The journalism building appeared deserted, as did a squatty structure that I thought housed philosophy and other cerebral, and therefore non-marketable, majors. Secretaries were now leaving for the day, replaced by the custodial staff, a few humorless students, and a rare faculty member with a bulgy briefcase and the obligatory leather patches on his or her elbows.
It was approaching five o’clock, which meant Caron was likely to be working herself up to a fine figure of a snit. My meandering had deposited me at the door of Guzman Hall, home of the law school; unlike the other buildings, it was lighted, and students were visible inside a lounge and a library. I decided to hunt up a pay telephone to tell Caron that she could close the store-if she could find a key in the drawer below the cash register or in any of my desk drawers, or in the box of junk on the filing cabinet, or in a similar container in the cramped bathroom. If she had no luck on this jolly little treasure hunt, she’d have to call a locksmith and wait until he arrived. My head began to throb steadily as I imagined her response to the final option.
I entered the building with the due caution of a civilian entering a lion’s den. The students brushing past me appeared normal, even nondescript, but I was keenly aware of their chosen careers and kept my face averted as I prowled for a telephone. The main office, an adjoining room apparently used for moot trials, and the dean’s office beyond it were all dark. No one was home to offer aid at the legal clinic. I heard distant laughter from around the corner of the hallway, and surmised it came from the lounge I’d glimpsed through the window. Surely there was nothing in the corpus juris of the library worthy of a laugh, or even a tiny chuckle.
A lounge was the logical place for vending machines, uncomfortable furniture, merriment, and telephones. I turned-and gasped as I found myself once again confronting the eerie white face of the man in the moon. My eyes wide and my mouth flapping mutely, I recoiled into a water fountain before I realized it was only a portrait attached to the wall, the last in a string that decorated the hallway like pretentious ancestors.
Once I’d regained my composure, I went to the portrait and managed to make out the words on the brass plaque beneath it: John W. Vanderson, Dean of the Guzman Center for Law, 1983-. I frowned at this, and then at his depiction, trying to convince myself that I was muddled, addled, mistaken, in the throes of a concussion, just plain crazy. But I wasn’t. His face was distinctive and easily recognizable, although in this case he was beaming genially at me from behind a broad, uncluttered walnut desk, with bookcases, framed diplomas, and an American flag in the backwound.
I made sure I was alone, then sat down on the opposite side of the hall and gazed up at John W. Vanderson, dean of the law school, husband of the Kappa Theta Eta house corps president (whatever that was), parlous pedestrian, and skilled prowler. Despite my efforts to the contrary, I could produce not one flicker of doubt that he was the man who’d stopped in front of the Kappa house to rub his jaw, the man who’d looked down at me from the third floor the next night, and the man who’d only a short time earlier knocked me into a tree and fled. He was the leading candidate for the anonymous caller
I rubbed my jaw much the way he had as I tried to make sense of this, but I might as well have been sharing my secret whistle with him. I understood why Winkie had recognized him from my description; she would have met him when he escorted Eleanor to alumnae functions at the sorority house, or at the Vandersons’ house. Her reticence was more difficult to understand, but for all I knew, it was based on a dictum from National or arose from an anagogic rite of sisterhood.
Clanks, clatters, and bits of conversation from the direction I’d come caught my attention. I stood up, and after a parting frown at Dean Vanderson, retraced my path to the main hail. Offices that had been dark were now lit, and within the nearest I saw a man emptying a wastebasket into a large plastic container, and a second wheeling a bucket into an inner sanctum.
The door of the dean’s office was ajar. If he could prowl, so could I, although I chose to do so with a great deal less impunity. I waited until the custodians were both out of sight, then darted into the office. I froze behind the door, and only when my heart stopped bouncing did I smugly conclude I had accomplished this minor intrusion unnoticed and unchallenged. What I now intended to do was a good question, but I saw no reason to pester myself with such paltry details.
The reception room contained a desk, a computer covered with a plastic hood, filing cabinets, and two straight-backed chairs on either side of a small table with journals and a bowl of mints. The door on the far side was closed, but not necessarily locked, I told myself cheerfully as I glanced at the still-deserted hallway and hurried across the room.
Seconds later I was inside Dean Vanderson’s private office, gripped by a sensation of déjà vu until I realized his portrait portrayed the room right down to the leather accessories on his desk and the diplomas on the wall. Beyond the windows was an expanse of lawn, and in the distance Farber Hall rose imposingly above the treetops.
I willed myself not to compare it to the tiny, crowded, dusty office at the back of the Book Depot, where I’d always wondered how the cockroaches fared in battle against the mice in the wee hours of the night. Beside the desk was a table, and on it sat a telephone. As long as I was in the midst of a crime spree, I decided there was no reason not to compound the felony and save myself a dime.
I dialed the number and leaned against the desk to brace myself for a barrage of outrage. “Hi, dear,” I began as soon as Caron picked up the receiver. “I’m going to be a little late, so why-”
“A Little Late? We are talking one hundred and fifty-seven minutes late, Mother. I told you we had to do our hair before we went to Rhonda’s. I called her earlier to tell her I wasn’t going to limbo if she paid me, and she said Louis and some other guys on the football team are coming by after they go to a movie. Do you want me to walk in there as if I’d arrived on a watermelon truck? It’s bad enough that…
She may have added quite a bit here, but I wasn’t listening; I was staring at a sliver of pink paper visible under the computer at the other end of the table. The color was familiar evoking unpleasant sensations not tin-like chilblain.
“Lock the store when you leave,” I said, hung up the receiver and cautiously edged toward the computer. I was not tampering with evidence, I told myself as I tried to coax out the insidious pink cat. Not one of the police officials, campus or local, believed my story that I’d seen John Vanderson on previous occasions. Therefore, there could be no evidence because there’d been no crime, even of the lex non seripta variety. Half an hour in Guzman Hall and I’d already prepared my first brief, I realized, increasingly irritated that I couldn’t get enough fingernail on its edge to pull it out.
I poked at it with a pencil borrowed from dear John’s leather cup, but it was pinned firmly by the weight of the computer. Honest soul that I was, I replaced the pencil, studied the computer for potential handholds, and had hoisted it up a few inches when a cold, unfriendly voice said, “Put that down.”
I did.
“Whaddaya think you’re doing, lady? If you want a computes go buy one at the store instead of stealing it from the college.”
I looked back at a middle-aged man who wore a gray uniform and brandished a mop. His expression was as unfriendly as his voice. “I was not stealing this,” I began, paused to clear my throat, and with more assurance than I felt, continued. “It does look odd, doesn’t it? I feel awfully silly being caught like this, but all I was trying to do was… well, what may appear to be..”