The Kingdom of Dog (19 page)

I felt like Scheherazade in the
Tales of the Arabian Nights
, talking to save my own life. I wondered how to divert Mike's attention, to stall him until someone else showed up. “Joe was pretty set in his ways. You must have argued with him a lot.”

“I'll be frank with you Steve, because I know it'll go no further. This is the slowest time for a campaign, after the nucleus fund has been collected and the first surge of pledges have been paid in. Everybody gives at the beginning, and then at the end we make a big pitch to get over the top, but during the middle it's slow. I can't afford to distract my attention or my staff's attention. That's the only way we'll ever succeed.”

“And when Eastern succeeds, you'll be the hero,” I said.

“I'll be hot when this campaign is over, Steve. I'll be the best fund-raiser around if I can carry this campaign off. Imagine, five hundred million dollars for a dinky little college like Eastern. I can go anywhere, do anything I want when this is over. I'll be able to write my own ticket. I'm not going to let anybody stand in my way. And that means I need you to back off talking to the police. Let this thing die down of its own accord.”

Let it die down because you don't want to get caught
, I thought. “I can't do that,” I said.

“I was afraid you wouldn't listen to reason,” Mike said. “You don't want me to take the next step.”

Mike's right hand pulled quickly out of the pocket of his sports jacket, and I saw the glint of metal. I jumped back, banging against the door frame. I thought my heart was going to beat its way out of my chest.

Then I realized Mike was holding a cell phone. “You don't want me to call President Babson and have him tell you to back off.”

He looked at me strangely. He must have seen the fear in my face. “What, did you think I was going to knife you or something?”

I nodded.

“Jesus. ” He sat back down in his chair. “Are you telling me you think I killed Joe?”

I was having trouble catching my breath, but I managed to say, “You had a motive.”

“Steve. You've been watching too many cop shows on TV. Sure, Joe was stonewalling me at every opportunity. But I'm a lot smarter than he ever was. I anticipated everything he tried to do and blocked him. He could have stayed alive for years and it wouldn't have bothered my plans one bit.”

His desk phone began to ring. “And there's another thing. I think you have to be a little off balance to go so far as to kill someone. And I know exactly where I'm putting every footstep I take.”

He picked up his phone and I took that opportunity to duck out of his office.

 

When I got back to my office Rochester was all over me. It was like he smelled the leftover fear on me. I spent a couple of minutes just petting him and thinking. I still wasn't sure Mike MacCormac hadn't killed Joe—but I recognized that I didn't have any evidence against him and I didn't want to look like a fool pushing Rinaldi. And if the same person had killed Perpetua Kaufman, then I didn't know how Mike could have a motive against her.

I realized that I still hadn't told Tony about the photos from Barbara Seville's portfolio. I dialed the Leighville police station and sat on hold for a minute while he came to the phone.

“If you're calling with more support for Ike Arumba, you can give it up,” he said. “I checked the timetable and there's no way he could have killed Dagorian and still made it up to the stage to sing.”

“That's good to hear,” I said. “But I was calling about something else. Maybe you'll think this is weird but it kind of fits. ” I told him about finding Barbara's photographs at Joe's house, and the connection between the Bucks County Nature Conservancy and Bar-Lyn Investments. “Both Joe and Perpetua were involved in trying to stop Bar-Lyn from building.”

I could hear him taking notes. “I'll look into it,” he said.

I hung up feeling a little better, though I still didn't feel like working. I forced myself to go back to the personality profiles for Mike, because he had asked for them twice by then, and I didn't want to be empty-handed when he asked again.

By three o'clock I was dead bored, flipping through my email searching for a distraction. Babson had sent a message detailing revisions to the college budget. It was written in bureaucratic jargon, the kind of language I was seeking to eliminate in representing the college, but it boiled down to more money for Mike's fundraising efforts and less in the pot for the rest of us. I reflected for a couple of minutes about how Mike's single-mindedness seemed to be working, and I was depressed to realize that I could never be that way.

“Knock, knock,” Lili said from my doorway. Rochester looked up at her, then put his head back down.

“Hey, come on in.” I motioned her to the chair next to my desk.

She was dressed in jeans and a thick Icelandic sweater, with a colorful wool scarf, and her curly hair was pulled back from her face. She had a messenger bag slung sideways around her neck. “I'm bored,” she said. “I need to get away. I was hoping I could convince you to play hooky with me. We could drive out and see that property where the pictures were taken.”

“An inspired idea. I need to get out of here, too.”

From the Bucks County Nature Conservancy site, and a mapping program, I pulled up directions to the property Bar-Lyn Investments owned.

I stood up. “Come on, Rochester, let's go for a walk. ” I stretched his expandable leash a couple of times, expecting him to jump up and go in to his deranged kangaroo routine, but instead he stayed in place.

“He's usually much friendlier.” I pulled on my coat, scarf, and hat, and reached down to hook up Rochester's leash. He turned away from me, trying to hide his head.

“No nonsense, dog.” I reached around his downy neck and hooked the leash, but he decided to play dead. I tugged on the leash, to no avail. “I'll drag you out of here if I have to.”

Lili was giggling. “Here, let me try.” She held her hand out and I handed her the leash. Immediately, Rochester leapt up, then tackled her.

“Rochester!” I said.

“It's all right,” she said, reaching down to scratch behind his ears. “Are you a good boy?”

“No,” I said, as he woofed and nodded his head.

She let him have his head as we walked out of Fields Hall. “Want to take my car?” I asked. “You can navigate.”

I opened the back door of the BMW and Rochester looked at me like I was crazy. “He usually sits up front with me,” I said. I tugged the leash again, and he jumped up onto the back seat.

We drove up along the River Road to Point Pleasant, then turned inland on Tohickon Hill Road, taking a couple of turns on small lanes that skirted woods and farmland. “That must be it,” Lili said, pointing ahead, to where a large sign proclaimed that it was the future site of Tohickon Creek Adult Living, a project of Bar-Lyn Development.

I parked at a wide space in the road and Lili and I climbed out. I opened the back door and Rochester scrambled out, immediately sniffing a bush and peeing. Lili pulled a very expensive-looking camera from her messenger bag and hung it around her neck.

The photos Barbara had taken were next to a piece of water, so we walked the property looking for the creek or one of its tributaries. It was chilly but bracing, not really freezing, and there was still enough sun to warm the open spaces. While Rochester romped and sniffed, Lili and I walked along the water, looking for the Common Shooting Star.

“It's too early for it to be blossoming, but we should be able to recognize it by its foliage,” she said. She stopped periodically to take pictures—a couple of me, a couple of Rochester, some of the landscape.

“I needed this,” she said. “I was going stir crazy in my office.”

“I'm glad you came by. I've been stewing about Joe's murder too much. ” I told her about my confrontation with Mike MacCormac.

“You're not too bright, are you?” she asked, stepping up close to me. “You shouldn't go around confronting people you think are murderers.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Your dog loves you. You wouldn't want him to be all alone, would you?”

She was so close then. The chill seemed to highlight the scent of her floral perfume, and I leaned forward and kissed her again.

“Mm,” she said. She kissed me back. “And see, if someone killed you, you'd miss this, too.”

I wrapped my arms around her heavy sweater and pulled her close. We kissed again, standing in the clearing, and then Rochester started barking.

I pulled away from Lili long enough to say, “Rochester! Quiet!”

He didn't shut up, and she stepped back. “Maybe he found something.”

I cursed the damned dog under my breath as I followed Lili to where Rochester was standing, by the bank of the creek, barking at something.

“It's probably a squirrel or something,” I said.

He stopped barking as we approached, looking from me to Lili and back.

“I think he found the plant,” she said. “Look, don't the leaves match?” She chucked Rochester under the neck, and he stretched his head back to give her easier access.

I held the photo up and we compared it to the plant. There were no flowers, but the stem and leaves seemed to match. Lili took a bunch of pictures.

We were just finishing when a man's voice boomed out behind us. “This is private property, and you're trespassing.”

We looked up at a tall, bald man in a camel-hair coat. Rochester began barking at him.

“Rochester. Shh,” I said.

“What are you doing with my daughter's photo album?” the man asked. “Who are you?”

“You're Barbara's father, aren't you?” I asked. “My name is Steve Levitan. I just took over the technical writing class she's in.” I nodded toward Lili. “This is Dr. Weinstock, from the Fine Arts Department. I thought Barbara's photos were so well-done that I showed them to Dr. Weinstock.”

“Your daughter has real talent,” Lili said. “I'd like her to take my photography course.”

“You shouldn't be out here,” Seville said. “You aren't part of that group of nature freaks, are you?”

“The Bucks County Nature Conservancy?” I asked.

“That's the one. You're here to keep screwing up my project, aren't you?”

“Not at all.” I took Lili's hand. “We just thought we'd come out to see the place where Barbara took her photos. We'll go now.”

“You took over Barbara's class. So you must have known her other teacher. Stupid old ex-nun.”

“Professor Kaufman? No, I didn't know her. The department chair just needed a replacement quickly.” I started backing away from him.

“Not so fast.” He pulled a handgun from his coat pocket. “I know you. Barbara has been talking about you. You've been snooping into her professor's murder.”

I thought the best defense was to play innocent. “Professor Kaufman? I thought she died from a faulty space heater.”

“Don't try and fool me. You know exactly what happened to her, and to that jerk from the admissions office, and why. And you know what that means, don't you?”

Lili looked at me and squeezed my hand. I could see Rochester tensed behind Seville. “I don't know anything you're talking about,” I said.

“It means I can't let either of you leave here. ” He raised his hand and aimed at Lili.

 

Lili was fearless. She raised her camera to her eye and started snapping shots of Seville aiming at us. Rochester lunged at Seville from behind, and as he squeezed the trigger, the dog knocked him to the ground, so the bullet went wide. Seville dropped the gun as he fell, and it landed a few feet away.

Rochester was on top of Seville on the ground, the big man struggling to push the dog off him. “Give me your scarf,” I said to Lili. “And then call 911.”

She pulled her scarf off and I joined Rochester, kneeling on Seville's back. I tied Lili's scarf around his hands, behind his back, as she picked up his gun. Then she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed.

“Tell them to send Sergeant Rinaldi,” I said.

Seville continued to struggle, but with me sitting on his butt, and Rochester at alert next to his head, he wasn't going anywhere.

“You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” Lili said.

“You were amazing. You aren't afraid of anything, are you?”

“Spiders. Being stranded somewhere without a book to read. Getting a degenerative disease so that I become a prisoner inside my body. And a few more things, too.”

“But not men with guns.”

“I spent three months in Beirut as a photojournalist during the last civil war. I learned my camera can be a weapon, too. Once I knew that, I could face down anything.”

Seville tried again to push me off his back, but I sat fast. “Amazing. Beirut? Really?”

She nodded. “I did some freelancing for the Miami
Herald
. I was traveling with a reporter up to Hamra when we were stopped at a security checkpoint. They took away our passports and all our ID, confiscated the van we were driving in and took away our translator and our driver. They tried to take my cameras but I kneed the guy in the balls and he backed away.”

“See?” I said to Seville. “You got away lucky.”

“You'll regret this,” he said, his head resting against the sparse winter grass. “I'm going to see you both behind bars.”

“There will be bars between us, but you'll be on the wrong side of them,” I said. “I looked up at Lili. “So what happened?”

“They kept us in this dark room for two days. Only fed us a little water and some mushy rice. Finally our translator got word to someone in his family, who contacted the embassy, who sent someone out to get us. It was scary but it was also incredibly tedious.”

Seville gave up struggling and wouldn't say anything further. It took nearly ten minutes for the first cop car to arrive. By then I had called Tony Rinaldi on his cell and explained to him where we were and what we were doing. He made contact with the patrol car, so the officer had already been briefed by the time he approached us across the open space.

He cuffed Seville and stood him up. “These people are trespassers and they attacked me!” he sputtered to the cop. “I demand that you let me go and arrest them.”

“Let's go wait in the car until the sergeant gets here,” the cop said. “I suggest you folks warm up, too.”

I was shivering, and my pants were damp with the last snow from the ground. I was grateful to stretch my arms and legs and then walk to the BMW. Rochester jumped into the back seat without complaint, and Lili and I sat in front with the heater going.

“I'm sorry to have dragged you into this,” I said. “I never would have brought you out here if I'd thought we could get into trouble.”

“Sometimes I complain that the life of a college professor is boring and routine,” she said. “I won't be saying that for a while.”

Rochester snored lightly on the back seat. I plugged my iPhone into the adapter for the radio and asked Lili, “Any kind of music you prefer?”

“Let me see what you've got. ” Our fingers touched as I handed her the phone. We listened to some country music for a while, then a couple of show tunes, until Tony Rinaldi arrived.

He came over to talk to us first, and we both got out of the car, leaving Rochester in the back seat. I explained everything that had happened. Then he went to talk to Richard Seville. After a long time, he came back to us. “Let's recap,” he said. “You were trespassing, and Mr. Seville confronted you. You argued, and he felt he had to pull his gun to defend himself.”

“Excuse me?” I asked. “Is that what he says?”

“He is the property owner.”

“There are no posted signs,” Lili said. “Not a single no trespassing sign. So he can't pull that nonsense.”

Tony nodded. “I agree. Which leaves us with things the other way around. He shot at you, and you were defending yourselves against him. Since he's the one with the gun, I'm likely to believe you. But unless you're willing to press charges I can't take him in.”

“I'll do it,” I said. “But what about arresting him for killing Joe Dagorian and Perpetua Kaufman? He almost admitted it to us.”

“Almost admitting is like almost pregnant,” Tony said. “You don't get a result in either case. But I've been doing some investigating myself. You know, that is my job.”

“Yes, I know.” Rochester forced his way into the front seat and looked through the driver's side window at us. He barked once. I just looked over at him.

“I'm close to putting a case together against Seville,” Tony continued. “I can hold him on the assault charge until we get a judge and a bail hearing. And by then I hope to have a lot more to hold against him. I'll work with Rick Stemper on charging him with both murders.”

While Tony and I were talking, Lili pulled a netbook out of her messenger bag and uploaded the pictures from her camera to it. “Give me your email address,” she said to Tony. “As soon as I can get a wi-fi signal I'll email the pictures I took to you.”

Tony gave it to her. I had to promise to meet him at the Leighville Police Station the next morning to give a formal statement. He took custody of the book of Barbara's photos, and let us go.

“I'll drive you back to campus,” I said, turning on the car.

“We don't have to head back so quickly,” she said. “You know anyplace around here where we could get something to eat?”

I thought of More than Chocolate, Gail's café in Stewart's Crossing. “You like chocolate?”

“You bet.”

Rochester went to sleep in the back seat, and I drove us down to Stewart's Crossing. While we waited for our food, Lili opened her netbook and did some quick tweaking on the photos, then emailed them to Tony.

After a very nice dinner, I mentioned that we were so close to my townhouse, and asked if Lili might like to see it. I thought I was being very suave, but she saw right through me. “Only if the tour includes the bedroom,” she said.

“I can manage that,” I said, though I wasn't a hundred percent sure I could. After all, it had been a long time.

We got back to the house, and Rochester went right to his bed in the kitchen and settled down. I guess he figured he'd earned a good long nap, and I agreed.

Lili and I went upstairs, and I did manage, well enough to satisfy us both. After we cuddled and dozed for a while, I drove her back up to the campus. Rochester chose to come along as our chaperon.

“It's been a hell of a second date,” she said, as we pulled up next to her car in the faculty parking lot.

“In a good way, I hope.”

“A very good way. ” She leaned across and kissed my cheek. “Can't wait to see what you've got lined up for date number three.”

I drove back downriver to Stewart's Crossing, where I took Rochester for a long walk around River Bend, feeling very satisfied with myself. It's not every day a man faces down death, catches a killer, and makes love to a beautiful woman, after all.

The next morning Rochester decided to take the day off and stay home. I figured he'd earned it. Instead of driving up the hill to the college, I stopped at the police station. Tony had worked most of the night, gathering evidence against Richard Seville, and the district attorney was preparing an indictment against him for the murders of Joe Dagorian and Perpetua Kaufman. I gave Tony a full statement of everything I knew, interspersed with a lot of questions.

He must have said, “I can't put that in my report,” every time I mentioned something Rochester had done, though.

“You and your dog seem to have a knack for getting into trouble,” he said. “And if my chief ever figures out a dog is out-thinking me, then my job is on the line.”

“No worries. I think he and I have a woman to keep us out of trouble for a while.”

“You and the photographer? You could do a lot worse. She's beautiful—and those pictures she took while Seville had the gun on you both? Amazing.”

“Yeah, the rest of the evening was pretty amazing, too.”

He raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything more. “Keep in touch,” he said. “I'm sure we'll need more from you as the DA puts the case together.”

He opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out a bag of rawhide bones. “For the dog,” he said.

“Thanks. You ever need him to consult on a case, you just let me know.”