonald's frame of mind the day Groth was killed."

  "And Hugo's, too. Mary wouldn't talk to me at all." I twisted sideways, the better to see his face. "What do you think happened?"

  Jay slowed as the camper in front of him signaled a left turn. "I didn't know Groth, so your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably." The camper turned off, and the Honda picked up speed. We were almost at the village of Shoalwater. Jay said, with diffidence, "I got the impression Groth had strong principles."

  "He wasn't a fanatic!" Even as I protested, I wondered. Fanatic was Angie's word for Hugo. Fanatical and rigid.

  "How do you think Groth would have reacted, if he thought McDonald was hitting on one of the female students?"

  I closed my eyes and tried to visualize Hugo's face. It was already fading, a sad ghost. "He wouldn't have liked it, but I think he would have talked to Keith before he reported anything to Bianca."

  "Or to the Dean."

  That was a possibility I hadn't considered. "But Bianca was Hugo's employer, and they had a lot of history."

  Jay stopped at the only stop sign in Shoalwater. There was no traffic at all, but I spotted a patrol car at the Grub 'n Stuff Drive-in. "Does she care about Lover Boy's infidelities?"

  I thought about it. "I don't know. Today she seemed indifferent, but I've heard her say some pretty bitter things about Keith."

  Jay chuckled. "You ought to hear the Dean on that subject."

  "All the same--"

  "She hasn't divorced the sucker yet, and God knows she's had grounds."

  "True."

  "I think Groth threatened to report McDonald to the college. He must have known McDonald was already on shaky ground because of the earlier harassment charges." He headed out of town on the country road that leads to our house. "Since Groth was technically also a faculty member, in the sense that he was supervising our students, the Dean would have had to take his evidence seriously."

  "He'd listen to Hugo, but not to someone like Carol--is that what you're saying?"

  "Not exactly." He topped the ridge and began to wind down the steep hill that leads to the Shoalwater Approach and home. "A lot of women on campus believe a male administrator won't take their word against a male faculty member. That's not quite what happens. At least with the Dean."

  "Then what does happen?"

  "He doesn't want to believe anything negative. Typically he postpones action until something forces him to take steps. Then he overreacts. He forced McDonald to resign as department head, for example, instead of instituting a process of counseling and observation. Seemed to think he'd solved the problem."

  "Clearly not."

  Jay sighed. "My point exactly. So McDonald stepped down, bellyaching."

  "I suppose he thought he was the aggrieved party."

  "Yeah. Sexual harassment is a touchy subject."

  I glanced at him, wondering whether he was touchy about it, too.

  His mouth twitched in a grin. "And he went right on acting like a bird in mating season."

  I flashed on a TV special I'd seen on avian courtship and had to suppress a smile, too. Good old Keith, flicking his tail feathers and warbling sweet songs. My amusement faded. "He's an idiot."

  "He's not real sharp."

  "What I don't understand is why it would matter so much to him to keep the teaching job. Bianca has more money than the GNP of Paraguay. Keith doesn't have to work."

  Jay swerved around a pothole. "Come on, Lark, it's his identity. He revels in it. Bianca is an overwhelming personality. She was probably overwhelming as a twenty-year-old hippy. Now she has big money, too. She'd erase the guy if he was dependent on her."

  I rubbed my forehead. "I don't think she means to overwhelm people." Why was I defending Bianca? I changed the subject. "Why did Hugo go out to the greenhouses to talk to Keith?"

  "Instead of to the farmhouse? So Bianca wouldn't overhear."

  "You just said she wouldn't care. Be consistent."

  He slowed the car for a sharp curve. "It's all speculation. You knew Groth. How would you explain it?"

  "I don't think Hugo would have wanted to hurt Bianca unnecessarily. Maybe he thought he could reason with Keith. So Hugo met Keith at the greenhouses, and they fought." And Hugo hit his head and died.

  Jay pulled into the driveway and set the brake. "Groth was smaller and lighter than McDonald. I think McDonald attacked. There's more than one head wound. He may even have meant to kill Groth, but it's hard to prove intent."

  I thought about Keith's behavior that afternoon. "More likely he just panicked. But he did mutilate the body--"

  "And leave it where he thought it would incriminate the Vietnamese crew. That stinks."

  "Will it make a difference?"

  "To the charges? Maybe. A good defense lawyer might get around it. It will matter when it comes to sentencing."

  We got out and went into the house through the back door. My kitchen looked bright and welcoming. I didn't want to leave it. I made a pot of coffee.

  Jay watched me. "Why don't you go for a run?"

  I pressed the button that turns the coffee maker on. The device cleared its throat. "I don't have time."

  "You have two hours, sweetheart. Go for a run and take a long hot shower afterwards. I'll fix us something to eat."

  I gave him a hug. "You're terrific."

  He kissed me. "You, too. Go on, Lark. Scoot."

  What he didn't tell me was that Dale would be waiting in my nice bright kitchen when I came down from my shower--waiting and wanting another statement.

  I dashed into the kitchen and slid to a halt.

  "Hi, Lark." Dale raised his coffee mug in salute. He looked exhausted but content.

  "Jeez, can't it wait until tomorrow?" I had known he would want a statement sooner or later.

  "Is tomorrow better?"

  It wasn't. Dale didn't wait for a reply. "The prosecutor has to know what happened this afternoon. May affect the amended charges."

  "Okay." I glanced at Jay. He was making toast and sautéing something. All of a sudden I felt ravenously hungry. "Omelets?"

  "With mushrooms and goat cheese."

  "Hotsy-totsy."

  He grinned and spooned the mushrooms into a dish. "Neither of us has done any grocery shopping lately. That's the cheese you bought at Christmas." He ducked down so he could see Dale through the pass-through. "Want an omelet?"

  "Uh, sure. Thanks."

  So we ate omelets, and I filled Dale in on the events of the afternoon. He recorded a lot of chewing and slurping. As he turned the machine off and stowed it in its leather case, he said, "Good thing you talked McDonald out of it before we got there. I hate a hostage situation."

  "Bianca talked him out of it." I finished my third cup of coffee. I was going to be wired. "She promised him F. Lee Bailey."

  Dale snorted. "That'll make the prosecutor's day."

  "You talked him out of it, Lark." Jay's voice was warm with approbation. So I didn't argue.

  He took me out to the farm, but said I'd have to drive myself home in the Toyota.

  I got out and faced him over the roof of the Accord. "You could come back and get me."

  He smiled. "Not on your life. I'm going straight to bed. I got about two hours' sleep on that damned hospital cot last night."

  "I'll tell you all about the workshop over breakfast."

  He mimed a kiss and got back in
the car. I watched him drive off and wished I could go with him.

  Frank Hrubek was sitting at the butcher block table in the farmhouse kitchen, eating an enormous sandwich and eyeing Marianne's canapés. He greeted me cheerfully.

  I divested myself of coat and purse. "Are you okay?"

  "Never better. Thanks to you, my dear."

  Marianne took something from the oven, set it on the tiled counter with a thump, and said Bianca wanted to see me. Somebody didn't think I was wonderful.

  I wasn't up to pacifying Marianne, and I didn't want to see Bianca, either.

  Marianne said her employer was off in the conference wing showing the last of the journalists to their quarters. I took that as a hint to leave Marianne's domain. Frank smiled at me around a bite of sandwich.

  Two strangers--one male, one female--fell silent as I entered the living room. I gave them a distracted greeting. They told me their names, and I forgot them immediately. The flowers were in place, someone had built a fire, and the room looked like an upscale hotel lobby--in other words, Keith's melodrama might as well not have happened.

  Whatever her opinion of me, Marianne's price was above rubies. I checked to make sure someone had photocopied Frank's handouts and the participants' schedules. Then Bianca entered from the conference wing.

  When she saw me, she walked over, her face as blank as it had been for Keith that afternoon. There were no effusions of greeting. She was pale but composed. "I'm going to make a statement at eight. I'll leave everything else to you and Frank."

  Thanks a lot. I made no comment. She nodded and went over to talk to one of the writers.

  Plan B got off to a fair start. Frank's charm and Marianne's goodies kept the journalists happy for an hour. Del and Angie circulated. All of us except Bianca trouped down to the seminar room and the reporters admired the amenities. When we climbed up to the computer room, they went into a feeding frenzy. They accessed the Internet, scanned data bases, dived into the library, two of them started playing games, and one, a woman with frizzy red hair, borrowed a laptop. The others had brought their own. Angie and Del conferred in a far corner. At least they were speaking to each other.

  Frank and I stood back against the French windows and watched the writers mill, Frank smiling to himself, I listening. It was safe to assume they hadn't heard of Keith's arrest yet. Bianca was going to create a sensation.