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“YOU WANT ME TO KEEP you company while you spy on your husband?”
“Shh,” I whispered. “I didn’t need everyone in the cafeteria to hear. But yes, Emma. I need your help with this.”
Emma picked up the stub of her Spam musubi from the cafeteria tray and popped it in her mouth.
“So it’s tonight?” She looked at my tray. “Hey, you’re not eating your burger. How come?”
“It’s raw inside.”
“So? Aren’t you always complaining that you can’t fit into the clothes in your skinny closet? A good dose of salmonella would fix you right up.”
Emma thought the whole idea of my skinny closet was silly. According to her, I should have given away my too-small clothes long ago and kept only the items that fit. That might have made sense for someone who didn’t own a single Lilli Ann suit, and whose typical outfit was nondescript jeans and a five-year-old t-shirt from the annual meeting of the American Phytopathological Society.
“You ever find the tablet? The one we bought with the grant money?”
“You don’t have to keep reminding me. No. I looked in my office. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that I left it at Donnie’s house.”
“Well, something weird’s going on with it. Someone’s adding new pictures to our photo stream.”
“Photo stream? What are you talking about?”
“Come on Molly, what century are you living in? Whenever someone takes a picture, records an interview, whatever, it’s automatically backed up onto a remote server.”
“From our tablet?”
“Yes, dummy. So all the stuff you recorded, like at that biotech forum? It’s all backed up and retrievable.”
“It is? Great.”
“I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t know. Was there some kind of online account you never told me about when you set up the tablet?”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess so. Remind me to get you the login information. Not now, though. I don’t have it here.”
“So you’re saying new pictures have been appearing, after the fire?”
“Yup.”
“Like what kinds of pictures?”
“Young guys, without their shirts on, doing muscle poses.”
“Sounds like some kind of scam. We need to report it to IT. Can you do it since you have all the login information?”
“Sure, Molly. I’ll get right on it.”
“So back to my plan. Donnie’s going to be on campus, so we can coincidentally happen to walk by. It won’t look suspicious because we both work here.”
“So you think we should be sneaking around here at night? That’s never gonna not look suspicious. Why don’t you call Detective Medeiros if you think Donnie’s in trouble? He said he wants us to let him know about anything new.”
“I don’t have anything concrete to tell him. After tonight, we might, though. What could Donnie be mixed up with that would make someone want to burn his house down?”
“Who knows? Man, I’m still starving. I had a hard workout today. Here, let me see that.” She grabbed my half-eaten, undercooked hamburger.
While she was devouring it, I explained my plan: I would go home after work as usual, where I’d cook dinner. (At this, Emma briefly choked on the burger). Right after dinner, I would say I needed to go grocery shopping. Donnie would tell me he had work to do and would see me at home later. I would drive about a block uphill and wait for him to leave, then follow him to campus. Emma would wait at her office for my text.
Emma swallowed the last of the burger. “Wait, wait, wait.” She waved her hand vigorously. “You’re gonna cook?”
“I’m going to do a slow cooker pork roast,” I said.
“Doesn’t Davison need all his meat to be organic and shade grown or something?”
“He ate half an extra-large pizza last night. I think he’ll be fine.”
I rushed home after lunch to start dinner. I rinsed off a five-pound pork butt, stuck it in the slow cooker, showered it liberally with steak seasoning, put the cover in place, and turned the temperature to “auto.” Then I knocked the old, pebbly rice out of the rice cooker, rinsed out the inner container, and started a new batch. Both the meat and the rice would be ready by dinnertime. If I was feeling ambitious, I could even stop off to buy a couple of heads of lettuce this evening on the way home and round out the meal with a nice salad.
My dinner wasn’t as elegant as one of Donnie’s productions, but the pork was tasty, and the rice unobjectionable. I served the meal on my fanciest dinnerware, bright red and yellow vintage plates with whimsically mismatched utensils, all of which I’d purchased from the Salvation Army. Emma had volunteered to test the red plates for radioactivity and lead, but I told her I’d rather not know.
Davison looked like he was going to make a comment about the food, but Donnie shot him a silencing glare, and Davison ended up wolfing down a pile of salad, followed by three consecutive servings of pork and rice. I was too nervous to eat much.
After dinner, I excused myself to go “grocery shopping,” ducked out, and waited in my parking spot a block away.
Half an hour later, I stood in the dark outside the Language Arts building, a two-story concrete structure with classrooms on the ground level and the English Department faculty offices on the second floor. Pat’s old office was up there, along with what was probably the world’s oldest working coffee vending machine. (“Working” in the sense that it accepted money and in return dispensed a hot liquid that looked like coffee but tasted like chocolate and chicken broth.)
“This building is creepy at night.” Emma’s voice in the dark made me jump about ten feet.
“Oh good.” I clutched my chest. “It’s you. I know. This building is oppressive.”
The Language Arts Building, constructed during the energy-conscious Brutalist revival of the 1970s, was a severe-looking block of raw concrete. Mahina’s soggy climate endowed it with a perpetually tear-stained look.
“I can imagine Marcel Breuer shaking his head at the sight of this building, going, ‘Dude, that’s bleak’.”
“Who’s he? Some architect of hideous buildings?”
“Pretty much. He’s the one who designed the Hubert H. Humphrey building in D.C. It houses Health and Human Services. Ironic, because the mere sight of it makes you want to kill yourself.”
Light glowed through the vertical strip of glass embedded in the door of Language Arts 124, the room into which I had watched Donnie disappear.
Emma and I tiptoed up to the source of the light. Emma peeked through the narrow glass window and then pulled back.
“Donnie’s in there,” she whispered.
“Anyone with him? I don’t want to stick my face in the window.”
“I don’t see anyone except him.”
“He’s been coming to campus every week to sit in an empty classroom by himself?”
“Hold on.” Emma ducked under the window and moved to the other side, then peered in again.
“Nicole Nixon,” Emma hissed.
“From the English Department?”
“Uh-huh. Hey, she divorced what’s-his-name, didn’t she?”
“It’s just the two of them? Donnie and Nicole?”
“Looks like it.”
We scuttled away and ducked into the first-floor bathroom. The stall doors were missing from the stalls, and the dividers were covered with graffiti.
“Holy deferred maintenance.” Emma glanced around. “This looks like something right out of that cop show Yoshi likes.”
“Which one?”
“The one with a lot of swearing and people getting shot and beat up. It’s supposed to be ‘gritty.’ Molly, you okay?”
“He’s having an affair.” I blinked rapidly. “He’s been coming here every Wednesday night for a rendezvous with Nicole Nixon. This whole time, he’s been sneaking out—”
“Are you crying?”
I snatched a brown paper towel from the wall dispenser and dabbed it under my eyes. “I am not crying.”
“So what does this have to do with his house getting burned down? You still think his life is in danger?”
“Yes, I do. Because I’m going to kill him.”
“Whoa, Molly. Slow down.”
“I have to see for myself.”
Emma shrugged and followed me back to the classroom door. I was about to peek through the glass when my phone exploded with a burst of choral sound.
“Run,” Emma hissed, unnecessarily. We were already fleeing at top speed toward the parking lot.
“Hello?” I panted as we slowed to a walk.
“Professor Barda? This is Ka`imi Medeiros, of the Mahina Police Department. I called your husband, but he doesn’t seem to be picking up.”
“Detective Medeiros. Yes, Donnie is apparently busy right now. Is there any news about the fire?”
“It seems the fire started on your front porch. According to the investigator, the accelerant was a large piece of cardboard or papier-mâché. Any idea what it might be?”
“The fire was started with something made of papier-mâché?”
“A piñata?” Emma suggested.
“Why would someone burn a piñata on Donnie’s front porch?”
“Professor Barda?” Medeiros’ voice squawked on my phone.
“Sorry Detective. I don’t know. I have no idea what it might have been, or who would have wanted to burn down our house. Did you find anything else?”
“Just, it’s a good thing your husband’s insurance is paid up. Not much salvageable.”
“Any way we can help the investigation?”
“No, unless you remember something else.”
Emma and I plodded glumly to her car.
“Donnie’s having an affair.” I regretted saying it aloud. I hated hearing the words.
“You don’t know for sure. I mean, they weren’t doing anything. It looked like they were just talking.”
“Should I confront him? Should I wait until he tips his hand? Emma, what should I do? What would you do if it were Yoshi?”
She touched the door handle to unlock it.
“What would I do? I’d kill him.”