Murder Misread (4 page)

“
But you could
read.”

“
Yeah, I didn’t say he was
consistent. And for me, reading was a good escape. I was happy
reading. But he said—” Charlie replaced his glasses. Why the hell
was he nattering on about olden days? No need to present his
statistical consultant with his whole life history. He said,
“Anyway, there you have it. The reasons this knight decided to slay
the dragon of illiteracy.”

She smiled. “Good reasons.
But it’s a big and complex dragon.”

“
Yes. There are so many
theories about, so many complexities. But if we….” He trailed off,
becoming aware of Maggie’s gaze fixed behind him, of a strong
stale-smoke scent, of a massive tweed elbow by his ear. “Oh, hi,
Bart!”

“
Hullo.” Bart Bickford’s
small eyes, set deep in their bony sockets, scanned the interior of
the restaurant. “I was supposed to meet Tal Chandler here. Have you
seen him?”

“
We’re waiting for him
too. Sit down.” Charlie slid across the seat to make room. Bart
needed a lot of room. “Maggie, this is Bart Bickford. Teaches
development of creativity. Maggie Ryan, our project
statistician.”

Maggie murmured, “Mmph,”
pleasantly around a mouthful of dolmas, swallowed, and asked, “What
kind of creativity are you interested in?”

“
Last couple of years I’ve
been working with verbal creativity. There are musical prodigies,
math prodigies, but it’s harder to set criteria for poets or
storytellers at very young ages.”

“
Are you finding the
criteria?”

Bart shrugged diffidently.
For such an immense man he always seemed to Charlie to be
apologetic, even timid. He said, “We’re developing a couple of
criteria. Long road ahead.” He glanced back at the door. “Do you
have any idea what Tal’s up to?”

Charlie suggested,
“Probably got another book accepted for publication.”

“
Yeah.” Bart continued to
stare at the door. He drummed his fingernails on the tabletop
almost imperceptibly to the rhythm of the bouzouki. “Probably. But
he seemed so excited.”

“
Well, maybe he’d had good
news from the doctor.”

“
Yes, but—did he say
anything to you about old enemies?”

Charlie frowned. “Enemies?
Tal said something… a quote, wasn’t it?”

Maggie, having swallowed,
nodded agreement. “From
Cyrano
. ‘Old enemies who round me
loom. ’ But the enemies he’s talking about are pretty
abstract—falsehood, cowardice, prejudice.”

“
Well, Tal has certainly
always been against those,” Bart said, fumbling in his jacket
pocket. “Still, it seemed odd.”

“
He could still have been
talking about the cancer,” argued Charlie, warming to his own idea.
“It’s in remission, but a couple of years ago it was a very real
enemy.”

“
Could be.” Bart was
fussing with one of his buttons, winding a loose thread around the
shank. “I suppose there are academic opponents too, though I don’t
know a hell of a lot about research on reading.”

“
Yeah, that’s true,”
Charlie admitted. “A couple of younger guys at MIT are attacking
his theory.”

“
And your work?” asked
Bart shrewdly.

“
It’s not exactly an
attack,” said Charlie uncomfortably. “More a development. Anyway,
you know Tal, he’s always ready to argue almost any side of an
issue. Though he claims to be flattered that his work is still
being noticed.”

Bart squinted at the
button, seemed to approve, and looked back at the door. “Hell, I’m
probably reading too much into it. Look, there’s Nora!”

Charlie twisted to look
back over his shoulder at the door. Outside the plate-glass
windows, the sun glinted on College Avenue’s boutiques and trash
cans, on bicycles, motorcycles, aging rusty Fords and gleaming
Camaros, on blue-jeaned students strolling languidly through the
sleepy, sparkling vacation day. One of the figures, not blue-jeaned
but dressed in navy skirt and jacket, pushed open the door and
stood for a moment blinking at the dimness.

“
Over here, Nora!” called
Bart.

Her head turned with a
little puzzled frown at Maggie, then she saw Bart and smiled. A
knot of apprehension gathered in Charlie’s stomach. Nora was okay
as a colleague, but after hours…. Well, she hadn’t referred to the
incident since, and they managed to behave civilly enough in their
daily interchanges. But he still cringed with embarrassment to
think of last fall’s Halloween party. He’d parted his curly hair in
the middle, removed his glasses and added a tiny mustache and tramp
clothes. “My God, it’s Chaplin!” everyone had exclaimed. Nora, a
little tipsy, had declared herself so smitten she wouldn’t leave
his side. And she hadn’t. He’d had to drive her home, practically
push her weeping out of the car. But she wasn’t tipsy now; she was
her usual businesslike self. Nora’s skin was fine, tight, as though
a size too small for her facial bones. Her eyes were brown and
intense, and her dark hair was scraped back smoothly from her brow,
softened only by the first streaks of gray.

At the Halloween party,
she’d been wearing a slinky thirties gown and a platinum wig. Jean
Harlow, he supposed. Though at one point she’d borrowed someone’s
shawl and claimed she was the blind girl in
City Lights
.

“
Hi, Bart,” Nora said,
squinting at them. “Oh, and Charlie too! It’s hard to see anything
in here at first.”

“
You want my thumbnail
lecture on dark adaptation?” teased Charlie, pleased that she was
keeping her distance.

“
Not in the least! One of
my few joys in life is that I don’t have to worry about physiology
any more. I’m Nora Peterson,” she added, turning abruptly to
Maggie.

“
Maggie Ryan. Statistical
consultant for Charlie’s project. If you’re waiting for Tal
Chandler too, have a seat.” She slid farther into the corner,
patting the space next to her.

“
Thanks.” Nora took off
her dark jacket, folded it carefully, and placed it with her
briefcase on the seat beside her as she sat down. Her cream-colored
blouse, though simple, had an unexpected tiny edging of lace that
reminded Charlie of Deanna’s underthings. He forced his eyes up to
focus on Nora’s thin, smiling, talking lips. “Well, things must be
going well with your project, Charlie! Getting the statistician
signals phase two, right? Are you going to give us a report
soon?”

“
Can’t give much of a
report until the numbers are properly crunched.” Charlie smiled at
Maggie. “But now that the cruncher is here, it shouldn’t be much
longer.”

The plump waitress
arrived, dealt out menus like blackjack cards, and asked Maggie
hopefully if she wanted anything else.

“
You bet! But I’ll wait
until Professor Chandler comes.”

The waitress beamed. “Oh,
good! I’m glad he’ll be here. Okay, I’ll be back soon.” She bustled
away.

“
How’s your brother doing,
Nora?” Bart asked.

“
Fine.”

“
It’s a different world
for teenagers these days. Hard to stay out of trouble. Drugs and
all….” Bart shook his head.

“
He’s twenty-two, and he’s
doing fine.” Nora turned to Maggie. “You’re not from NYSU, are
you?”

“
I’m a partner in a New
York City consulting firm now. But in fact, I got my Ph.D. here a
few years ago. So it’s not completely new.”

“
A nostalgia
trip?”

“
Partly. Mostly business,
some pleasure. What’s your field, Nora?”

“
How children solve
problems at different ages. I’m applying some of Piaget’s theories
to moral dilemmas that I pose to children. Though I’m not ready for
a statistician yet!” Her taut face split into a smile.

Maggie smiled too. “Good.
I’m not looking for more work. I want to have time to enjoy the
beautiful country summer.” She gestured at the window. “Sunshine,
trees, graffiti—”

“
Now there’s a moral
dilemma,” said Bart. He shifted in his seat, causing a small
earthquake at Charlie’s end of the booth. “Tell me, Nora, if a
person knows someone who sprays the walls, is it moral to turn him
in? I mean, weighing the relatively trivial nature of the crime
against—”

“
Excuse me.” Maggie stood
up on the seat of the booth, placed one sneakered foot neatly
between the salt shaker and the dolmas plate, bounced across the
table, and landed on the floor running. She was pulling open the
door before Charlie could turn his astounded head.

But then he heard it too,
still partly masked by the bouzouki music but getting louder. A
woman screaming: “Help! Oh, my God, help! Help!”

3

Anne Chandler’s wandering
attention was caught by her own stubby fingers pulling yet another
Gauloise from the pack. Unwillingly her eyes slid to the ashtray:
this would be number seven. No, eight, damn it. She tapped the
cigarette back into the pack regretfully and tucked it into her
jacket pocket.

“
So, uh,
do you suppose you could give me the extension?” asked the pimply
student sitting stiffly on the other side of her desk. His Adam’s
apple bobbled in his scrawny young throat. Knot, the French called
it:
noeud
de la gorge,
knot of the throat. And
noeud
de la
question,
the crux of the matter. The crux
was that this poor kid wasn’t suited for college at all. Anne
wanted to pat his downy cheek, set him on a tractor, let him earn a
living in the healthy open air with no need to decipher any more
funny-looking French words.

But no doubt he was
pursuing some other, less suitable goal. Ambitious parents,
perhaps. It would be kindest to get it over with. Anne squashed her
maternal instinct and said briskly, “Three more days. But that’s
it, Bill. I can see that it’s a problem for you to get the paper in
by next Wednesday”—somewhere in his maundering account he had made
some excuse or other, she remembered vaguely—“but I really have to
close the books on this course. It’s already a week past the
final.” She stood up to signal the end of the
conversation.

“
Yeah, okay, I’ll try,
Professor Chandler.” He stumbled to his feet glumly.

“
I’ll look forward to
getting your paper,” she lied with her best inspiring-teacher
smile. His gangly height loomed a good twelve inches over her own
stocky bantam figure. “See you later, Bill.”

“
Thanks, Professor
Chandler.” He shifted his bookbag apologetically and ambled
out.

Anne fingered the
cigarettes and looked at her phone.

It didn’t ring.

What the hell was he up
to?

With sudden decision she
plopped back into her chair, picked up the receiver, and dialed Ken
Little.

“
Ken, sorry to call you so
late, but I can’t meet you for lunch today. Could we
reschedule?”

“
Sure thing, Annie. I have
some kind of bug anyway, woke up feeling woozy, and I wasn’t really
looking forward to lunch that much. You know, with the food at the
Union—”

“
We really should get the
film schedule set soon, though,” she broke in, paging through her
calendar. “How about tomorrow, at ten?”

“
No good.
Eleven?”

“
Fine, I’ll start my
office hours late.”

“
Okay. Do you know if
there are any bugs going around? I mean, this just came out of the
blue. When I woke up—”

“
You’ll feel better
tomorrow, Ken. See you then.” She pressed down the cradle before he
could reply and, without letting herself think, dialed Tal’s
office. But again it rang fruitlessly, over and over.

Dr. Lambert,
then.

God, why was it so
difficult? She had muscled her way brashly into the academic world
long before women were welcomed.
La
plastronneuse
, some catty old
professor had nicknamed her: the pushy one, the show-off. Or, more
literally, the starched shirtfront, the breastplate, the chesty
one. Tal had been delighted with the pun, burrowing his nose into
her ample bosom and murmuring lasciviously, “Mmm,
la
plastronneuse
!” and
they’d both giggled like kids. Well, pushy she’d been, she’d had to
be. She had defended countless papers at conventions, had traveled
alone in France and French Africa, had force-fed the glories of
French literature to generations of linguistically lazy students.
But now, instead of making a simple call, her fingers were again
twitching at the Gauloises.

She pulled her erring hand
from her pocket, placed it firmly on the receiver, made herself
dial the well-known number.

“
Can you hold a moment,
Mrs. Chandler?” asked the receptionist.

And in a moment,
miraculously, John’s voice: “Dr. Lambert here.”

“
John, it’s Anne Chandler.
I haven’t been able to catch Tal, and I wondered….” She trailed
off. What she wondered could not be put into ordinary
English.

And didn’t have to be.
John exclaimed enthusiastically, “Looked great, Anne! Still
shrinking. He keeps on like this another six months and he’ll be
good as new.”