The Kingdom of Dog (14 page)

 

I felt as nervous as a teenager as I walked down West 45
^th
Street that evening. The sidewalk bustled with pedestrians in winter coats, prosperous-looking couples, slouching teenagers, and working people heading homeward. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a date.

I met Mary at a party in New York, and we'd had the same kind of initial connection I had with Lili. We spent hours talking to each other that night and kept on seeing each other until we moved in together. I didn't consider that meeting a date—and I couldn't conjure up a memory of any girl before her.

A stiff wind swept down the street and I shivered. Then I saw Lili approaching, wearing the same oversized wool trench coat she'd been wearing in the TKTS line, and I couldn't help grinning like an idiot.

We checked our coats just inside the restaurant door. Lili was wearing a tight-waisted red blouse that matched her eyeglasses, and a swirling, knee-length skirt in a floral print. I had ditched my suit, but all I'd brought with me beyond it was a pair of LL Bean jeans and a light blue long-sleeve polo shirt. I felt underdressed.

“You look lovely,” I said, holding the chair for her. “I'm afraid I didn't bring any date clothes with me.”

“When you've traveled as much as I have you tend to be prepared for any eventuality,” she said. “Even a date with a handsome man.”

Something warm bubbled up from the bottom of my stomach. “I'd like a kir,” please,” she told the waiter.

“Make it two,” I said. “I used to work for a boss years ago who insisted that you should order an aperitif before a fine meal rather than dulling your palate with scotch or whiskey.”

“Is this going to be a fine meal?”

“I don't see how it couldn't be, with you across the table from me.”

“You're smooth, Steve,” she said.

The waiter brought our cocktails and we toasted each other, then looked down at the menu. “Tortellini alla panna,” I said, pointing. “My favorite.”

“No!” she said. “I always order tortellini. The first time I ever had it was at this little restaurant along the Brenta river, between Padua and Venice. The people I was with insisted I order the tortellini in brodo, and I just fell in love.”

“My story isn't so romantic,” I said. “I used to live in the city and my ex-wife and I went to a lot of Italian restaurants. She hated to order the same thing over and over again and she made me try a lot of different dishes.”

“Ex-wife?” she asked.

I nodded. “Married for twelve years. Divorced two years ago. How about you?”

“Married an Italian I met on my junior year abroad,” she said. “I dropped out of college after that term and moved to Milan with him. I got a job as an assistant to a fashion photographer and fell in love with photography. Two years later I was divorced, back in college and finishing my BFA.”

The waiter returned with a platter of foccacia, a bottle of olive oil, and a black pepper grinder. We both ordered the tortellini and dipped crusts of bread into the peppered oil.

“Wow, this is great,” I said.

“I learned a lot about Italian food during those two years,” she said. “The chef here, Donatello Nobatti, is amazing, and whenever I come to New York I eat here.”

“So,” I said. “BFA?”

She nodded. “Then an MFA in photography. Worked as a photographer myself, married an editor for a fashion magazine. He had a great eye for models—unfortunately, more than his eye got involved. Divorced him, then started teaching. Got a couple of one-year visiting artist gigs, then this opportunity opened up and I came to Leighville.”

She dipped another piece of bread in the oil. “How about you?”

“Grew up in Stewart's Crossing, just down the river from Leighville. Went to Eastern. MA in English from Columbia, met my ex, got married, moved with her to Silicon Valley so she could immerse herself in her career.”

“Hence the divorce,” Lili said.

It would have been easy to agree and move the conversation on. But I had the feeling Lili was the kind of woman who liked cards on the table.

“That was certainly part of it. I was working as a technical writer for a computer company, and I got into hacking. Mary had a miscarriage, and things were tough between us. She went on a shopping spree that put us in the hole for a year. Then she got pregnant again and we were both so happy.”

I paused to sip my kir. “She lost that baby, too, and I was scared she'd run up our credit cards again, so I hacked the credit bureaus and flagged her cards.”

“You can do that?”

“I could. And I did. And I got caught, and I went to prison. While I was serving my time, my father died, and Mary divorced me. When I came out I moved back to Stewart's Crossing to lick my wounds and start over again.”

I smiled. “And that's my story. Tell me about the pictures you have in the museum exhibit. What do you photograph?”

We talked about photography, and New York, and a bunch of other things I couldn't remember even an hour later. She had very kissable lips, highlighted with red lipstick, and in between thinking about how beautiful she was and how intriguing, I wondered what it would be like to kiss her.

Somehow we finished dinner and walked to the theater, where we sat close together and mouthed the words to the songs along with the cast. By the end of the show I was intoxicated with romance and passion and music. We began filing out of the theater and got stuck in a bottleneck a few feet from the single exit door. I could no longer resist—I turned and kissed Lili on the lips, very lightly and quickly.

I'd forgotten what lipstick tasted like. It had been a long time since I'd kissed anyone on the lips, but the feelings came spiraling back.

When I backed away I looked at Lili's eyes. They sparkled in the theater's lights. She took my hand in hers and squeezed, and we shuffled forward, holding hands.

“A nightcap?” I asked when we reached the street.

“I wish I could,” she said. “But I have a command performance tomorrow morning at the Brooklyn Museum, and I need to get to bed, and then do some preparation in the morning.”

I nodded. “I'd like to see you again in Leighville.”

“Count on it. ” She leaned forward, and we kissed again, up against the wall of the theater, out of the way of the hurrying crowds. Her lips were cold against mine, but they warmed up. I resisted the urge to pull her too close, just savoring the way the chilly air heightened the floral smell of her perfume, the way strands of her hair brushed against my face.

Then she backed away. “I see a cab,” she said. “Ciao, cara!” She stepped toward the street and flagged down the cab. As she stepped into it, she blew me a kiss, and I mimed catching it in my hand and pressing my fingers to my lips. ” My last vision was of her laughing as the cab drove away.

 

 

I left my suitcase with the valet at the hotel and walked up to H & H Bagels, where I bought a dozen in assorted varieties to take back to Stewart's Crossing with me. I had a salt bagel with a shmear and a Doctor Brown's black cherry soda, then retrieved my suitcase and took the train back to Trenton.

Rochester was romping in Rick's yard with Rascal when I pulled up. As soon as he saw the BMW he lit across the yard, slamming into the fence. “Hold on, hold on,” I said, scrambling out of the car. I reached over the fence to pet his head as Rick came out of the front door.

“You sure you can't leave him here for a couple of days?” he asked. “Rascal hasn't chewed anything in the house since Rochester got here.”

“Not a chance. This boy is coming home with me. ” Rochester woofed and shook his head.

Driving back home, with Rochester on the seat next to me, I thought about Liliana Weinstock. Should I call her? Text her? Post something on her Facebook page that said, “Thanks for the great kiss?”

I felt like a teenager again, and I wasn't sure that was a good thing, at forty-three. I settled for sending her an email, from my college address to hers, saying that it was great to run into her in New York, and I hoped we'd get together again now that we were both back in Bucks County.

I spent some of the afternoon at the kitchen table, writing up my meetings, sending email thank yous and making plans to follow up with the reporters. Rochester sat at his customary post on the stair landing, two paws hanging over the tread, supervising. I couldn't help checking my email every hour or so, nervous about what kind of response I might get from Lili.

I knew she had that presentation to give at the Brooklyn Museum, and that she might not even return to Bucks County until late in the day. And there was no guarantee she'd even check her college email until the next day.

I admit to checking her faculty web page, which had a very flattering picture of her that reminded me of our kiss. And I might even have done some Googling, finding records of her past exhibitions and seeing some very beautiful photos she had taken. All in the name of research, of course. But by the time I turned off the computer and took Rochester for his before-bed walk, I had still received no response from her.

Monday morning, I woke before Rochester. He lying next to my bed, snoring lightly and probably dreaming about his wild weekend with Rick and Rascal. It gave me no small pleasure to nudge him awake. He yawned, but stayed flat on the floor. “Huh, don't like it when the shoe's on the other paw, do you?” I said. I toed him in the side again. “Come on, get up, you lazy lump.”

Wrong move. He sprung up and began dancing around me in circles. I guess Rascal didn't wear him out enough. Outside, he was all business, striding forward on all four legs, barely stopping to sniff before peeing, pooping his guts out, then tugging me back home.

Security had been tightened on the campus as a result of all the newspaper articles. The guards at the front gate were taking their jobs more seriously, too, and the back and side gates into the campus were now either closed or manned by guards. I had to show my ID to get into the parking lot, and again at the front door of Fields Hall.

Once in my office, I wrote a report on my trip, and a series of thank-you notes to the people I had met. Dezhanne came in for a while to answer the phone and I read through the Sunday papers. The Leighville
Gazette
featured an in-depth look at security problems at Eastern College, which highlighted the fact that a ruthless killer was still on the loose.

Babson called at ten to rant about the poor press we were getting. I almost told him it wasn't my fault Joe got killed, or that the police couldn't seem to latch onto the guy who did it. But I knew that it was a touchy subject with him so I held back.

Four newspapers and the AP wire called to see if there had been any new developments in the case, and I told them no. Babson declined an opportunity to be interviewed on the campus radio station about security problems, and a TV station in Philadelphia called to say they might be interested in sending a camera crew up, if there were any new developments in the case. I said I would let them know.

I left Rochester snoozing in my office and met Sally for lunch at the Cafette, an on-campus sandwich shop in an old carriage house behind Fields Hall. It was a worn, homey-looking place, with old wooden picnic tables and benches. We snared one of the few single tables, off in the corner next to the remains of a brick chimney. Sally was eager to hear about my meeting with Verona Santander.

“She seemed like a real nice, well-adjusted girl,” I said. “Not the kind who'd make up stories or hold a grudge. Your basic college freshman.”

“What did she say about Ike?”

“Well, it's kind of hard to believe, but like I say, she doesn't seem to have much reason to lie.”

I told Sally Verona's story, and afterwards she sat back in her seat and said, “Shit. What an awful thing to do. And when he seemed like such a good kid.”

“Even good kids have their faults,” I said. “His is just a little worse than most.”

“Not just a little. A lot. I mean, that's a serious breach of ethics. To promise a girl admission if she sleeps with you. ” She shook her head.

“She never said he promised.”

“Even so, just to make the proposition is a serious breach,” Sally said. “Why the hell did this have to happen now? When I'm so swamped and I have a million other problems?”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I don't know. Ike is graduating this semester and I don't think it's fair to expel him when we have so little evidence. It happened a year ago, no one was hurt, and it's going to be Ike's word against this girl's. I'm going to have to let him go. I'll just make up an excuse. I can't take the risk that he'll compromise the office again.”

“You aren't going to confront him with Verona's story?”

“He'll probably deny it and we'll have a scene. No, I'll just tell him there was an indication in Joe's files that he was to be let go, and I have to go along with Joe's plans, even though I don't understand them.”

I did some more work back at the office, and after making sure Dezhanne had showed up to man the phones while I was gone, I went to teach the tech writing class. We talked some more about research, and how to structure a research paper. Then I set them loose to look for information on their research topics.

As I walked around the room, I noticed that once again Lou Segusi seemed to be busy working on a paper for some other class. I wondered how many papers the kid had to write in one term.

“I tried to contact that group,” he said, popping up an internet browser that hid the document he was working on. “See? The Bucks County Nature Conservancy. But both the phone numbers have been disconnected.”

He pointed at the bottom of the screen. “That first number, that's Sister Perpetua's. I cross-referenced it with the Yahoo people search.”

I recognized the Stewart's Crossing exchange. “And the other?”

“Belongs to some guy named Joe. It's shut off, too. ” He quickly copied the number, then pasted it into the search box. “Dagorian, Joseph R. ” came up as the result.

“Joe Dagorian?” I asked.

“Yeah, that's the guy. You know him?”

“I did. He was in charge of admissions here. He was murdered a couple of weeks ago.”

“No!” La'Rose said. “I read about that. Mr. Dagorian was really nice. He recruited me to come to Eastern.”

I moved on down the line of computers, and Lou went back to whatever he was working on. It was a pretty big coincidence that both Joe and Perpetua had worked for the Nature Conservancy, and both were dead.

But was it? Both of them worked at Eastern, too. Joe had been around the college forever; he might have known Perpetua, and known she was interested in ecological subjects. And besides, Perpetua's death was an accident, wasn't it?

After class, I walked outside with Lou Segusi and Barbara Seville. As we got outside she suddenly took off, runing up to a big black Lincoln Town Car. A tall man in a camel-hair coat got out and she kissed his cheek. I recognized him as her father. The two of them stood there talking as Bob Moran approached, giving Seville a big clap on the back like old friends.

Did they work together, I wondered, as I walked back to my office. Did Barbara, who was a sophomore, know Marty Moran, who was two years younger and trying to get into Eastern? I realized I'd never asked Tony Rinaldi what he'd learned about Bob Moran. I made a mental note to call him when I returned to my office, but I didn't have to bother, because he was there waiting for me.

Rochester was still asleep in the corner. “Dog's not doing a very good job of security,” Tony said.

“He had a big weekend. How's the investigation going?”

“Not so good. There was nothing unusual in Dagorian's phone records. His email, though, that's another story.”

“How so?”

“Tell me about this guy Mike MacCormac. He seems to have exchanged a lot of very angry emails with Dagorian.”

“Mike? He's my boss. Ex-football player, very aggressive, very determined. He's the guy with the main responsibility for this big fund-raising campaign we're running. He and Joe used to argue all the time.”

I looked at him. “Did Mike threaten him?”

Rinaldi shook his head. “No. Everything was about the college, and this fund-raising campaign. Nothing personal, nothing like a threat. ” He sighed. “If this case gets solved, it's going to be through police work. You go on your hunches and you go with the clues, and sometimes you just have to start all over again. Maybe you get a lucky break and you solve a case the first time out, but that's the exception, not the rule.”

“You don't get very many homicides here in Leighville.”

“No, but we do get drug cases up on the campus, and burglaries and muggings occasionally. You use the same skills to try and solve homicides, but the stakes are higher.”

“What ever happened with Bob Moran?” I asked. “You know that after Joe died, his son was offered admission here.”

“I'm treading lightly,” Tony said. “He's a big cheese in town, you know. Friends with the mayor and the chief of police. I met with him again this morning—told him I wanted to get some background on who was where the night Dagorian was murdered.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He didn't confess, if that's what you're asking. But I checked, and his prints are in the FBI's IAFIS database, because he was in the Army in the first Iraq war.”

“Do they match the print you got from the knife?”

“Nope.”

“But that print could have been from someone else, you know,” I said. “Maybe Moran picked up a knife that another guest had used, and made sure to wipe his own prints off, or use gloves.”

“You really read too many mysteries,” Tony said.

“What was his specialty in the military?” I asked. “Was he trained in how to subdue sentries? Because I read somewhere that the Army trains you to go up behind a sentry and slit his throat, to keep him from making any noise. And that's what happened to Joe, wasn't it? His throat was slit from behind?”

“I don't have access to that kind of information myself,” Tony said. “And I have no cause to go searching for it, when his fingerprint doesn't match the one on the knife.”

“And it doesn't match anyone in the AIFIS database?”

He shook his head.

“Have you spoken to Ike Arumba?” I asked. “The tall, skinny kid from The Rising Sons?”

He opened his notebook and paged through it. “Nope. Too busy trying to find something on Moran, and going through Dagorian's records.”

“Well, maybe you should.” I told him about my visit to Verona Santander, and the letter we had found in Joe's file indicating he was going to fire Ike.

“How serious is something like that up here?” he asked. “It's not like the girl didn't consent, though of course there was some implied pressure. But boys have been diddling girls since Adam and Eve.”

“We have a strict policy against sexual harassment,” I said. “There was a situation a couple of years ago where a girl said she was forced to have sex with a couple of boys at a frat party. The college really cracked down after that.”

“I remember that case. I wasn't the investigator, but I know it was hell to get details out of anyone up here.”

“I hate to get him into trouble; he seems like a pretty good kid. But you should talk to him.”

“Can I get a copy of the letter?”

I buzzed Sally and asked her. “I guess so,” she said. “I'll make a copy.”

“There's one more thing,” I said to Tony, after I hung up the phone. “Does the name Perpetua Kaufman mean anything to you?”

“Sounds like a Jewish saint.”

“You're not far off the mark. She was a former nun who taught here at Eastern. She died over winter break. Somebody told me it was a faulty space heater.”

“And?”

“And she knew Joe Dagorian. She and Joe were the two leaders of a local ecological organization. It just struck me as strange that both of them would die so close to each other.”

“People die every day,” he said. “She was an elderly woman, this ex-nun?”

“Yeah.”

“We get lots of deaths of elderly people in the winter. Some of them from exposure, some from falls, some, like this lady, from bad space heaters, or carbon monoxide. But you're right, it is a funky kind of coincidence. Spell the name.”

I did. “But she lived in Stewart's Crossing. You ought to call Rick Stemper and see what he knows about it.”

“I do know how to interface with other law enforcement agencies,” Tony said drily. He stood up. “I appreciate your time, and the lead on the kid and the ex-nun. I'll do some checking up on both of them. You never know what I'll find. They say police work is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”