Part 2 (2/2)

Crawford stared at me expectantly.

”Ginkgo biloba is a wonderful remedy for memory loss. It's all natural, too,” I said, and tried to hold Crawford's gaze. He stared right back at me. I had to face it: I wasn't tough, they knew it, and that was the end of that. What I was was a trembling, scared, insecure English professor who was now linked to a tragic death. He continued to look at me until I spoke. ”There's nothing else. We've been over this.”

Wyatt returned from whatever reverie he had entered momentarily. ”Did you know that Kathy was in your husband's-sorry,” he said with gravity, ”-ex-husband's introductory biology cla.s.s?”

”Yes, Ray mentioned that.” And was crying when he did, I thought, but again, held back.

”She never mentioned it to you?” he asked, dubiously.

”No,” I said, emphatically.

And with that, they stood up. I stood, too. ”Thank you for coming by,” I said, forgetting for a moment that I had just been interrogated and didn't need to thank them for anything. I mentally slapped myself. If nothing else, I had been taught to be unfailingly polite. I recalled thanking Ray for signing and submitting his divorce papers on time.

Crawford gave me a bemused smile. ”Why, you're welcome,” he said.

Wyatt followed Crawford out and closed the door behind him. When I thought that they were a safe distance down the hall, I pulled out my garbage can and puked into it.

Five.

As is often the case with Max, I heard her before I saw her. ”Detectives!” she called out in greeting as she entered the office area. She arrived just as they were leaving. I heard some mumbled responses from them and then the clickety clack of her high heels on the wooden floors. I quickly pulled a wad of tissues from the box on my desk and blotted my mouth.

She knocked softly and came in. I hadn't been expecting her and asked her why she was here. ”I'm taking you to lunch,” she replied. ”G.o.d, it stinks in here!” she said, thrusting her tongue out all the way in an exaggerated gesture of disgust. I still didn't know why she had picked this day to come get me for lunch, but I was happy to see her. Maybe after all these years, we had some kind of telepathy between us; whatever it was, she had come when I needed her, and that was all that mattered. ”What were they doing here?” she asked, taking stock of my sickly pallor. ”And what happened to you?” she asked. She leaned over, took in the garbage can, and crinkled her nose.

”I just got interrogated again,” I said, and poured some water from a new bottle onto another wad of tissues. I pressed it against my forehead and around my mouth, hoping to bring myself back to life.

”You've got to stop puking every time you see him.” She picked up the garbage can and handed it to me, smiling as she came to a conclusion. With Max, you can practically see the lightbulb go off over her head, signaling some kind of epiphany. ”You've got a crush on the detective,” she sang.

I was queasy and short of temper. ”I don't puke every time I see him. I puke every time my name comes up in connection with a murder case.” I didn't feel the need to dignify the crush remark; I was a mature woman who didn't get crushes on men I had just met, especially those who thought I could murder a coed and stick her in the trunk of my car. I took the garbage can and left the office, going into the coed bathroom three doors down. I cleaned out the garbage can, sprayed it with the Lysol in the medicine cabinet above the sink, and dried it with a clump of paper towels. I rinsed my mouth out a few dozen times. When I returned to my office, Max was sitting in one of the chairs across from the desk, her feet on the edge of my desk, picking at one of her cuticles. I closed the door and sat down, a few tears spilling onto the front of my dress.

”Oh, come on,” she said, rolling her eyes. She hated crying. ”What's the matter?”

”Max, I'm a suspect in a murder case!” I said, now into full-blown hysteria, my nose running. ”They think I have something to do with this. What am I going to do?”

”Now, why would you be a suspect?” she asked. She got up and patted my shoulder awkwardly.

I rolled my eyes. ”I don't know . . . maybe it's the dead girl they found in my car,” I said, stating what I thought was obvious.

”If they pay attention at all, they'll figure out that you had nothing to do with this. You're guilty of nothing more than driving a s.h.i.+tty car that was easy to steal.”

”Do you think it has something to do with Mob business?” I asked, innocently. Although I had nothing to go on besides the fact that it was rumored that Peter owned a strip club in addition to a couple of racehorses, the Capelli-Miceli union had the stink of Mafia around it.

Max snorted. ”Mob business?” She laughed. ”You watch too much cable.” She sat down again, her comforting skills having no effect on me. ”Didn't you tell me that she had a crazy boyfriend? My money's on him.”

I thought for a moment. She had a point. Although I didn't know Vince very well, I had heard things around campus. Possessive. Jealous. Druggy. Except for the druggy part, those adjectives described me when I was married to Ray. Kathy had seemed young, naive, and scared a lot of the time, but that was just my perception, and I really didn't have anything to back up that feeling. If I saw a movie of myself during the time I had been married, I probably looked the same way most of the time.

”I don't even know if the police are looking at him. I could be their only suspect,” I said. I put my head into my hands. ”Why would I kill her? And why would I dump her in my car? I know I'm not a criminal mastermind, but you'd think the police would give me some credit for being intelligent.”

Max continued chewing on her cuticle, deep in thought. ”You didn't kill her, did you?”

”No!” I screamed. ”Jesus, Max!”

She put her hands up. ”I had to ask.” She went back to thinking, and I saw her eyes widen. ”Vince goes to Joliet, right?” Joliet was a school about twenty blocks or so down the avenue and our two schools had a cooperative agreement. Students could take cla.s.ses at either place, depending on the course and department schedules. ”Can you get into the admissions records on your computer?”

I looked at her. ”I don't know. I've never tried.” My eyes narrowed. ”What are you getting at?”

”We need to find out where Vince lives.”

”OK,” I said slowly. ”Why?”

”So we can look around his room.” She stood up. ”Who knows what we'll find? Maybe he's so stupid that he kept your keys after he stole your car.”

”You're really convinced it was Vince?”

She nodded. ”Yep. If he's as much of a psycho as everyone says he is, then it's definitely possible that he killed his girlfriend, stole your car, and dumped the body.”

”Who's been watching too much cable?” I asked. There were moments when I suspected that Max might spend a little too much time in the fantasy world of cable television. ”I hope you can line up Jane Seymour to play me in the cable movie version of A Murder on Campus: Love, Lies, and Deceit. I've always liked her.”

”Well, that scenario is a little better than crazy college professor loses her s.h.i.+t and goes on a killing rampage, dumping bodies in her s.h.i.+tty car.”

”Stop calling my car 's.h.i.+tty.'”

She ignored me. ”Think about it. Crazy boyfriend, cheating . . .” She stopped when I protested and then repeated the word emphatically so that I would follow her train of thought. ”. . . cheating girlfriend, crime of pa.s.sion, unpremeditated murder.” She threw up her hands. ”Voila! Case closed.”

I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, but couldn't. ”You should have been here when the police were here, Max. You could have solved the whole thing and saved the New York City Police Department a tremendous number of man-hours.”

”It's the only thing that makes sense to me.”

”Why would you think that she was cheating?”

”What else would make a guy like that snap?” she asked.

I shrugged. ”I honestly don't know. Just about anything, I guess.” My husband had cheated on me, and I hadn't gone off the deep end. Maybe Vince wasn't as evolved as I liked to think I was. Or rational. Or as much of a dullard when it came to one's loved one cheating. I thought for a moment. The police seemed to be spending an awful lot of time on me; did they even consider Vince a suspect? As harebrained as it sounded, maybe Max was onto something. It was definitely a stretch. But Vince was sure to be at the cemetery and get-together after the funeral for a few hours so we had a window of opportunity. ”I have a friend at Joliet who works in the housing office.” I picked up the phone and called Diane Berlinger. She picked up after the second ring. ”Diane? Alison Bergeron.”

”Alison? Hi!” she said, happy to hear from me.

We chatted for a few minutes and then I got to my question. ”Diane, let me ask you something. Do soph.o.m.ores at Joliet still live in La Salle Hall?”

”Yes. Why?”

I hadn't expected that she would want to know why, so I came up with a lie on the spot. I sounded contrite. ”I'm way behind on grading and I've got a few research papers to deliver. I've got a couple of Joliet soph.o.m.ores in my creative writing cla.s.s and I'd like to hand-deliver their papers. I'm on my way to the City and thought I'd stop by and stick them in their mailboxes.”

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