7

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK ON TUESDAY CHARLIE and Constance were admitted to Debra Rasmussen’s office in the college administration building. She had called earlier and said she was anxious to talk to them as soon as possible. She met them at her office door and told her secretary to hold calls, tell people she was in conference or something.

She appeared far less self possessed than she had before. “Thanks for taking time to see me,” she said, motioning to a several chairs near a window across from her desk, which was nearly covered with papers. “Would you like coffee? It’s made.”

“That would be good,” Constance said. “Coffee makes everything easier, doesn’t it?”

“I find it so,” Debra said. She served the coffee and sat across a table from them. “There were a few things that I thought you might find helpful, although at the moment I can’t think why.” She sipped coffee, put her cup down, and ran her hand through her hair. It looked as if she had been doing that a lot. “That damned house,” she said. “I wish I’d never heard of Howard Bainbridge and his damn house.” She drew in a breath. “My trustees are insisting on a meeting. They’ve heard rumors of a fortune concealed there and they are demanding a discussion to consider exactly what is at stake, how the college is involved, what we should do. It’s a mess.”

“Alice?” Constance asked.

“Alice. Someone will throttle her one day, and there will be a collective sigh of relief in town. She’s also talking about a curse. And this is such a busy week, with students arriving this weekend with parents in tow, orientation next week, classes to follow, music in the park every night starting tomorrow, and a big musical performance scheduled for Saturday night. Dinners, receptions… ”

Constance nodded sympathetically. “And the bequest of a million-dollar house to consider. Will you tell the trustees all of it now?”

“I almost have to, since there’s so much talk about a hidden fortune. And the college can use the money. Donors are cutting back or not contributing at all. We’ve had to reduce staff, put a few people on part-time. Mouths are watering for a windfall. If we end up with the house and manage to sell it… A million dollars doesn’t sound like much these days, but to a small college like ours, it would be a miracle. They’re already fighting over who gets how much, for what purpose. I just can’t imagine why Howard Bainbridge did this, but I know he didn’t care about the house any more than I do.”

“What do you mean?” Constance asked.

“I talked to the Realtor who arranged the sale for him, to find out what the current value might be. He said close to a million, possibly more. Bert, that’s Bert Holmquist, said that Bainbridge really wanted to buy the old fishing camp where the family had spent time years ago. Out of the question, of course. It’s Lakeview Resort now, definitely not for sale. Then he wanted any house with a lakefront and there wasn’t any for sale. Bert said he was angry about it and said he’d settle for anything not in town, anything with a little privacy, and that house was available. He hardly even looked it over, but it’s a very fine structure, custom designed, custom built, and the price tag was one million two hundred thousand. He didn’t quibble or haggle, just took it and paid cash. The will was read in the house, and it’s appalling. He didn’t do a thing with it, brought in junk furniture, no carpeting for the most part… ” She frowned and shook her head. “Sorry, none of that is of concern to you.

“What I thought you might want to know concerns Howard Bainbridge, however. As I mentioned, I looked him up after I was informed about the bequest. He didn’t give a damn about the college, never had a connection with it except for that one scholarship. When the girl drowned, Dr. Wilkerson, the former president here, wrote to him about the remainder of the scholarship money, asked how he wanted it handled, and Bainbridge said to return it to him. That’s unusual, perhaps even unprecedented. But the remainder was returned to him and that was the end of that.”

“What else is on your mind?” Charlie asked when Debra paused. “There is something else, isn’t there?”

“Yes, and I don’t know what it means, if anything. I talked to Sonia Talmadge, Dr. Wilkerson’s secretary and now mine. She comes with the office. I asked her if she had any knowledge of what happened, why Andrea dropped out when her grades were so good. She had a three-point-six grade average, newly married, apparently doing very well, and suddenly she dropped out without giving a reason. Sonia remembered clearly.” She lifted her coffee, sipped again.

“Sonia told me that Andrea came to the office, very agitated, and said she had to see Dr. Wilkerson. Well, he was out of town and Andrea demanded that Sonia tell her if Bainbridge was the one who had provided her scholarship. Sonia tried to evade the question, but she isn’t a good liar, or her expression gave it away, or something else. Andrea turned pale and for a moment Sonia thought she was ill, that she might faint. Andrea went to the door, paused, and said without looking back that she wouldn’t be needing the rest of the scholarship, she was through. She never came back, according to Sonia. When she brought it up with Dr. Wilkerson, he suggested that Andrea might be pregnant and dismissed it.”

“Pamela Bainbridge seemed to think that Bainbridge was seeing Andrea, that he was in the area. You doubted it. Is it possible that he really was around?” Charlie asked.

“Remember, I wasn’t on the scene,” she said. “But it seems so unlikely that I don’t believe it. This is a very small town, you know. He would have been noticed, people would have talked.” She grimaced and spread her hands. “Believe me, people talk. Earlier, there simply wasn’t time before she came. She was eighteen and living in Newton when the scholarship was arranged, and it took most of a year to locate her. It appears that Bainbridge didn’t know where she was, and assumed she was still here in town. After she arrived and started school, there was even less time. She got involved with Earl Marshall, they married, and she continued to be an excellent student, which in itself takes a good deal of time. But Howard Bainbridge was the reason she got the scholarship in the first place, and presumably when she learned it was from him, she dropped out. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t make sense. Maybe during that last year they were seeing each other and kept it so secret that no one suspected a thing. Unlikely in a town like this, but I suppose it was possible. I can’t imagine where he would have stayed without it being known. Remember, he didn’t move here until four years ago and she died twelve years ago.”

She ran her hand through her hair again, glanced at her watch and said, “That’s what I wanted to tell you. It seemed inappropriate to tell the family that Howard Bainbridge was so stingy with money that he wanted it back instead of allowing it to go into the our scholarship endowment fund. God knows the college could have used it.”

They all stood and as they went to the door, she added, “I hope to God that you or the family find those checks. That’s my nightly prayer, that it’s found before we take possession.”

At the door Constance asked, “By any chance do you know if Professor Oglethorp is still in the area?”

“Ethel? Yes, she’s here. She must be eighty, but she still gives a slide show for biology students every year. She spent two or three months in Costa Rica a year ago and has a lovely slide show of birds from there. Students used to call her the Bird Lady. She’s a professor emeritus these days, not teaching any longer. Why do you ask?”

“We’re still filling in some blanks,” Constance said. “The newspaper accounts we’ve read mentioned that Andrea was at Professor Oglethorp’s house the day she saw the accident at the lake. She might have a different perspective on the events.”

“What on earth can that have to do with anything happening today?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Maybe nothing. But we like our packages tied up nice and tidy with no sharp points sticking out. Her address?”

Debra gave them directions to Professor Oglethorp’s house, they thanked her and walked out to the car.

“Oglethorp?” Charlie asked, pulling away from the curb.

“Of course,” she said. “The Bainbridge crew will wonder what happened to us.”

“Let them stew. Good for them. Onward.”

They drove past the gingerbread house and Charlie looked at it fondly. “Home sweet home,” he said. “It’s worth putting up with the talk machine just to have breakfast on the terrace.”

Constance laughed softly. “You certainly showed your appreciation.”

“And I’ll do it again tomorrow. Why don’t we have croissants every morning at home?”

“Be warned. If I ever start that, it will mean that I’ll be ordering widow’s weeds. Keep an eye out for birds.”

Debra had said, “When you see birdhouses hanging from everything that will support them, that’s it.”

The birdhouses came into view and Charlie pulled into a driveway. The house was a two-story white-frame building that looked as if it had been there for a century. It needed a coat of paint, and wild growth around it could have been trimmed into submission but hadn’t been. It appeared that all the trees and bushes bore fruits of one kind or another—Russian olives, cotoneasters, ground cherries, huckleberries, lingonberries…

“For the birds,” Constance murmured.

Charlie thought so too, but he had a different definition of what the phrase meant. They mounted a wide porch and he rang the bell. A whip-poor-will call sounded followed by the yelping of a dog.

The woman who opened the door was diminutive, five feet tall, possibly a hundred ten pounds, with hair dazzling white and tightly curled. Gold-framed eyeglasses were nestled in her curly hair. Her eyes were bright blue. A poodle was dancing about her feet, barking excitedly. She told it to hush. It kept yapping.

“Yes?” she said. “Are you lost?”

“Professor Oglethorp?” Charlie asked.

“I am. Who are you?”

“Then we’re not lost,” Charlie said. “We’d like very much to talk to you, Professor.” He introduced Constance and himself.

“Oh, you’re the people looking for all that money, aren’t you? Mr. Meiklejohn, I don’t have it and I don’t know where it is. Was there anything else?”

Before Charlie could respond Constance said, “Professor Oglethorp, we didn’t come about the money. Actually we’d like to talk to you about an accident that happened thirty years ago, when a girl was drowned in the lake and Howard Bainbridge was injured.”

“Why?” the professor asked.

“I think that in order to grasp the present, one must have grappled with the past. History can be a good teacher.”

Professor Oglethorp looked her up and down, then nodded. “Exactly so. Well, come on in. This is Bonita, and she’s a drama queen. I told you to hush that,” she ordered the dog, and this time, with the strangers accepted and crossing the threshold, the little dog stopped yapping.

“There’s another one, Bummer, but he’s probably hiding somewhere and just doesn’t want to be bothered. He’s eighteen years old and a coward. Always was a coward and age hasn’t changed a thing except now he doesn’t pretend. They don’t bite. I prefer cats, but at least dogs leave the birds alone. This way. As long as the weather holds, I prefer to spend my time out back.”

Her house was cluttered with knick-knacks, framed pictures on tables, books here and there, an open magazine on a sofa. They continued on to her preferred room, a screened-in sun porch with orange-and-white-covered rattan furnishings and bird pictures crowded on the back wall, watercolors and photographs. Many of the paintings were signed with the initials E.O. Her work. It was a beautiful art collection, the birds exquisitely rendered in watercolor. The view of the lake was unobstructed by trees or shrubs. It looked very blue and sparkly in the sunshine.

“Please make yourselves comfortable,” the professor said, gesturing toward chairs. She seated herself in a recliner and put her feet up. Bonita instantly jumped into her lap. “You want to know about Howard Bainbridge and his fiancée, don’t you? And Andrea, I assume.”

“Especially Andrea,” Constance said. “The accounts we read said she was here that day.”

“She was. Her mother, Teresa, was working with me, doing an index for a book I was writing. She often brought Andrea with her, especially in the summer when school was not in session. She was only eight that summer, much too young to leave alone, of course.”

“Professor Oglethorp, will you tell us what you recall about that day?” Charlie asked.

“I remember it all very clearly, young man. My memory is not impaired,” she said and deliberately turned toward Constance. “Teresa usually came around noon and stayed about four hours. That day she had an appointment in the morning and couldn’t make it until two or a little later. She had a dentist appointment,” she said to Charlie with a reproving look. “We worked inside, in my office,” she said, motioning generally in the direction of the house, “and Andrea stayed out here, or else on the other part of the porch where she had a better view of the lake. She always brought her own books to read, or sometimes she looked at the books I had with pictures of birds. She was a lovely child, intelligent, filled with curiosity. She especially liked to use my binoculars and note what birds she saw. There used to be many birds, but no longer. Too much development, destruction of their habitat has driven them away.”

She looked both angry and resigned as she said this. “Well, no one person can stop what they call progress. That afternoon Andrea had been using the binoculars and she came running into the office to tell Teresa that a boat was sinking and a man and lady had fallen into the water. Teresa looked out and called nine-one-one, and then she called Walter Joiner. He had a motorboat and was out on the lake almost as soon as he hung up his phone. We, Teresa and I, went back out with Andrea to watch. Alice had the binoculars by then and I had to practically wrest them away from her. I saw them recover the young man and bring him ashore. An ambulance had come by then and the medics worked on him even as they were loading him on the stretcher and putting him inside. It was good that the ambulance came to this side because there is better access to the lakeshore here. I wouldn’t let the girls continue to watch after that. I knew the young woman could not survive that long in the water.”

“Alice was here? No one mentioned that before,” Charlie said, forgetting that the professor did not approve of him.

“She was. Her mother was my housekeeper. That happened to be her full day here. She brought Alice with her, ostensibly to help, but the girl was not interested in helping. She was about twelve or thirteen and what she was interested in was watching those boys at the fishing camp. She asked if she could use the binoculars that morning and I sent Andrea out to join her when she and her mother came, and she had the good sense to get help when the accident occurred. Lucky for him that she did,” the professor added with a shake of her head. “Possibly Alice did not realize the gravity of what was happening out there. In any event, Alice did not raise the alarm and there was no reason to mention her.”

“Is Alice your housekeeper now?” Constance asked.

“Yes. She is, what is the saying, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, not the brightest bulb on the tree? But she is reliable. Of course, I discount about ninety percent of what she says. These days she comes once a week in the morning. I imagine that she has told everyone in town about a hidden fortune in the house. And she tends to prattle about what she calls the Bainbridge curse. I believe she still holds a ridiculous grudge against Howard Bainbridge, despite the fact that the poor man is dead.”

“Why a grudge? What did he do to her?”

“Nothing to or for her. In the spring following that accident, he came to Stillwater with a fancy bicycle for Andrea. Teresa told me about it. He asked her permission first, then gave it to Andrea and stayed with her for more than an hour making sure she could ride it, keep her balance, steer and so on. Teresa kept her eye on them the whole time. Before he left again, he thanked Andrea and shook her hand. Teresa was quite touched by his generosity and the fact that he had made a special trip to thank the child. But Alice threw a hissy fit over it. She was not very nice to Andrea after that, I’m afraid. Girls that age can be very cruel, of course, and she was jealous.”

“How wide is the lake here?” Charlie asked. “I’m surprised she could see the Bainbridge guys over there.”

Professor Oglethorp pushed the little dog down and rose from her chair. “Come, I’ll show you,” she said. She opened a cabinet and withdrew binoculars, then motioned for them to follow her. She led them to the other side of the porch, which was not screened. There were several wicker chairs and a glider on that side. “It’s perhaps half a mile,” she said, handing the binoculars to Charlie. “See for yourself.”

He looked, adjusted the focus and looked again, and now he could see kids on a decorated raft, others on floats in the water, sunbathers, people at tables… He handed the binoculars to Constance and said, “You made your point, Professor.” Without the binoculars all that was discernible across the lake was a cleared area, some bright colors, and an indistinct building.

“I’ve spent more hours than you could count sitting on this porch watching birds,” she said. “Now what you see are half-naked people cavorting and rich people indulging themselves with food and drink.” She sounded more sad than outraged.

“Now you go to where the birds are, don’t you?” Constance said softly.

“Yes. As long as I can walk and see, and remember,” she said with another sharp glance at Charlie, “I’ll continue to pursue my interests.”

In the car a few minutes later Constance murmured, “I believe you were more or less taken to the woodshed, young man.”

“Lesson learned,” he said, “is don’t mess with the Bird Lady. Now, a choice. A bite to eat, or we’ll be ravenous by the time Alice provides food and end up eating with the Bainbridge crew.”

“I doubt the second option would be beneficial to one’s digestion.”

Charlie chuckled and patted her thigh.