The DeadHouse

30

"Looks like the weatherman may give us a break.

"It had taken us nearly an hour to drive from the courthouse to King's College. The radio continued to promise a winter storm, but was delaying its arrival until nightfall, and the wet flakes that deposited themselves limply on the windshield did not seem to be sticking.

Like any college community at Christmas break, the area around 116th Street and Broadway felt like a ghost town. The Barnard, Columbia, and King's students had scattered to their homes and families, and the normally lively sidewalks and footpaths were bare of young adults and earnest academics.

At one-fifteen, we knocked on the door of Sylvia Foote's office and were invited in. I glanced around the conference table, taking an informal inventory of the assembled guests. She ushered us to our seats, and I squeezed in between Chapman and Acting President Recantati. As I placed my pocketbook on the floor behind me, ^mY pager beeped loudly.

"Excuse me, please. I'll turn it off." I removed it and checked the number, worried that Battaglia might be tracking me down, annoyed that I had blown him off when he had requested that I come in to talk to him. Relieved to see that it was only Jake, beeping me for the third time since we had left downtown, I clicked the mechanism off and tossed it inside my bag.

"Unhappy boss?" Mike asked.

"Unhappy boyfriend."

Mike, in the meanwhile, was checking off the faces present against his list of names: Sylvia Foote, Paolo Recantati, Winston Shreve, Nan Rothschild, Skip Lockhart, and Thomas Grenier.

"As an aficionado of the detective story, Mr. Chapman, it appears to me that you've come here expecting one of us to stand up and announce that he-or she-is, in fact, Professor Plum, who killed Lola Dakota in the library with the lead pipe." It was Grenier who tried to break the ice with a bit of facetious humor.

"This isn't a board game." Mike glared at the biology professor, whom he was meeting for the first time. "But if any one of you wants to save us some effort, I'd welcome the admission."

"Are we waiting for Claude Lavery?" Grenier asked Foote, striking a more serious tone.

She turned to Mike. "Professor Lavery won't be coming. He called an hour ago to say that since we've severed him from college affairs while he's under investigation for the grant impropriety, he doesn't feel obligated to participate."

I watched pairs of eyes find each other across the table, silently affirming alliances.

Winston Shreve, the anthropologist, looked back at me. "Per haps that message you asked Sylvia to deliver to us last night unsettled him. About the diaries and the so-called secret garden."

"Why him in particular?"

"Claude Lavery and Lola Dakota confided in each other. They were neighbors, good friends." It was Paolo Recantati who picked up Shreve's lead. "I can't believe he didn't come here today. It's either arrogance, or it's exactly what Winston is suggesting. Claude won't discuss what he knows in front of the rest of us."

Sylvia Foote tried to regain control of her herd. "I thought it would be useful for those of us who worked with Lola to sit down together as a group and examine her professional circumstances. Most of us, of course, believe her death relates to her complicated personal situation. But perhaps if Miss Cooper and Mr. Chapman get a better sense of what was going on here at the college, they'll understand why we feel this way."

And they'll get out of our hair, she seemed to imply.

Sylvia asked Nan Rothschild to begin the conversation. If the severe general counsel meant to set herself a smooth sail, then she had chosen well. As the quiet anthropologist began her description of the Blackwells project, I tried to focus on her words and keep my imagination from divining the real dynamic between the two successful women, Rothschild and Dakota. Had I been too quick to eliminate Nan's interests and possible motives simply because I had known her as a casual acquaintance from the ballet studio?

Mike was making notes, and I jotted a reminder to myself to ask him whether he thought the tension between the female professors was something to explore.

Nan started with how the working teams came to be formed, then moved along to the technical aspects of the dig, which I found fascinating now, in light of the stories of old Mr. Lockhart. Wouldn't the high-tech equipment used by the interns and volunteers have uncovered any of the legendary treasures that had been concealed on the island? It didn't seem clear, though, that the team had actually done any work on the southern tip, where the prison had once stood.

Nan then turned the narrative over to Winston Shreve. With frequent punctuation by Lockhart and Grenier, Shreve led us through a much more congenial version of the academic staff relationships than we had been treated to during the one-on-one interviews. Any hopes that this gathering would help us disappeared by the end of the first hour.

I could tell that Mike wanted to take the meeting in another direction. While his pen jiggled up and down between the first two fingers of his right hand, he was brushing back his hair with the left.

"Let me ask you this, Ms. Foote. Is there any additional discipline the college could impose on Claude Lavery while his matter is pending a decision? Any other action to take against him?"

"I'm not sure I understand, Detective. What are you suggesting?"

"Suppose he lied. Supposed he lied about what Ms. Cooper here might call a material fact."

"Related to what?"

"To Dakota. Lola Dakota."

"Why don't you tell us the fact?" Recantati asked, trying, perhaps, to reclaim the position he had undermined by entering Lola's office after her death.

Mike looked over at me to see whether I agreed that we should reveal information, hoping to gain something in return. The slight nod of my head told him that I did.

"We've got a witness, an eyewitness," Mike began. He obviously didn't want to tell the assembled group that Bart Frankel was dead. "This guy observed Lola Dakota walking into her apartment building within an hour of her death."

No one spoke.

"Claude Lavery held the door open for Lola and walked inside with her."

Again, I tried to identify the allies. Recantati's eyes darted from Foote to Rothschild, Lockhart sought a reaction from Shreve, Grenier fixed on Mike Chapman.

"Problem for me is that when I interviewed Lavery, he denied seeing Dakota. Never mentioned it. Told me the last time he saw Dakota was around Thanksgiving, three weeks or so before she was killed."

"There's no reason to assume Claude's the one who's lying, Detective." Sylvia Foote was quick to take the supportive role. "It depends, doesn't it, on how reliable your eyewitness is. Someone who knew both of them? Some passerby who might be mistaken?"

"Solid as a rock," Mike answered, neglecting to add that he'd be as difficult as a rock to cross-examine at this point, too. "No mistake. I'm asking you to assume for the moment that Claude Lavery outright lied about something as important as that. Why? Does it put him in any worse situation with the college, or does it tell me something I need to know for my investigation?"

Eyelids raised, brows furrowed. I didn't know what Mike was digging for, but I was certain that this message was designed to get back to Lavery as soon as the meeting broke up. Stirring the pot, the lieutenant liked to call it. Seeing whether anyone could be flushed out or who would turn against whom.

"I thought from the outset that it was strange that Claude didn't report hearing any noise, living directly upstairs from Lola." Thomas Grenier wanted to get that off his chest. Nan Rothschild frowned, and I inferred from her expression that she disapproved of his candor.

"I'm a bit surprised, actually," said Shreve. "I don't know why Lavery said that to you. The morning after Lola's death-before he left for vacation-I called Claude to talk about her, about how sad it was. I sort of assumed he'd know more details, being a neighbor and all that. I know he told me that he had gone up in the elevator with her that same day. I'm positive about that. Maybe we can speak with him-"

"That's my job, Professor. I'd appreciate it if you let me do the interviews."

"If your question, Mr. Chapman, is whether Lavery faced administrative action of any other kind, then the answer is no. We'd leave that portion of the case up to you."

"You want to tell us, Mr. Lockhart, what you learned from your grandfather this morning, when you went there to ask him about Freeland Jennings's legacy? You find anything in the attic?"

The young instructor blushed as his colleagues all turned to follow Mike's jab. "I, uh, I had forgotten all about that model until Sylvia's message. Of course I tried to see if it was still at the house. Obviously, I would have brought it back here to the meeting. That's what Miss Cooper wanted to know about, wasn't it?

"I'm planning to drive back up to White Plains after this meeting. Sit down and try to have a lucid conversation with my grandfather, if you all think that would help." Skip Lockhart looked at the faces around the table.

"Maybe Ms. Foote told you, buddy. We're going to keep you company." Mike circled his hand in the air, drawing the group in the room into an imaginary ring.

"I'm game," Shreve said. "We're all interested in this, Skip."

"Well, we can't just pile in on him. The excitement would be too much." Lockhart fidgeted in his chair.

"We don't all have to talk to him at once," Shreve went on. "The detective and you can do the interview. We can wait in another room, so we can brainstorm if he remembers anything. After all, we've got a pretty good collective knowledge of Lola and her habits."

The phone rang and Sylvia answered it. "Just a minute. I'll have him pick up an extension." She motioned to Mike, who stepped out of the room.

"I don't think I need to go," Recantati said. "None of this has anything to do with me."

"Well then, Sylvia," Shreve said, "you can ride up in my car if you like. I've always wanted to meet your grandfather, Skip. Lola told me about his fascinating stories. I assume Miss Cooper and the detective will go together?"

"Yes, we'll meet you there."

Skip seemed reluctant. He had little choice but to offer to drive Nan Rothschild and Thomas Grenier with him.

The door opened and Mike waved me out to the secretary's anteroom. "You mind grabbing a ride with one of them and trying to charm the pants off Grandpa?"

I started to ask him why but turned my head as I noticed that both Winston Shreve and Skip Lockhart had followed me out, looking for paper on the desk behind me to write directions.

"Listen up, blondie. You put the Rand McNally in a safe place, right?"

I was distracted again as Lockhart dropped his pen on the floor. "What?"

"The map."

I nodded that I had.

He looked at his watch and noted that it was almost three o'clock. "I can be in White Plains in an hour. I just got to swing over the bridge to Newark and take a peek in the Hertz parking lot by the airport."

The two professors reentered Sylvia Foote's office.

"How come?"

I was pleased to see his trademark grin. "Tony Parisi called. He's working round the clock on Bart Frankel's unexpected demise. Found out that one of the private investigators Ivan Kralovic had been using on Lola the last year may have a connection to Saturday morning's 'accident.'"

"What kind of connection?"

"A very direct one, apparently. Enough to make Parisi tell me the Jersey prosecutors think they can put the cuffs on Ivan the Terrible and lock him up before he has to shovel the snow out of his driveway tomorrow. Looks like the PI rented a van at the airport on Friday and brought it back in yesterday afternoon, claiming he'd had a fender bender on the turnpike."

"Any damage?"

"There's a big dent on the right front fender and it's covered with chipped paint and what looks like blood, so he's having it tested. Wants you to check the jerk's bank account for deposits from Kralovic when you get a free minute. And he wants me to eyeball it before they haul it off for repair."