by Neil Plakcy
“Tough nuts, dog,” I said, pointing at his bowl. “Eat your food.”
I scrambled to get ready for work, giving Rochester his biscuit after I showered. Didn’t help his attitude, though, and just to be as cranky as he was I wouldn’t roll the window down for him. By nine-thirty, as we arrived at the winding road that led up to the abbey, we were both in a funk.
The road needed to be widened, repaved and landscaped before we opened, but we were waiting until all the heavy equipment was finished. I had to pull to one side, dangerously close to a stand of pine, in order to let a fire truck pass me, coming downhill.
“Don’t tell me the place burned down,” I said to Rochester, who didn’t. I rolled down my window and sniffed the air. The breeze brought with it a smell of wood smoke but I had a feeling it was from something more than a fireplace fire. I pulled up in front of the office and looked down toward the far end of the property, where I saw Joey Capodilupo standing where the stable was. Or rather, had been. The ramshackle wood building with two big front doors was gone. In its place was a smoking pile of rubble. Another fire truck stood by as a couple of firefighters sprayed the debris with water.
I hurried down the gravel road to Joey, Rochester right behind me. “What happened?” I asked.
Joey had grime smeared on his forehead and along one cheek, and his T-shirt was soaked with either water or sweat. “Something ignited inside the stable,” he said. “When I got here at seven-thirty the fire was smoldering, but it took off right after that.”
“At least you saved the other buildings,” I said.
“Yeah, but this opens another whole can of worms. You ever notice there’s no fire hydrants up here?”
I looked around through a smoky haze that hung in the air and didn’t see any. “That a problem?”
“It is if there’s a fire. Fortunately this was a small one and they could put it out with the water they carry. None of these buildings are up to code, and we’ve already planned to install sprinklers. But now it’s clear we need to have a couple of hydrants up here, too. That’s going to require extra permitting and a new line from the main at the bottom of the hill. That’s going to mean more money and more time.”
“Crap,” I said. At least that portion of the work would fall to Joe Sr., not to me. “Any good news this morning?”
“We were storing the carpet rolls for the dormitory in the stable,” he said. “It’s all burned to a crisp, but it was butt ugly.”
“I hope this is all covered by the college’s fire insurance policy. And by the way, don’t let Mark hear you say that. You know how sensitive these decorators are.”
“Yeah. Too sensitive for me. Any way you can shift the job from him to somebody who has some taste?”
Ouch. Another matchmaking attempt fallen through, on top of all the damage. “You sure don’t want me picking the finishes,” I said.
He grumbled something under his breath that sounded like he didn’t want Mark doing anything, but then his cell rang and he had to answer it.
The College president, John William Babson, showed up around noon to survey the damage, and he wasn’t happy. I spent the whole day in meetings and on the phone, scrambling to help wherever I could. Long conversations with the college’s insurance administrator, the fire chief, the company that supplied the carpet. All of them dull but required.
I got an email from the man who’d first hired me at Eastern, Lucas Roosevelt, the chair of the English department. He wanted my help with a computer problem, as he knew I was on the IT committee. The default settings on the computers in English department classrooms for paragraph indent and spacing didn’t match what the department required of students. Verri M. Parshall, the previous IT director, had blocked his efforts to get that changed. Could I talk to Oscar Lavista and the committee on Lucas’s behalf? I made a note.
Late in the afternoon, Lili called. “You want to come up to my place for dinner?” she asked. “I want to show you the movie I made of the sneaker with the music I found.”
“I would love to come,” I said. “Horrible day. I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”
By the time we left the office, Rochester was mad because I hadn’t let him go anywhere near the burnt stables despite his eagerness to stick his nose where it didn’t belong. I was dead on my feet and in no mood to jump into the delicate negotiations that would result in Lili moving in with me.
When Lili opened her door, the aroma coming from her kitchen was a tantalizing mix of sweet and spicy, which cheered both me and Rochester. “You smell like smoke,” she said as we pulled apart after a kiss.
I followed her to the kitchen, where I sunk down at the table and explained about the fire at Friar Lake. “Nobody was hurt?” she asked.
“No, we were lucky.” I sniffed the air. “What smells so good?”
“My mother’s roast chicken with apricots and prunes,” she said. “And don’t make a face. It’s delicious.”
“At this point, sweetie, you could cook me shoe leather and I’d be happy to eat it.”
She’d even bought a small bag of Rochester’s chow, and she mixed it up with some diced chicken. He wolfed it down as we began to eat.
While we ate, I told her about my day, including my meeting with Babson. “He ought to be grateful it happened now,” she said. “Imagine if you were already open for business.”
“In that case, the ugly carpet wouldn’t have burned up.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Ugly carpet?”
“Joey Capodilupo thinks it’s ugly. He also thinks that Mark Figueroa has no taste.”
“Poor baby,” she said. “Matchmaking not going so well?”
“Not at all.” I told her about Rick’s reluctance to get involved with Tamsen, and how Gail thought she was too busy to date Declan.
“Maybe you should stick to crime-solving as a hobby. You do a pretty good job of that.”
“Thank you. I don’t feel that way now, though. I’ve been able to give Rick a couple of clues, but I still don’t think we’re close to finding out who killed that boy.”
She stood up. “I’ll clean up in here. Why don’t you go do some sleuthing. That always cheers you up.”
“You are a treasure,” I said. “A woman whose price is far above rubies.”
She leaned down and kissed my cheek. “I love a man who knows his literary allusions.”
“I love you, too.” I walked out to the living room, settled on the couch, and called Rick. “Did you speak to Eben Hosford?”
“Once I had his full name, I checked the computer database. Our town records have only been digitized as far back as the 1980s, and there’s nothing under his name but a couple of building code violations. I haven’t had time to go digging around in microfiche for anything before that. Drove up to his house but he wouldn’t let me in the gate. Just stood on his doorstep with his shotgun next to him. Denied he was a part of Brannigan’s circle. Denied he knew anything about that false wall.”
I heard him sigh, then he continued. “I checked with Mrs. Holt and with Edith Passis. Neither of them remembered Hosford being involved, and both of them said Brannigan had only recruited girls to help him. Edith didn’t even think Hosford became a Quaker until a year or two after the war was over.”
“How about Vera Lee Isay?” I asked. “Did she know Hosford?”
“She says she didn’t.”
“Did you ask her why she joined the Meeting in Stewart’s Crossing?”
“Yeah. She said she didn’t want to be specific, but the Meeting in Lahaska wasn’t serving her spiritual needs, whatever that means. She insists it was a coincidence that she joined just as the renovation was beginning.”
“Can you get Hosford’s fingerprints? See if they match any around the body?”
“The crime scene guys retrieved a lot of fingerprints, from the walls and the ladder inside that space. But I don’t have anything that connects Hosford to Lamprey other than speculation, so I don’t have any legal
reason to request his fingerprints.”
“What about the soap?” I asked. “Or the candles? I know Gail has bought from him. You could pick up what she has and get it printed. I’ll bet his prints are on the inside of the packaging, so that would eliminate Gail or anyone else who happened to pick it up.”
“I’ll ask Gail. But look, Steve, sometimes we have to accept when a case reaches a dead end. The trail is dead. The autopsy results are inconclusive – somebody could have knocked Lamprey out with a blunt object, or he could have hit his head in an accident. I have no more clues and no suspects beyond Peter Breaux, and he’s vanished.”
“So you’re giving up?”
“I’m moving on. I’m on the lookout for a Peeping Tom out in Crossing Estates,” he said, naming a community of fancy homes in the suburbs. “Coordinating a DUI stop with the state police. And talking to the kids at Stewart Elementary tomorrow morning about what it’s like to be a policeman.”
“You’ll let me know about the fingerprints?”
“Yes, brother Joe. Now I’ve got to go.”
After I hung up, I thought about Arnold Lamprey and his brothers again. Was it enough closure for him to know that Don had died there at the Meeting House? Or would he always wonder how it had happened? I remembered those missing children I’d found about online, how their families, like that of my father’s friend Des, had probably never stopped looking for traces of their kids.
I could always look for Brian Lamprey – but that was a dangerous slope to put myself on, because I could see how easily the search could lead me to unauthorized locations. One thing that I’d learned from my online support group was that when I was tempted to hack, I had to focus on something else—something that was equally important.
I looked at Rochester. “What do you think, boy?” I asked. “You ready to do this with me?”
He rolled on his back and wagged his legs in the air, his signal for a belly rub. I reached down and scratched, then stood up and walked to the kitchen, the dog on my heels. One of the lessons I learned in prison was that I had to face up to anything, or anyone, that scared me. If I didn’t, I lost all power over that thing or that person.
Lili was just closing the dishwasher. I stepped up and said, “Yes, I said, yes I will yes.”
She stared at me for a moment, then said, “The end of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses. Are we playing literary trivia?”
“No, I’m telling you that I want you to move in with me.”
I waited nervously for her response. Suppose she’d changed her mind? Despite her reassurance, what if she was worried about linking her life to a convicted felon and an (sometimes) unrepentant hacker?
Then she said, “Just the kind of response I hoped I’d get. Positive and romantic and all tied up in a man who sees life through the lens of literature.”
My heart skipped a couple of beats as joy rushed through my veins. I crossed the tile floor to her and took her in my arms, and we kissed. Rochester kept nosing between us and I had to push him away. This moment was all mine and Lili’s.
When we finally pulled apart, I had a moment’s hesitation. My life, and Rochester’s, were going to turn upside down, and so soon after taking on the new job at Friar Lake. It seemed like my life had become one big chain of changes, and I didn’t like it. But then I looked at the smart, sexy, beautiful, talented woman in front of me and knew I was making the right decision.
Rochester even seconded the motion with a woof – though that could have just been him wanting attention.
“You’re sure about this?” Lili asked. “Because I don’t want you to feel any pressure.”
“I’m sure.”
We went back into the living room together and talked through some details. “I like your couch better than mine,” I said, putting my hand on it. “My parents had mine for ages, and when Rochester was a puppy he chewed on the legs.”
We held hands as we walked around the apartment together. “Your dining room table is better than mine,” I said. “But the chairs at my house are more comfortable than yours.”
“I agree.”
“And I think your desk will fit better into my extra bedroom than the crappy one I’m using, which I’ve had since I was a kid. And if we angle it right, there’ll be room for both of us to have computers there and even work together when we need to.”
I had a ton of kitchen stuff, inherited from my parents, but Lili had a few pieces she liked that I was sure we could make room for. “And I think you should bring all your art and your rugs,” I said. “We’ll move things around and rearrange until it all fits together.”
“That’s good,” she said. “A lot of what I have is basic stuff I got at IKEA when I moved here. I’ll either donate what I don’t want to keep up or put it up on Craigslist.”
“Whatever you want to bring, we’ll make room for,” I said.
I had grown up in a house full of clutter, and lived in tiny, cramped spaces in New York. When Mary and I moved to California I’d had the impulse to add layers – framed photos, books, occasional tables, potted plants and display cabinets. Mary had a design esthetic of Zen-like simplicity, though, and she fought me on each acquisition. Gradually I adapted, and the forced monasticism of prison life had become imprinted on me after that.
I had very little left from my life in California, and I’d grown accustomed to living with lots of open space, shelves empty except for books and a few knickknacks. Would all of Lili’s stuff start to crowd me out?
Rochester nosed my hand, and I reached out to stroke his fur. As long as he and I were together, I could handle anything the world threw my way. Lili started talking about curtains and slipcovers and I flashed on the way Mary had taken over the decoration of our house in California.
Lili certainly wasn’t Mary, though, and I had to find a way to get my ex-wife out of my head, or else I was going to doom my relationship with Lili. But how could I do that? In the past I’d always buried myself in computer work whenever something went wrong in my personal life. And see where that had gotten me.
30 – Scrawl
Lili had some papers to grade, so she went into her office and left me on the sofa. To keep from thinking too much about how my life was going to change once Lili moved in, I went back to the case, but there were no new clues I could follow. We had interviewed everyone still alive who’d worked with Brannigan. Despite his creepy behavior, there was no evidence against Eben Hosford unless Rick could match fingerprints from his soap or candles to the crime scene. Vera Lee Isay could have been involved somehow, but she was too busy protecting Brannigan’s reputation to give us anything incriminating. And Peter Breaux had disappeared into Canada, never to be heard from again.
Rochester clambered up on to the sofa and nestled against me. He had a piece of paper in his teeth with the Eastern College letterhead, and I pulled it from him gently. “What are you, the postal person now?” I asked. It was a departmental memo from Dr. Peter Bobeaux announcing new procedures for petty cash disbursement. I was about to crumple it up when I looked at his scrawled signature.
It looked as if he’d written “Breaux” instead of “Bobeaux.”
I remembered the problem Lili had had with her student, Jean or Joan Bean. Could the same thing have happened to Peter Breaux – a mix-up with the spelling of his last name? My brain started running. Lili’s new boss was about the right age to have been a draft evader in the 1960s. He’d graduated from college in Canada. I’d assumed he was French Canadian, with a name like Bobeaux. But what if he wasn’t?
I jumped up and went into Lili’s office. She was sitting at the desk, logged into our online learning system. “I hate to interrupt you, but can I use your computer?” I asked.
“Sure.” She pushed back her chair and stood up, and I slid into her place. “What do you need?”
“Give me a minute. I have so many ideas mashing around in my head that I can barely type.”
With Lili looking over my shoulder, I starte
d at the Eastern website, where I found that Peter Bobeaux had received his bachelor’s in French literature from Carleton University in Ottawa in 1973 – perfect timing for a high school senior fleeing the draft in 1969. I pointed that out to Lili.
“Oh, my,” she said, and I could tell she was following my thoughts.
Bobeaux had gone on to receive his master’s and doctoral degrees from the same university. From there he had taught at a number of colleges and universities, eventually landing in the United Arab Emirates, where he had been before coming to Eastern.
“What made you think of the connection?” Lili asked.
“Joan Bean, Jean Bean,” I said. “Peter Breaux, Peter Bobeaux.” I showed her the memo, and Bobeaux’s scrawled signature.
“Why would he come back here, if he killed someone?” Lili asked.
“I don’t know. But murder isn’t a logical act, so I don’t think you can apply logic to anything that happens afterward.” I looked at her. “He has a temper, doesn’t he? I saw him get angry in the committee meeting. Imagine somebody with his personality, a teenager with less impulse control, scared and nervous?”
“So what do you do now?”
My fingers itched to do some hacking. I wanted to check Peter Bobeaux’s student records at Carleton and see if there was any indication of where he’d gone to high school. Maybe I could match that to where our missing draft dodger, Peter Breaux, had gone. I could make an excuse to Lili, head back to my laptop and its hacking tools. What the heck, right? Nobody had to know. I could be in and out of Carleton’s database before anyone knew I was there.
Rochester suddenly sat up and placed his front paws on my thigh, sniffing at me, and that was enough to snap me back to reality. Nope. That was something I could get Rick to discover through official channels.
“I’m going to do a bit more searching on Peter Bobeaux,” I said. “Nothing illegal. I want to see if I can find out where he came from before he started school at Carleton.”