“What do you need, Professor Fisher?”
“A student file.”
“Again?”
“Yes.”
“You need the student’s permission,” Mrs. Dinsmore said. “I told you that last time.”
“And like last time, the student is dead.”
“Oh,” she said. “What’s his name?”
“Archer Minor.”
There was a pause.
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“As a student, no.”
“But?”
“But I remember reading in the Lanford News that he was murdered a few years ago.”
“Six years ago,” I said.
I started up the car, keeping the phone to my ear.
“Let me see if I understand this,” Mrs. Dinsmore said. “You’re looking for Natalie Avery, correct?”
“Correct.”
“And in searching for her, you’ve needed to look at the personal files of not one but two murdered students.”
Strangely enough, I hadn’t thought of it that way. “I guess that’s true,” I said.
“If I may be bold, this isn’t sounding like much of a love story.”
I said nothing. A few seconds passed.
“I’ll call you back,” Mrs. Dinsmore said before hanging up.
The Hyde Park Assisted Living facility resembled a Marriott Courtyard.
A nice one, grant you, upscale with one of those Victorian gazebos in front, but everything screamed chain, impersonal, prefab. The main building was three stories with faux turrets on the corners. An oversize sign read ASSISTED LIVING ENTRANCE. I followed the path, walked up a wheelchair ramp, and opened the door.
The woman at the desk had a helmety beehive hairdo last seen on a senator’s wife circa 1964. She hit me with a smile so wooden I could have knocked on it for luck.
“May I help you?”
I smiled and spread my arms. I had read somewhere that spreading your arms makes you appear more open and trusting while folded arms make you seem the opposite. I didn’t know if that was true. It felt as though I might swoop someone up and carry him away. “I’m here to see Sylvia Avery,” I said.
“Would she be expecting you?” Beehive asked.
“No, I don’t think so. I just happened to be in the neighborhood.”
She looked doubtful. I couldn’t blame her. I doubt too many people just happen to drop in on assisted-living facilities. “Do you mind signing in?”
“Not at all.”
She spun an oversize guestbook, the kind I usually associate with weddings, funerals, and hotels in old movies, toward me and handed me a large quill pen. I signed my name. The woman spun the guestbook back toward her.
“Mr. Fisher,” she said, reading the name very slowly. She looked up at me and blinked. “May I ask how you know Miss Avery?”
“Through her daughter Natalie. I thought it’d be nice to visit.”
“I’m sure Sylvia will appreciate that.” Beehive gestured to her left. “Our living room is available and inviting. Would it be okay if you met there?”
Inviting? “Sure,” I said.
Beehive stood. “I’ll be right back. Make yourself comfortable.”
I moved into the available, inviting living room. I realized what was up. Beehive wanted the meeting in a public place just in case I wasn’t on the up-and-up. Made sense. Better safe than sorry and all that. The couches looked nice enough, what with their floral prints, and yet they didn’t look like something that could make one comfortable. Nothing here did. The décor resembled that of a model home perfectly laid out to accentuate the positives, but the smell of antiseptic, industrial-strength cleaner, and-yes, dare I say it-the elderly was unmistakable. I stayed standing. There was an old woman with a walker and tattered bathrobe standing in the corner. She was talking to a wall, gesturing wildly.
My new disposable number started buzzing. I looked at the caller ID, but I had only given this number to one person: Mrs. Dinsmore. There was a sign about no cell phone use, but as I’ve now learned, I sometimes live on the edge. I moved into a corner, turned my face to the wall, à la the old woman with the walker, and whispered, “Hello?”
“I have Archer Minor’s file,” Mrs. Dinsmore said. “Do you want me to e-mail it to you?”
“That would be great. Do you have it right there?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything strange about it?”
“I didn’t look at it yet. Strange how?”
“Would you mind taking a quick peek?”
“What am I looking for?”
I thought about that. “How about a connection between the two murder victims. Were they in the same dorm? Did they take any of the same classes?”
“That one is easy. No. Archer Minor was graduated before Todd Sanderson even matriculated here. Anything else?”
As I did the math in my head, a cold hand reached into my chest.
Mrs. Dinsmore said, “Are you still there?”
I swallowed. “Was Archer Minor on campus when Professor Kleiner ran off?”
There was a brief pause. Then Mrs. Dinsmore said in a faraway voice: “I think he would have been a freshman or sophomore.”
“Could you check to see if-?”
“One step ahead of you.” I could hear file pages being flipped. I glanced behind me. From across the room the old woman with the walker and tattered bathrobe winked at me suggestively. I winked back with equal suggestion. Why not?
Then Mrs. Dinsmore said, “Jake?”
Again she used my first name.
“Yes?”
“Archer Minor was enrolled in Professor Kleiner’s class called Citizenship and Pluralism. According to this, he received an A.”
Beehive returned, pushing Natalie’s mother in a wheelchair. I recognized Sylvia Avery from the wedding six years ago. The years hadn’t been so kind to her up until then and judging by what I was seeing now, that hadn’t gotten any better.
With the phone still to my ear, I asked Mrs. Dinsmore, “When?”
“When what?”
“When did Archer Minor take that class?”
“Let me see.” Then I heard Mrs. Dinsmore’s small gasp, but I already knew the answer. “It was the semester Professor Kleiner resigned.”
I nodded to myself. Ergo the A. Everyone got them that semester.
My mind was whirling a thousand ways to Sunday. Still reeling, I thanked Mrs. Dinsmore and hung up as Beehive rolled Sylvia Avery right to me. I had hoped that we would be alone, but Beehive waited. I cleared my throat.
“Miss Avery, you may not remember me-”
“Natalie’s wedding,” she said without hesitation. “You were the mopey guy she dumped.”
I looked toward Beehive. Beehive put her hand on Sylvia Avery’s shoulder. “Are you okay, Sylvia?”
“Of course I’m okay,” she snapped. “Go away and leave us alone.”
The wooden smile did not so much as flicker, but then again wood never does. Beehive moved back to the desk. She gave us one more look as though to say, I may not be sitting right with you but I’ll be watching.
“You’re too tall,” Sylvia Avery said to me.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just sit the hell down so I don’t strain my neck.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Again with the sorry. Sit, sit.”
I sat on the couch. She studied me for a bit. “What do you want?”
Sylvia Avery looked small and wizened in that wheelchair, but then again who looks big and hardy in them? I answered her with a question of my own.
“Have you heard from Natalie at all?”
She gave me the suspicious stink eye. “Who wants to know?”
“Uh, me.”
“I get cards now and then. Why?”
“But you haven’t seen her?”
“Nope. That’s okay though. She’s a free spirit, you know. When you set a free spirit free, it flies off. That’s what it’s supposed to do.”
“Do you know where this free spirit landed?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but she lives overseas. Happy as can be with Todd. I’m looking forward to those two having kids one day.” Her eyes narrowed a bit. “What’s your name again?”