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  I stopped listening. He sounded like a dean promising to look into some fairly innocuous fraternity prank. I wondered how long it would take him after the detectives left to get on the phone with Harvey O’Hara, the college’s director of public affairs, to set the PR wheels in motion. Perhaps he already had.

  My coat was lying on the kitchen counter. It had been retrieved from the ghastly closet by a state trooper after the closet had been checked over by technicians. I looked at it with horror, but I had no choice. It was well below freezing by now, and home was a twenty-minute ride away in a car that took forever to heat.

  As Daniels and Piotrowski left, I rose to put the coat on, and was surprised to have Avery reach out a hand to detain me. “Could you stay a minute, Karen?”

  He conferred briefly with the town policeman and the college security officer, who then departed together. Underage Enfield students show a disturbing proclivity to be drunk and disorderly in local bars, and it was unusual to see the two as chummy as they were tonight. I imagined Dermott and White were headed straight for Mocchio’s and a couple of Buds—as far away as they could get from the high authority of the president and the staties.

  Mrs. Maher had already vanished. The housekeeper and her staff had not been allowed to clear away the party debris. The police technicians had taken hours, until just a few minutes ago, to complete their investigation. Mrs. Maher had stood in the doorway of the living room the entire time, clutching a light blue hand-knit cardigan over her shoulders and watching intently. I wondered if she expected some policeman to make off with the heirloom crystal punch bowls. She’d have a strenuous morning among the crumpled napkins, discarded hors d’oeuvres, and half-emptied glasses, but at least she’d know the Waterford was all accounted for.

  “Karen,” said Avery, as the door closed behind the two men, “let me drive you home. You’ve had a terrible shock. You’re in no condition to be out on these roads.”

  “Thank you.” My reply was decisive. “But I’ll drive myself. I’m fine.” I reinforced my statement by sitting down hard, very suddenly and without volition. The tremor in my hands was impossible to conceal.

  Avery regarded me in silence. Then he left the room, saying, unnecessarily, “Don’t go anywhere.” His footsteps mounted the stairs. I clasped my hands very tightly in my lap, staring at them, willing them into submission.

  When he returned he was carrying a plastic prescription bottle.

  “This is Xanax.” He opened the container. “I think it might help if you took one.”

  I looked at him incredulously. Suddenly I was intensely aware that I was alone in a house where a murder had just occurred with a man I detested. And now he was offering me pills from a sinister-looking brown bottle.

  “No, thank you.” I spoke as politely as I could. After all, if this potential murderer turned out merely to be a concerned human being, he was the president of the college I would someday be petitioning for tenure.

  I suddenly felt myself about to be overcome with hysterical amusement at what I saw as the irony of my situation. My hands were ice-cold and the shaking had spread to the rest of my body. Especially to my teeth, which were audibly chattering. Even in this warm room, I was shivering with shock.

  Avery looked alarmed.

  I stared hard at the pills. Small, oval, and salmon-colored, they certainly resembled Xanax. I knew what Xanax looked like. Believe me, I knew.

  Like the heroine of a romance novel, I threw caution to the winds.

  “Maybe you’d better give me two.” He shook them into my hand and I swallowed them down with the rest of the tea, cold now in the bottom of my cup. The characteristic bitter flavor of Xanax lingered reassuringly on my tongue.

  I gradually stopped shaking. Then I apologized—three times. It was two times too many.

  I did not want Avery to drive me home, but my protests sounded feeble. I lived fifteen miles from the college. It was too long a trip for him to take at that hour. And besides, I would end up carless in the morning.

  “You’re in no shape to drive,” Avery said firmly. “The roads are icy, and you’re still shook up. I’ll send a college car in the morning. Just let me know when.”

  “But—”

  “Or,” he said, “you could spend the night here.”

  “Oh.”

  He helped me on with my coat and into his big dark gray Volvo sedan. Infinitely classier than my gray 1988 Volkswagen Jetta. The roads had been freshly sanded. The wheels of the heavy car ground the grit into crusted ice.

  I live in Greenfield, the low-rent district. Yes, I know the college owns three square blocks of prime real estate in the heart of Enfield’s residential district. But the thought of bumping into my colleagues in the supermarket or over early-morning coffee at the local eatery appalls me. I’d opted instead for a cheap, shabby house in the country. One that suited both my psyche and my pocketbook.

  We were turning onto Route 4 from Field Street, Enfield’s main thoroughfare, when Avery shifted into overdrive, sat back in his leather-upholstered seat, and spoke.

  “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the police, but—Christ—as if the murder weren’t enough, that scene with Margaret Smith was”—he struggled for an adequate word—”horrifying. Do you have any idea what that was all about?”

  Shortly after I’d discovered Randy’s body, Margaret, a member of the Religion faculty, had gone into the nastiest case of hysterics I’d ever seen. Her guttural, choking sobs and piercing screams shocked the party-goers almost as much as Randy’s corpse had. Well, she was a hell of a lot noisier than the corpse.

  “No. I scarcely know her. Was she a special—er—friend of Randy’s?”

  “Hardly.” His laugh had a surprisingly bitter edge. “He liked his women young and beautiful.”

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “And as for her,” Avery went on, “she’s such a repressed and quiet type. I can’t imagine that Astin-Berger meant anything to her. But those uncanny wails—jeez—they chilled me to the bone. Then that poor student—”

  “Sophia Warzek—”

  “Yes, Sophia. When she went crashing to the floor, tray and all—well, for a moment I thought I’d stepped into a grade B horror film.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think she’s been well.” I didn’t feel like talking about Sophia. How could someone like Avery Mitchell understand Sophia Warzek’s life?

  The conversation lapsed. We drove for five minutes or so in silence, the only sounds the hum of the motor and the soft whoosh of the fan blowing heat into the frigid interior of the car. The green lights of the dashboard glowed hypnotically in the darkness. Avery reached out and switched on the CD player, and the exquisite sound of violins flooded the confined space. Bach? Handel? Maybe. I really wouldn’t know.

  In my mind I was replaying the entire evening, especially my conversation with Randy. What had he been saying about a letter? “If only I’d been paying better attention,” I thought, fuzzily. I think I’d overdone it on the tranquilizer. I was startled when Avery responded. I had evidently spoken aloud.

  “To what?” he asked.

  “What to what?” I replied, less than comprehensibly.

  “Paid attention. To what?”

  “To what Randy was saying. Something about desire.”

  “Of course,” Avery said. “What else but desire? Jesus!” His tone was so abrupt I glanced over at him, startled. I couldn’t read his expression. Surely that wasn’t fury playing across his fine features? Noticing my glance, he made an attempt to smile. It was a rueful smile, as if we shared common insight into Randy’s eccentricities.

  “Wouldn’t you think a topic like sexual desire would make for riveting conversation?” he went on. “But whenever Astin-Berger approached me, I felt cornered. It wasn’t conversation he wanted; it was an audience. Did you ever notice that? The man was incapable of comprehending the fundamental principle of conversation: When people talk, they talk to each other. For Randy conversation was
pure narcissism.Sometimes I think the most compelling desire he ever felt was the lust for applause.”

  He lapsed into silence. I wondered if my exhaustion and the drugs had made me fanciful. Anger of any kind, I thought, would be way out of character for this imperturbable aristocrat, let alone the powerful emotion I thought I’d seen. Certainly, when Avery began to speak again, his words were cool enough.

  “He was obsessed with the mirrored reflection of his own brilliance, you know. A kind of verbal auto-eroticism. All he ever wanted from anyone was a mirror to flash back an image of his own precious genius. To be frank, I found him insufferable.”

  I nodded agreement, too spaced out to reply. I don’t know whether or not he saw me.

  After another moment’s silence he added, “That was very indiscreet. Please don’t repeat it.”

  The farther away we got from Enfield, the more Avery’s air of smooth competence and control evaporated. He seemed distracted and moody. Perhaps the illusory intimacy created by our isolated closeness in the car as we sped through the frozen countryside, the only sign of life every now and then a glowing Christmas display or a lighted room in an otherwise darkened house, had caused him to drop his habitual guard.

  “Jesus …” The change of subject was abrupt. “Sometimes I hate this job. Did you hear me with those detectives? What an ass I am in full swing. Call on me for anything, day or night,” he mimicked, savagely. “Christ, you’d think I was a broker meeting a client.”

  I didn’t know whether or not it was the Xanax operating, but I felt momentarily well disposed toward this man. I smiled a little loopily in the darkness, and patted him benignly on the hand, a liberty I would recall with horror in the morning. Between exhaustion and the drug I was too abstracted to speak. We drove in silence the rest of the way home, and he shone the headlights on the front door until I was safely inside.

  Three

  WHERE WAS Sophia Warzek? I was worried about her. She usually worked the lunch shift—serving hot food, clearing tables—but I’d been sitting at my table in the Faculty Dining Commons for more than fifteen minutes and hadn’t seen her. Maybe she hadn’t recovered from her collapse when Randy’s body was discovered. I’d better call her, I thought. That girl seems to be in a very fragile state.

  The lackluster December sun slanted through high uncurtained windows. Fat red Christmas candles flickered on every table. About the room hung the ripe odor of oversteamed broccoli. The Commons was crowded, Randy Astin-Berger was dead, and I was sitting in front of a cooling plate of chicken Tetrazzini. None of it made any sense. And where was Sophia Warzek?

  I thought back several days to the last day of classes. Sophia had been unusually withdrawn then, too. Lingering in the classroom, shuffling papers and books, she’d come up to my desk after the other students had gone. The skin of her face seemed drawn more tightly than usual over the fine bones. Her blue-gray eyes seemed unfocused, and her normally silky blond hair was dull. She’d handed me a gift-wrapped cookie tin and muttered something about thanks for a wonderful class. Then she’d left.

  I remembered staring after her. That girl looks like she’s in real deep shit, I’d thought. Then I’d shrugged. What could be wrong? It was simply that she worked too hard. That’s not uncommon with scholarship students. I knew that from experience. She’d survive. I had enough on my mind, I’d reminded myself. I didn’t need to start playing mother hen to my students.

  The call from the president’s office had awakened me that morning at nine. Would it be convenient for the college car to pick me up at nine-thirty? By ten A.M. I was sitting at my office desk, awake but not quite conscious, staring at a pile of forty final research papers. All of which had yet to be graded. Randy Astin-Berger was dead, but final grades had to be in on time. I sighed, picked up the red pen, and got to work. Enfield students are very smart, but reading forty of anything is a little like opening your skull on its hinges and banging a rubber mallet directly on the soft tissue of your brain.

  Greg rushed into the Commons, grabbed a sandwich and coffee, and plopped himself down at my table. “Karen, you all right? I hung around last night until they chased me away, but you hadn’t come out yet.”

  “Well, the cops kept me for a while….” But Greg was on to the next subject.

  “This place has gone crazy,” he announced. “I’ve been here six years, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you heard the gossip? Revenge. Intrigue. Dark, sinister secrets. You’d think Enfield was a daytime soap opera, not one of the country’s most precious little colleges!”

  “Oh, come on, Greg. Revenge? Sinister secrets? Aren’t you getting a little carried away?”

  A hand grabbed my shoulder. I gasped and jumped straight up out of my chair.

  “Jeez, Karen,” said Jill Greenberg. “You’re wound tighter than a sidewalk watch.” She perched on the chair next to me. Today the heart-shaped face with its dark eyes held an uncharacteristically somber expression.

  Jill’s usually wild hair was pulled back severely at the nape of her neck and clasped with a gold barrette. Wispy curls escaped their restraint, creating endearing little tendrils across her forehead and in front of her ears. She wore turquoise jeans and a bright orange turtleneck sweater, and looked far more like a high school junior than was decent for any Enfield College faculty member—even a brand-new one. I knew Jill had to be at least in her mid-twenties. She couldn’t possibly have a Ph.D. if she were only sixteen years old. Could she?

  “I meant to reassure you, not scare you to death.” Jill picked up my buttered whole wheat roll. Glancing at me for approval, she broke a chunk off and popped it in her mouth.

  “I can’t stay; I’m off to give an exam. But I saw you and Greg through the window and thought I’d say hi.” She put the bread roll down and rose before she’d really settled into the seat. Pushing the chair tidily under the table, she stood behind it and gazed at me with solemn concern. “Karen, I just wanted you to know that I don’t believe any of the rumors.” Then she squeezed my shoulder again, nodded with grave sympathy, and made her way out of the room.

  Rumors? I looked over at Greg. Rumors?

  “That was certainly reassuring,” he said.

  “Greg? What rumors? Tell me!”

  He chomped into his ham on rye. “Not to worry. Only a few people think you murdered Randy.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Listen, I’m telling you, don’t get upset.” Greg stirred sugar into his coffee. “There’s plenty of sympathy for you—especially if you did strangle him.” He grinned at me as he lifted his cup.

  I groaned and hid my face in my hands. The only place I’d ever get tenure now was at the State Penitentiary.

  Greg had finished half his sandwich. “But, seriously, what was going on with you and Randy, anyhow?”

  “He was a pain in the ass, Greg. But in case you’re wondering, I didn’t kill him.”

  “I never for a moment thought you did.” Greg paused. “Although I wouldn’t have blamed you for trying, the way that prick kept hassling you.”

  “Hey, the cops don’t know about that, so don’t mention it.”

  “Well, you’ve been pretty discreet, Karen, but people have noticed things. This place is buzzing with gossip. The cops’ll hear.”

  I twirled the strands of cold chicken Tetrazzini around my fork without conveying any to my mouth. The broccoli lay untouched on my plate. Randy Astin-Berger was dead, and my stomach was in turmoil. Greg reached out, serious for once, and touched my hand.

  “Karen, you look sick. Maybe it would help to talk about it. What was really going on?”

  “Jeez, Greg. I don’t know. He seemed to have some sort of thing with me—a fixation, like.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not sure. It started the first day of classes. I was, you know, all keyed up, nervous about meeting my students. I pulled open my office door, on my way to class, and there he was, lurking in the hall.”

  “Lurking?”
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  “Well, that’s what it looked like. The bulletin board is right outside my door, and he was staring at the notices, but I don’t think he was really reading them. I was in a rush, and I crashed right into him.”

  “I bet he enjoyed that.”

  “He seemed to.”

  I pushed the limp broccoli around on my plate and thought back to my first meeting with Randy.

  A dark, sinewy man, past first youth, but not by much, he’d resembled a redesigned Mick Jagger: younger, more stylish, slightly more sculpted in the facial features, a teensy bit feminine, as if Jagger had put himself in the hands of Michael Jackson’s image consultants.

  At the impact, he’d grabbed my arm, seemingly to steady me, but his grip on my upper arm lingered just a little longer than necessary.

  “Welcome. Welcome to Enfield College,” he’d effused, extending a strong lean hand. “I’m Randy Astin-Berger, and we are going to be great pals.”

  I put my fork down and looked at Greg. “It was as if the great Astin-Berger had decided I was going to be his little disciple. The first thing he did was confide in me that my new department was—and I quote—’a virtual wasteland peopled with retrograde intellects characterized by elitist, masculinist, homophobic, racist politics.’ But that, together, he and I could work a radical transformation….”

  Greg’s laugh was sardonic. “Sounds like Randy. And he was probably right, don’t you think?”

  “Well,” I said. “It may have started out political, but it didn’t stay that way. Randy made it clear—several times—that he could do a great deal to further my career. If you know what I mean.”

  Greg’s lips tightened. “Scum!”

  “And at first I thought that was really odd. He’s so well-known for his work on homosocial desire, you know; I always thought he was gay. But, God, sitting next to him at the first faculty meeting, I was thoroughly convinced otherwise.”

  “Well, I could have told you that. Randy’s hetero-sexuality is—was—notorious, Karen.” Greg’s expression darkened, as if something more personal than college gossip was at stake. “I could tell you a story….” But he let the impulse die. I was surprised; reticence was not Greg’s strong point. Then he continued, “Anyhow—Randy liked to be on the cutting edge. If gay studies was the cutting edge, that’s what randy Randy would be up to.”