No Stone Unturned (19 page)

After nearly blowing my brains out from the doorway, the police treated me quite nicely. Detective Sergeant Pat Morrissey arrived a few minutes after the patrolmen but didn’t talk to me until his men had briefed him, chalked the body, and dusted the apartment for prints. A tall, strapping specimen, he wore his wavy hair slicked back like Robert Mitchum. I found him terribly handsome. He must have thought the patrolmen had searched me, because he never did.

“My boys tell me you discovered the body,” he said, sitting next to me on the linen couch. He crossed his legs. “Mind telling me what you were doing in here?”

“Not at all, Detective,” I said, a little short of breath, feeling the letter’s sharp creases against my breast. “I write for the
New Holland Republic
, a local paper in upstate New York.” I showed him my press card.

“Let’s hear the punch line; I’m an impatient guy.”

“I’m investigating the murder of Virginia White’s roommate, Jordan Shaw. She’s from New Holland.”

“You’re telling me her roommate was killed? That’s a kick in the head. When?”

“Last Friday night. At first, it looked like one of those small-town murders that happen every so often: grisly, but run-of-the-mill, if you know what I mean.”

Morrissey asked what the New Holland investigation had turned up.

“Not much,” I said. “That’s why I came to Boston. I was hoping to get some information from her roommate.”

“Looks like you made the trip for nothing,” he said.

I smiled sheepishly. I couldn’t very well tell him I’d found the motel receipt in Jordan’s purse; he’d arrest me for tampering with evidence. I’d just have to trust him to find the receipt on his own.

“By the way,” he asked, “was that you who puked in the bathroom?”

I blushed. “I could sure use a drink.”

“Can’t help you there. Sorry you had to find her that way, but that’s why you call the police before breaking down a door. Nice job you did, though.”

“Thanks,” I said, and instantly felt like a fool. That probably wasn’t a compliment. “Actually, I thought I smelled gas. Otherwise, I would have called the police right away.”

Morrissey offered me a cigarette, then asked me when I was going back to New Holland.

“Maybe tomorrow. I still want to talk to some people here.”

“Give me a call when you get a room,” he said, standing up and offering me his card. “I’ll want to talk to you later. Now go get yourself a stick of gum.”

I rose from the couch and shook his hand. “I can go?” I asked, covering my mouth.

“It’s a free country.”

I drove to Medford and stopped at a drugstore on Broadway advertising fast film processing and dropped off one roll—the letters only. I would process the film of the body and datebook back in New Holland. For two dollars and a bit of flirting, the clerk put my film at the head of the line. My pictures would be ready in two hours. Back inside my car, I unfolded the letter I had stashed down my blouse.

Dear Jordan,                                                                        14 November 1960

There can be no more avoiding the difficult task. Since I believe you to be unwilling or unable to end our love affair, I must do it myself. I’ve explained to you time and again that our relationship depended on circumstances beyond our own wills and desires. I told you the day would come when we must part. Today is that day.

Your youthful zeal and guileless passion, which I so often urged you to restrain, ultimately destroyed the secrecy of our affair. My wife found one of the love notes you’d slipped into my jacket. She threatened to leave me and take my son with her. You must realise that we cannot go on, so I have no choice but to break off all contact with you.

My love for you will not fade, but as you know me to be a man of resolve, please accept my decision. I will never forget you; don’t forget me.

The letter was unsigned. Whoever had written it didn’t want to leave any footprints.

It was a little past two when I made the long climb up the steps from College Avenue to Miner Hall. The trees were bare, and a wet wind blew cold down my collar. I stepped into the lobby, grateful for the sweltering radiator heat, and checked the directory. The Romance Languages Department was on the second floor. Past a frosted pane with black lettering, a lone secretary was typing away at a large, wooden desk. In her late twenties, her brown hair tied back in a tight bun, she was so intent on her task that she didn’t notice me enter. I cleared my throat twice before she looked up from behind a pair of cat-eye glasses.

“Yes?” she asked with a bemused smile. She had one snaggled incisor on the left side, which she didn’t seem to mind.

“I was hoping you could help me,” I said.

“Who’s your professor, miss?”

I smiled, noticed the nameplate on her desk:
Muriel Rosen
. “Actually, I’m not a student.”

“Well, if you’re not a student, you must be here about Jordan Shaw.”

“You know about that?”

She shrugged. “The dean called our chairman yesterday to break the news. Who are you, then? You don’t look like a cop, that’s for sure.”

“No, I’m not a cop,” I said, wishing I could be. “I’m a reporter. Ellie Stone. I’m interested in her academics and social life.”

Muriel shook her head. “You’ve come to the wrong place. She never spent much time here. At least not for the past year or so.”

“I thought she studied French.”

“Yes, but she finished most of her courses in her freshman and sophomore years.”

“So you knew her?”

“Sure. Nice, smart, polite. She used to be a top student, active in department functions, mixers, and the like. Just kind of took a powder after her junior year.”

“Any theories on why she disappeared?” I asked.

Muriel sized me up. She was an odd girl, and not afraid to make you feel uncomfortable. She shrugged.

“Found something better to do, I guess. No law against that.”

“You said she was smart.”

“She won a prize her sophomore year for best essay in French. She had great promise but seemed to lose interest after that summer.”

“Which summer was that again?”

“Last year,” she said. “After her trip to India.”

“You keep track of these things, do you?” I asked.

“That’s my job. Jordan Shaw was a star student. We were disappointed when she lit out.”

“Did she have any friends here? Boyfriends? Suitors? Any professors interested in her?”

Muriel peered over her glasses at me. “So that’s your game? Digging for dirt? Well, there was plenty of interest all around, but our faculty is very proper. This isn’t France, after all. And you should be ashamed, Miss Stone.”

“I am. But that’s my job. What about the men in this photograph?” I asked, producing the snapshot Audrey Shaw had given me, the one of Jordan in a bazaar in India.

Muriel stood, smoothed her woolen skirt, and took the picture from my hand. She adjusted her glasses and took a quick look.

“Never seen them before in my life,” she said simply. “Nice snap of Jordan, though. My, she was pretty.”

I trudged back down the long sets of stairs to College Avenue, taking a seat on the bottom step, where I lit a cigarette. For a few minutes I just watched the students passing by, wondering what I should do next. The French Department had been a washout, and I still had a half hour before my film would be ready.

I reread the letter I’d swiped, trying to find clues between the lines, but there was little to go on. The fellow who had written it was married with a son. And he wrote well. Probably an academic. But if Muriel Rosen was to be believed, Jordan’s French professors weren’t the cheating kind. I folded the letter and looked up at the passersby. Most of them probably wrote well, too. This was a university town, after all.

Still, something about the letter nagged me. I was about to read it again when a young man in horn-rimmed glasses passed me and paused at the curb. He was waiting to cross College Avenue, not ten feet in front of me. I stood, stuffed the letter back into my purse, and approached him. He took notice and tried to edge away. I got a good look at him before he crossed the street. I’d seen him before, all right. Just to be sure, I fished the snapshot from my purse: two men with Jordan in a bazaar somewhere in India. I couldn’t believe the coincidence, but the waxy-skinned man in the photo had just dodged a speeding taxi in the middle of College Avenue and legged it up the stairs of the large building on the other side.

I crossed the street and followed him into the building, Anderson Hall, and up to the fifth floor and the offices of the School of Engineering. There I found four young men leaning against the office mailboxes, discussing linear circuits as I might have talked about the weather with Bobby Thompson in the photo lab. An older gentleman—surely a professor—was stooped over a desk, giving instructions to the secretary, a thick woman in her forties. A dark young man with an Indian accent was engaged in conversation with another professor. No one seemed to take notice of my arrival. Finally, the secretary looked up from her desk and asked if she could help me. Her nameplate read
Phyllis Gorman
.

“I’d like to see the chairman,” I said.

She looked at me queerly. “Are you a student?”

“No, I’m a reporter.” I showed her my card. “Is the chairman in?”

“May I ask what this is in reference to?”

“It’s in reference to a murder,” I said, and the chatter around me stopped. I could feel several sets of eyes on me, waiting. “Is he in?” I repeated.

“One moment, Miss Stone,” she said, handing me back my press card. She disappeared through a door behind her desk.

The four young men by the mailboxes resumed their discussion, but in low tones, and I knew they were talking about me. The foreign student and two professors just gaped at me, making no attempts to disguise their curiosity.

The secretary emerged from the door a few moments later, motioning for me to follow her. She ushered me into a dark office that smelled of chalk and old books. A stout, bald man in a brown suit rose from behind the desk—almost buried under a mountain of papers—at the rear of the office.

“Professor Benjamin; Miss Stone,” said the secretary by way of introduction, and she left us.

“Have a seat, miss,” he said. “You seem awfully young to be a reporter. Are you sure you don’t work for the school paper?” He chuckled; I ignored.

His smile faded, and he motioned to a dusty cane chair in front of his desk. I took the seat.

“Now, what’s all this about a murder?” he asked.

“Do you know a student named Jordan Shaw?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t know any student by that name. Who is this fellow?”

“It’s a young lady,” I corrected. “French major.”

“You realize that this is the School of Engineering?”

“Yes, but I understood that she was interested in graduate work in engineering.”

“That’s possible, I suppose,” he said. “I’m not aware of it, though. But tell me, what’s this all about?”