Murder Misread (26 page)

“
Okay.” Maggie swooped
forward suddenly and placed something on the coffee table where
Anne and Nora could see it. It was a silver-framed snapshot of a
young woman and a boy of about ten. After a moment Anne realized
that the young woman was Nora, her hair long and unkempt in a
mid-sixties style. Maggie asked, “Is that your little
brother?”

“
That? Yes.”

“
What’s his
name?”

“
Dick.
Richard.”

Maggie nodded as though
pleased. “Tell me about Dick.”

“
For God’s sake, why? He’s
my little brother, I keep a photo of him. What else is there to
say?”

Anne wasn’t sure what
Maggie was driving at, but she said, “You told me you’d had to
raise your brother almost by yourself.”

“
Well, yes. My mother got
very ill when he was nine, and I had to take over.”

“
How’s he doing now?”
Maggie asked.

“
Fine. He’s doing
fine.”

“
He’s twenty-two, you
said.”

“
I did?”

“
In Plato’s, while we were
waiting for Tal. Bart asked you how your brother was doing. He said
that with drugs and everything it was hard to raise kids these
days. You told him Dick was twenty-two and was doing
fine.”

“
Well, I guess I did. It’s
true.”

“
Where does your brother
work?”

“
Look, what does this have
to do with anything?”

Maggie leaned back in her
chair again. “You evaded Bart’s question then. You’re evading mine
now. Is your brother in trouble?”

“
I don’t see how this is
getting us anywhere.” Nora was on her feet. “Anne, I’m not trying
to be rude, but this is a waste of everyone’s time. Maybe you’d
better—”

“
Okay, okay, sorry!”
Maggie raised her palms in a gesture of appeasement. “I promise not
to ask any more questions about Dick Peterson.” When Nora looked
down at her suspiciously, she repeated, “Honest. It’s a
promise.”

“
Well….” Nora sat down
again. “I still don’t see what else we have to say to each
other.”

“
You must have some
questions for us,” Maggie said.

“
Well, Anne, I don’t want
to be rude,” Nora said.

“
Go right ahead,” Anne
told her. “We’ve certainly asked you some rude questions. It’s your
turn.”

“
I wondered if you’d
really told the police about the extent of the rivalry between
Charlie and Tal.”

So she still thought it
was Charlie. Anne said, “Yes. I told them. But my impression was
that it was just another in a long series of academic controversies
that Tal engaged in. He loved it.”

“
I’m sure from Tal’s side
that was all it was. If he’d known how seriously Charlie took
it—”

“
Did he take it that
seriously?”

“
Well, he must
have.”

“
More seriously than Tal,
I’m sure,” Anne reflected. “He is young still. But he had a lot of
studies going. It didn’t look to me as though he’d be ruined if Tal
won on one point.”

“
Maybe not,” Nora agreed.
“And I’m sure Tal had no reason to think anything else. He
certainly wasn’t out to ruin Charlie, and couldn’t believe anyone
would be out to ruin him.”

“
About your gun,” Maggie
broke in. “Charlie told me you bought it last year, after someone
threatened you in your office.”

“
Yes.” Nora had stiffened
again.

“
Tal saw him too, didn’t
he?”

Anne nodded. “He and
Charlie went in when they heard the shouting. The student left
immediately, Tal said, but you were nervous enough to go ahead and
buy the gun.”

“
That’s right,” said
Nora.

“
Just for the office?”
Maggie asked.

“
No, there’s another one I
keep in my purse. But I generally put that away while I’m in the
office.”

“
So you had two guns,”
Maggie said. “What were these threats? Why?”

“
Just a grade
problem.”

“
It’s more than that,
Nora. You don’t buy guns because a student is angry. You buy them
if you fear serious criminals. Like enforcers.”

Nora winced. Anne realized
that Maggie had scored a hit, but where had her question come from?
She asked, “He was a serious criminal?”

Nora shook her head. “No,
no, he wasn’t a criminal!”

“
Not a criminal,” said
Maggie. “Okay. So you helped him get the Campus Security job. You
talked to Walensky.”

“
Damn him! He promised he
wouldn’t tell anyone!” Nora was on her feet again, striding toward
the telephone.

“
Wait, wait!” Maggie flew
after her and laid a hand on her arm. “Nobody told me anything! I’m
just putting things together.”

“
What? What are you
putting together?” Nora wheeled to face her.

“
All the disturbing things
that have happened in the last year to a hardworking professor of
child development. Breaking up, buying guns, getting visits from a
fellow who dresses first like an angry student and later like a
campus cop. But the cop wasn’t named Dick Peterson.”

Anne understood suddenly.
“He was named Pete Dixon,” she said.

Nora sagged a
little.

Maggie said, “It didn’t
make much sense at first, all those facts. There was a hollow at
the center. But when I realized how evasive you’d become about a
brother you were close to, one you’d raised, one you used to tell
Tal and Bart about—well, if he was in serious trouble the rest of
it made more sense.”

“
Please don’t tell
anyone!” Nora begged. “It’s life and death!”

“
There really are
criminals after him, then?”

“
He had some drug problems
in New York. Ran up a debt. Yes, they’re after him.” Her eyes were
hollow with anxiety. Anne’s heart went out to her.

“
So you got him to change
his name and signed him up with Walensky?” Maggie gestured toward
the sofa and Nora let herself be led back to her seat.

“
Yes,” she said. “It took
some work. He wanted money when he came last year, when Tal and
Charlie saw him. But I couldn’t pay off drug debts. I just
couldn’t! I realized that’s where the other money I’d sent him had
gone. So I sent him to a rehabilitation program. He was finally
scared enough to take it seriously, I think. We changed his name
for protection, and when he got out Walensky took him
on.”

“
You picked Campus
Security so he could be armed and so he’d have buddies
around?”

“
Yes, it seemed safe. And
he’d been a security guard off and on in New York City, he said, so
I thought he could manage the work. So far he’s been fine. Please,
don’t tell anyone!”

“
No need to tell anyone if
Walensky already knows all this. Does he?” Anne asked.

“
Yes. He was very
helpful.”

“
Well, then he’ll tell
Hines whatever’s necessary.”

“
Theoretically, he will,”
Maggie said. She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and began
scribbling on it. “Got an envelope, Nora?”

“
Sure. Plain letter size?”
Nora started for the desk against the wall.

“
Yes.” Maggie jumped up
and accompanied her. She accepted the envelope, helped herself to a
stamp from Nora’s desk, and pasted it on. “Here, Anne. Please take
this out and mail it. I’ll meet you at the car in just a minute. I
have to explain all this to Nora.”

Anne was on the verge of
protesting, but something in Maggie’s tone caused her to take the
letter meekly. “I’ll see you later, Nora. Thanks for helping,” she
said and went out, wondering. The mailbox was at the end of the
widened parking area. She lit a Gauloise and then walked across to
mail the letter. It was marked “Personal,” she saw, and addressed
to M.M. Ryan at Ryan and Reade in New York City. By the time she
was back at the car Maggie was emerging from the apartment too.
“Okay, what was all that about?” Anne asked.

“
Maybe unnecessary. But
there were a lot of guns in that family,” Maggie said, opening the
door. “I thought Nora and her brother should be aware that my
personal mail won’t be opened unless I turn up dead.”

“
Dead!
You think she would—
merde
!” Anne drew a deep
lungful of smoke and stubbed out the cigarette in the Camaro’s
ashtray. “So you mailed this story to yourself, just in case.
Surely Nora wouldn’t— But if that was her brother in her office
last year, he’s got a temper.”

“
He’s got a temper, he’s
got easy access to his sister’s gun, and if Tal recognized him as
the angry student and started asking questions, he’d have motive
too.” Maggie turned onto the highway and headed for the Cortland
Road before adding grimly, “But what worries me most is Nora. She’s
not overly fond of Charlie, but those accusations aren’t grounded
in hatred. They’re grounded in terror. She’s scared to death that
little Dicky did it.”

15

The Cortland Road led into
the hills through farms where the land rolled gently, woods where
steeper slopes made agriculture difficult. Outside the Laconia city
limits, the road was lined with small houses on lots snipped from
the farms behind. Cindy Phelps lived in a one-story bungalow of
white-painted asphalt shingles. It was a drab little house, livened
only by a pretty front porch with a swing and a long hedge of
spectacular pink peonies along the gravel drive. Maggie pulled over
to the edge of the driveway a short distance behind Cindy’s Toyota.
Anne climbed out and paused to touch one of the massive peony
blooms.

“
It’s gorgeous out here,”
Maggie said.

Anne followed her gaze and
nodded. The hills here rolled down to the lake, sapphire blue on
this June day. The scruffiness of the cottages along the road
didn’t matter because the eye was drawn to the lake, the hazy
hills, the white clouds that drifted across the expanse of sky.
Anne could see the university towers tiny on a far hill. Behind it
her own section of town seemed nothing but trees, and beyond that
the cemetery blended into the landscape. She was glad it was on a
hill too. Tal liked hills. From a hill, the grandeur of the
universe soothed.

She turned and followed
Maggie up the cement walk to the porch.

“
Well! What brings you two
here?” Cindy answered the bell wearing jeans and a Western-style
pink-checked shirt. A pink headband held back her tousled
curls.

“
Got some questions about
the department,” Anne explained.

“
I’d think you two knew
everything already,” Cindy said. A child peered out the door behind
her. She shooed him back in and called, “Back in a minute, Mark.”
Then she stepped out onto the porch and closed the door firmly
behind her. Her sneakers were pink too.

“
Everything we learn about
it seems to bring up new questions,” Maggie said.

“
I’ve noticed that too.”
Cindy walked to the end of the porch, looked out at the lake, then
turned her back on it to sit on the porch railing. “The hell of it
is, I can’t think why anyone would want to kill Tal.”

“
I can think of a lot of
possible reasons.” Maggie was pacing along the length of the porch.
“But most of them involve Tal knowing somebody’s unpleasant
secret.”

“
That’s exactly what I
mean,” said Cindy. “What secret could he know? And what difference
would it make if he did know?”

Anne leaned against the
house wall and lit a cigarette. “Thought you might have some
ideas.”

“
Why me? Talk to
Bernie.”

Maggie’s trajectory had
brought her to Cindy’s end of the porch. “Come off it, Cindy,” she
said. “You know more about that department than Bernie. You’ve been
there longer and you keep the records. And I notice that you aren’t
saying people don’t have secrets.”

“
Well, sure. I’ve been in
this mean old world for a while. I know people have things to hide
sometimes. Doesn’t mean I know what they are.” Her rigid shoulders
belied her light tone.

Anne tried to ease the
tension. “Just thought you might be willing to make some guesses,
Cindy. We know that nobody knows for sure.”

“
Look, Anne, you and I
understand each other pretty well. You know there’s nothing I
wouldn’t do for Tal.” Cindy’s light eyes under the blackened lashes
were earnest.

Anne nodded. “I
know.”

“
But I don’t know anything
that could help. Honestly. And I’m no dummy. I can see where this
one’s leading.” She gave a curt nod at Maggie. “If I say anything
about anybody, the next step is to claim I was blackmailing them
and Tal found out. So anything I know makes me a suspect
too!”

“
For God’s sake, Cindy!”
Anne stamped across the porch to tap ash into the bushes. “You know
I don’t believe that!”

“
Hey,
not so fast.
I
might believe it,” said Maggie. Still facing Cindy, she had
propped a foot on the railing nearby, effectively fencing her in.
“I even brought up the possibility to Anne. Right?”