In the far corner of the first floor was a small, carpeted room where I sometimes showed my classes films with a business theme—Wall Street and Trading Places usually went over well. Room-darkening blinds covered all six windows. I closed the door behind me, a small amount of late afternoon light filtering through the narrow rectangle of pebbled glass. Sitting in a desk in the front row, I felt the momentary lightheadedness one occasionally feels in old buildings. Believers in the supernatural say spirits are passing through you. More likely it was toxins in materials no longer used in the construction of newer buildings.
I held my magnifier against Thayer’s business card. The small, bubbly serif required some guess work. Even with a 22X magnifier, I don’t so much read as piece together words and sentences through deductive reasoning. Thayer was his last name. His first name seemed to be Hammond. “Actor,” he had chosen for the line where you told people what you did. I slid my loupe past the stock image of tragedy and comedy masks in the card’s center. I had made it to the third number, an eight or a six. I also couldn’t decide what kind of help he might provide, wary as I was of his partner’s influence. I returned the card to my wallet.
Hoopel’s handwriting was large and neat. I typed Skipwith’s number into my phone. It had the raised bump on the five, but I wasn’t a fan of the tiny buttons, of pressing them tenuously with my fingernail instead of my thumb. The sound as well was inferior to the cord-tethered receiver on my nightstand. Static enveloped the voice of the young woman who didn’t say Skipwith’s name when she answered. She had the good cheer of a receptionist who likes her boss but not her job, or the other way around.
“Ted there?” I asked.
Her silence didn’t foreshadow the click of my call being transferred.
“Do you mean Theo?”
“Of course. Theo.” Still no click.
“Whom should I say is calling?”
“Tell him Simkins. First name Dean.”
She said she’d see if he was available. The click sounded skeptical. Outside, the conversation of two birds was muted by unbroken window panes. The library had incurred far less vandalism than the buildings with classrooms and faculty offices. Somewhere beyond the stacks, less muted than the birds, came the hiccupy laugh of a flirty debutante.
“Who is this?” said someone other than the receptionist. He sounded no older than forty-five, possibly as young as his early thirties. The seriousness of people who work around money has a way of aging a voice.
“That got your attention, didn’t it?” At the last second I had decided on a Southern accent. I had spoken with one, or so my grandmother told me, well into elementary school. Years of hard work had covered it with a lovely, non-regional coating of white paint, but it was still there when I needed it. I never needed it.
“May I help you?” Skipwith’s harsh tone sloughed away the pretty parts from the word help.
“I suppose you can start by telling me what’s going on at that overpriced institution where I sent my son more than ten years ago.”
“Your son is an alumnus?”
“He’s a junior.” I stretched my vowels until they snapped. “What my boy tells me, he’s further from his diploma than he was last year. How is it, in Christ’s good name, that a college can move a student backwards?”
Skipwith didn’t tell me how it was. He was too busy typing on his computer.
“Whoever murdered that Simkins fellow was probably tired of writing forty-four thousand dollar checks each September and seeing no return on their investment.”
“The way I understand it—I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your real name.”
“Biggins. Francis W. Biggins.”
“Well, Mr. Biggins, the way I understand it, the dean took his own life. I don’t have the details, but I’m sure it was very tragic. These things usually are.” Skipwith had all the patience of a janitor the day before his retirement.
The sound of the chuckling girl returned. I stood by the door and held the phone at my side. The laughter got quieter, more closely resembling a furry, ugly-faced creature a zookeeper brings on a late night talk show.
I returned the phone to my ear. “Call it a suicide if you like. That’s all in the past. Day trader like yourself, you must be a man with his eye on the future.”
Skipwith’s sigh would have blown out a candle across the room. “Yes, sir.”
“This Bibb woman who’s taking over, my son’s had her for a few classes. His descriptions don’t paint a picture I’d like to hang in the living room. Do you believe, Mr. Skipwith, that the future of Parshall College rests in the lap of this Bibb woman?”
Silence on a cell phone sounds a lot like a line that has gone dead.
“You there, Skipwith? I heard a rumor that the trustees might
have conspired with this Bibb woman to put an end to Dean Simkins. What do you know about that?”
Skipwith blew out another candle. “I’m going to level with you, sir, in the hopes of returning to my regular job, the one that pays actual money. I’m one of three trustees. In making decisions germane to the college, I receive one half of one vote. The other trustees have full votes. Therefore, Mr. Biggins, my opinion is not as important as that of the other trustees, which I’m sure you were able to discern unless you, too, are an alumnus of the diseased institution my great-great-great-uncle inflicted on higher education those many years ago. I’d just as soon cede my half-vote to someone like yourself, someone who seems to care about the students, or at least one of them, which is one more than I care about, but you’d be surprised how strict our legal system can be when it comes to wills and inquests and blah blah blah.”
I sat down in the desk closest to the door. It was smaller than the one beside it, a gift from one of Grayford’s middle schools. “Perhaps, Mr. Skipwith, you could tell me how to get in touch with those other trustees with their full votes and greater concern for the young minds of Parshall College.”
“Love to, Mr. Biggins. Can’t. Not since the reading of my great-great-great-uncle’s will, prior to which I believed I was about to inherit something of actual value, have I set foot in that humid, beige city called Grayford. Mr. Biggins, can I give you some free advice on
your son’s future? Take that annual check and put it in a low-risk mutual fund.”
“Why not some blue chips or a high-interest CD?” I knew a thing or two about finance, even if I never had money to invest.
The line was silent. This time it was dead. Somewhere beyond the classroom, the keening continued at a low volume. Ghosts who make loud noises aren’t the ones you need to fear, I told people who cared enough to respond to Simkins’s occasional e-mails offering up my services. It’s the quieter sounds, the respectful tones that warrant consternation. Angry spirits use hushed tones to draw you closer. All my wisdom of the paranormal came from books by men with Eastern-European names and advanced degrees from schools with the word Institute in their titles. Once in a while, I caught myself considering a passage more thoroughly than a reasonable man should, the way one checks a day-old horoscope for anything that sounds true.
A protracted squeal split into little beeps. The sound seemed to
get further away, pulling me closer, as the experts say. Placing my ear against the wall of the classroom, I could hear it well enough to say it was human, or used to be. I remembered the utility closet in the back corner. I skipped the ear routine and gave a light knock. When no one answered, I went for the doorknob.
A bonfire of a scream engulfed the closet and classroom. The force of it, along with the darkness and a tangle of coaxial cable, sent me tottering into the metal cart with the VCR and projector. I grabbed the cart’s middle shelf, but continued to fall.
“There she is,” I said.
The closet was the size of a motel bathroom. On the deeper side, scantily illuminated by the twice filtered daylight from the
open door, three breaths tried to decide if they wanted to become
a second scr
eam.
“Dr. Cowlishaw?” It was a young girl’s voice, ruling out my first guess of a homeless squatter, a recurring problem in cooler months.
“You are aware you’re in a closet,” I said, not yet able to place
the voice.
“I had to get out of my dorm, Dr. Cowlishaw.” The screams hadn’t cleared her voice of tears, which seemed to be starting up again.
Blood rushed to my face, most notably to the parts that had seen fists rush toward them. I freed my foot from a pile of cables. “The dorms are pretty small, aren’t they? Nowhere near as comfortable as these storage closets.”
She laughed slightly. It might have been a miniature sob. “I’m sorry I stopped coming to your class.”
“You had plenty of company, Nikki.” The crying had made Nikki Gladstone’s husky voice difficult to identify.
“You shouldn’t have passed me. I only took the first exam.”
“You had the highest score in the class, Nikki.”
“Really? I didn’t even study.”
I could hear the smile around her words and felt guilty for the lie.
“Not really.”
“How did I pass then? I didn’t do any work.”
“Do you remember the sub shop on campus? They punched a card each time you bought a sub. After six punches, you got a free one. Dean Simkins thought you had earned a free sub.”
Nikki Gladstone was getting up. She stepped over me into the classroom. “I didn’t like him,” she said.
“I’ll add you to the list.”
She sat down in the desk closest to the window. She had on loose-fitting pants with a plaid pattern, possibly pajamas. I sat beside her in the second aisle. My pocket buzzed. I gave it a good swat that would have killed it if it weren’t a phone.
“You wouldn’t have been hiding in there, would you, Nikki?”
She crossed her arms. “Somebody broke into my room.”
I told her I was sorry to hear it. I wasn’t surprised to hear it, but this I didn’t tell her.
“They stole my file cabinet.” The cracks returned to her voice. “I keep all my papers in it. On a flash drive. My senior project,” she said, her smoky voice reduced to a little wisp.
“Did you think it might be in here?”
Nikki shook her head with enough authority that I noticed without looking away. “I just had to get away from those people.”
“Which people?”
“Other students. I’m just tired of it, Dr. Cowlishaw. It’s just— I mean, a lot of us have vandalized stuff to vent our frustration. Some people steal things because, like, this place steals our money. But we never vandalized or stole each other’s shit. A line’s been crossed,
you know?”
“That’s all they took?”
“Yeah. They left my jewelry and laptop, but most of us—most of them—don’t steal because we need money. It’s not like anything on this campus beyond our rooms has any value.”
“When was your file cabinet stolen?”
“Last night. Some jerk pulled the fire alarm and we had to wait outside until it got turned off. When I went back inside, it was gone.”
In class, whenever I noticed damaged or stolen property, I generally laughed along with the students. I was only encouraging the culprits, but I wasn’t much of a teacher and thought I should encourage my students any way I could. Instead of laughter, I offered Nikki Gladstone what I hoped was a believable look of concern. “Anyone else have anything stolen?”
“Islanda—she’s the R.A.—she said I’m the only one. Maybe someone doesn’t want me to pass my class. Some teachers grade on
a curve, you know, and one high score can affect the grades of the whole class.”
“What’s your current grade in this class?”
“A low C.”
“So much for that theory. Whose class is this?”
“Miss Worth’s.”
“I’ll talk to her, see if I can’t get you an extension.” I was reaching into my pocket when Nikki threw her arms around me.
“You’re the best, Dr. Cowlishaw. Seriously.”
“You’re grading on a generous curve, Nikki.” I handed her the business card Londell had given me. “Give this fellow a call about your stolen property.”
She held the card in front of her face. “You want me to call
an actor?”
“He’s also a detective. Tell him I referred you. Tell him your file cabinet’s being held for ransom. The thespian in him will appreciate the drama.”
Chapter 15
I LINGERED BY THE LIBRARY’S EXIT to see who had called. Even magnified twenty-two times, the numbers on the screen were very small. I pushed a few buttons until the number of the missed call was highlighted and pushed send.
“I found some articles about that cop,” Hoopel said, not bothering with hello. “Should I e-mail them to you?”
“Why don’t you summarize them for me?”
He sounded as though he were climbing stairs. “Well, there’s one about a wife who killed her husband. In the trial, Stashauer testified about the gun she used and the ballistics. There’s another about a homeless man who stabbed another homeless man to death. Stashauer testified about the knife that was used, the fingerprints.” He kept going. Afternoon dimmed in the sky.
“I don’t mean to impugn your journalistic instincts, Hoopel, but this is every homicide in Grayford for the past ten years. Detectives testify at trials. It’s part of their job.”
“I thought you wanted a link between him and your dean’s murder. I thought since these were all murders . . .” Hoopel’s voice slumped over, wounded.
“That would be helpful. And if you find one, by all means, let me know. For now, we might have to start small. Do any of your articles describe our detective in terms other than ordinary?”
Hoopel grunted in concentration. It turned into a sigh. “Not really. Here’s a notice of his divorce, but lots of people get divorced. He participated in a fundraiser. I guess a lot of people do that, too.”
“How many fundraisers have you participated in, Hoopel?”
“None.”
“Between us, that makes zero. What kind of fundraiser?”
“Some kind of annual event for the Grayford Food Bank. ‘Will Read for Food,’ it says on the flyer. It took place at the state college.”
“See what else you can find about this event. What do you know about that divorce?”
“Just the date it was filed and the date it was granted. Sixteen months ago and four months ago, respectively.” Hoopel was excited again. “State law says you have to wait a year. My parents almost got divorced when I was in sixth grade.”
“No doubt your inquisitive spirit helped keep them together. What’s her name?”
“My mom?”
“The former Mrs. Stashauer.”
“Marianne Randallman.”
“Why does that sound familiar?”
“You know, Mr. Cowlishaw,” Hoopel began to sing. “If you get in a wreck, slip and break your neck, call Randallman Dudek, Attorneys
at Law.”
The ads were ubiquitous on local TV. Every six months, a new spot premiered with a new plot that always resolved with Lady Justice carrying a bag of money to a bad actor in a neck brace. Somewhere in the middle, Marianne Randallman and Mark Dudek recited their spiel about “the money you deserve.” A few times I had been close enough to the TV to see their faces. Dudek had white hair and whiter teeth. He wore sweater vests and bore a resemblance to Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. Marianne Randallman wore short-sleeve blouses that showed off her toned arms. She had short red hair and the genial face of a second-grade teacher. That she or anyone had considered Stashauer worthy of marriage, and presumably love, gave me pause. So did his charity work. That he had redeemable qualities, traits that had to be set aside, suggested a man with motivation rather than an asshole who doles out threats and coffee stains without reason or prejudice.
; “Maybe I could pay her a visit,” said Hoopel. “I could say I got
into an accident, then tell her I’m going through a divorce and see
what she says.”
I started walking with the phone against my ear, which felt a bit like walking with one eye closed. “You’ve got too honest a face, Hoopel. Besides that, you’re much too valuable to our research department. Keep pounding that pavement.”
“What pavement?”
“Keep typing,” I said. “Go where your curiosity takes you.”
“That’s what my journalism professor used to tell us.” Hoopel laughed. “I’ll bet you’re a great teacher, Mr. Cowlishaw.”
“I’ll bet you’re a horrible gambler, Hoopel.”
I slid the phone into my pocket and entered the swimming pool to the brittle, dissonant bells of a ringing desk phone. The caller had plenty of patience. I stopped counting after the eighth ring. We no longer had voicemail. Only a handful of desks still had a phone.
I followed the bells to the cubicle of Duncan Musgrove. Duncan was not there. The adjacent desks were also empty. I sat in Duncan’s lawn chair and reached for the receiver, but it was no longer ringing.
The ceiling lights buzzed. I had the feeling that I wasn’t alone in the pool. I had taken a pair of steps toward my own desk when the intrepid caller tried again.
“Musgrove,” I answered, making no attempt at his abrasive voice.
“This isn’t Duncan.” The outraged voice belonged to a large woman, the flesh around her neck and throat padding her words.
“Okay, it isn’t. Who’s this?”
She responded without words, only tears. Lately I had this effect on women. “We have a little money,” she said. “Not much, but it’s yours if you promise not to hurt him.”
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