Quick Study

by Maggie Barbieri

  Louise put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s OK, Sister.” Sister Louise stared at Agent Goldenberg. “So, Agent Goldenstein, Dr. Bergeron had nothing to do with his.”

  “Goldenberg.”

  “Goldenberg,” she repeated, but I could tell she was thinking “whatever.” “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  Hernan stood, finally sure of what he needed to say and do. “I do have something to say.”

  The nuns, the agents, Crawford, and I stood there, staring at him. He knitted his hands together worriedly.

  “I saw who murdered Agent Cranston.”

  Thirty-Nine

  Who knew? Turns out that if you scratch the Feds’ backs, they’ll scratch yours.

  But more on that later.

  Hernan described a scene that none of us could have imagined: Class of ’59 (and Hernan described him perfectly, down to his giant class ring and his letterman’s jacket) driving along, talking on a cell phone, pulling into the parking lot of Riviera Point, and, as it turns out, up to no good. I don’t think he ever imagined, though, that he would be facing manslaughter charges in the death of a federal agent. He corroborated Hernan’s story, telling all, and hoping for leniency.

  His goal was simple: to vandalize the building and equipment so much that construction would cease for the short term, until his injunction went before a judge. Hernan had been poking around after dark—amassing some concrete information on the building’s code violations—the illuminated sales office just a few hundred feet to the north of where he was. He watched as O’Laughlin approached the office, dressed in black, a tire iron at his side. And then he watched as the man took the tire iron and raised it over his head, his goal to shatter the plate-glass windows that fronted the building—an act of pure vandalism and nothing else. Agent Cranston had come from around the side of the building—Hernan wasn’t sure where she had come from or where she had been going—surprising O’Laughlin, whose raised tire iron came down on her head instead of through the plate glass.

  Hernan’s cry of surprise and horror had stopped O’Laughlin in his tracks, but Madeleine was surely already dead. Hernan said that her head had been bashed in, something that Crawford said had been verified by the medical examiner.

  So why hadn’t Hernan told me this earlier? He was terrified. O’Laughlin had seen him and chased him for a good number of blocks along the river, which is why Hernan had looked the way he did when he arrived at my house. Eventually, O’Laughlin gave up the chase and had stashed Madeleine in her car, trying to make the whole thing look like a bad car accident, or so Hernan surmised when I filled him in on where she had been found. Still reeling from the threats from the foreman—who knew that Hernan’s intentions were not in the foreman’s or Richie’s best interests—he was now practically paralyzed by what he had just witnessed at the sales office.

  He thought he could figure out a way to get this information to the authorities on his own without involving me further. That was kind of him, although he had involved three nuns, all of whom were just raring to take on the federal government if it so much as sneezed in their direction.

  Hernan revealed all this to the Feds, who in turn filled in Crawford, who was kind enough to complete the tale for me.

  O’Laughlin had spilled the beans as soon as he saw the Feds. He was on the hook for manslaughter and obstruction of justice and he was going to lose his view, just as he had anticipated. This wasn’t the first time he had been in trouble, either. He had a domestic battery charge to go with a breaking and entering stemming from a dispute with a neighbor. A choir boy our Reginald O’Laughlin was not. He had severe anger management issues, which Crawford was sure would come up in court. And which his daughter, Daphne—apparently the dumbest receptionist ever to work on a Kraecker project—had confirmed.

  I had met Amalia the day before at the coffee shop by the Lord’s Bounty church and the relief etched on her face made me so happy that I could almost absolve myself of all the subterfuge I’d engaged in and illegal sleuthing I had done to protect her father. We talked a little bit about her upcoming senior year and how I wanted to introduce her to Sister Louise and the other professors in the nursing department so that she could get a feel for St. Thomas.

  “Frankie’s in a basketball tournament at the County Center this weekend,” she said, blushing a little bit.

  “Really?”

  “Are you going?”

  I thought for a moment. “Maybe I will.” I gave her a hug. “I guess I’ll see you there?”

  She nodded and made her way to the door of the coffee shop, turning back and giving me a dazzling smile.

  Crawford and I were on our way to the hockey game, delighted to be in each other’s company and happy to put this whole mess behind us. We were on the escalator at the Garden and fortunately, because our seats were so good, we didn’t have to go very far. The Garden escalators make me nauseous and Crawford knew it, so he kept a safe distance from me. We exited at our gate and walked down to our seats. Once seated, he told me the best news of all.

  “Hernan’s got himself instant citizenship, if all goes well and the conviction comes down. So does Alba. Amalia was born here, so that’s not an issue,” Crawford said.

  Hence the back-scratching analogy. My eyes filled with tears. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Goldenberg wasn’t going to budge, but Abreu is going to make it happen,” he said. He pinched me in the side. “Abreu, who, by the way, makes you act like a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl every time he’s in the room.”

  I blushed deep red.

  “I knew it,” he said, getting a look at my rosy cheeks.

  “I call him Agent Rico Suave in my head.”

  “I bet you do,” he said, and flagged down the beer guy. “I didn’t know you were into Latin guys.”

  “He’s Portuguese.”

  “Same difference. Tall, dark, and handsome. That’s all you need to know, huh?”

  It was all in good fun but I leaned in and gave him an assurance kiss, just to remind him of how I felt. “Just like you, Crawford.”

  Satisfied, he handed me the two beers he had purchased, shoving the change from his transaction deep into his pockets. I handed him back his beer just in time for the lights to dim and for the ceremony for the ’94 team to get under way. We stood, as did the rest of the fans in the Garden.

  “You think they’ll ever win another Cup?” Crawford asked.

  “Only if these guys come out of retirement,” I said, pointing to the players on the ice, who were now older than I by at least ten years.

  Being at the Garden for this event was more exciting than I imagined. And being with Crawford made it even better. I knew that he was exhausted; he had worked for almost twenty-four hours straight. But instead of going home and directly to bed, he had come from work, picked me up, and driven me to the game. If I got less than eight hours sleep, I was impossible to be around, yet here he was, eight hours perhaps his total for the previous week. And he was with me, happy and totally engaged in what we were doing.

  The game got under way and my beloved Rangers scored three goals in the first period, making me quite possibly the happiest woman on the planet. Until I spied Jack McManus out of the corner of my eye, standing in the aisle next to our seats, a stockily built bald man in a very expensive suit beside him.

  My knees almost gave out as I realized who he was at the same time as the rest of our section. The collective cry of “Mess-ee-AY, Mess-ee-AY” went out through the Garden.

  Jack shook hands with Crawford and leaned in. “We only have a minute, Alison, but I wanted to introduce you to Mark Messier.”

  I nearly went to my knees and Crawford obviously sensed this because he put his arm around my waist and hoisted me upright. I put my hand out and shook. “Nice to meet you,” I said in a shaky voice.

  When I replayed the scene in my head and when I relayed it to Max, it was much more dramatic and I think I even told her there was a marriage proposal in the mi
x, but in actuality, Mark Messier was congenial and gentlemanly before moving on down the stairs. Our time together was brief, but for me, meaningful. Jack turned around and winked at me, knowing that he had left a quivering mass of Jell-O in his wake.

  Crawford turned to me. “You OK?”

  I looked at him and broke into a huge smile. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  Crawford smiled. “We should invite Mark Messier over more often.”

  You know what it’s like when you meet your idol, your hero? Sometimes it surpasses your wildest dreams; other times, it’s a giant disappointment. Mark Messier didn’t stick around long enough to have either effect on me, but at the very least, it made for a good story.

  After the game I stared out the window as we hurtled along the West Side Highway in Crawford’s very clean and very sensible Volkswagen Passat station wagon. A solid car for a solid guy. I watched the different neighborhoods go by, getting grittier and more urban as we went north, getting more suburban and affluent again as we went farther north. We passed through the neighborhood in which St. Thomas resided, then crossed into Westchester, and finally arrived in Dobbs Ferry. I thought about the previous weeks, the night we had just had, the future that I hoped we would enjoy. When we pulled up in front of my house, I turned to Crawford.

  He leaned in and gave me a long kiss. When I broke away, I put my hand to his cheek and looked at the bags under his eyes. “You look so tired.”

  He kissed me again. “Not that tired,” he mumbled between kisses.

  “You coming in?”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “Best you’re gonna get,” I said and opened my car door. “But you’ve got to walk Trixie first.”

  “She’s your dog,” he whined. “And I’m so damn tired.”

  I started up the front walk. “OK. If you’re going to be a huge baby about it,” I said, holding open the door for him. Trixie ran out between my legs and greeted Crawford by jumping on him. “See? She wants to be with you,” I said, laughing.

  He gave me a look over his shoulder as he walked down the path to the street, Trixie at his heels. “Hey, is the push-up bra clean?”

  “You know it.”

  “What about the Idaho T-shirt?”

  “Uh, not so much.”

  “The thong?”

  “Clean as a whistle.”

  “Excellent,” he said, and he started down the street. I detected a little skip in his step as he watched Trixie run across my sleeping neighbors’ lawns. “I’ll be right back. Don’t fall asleep.”

  There was no way that was going to happen. I went into the house and pulled off my coat.

  The living room was dark when I entered, my attempts to program a light timer abandoned long ago. But I made out a little form curled up on one half of the couch. “Max? Is that you?” I asked.

  She lifted her head and in the light that was thrown from the hallway, I took in her tear stained face, her tousled hair. “It’s over for us,” she said, a sob escaping from her throat.

  I didn’t have to ask and she didn’t need to elaborate. Anyone could have seen this coming a mile away. I sat on the couch and she told me her story.

  Here is an excerpt from FINAL EXAM – the next Murder 101 mystery from Maggie Barbieri–available soon in hardcover from Minotaur Books!

  One

  “I’m Mary Magdalene!”

  Now that got my attention. I was leaning against a wall in one of the dorm’s dining halls, scanning the crowd in a laconic fashion for anyone drinking an illegal substance and hoping I could get in on that action. We’re a dry campus. And let me tell you, there are some people who teach here who just need to get lit.

  I was bored silly. Until I saw one of my best friends in the world, Father Kevin McManus, school chaplain and all-around nice guy, cutting a rug to some Kanye West song with another chaperone, a member of the sociology department. Nancy Weineger was married, a mother of four, and about fifty years old. She favored the peasant-skirt-cum-clog look, and tonight she was also wearing a white cardigan sweater with, curiously, a lacy camisole underneath it. I had always thought of her as more of an Elisabeth, the proud mother of John the Baptist. It never would have crossed my mind that she fancied herself Mary Magdalene, a woman of (ahem) bad character, as the Bible says.

  I don’t read the Bible and I hardly ever go to church, but what seventeen-year-old, upon learning that the Bible boasted a prostitute, hasn’t sat up and taken notice? I heard it lo those many years ago and it had stuck with me ever since. And oh yes, I had highlighted every passage devoted to her. Because if the Bible has a hooker, well, I’m in.

  I stood up a little straighter as Kevin turned in mid-gyration and looked at me, his eyes wide behind his tortoise-framed eyeglasses. Nancy was doing some kind of cross between a clog dance and the chicken dance and getting progressively closer to Kevin as the song built to a rap-flavored crescendo. We were at a post–spring break faculty mixer that has a history of being the most boring event to be held anywhere. Ever. But it’s a command performance and you can’t just make a quick appearance and then duck out because the president, Mark Etheridge, thinks he’s very clever and prepares awards for everyone, which he hands out only after the buffet dinner has been served. So, if you’re not there to accept your “Worst Parallel Parker!” award, you’ll hear about it. You can’t get out of it by using an excuse—not even my old standby (diarrhea) because he’s on to that one.

  Nancy was working herself into a frenzy, so Kevin danced closer to me.

  “Cut in,” he said breathlessly.

  I cupped a hand to my ear, faking deafness. “What?” I asked. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Cut in,” he said a little louder as Nancy grabbed his arm and dragged him back out into the middle of the floor.

  I love to dance—in the privacy of my bedroom. There, I perform nightly. It’s a one-woman show and the audience consists of my golden retriever, Trixie, and, I just learned, the prepubescent kid across the street. I caught him with binoculars the week before, peering through my second-story bedroom window. When confronted, he claimed to be concerned that I was having a seizure. But Kevin needed help, and being as he’s the one who’s usually bailing me out, I felt like I needed to repay the favor. I put down my glass of flat Diet Coke and disco-strutted onto the dance floor. I grabbed Kevin around the waist and spun him around because while he’s quick and fit thanks to a childhood filled with Irish dancing and boxing lessons, he’s also more of a flyweight to my bantamweight. And he’s also a good three inches shorter than I am so that when we do dance together at school functions, I always lead. It’s the curse of the tall girl. Or the bossy one. I can’t decide which is more accurate.

  As I prepared to get down to “Gold Digger,” the mood, and song, changed abruptly and we found ourselves slow-dancing to “Wind Beneath My Wings,” the top of Kevin’s head grazing the bottom of my chin. He’s one of my two best friends in this world, so nobody thought twice about seeing us in this terpsichorean clinch, yet I suddenly felt suitably uncomfortable and so we beat a hasty retreat from the dance floor—or middle of the dining hall, as the case may be—and into two open chairs at a small round table.

  One of the reasons I love Kevin is because he’s an inveterate gossip. The minute we sat down, he leaned in conspiratorially. “So, I guess you heard what happened to Wayne Brookwell?”

  I shook my head. “Nope.” Unless Kevin tells me, I have no idea what goes on on campus. I flagged down a passing student who was a server for the party and probably getting either community service hours or work study credit for her time. I asked her for two Diet Cokes. “But before we get to that, what’s with you and Nancy Weineger? Or should I say, ‘Mary Magdalene’?”

  Kevin shook his head, clearly embarrassed. “She’s one of those wacky Catholics who fall in love with priests. I’ve seen it a thousand times.”

  He had? This was a new phenomenon to me. I’d heard of “Fr. What-a-Waste”—the handsome
priest who devotes himself to Christ rather than a woman—but I didn’t see Kevin in that role. My incredibly handsome boyfriend had once confessed to thinking about becoming a priest. Him? He would have been the ultimate Fr. What-a-Waste. Kevin? Not so much. “Explain.”

  “Nothing to explain,” he said, taking a sip of the soda that had been delivered to our table. “The collar turns some people on.” He was pretty matter-of-fact, confident that his collar was setting libidos ablaze, so I took him at his word.

  “Interesting.” I poked him in the ribs with my elbow. “Ever think of taking her up on it?” I asked, only half joking.

  He gave me a horrified look. “No!” He smoothed down the front of his black clerical shirt. “I have to be careful with these kinds of situations. You know that.”

  “I do know that,” I said. “Just joking, Kev.”

  “Besides,” he said, “you know the archdiocese isn’t my biggest fan.”

  I knew that, too. Kevin had been sent to St. Thomas after several complaints from parishioners at the church in which he had been installed prior to this job. Something about repeated sermons about the cardinal and his champagne tastes, which was fine, if said cardinal wasn’t closing churches and parochial schools with wild abandon due to lack of funds. The archdiocese figured that sticking him at a Catholic college with a small enrollment and a host of blind and deaf nuns was better than having him preach the Gospel at a thriving parish. So far, Kevin had made it work. And he had made my teaching here that much more enjoyable through our delightful, yet unorthodox, friendship.

  He looked around and leaned in again. “So, Wayne Brook-well?”

  “Remind me who he is again?” I drank my second flat Diet Coke and made a face. “This would be much better with a shot of rum.” Unless I broke into the nurse’s office and got us all a shot of Robitussin, flat Diet Coke would have to do.

  “He was the resident director over at Siena Hall.”