by Dean James
Maggie and I both nodded.
“Well,” he went on, “I think Charlie must have had copies of Whitelock’s house keys made, because I found some unfamiliar keys on his key ring when I had to borrow his car one time. I asked him about them, but he just shrugged it off, saying they were from his house in South Carolina. But they disappeared off the key ring not long after that.”
Rob took a sip of Coke before continuing. “While he was house-sitting this summer, Charlie took me over for a look through Whitelock’s house. You know, just a tour, nothing else.” He glanced from me to Maggie. “There was a room upstairs, right next to Whitelock’s bedroom, that was locked, and Charlie said he didn’t have a key.” Rob’s nostrils flared in disgust. “I imagine that’s where Whitelock had his playroom. Charlie must have found the key somehow, and I bet he probably found some way to set up a video camera in there. He spent almost two months in that house last fall during Whitelock’s sabbatical in France. Who knows what he could have done in that time?”
“Did Whitelock have an alarm system?” Maggie asked.
“No,” Rob replied.
“Then, if Charlie did keep a key,” Maggie speculated, “he could have gotten in and out of the house when Whitelock was on campus. Pick up a tape, set up a fresh one. But how did he get it to record at the right times?”
“Voice-activated camera,” Rob responded grimly. “That camera can do just about anything, except wash the dishes.”
“There’s another explanation, though,” Maggie said, staring off into space. “Maybe Whitelock himself made the tapes. I wouldn’t have put it past him.”
I nodded, considering the idea. “That sounds plausible to me. I guess Charlie could have found the tapes, then either stole them or made copies.”
Those two explanations were probably as close to the truth as we’d ever get. Only Charlie and Whitelock knew for sure, and they couldn’t tell us. If the police had discovered any information, I’d be willing to bet they weren’t going to share it.
In silence, we finished our lunch. Once we had cleared the table, Rob departed to use Charlie’s computer for a while, and Maggie and I reluctantly agreed that we should try to get some legitimate work done. In other words, it was back to our reading lists for both of us.
Maggie paused as she was going out the door. “By the way, Andy, do you have the library’s copy of Stenton’s Anglo-Saxon England? It’s checked out, according to the library computer, and of course, they’re not allowed to tell me who has it. I put a hold on it, but who knows how long it’ll be out.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t have it. I’d like to get ahold of it myself, because it’s on my list, too.” As I spoke, I had a quick flash of something in my mind. What was there about that book? Something nibbled at the edge of my memory, then it was gone.
“What is it, Andy?” Maggie watched me with sudden concern.
I shook my ahead again. “There’s something teasing my memory about that book, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it is.” I shrugged. “I guess I’ll think of it eventually. In the meantime, if you do find out who has it, remember I’d like to get it when you’re done.”
Maggie nodded, curiosity in her eyes, but evidently she decided there was no point in questioning me further. She bade me goodbye and walked down the sidewalk to her car.
With Maggie gone and Rob working at the computer next door, I settled into my chair and picked up my turgid treatise on medieval English law.
That lasted about five minutes. I simply didn’t have the willpower to force myself to concentrate on writs of right and writs of novel disseisin. I thought about the paper Rob had hidden. That really bothered me. I needed a distraction, so I pulled one of my favorites by Elizabeth Peters from a nearby bookshelf and spent several hours cavorting with the Emersons in nineteenth-century Egypt.
Rob dragged in around six o’clock, looking worn out and thoroughly disgusted. “No luck, huh?” I asked. For a moment my conscience bothered me about having a good time reading a mystery novel while he had sweated over Charlie’s computer, but I remembered that he was hiding something from me, and I stopped feeling guilty.
Wearily, Rob shook his head. “Whatever Charlie did with the rest of his so-called journal, I don’t know. Those recent entries were the only ones I could find. Maybe that was all he had. Maybe he just started keeping it this semester. Who knows?” He leaned back into the couch and tried to relax his shoulders.
“Oh, well,” I comforted him, “what we have is enough to keep the police busy for a while.” Except for what you’re hiding from me.
“You realize, don’t you,” Rob asked, “that we should’ve called Herrera already?”
What is it that you don’t want me to know? I asked myself. And why can’t I just come right out and ask you? Because, I answered, I want to trust you, and I don’t want to hear an answer that would let me down.
Ruefully, I nodded. “I thought about that—fleetingly, I’ll admit—but it’s Saturday night, and he’s probably enjoying some time off. Surely it can wait till tomorrow or Monday.” I tried to put it out of my mind.
Since Rob had cooked for us twice already, I thought it was my turn. My specialty was hamburgers, and hamburger meat was relatively cheap, as were instant mashed potatoes. I had one last package of hamburger meat in the freezer, and I thawed it out in the microwave.
Rob didn’t complain about my cooking, and after we ate, we went to our rooms. He hesitated a moment over his “Good night, Andy,” and I knew he wanted something more from me than just a return of his good-night wish. But I only muttered, “Good night, Rob.”
I almost asked about the piece of paper, but, unwilling to face a confrontation, I turned and went into my room and shut the door firmly behind me. I rummaged through my videotapes and decided to watch Bringing Up Baby for the umpteenth time. Maybe Grant and Hepburn could take my mind off things.
I laughed, as I always did, at this wonderful movie, but the romantic aspect of it hit me more forcefully than usual. I really was hopeless in some ways, because I secretly expected life to be like one of my favorite movies. I wanted Cary Grant to come along and sweep me oft my feet, with witty dialogue, wonderful clothes, and lots of money.
Is Cary Grant waiting for me in the room down the hall? I wondered. Hell, I didn’t know, and I was too confused to figure it out.
I rewound the tape, put it back on the shelf, then stripped off my clothes and got in bed.
The next morning, when I woke up, the house was quiet. I had slept better than I expected, given the mood I was in when I tried to go to sleep. By the time I finished my shower, I heard Rob stirring about in his room. I went down to cook breakfast.
About the time I had breakfast ready, Rob appeared, holding the Sunday paper. Neither of us was a chatterbox, for which I was grateful. Facing him over the breakfast table every morning would be more than a bit disconcerting. As we settled down to eat, each of us took a favorite section of the newspaper. Rob laughed over the comics, and I leafed through the book section, looking for reviews of mysteries.
I put aside the book page, disappointed to find no mystery reviews, and picked a section at random as I finished my toast. I grimaced—it was the society section—but shrugged and decided to look through it anyway. I would read even the cereal box if that was the only thing available. At least the society pages beat the cereal box—just barely.
I turned the page, shaking my head over the extravagance of the clothes I saw in the pictures. Not for the first time, I wondered how much money was really raised for charities at some of those events. As my eyes swept over the few photographs on the next page, they lighted upon a familiar face, then widened as I read the caption beneath it.
“That’s who he meant!” I said aloud as I slapped the paper down on the table.
Chapter Twenty
Rob looked up, startled, when my hand connected sharply with the table. “What on earth are you making so much noise about?” he asked g
rumpily.
I thrust the folded paper into his hands and, pointing erratically at the picture which had caught my interest, commanded, “Look at this!”
“It’s Bella,” he replied, as if to ask, So what?
“Read the caption,” I replied.
“The lovely Miss Arabella Gordon,” Rob read aloud, “daughter of the Honorable Frank Gordon, Mayor of Houston, attended the gala benefit dinner with her steady companion, the dashing Bruce Tindall.”
Rob looked up, and together we stated, in tones of smug satisfaction, “A and B.”
“Exactly!” I said. “It wasn’t Azalea and Bella, or Azalea and Bruce, after all. I had forgotten that Bella’s name is really Arabella. I bet that’s what Charlie meant in his journal.”
“After their little visit yesterday,” Rob mused, “I figured they had to be involved somehow. But do you really think Bella was screwing around with Whitelock? Who’d want him, with a hunk like Bruce around?”
“Good point,” I responded, grinning, “but that’s supposing Bella’s interested in Bruce and vice versa.” I’d thought for some time that Bruce had to be in love with Bella, but I wondered what Rob thought.
He laughed. “Come on, Andy. Don’t tell me you’re that blind. Bruce adores her. He’s got hungry eyes. When he thinks no one’s paying any attention to him, he watches her—and I’m telling you, he’s in love with her.”
“I won’t argue that point, because I happen to agree with you. But it still doesn’t mean Bella seconds the emotion.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he said. “She’s pretty insensitive about a lot of things, but they have a feeling of intimacy about them when they’re together. They’re definitely a couple, in more ways than one. She treats him like a pet rock half the time, but she’s very possessive. Charlie needled her once, joking that he was going to seduce Bruce away from her, and she really overreacted.” Rob’s face mirrored the distaste that he had obviously felt, having witnessed the whole thing. “I didn’t think it was very funny myself, but she got downright ugly. And believe me, the woman knows how to be ugly.”
I could easily imagine it. With the brief time Bella had spent near the top of the modeling world, I didn’t have any illusions about how “nice” she had been then, in such a cutthroat business.
Acknowledging my agreement, Rob went on. “Anyway, I think there are strong motives there. If Bella was fooling around with Whitelock, and Bruce found out about it—especially if Charlie told him and taunted him with it—don’t you think Bruce is capable of knocking both of them over the head?”
“Yeah, I do. Bruce is a still-waters kind of guy. It probably takes a lot to get him angry, but once he does, I’ll bet his temper gets away from him.”
I was like that myself. I rarely got that angry, but when I did, I went a little crazy. But at least I hadn’t been trained to kill, like Bruce the former Marine.
“Lord,” Rob moaned, “how would we ever convince the police that the mayor’s daughter could be involved in a kinky sex-murder scandal?”
I snorted derisively. “Are you kidding? The papers would love it, the way they trash His Honor every other week. With the election coming up next year, he’d be out of office for sure.”
The light dawned for us both at the same time, and Rob and I looked at each other.
“My goodness,” he said, his southern drawl more pronounced than usual. “I never thought of that.”
Chilled, I considered the implications. Neither one of us, until that moment, had carried the train of thought that far, but it was the logical conclusion. “Bella makes snide remarks sometimes about her father and his political ambitions”— he apparently had his eyes on the governorship—“but she gets aggressive when anyone else says something. If Charlie threatened to expose Julian Whitelock, that could have meant big trouble for her, if her name came up.”
Rob paused briefly for thought. “But, from what we read in those journal entries, it didn’t sound as if Charlie had any real proof that Bella was involved with Whitelock. It sounded more like he was suspicious and intending to find out more. He was like a terrier—he loved to dig.”
I looked at him grimly. “Well, I guess after he confronted Whitelock, some-one just didn’t give him the chance to dig any further.”
His hand shaking, Rob took another sip of coffee. “No, they didn’t.”
I figured it was time to change the subject. “Don’t you think we ought to let Herrera know about the journal?”
He sighed. “Yeah, since I couldn’t find anything else. I know there has to be more, but where it is, I don’t know.”
Like in your bedroom upstairs, maybe? I thought but didn’t say—though I was tempted, just to see how he would react. I still wasn’t ready to force the issue. Either he would trust me, or he wouldn’t.
Instead, I voiced a different thought, feeling stupid that it hadn’t occurred to me sooner. “Well, disks are small and not that difficult to conceal. Maybe the person who broke in on you took some.”
“You’re right,” Rob muttered in disgust. “I hadn’t even thought about that. And I’ve been so erratic lately about turning on the alarm system, anyone could’ve sneaked in while we were gone. And Charlie had so many disks, I’d never be able to tell what was missing, unless it was one of his program disks.”
I thought of something Bella had said the morning we discovered Whitelock’s body. I reminded Rob. “You remember, Bella said something about Bruce having something to do, and she kind of grinned.”
“That means Bruce was probably here breaking in, while we were on campus discovering a dead body.”
I nodded. “It would have been easy for Bruce to swipe some disks. But if he broke in then, why would they come back here so he could get a look at the tapes in my room? It doesn’t make sense.” I had another thought. “Why didn’t he just erase the other files from the hard disk?”
Rob laughed. “He couldn’t have, I imagine. Charlie had it worked so you really had to dig to get into that subdirectory to find those files, and he had some sort of protection program to keep somebody from erasing or reformatting the hard disk. You’d have to be an accomplished hacker to figure it all out. At least he trusted me with the information.”
“I don’t know how much computer experience Bruce has, but from what you’ve said, I doubt it’s enough to be able to get to those files.”
“No, I don’t think he could have.” Rob laughed again. “Maybe, if he’d stayed there long enough plugging away, but he wouldn’t have wanted to spend that kind of time. I mean, the longer he stayed, the more chance somebody would come back and catch him.”
“You’re probably right.” I groaned. “I think we’d better get it over with and call the police. The sooner we get rid of this stuff, the safer we’ll both feel. I don’t like the idea of anyone trying to break in next door again for another chance at the computer.”
“I guess,” Rob said, though he didn’t sound too happy about the prospect of dealing with Herrera again. He stood up. “I’ll call.”
The person who answered the phone at the campus police office promised to relay the message. It was around ten-thirty, and we had no idea how long it would take before we heard something from Herrera.
The phone rang ten minutes later. Rob was in the living room, reading, while I washed the dishes. I dropped my dishcloth and picked up the receiver. “Hello.” Maggie’s voice rushed into my ear. “Well, I had a visit from the campus police this morning.” She sounded a little indignant. “On a Sunday,” she added, as if I needed reminding.
“What for?” I asked.
“Herrera was here to check up on your and Rob’s alibis for the time of Whitelock’s murder.” Her voice gave evidence of her satisfaction as she continued. I would’ve loved to have been the proverbial fly on the wall, listening to that interview. I’d bet the lieutenant didn’t quite know what to do with Maggie. “I think I convinced him that both of you are in the clear.”
“
Thank you,” I told her sincerely. The knowledge that she was on Rob’s side meant a lot. “Rob will be relieved to hear that.”
“Good. Oh, Herrera’s probably on the way over there now. His beeper went off while he was here, and when he called his office to check in, I heard him mention Rob’s name.”
“Yeah, Rob called to let him know about the journal entries.” I explained what Rob and I had decided about the A and B in the journals. “I expect we’ll have fun explaining why it’s taken us so long to turn over more evidence.”
Maggie laughed. “Come on, now, he’s not that bad. All things considered, he was pretty nice to me, even though he was persistent about your alibis.”
“Yeah, right. You may fall for that lilting Spanish voice, but not me.”
She laughed again. “He’s pretty gorgeous, I’ll admit. If he sorts this out soon, maybe I’ll give him a call.”
“You’re utterly shameless, you know,” I teased.
Maggie snorted in response. “Sometimes you have to be. It’s hard enough finding a decent guy.”
“Amen to that, sister!” I said fervently.
“Some people,” Maggie said, her voice dry, “are lucky enough to have one literally in the next room, however.”
“Don’t push it, okay?”
“Oh, Andy, just relax, and get over yourself.” She laughed.
“Why don’t you give us about an hour,” I went on, as if the previous exchange hadn’t happened, “then come on over. Herrera should be gone by then, and the three of us can talk over everything and see if we can figure out who done what to whom and with what sex toy.”
“Okay,” Maggie replied, still laughing. “But I think I’ll leave the sex toys to you and Rob, if you don’t mind. See you later.”
Hanging up the phone, I figured I’d be in for another lecture when she arrived. She seemed determined to play yenta for Rob and me. Oh, fabulous day. I looked up to find Rob standing in the doorway.
“Who was that?” he asked.