Murder 101 (4 page)

Four

I returned to my office and stopped by Dottie’s desk to look in my mailbox, which was in a row of boxes behind her. I saw that I had two phone messages from Max—one dated three days before—a late paper from a student with a Post-it note of apology on the front, and a business card from a publisher’s rep who wanted to sell me a new literature anthology for my intro class. Dottie swung around in her desk chair and looked at me pointedly, one of her tattooed-on eyebrows raised questioningly. I figured she wanted details of the funeral, which I would refuse to give. But she persisted in looking at me until I met her eye. She threw her head to the left as if she were having some kind of seizure. “Are you all right?” I asked. Normally, I like just about everyone I meet; Dottie is the one person with whom I have no patience. She’s nosy, lazy, and a crappy secretary. She tried to bond with me over my divorce, but I didn’t think Dottie could provide any solace during one of the worst stretches in my life. Right now, we had an uneasy alliance; she worked for everyone on the floor, including me. I had to be, at the very least, polite.

I followed her gaze and thrusting head. Detectives Wyatt and Crawford were standing outside my office. Wyatt was looking at the Modern Language bulletin board, seemingly mulling over a junior year abroad in La Rochelle; Crawford spotted me and gave me the same wan smile that he had greeted me with in the chapel. So I had been spotted. I could try to run away, but slingbacks wouldn’t provide any traction. Running away could also get me arrested. I strode over to the door of my office and greeted them with a grimly resigned, “Come on in.”

I put the key in the lock of my office door and opened it. Both refused to enter until I went in. I walked around to my desk and motioned to the two chairs. “Have a seat.”

Wyatt had on a starched white oxford shirt that had at least an eighteen-inch neck. His jacket was a black-and-white-herringbone, and his pants a black lightweight flannel. I still couldn’t tell what nationality he was—slightly Asian, slightly African-American, kind of white . . . it was hard to tell. He was a bit of a dandy for a large, imposing behemoth of a man, but he obviously made an effort with his appearance. Crawford, with his chiseled Irish-American face, looked like every guy whom I had gone to college with, had had a crush on, and been too intimidated to talk to. He was in khakis, a white oxford, and a blue blazer. Wyatt’s look said “I have a wife, and she shops at Brooks Brothers,” while Crawford’s screamed “I’m single and I get the Lands’ End catalog.”

Wyatt jumped right in with the questions. “Did you talk with Mrs. Miceli today?”

“Why, hello, Detective. So nice to see you,” I said, trying to affect a nonchalant sarcasm that I was incapable of pulling off. When he continued to stare back at me, eyes narrowed and beady, I decided to answer his question. “Gianna? No.” I neatened a stack of papers on my desk. “I didn’t think today was the day to do that. I sent a Mass card to their home.”

“Anybody else in the family?” he asked.

I shook my head. Boy, these papers were really disorganized. I continued neatening, giving the desk my undivided attention.

“Did you and Mrs. Miceli have a relationship in college?”

I thought back. “Relationship? We were friendly. We lived on the same dorm floor during my sophomore and her senior year so we saw each other until she left school. She was dating Peter at that time, I think.”

Even though he had closed the door on the way into my office, Crawford’s voice was barely above a whisper. “What is your relationship with your ex-husband?”

My face reddened. I hadn’t expected any questions about Ray, and I was taken off guard. “Amicable,” I managed to say through almost-clenched teeth.

Crawford waited to see if I had anything else to say. I did, but I decided to say it in the mirror to myself later that day, when I was home. Alone. It had to do with goatees, infidelity, and new cars.

“You must see each other a lot.” He looked directly at me, probably hoping to read something on my face.

“We team-teach a course together three times a week, so we see each other on those days. What does Ray have to do with anything?”

Wyatt changed the subject. “Do you have any other connections to the Miceli family besides your history with the mother?” He leaned forward in his chair and laced his fingers together between his knees.

“How did you know?” I asked, flippantly. “Yes. I’m a headlining exotic dancer at one of their clubs. Who happens to read Joyce while she’s giving lap dances.” I held Wyatt’s gaze.

Crawford looked down but couldn’t contain a slight smile. He did his old tie-pull time killer and looked around, focusing on a spot behind my head.

When Wyatt didn’t respond to my attempt at humor, I decided to give a straight response. “I knew Gianna eighteen years ago. I never saw her from the day she left school until the first day of school this year, when Kathy was moving in.”

“What about Mr. Miceli?” Crawford asked.

“I haven’t seen Peter during that entire time until today.”

“Did you see him when you were in school with Mrs. Miceli?”

“He had a souped-up Trans Am with twin exhausts. He was hard to miss.”

Wyatt leaned back in his chair and shifted his hands up to his stomach. “What do you have to do with this, Professor?” he said, using my title almost condescendingly. “Why your car, for instance?”

I could feel my armpits dampen. This dress was a goner. “It’s ‘doctor,’ and I don’t know what I have to do with this, Detective,” I said.

“Doctor.” He smirked a bit. “Face it. Twelve-year-old Volvos aren’t really a hot commodity for car thieves these days. Unless they’ve become vintage and I didn’t realize it. Are they vintage, Crawford?” he asked, looking over at Crawford.

Tie pull. “Not that I know of.”

I still had the remnants of a concussion, and my head was starting to pound. I felt my face go from red to ashen in the space of a few seconds, and I saw Crawford get the same panicky look he had on his face the second time I vomited on his shoes. I opened my bottom desk drawer and rooted around for a water bottle. It might have been my weakened, almost-hallucinogenic state, but I could have sworn I saw Wyatt instinctively put his hand on his gun. He relaxed when he saw the water bottle, and I was sure then that he had planned on killing me.

“Detectives, I’m going to have to do this another time. I’m not feeling well, and I have to go home,” I said, one aspect of that statement being true. I opened the bottle and drained it in two swigs. “Maybe I could come to the station house or precinct house or whatever it is you call it so we don’t have to do this here. Pick me up in your cruiser. I don’t have a car.”

“We don’t drive cruisers,” Crawford interjected. As if it mattered.

Wyatt persisted. “You didn’t answer my question.”

I looked at him.

“Why your car?” he repeated, as if I had forgotten the question in the last twenty seconds. “It doesn’t make sense.”

If he didn’t know, then I surely didn’t. I was exhausted with thinking about a possible answer. “I . . . don’t . . . know,” I said, as slowly and clearly as I could. I tried to stare Wyatt down. “Do I need a lawyer, Detective?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you?”

“I don’t think so, but the way these questions are going . . .”

Crawford took over. “How well do you know Vince Paccione?” he said in his same, whispered tone. He acted like we were still in the chapel and he was conducting the interrogation there.

“Not at all. I see him every now and again on campus, but that’s it. I don’t think we’ve exchanged three words all year.” I needed more water, but I was afraid if I opened my desk drawer again, Wyatt and his itchy trigger finger would shoot me dead.

“And how well did you know Kathy?” he asked.

“I already told you, remember? She was in my class. I knew her a bit better than most of my students but only because I had known her mother. I would ask how her mother was, and she would give me her mother’s regards. Nothing more.”

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 class?”

“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. “God, 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 shitty 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 classes 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 shit and goes on a killing rampage, dumping bodies in her shitty car.”

“Stop calling my car ‘shitty.’”

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 passion, 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 sophomores 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 sophomores in my creative writing class 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.”

Max looked at me and stuck her finger down her throat in mock disgust. I was a terrible liar, and she knew it; fortunately, Diane couldn’t see my face turn scarlet as I concocted this untruth.

“Wow, that’s really nice of you, Alison. I don’t think any of the professors here would be so considerate,” she said, making me feel even worse. “Yes, any sophomore who is a resident will be in that hall. Males are on one and two and females are on four, five, and six. A group of displaced juniors are on three.” She paused for a moment. “I can look up the names of the sophomores you need if you want to save some time.”

I hesitated a moment. I didn’t have any Joliet sophomores in my creative writing class, so I would have to come up with other names besides Vince’s on the spot. But getting his room number would save a lot of time in the long run. “Well,” I said, “I’ve got Vince Paccione . . .”

I heard her punch some keys on her computer keyboard. “One twelve.” She paused for a moment. “Didn’t he date that poor girl from St. Thomas who was murdered?”

I noisily rifled through some papers on my desk, ignoring her question. “And . . .” I called out to an imaginary student at my door. “Be right there!” I returned to Diane. “Oh, Diane, I’ve got a student. Gotta run. I’ll find the others when I get there. Thanks so much for your help!” She was still talking as I hung up the phone.

Max looked at me. “That was pathetic.”

“Thanks.” I stood up. “So what now?”

“Now, we break in.”

We left my office through the back door and went to Max’s car, which was parked in the lot at Regis Hall, right behind my building. I had no idea how we were going to get into Vince’s room, but I was determined to find something that would either implicate Vince or exonerate me. Max drove down the avenue, cutting through the posh neighborhood that separated the two campuses. She drove to the back of La Salle Hall and parked her car next to a Dumpster, illegally.

We got out of the car, and she hit the button on the key tag that chirped, flashed the lights, and locked the doors, all at the same time. Max stared at the back of the building. “One twelve, right?” she asked.

I nodded. We walked up and looked in the window closest to us. Each room had two sets of double-hung windows that faced the back parking lot. Max said that she had dated a guy in La Salle when we were in school and his room was the first one to the right—102. She counted down the windows until she pointed at what she thought was one twelve.

“How did you remember that?” I asked.

“I climbed in and out of that window a hundred times.” She stood with her hand on her hip. “Back in the day, they didn’t allow visitation after nine. Remember?”

I didn’t. I didn’t date a lot in college, and the guys that I did date always dropped me off before visitation ended. Rule-following nerds seek out other rule-following nerds; it’s one of life’s sure bets. Too bad I hadn’t stuck to that in choosing a husband.

“Go inside and wait for me.” I didn’t move fast enough for her. “Go!” she said, and pointed to the door.

I was getting cold feet. I stood rooted to the pavement until she gave me a push. I went in through the back door and looked down the hallway, first to the right and then to the left. I didn’t see anyone, so I made a left and tiptoed in my heels down the hallway. I stopped in front of 112 and waited. I didn’t know what Max had in mind, but I did as I was told.

The hallway had the smell of stale beer, Doritos, and feet. I stared at the cinder-block wall in front of me and prayed that nobody would come down the hallway. I was so paralyzed by fear that I didn’t even have the ability to produce sweat.

I heard Max’s entrance. She came through the back window, rolled over onto something, cursed like a sailor, and landed on the floor. A few seconds later, she opened the door. She studied the bulletin board to my left. “Hey, Rufus Wainright is playing here next Saturday,” she said. “Do you want to go?”

I looked around nervously, and hissed, “Focus!”

“Get in here,” she said, and grabbed me by the collar, dragging me into the room.

Vince’s room, like every room in this dorm, was a double. Beds were on opposite walls, with built-in shelves above them. At the top end of each bed was a desk pushed against each wall and to the side of each window. The screen of the left window was open: Max’s mode of entry. At the bottom of each bed was a closet. Max looked at me, and mouthed, “Vince?” as she pointed to the bed on the left. The bed was covered with a chenille bedspread and had two pillows.

I shrugged and went to the desk. A day planner lay open and I turned to the first page. Vince had scrawled his name in the front of it, along with his Staten Island address. I looked over at Max and nodded. I flipped to the day when my car was stolen, but Vince didn’t have any entries for that day or any of the days that followed. Unfortunately, it didn’t say anything like “kill Kathy, steal professor’s car,” or anything to that effect. Either Vince didn’t see the advantages of using a planner, or he led a very empty life. Or both.

Max picked up Vince’s mattress and looked underneath it. “See anything?” I asked.

She dropped the mattress and shook her head. She went into the closet, burrowing in like a pack rat. I could see her rear end and feet and nothing else. She tossed the closet in no time flat and came out. “Nothing.”

I looked at the articles on the desk: a picture of Vince’s family, his books, a bong, and his car keys. Not a thing that would link him to the murder or let me off the hook. I opened the top drawer gingerly and found a mess of papers, pens, pencils, and other detritus, but again, nothing incriminating.

I heard voices in the hall. I froze in place and looked at her, wild-eyed. She was by the closet, standing still and holding her breath. We stood looking at each other until the voices got softer and whoever it was moved down the hall.

“Let’s go!” I whispered as loudly as I could. I was definitely going to confession—or jail—when this escapade was over.

She looked at me and pointed at the window. I jumped up onto Vince’s desk and threw myself out the window and onto the pavement, rolling a few inches, ripping a huge hole in my panty hose, and scraping the hell out of my shin. Max, better prepared for the break-in than I, in black pants and black-cotton turtleneck, hoisted herself out and perched on the sill. She put both hands on either side of her feet, deftly jumped onto the pavement like a gymnast, not a hair out of place, and landed flat on her feet, high heels and all. She pulled the screen down, and we made a run for the car.