WHEN we got back to the hotel, Rick Goldman was waiting for us, sitting in the same chair in the lobby he’d used before.
“I should’ve figured he’d show up, considering the scene last night,” I told Tolliver. “I wonder if he’s told the cops yet.”
I introduced Rick to Tolliver as politely as if Rick had come to ask us to tea. But there was a muscle jumping in the private detective’s jaw, and his whole body was tense.
“Can we have this talk somewhere a little more private?” he growled at me.
Tolliver said, “That would be best, I think. Come with us.”
The ride up in the elevator was silent and ominous.
The maids had been in, and the room looked clean and welcoming, I was glad to see. There’s something kind of seedy in having guests in your hotel room when the evidence of your stay is strewn all around you in disorderly heaps; room service cart, crumpled newspapers, discarded books, a shoe here and there. I’d been enjoying having a sitting room at this hotel, though I never forgot I was paying for it through the nose.
“You didn’t have to kill Nunley,” Rick Goldman said. “I know he was an obnoxious drunk, but he didn’t hurt you.” He switched his level gaze to Tolliver. “Or were you so angry he manhandled your sister that you tracked him down after I left?”
“I might just as well suspect you,” I retorted, not a little pissed off. “You’re the one laid hands on him. You can leave right now if you’re going to sit there and accuse us of stuff without having the slightest bit of evidence that we ever saw the man again.”
I took my jacket off and walked over to the door of my room, tossing it inside. Tolliver unbuttoned his more slowly. “I take it you’ve been to the police already with your little story about what happened in the lobby,” he said.
“Of course,” said Rick. “Clyde Nunley was an asshole, but he was a professor at Bingham. He had a family. He deserves to have his murder solved.”
“I saw he was married, on the news,” I said. “Though, come to think of it, he didn’t wear a wedding ring.”
“Lots of men don’t,” Rick said.
“Not in my experience,” I said, surprised.
“He had a metal allergy,” Rick said.
“You knew him a little better than I thought.”
“I read his personnel file,” the private detective admitted.
“I’m betting the weird content of Clyde Nunley’s classes wasn’t the only reason he was being investigated,” Tolliver said. “I’m betting he had some affairs, maybe with a student or two? And the college decided they’d better check him out. Am I right?”
“There was a certain amount of talk on campus.”
“His wife wasn’t so amazed when he didn’t come home at night,” I said. “She didn’t even call the police until the next morning.” I sat on the couch and crossed my legs, lacing my fingers together in my lap. Tolliver was still hovering around the room, too restless to perch. Our guest had thrown himself down into one of the wing chairs without waiting for us to ask him to be seated.
“Rick, do you still have a lot of friends on the force?” Tolliver asked.
“Sure.”
“So you won’t mind when they ask the staff what they saw last night?”
“Of course not.”
“Even when they tell your former colleagues that they watched you throw a guy out of the lobby, while my sister was absolutely passive?”
I made my eyes look all big and tearful. I look frail anyway, no matter how tough I actually can be.
“I wonder who they’ll remember being violent and forceful, you or Harper?”
“Damn. And I was helping her out.” Rick Goldman looked at us as if he could not believe people like us were walking the earth unjudged. “You people!”
“I did appreciate your helping me, right up until the time you insulted me,” I said. “But Clyde Nunley was a pest, not a danger. Now he’s dead, and I had nothing to do with it. We were just over at the Morgensterns’, and they heard the news while we were there. Pretty upsetting.”
“They asked you to their house?” This, again, got a big reaction.
I said, “Some people don’t treat us as if we were frauds and murderers.”
He threw up his hands, as if I’d stepped over a dearly held boundary. “I give up,” he said.
A little drama on the part of the old Rickster.
“You two are no better than scam artists,” he said. “It makes me crazy that I can’t figure out how you do it. You were right on the money about those deaths, right on the money. How’d you get the documents ahead of time? I really want to know how you did it!”
There’s no convincing someone who’s not open to reason, or to anything else, for that matter.
“You’re not going to believe I’m the real thing, anytime soon,” I said. “There’s no point in talking to you. Besides, the police will be coming, and I want to shower before they get here.” That wasn’t true. I’d already showered. I just wanted Rick Goldman to leave, right away.