Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 05 - The Maltese Manuscript (13 page)

I settled into the rhythm of my talk. Sunnye took notes, much to my surprise. Even Dennis seemed interested, although it was hard to tell just exactly what he was interested in. Halfway through, I realized I was enjoying myself.

As I glanced up from the final page and out over the audience, I noted a face staring at me from the back of the auditorium, a face that didn’t belong in this academic setting. A familiar face, but set on an unfamiliar body. Who was it? I squinted; I’d left my glasses in my jacket pocket. Could it be Charlie’s partner, Felicity Schultz? I concluded my talk: “Thus nineteenth-century working-class discourse on homicide
re-envisions the class hierarchies of patriarchal power structures, but, given cultural biases, leaves intact the oppressive hermeneutics of race and sex. With such characters as Ned Buntline and ‘Old Sleuth,’ the iconic tough-guy sleuth was born in nineteenth-century American fiction for the masses. But it wasn’t until the late twentieth century that racial and gender barriers became sufficiently permeable for characters such as Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins and Sunnye Hardcastle’s Kit Danger to flourish in the popular imagination.

“Thank you.”

The applause seemed genuine, but I wasn’t paying much attention. The familiar face in the back of the room was giving me the familiar eye.
What the heck?
Then a hand rose in a peremptory gesture:
Come
. Sergeant Felicity Schultz of the Massachusetts State Police wanted me, and wanted me
now
. Schultz was eight months pregnant with what from the size of her looked to be quintuplets, but was, I knew, just a single boy. She was so big, it was a wonder she could still walk. But what was this homicide cop doing here in the middle of a very tame scholarly panel at the beginning of an equally tame academic conference?

Suddenly, my heart stopped. Had something happened to Charlie? Was Schultz here to break the news? Abruptly nodding my apologies to the other members of the Murder in History panel, I descended the steps from the podium and hurried down the narrow side aisle to where she waited. The sergeant gripped me by the elbow and hustled me out into the hall. Shultz was wearing a green gabardine pup tent, and her fingers, normally short and stubby, had swollen to the size of kumquats.

“Charlie?” I queried, anxiously.

“Not here yet,” she replied.

Huh? What would Charlie be doing
here
? “He’s okay?”

“Of course, he’s okay. It’s just that he was way the hell down in Springfield when the call came in.”

“The call? What call?”

Schultz shot a narrow cop look at a student who was kicking a lobby vending machine, trying to get it to release his soda. Then she turned back to me. “The call about the body in the library.”

***

I stared down at the pale figure sprawled awkwardly between the PR and the PS sections of the closed stacks. There was no blood, no particular sign of violence. Just the twisted body in that awful blue suit lying snug against the rows of shelves, its head bent at an unnatural angle against PS / 3515 /.A34. A half-dozen volumes lay toppled open around him.

Long aisles stretched across the cavernous, windowless room. From twelve-foot ceilings, fluorescent tubes cast anemic light on ecru walls and scarred oak shelves. Countless books in the brown leather bindings of bygone centuries were lined up in rows, spines straight. A set of library steps on wheels blocked the aisle at an oblique angle to the shelves. It looked as if it had skittered there under some propulsive force. Had the dead man fallen? Had he been shoved?

Two town cops stood near the body, shifting from one foot to another. The heavy bald man gripped the butt of his gun, as if a killer might materialize at any second, weapon drawn. The short, young guy bit his thumbnail, then jammed his hands deep in his uniform pockets. A uniformed trooper interviewed two college security guards while his partner strung yellow crime-scene tape.

“His name is Bob Tooey,” I said, after a moment of shocked silence. “What happened to him?”

“That’s what they said—Tooey. What do you know about Mr. Tooey?” Schultz was good at evasion.

“Not much. He’s a researcher here, on leave from some community college…someplace out in the mid-west. How did this happen?” I was in that blank state of emotional denial that follows any horrific event. Even my tongue was numb.

“Lake Superior College?”

“I think that’s it. How’d he die?”

“Too soon to tell. So, you ever talk to him, this…Tooey?” She took a notebook from the pocket of her voluminous green dress.

“No.…well, yes. Once. Was he…murdered?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the sprawling body. By the time I’d arrived at the coffee hour in the Emerson Hall lobby earlier that morning, the only pastries left were prune Danish. Now I felt the sour bile of half-digested prune rise into my throat.

“Can’t say yet. What’d you talk about?”

I swallowed. “For God’s sake, Schultz, we talked about the weather! He told me it was going to snow! What the hell happened to the man?”

Schultz gazed at me, her eyes narrowed. “You’re looking kind of punky, Karen. Let’s get you away from this…Mr. Tooey.” Her kumquats gripped my elbow, and she steered me toward a door in the wall.

“Get
me
away?” I shook her hand off my arm. Then I relented, took her hand and held it for a minute. “What about you? You’re the one who’s about to go into labor any second. What’re you doing here, anyhow?” I cast a sidelong glance at the pathetic corpse. “This can’t be good for the baby.”

“The baby doesn’t know anything about it.” She opened the door and we walked directly from the stacks into Rachel Thompson’s empty office. Where was Rachel anyhow with all this excitement happening on her turf? She should be right here in the center of it. Schultz lowered her bulk into the desk chair. Then she untied the laces of her brown leather boots and eased them off. Her feet in green socks had the shape and definition of over-ripe zucchini. “And if you think I’d give those boys in there,” she tilted her head toward the big room behind the door, “the satisfaction of having to leave the job one second before I pop with this kid, you’re not the feminist I thought you were. Ooof!” Her hand flew to her swollen belly.

“Felicity? Are you—”

“It’s nothing. He kicked me, is all.” She laughed. “He’s gonna be a soccer player, the little bruiser.”

A voice outside said, “It’s right in here, Lieutenant.” The office door opened. Charlie Piotrowski walked in. He stopped short at the sight of me and frowned. “Karen! What the hell are you doing here?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but Felicity Schultz stuffed her feet back into her boots and intervened.

“My call, boss,” she said, pushing herself up from the chair. “Karen’s the only one we really know here, and there’s some question about the I.D. on this victim.”

I furrowed my forehead at her. First I’d heard of it.

“Thought she might be able to tell us for sure who he is.” She placed both hands on the small of her back and stretched to ease the strain. “Now, what I’m thinking is this isn’t necessarily a homicide. Guy fell off a…” she glanced at me, “whatyacallit?”

I shrugged. “A set of rolling library steps—you know, with the little wheels.”

Intent on Schultz’s report, Charlie nodded without glancing over at me.

“So, I’m thinking suspicious death. Could be it’s an accident, but there’s a couple of odd things we gotta look into, just in case.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, number one, what was the guy doing here in the first place? He’s been dead, oh, I’d say maybe five, six hours. That puts it in the middle of the night.”

I broke in. “And how’d he get in, anyhow? It’s a restricted area, and he’s not a library employee. No way he had permission, let alone a key.”

“Hmm.” Charlie finally looked at me.

“Plus, number two,” Schultz continued, “there’s some question about his identity.”

“He’s—he was—Bob Tooey,” I interjected. “I told you that.”

She ignored me. “So, maybe the steps did just slip out from under him, or maybe—”

“Not likely,” I said. “Library steps are made to be stable. Look….” I could see a set of steps out in the reading room. I pulled them toward us, and they rolled smoothly on their little wheels. Then I climbed onto the first step. We heard a click as my weight activated a locking device and the steps became immobile.

Schultz gave a little push; the steps held firm under me.

“No way these babies are going to skitter across the floor with anyone on them,” Charlie said. “You’re right, Sergeant. We’ve gotta treat this as a suspicious death, possible homicide, until we find evidence otherwise.”

My heart sank. Was there a killer among us, here, in the library? A place I considered to be sacred space.

“So, Schultz, who’ve you talked to so far?”

“No one, really. We haven’t located the head librarian for this department, yet…the, ah, curator. And the woman at the desk…” She glanced down at her notebook. “Ah, Nellie Applegate…I gotta say it, she’s useless. Just whimpers on and on about not being in charge. A student worker found the body first thing this morning and came running out to this Applegate woman, who went into some kind of meltdown, so the student called Security and waited around—”

“A student? What student?” I queried.

Schultz checked her notebook again. “Briggs, Margaret.”

“Oh, God, no, not Peggy! Not after all she’s been through!” I was beginning to get a truly sick feeling.

“Peggy…Briggs?” Charlie’s eyes slid toward me. “You know a Peggy Briggs?”

“She’s my student.”

“Kinda plain? Brown hair? Heavy set? About…let’s see… she’d be about thirty now?” He stared at me, quizzically.

I nodded.

“Peggy’s a student here?” He beamed. “Well…good for her!”

“
You
know Peggy Briggs?”

“She was involved in a case….” He let it trail off.

“Her sister.”

“She told you about it, huh? She must really trust you. You know, I always thought Peggy had what it took. I’m glad she got her act together—”

“Ahem,” Schultz interjected. “We have a possible homicide just the other side of this door.”

“Right, Schultz.” He turned to her, expression vanishing from his face like a drawing from an Etch-a-Sketch. “So, give me the whole story.”

***

Peggy had found the body shortly after nine and had identified it as that of a regular researcher in Special Collections. The name in the sign-in book was Bob Tooey, just as Nellie had told me weeks before. Schultz had retrieved his wallet, a cheap imitation alligator trifold with curling edges. The picture on the Lake Superior Community College faculty identification card verified that he was Professor Bob Tooey of the English Department. He also had a Boston Public Library card in the name of Bob Tooey. But according to his driver’s license, he was Elwood Munro of Chesterfield, Massachusetts, and the photo on his license confirmed that. He had credit cards as both Bob Tooey and Elwood Munro. A man with two names: odd.

“Get someone on the Internet,
toot sweet
,” Charlie ordered Schultz, “and see if we can pin this bird down. And get…her…” he cocked his thumb at me and scowled at his sergeant, “the hell out of here. I gotta take a look at the body.”

“Don’t worry about me, Lieutenant,” I replied, stung that I had suddenly become a
her
, not
Karen
, who just night before last had been his
hot little
—er, his significant other. “The last thing I want…Lieutenant…” I said, haughtily, “is to go back in there.” I shuddered. “I’ll get myself out of here, thank you both. If you want me, I’ll be…” And then I paused, because I didn’t know where I would be. Back at the conference fielding questions about murder in history with that poor, pale corpse so fresh in my mind?

Charlie stopped short, registered the brusqueness of my tone, winced, then came over to me and squeezed my shoulder with his big hand. “Sorry, Karen. Don’t get pissed, okay? I get carried away. It’s just that I don’t want you anywhere near this ugliness. I mean…” He glanced over at Schultz, who was conspicuously absorbed in tying her leather bootlaces. This was not an easy task, given the size of the belly over which she had to bend. “You gave us some useful stuff. But, you didn’t know this guy, right? You don’t have any involvement here, right? I really want you out of it. You do understand, don’t you? I worry about you.” He looked so anxious that I had to smile at him. He let out his breath in a relieved huff. “We okay?”

I nodded.

“Good.” He glanced over at his sergeant again, then patted my shoulder. “Now you go back to your conference—that’s where you are, right? At that conference? And just behave as if nothing had happened.”

“But people will know something’s wrong. There are police cars—”

“We’ll make an announcement as soon as things get sorted out over here and we talk to the college authorities. You—just—go.” He gave me a gentle push in the direction of the door. “And I’ll see you later. Okay?”