Murder 101 (7 page)

“Nope. Thanks, though!” I called and plodded, in my decidedly unsexy, rubber-soled clogs, down the street toward my block. I turned into my street and realized that I had another quarter mile of this humiliation and now, in front of the prying eyes of all of my neighbors. I stopped, and he pulled up alongside me, opening the passenger-side door. I got in. He reached across me, but instead of acting out my fantasy and kissing me like I had never been kissed, he pulled the seat belt out of the holder and strapped me in.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Are you always this controlling?” I asked.

“Are you always this stubborn?” He drove to my house and pulled up in front.

“You have my card, right?” he asked. “In case you remember anything else?” he asked pointedly, referring to what was now known as the “Peter Miceli incident” in my mind.

I nodded. “What should I be thinking about?”

“Anything. Where you were when your car was taken, who you saw, anything about Kathy . . . anything.”

“Got it.”

He turned his face to the driver-side window and let out a sigh. “You’re still a sus—. . .” I thought I heard him whisper. He looked over at me with a sad expression.

I waited a moment, hoping for the end of the sentence. But there was none. Just a long, pregnant moment in a steamy car accompanied by the slapping of the windshield wipers on wet glass.

I already knew what he was trying to say, and if I thought about it, I didn’t want to hear him actually say it.

He got out of the car and opened my door, watching me as I walked up the front walk of my small Cape Cod house. I turned and waved for the last time before entering. I closed and locked the door, leaning my forehead against the cool wood of the door. That was far superior to eating and masturbating.

Nine

I woke up feeling much better than I should have, considering the only beverages I had consumed the day before consisted of coffee, a slug of Foster’s Lager, a martini, and red wine. I considered that my daily two-mile walks might have been contributing to my good health and joie de vivre and that I would never buy a new car. I didn’t want to lose this new sense of feeling rested, invigorated, and in shape. As I threw my legs over the side of the bed, I heard the turnover of an engine and the crunch of gravel in front of my house. I looked at my alarm clock and saw that it was six-fifteen. I walked over to the window and pulled the shade back only to see taillights twinkling in the distance. That drove home for me the reality of the situation: I was a suspect in a murder, and I was being watched. I could pretend that my dinner with Detective Crawford was just a meal between two friends, but he had a job, and he was going to do it, despite all of our witty repartee about grocery bags and New York sports teams.

I had my least favorite class, the infamous Shakespeare introduction, later that day. An image of Fiona Martin’s muck-covered paper floated into my head, but I pushed it away with my mantra, “tabula rasa.” Clean slate. Don’t think about it. An apt mantra for many aspects of my life.

I took a quick shower and wrapped my hair and body in towels. I dried off, stepped into my bedroom, and opened my closet. I saw my trusty clogs on the floor, still mud-spattered and a little wet from my walks in the rain. I spied a Nine West box in the corner and opened it, looking at a beautiful pair of backless brown-leather mules that I bought at an end-of-season sale at Bloomingdale’s in the midst of a very long winter. Today was the day. I would not wear my clogs but these beautiful shoes. I would stand tall, at six feet in my heels, and teach my classes: Professor Amazon. I pulled out tan linen pants, and a fitted, brown linen shirt to go along with the shoes.

I took the towel off my head and stood in front of the bathroom mirror to put on makeup and blow-dry my hair. I picked up a bottle of sculpting gel, compliments of Max, thought better of it, and threw the bottle in the garbage. All I needed was to show up at school with a big mane of sculpted hair looking like the Merry Divorcee of Dobbs Ferry for the talk to start. Sister Mary would not approve.

After a quick breakfast of juice and tortilla chips, I headed out the door, marveling at the comfort of my new mules. I was at the end of my driveway when my neighbor, Jackson, pulled out of his driveway and stopped his car in front of me.

“Hey, Alison! Do you want a ride?” he asked. “I’m heading for the seven-twenty train.”

I thought a moment. “Sure. Why not?” I jumped into the car and put my briefcase between my legs. “How are you? I feel like I haven’t seen you in months.”

I didn’t know much about Jackson, except that he was a graphic designer at a publishing company. Although I had lived in my house for almost ten years, he was a relative newcomer, having only lived in the neighborhood for five years. I usually saw him and his wife, Terri, while doing yard work, but beyond that, hardly ever. They were clearly headed toward parenthood at some point while Ray and I weren’t—the secret vasectomy and all—so that put us in another social circle. It seemed that we were the “career couple” on the block and nobody quite knew what to make of us as a result.

He took a breath. “We haven’t seen Ray much. Everything all right?” he asked.

I hesitated but felt that he deserved an answer. “Well, Jackson, not really. We’re divorced. Ray moved out about six months ago, but we had filed before that. I’m sorry. I figured everyone knew.”

“It’s OK. I’m real sorry, Alison. You shouldn’t have to go through something like that.” He made a turn into the station and looked for a parking space. He stayed silent for a moment. “I was sorry to hear about all that business at your school, too.”

If “all that business” was Kathy’s murder, I was sorry, too. “Thanks. It’s been horrible.”

“They found her in your car, huh?” he said, pulling up to a stop sign.

“Yep.”

He cast me a sidelong glance but didn’t say anything. He pulled into a spot about an eighth of a mile from the platform. We were late and lucky to have found a spot at all. “Are you staying in the house?” he asked, pulling the keys from the ignition.

“Sure. I really like where I am. I’m staying put.” I opened the door and got out.

“That’s good.” He started toward the station. “I have to buy a ticket. I’ll see you on the train.” He jogged down the parking lot. “By the way, nice shoes!” he yelled back at me.

I headed toward the platform. “Thanks, Jackson. See you soon.”

The day was turning out to be a beautiful one after all the rain from the day before. I stood on the platform with my back to the river and let the sun wash over me. I saw the train in the distance and pulled my briefcase strap over my head.

The train came right on schedule and arrived fifteen minutes later at the station close to school. I got off the train and started up the hill that just the night before had been dark, wet, and foggy. My new shoes were holding up well, but I felt a blister starting on the top of my pinkie toe. I pushed the pain out of my head and trudged up the hill, down the avenue, and onto campus.

By the time I reached the guard booth at the front gate of campus, I was in agony. I stopped at the booth and saw Franklin, the morning guard.

“Morning, Prof,” he said, as he did every day, not seeming to be alarmed by my hobbling through the front entrance in obvious distress.

“Hi, Franklin.” I collapsed against the side of the guard booth and took off my right shoe to massage my foot. “Listen, could you call down and have someone drive up the cart to pick me up? I can’t walk another step in these shoes.”

He looked down at my raw feet. Every toe now had a blister. He whistled his sympathy. “Not the right kind of shoes for walking,” he said, as if he were talking to an idiot. Which apparently I was. He spoke into a walkie-talkie that was perched on the counter in the guard booth and asked Joe, one of the other guards, to bring up the golf cart. Franklin and Joe, with a collective age of 130, represented some of the younger, spryer guards on campus. The golf cart was probably used in the first Bob Hope celebrity golf classic. “Safe” and “sound” were not words that could be used to describe our campus anymore, what with the murder and the rapidly advancing age of our security force.

After making fifteen minutes’ worth of weather chitchat with Franklin, Joe appeared. The waistband of his pants, stretched to the maximum allowable circumference, touched the steering wheel. He motioned for me to get in. “Where you going?”

“Thanks, Joe. Could you drop me behind the Administration Building?” I asked as politely as I could, through clenched teeth. The pain in my feet was unrelenting and throbbed to a beat all its own.

I endured a much longer cart ride than the distance required. And a dissertation on why we should “bomb the hell out of Iran, Iraq, and
Cyprius
.” I wasn’t sure where that was but was too afraid to ask for a geography lesson; he seemed pretty pissed off. Finally, he pulled in behind the Administration Building and pulled up as close as possible to the steps behind the building. I hopped out, holding both of my shoes in my right hand, and walked down the stairs, barefoot. Things were going my way, and the back door was open. I made a left into the main office area and hobbled back to my office, which faced the back steps.

I rocked back on my heels so that my feet wouldn’t touch the ground and opened my office door. I threw my briefcase onto the guest chair and settled in behind my desk, opening my top drawer to see what kind of ancient first-aid items might be lurking therein. I found a box of Band-Aids from a drugstore that wasn’t in business anymore and pulled them out. Hopefully, adhesive didn’t have an expiration date.

I was putting a Band-Aid on my last toe when the phone rang. It was Max. “You’re at work early,” she said.

“I have a ten-ten class and papers to correct. I figured it was a good idea to get in. What’s up?”

“You sound pretty good for someone who was drinking her face off twelve hours ago,” she said, taking a noisy slurp of her morning coffee.

“I wasn’t drinking my face off. I had a martini and a glass of wine. And a couple of sips of Foster’s Lager.”

“Maybe you were just giddy from your dinner with Detective Hot Pants.”

“Maybe, Max,” I said, losing patience. “Why did you call anyway?”

“I just wanted to touch base. We got cut off, remember?”

“Right,” I lied.

“Do you want to have dinner tomorrow?”

“Sure. Remember, I still don’t have a car, so take pity and make it close to me.”

“That’s right. I’ll come up by you. When are you going to get one?”

“I don’t know. Before today, I was actually enjoying walking everywhere. Today, however, it seems pretty old.”

She mumbled something to someone in her office that sounded like “the fish is in the oven.” “Gotta run. Let’s go to the Chart House. Six o’clock.” She hung up without waiting for my answer.

I had two hours until my first class, blisters on my feet, and no way to get to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. I swung my chair around to look out the window and saw Father Kevin trotting down the steps behind the building. He looked up, saw me, and waved. I motioned for him to come in when he got into the building.

He arrived moments later, dressed from his morning run in sweatpants, a T-shirt, and running shoes. He was extremely myopic and astigmatic, so he had to wear glasses every moment of the day. Today, they were attached to his head by an elastic headband that back in the day would have made him the recipient of a good beating in most New York City neighborhoods. Fortunately for him, his Irish mother had given him Irish dancing lessons and boxing lessons simultaneously. He was graceful, knew what a hornpipe was, could run fast, and had a killer right hook. He was dripping sweat, his shaggy blond hair almost black from the moisture. “Hi, Alison. How are you?”

“I’m good, Kevin.” I stood up and gave him a peck on the cheek, trying not to swallow a gallon of sweat in the process. Kevin had taken over as chaplain at the college two years earlier and we had become fast friends. We were about the same age and both loved the Rangers, an instant bond. He was also the most irreverent person I had ever met. Kevin had been the pastor of a parish in Westchester, but his outspokenness was not popular among the wealthy patrons of the church. Since the Catholic Church was not in the position to fire anyone given that vocations were at an all-time low, Kevin got away with saying things from the pulpit that would have had him excommunicated only a few years before. I think the archdiocese figured they would keep him but put him where he could do the least damage, i.e., reach the smallest population. So, Sunday Mass consisted of Kevin preaching to fifty half-deaf nuns and a smattering of college students who thought he was the closest thing to an ordained rock star. I was certain that we would lose him after he referred to the Cardinal as Mo from the Three Stooges, but he was still here. “Do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

I lifted my feet and displayed my bandages. “Could you get me a cup of coffee? I’m trying to limit the amount of walking I’m going to do today.” I showed him the mules, and he whistled.

“Nice shoes. Not for this campus, though. Where are the clogs?” He sat in one of the chairs, panting from his exertion.

“I’m giving the clogs a rest. They’ve served me well, but I was starting to feel dowdy. I needed an attitude adjustment.” I reached into my bag and got out my wallet, figuring he didn’t have money on him. “Coffee? Please?” I held my hands out pleadingly.

“Sure,” he said, taking the money. “Muffin?”

“If they look good. And get yourself a cup, too. Let’s chat for a minute, if you have time.”

He was gone ten minutes and returned with two muffins, two large coffees, milk, and sugar packets. He sat down across from me and kicked the door closed with his left foot. “What’s going on?”

“You did a nice job at the funeral.”

He blushed slightly. “They’re always hard, but that was the hardest one yet.”

“Who was the concelebrant?”

“Father Minette. From Kathy’s parish. He knows the family well.”

“How’s her family doing? Gianna?”

He shrugged. “Not good. I saw them over the weekend, and they are having a very difficult time. Peter has holed up in the bedroom and is in deep mourning. Keep them in your prayers.”

I wanted to tell Kevin that Peter wasn’t holed up in the bedroom for the whole weekend, but I didn’t. “I do, Kevin.” And I was telling the truth. “Did you know Kathy?”

He pulled the paper off his muffin and took a bite. “Yes,” he said, and went silent. That, to me, meant that he had spent some time with her but was not at liberty to talk about it.

“Do the police know that you knew her?”

He nodded. “I’ve spent a few hours with Detective . . .” he paused, searching for the name.

“Crawford?” I asked, and felt a blush come to my cheeks.

“Yes, and the other, crabby one. Wyatt?” He continued eating his muffin. “Crawford gets why I can’t go into detail but Wyatt doesn’t. He keeps pressing me, but I can’t tell him anything. He even threatened to subpoena me,” he said, shaking his head. “Can you believe that?”

“Crawford gets it because he’s Catholic.”

“That’s what I figured, but I don’t know why I can’t get Wyatt to understand it. If he subpoenas me, I’m going to have to sic a church lawyer on him. My cousin is at Catholic University studying canon law. He’d love to get into it with the police.” He laughed, getting a mental image of what that would be like.

“Have you ever met Vince?” I asked.

“I never could figure out what she saw in him,” was all he said. He took the lid off his coffee and poured in cream from a little plastic container.

“Me, neither. But who am I to judge?” I asked, and gave a little laugh.

Kevin ran his hands through his shaggy blond hair and put them behind his head. “You doing all right with all of that?”

I nodded. “I have to see Ray every other day for our course, so we have to be civil with each other. Things are as OK as they can be. I’m doing better with the whole divorce thing.” I looked out the window. “I don’t feel like Mary Magdalene anymore, which is good, right?”