by Lev Raphael
“What about her?”
“She despised him because he humiliated her! Perry Cross got the position she really wanted, the one she deserved and he didn’t. He’s dead, and she’s got it now.”
“That doesn’t sound like a reason to kill someone,” he said calmly, studying my reaction.
“Maybe not to you, but I thought you said professors do stupid things?”
He shrugged, granting me that point. “Who else?” he prodded.
I couldn’t stop now, though I felt ashamed of saying all this to a cop about my colleagues. It was one thing to draw up lists, another to accuse people of murder publicly. “Priscilla Davidoff—she didn’t like him either, but I don’t know why. There’s got to be something going on there. She writes mysteries—she plans murders on paper. Maybe she did it for real, maybe she’s a psycho!”
Valley sneered and I barreled onward. “Try pushing Lynn Broadshaw and Bill and Betty Malatesta to tell you what they had to hide! Ask Claire, Broadshaw’s secretary, why everyone’s been in such a hurry to clean up after this mess. I can’t believe you haven’t found out any of this stuff!”
“It’s not much, compared to all that money.”
“Listen, Detective Valley, I don’t care how long you’ve been here at SUM. You don’t know shit if you haven’t figured out that this place, like all universities, is as cutthroat and vicious as any corporation. Hell, as vicious as the Mob. Only they hide it all behind pretend smiles and puffed-up rhetoric about the civilizing nature of education or whatever lousy cliche is hip that month. People get knifed and strangled and poisoned all the time around here—only nobody discovers a body.”
“That’s a nice speech,” he drawled.
“It’s not a speech, it’s just the truth. And since we’re talking about the truth, hasn’t anyone told you there was something very strange about Perry Cross being here at all? How does someone who’s only had short-term teaching positions fall into a tenure-stream job with a starting salary twenty thousand dollars higher than it should be?”
Valley looked surprised, and interested. “Really?”
“Yeah! He was getting fifty thousand dollars a year! Only some kind of star would get that as an assistant professor. And how come he beat Serena Fisch for the position? She’s got two books, he doesn’t have any as far as I know. How was he qualified?”
Valley looked eager to head off and follow this up, but as he walked to the door, he said, “You’re not legally married. You can testify against Stefan. Otherwise you may end up being charged as an accessory.”
I was so furious I couldn’t be tactful. I quoted from Steel Magnolias: “What separates us from the lower creatures is our ability to accessorize.”
It was a stupid time to pun, but satisfying because Valley didn’t get it and I enjoyed his puzzled look.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, with the clear implication that he meant “go for now.” He obviously intended to come back. “But remember what I said.”
I yanked open the door for him, then tried to calm down. I shut it quietly when I really wanted to slam it as he walked over to his car. I imagined him pulling out of the driveway, his suspicious eyes on our house.
As he drove off down the street, I wondered if Valley really had anything new about Perry’s death. Or had he just been fishing, trying to scare me into shooting my mouth off?
Whatever the answers, it was obvious that I had to go on with my battered investigation, even if it seemed pointless. I couldn’t let a homo-hating campus cop ruin Stefan’s life and mine.
I should talk to Chad, I thought, privately, where he wouldn’t be so anxious and he could take me through finding Perry’s body much more slowly. I dug out my grade book from last year to look up his last name so I could get his campus phone number. But when I found it, and the campus operator gave me the number, I ended up with a tape telling me it had been disconnected. Great—another student forgetting to pay his phone bill! How was I supposed to track him down?
But that wasn’t as important as talking to everyone else. I knew Lynn Broadshaw would be in, he always was, and I was pretty sure today was Serena Fisch’s long day of office hours, so maybe I’d get to her too.
Claire was very cool when I spoke with her twenty minutes later on campus.
“Professor Broadshaw is not in,” she said.
“When’s he coming back?”
She paused, as if offended that I had asked her a question at all, let alone something so specific.
“Why do you need to know?” she said.
If before, I’d considered Claire gracious, today she struck me as appallingly rude. Was that because of Stefan? Was everyone talking about him and the will? Was I along with him suffering a sharp drop in status, so much so that Claire could afford to be impolite?
I wanted to tell her that she had too much jewelry on and that her hair needed retouching—anything to shake her composure, to strike back.
“It’s very important,” I brought out, slowly, as if to someone with a weak command of English.
“I’ll let him know,” was all she would say.
I was tempted to slam the door shut when I left, but I knew it would do more than reverberate in the office, it would be reported, embroidered, made part of a profile, a reputation, something I’d be stuck with in this department.
Serena’s office was down the hall, and I found her at her desk with the door open. She glanced up from a pile of papers and smiled me in. I closed the door behind me.
Her office was as featureless as most in the department—at least in its outline. But it was softened in many ways. A vaguely Persian rug covered most of the floor, and all the chairs were upholstered and inviting. Framed portraits of modern Canadian and American authors jostled each other on the walls, and there were at least half a dozen small vases of fresh flowers on shelves, tables, and her desk. Though Serena’s harsh perfume in that small office defeated any effort the flowers might have made.
Serena herself looked anything but soft in a grim Joan Crawford-ish dark suit, kohl black eyelashes, too-red cheeks and lips.
I sat in the armchair behind her, so that she had to swivel from her desk to appraise me.
“You don’t look so good,” she said.
“I’m worried about Stefan.”
“You should be,” she said. “He’s the main suspect—they say he’s going to be arrested. So, if you’re here to interrogate me about Perry’s death, why don’t you start?”
“Oh God, is it that obvious?”
She leaned over and patted my hand. “I’m afraid so.”
“I’m hopeless.”
“Don’t worry, I’d do the same thing if I were you. I’d go hunting too. So. Let me tell you what I told that slimy detective. Of course I hated Perry, for all the right reasons, and I’m not sorry he’s dead. But I was asleep when he was killed, or when he died, whichever it was.” Her eyes widened in sympathy—whether with Perry or with her own lack of an alibi, I couldn’t say.
Now she studied me like a photographer framing a shot. “I’ll tell you something else. I don’t think that Stefan killed Perry, not for a minute.”
“You don’t?”
She practically snorted. “Why would he? Stefan has everything: his job, you, critical respect—and good sales, so they say. Why on earth would he risk losing all that? Perry wasn’t a threat to him. Jealousy? Long-frustrated passion?” She rolled her heavily made-up eyes. “That’s so corny!”
“Did you tell that to Valley?”
“I most assuredly did.”
“If they think Perry was killed, then who did it?”
She sighed. “I can’t believe a man like Perry didn’t have enemies all over the country. The continent. Why does it have to be someone from around here?”
That question didn’t help me. If someone had sneaked into town to kill Perry and then disappeared, Stefan and I were sunk. How would anyone ever find that out?
“Who really got Perry the job?”
I asked, not expecting an answer.
“I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s Rose.”
“Rose Waterman! Why?”
Serena pursed her lips. “To get back at me. She hates me. Why d’you think I lost the chair of Rhetoric and we all got thrown into this department in the first place? Rose started out in our department, and the first time she came up for tenure, I voted no. She got it the next year, because she worked harder, but she never forgave me. Like Stewart Green. Did you ever hear that story? He was the chair of Journalism. They were lovers, but when he dumped Rose she took his department away. Enrollment was down, the budget was in trouble, and she got away with it. He built that department, and when it was reduced to just a program he went down the drain. Rose is a truly vicious and vindictive woman. People are right to be afraid of her.”
“What else has she done?”
Serena ignored that. “And when Rose got to a position where she could hurt me,” she continued quietly, “she did exactly that.”
“Does everyone know about this but me?”
“Not at all. There’ve been retirements and moves, people forget. And then Rose has been powerful for so long, no one remembers she was once just an assistant professor of”—she paused melodramatically—“Rhetoric.” Serena squirmed in mockery of all the professors who looked down on anyone who taught freshmen how to write.
“When they cut your department, did you try to move? Why not?”
“Pride,” she said. “I didn’t want to look like I was running away.” Musing a little, she said, “And I like it here, very much. I grew up in Grand Rapids. Michigan is home for me.”
I got up to go, but decided to ask her another question.
“Do you think Claire is acting strange today?”
Serena waved it away. “Haven’t you noticed she’s always edgy around paycheck time? It’s a lot of responsibility, and frankly I don’t think she’s all that bright.”
Elated by her confidence in Stefan’s innocence, I grabbed her hand to shake it in thanks and sailed off. It wasn’t until I was heading downstairs that I wondered if Serena hadn’t snookered me, hadn’t wanted to deflect suspicion from herself by mentioning Rose Waterman.
Shit! Was this ever going to end? How much longer would I be turning over every single remark anyone made to me as if I were deciphering the silences in a Pinter play? I was not used to seeing the world as steeped in lies. I hated what this business had done to my life.
And what it threatened to do.
On the way out, I picked up a campus paper from a stack near the building door and sure enough, on the front page there was an article about Perry’s death: “Rumors of Witness in Prof’s Death.” The few paragraphs were a combination of hearsay and a rehash of previous articles, mixed in with lots of “no comments” from various sources, but it all pointed to some kind of crescendo. Why else would Detective Valley have come to our house? But then I imagined Sharon being asked that question. Wouldn’t she say that Valley had come to scare me, that if he had any real evidence he could have Stefan, or me, or both of us arrested?
Maybe this article was a plant, a ruse to make something happen. If that was the case, then I needed to continue calmly, with “order and method”.
Which reminded me that I’d never called Stefan back. Damn! I dashed back inside and upstairs to his office, but it was locked. Breathless now, I made my way downstairs, slowly, aware that I should have eaten less at Mr. Borowski’s in Ann Arbor.
I drove home in what I think of as the heavy rush-hour traffic, but friends from either coast jeer at me because even at its worst, the ride from campus to home takes no more than ten minutes. At home there was another message from that eager Channel 9 reporter which I had no interest in returning.
I wondered what Stefan was doing, where he was. I drank some coffee, had half a melon, and decided to go to the gym because I needed an escape, I needed not to think for a while.
The Club, which was practically down the street from us, was a brand-new and enormous series of connected buildings on several acres of land, so stuffed with gleaming weight machines, free weights, and aerobic equipment, it looked like it had been stocked with the plunder of some athletically minded pirates. The weight room stretches for what feels like the length of a football field (especially if you’re out of shape), shading into aerobic studios, and is surrounded by tennis and racquetball courts. You almost need a golf cart to make your way around.
Stefan had signed us up last year, since he didn’t want to exercise on campus where he might end up unable to avoid chatting with faculty members. Though he worked out and ran on the indoor track at The Club several times a week, I almost never went because I found it all too intimidating. Somehow I’d always find myself struggling with a pathetically light dumbbell while a burly high school hunk on the next bench over glanced at me with pity and contempt as he lifted obscenely large weights with macho ease.
Today, though, the place was so crowded I felt anonymous and safe, and was soon threading my way through the crowds of students, yuppies, and housewives. I passed Lynn Broadshaw. Stefan, who went regularly, hadn’t told me Lynn was a member. Broadshaw didn’t notice me. I was amazed to see him doing bench presses, lifting a bar with several hundred pounds on it, grunting, his face bright red. No one was spotting him. I got on a free treadmill at the other end and watched him in the mirror when he stood up, breathing very hard.
I would have expected Broadshaw to look incongruous in a tank top and biking shorts, but he was amazingly well built for a man near sixty, at least. He looked completely different in gym clothes: threatening and strong. He was barrel-chested, which the leather weight belt emphasized, and his thighs, biceps, and butt were powerful and tight. He even moved differently, with that showy step I’ve seen in other lifters that reminds me of prancing Lippizaners. I lost track of him after a while, gazing periodically in the mirror at closer and choicer specimens. Stefan kept telling me to come work out because the men were beautiful, or that there were enough of those mixed in with the rest, but that still wasn’t enough to motivate me. I even resented the perky color scheme of The Club: sky blue and daffodil yellow—it made me feel trapped in a child’s fingerpaint sketch.
After a grueling half hour program, I headed for the locker room. I got out of my sweaty gym clothes and into my towel quickly, exposing my less than wonderful body as little as I could manage. That’s why I preferred the steam room to the sauna and the whirlpool—it was harder to see in there, and I felt less self-conscious.
I hit the showers at a lull. There was no one around, and I staggered with relief into the steam room, deeply inhaling the eucalyptus-scented hot air.
I carefully made my way to one of the tiled shelves, climbed up and settled back against the wall, feeling the hot tiles all down my neck and back. Glorious.
A voice broke into my relaxation. It was Broadshaw, an invisible gorilla in the mist.
“You’ve been asking a lot of questions,” he said.
“How did you know that?”
Broadshaw chuckled evilly. “Claire knows everything that happens in the department.”
How could he see me when I could barely make out his outline? Then I realized it must have been the light coming in at the door when I entered.
“You’re a pretty nosey kind of guy, aren’t you, Nick?”
The steam was clearing a little, and Broadshaw’s hairy bulk seemed ominous and threatening. Wrapped in just a towel, he looked more like a hired thug than an academic.
“I want to find out what happened to Perry Cross. If he was killed, Stefan didn’t do it, no matter what things look like.”
“You should mind your own business,” Broadshaw growled. “You’re an assistant professor, not Sherlock Holmes. Stop trying to dig things up and make people look guilty.”
“I can’t let Stefan get blamed for something he didn’t do!”
His voice dropped and he said, “You’re not acting like someone who wants t
o get tenure.”
That was chilling, but the image of him coming on to Bill in bikini underwear suddenly returned and saved me. Why should I be afraid of this man? If he tried to sabotage my tenure, I’d tell everyone about his harassing Bill Malatesta.
“Why don’t you go home and slip into your Jacuzzi?” I snapped. “And wait for the pizza boy to make a delivery.”
“Fuck you!” He jumped up, wrenched open the steam-covered glass door, and stormed off to the showers.
As the door swung closed, I realized I had momentarily stopped breathing, shocked by the sudden confrontation. Had Broadshaw been waiting for me? Would he have followed me into the sauna or whirlpool if I hadn’t come into the steam room? How bizarre!
It was bad enough before that Broadshaw didn’t seem to think much of me as a scholar or teacher or even individual, but this was awful. He was pissed; he had threatened me. My chair was going berserk.
And he was scared, right? Somehow whatever I had been doing in my bumbling way had scared him enough to have to threaten me.
Damn! I thought. I must be making progress, even if I didn’t know it!
On the way out of the shower, I ran into what was practically a tour of jaunty businessmen—they were all in suits, lugging big gym bags and tennis rackets, and shouting hearty abuse at one another.
Stefan wasn’t home when I got back, which worried me. I called his office—no answer. And the department office was closed, so there was nowhere else to try. I looked around for a note, in my study, in his, in the bedroom, but couldn’t find anything.
I threw my gym clothes in the wash on a quick cycle, and just as I was trying to decide what to make for dinner, the phone rang.
Stefan, I thought, running into my study. But it was his father.
“Nick,” he said, “did you look closely at those Xeroxed sheets you gave me?”
I sat down at my desk. “Not really, Mr. Borowski. I don’t know any German, and it’s not a language I even like to look at.”
“I understand.”
He was silent, so I hurried him. “Are they done? Have you translated them?”