“A Caucasian male in his early sixties, recently deceased, gunshot wound to the head.” I left out the self-inflicted part.
“Did you call 911?”
“I didn’t have their number.” I gave Thayer the address and hung up while he was talking.
I wondered if Janice had heard her husband’s gunshots, or if she had rationalized the sound as rodent-on-rodent violence. I picked up the dress. Its wide measurements made it clear whose closet it had come from. I reached for the wig, wondering if the brown might be red. The wig and dress added up to the homely Delilah Bibb at Rosewall Glen, seeking a signature for that petition. Duncan might have been trying to secure his pension under a new regime. I still couldn’t convince myself that my late colleague had killed Simkins, if only because murderers tended to issue more threats than they received.
Rick Stashauer’s enduring interest in the case was its own mystery. Perhaps Ms. Randallman had alerted her ex-husband to the rescheduled appointment. I picked up the note Duncan had left someone, possibly me. Don’t let them hurt her. Five words. I understood four of them. Who and how many “them” referred to, beyond Stashauer, I couldn’t say.
The TV buzzed in spite of the volume turned all the way down. I could hear my friend on the sidewalk whistling a rhythmless tune that seemed to be missing notes. I sat on the foam floor between the late Desert Market and the Steelers trash can. I tried to think of something sweet and sentimental to say, a eulogy for the man with whom I had shared dozens of beers and five unrewarding years at Parshall College. Nothing came to mind, but it was hard to concentrate with a wailing siren outside the house.
My friend was no longer whistling. Crackheads tend not to linger in the presence of law enforcement. Stashauer yelled something. I might have been well-advised to turn off Duncan’s cell phone, recalling now how they were used to pinpoint the location of missing persons. The crackhead stammered an incoherent response.
“Stocky motherfucker with gray hair.”
“Five dollars.”
“Or I could not kill you. Which house is his, you fucking wastrel?”
Words failed the crackhead. It might have been the other
way around.
I took shallow breaths, partly to listen, partly to control my creeping nausea. Conventional wisdom on odors says they weaken over time. The human waste downstairs and Duncan’s corpse seemed to contradict this. The downside of smelling things more intensely than other people is smelling things more intensely than other people. I dry-heaved into the Steelers trash can. I let go of it on a part of the floor not covered in foam. When the ringing dipped below the humming television, rustling was audible in the tall grass. Much louder came the sound of feet on the ladder.
I switched off the television and found a few boxes by the wall that hid half my body. I went with the upper half. Duncan’s phone rang. I gave it a toss in his direction. Stashauer reached the top of the ladder. The phone stopped ringing and started again. A sphere of light skittered across the ceiling and back wall. It touched my leg but didn’t like me enough to go all the way.
Stashauer’s weight shook the floor. It seemed to tilt a little in his direction. “There’s an easy way and a hard way, Musgrove. To be honest, they’re both easy for me.”
The flashlight dipped and swayed. “I see you back there. Put your arms in front of you and crawl toward me.”
Defiant even in death, Duncan stayed put.
“Time’s up, Musgrove. If they had asked me, which they didn’t, we would have gone this route Monday night. God knows you didn’t do what you were so politely asked to do.”
Stashauer counted to three with his trigger finger. He crawled toward us to check his work.
“If anybody asks, which they won’t, you fired first.” Two more shots found the wall near the exit. “Let’s see. Were you right-handed or left?”
Stashauer laughed a little, then harder and harder. “You
didn’t have to kill yourself, Musgrove. I would have saved you
the trouble.”
Seconds later, the square of light went away as Stashauer
closed the door. I liked the sound of his feet on the ladder, much more than I liked the sound of the ladder being dragged around
the house.
Chapter 27
“HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET UP THERE?” Thayer yelled.
“I took the elevator. Now I can’t find it.”
Thayer located the ladder and climbed through the opening. He shined his flashlight into the darkness. Standing upright, he cleared the ceiling by a couple of inches.
I filled him in on what had happened in the minutes between our conversation and his arrival. I wasn’t sure if it was a crime to kill a dead man. Perhaps it was attempted murder if the shooter doesn’t know the victim is dead.
Thayer cocked his head to one side and looked at me with the pity commanded by a grown man on his hands and knees. I thought he might pat me on the head. “Listen, Cowlishaw. I know your experiences with Rick have been negative, but enough is enough.”
I found Duncan’s phone beside the couch cushions and handed it to Thayer. “Your partner’s number would be the last two. I spoke to Stashauer’s ex-wife on Duncan’s phone a little while ago. Marianne Randallman was the last person he called.”
“Now I know you’re wrong. Stash and Marianne haven’t spoken since the divorce.”
“As far as you know,” I said. “At the very least, you must find his proximity to both of Parshall College’s recently deceased faculty a little troubling.”
“No more so than yours, Cowlishaw.” Thayer picked up the plaid dress near his feet. “It’s true, is it not, that you don’t see very well?”
“My hearing’s pretty good,” I said.
Thayer picked up the wig and shook it like a pom-pom. “Look at this,” he said hopefully. “Your colleague was a cross-dresser. His proclivities must have become known to his wife or family, or he couldn’t bear the thought of them knowing. Charade over. Open mouth, insert gun. We see this all the time, Cowlishaw.”
“When was the last time you saw it?”
Thayer thought about it. He kept thinking.
I directed him to Duncan’s note beside the bookcase. “Who is he talking about when he says ‘Don’t let them hurt her’?”
“People like this, they often think of themselves as two people. He killed himself to protect his female alter ego. He probably had a name for her. They always do.”
My phone buzzed. I took it out of my pocket and answered it. “Found some info on the cop,” said Hoopel.
I raised the volume on my phone. “Let’s hear it.” Thayer smacked the side of the television.
“That Will Read for Food thing,” Hoopel said. “It’s an annual benefit for the Grayford Food Bank. Faculty from the writing program and a couple of local alumni read their work. They raffle off signed books and lunches with the writers. Rick Stashauer was one of the participants four years ago.”
“In what capacity?”
“He was one of the readers.”
Thayer turned up the volume of a soap opera. Violins swelled above an actress’s tearful soliloquy. I crawled toward the television and spoke a little louder.
“And what did Mr. Stashauer read, Hoopel?”
“It doesn’t say in the program or the student paper. Each year somebody does a write-up of the event, but it looks like nobody did one that year. I know the faculty advisor for the student paper. He sends us interns. I asked him why nobody covered it that year, and he gave me a funny smile and said to ask somebody in the writing program.”
“You’ve been busy.” I shot Thayer a meaningful look. He didn’t get the meaning as he didn’t see the look.
“It beats moderating reader comments on editorials,” said Hoopel. “F that, Mr. Cowlishaw.”
“Can I assume you spoke to someone in the writing program?”
“I talked to a graduate assistant. She’s the one who gave me the program. She wasn’t
there that year, but I sweet-talked her into finding someone who was.”
“Sweet-talked her, huh?”
“I told her I was investigating a murder.”
“How sweet.”
“She took me to the office of this bald guy with frizzy hair on the sides. He had on a white cardigan. He looked kind of like a scientist, but apparently he’s some kind of playwright.”
“Doug Finch,” Thayer said without turning around.
“His name was Douglas Finch,” said Hoopel. “He started Will Read for Food back in the eighties.”
“He’s had a couple of his plays produced off Broadway,” Thayer said to the television.
“Finch told me the readers were always faculty and well-published alumni. Stashauer was the one time he had made an exception. Never ever again, Finch said and grinned at me with a bunch of chipped teeth. He held his smile for a long time, like he was posing for a picture.”
“Or showing you something,” said Thayer quietly.
“This next part is off the record, Mr. Cowlishaw. Mr. Finch offered to let Stashauer read at this event. In exchange, Stashauer was going to fix a few DUIs for Mr. Finch.”
“That was bad enough,” said Thayer in the same lugubrious tone the doctor on TV was using to deliver news of a miscarriage.
Hoopel continued. “So Stashauer read some kind of story about goblins and warlocks. Like half a minute in, people in the audience started laughing. Finch said it was hilarious, which wouldn’t have been a problem if Stashauer had set out to write a comedy. Every time somebody laughed, Stashauer paused to stare them down. Apparently, everyone is supposed to read for ten minutes. After about forty minutes, people started leaving. Finch tried interrupting him a couple of times.”
“That’s when it got bad,” Thayer said.
“I don’t know if any of this helps, Mr. Cowlishaw. Are you sure you don’t want me to pay a visit to his ex-wife?”
“You’ve been very helpful, Hoopel. I’ll be sending some more work your way very shortly.”
“Another assignment?”
I took a deep breath a little too close to my late colleague. “Another obituary.”
The soap opera went to commercial, a jingle about oil soap set to the tune of the 80s sitcom about a boarding school. Thayer turned down the volume and faced me with his head bowed.
“I’m afraid my partner’s less admirable qualities might have rubbed off on me,” Thayer said.
“Does that mean you’re going to shoot me?”
I couldn’t tell if the actor-detective was shaking his head. He was not reaching for his gun. In a voice as small as the rest of him, he said, “I’m covering for him, Cowlishaw. I’ve done it for years. It’s like Hamlet says, ‘Lying ’tis easy.’”
Thayer reached above his head. A click turned on a light bulb screwed into the ceiling. He circled Duncan’s body. It was brighter and still dead.
“Guy’s got a hot plate, coffee maker, bottles of water, a whole cabinet of canned goods.”
My own eyes noticed a dark design on the front of Duncan’s white shirt. A small constellation of bullet holes circumscribed the embroidered horse. Dead as he had been when they went in, no blood had come out.
“What’s this guy’s story, Cowlishaw? Did he live in his own attic?”
“He had a preference for stuffy climates. He was a professor for over thirty years.”
Thayer was sliding cans across the metal cabinet. It might have been the curiosity of a good detective. It might have been the fidgeting of a man avoiding the truth.
“What was that you were saying about your partner?” I asked.
Thayer closed the cabinet door. After a long moment, he had a seat on the floor, Duncan’s body between us. “Stash has always been a big brother to me, Cowlishaw. He’s kind of an asshole, but he’s saved my life a couple of times.”
Outside, a siren got closer and faded into the din of Hannon
Valley traffic.
“Stash blamed Finch for the audience’s reaction. At the end of the evening, he followed Finch into the men’s room. He stood behind him at one of the urinals. When I walked in, he was ordering Finch on his knees to kiss the porcelain. He only got in a couple of kicks before I got him to stop.” Thayer pulled a thin book from Duncan’s shelf and turned pages. “Worst of all, for me, anyway, is that Doug Finch had been a mentor of mine. I smoothed things over the best I could. Covered things up might be more accurate. All this is to say I owe you an apology, Cowlishaw. Here it is an hour and a half after I saw the coroner’s report, clearly forged, and I’m still defending him.” Thayer’s sigh pushed the odor of decomposition in my direction. “I wonder if I’m not a little codependent. It can happen when you’ve been in life-and-death situations with someone.”
“What was that about the coroner’s report?”
“Stash forged it. For God’s sake, he started to sign his own name and crossed it out.” Thayer’s voice cracked. “Why? Why would he want to kill this guy? Why would he kill your dean?”
“Maybe someone else wanted him to. Has he ever mentioned a woman named Delilah?”
“I don’t think so. He has been seeing someone lately. At least I think he has. I heard him say her name on the phone the other day.” Thayer snapped his fingers, trying to think of it.
“Wasn’t Carly, was it?” I held a deep breath to cushion the blow.
Thayer kept snapping his fingers. “Sarah. That was it.” He examined the wounds in Duncan’s chest. “Sarah Freyman, I think.”
Below us, Janice Musgrove shouted to the mice that daddy would be home soon.
I tried to calculate the odds of two Sarah Freymans with links to Parshall College. “Do you know anything else about her?”
“Just that Stash is as happy as I’ve seen him since the divorce. Why?”
“Sarah Freyman is the name of a trustee of Parshall College. If they’re the same person, she’s quite a bit older than your partner.”
“A May-December romance?”
“More like ‘May I be named in your will.’ From what I gather, this gal’s in her nineties.”
We chewed on this for a little while. At last Thayer switched off the overhead light. I got the television and followed him to the pale square of afternoon.
His unmarked car was parked across the street two houses down. Four houses away in the other direction, I heard a man imitating a high hat. The crackhead hadn’t showered in the last thirty minutes. I thanked him for his help and went through the bills in my wallet. I only carry ones and fives so I can count my change from purchases without a magnifier. He wouldn’t take my five.
“Looks like somebody roughed him up,” Thayer said.
We followed the crackhead to Thayer’s car. He slapped the hood and pantomimed a punch to his own jaw.
“What does your partner drive?” I asked.
“One of these. A little newer. Why?”
“I think he might have socked our friend one.”
The crackhead tapped the hood again, faked another punch. Thayer gave him a round of applause. I gave him five bucks, which he accepted with a bow before exiting stage left.
Thayer saw me noticing the dark spot on the hood of his car. If you stare at something long enough, people give you clues about what it is.
“Grayford’s version of an unmarked car,” he said. “See where they painted over the parts that said ‘Police’?” He indicated additional places on the doors and front panels, not unlike the sloppy paint job on the car belonging to Juliet Bibb. “Budget cuts, Cowlishaw. We drive these things until they’re about to die, then auction them off for whatever we can get.”
“Who buys them?”
“Whoever wants them. They don’t publicize the auctions. Often it’s friends and family of people on the force.”
“This might be nothing,” I said, “but I think our interim dean bought one of these a couple of years ago. Thus far, she’s the only one who’s profited from Simkins’s death.” I put air quote
s around profited, coming as her post did with its hidden fee of seventy-five thousand dollars.
Chapter 28
I ASKED THAYER TO FIND OUT what he could about our interim dean. In the interest of being thorough, I gave him Carly’s name as well. At this point, neither was going to open up to me. Maybe a badge and the charisma of a trained actor would be more effective. He let me out on the sidewalk beside Hemsworth Tower. Grayford’s skyscraper rose forty stories above downtown, twenty-five higher than the next tallest building. It was named for the late senator no one seemed to like, who nevertheless died in office at age ninety-three, a month after being elected to an eighth term. Marianne Randallman was expecting me at two o’clock.
The throng of people by the elevators meant I wouldn’t have one to myself. Bringing one’s face a few inches from the panel of buttons requires a certain amount of privacy. For this lone reason, I had once considered learning Braille, but feeling the little bumps beside the buttons didn’t seem any more discreet. I found the unmarked door that usually leads to a stairwell. This one did. I started up the first flight and started counting.
I emerged panting on the twenty-eighth floor, hands on my knees. My exhaustion drew the attention of an elderly man in a sweater vest. His white hair appeared fluorescent in the left rim of my blind spots. He had the frail, regal gait of a man who has spent many hours on horseback. He mistook my breathlessness for confusion and asked what I was looking for. I told him and followed his small paces to a brass-handled glass door around the corner.
“Mr. Dudek,” said the receptionist I had spoken to over the phone. “Shame on you for coming back.”
“The links will wait long enough to show this young man where he can find the best legal counsel in the great state of North Carolina.” Mark Dudek, the man who had famously negotiated a nine-figure settlement out of big tobacco twenty years ago, clapped me on the back. “What’s your name, son?”
“Musgrove. Duncan Musgrove.”
“Mr. Musgrove, this young lady will get you situated. And Sarah, let them know the elevators are broken. I suppose I, too, will have to take the stairs.”
The receptionist with the compelling name waited until Mr. Dudek left and said my name, my late colleague’s name, with something other than pleasure. “I’ll tell Ms. Randallman you’re here.”
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