Phi Beta Murder (13 page)

“Tony’s a good guy,” R.J. remarked, speaking for the first time since his brush with death.

“Aye. He seems to think mighty highly of you too. You gave us quite a turn.”

“You saved my life. That was a crazy thing you did, man. You could’ve gone over with me.”

“I wouldna’ve let that happen. I have a strong sense of self-preservation.”

R.J. ran a hand through his dark hair. “I can’t explain what happened. All the time I was riding to the top, I thought I would never do it when it came right down to it. And then when I looked over, it all seemed so simple.”

“I would never have forgiven myself if you’d gone over.”

R.J. shrugged in response.

“How do you feel now?”

“Light-headed, I guess. Like nothing really matters, except that I can feel every pulse in my body. The coffee tastes better than anything I ever had before.”

Rex guessed R.J. was feeling an adrenalin rush. As for himself, he was shaking. “My ex-girlfriend tried to commit suicide on Tuesday,” he found himself confiding.

“You should carry a government health warning. Seems like people all around you are trying to self-destruct.”

Rex smiled ruefully. “The doctor said it wasna a serious attempt, but still … It’s a terrible thing to think about.”

“I was thinking about someone in that moment before I let myself go. I remember saying to myself, ‘Now she’ll be sorry.’ She could have saved me from having to go to court. All she had to do was go to the police and show them my hoodie, and tell them she had it all along.”

“Why didn’t she? Who is she?”

R.J. shook his head. “I can’t tell you—I promised I’d never tell.”

“And when did you make this promise?”

“When we were in my bed the first time. Just lying there whispering in the dark.” R.J.’s voice caught in his throat. “I would have done anything for her.”

“Did she feel the same way? If she did, why didn’t she go to the police? Why didn’t she try to protect you?”

R.J. hunched over the table. “Maybe she thought I’d never be convicted. Then, when I was expelled, she probably thought it was too late to come forward. I don’t know if she ever spoke to the dean because by then she had stopped taking my calls.”

“Would she have had any authority with him?”

“Probably not. Cormack didn’t. And I know he tried.”

“I could talk to the dean.”

“The faculty would never admit to making a mistake. And Binkley would just argue I was using, which is against university policy.”

“Can they actually prove you were using? My guess is they don’t have much of a case, since the video failed to incriminate you.”

“A couple of students testified that they saw me snort coke. I have no money for college now anyway. It’ll take me years to pay off my defense.”

Rex leaned forward. “Be that as it may, I need to be absolutely convinced of your innocence in Dixon’s murder. You have to tell me about the button if it absolves you.”

R.J. sat back in his chair. “I can’t.”

“Then I don’t know how I can help you.” Rex reached into his pocket and slid one of his business cards across the desk. “Here’s my cell number. I’ll be in town until tomorrow.” He stood up and, on his way to the door, stopped by R.J.’s chair. He gave his shoulder a paternal squeeze, sighed heavily and left.

Tony was talking to the cop at the foot of the trailer steps. He escorted Rex to the gate. “Is he okay?”

“He’s not very communicative.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Rex took out his cell phone and called Campbell to tell him to meet him at the car.

“Can’t we get lunch first?”

“Don’t you have a lecture?”

“Not until two. How did it go with R.J.?”

“It was hair-raising. I’ll tell you all about it, but I need to get to the campus right away.” Rex remembered to look both ways before crossing the street. Sometimes he forgot that traffic moved in the opposite direction from home. He didn’t want to have survived a close call on a skyscraper just to be hit by a car.

“There’s someone I need to see immediately,” he told Campbell over the phone. “Could be downright embarrassing if I’m wrong, but I have to give it a shot.”

Rex stopped by the
Student Health Center where a nurse cleaned the cut on his elbow and applied a fresh dressing. By the time he reached the Marine Science Department, the pain in his arm had subsided to a throb. Students were spilling out of the building.

“Where can I find Professor Johnson?” he asked a coed.

“We just came out of her class. She’s in the wet lab.”

Rex entered a classroom set up with long work benches. A marker board covered most of the back wall. Other walls displayed fish mounts and enlarged checks granted by various organizations for marine research. But no sign of Ms. Johnson.

An adjoining lab contained a central fish tank. Through the open door, Rex glimpsed a collection of aquaria and microscopes lining the wall counters. The young assistant professor came out wearing a tight, ribbed sweater beneath her lab coat, her honey blond hair clasped in a ponytail. She could not be older than twenty-six.

“Hi,” she said, clearly surprised to see him.

“We ran into each other yesterday in the parking lot,” Rex reminded her, in case she had forgotten. “But we were not formally introduced.” Cormack, the math professor, had all but pushed her into the car.

“You’re Campbell’s father. Nice kid. He writes beautiful reports. I guess British schools do a better job at teaching English.”

“I’m afraid I’m not here to discuss Campbell’s progress, although, naturally, I am always interested to hear how he’s getting on. What I’ve come to discuss has nothing directly to do with my son.”

Ms. Johnson leaned back against a workbench, hands gripping the edge, and held him in her blue gaze. She bore a passing resemblance to a young Brigitte Bardot. He hoped his hunch about her was right, otherwise he would merit a slap in the face.

“I’ve come about R.J. Wylie.”

She blushed and looked away.

“Look, I’m not here to cause trouble. Whatever happened between you and R.J. is none of my business, except in-so-far as it relates to my investigation into Dixon Clark’s death.”

She started to say something, but stopped.

Rex stuck his hands into his pockets and paced between the benches, talking calmly as though delivering a lecture. “You borrowed his hoodie. It was cold that late October night or early morning when you crept out of the dorm. When he was arrested, the garment was still in your possession, so he could not prove that his jacket wasn’t exactly the same as the one in the video. All the time he was in custody, he kept quiet because he didn’t want to expose you and subject you to censure by the university. Am I on the right track so far?”

The young woman nodded, a troubled expression on her face. “I was a coward. Does Al know?”

“Cormack? Not through me. And not through R.J. That lad has a misplaced sense of loyalty, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. He threw himself off a rather tall building this morning.”

Bethany Johnson gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

“He’s all right physically. I caught him just in time. But I hope that gives you some idea of the pressure he’s been under. He’s working a dangerous construction job.” Rex looked around the classroom. “He gave up his degree for you. If you had come forward at the beginning, the outcome might have been different.”

He didn’t care if he was being harsh on her. She made no effort to deny any of it, and here she was sitting pretty while her distraught young ex-lover had dangled over the side of a skyscraper.

“I was paying off student loans and living back at home. My parents would never have approved of the relationship,” she said in her defense. “Then, when R.J. was arrested, I couldn’t risk visiting him in jail and compromising my position.”

Which compromising position in particular
? Rex asked himself.
A Kama Sutra one
?

“He wasn’t one of my students,” she went on hurriedly, in response to his raised eyebrow. “We met off campus at a concert. At around the time he was arrested, I had started seeing Al Cormack.”

“You didn’t tell him about your affair?”
Obviously.
Professor Cormack was all about ethics.

“No. He was rooting for R.J. and fighting the university to get him re-admitted. I couldn’t tell him.”

I see trouble in paradise
, Rex predicted, wondering if Cormack would waive his ethics in Ms. Johnson’s case. She really was quite lovely.

“Someone was spiteful enough to post a compromising picture of you on StudentSpace.com.” Rex felt quite spiteful himself at this point.

“Like that’s my body,” she scoffed. “The model is at least a double D. And I don’t have a tattoo on my ankle.”

“I think someone knew about your affair with R.J. and wanted to get back at you without betraying R.J.’s confidence.”

R.J. was sharing a room with Justin in his second year. It would be very surprising if Justin didn’t know about Ms. Johnson. She was quite a trophy. Most boys wouldn’t be able to resist boasting about her.

“Who knew about it?” she demanded.

“I have my suspicions, but that’s all they are at this point, and I don’t want to add to the rumour mill.”

“Al and I have been talking about getting married.”

“In my frank opinion, you should lay it all out on the table, Professor. The truth has a way of coming out.” He had been caught out over Moira, even though he’d had nothing to hide. Helen had taken a different view of the matter. “If Mr. Cormack finds out, the consequences will be worse. And do you really want to live with the worry of what someone might say or what might appear on the Internet?”

Bethany Johnson looked at her hands. Was that an engagement ring on her finger? “I can run back to my parents’ house and get the hoodie,” she mumbled.

“It’s a bit late now,” Rex said, then reconsidered. “Aye, why not?”

“Campbell has a lab this afternoon. I could give it to him.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s not what you think,” she said. “I know there are all these cases in the media about female teachers preying on their students, but R.J. was nineteen and very mature for his age.”

Rex gave a non-committal nod and left the lab, glad to be out of Bethany Johnson’s presence, but probably not as glad as she was to get rid of him.

If R.J. had not murdered Dixon Clark, he wondered feverishly, then who had? Reviewing his list of original suspects, he made straight for Astra Knowles’ office.

She was standing by a filing cabinet and sighed when she saw him. “Don’ you ever quit, Mr. Graves? Who you looking for now?”

“Klepto.”

“Who?”

“Ty Clapham. Know him?”

“I sure do. That kid is one of our brightest stars. His SAT scores were off the chart. He could have gone to an ivy league college, but he got a full scholarship at Hilliard.”

“I need his domicile address.”

“I’d rather give you his class schedule. Then you could meet him at his lecture hall. He’s a psych major.” She sat down at her computer and folded her hands on the desk.

“I’d rather see him in his home environment and surprise him.”

Ms. Knowles surveyed him over her reading glasses. “Now why would you want to do that?”

“I have something I’d like to return to him in private.”

“If you insist.” The registrar’s multi-ringed fingers flurried across the keyboard. “4312 Arlington Court. It’s close to the campus.”

Rex retrieved the SUV and, following her directions, entered a respectable neighborhood with freshly mown lawns and shiny cars in the driveways. At #4312 he saw a BMW parked in the garage next to a red Chevy pick-up. The contents of the mailbox confirmed what he already suspected. He rang the bell expectantly. Someone must be home since the garage was wide open.

A yapping bark ripped through the house. When the front door opened, a rat-like creature confronted him from the arms of a lacquered redhead not quite old enough to be Klepto’s mother.

“Luella Shaw?”

The woman whipped the cigarette from her lips, releasing a stream of smoke, and peered at him, the sides of her heavily made-up eyes creasing into crow’s feet. “Is this about my ex?” she asked suspiciously. A meanness about the mouth hinted that life had not always been a bed of roses and she begrudged every thorn.

“Not as far as I know. Does Ty Clapham live here?”

“Ty-ler!” she screeched, turning toward the interior of the house. Her high-heel mules clicked across the tiled hall, revealing toned legs beneath a short flannel beach wrap.

Klepto appeared in a pair of board shorts, eyes popping out of his head. Rex was pleased to see he had caught the boy at a disadvantage, as planned.

“Don’t let all the cold air out the front door,” Luella shrilled.

“You’d better come in,” Klepto said, glancing up and down the street.

Rex did so.

“Uh, follow me.” Klepto led him through the house past a home office containing a treadmill and a master bedroom with an unmade king-size bed. He gestured to a patio table in the lanai where a pair of plastic rafts floated in a kidney-shaped pool.

Rex took a seat, enjoying Klepto’s red-faced confusion, each waiting for the other to speak. Gossip magazines covered the glass-top table, along with an overflowing ashtray and numerous pots of glittery nail polish. Removing from his pocket the gray button Klepto had given him the day before at the memorial service, he stuck it in the student’s face. “I saw R.J. today,” he announced.

“Yeah?”

“He sends his best.”

Klepto smirked. “Sure he does.”

“I don’t know why you thought I’d buy the story about the button. But I think your main objective was to alert me to the fact that your friend Dixon didn’t kill himself, and for some reason you didn’t want to go to the police with your theory.”

“The cops are morons.”

“Well, they certainly got the wrong man in the drug bust.”

“How do you know for sure that’s not R.J.’s button?”

“He no longer has his hoodie. Hasn’t had it for months. But I know who does.”

Klepto gazed at him, his mouth slightly open, apparently hesitant to say anything and put his foot in it.

“And I don’t think he would have rushed out to buy a new one just like it, especially if he intended to visit campus, where security would associate him with the gray-hooded man in the video. If he had intended to go and kill Dixon Clark, I think he would have tried to disguise himself a bit better. So what’s the real story behind the button?”

“I found it in Dix’s room like I said. I don’t know whose it is. It’s definitely not Dix’s.”

“What is your grouse with R.J. Wylie? Is it because he was popular? Had success with the women?”

At that moment Luella slid open the glass door carrying a tray with a jug and two glasses. “I brought y’all some ice tea.”

Rex swept aside the magazines to make room. “Most kind. Thank you.”

As she bent down to deposit the tray, her wrap fell open revealing a lacy black bra encasing a pair of stretched breasts. Rex pretended not to notice. Her hand, which still held a cigarette, swept to her chest, spilling ash in the jug.

“Okay, Lou. You can go now,” Klepto said tightly.

She flounced off, retying her wrap, the hem swirling in the air. She did have a fine pair of legs.

“Not your mother, then?” Rex inquired, knowing perfectly well it wasn’t. “She said something about an ex. Did she revert to her maiden name or is Shaw her husband’s name?” He poured himself some ice tea, careful not to let any ash tip into his glass. “First or second husband?”

“Second.” Klepto spoke in a constrained voice.

Gone were the swagger and insolent repartee of the previous day. Rex knew he was getting to him. “It’s an amazing coincidence that StudentSpace.com is registered to Luella.” He took a sip of the instant tea that tasted of saccharine and artificial lemon.

“So, you found out I run the site. Congratulations.”

“Anyone could have if they’d tried.” Rex was not going to implicate his son in the discovery. “The university could not have tried hard enough. Unless, of course, they knew who was behind the site and didn’t want to lose one of their scholarship students.”