“I tried contacting him,” I lied. “He didn’t pick up.”
“It’s possible he hasn’t yet gotten where he’s going.”
“Spoken to who?” Carly asked.
“Whom,” said Parshall. “Darling, I mean no offense to the realist tradition to which you doubtless belong, but this is a conversation for believers. If you’d like us to pause while you step into the hall, we’ll gladly do so.” Parshall threw his words a little harder at the top of the well. A few hit the edge and fell back down.
“Carly’s a believer,” I said. “Her novel is about vampires.”
Parshall’s hand covered his heart again. “Is this true?”
“It’s true,” she said in the same sheepish voice that had shared the news Monday morning.
Parshall offered her a sincere apology. The elderly have no reason to be insincere. Turning to me again, he said, “Goddammit, Nick. You were supposed to take care of this.”
“Due respect, Dr. Parshall, I’ve never known ghosts to fire guns.”
A big, derisive breath must have flared his sizeable nostrils. They were as wide as nickels, sometimes registering beside my blind spots like small eyes. “Spirits wield their influence in a variety of ways. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”
As always, I declined the opportunity to deny my paranormal talents. The week we met, while showing me his library, I had heard a click in the ceiling, and his excitement—“You can hear it!”— prompted him to pull down a book from one of the lower shelves. He pointed to a passage, which I pretended to read.
“Do you think you could give it a try?” he had asked, and I had nodded, not sure what trying or it entailed.
The next day he declared his study ghost-free. In the coming weeks, I did him the courtesy of scanning his various tomes into my computer, converting the text to speech, and parroting their contents to him over bowls of rice pudding my grandmother made with assistance from the kitchen staff. The whole charade was for her benefit, I long presumed, an elaborate plan by Dr. Parshall to convince her, after so many refusals, to say yes to his standing proposal of marriage. She cited the twenty-year difference in their ages. Never mind how little time she had to live. Only when he asked me to close the door of his study, not wanting my grandmother to hear the finer details of his employment offer, did I realize it was only a charade to one of us.
I sat down in the wheelchair. “Maybe there’s a book you can recommend, Dr. Parshall.”
It sounded as though a piece of popcorn were caught in his throat. He kept making the sound without much vigor. Carly said his name, and the sound rolled to a stop.
“Tate, his eyes are closed.”
I reached for his liver-spotted hand, as small as a child’s.
“Dr. Parshall, wake up.”
Carly was in the hallway, yelling for help.
The nurse with a questionable background in performing arts took his pulse and blood pressure one more time. There were curse words, his and hers, and the sound of a motorized bed.
“He just needs some rest,” she said, ushering us into the hallway. “Between you and the woman who was here earlier, he’s had about all he can handle in a day.”
“Which woman was this?” I asked. Dr. Parshall had no family to speak of, and I remembered no regular visitors from the time I came to Rosewall Glen on a daily basis.
“Some woman trying to save a nest of birds. She wanted him to sign a paper giving her group permission to rescue them from one of the buildings at the college.”
“Do you remember her name?”
“It would be in the guest book. She had burnt orange hair. In my opinion, she could have used conditioner. I don’t like to speak ill of someone in a wheelchair, but her clothes were several sizes too big. She looked like a little girl who raided her mother’s closet.”
“Did he sign it?” I asked the nurse.
“You’d have to ask him.”
I opened his door. Parshall was already asleep. I shook him gently until he made a B sound.
“Dr. Parshall, do you remember the woman who was here to see you earlier?”
“What woman?” he said. Sleep had punched a lot of holes in his voice.
“She wanted you to sign something. Did you sign anything today?”
“Sign,” he said in a glassy voice you could see right through.
“He has good days and bad days,” said the nurse.
“When we have to separate them, the good isn’t that good, is it?”
I sent my gaze upward to see the nurse shake her head with a
flat smile.
“We can’t blame them, Nick.”
“Blame who?”
“We put our school on their land. Of course they’re going to be mad.”
“Whose land?” Years earlier, he had told me they were the ghosts of students denied admission. Then they were the ghosts of faculty denied tenure.
“I have a new theory.” He thumped his hand on the arm of the chair, as though it had fallen asleep. “What if the college was built on the sacred land of Indians. What can we do to appease them, Nick?”
I noticed on his nightstand one of the green plastic containers used by the library for the blind for books on tape. I had told him about the service when his eyes could no longer manage large print. “What are you reading these days, Dr. Parshall?”
“A new writer. Talented fellow named Stephen King. That one’s called The Shining.”
“I’ve heard of him,” I said, realizing where he had gotten his new theory.
“Dr. Parshall, maybe you would like to do a little reading before bed.”
The nurse insinuated herself between me and the chair. “Visiting hours are over. He needs his rest.”
“Just one more thing. Dr. Parshall, I understand there are three trustees. I know you’re one of them. One of the others wouldn’t be Theodore Skipwith, would it?”
“That’s right. Old Letrobe passed on, left his share to the Skipwith boy.”
“And who’s the third trustee?”
“That would be Ms. Freyman. Sarah Freyman.”
“Does Ms. Freyman work out of the trustee’s office?”
Parshall held out his arm as far as it would go, gesturing to the room. “When you reach our age, this is what an office looks like.”
The nurse pulled my wrist in the direction of the hall. “Might Ms. Freyman have an assistant?”
Half a minute went by. I asked him again, a bit louder. “No, Sarah was an only child.”
“Not a sister, an assistant.”
Dr. Parshall grabbed my hand. He pressed it between both of his. “Go purify the land, Nick. I give you my blessing. Ask Ms. Freyman to give you hers.” He dictated her address to Carly. “Never mind the Skipwith boy. Too many generations separate him from the founders. He has no connection to the land.”
We checked the guest book, not expecting the bird activist to have used her real name. At 10:30 this morning, in what Carly described as block letters, was the name of our interim dean. Under the column where guests wrote whom they were there to see, in more block letters, she had written F. Randolph Parshall.
Chapter 16
NO CARS, BLACK OR OTHERWISE, followed us to the Gray Knight. I counted only a pair of vehicles on our side of the building. The hourly customers didn’t arrive until the bars closed.
“Why do you live in a motel?” Carly asked.
“I don’t like making the bed.”
The office was hazy with smoke and garlic. The Gogeninis had put a white table cloth on the card table against the wall. In the center of it, a single candle burned beside a bottle of red. The housekeeping cart was diagonal between the desk and the door to the Gogeninis’ apartment.
“What a picky man,” Sundeep said from behind the desk by way of acknowledging us. He picked up pillows scattered on the floor and stuffed them on a shelf under the counter. “For two hours, this man has run me ragged. There is a spot on his sheets. I change the sheets. The she
ets are scratchy. I change the sheets. Thread count this, lumpy pillow that. Finally, I tell him, sir, if you want luxury accommodations, I recommend the suites across town named after the dead writer.”
“Hope we’re not too late for dinner,” I said.
Sundeep bowed his head. “Forgive me. Welcome, Carly. Welcome, Tate.”
He promised dinner would be out shortly and disappeared inside their apartment. I pulled out one of the card table chairs for Carly and took the seat beside her. I slid my hand along the table until my fingers found the base of a wine glass. I rested the neck of the wine bottle on the glass’s lip and gave myself a generous, five-second pour. I gave Carly the standard three count.
It was an Italian pinot noir of which Sundeep had grown particularly fond in recent months. Notes of vanilla and red fruit gave way to subtle, nearly imperceptible hints of clove. Some wine drinkers say the pleasure comes less from the flavors themselves than the search and contemplation. Personally, I like finding what I’m looking for, even if it’s gone in a matter of moments.
Jaysaree made us get up to hug her. She complimented Carly on the top she was wearing. She complimented me on Carly’s face and figure.
The serving dishes of rice and Malai Kofta were still going around when Sundeep raised his glass. “To the first of many meals among the four of us.”
Jaysaree put a hand on Carly’s wrist. “We worry about Tate. He is too old to be playing in the field.”
I complimented the food. The subject didn’t change.
“Do you want children, Carly?”
Carly hummed the letter M for a long moment before letting it become “maybe.”
“Do not wait, dear. Sundeep and I have been trying for some time. You cannot predict when the toughness will get going.”
“Jaysaree, you are embarrassing us all,” said her husband.
“Tate will not admit it,” said Jaysaree, “but I believe he wants a big family. It is only natural for someone whose parents—”
“What’s the status of that stained shirt?” I asked a little too loudly.
Jaysaree stopped talking. She pushed her chair away from the table and moved around the desk into their apartment. I feared I had offended her until she emerged a few seconds later. She held the shirt, folded inside a thin box, very close to my face.
“All gone,” she said. “Get out your magnifier and look at the buffet.”
“Feast your eyes,” corrected her husband.
I did not get out my magnifier. I thanked her and set the box on the floor.
“I ran into your colleague while I was at the dry cleaners,” Jaysaree said.
“Which colleague?” Carly asked.
“The red-haired woman in the wheelchair. The one with a face like. . .” Jaysaree’s hand went around in a circle, trying to conjure the right comparison. “A newborn squirrel.”
“Delilah Bibb,” I said.
“That is her. She claimed not to remember me from the Christmas party, but I remembered her. Each time I brought out pakoras or samosas, she would ask me what was in it. She had brought her daughter and wanted to make sure she was not allergic.”
Carly held her glass while Sundeep refilled it. “Delilah recommended that dry cleaner to me last year. They ruined a pair of my wool slacks.”
“Cleaner Than Cleaners?” Jaysaree leaned back in her chair.
“Washed Up. Off Summitview.”
“No, dear. They are far too expensive. I always go to Cleaner Than right across the street.”
I ushered a mouthful of wine past my tongue, foregoing the search for clove. “This isn’t exactly Delilah’s neck of the woods.”
“The owner, Mrs. Thopsamoot, said she had never been there before. Mrs. Thopsamoot wanted to know why I called her Miss Bibb. Apparently, this wasn’t the name she had given her.”
“How is Mrs. Thopsamoot with blood stains?” I asked.
The question floated in the air with the masala. At last the moaning door to the lobby punctuated the silence.
“Sure smells like Heaven in here. Your people don’t call it Heaven, do you? How are the good people this evening?”
I connected the syrupy accent to its lumbering owner, whose acquaintance I had made at the end of the afternoon’s memorial service.
Sundeep pushed a sigh through his nose. “What can I get you now, Mr. Totten?”
The accreditation representative took a few more steps toward our table. “Dr. Totten,” he said, “but Jefferson is just fine. May I?” Standing between Carly and Jaysaree, Jefferson picked up the wine bottle and set it down with a click of his tongue. “Drink as you go. I used to be in that boat myself once upon a time. I’m working on a cellar these days. I don’t know if this will mean anything to you good people, but I have a 1973 Chateau Gerard. Bordeaux, of course. I’ve never been as keen on pinots. They just don’t stand up against serious meats.”
Sundeep stood up from the table. “What can I get you, Dr. Totten?”
Jefferson Totten seemed not to hear him. He bent down again, but didn’t pick up the wine. I noticed gray sideburns as thick as outdated carpet. “You two look familiar. You didn’t dine with my wife and me on an Alaskan cruise about a year and a half ago, did you?”
I weighed the benefits of telling him how he knew us. They didn’t weigh very heavy. Carly had different scales. She told Totten where we had met.
Jefferson Totten gave us a double clap. “Lovely. Absolutely lovely. An absolute shame about Scoot.” He set a large hand on each of our backs. “You know, I have been trying to learn a little bit about your interim dean all afternoon. All I’ve come across are papers and presentations.” He tossed those words like a handful of sand into the ocean. “If I’m going to work with someone, I need to know if he or she is someone I can work with. I’m talking about somebody’s essence. You can’t type that into a search engine.”
Sundeep, who had disappeared into their apartment, came back with two pillows. “My wife and I sleep on these in our own bed.
Take them.”
Totten waved him off. “The other pillows should be adequate. It’s the air in the room. It’s rather dry. Could I trouble you good people for a humidifier?”
Jaysaree said there was a vaporizer on the shelf above the washing machine. Totten said that would possibly work. Sundeep went to retrieve it.
“As I was saying,” Totten resumed, “I like to know what kind of person I’m working with. Dean Simkins, you see, was a good man. A good, good man. We worked together just fine. Would the two of you say the same of Delilah Bibb?”
“Good at what?” I asked.
Jefferson Totten touched my shoulder with his fingertips. “In the most basic sense, would you say she does right by those around her?”
“At least one person,” I said, “thinks she’s a wonderful human being. She has a card to prove it.”
Sundeep returned with the vaporizer in his arms.
“If you could just get that started for me,” said Totten. “I do thank you.”
Sundeep carried the vaporizer out of the lobby without a word. “See there? That is a good man.” Totten had a seat in the empty chair and touched Jaysaree’s arm. “If I could make a recommendation for you to pass along to the owner of these accommodations. It would be a prudent investment to centralize the heating and cooling. The finer hotels have gone in that direction, particularly in Western Europe.”
Jaysaree rested her hand on Totten’s arm. “My husband and I
are the owners. And if I might ask, doctor, why isn’t a man with such sophisticated taste not staying at one of these finer hotels?”
Jefferson Totten sat up straight. He inspected the folding chair in which he had sat and groaned disapprovingly. “Unfortunately, I am in town for business and not pleasure. The fine folks in Raleigh handle my travel arrangements, and they are a decidedly impecunious breed.”
Chapter 17
AFTER DINNER, ON THE WAY to my room, Totten’s voice was audible through the s
ingle-pane window of his meager accommodations. Carly paused behind the car outside his door. “Look at this, Tate. He drives a Mercedes-Benz. He has a wine cellar, takes Alaskan cruises, stays at the finer hotels of Western Europe.”
She kicked the rear fender of his luxury automobile.
“He does have a PhD,” I said.
The click of high heels on asphalt curved around the building in our direction. The volume and interval of the footsteps told me she was tall and full-figured. The cloud of olive oil, in which Myrsini liked to bathe, reached us a few seconds before she did. Six-four in heels, she leaned down to kiss my cheek.
“Good evening, Tate Cowlishaw.” Myrsini maintained a Greek accent as thick as moussaka, though she had lived in America since age nine. She would be a good match, at least in height, for Jefferson Totten, on whose door she began to knock.
“We’re neighbors,” I said, noticing Carly’s mouth had not closed.
Once Myrsini had gone inside, Carly kicked Totten’s bumper one more time. “That’s for cheating on your wife, Dr. Totten.”
“He might not be cheating,” I said. “Myrsini specializes in conversation. She has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology, I believe.”
Carly laughed angrily. “That’s what I’m talking about. Londell has a PhD. So does Tweel, for God’s sake. They don’t make much more than those of us with Master’s degrees. Administrators like Simkins and this asshole—do you have any idea how much Simkins’s annual salary was?”
I unlocked my room and turned on the dry heat. “Remember when human resources was the retired postal worker who tried to get us to join his fantasy football league? I passed by his cube once and noticed one of his drawers was open. One hundred forty-seven thousand dollars a year. Seven times what we make. More than seven. There’s Delilah’s motive right there.”
Carly sat on the bed next to Edward. He rubbed his face against her knee.
“Delilah has money,” I said. “Family money.”
“How do you think her wealthy family feels about her making what a cashier makes?”
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