I could see why she would remember him. Judging from the crow’s feet and gray, he was older, though the rest of his face didn’t appear to be aging. He had wavy dark hair with a few strands of gray and dark eyes. He appeared to be slightly built, which meant that he wasn’t a heavyweight. The page gave his name as Professor John Williams. The yearbook didn’t contain any contact information, but I was sure we could get that from the university website.
I cracked the door and looked out. No one was in the hall that I could see. I motioned for Kamila to follow me, and we headed back out the way that we entered.
Once outside, I searched the university website. Professor John Williams was in the sports complex building. That meant that he likely doubled as a coach at the school, but I hadn’t heard of him before.
We made our way over to the building, which was new since my time.
When we arrived, there was no security. I wondered why it was so easy to see the professors. Two young men were walking towards us. They were obviously athletes. They were freshly showered with their hair slicked back with water. Each wore a varsity letter jacket over a T-shirt and sweatpants. The one closest to us allowed his eyes to linger on us for a moment too long, and we didn’t make eye contact as we continued down the hallway.
I walked down the long hallway counting the doors until I came to Professor Williams’ office. The room seemed to be one of many that now lined the hallway on both sides. Again, I was glad that I worked where I did. I would have hated being in a confined cubicle all day long. That might be fine for Danvers and Williams, but not for me.
Whatever I had expected to see in his office, this was not it. The desk was empty. Boxes were stacked against the one wall, and there was no sign of anyone around. He had packed up to leave.
My mouth stood open, thinking of the original disappearance and the discussion on the quick removal of Fisher’s possessions afterwards. Now there was a second disappearance, and all of his belongings were already in boxes and ready to ship. I had a bad feeling about this.
I found a custodian down at the end of the hall. Kamila had not said a word but I was too lost in my own thoughts to care.
“Have you seen Professor Williams?” I asked when I found the older woman.
She paused a moment and then shook her head. “Sorry, most people around these parts call him ‘Coach,’ and no, I haven’t.”
I nodded. That made sense and explained why his office had been exiled to the sports complex building. Still, it made it unlikely that he and Professor Wallace had merely run into each other by accident. When two people worked so far apart, it meant that discussions were planned.
Now he was gone, and I was suspicious. Most faculty waited until the end of the year, or even the end of a semester to leave. It was a rarity for a faculty member to leave in the middle of a semester. It removed all continuity in lessons and grading.
“Where is he going?” Kamila asked. I was keenly aware that she hadn’t talked to me, but was willing to discuss the case with a stranger.
The custodian shrugged. “Not sure. We were just told to box everything up and move it into storage.”
That sounded worse. Not only had he left in the middle of a term, but he wasn’t even around to do his own moving. The words made it sound like he wouldn’t be back soon. I thought back to Ronald Fisher and his disappearance. I wondered if the local police would act any sooner on this matter than they had with the Fisher case.
“Thanks for your help,” I added, seeing no more questions to ask. I doubted that the supervisor would have told the custodians the latest gossip on campus.
Without speaking to Kamila, I decided to hike back over to the building where Professor Wallace had his office. Perhaps he knew something more about the coach’s disappearance. We walked in silence to the business school offices. I needed no help with directions this time around.
When we got to Professor Wallace’s office, there was no one there. I’d been lucky on my previous trips, but now I had struck out. The secretary was still there, typing up some notes.
“Hi,” I said, putting on my best smile. “I was wondering if Professor Wallace would be in today.”
The woman didn’t even bother to look at me. “No, he’s out for the next few days.”
I thought that equally odd, given that the term was in full swing at the moment. “Do you have any contact information I could have?”
“I can take a message,” she said. The woman sighed and slid a notepad over to me. “Just write it down there.”
I started to write it out, but stopped to ask. “What about Coach Williams? Do you know where he’s gone?”
The woman stopped typing now and looked at me. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” she said with a strange look in her eye, panic, perhaps, or maybe fear. I had not expected Professor Wallace to come clean about the conversations he’d had with Williams, but at the same time, I had a feeling that perhaps this departure was something like the disappearance of Ronald Fisher—a man gone, his possessions ready to go too, and no one who wanted to talk about it.
With the coach, I expected more of a university-led removal. That didn’t seem to explain the situation with Fisher. He’d been a student and not privy to any of the secrets that an education organization might have. He was a small cog in a large university. The possibilities that he could have come across something were slim. He had been in good spirits the last few days of school. I would have expected him to have been more pensive if he had uncovered something about the university or its staff.
Still, the disappearance felt like a planned event, and I was concerned now that Coach Williams might be missing as well.
Kamila and I walked outside of the offices and back to the car. The wind had picked up, and I wished that I had brought a jacket with me. The gusts blew through my T-shirt like I was not wearing anything.
I stopped for a second as a little idea toyed with my head. It was just out of reach until the wind blew again. A jacket. The athletes at the sports complex had been wearing varsity letter jackets. Presumably Ronald Fisher had owned one as well. Yet the inventory of the closet had included shirts, pants and shoes. No jacket. Granted that it was summer time, but I doubted that he would have left it at home for the summer. He’d been proud of his athletic career and it likely served as a reminder of his accomplishments. As such, he had taken it with him when he disappeared. I would have to call Trevor Jones to make sure, but I perhaps had my first real evidence that he’d left on his own.
While we had completed the needed paperwork for Kamila to continue working for us, the rest of the afternoon had been a waste. I hadn’t found any real answers to the disappearance. I decided not to count the hours that I drove there and back or the time spent filling out forms among the hours I accumulated for the professor. Even so, time seemed to be running out on the investigation.
Chapter 5
Sylvia Vallera actually suggested meeting in an alley. While I thought it smacked of Watergate and paranoia, Land was not so historical in his feelings about the matter. He was afraid that, in a case that had already featured a stabbing, one disappearance, and perhaps a second one, I could be a potential victim. He insisted on tagging me with surveillance equipment. I nixed carrying any recording equipment, feeling that the devices would betray my agreement with Vallera regarding our meeting. However, I did have two tracking devices on me besides my phone. With the amount of tech I had on my person, Land would be able to find me anywhere.
So I stood in a quiet alley, only a few streets over from Elm, where I worked. I couldn’t see anyone for the length of the narrow roadway, which ran between Broadway and Sycamore. At the moment when I began to think that I was being stood up, a woman appeared at the far end of the alley, down by Broadway.
Vallera was a beautiful woman, dark hair and eyes with just a hint of color in her cheeks. Even though I knew she had to be in her 50s, she looked 20 years younger than her age.
She would have been easil
y spotted even in an open area, because she was forever vigilant. Her head twisted one way and then the other, looking and listening for anything that could be considered a threat. She had a nervous energy that seemed to infect me as well; I became fidgety myself.
Unlike my intrepid husband, her tactics were reactionary. I wondered if she had been attacked at some point or whether threats had been made to her about Ronald Fisher. She kept an eye out around her, but what would happen if an attack was made? She would still be trapped in an alleyway with tall walls on either side of her and a long run without much room to maneuver. The few doors that opened into the alley were likely locked. A few had been boarded over.
I approached her slowly, letting Vallera see that I was alone and not carrying anything. I’d left my backpack with Sabine at the food truck, so that there would be no question of me carrying a recording device or weapon. Of course, there was always my phone, but I planned to let her see it to know that I had no desire to break the rules she’d set up for a meeting.
“Hi, Sylvia. I’m Maeve,” I said as I stepped to within feet of her. “Thanks for meeting me.”
She nodded and bit her lip. “I’m taking a big chance here. I’m still not sure that I should be doing this.”
I took a deep breath to center me. The waves of panic from her were washing over me, and my stomach began to do flip-flops. What could be so bad that she was this skittish about telling me something about Ronald Fisher?
“I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me. Let’s start with a few simple questions, just to get things going. You don’t have to make up your mind about talking yet. We’ll just talk background. So how did you know Ronald Fisher?”
“We were friends. We’d actually gone to high school together and we’d managed to stay in touch in college. You know how it is. You tend to hang out with people either in your major or people in the same sorority or fraternity. Even so, we saw each other every couple of months there. We’d do dinner or get a drink.”
I could feel some of the tension start to leave her body. The vigilance was still present, but she didn’t act like she was going to bolt at any second. “Did you two date at all?” I asked, hoping to find out more about him.
She shook her head. “No, Ronnie wasn’t interested in me. He dated a couple of the cheerleaders. He was a sports guy, so he was more into that crowd.”
“Wrestling, right?” I asked, trying to remember all the details of the man’s life. These things had likely been so important to them at that age. Now they were just scrapbook photos and memories.
“Yes, he was all-state in high school, and then he was on the squad when we got to college too. He didn’t talk about it all that much, but he was very into it.”
“He had a varsity letter jacket, right?” I asked, thinking about the missing items from his closet.
She furrowed her brow. “Of course. What does that matter?”
I ignored her question. “So, tell me about his senior year. He had to stay and finish up a few extra credits at the end of the year? So he didn’t graduate with you?” I was slowly trying to bring the conversation around to when Fisher had disappeared, taking my time, but feeling very antsy about the entire situation.
“Yeah, we were close that last year. We both lived on campus, and we ate in the same dining hall. So we saw each other probably two to three times a week. We’d usually eat together and talk.”
“About what?” I asked.
“School, mostly. A little bit of wrestling. He was having trouble with a business class. He ended up failing it and having to retake it in the summer. Plus he had two other classes that he’d had to skip because of his wrestling schedule. So he was a little down about going to summer school. That place is dead during the summer, and everyone Ron knew was leaving.”
I nodded. The disappearance had worked in part because he’d been alone. I doubted that he could have slipped out and left during the course of a regular semester.
“So he was depressed? Could he have done something to himself?” I asked, thinking of a cover-up of a suicide. I hadn’t considered that seriously, but if someone had cleaned up the scene, it was possible.
“Not that depressed. Just sad that he wouldn’t be leaving with everyone else.” She shrugged, as if to say that this wasn’t the big deal I was making it out to be.
“So then what happened?” I asked. I tried to check my watch without seeming obvious, but by my mental calculations, we’d already been here 15 minutes, more than enough time to be spotted if someone were really watching us.
“He got involved with some faculty member. That’s all I heard about it, and I heard it second hand from a mutual friend. Then two weeks later he was gone.”
“You think that the faculty member was responsible?” I asked, using the same terms which I noticed did not include a gender.
“I don’t know, but it has made me wonder all these years. The timing was off, and the local police seemed very uninterested in the entire matter—until the story started gaining traction. Then they went back over their steps and looked for him, but it was too late then. The trail was cold.”
“So who was the faculty member?” I asked. The trail could pick up if I had a name to go on.
“I don’t know,” she said after a moment’s pause. “Ron never mentioned names. He just said it was a faculty member.”
I waited for more, but there was nothing. All of this prep work and concern for a mere gossip item with no meat on its bones. An unnamed faculty member had been canoodling with Ronnie Fisher, and that might have played into his disappearance. I wondered why she thought this was so dramatic that we had to meet in the middle of a city alley.
Without warning, Sylvia pulled out her phone, punched a few buttons, and shoved it deep into her slacks’ pocket. I was startled and more than a little frightened. If I had thought her overly cautious, now I was cursing myself for being so far from any kind of assistance.
I looked around, but there were high walls on both sides of the alley that held enough windows for a brigade to fire down on me. I was trapped and alone.
“What did you just do?” I asked after a few seconds, when nothing had developed. We were still two women standing in the alley.
She paused, looking like she might say something, and then closed her mouth. “Just wait,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if that was a threat or a promise.
In my nervous state, I shifted my weight from foot to foot, probably looking like I had to use the bathroom. Still nothing happened, and I began to wonder if in Sylvia’s paranoid state, she had punched the keys just to make me nervous. It had worked.
About two minutes later and just a few seconds before I was going to leave and call this meeting a waste, a woman came down the alleyway. She approached from the far end of the alley down by Broadway, which I had not inspected before the meeting. I had felt more confident because Land had been showing me the basics of self-defense, but I wasn’t sure I’d need it for this encounter.
She was carrying a box, the type that reams of paper come in. She walked slowly but determinedly, as though she dared anyone to ask her for help. She was thin, nearly emaciated and of an age where she could have been Sylvia’s mother. She wore dark slacks, a pink blouse, and flats. =
“What’s going on?” I asked again, but now Sylvia didn’t say a word. She just watched the woman approaching.
I mentally calculated the risk. If she had a weapon, she couldn’t access it easily due to the box, and I doubted that the box held any explosive devices, since Sylvia looked more relieved than upset.
Finally, the woman stood next to us, and she set the box on the ground. She pushed it towards me with her foot. “This is for you,” she said. “You need to see all of this.”
I held out my hand. “I’m guessing you’re Mrs. Fisher?” I used my deductive powers to determine that the only woman of this age to play a part in the disappearance was Ronnie’s mother. I had wanted to impress these two woman, and from their f
aces, it was obvious I’d scored a hit.
She nodded and shook my hand. “Maybe you do have a chance of solving this. You have a good combination of fearlessness and smarts. I brought the things that Ronnie was working on when he left. I gave you the books, the notebooks, the other papers he had on his desk, anything that might be a clue.”
“Thank you. Do you have time for a few questions?” I asked, knowing that I might not get another chance to question the family. After all, I had practically declared a moratorium on talking to t them, in part because I’d heard that they were angry and slightly deranged. Instead, I found this woman to be a font of quiet strength. I couldn’t imagine losing a child and the pain she had felt.
She nodded at Sylvia, who left the alley, walking off in the same direction as Mrs. Fisher had come. We were alone.
Once Sylvia was out of sight, she said, “What do you want to know?”
“What was Ronald like in the days before he disappeared? Did he seem worried or upset or anything out of the ordinary?” I had so many questions, and at the same time, I had to pick them carefully, because I knew my time and the number of questions was likely limited.
Additionally, everyone had warned me about this woman’s intensity and fervor in trying to find her son. I remembered Trevor Jones telling me that she had trapped the boys in corners and stared at them. It had been one thing to meet Sylvia here. It was entirely different to meet this intense woman in a lonely place.
She sighed. “I’ve gone over this so many times that I feel like I am reciting lines in a play. He seemed very much like his usual self. If anything, he was happier. He had all but finished his classes and he was actively trying to find a job. He had a few leads, but nothing solid yet. He was a little concerned about the prospects at the end of summer, but he wouldn’t have run off because of that. He could have come home and stayed with us. We’d even talked about it.”
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 140