Chapter 17

  

Joe was compassionate. “I’m sorry this investigation is taking so damned long and I’m also so sorry for Celeste, and for Larry,” he said. “I know you feel lousy about all this, even if none of it was your doing.”

He was wearing an old apron of mine and stirring spaghetti sauce while I sat, glum and tired, at the kitchen table. Joe makes terrific spaghetti sauce, not to mention fried chicken and meatloaf. I also figured he came not only to feed me and bring me up to date, but also because college basketball was starting and my television set was newer and larger than the one in his bachelor pad.

“I feel a sort of guilt about Celeste,” I said. “I drank too much in college. I just didn’t get into Celeste’s kind of trouble. Now I wish I had known she was a heavy drinker when we talked in my office.”

“How would that have changed things?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think I might have better understood the irrationality of her behavior if I had known more about her. I might have been a bit less angry and aggressive. I might have gotten her to talk more about herself.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said and put down his spoon. “I knew my best friend was an alcoholic and I talked to him all the time, but it still didn’t change things. He would just make a joke about it. And, he was good at making jokes. He got more laughs than any of us. And, more girls, too.”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

“No. I was a little shyer in college than I am now. I didn’t get to my full height until sophomore year and then I grew three inches. That fall I tried out for basketball. I also hit the gym and tried to bulk up a bit.”

“I would say you did very well at that.”

He ignored my feeble attempt to flirt, and veered back to his friend.

“I can still see his face. One night before he died, we talked until about three in the morning. It was so easy to talk about yourself with him. He really listened, even when he was half in the bag, he listened. He had that way of looking intently at you when you were talking and making you feel like whatever you had to say was significant. I remember we sat in my room and I told him all about my parents and my sister and the girls I had lusted after and never dated.”

I kept still. Clearly Joe was lost in his story.

“That night I told him about the day my mother died and how I found my dad lying on the kitchen floor after we came home from the hospital, just staring at the ceiling and refusing to get up until the next morning.” Joe took a sip from his wine glass.

I kept still.

“He was supposed to be my best man. And he was the one friend I went to when I needed to vent.”

Joe picked up the spoon, turned to the stove and resumed stirring the sauce. “Until I met you,” he said to the wall behind the stove, “I didn’t think I would ever find another person I could really talk to.”

That picked me up. I resolved to learn how to shut up more often.

  

After dinner, Joe went into my living room to watch a game on television and I went into my home office. In preparation for the meeting Stoddard and I planned to have with George, Edwin, and Simon, I had taken home the still unopened suitcase Michael Brooks had left in my office. Maybe there was something in Henry’s papers that would help me.

To my surprise, when I opened the suitcase at home, I discovered copies of the school’s personnel files. Several had notes scribbled in the margins, Brooks’ own private musings about his faculty, irreverent and in some cases irrelevant. Such as “Ardith is too uptight—needs to get laid.” Really, Henry. One cryptic note on Edwin Cartwell’s file read, “Get Sterling at Arkansas to recruit him for chair.” So that had been Brooks’ plan. Get Edwin to accept another more prestigious position at a university back east, and then steal the man’s wife. Mary hadn’t mentioned this plot.

Simon Gorshak’s file was the first one I read thoroughly. Under marital status he had checked “single” and no one was listed as an emergency contact. There was no written reference to Henry’s request for Simon’s resignation. The comments about Simon’s teaching were milder than I expected, given what I knew of Henry’s true opinion. As I read though the draft of Simon’s annual evaluation, I suspected Henry had caved into Simon’s threats and was planning to give Simon a satisfactory rating. I put the file to one side so I could show it to Joe.

My file was at the bottom of the pile and offered a provocative note. Near the end of the marginal scribbles, I read, “If it weren’t for M, I would like to have a go at R.” What a sexy beast Henry had been. I was glad his children had left these files for me to examine. Phyllis and Max’s files were missing and I made a note to ask Nell about them.

The folders had piled up on my couch and, by midnight, I had read as much as I wanted to for one evening. As I started to put the folders back in the small suitcase Michael Brooks had given me, I noticed a yellow slip of paper on the bottom, with the scrawled words, “Fucking thief. This warrants punishment. Call Shaw tomorrow.” It was Henry’s writing, but who was it about? Had it fallen out of one of the files? And, who was Shaw?

I showed the slip to Joe.

He stared at it. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know, but Henry wrote it and must have been angry with someone. Maybe this is a motive for someone.”

“Someone on the faculty?”

“I think so, but I’m not sure.”

“Could it be Mary Cartwell?” Joe turned off the television. “I dated a lady in Chicago who stole from me.”

“You haven’t mentioned her before. Were you serious about her?”

“Not after money went missing from my wallet and some credit card problems turned up.”

“What did you do?”

Joe gave me one of his long looks. He was dressed in sweats and a t-shirt and looked very appetizing. I wondered if I really wanted a long conversation about another woman.

“I turned her in,” he said quietly. “My partner arrested her.”

“Josiah Morgan. What a rat. Did she love you?”

“I doubt it. Turns out my wallet wasn’t her first theft.”

“Did you love her?” My view of Joe was taking on a new dimension. Some tough emotional muscle inside this man.

“No, I liked her a lot. But she was, as Henry Brooks might have said, a fucking thief.”