“I expect your machine will go into overtime mode; I won’t add to it. Will you call me?”
She felt they had come to a crisis of some kind, that it had to do with trust, and hurt, and his new awareness of the fragility of their relationship. She would deal with it later, not now. “I’ll call,” she said. “Thanks. For dinner, for... Just thanks.”
He shrugged and went to get his jacket, and then paused at the door. “Call me,” he said, and left.
Later, soaking in the long deep tub, she regretted that he had not had his usual bath. He always liked to bathe in her old-fashioned tub that let him stretch out and relax. She thought of his words: maybe you need to talk to someone about it. In a town of eighteen hundred people, most of them familiar, some of them lifelong friends, there was not a single one she could talk to about that night.
She could imagine the questions: Six people saw you leave with him; where did you go? Did he seduce you? Have sex? Did he hit you? Did you hit him? Did he drive you home afterward? Did your father see you messed up, bloodied maybe?
What happened back at the fire? She closed her eyes against the pictures that surged in, and after a moment she thought, what happened to his van? Someone must have driven it away; someone else followed in a different car. They must have driven it off a cliff, into a gorge, maybe up the Columbia River, into the river somewhere. Then they came back.
They would get away with it, she thought dully. They wouldn’t tell on each other, and she couldn’t tell. Eventually the police would have to accept the idea that Philip had picked up a woman, fought, got killed, and she had driven his van away. What else could they think?
Lists of instructors who had been at the school the two years Philip had taught, follow-up lists: when they left, where they went, who was still here. Lists of his students, more follow-up lists. Lists of his subjects, course descriptions.
“What about the maintenance people, the cafeteria workers?” Ellen had asked bitterly, and Haliday had grinned. “Them, too.”
Now she stood in the doorway to the archives room with Winona Kelly, who was to assist her. She was a middle-aged woman with dyed black hair and gold-rimmed glasses. Earlier, Haliday had given the orders: When they found the files, Kelly would copy them, Blair would double-check, initial them, and restore the originals to their proper place. “That should satisfy your Dr. Melton,” Haliday had said. He had waved them out as Janice Ayers entered the conference room. The drapes were open.
“Okay,” Winona Kelly said. “Let’s get at them.” She chewed gum.
The recent files were in good order, Hilde Melton would have seen to that, but Dr. Pryor had been lax in his oversight, or had had inept help in archives. Ellen was sitting on the floor scanning one paper after another from a cardboard carton, laying them aside one by one. Winona Kelly was at a file cabinet pulling personnel files. Ellen glanced up to see Lieutenant Haliday in the doorway.
“How’s it coming?”
“Slowly,” Ellen said.
“Well, let’s break for lunch,” he said. “I thought that down here in the catacombs, you might not realize what time it’s getting to be.” He said to Winona Kelly, “You can go over to the cafeteria, no one’s going to pester you with questions. And you,” he said to Ellen, “can come up to the conference room with me. I’m having stuff sent in. They’re lying in wait for you, I’m afraid. Reporters.”
She saw what he meant as soon as they emerged from the library building. A clump of strangers rushed forward, along with Beverly Kirchner. A few flashbulbs flared. “Hey, Ms. Blair, what are you looking for down there?” “Did he really teach witchcraft?” “Are the files intact?”
Haliday took her arm firmly and walked through them.
“Is she a suspect?”
His hand tightened and his pace quickened as they moved along the path toward the administration building. She was out of breath when they reached the building and went inside. An officer at the door barred the reporters.
“See what I mean?” Haliday said cheerfully. “You’ll want to wash up a bit. See you upstairs.”
Hilde Melton appeared at her door. “Come use my washroom, Ellen.” She moved aside to let Ellen pass.
Ellen thought Hilde was going to question her again, and steeled herself, but all Hilde said was, “We’ve brought in security to keep them out of the buildings and away from the dorms, but we can’t keep them off the grounds altogether.” She looked very tired. Her phone was ringing. “It’s been like that all morning,” she said, going to pick it up. “Parents.”
Rita would be shunting other calls to other departments, Ellen knew, but only Hilde could deal with upset parents. She nodded sympathetically and went into the washroom.
When Ellen got to the conference room, Haliday was eating a sandwich. He waved toward a tray with more sandwiches, a carton of milk with glasses, and fruit. She helped herself to a sandwich and sat down opposite him.
They ate in silence. He poured milk, poured for her when she nodded, and then he said, “Problem here is there’s just too much coming and going. Take a corporation now; people get hired and they stay put. But here you’ve got a couple hundred new students year after year, couple hundred old ones hitting the road, gone. Besides those who drop out. And the teachers drifting in and out on one- or two-year contracts. Makes for a real problem.” He looked at her appraisingly. “I take it the files are another problem.”
“The old ones are,” she said. “And the old temporary-instructor files are jammed into boxes every which way. I don’t think they were sorted at all.”
“When you come across his student lists, think you’ll recognize names of locals?”
“Maybe. Some of them anyway. But I’d have to double-check. Thirteen years is a long time; most of them have left the area. Besides, I don’t really know everyone from around here.”
“Dr. Melton seems to think you do,” he commented. “She thinks pretty highly of you. Grooming you to take her place when she retires?”
Ellen felt her face grow hot. “No, of course not. I’m nothing more than her gofer.”
“Isn’t that what she was for the last president?”
“It’s not the same. She had a doctorate already, and I have a bachelor’s degree. She was more like a vice president.”
“So how’d you land your job here?”
Ellen curbed her exasperation. “I happened to be in the right place at the right time. She mentioned in the store one day that she was looking for an assistant. I had just lost my job, and I was available. She hired me. Since it’s a private school they don’t have to go through the procedures the public universities do. It was that simple.”
He held up his hand, grinning. “Peace, Blair. I’m making polite conversation like they taught me in charm school. Not looking for sore toes to step on.”
Unexpectedly she laughed. “I think you must have flunked the course.” Then she watched as he reached into his pocket and took out a dollar and transferred it to a different pocket. “What are you doing?”
“Made a bet with myself that I’d get a laugh out of you before you went back to work.” He bit into an apple. “What do you think about the hitchhiker theory?”
He was working all the time, she told herself. She had to remember that, no matter how much fooling around he did. She said slowly, “I don’t see any other way to account for the missing van.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem. The goddam van. But you see, it compounds the other problem. The missing personal stuff. And the fortune in gold. Tell me, would a hitchhiker go to his apartment and steal a manuscript and private letters, and leave that gold behind?” He shook his head. Then he asked, “What’s it like around graduation? What’s the usual schedule?”