Part 15 (2/2)
I was still stuck on our earlier conversation. ”You said McConnell's wife, Margaret, made threats after she found out about Lila. When was that?”
Carroll paused to think. ”To my recollection it was maybe a month before-” He hesitated, as if searching for the most delicate phrasing. ”Before your sister's pa.s.sing.”
”McConnell said he had told his wife about Lila only days before Lila went missing.”
”He said that?”
”Why would he have lied to me?”
Carroll s.h.i.+fted in his seat and adjusted his watchband. ”I can't speak for Peter. But I can tell you that he was very protective of his family. Whatever Margaret's faults were, she was a good mother. The most important thing in the world to Peter was his son, and he would do anything to make sure that little boy could stay with his mother. He would willingly take the heat for Margaret.”
”I don't follow.”
Carroll hesitated. ”You must understand, I'm reluctant to say more, because there is no proof whatsoever to support my theory.”
”Your theory?”
”Margaret knew some unsavory characters. Lila was a thorn in Margaret's side. I have no evidence, mind you, only a gut feeling. And a gut feeling, I'm afraid, is worth very little.”
”I'm sorry. I have to ask you to speak more plainly.”
Carroll crossed his legs again. When he s.h.i.+fted in his chair, the inner collar of his jacket came into view. His name had been sewn into it in red cursive letters. ”It would be injudicious of me to spell it out further. Perhaps I've already said too much. At any rate, Peter thought my suspicions were baseless.”
”What about Strachman?” I asked. ”Why didn't he tell anyone about Lila and McConnell?”
”Ah yes, Strachman. That was interesting, too. Strachman used his silence as a bargaining tool.”
”For what?”
”Peter and I were collaborating on a paper. Under his own aegis, Strachman would have had no access to me. To be quite honest, I disliked him. He was Peter's opposite in every way: cagey, humorless, moody. And jealous-personally as well as professionally. I guarantee you, he would have given anything to have been in Peter's shoes-to have Peter's natural talent, not to mention Lila's affection.”
”He had a crush on Lila?”
”Oh, yes. But despite the fact that he would have given his right arm to date her, he was as jealous of her mathematical abilities as he was of Peter's, probably more so.”
”But he won the Hilbert Prize.”
”Oh, yes, that.” Carroll frowned. ”He never would have had a chance were it not for earlier research he'd done with Peter. That work laid the foundations for his paper on the Hodge Conjecture. Every truly original idea that grew out of that collaboration could be attributed to Peter. But it wasn't in Peter's nature to make a fuss over it. At any rate, after your sister died and the police came around, Strachman vowed his silence on the condition that he be allowed to coauthor a paper with Peter and me.”
”And you agreed?”
”You must understand, Peter was very dear to me. He still is. I don't know what it is about him, but he has always brought out my paternal side.”
Suddenly, Carroll smiled and stood, holding out his hand. ”It's been wonderful talking with you, Ellie, but it's past my curfew. My wife will be wondering about me.”
”Thank you,” I said, shaking his hand.
”Would you like me to call campus security for you? They'll send someone to walk you to your car. One can't be too careful-”
”I'll be fine.”
As I turned to walk out the door, he placed his hand very lightly in the small of my back. It was one of those male gestures that had always made me uncomfortable, simultaneously chivalrous and patronizing-two sides of the same coin.
”I was wondering,” he said, his hand still resting in that intimate place.
I turned and faced him, so that his hand was left hovering in the air. ”Yes?”
”Lila-did she ever mention me?”
”She did.”
His shoulders relaxed, and there was the beginning of a smile on his face.
I left it at that. I didn't tell him that she had only mentioned him in pa.s.sing, as a brilliant professor with whom she would like to work. Like McConnell, her friends.h.i.+p with Carroll, and her evenings at his house had been a secret she kept hidden from me.
My footsteps echoed in the long hallway. I pa.s.sed by a door with a small sign that said Stanford Journal of Mathematics. A strip of light shone under the door. Was this the room where Strachman had come upon Lila and McConnell, all those years before?
Keys in hand, I walked quickly to my car, which I'd illegally parked in the faculty lot near the building. Someone had stuck a white envelope under the winds.h.i.+eld wiper. I removed it-a parking ticket. Apparently, the meter maids didn't sleep.
Thirty-three.
A FEW DAYS LATER, WHEN I PULLED UP behind Golden Gate Coffee, I spotted Henry's silver Prius. Dora whistled as I walked in. ”Going somewhere special?”
”It was the only thing I had clean,” I said. Maybe the black pencil skirt and knee-high boots were too much. I couldn't remember the last time I'd worn anything like it to work.
She winked. ”Henry's going to love it.”
In the cupping room, I began preparing the latest samples-an El Salvador yellow bourbon cultivar, a caturra from the Boquete region of Panama, and a peaberry from Costa Rica. I'd just finished pouring the water into the cups when Henry walked in from the roasting room, his face flushed from the heat. He looked different, and it took me a moment to figure out why.
”You got your hair cut,” I said.
He brought his hand self-consciously to his head. ”I went to my old place in the Castro, but Dottie wasn't there anymore. The new woman got carried away with the clippers.”
”It looks good.”
”You always hated it short.”
I smiled. ”It'll grow back.”
He pulled out a chair and turned it around backward before sitting down, legs straddling the back of the chair. It was a habit I'd always found oddly endearing.
”Remember that time you cut my hair?”
”Yes. I thought that would be the end of us. What a way to begin a relations.h.i.+p.”
<script>