The Kingdom of Dog (17 page)

 

I met Tony Rinaldi on the way to my office. Tony patted his head absently, then closed my office door. “I'm close to making an arrest in Dagorian's murder,” he said, sitting down across from me. “I wanted to give you a heads up.”

“Terrific! Give me the scoop.”

“It's our friend Mr. Arumba. We've got him in the right place at the right time, and we know he and Dagorian argued, and that Dagorian was threatening to have him expelled.”

My heart sank. “I had a long talk with Ike yesterday, and I don't think he did it.”

“Convince me, then.”

I related my conversation with Ike Arumba to him. “I don't see how he could have gotten the knife. Does his fingerprint match the one on the knife?”

He frowned. “No. That's the one detail that doesn't fit.”

“The other detail that doesn't is that Ike had no motive to kill Joe until they had their confrontation in the garden.”

“He could have run inside to get the knife, and then come back and killed him.”

“I saw him come inside, and just a couple of minutes later he was on stage. He didn't have time to find a knife, go back outside, kill Joe, and then get into place with the rest of the singers. And what about Perpetua Kaufman? Did you hear from Rick Stemper if anyone tampered with the space heater?”

He sighed. “It looks like the flue was blocked with an accumulation of dust and lint. That caused a buildup of carbon monoxide, and it accumulated in Mrs. Kaufman's bedroom. She was particularly at risk because she was elderly and had some respiratory problems.”

“So she was murdered?”

“That's harder to prove. Rick's expert said the stuff blocking the flue was packed in pretty well, and it's hard for it to accumulate naturally like that. He tested the heater for fingerprints and the only ones on it were Mrs. Kaufman's. But the back of the unit had been wiped clean.”

“Don't you see?” I said. “If Perpetua Kaufman and Joe Dagorian were both murdered, then there has to be a connection between them. And Ike Arumba can't be that connection.”

“How do you know, Steve? How do you know he didn't have a beef with her in a class, or that Dagorian told her about his plans to have the kid expelled?”

I blew out a big breath. “But you and Rick could check those things out, right?”

“Yes. We could. And we will.”

He left, and I resisted the urge to call Rick Stemper and get his take on things. Tony was already cranky with me, and I didn't want him to think I was going around behind his back because I didn't trust him to do things right. Instead I walked down the hall to Sally's office. “Rinaldi wants to arrest Ike for Joe's murder,” I said. “But I don't think he did it, and I feel like I need to do something. Can I see Verona's application folder? I want to be sure the documentation says what Ike told me.”

Sally handed me a file from her desk. “I pulled this out of the archives for you. I looked through it myself, and it does seem like Ike was very careful to document all his correspondence with her.”

“You know, Steve, I want to believe Ike is innocent of everything but it's hard to do. I can even understand why he might have killed Joe. Joe could have ruined his entire academic career.”

“Well, it may be a motive for murder but it's not an excuse,” I said. “And we can't use it to put an innocent person away. Before I see that kid go to jail I'm going to be sure that he's guilty.”

When I got back to my office, there were papers scattered all over the floor, and Rochester was sitting right in the middle of them, a goofy grin on his face.

“Rochester!” I said. “Bad dog!”

I started collecting the papers and organizing them once more. Rochester refused to budge until I had picked up everything around him. Only then did he get up, stretch, and then walk over to his accustomed spot by the French doors.

That's when I saw what he had been lying on. It was Barbara Seville's admissions folder, including the photos she had submitted as demonstration of her artwork.

 

I read Verona Santander's file, and everything was as Ike had said it would be. So whose story was most believable?

I pushed that idea ahead and read the material on Barbara Seville, the blonde pixie from my tech writing class. In her essay, she mentioned her father and his business, Bar-Lyn Investments, and how she loved to spend time with him out on his construction sites.

Bar-Lyn? Wasn't that the company Joe and Perpetua were fighting against? I turned back to my computer and pulled up the Bar-Lyn website. There was no mention of who owned the company. But then I did a search for the site's registration, and found that Richard Seville was the contact for Bar-Lyn's domain.

I went back to the small photo album she had included with her portfolio. It was divided into sections. The first documented construction at one of her father's sites, a shopping center. I thought she had a good eye for composition, but I wasn't any kind of judge. The second section were portraits—young people who were probably her friends or family members, then a series of elderly people from a nursing or retirement home.

The final section were nature shots. She favored close-ups of algae, lichen, flowers, leaves, and water flowing over stone.

But why had Joe kept this portfolio at home, when it should have been filed at Eastern? The Bucks County Nature Conservancy had been fighting against her father's plans for the property along Tohickon Creek. Was there some connection to her essay, or her portfolio?

Before I could think about it too much I looked up Lili's office phone number on the Eastern website and dialed. “Fine Arts, Dr. Weinstock,” she answered.

“Lili? It's Steve Berman. I was wondering if I could show you some photographs from a student's admission portfolio and get your opinion.”

“I could use a break,” she said. “I've been writing grant requests for an exhibition I want to mount in the fall.”

“Maybe I can help you with that.”

“Sounds like a good tradeoff. I need to stretch my legs—where's your office?”

I told her, and a few minutes later she was knocking lightly on the frame of my office door.

Usually Rochester is quick to jump up and interrogate any visitor, but he remained slouched in the corner. “Come on in,” I said.

“That must be your dog. What's his name—Rickenbacker? Rockefeller?”

“Rochester. He's very friendly. Come on in.”

She looked toward him, but he pointedly ignored her, putting his paw over his head, in his typical “If I can't see you, you're not there,” move.

“These are the photos I wanted to show you,” I said, as she came over to my desk. She pulled the visitor's chair next to mine and sat down.

She didn't say anything for a couple of minutes. I sat there, inhaling the light scent of her perfume, noticing the butterfly pins that kept her masses of hair in check.

“She has a good idea for composition,” Lili said at last. “And there's real empathy in her portraits, particularly of the elderly. The nature photos are a bit arty for my taste, but she clearly understands light and shadow and shutter speed.”

She leaned back. “Was that what you wanted to know?”

“I don't know. ” I explained the situation, from Joe's opposition to her father's company to the fact that he'd kept this material at his home instead of in the admissions archive.

“Let me see the booklet again. ” She paged back to the nature photos. “Have you looked into these captions?”

Under each photo was what I assumed was the Latin name of the algae, flower, grass or fern. “Hadn't thought of it. But there's always Google.”

With Lili spelling, I began researching the items Barbara Seville had photographed. When we came to
Cymophyllus fraserianus
,
I discovered that it was a
showy perennial called the Common Shooting Star. It grew no taller than half a meter, with white, lavender or lilac flowers that pointed upwards and backwards
. It was only found in Somerset County, in the western part of the state.

“That's pretty far away from here,” Lili said.

Lili brought out a magnifying glass from her shoulder bag. The photos Barbara had taken of it didn't quite match the ones we found on line. Lili began pointing out very tiny differences in the shape of leaves. “Could she have digitally altered the pictures?” I asked.

“Doubtful,” she said. “You'd have to be a very skilled artist to make everything match so carefully, and I haven't seen evidence of that level of artistry anywhere else in the portfolio. And why would she go to that much trouble?”

“If this plant was supposed to be in the western part of the state, and she found some here in Bucks County, would that make it an endangered species, do you think?”

“I'm in Fine Arts, not Natural Sciences,” she said. “But it does tie into the protests you said Joe Dagorian was making.”

“And Perpetua Kaufman,” I said. “Both of them were working to stop Seville's construction plans. And both of them are dead.”

Lili pushed her chair back. “This is the point when I go back to my boring grant applications.”

“Thanks, Lili. This was really helpful. ” We both stood up at the same time, and for a brief moment our faces were close enough for a kiss. But I hesitated, and you know what they say about those who hesitate. All is lost.

But I screwed up my courage before she walked out the door and said, “Maybe I could come over sometime and help you with those grant applications. Or maybe we could… have dinner again. Friday night?”

“That would be great,” she said. “We'll talk Friday and make plans. ” On her way out the door she stopped next to Rochester and reached down to scratch behind his ears. “See you later, sweet boy.”

I kind of hoped she was talking to me, but probably not. Rochester did not respond, and she walked out the door.

I followed her to the door and saw her walk down the hall and out the front door of Fields Hall. Then I went over and sat down next to Rochester. “What do you think, boy? You like her?”

He scrambled to his feet and put his head in my lap. “Is that a yes? She's nice, isn't she? Why weren't you friendlier to her?”

He buried his nose in my crotch. “You are such a goof. Are you jealous?” I used the baby-voice I'd never been able to use with a human offspring. “Is the puppy jealous?”

I realized that I was sitting in my office talking baby-talk to a dog—not exactly the most professional behavior for a director of public relations and publicity. I scratched behind Rochester's ears once more, then returned to my desk. I thought it would be a good idea to take the photos from Barbara's application over to the biology department, as Lili had suggested, and see if a professor there could recognize anything.

The college website told me that Dr. Searcy was the senior professor who specialized in plant biology, and he had a class in Green Hall, the science building, which finished at three o'clock. Green Hall was probably the oldest classroom building on campus and the least “green” of any of our buildings. One of the main targets of the capital campaign was a new building for the physical sciences, with up-to-date computer-equipped labs.

Dr. Searcy was an older guy in a white lab coat, totally bald, standing at the front of the class talking to a student. I waited until he was finished, then walked up to him as he was packing his briefcase and introduced myself. “I was hoping you could take a look at some pictures I have,” I said. “Help me figure out what kind of plants I'm looking at.”

“You have them with you?”

I opened the booklet Barbara had created and handed it to him. “Pretty common plants,” he said, flipping the pages. “You say these were taken here in Bucks County?”

“Up along the Tohickon Creek, I believe.”

He nodded and hummed to himself. Then he stopped. “This one isn't local,” he said, pointing to the Common Shooting Star.”

“That's what I was wondering about. Could it be?”

He looked more closely at the photo. “The other plants in the background are all native to this area. There isn't any reason why it wouldn't be there—this is just far from its habitat.”

“Somerset County,” I said. “South of Pittsburgh, where Pennsylvania meets Maryland and West Virginia.”

“Why exactly are you interested in these photos?” he asked, handing the booklet back to me.

“If this Common Shooting Star isn't normally found here in Bucks County, and some of them were found here, would that make them endangered?”

“You'd better come up to my office.” He picked up his briefcase and I followed him into the dark, gloomy corridor, and up a set of broad marble stairs, worn down by a hundred years of students trudging to class and to faculty offices.

Dr. Searcy's office was stuffed to the gills with biology books, photos of plants, preserved samples in glass cases, and a host of other junk that made it difficult to move around inside. He navigated his way between a teetering pile of books in cardboard mailers and a life-sized stuffed bird. “Ruffed grouse?” I asked.

“You know your birds?”

“I grew up in Stewart's Crossing. Just down the river. We had to memorize all the state stuff in second grade—ruffed grouse, whitetail deer, brook trout, mountain laurel. Can't say that knowledge has come in handy until now.”

He sat down at his computer and pulled up a website of endangered plants in the state of Pennsylvania. “Yes, there it is,” he said. “Common Shooting Star. Endangered, with a limited habitat in Somerset County.” He looked up at me. “Are you sure this photo was taken around here?”

“Not a hundred percent. But if it was, would it be a big deal?”

“To a biologist, certainly. To an environmentalist as well. ” He sighed. “You know who would have been a good person to talk to? Joe Dagorian, in the admissions office. He was a very ardent amateur naturalist.”

I shivered. “I found this booklet at his home. And I believe he was attempting to stop development in the area where the photos were taken.”

“Then I believe you need to speak to the police, young man,” he said, in what I was sure was his best teacher voice.

“I believe that too, sir,” I said.