Extra Credit (12 page)

I left Abe feeling better. I taught another class, then had stopped by my office just to pick up my things before calling it a day when there was a knock at my door, a sound that made me grimace in frustration. All I wanted to do was get the hell off campus and home to my husband and our dog, have a glass of wine, and relax. The night of worrying about how Trixie would fare all day without us, an unfounded fear after all, had taken its toll, and I was completely spent.

I called out to whoever was on the other side of the door to come in. To make it clear that my departure was imminent, I put my messenger bag on top of my desk and began putting books, folders, and assorted papers into it.

Mary Lou Bannerman poked her head in before coming all the way into the office. “Am I catching you at a bad time?” she asked.

For some reason, I was relieved to see her and not another student, someone who might suck up a good hour of my time asking for help with an assignment or requesting a recommendation for graduate school. Even though I wasn’t required to see students outside of my regularly posted office hours, I never turned anyone away, so it was my own fault if I didn’t get off campus until after six some nights. “No, please come in,” I said, “and have a seat.”

“I’m not staying,” she said. Her class had ended hours before, so I wondered why she was still on campus; maybe she was taking other courses at St. Thomas? She must have read my mind. “In the library,” she said, pointing toward the building just beyond the cemetery that could be seen from my office. “I wanted to work in complete silence, and being as we’re remodeling our family room and one of our bathrooms at home, I knew that would be impossible.” She looked at me, worry scurrying across her beautiful features. “You didn’t seem yourself in class today, so I just wanted to make sure everything was alright.”

I was close to cracking, but I managed to hold it together. I don’t know what it was about her—her sincerity, her concern, or just her serene demeanor—that made me want to burst out crying and reveal everything, but I had to remind myself that she was a student and I was her professor and that kind of behavior was completely inappropriate. “I had a stressful weekend. I guess I wasn’t able to shake it off as quickly as I had hoped.”

She stayed in the door of my office, a notebook and the textbook for our class held to her chest. “I’m so sorry. Anything you want to talk about?” she asked. She smiled. “I guess that’s a little out of the ordinary, you talking to a student about your stressful weekend?”

I nodded. “You could say that.”

She smiled again. “I thought so. Listen, though, if there’s anything I can do—”

“Someone poisoned my dog,” I blurted out. I put a hand to my mouth. “I’m sorry. That’s what happened. Someone poisoned my dog,” I said, and as I repeated it, I felt a tear slip down my cheek; I hastily brushed it away, but she saw it.

She dropped the notebook and the textbook on my desk and came over to give me a hug. The scent of her perfume, reminiscent of a fragrance my mother used to wear, was comforting, and I took a deep breath, inhaling it along with the memories it brought forth. I broke the hug quickly. “Thank you,” I said.

“Who on earth would poison a dog?” she asked.

I continued putting papers into my bag, not intending to do anything with them when I got home; the action gave me something to do and a way to avoiding looking into the kind face of this woman who had seen her own share of heartache. “I don’t know,” I said, “but I’m going to go home and curl up with her and make sure she’s doing better.”

“That sounds like a splendid idea,” she said. “I hope you have a lovely evening.”

“Thank you, Mary Lou.”

“I’m glad everything is okay with your dog. What’s her name?” she asked.

“Trixie.”

“Sounds like a beautiful name for a beautiful retriever,” she said.

I had never said what kind of dog she was; I gave Mary Lou a quizzical look.

She pointed to my desk. “That’s her, right? With your husband?”

I looked at the picture on my desk in which Trixie was front and center, Crawford kneeling behind her. I had taken it one weekend when in a misguided desire to get some fresh air I had dragged the two of them to a spot about a half hour north of the house that boasted spectacular views. What it also boasted was a hiking trail that went straight up at a forty-five-degree angle, so when we arrived at the top, we were incapable of looking at the view, thanks to our exhaustion from making the trek. I remember my hands shaking as I aimed the camera at the two of them, managing despite my fatigue to get a great shot, the fall leaves behind them in spectacular array.

What was wrong with me? Here was this nice woman trying to help me get past my horrible state of mind, and all I could think was that she hadn’t known the breed of my dog prior to entering my office and having a conversation with me. I needed sleep badly. I was losing it.

She patted my shoulder one more time. “Come on. I’ll walk you out.”

I threw my bag over my shoulder and locked my office door on the way out, grateful for the company of this lovely lady who wanted to write a novel about a murder.

As I had often thought in the past, St. Thomas University made strange bedfellows. I realized as she walked away in the parking lot, having seen me to my car, that I never asked her why she had come by my office.

Fifteen

Max and Fred were at the house when I got home, and I moaned to myself as I drove up the driveway, having spotted their car parked at the curb. It’s not that I don’t love my best friend; she can be a little
much
, though, and God knows she had been really irritable lately. I wasn’t in the mood. Knowing that they were there filled me with dread; I had a date with the luscious Trixie Bergeron-Crawford and her even more luscious owner, Crawford, and a bottle of wine that didn’t have “Gallo” written anywhere on the label. I got out of the car and picked my way across the backyard in my heels, thinking that they would be the first item of clothing I removed when I entered the house.

The group was clustered in the kitchen, Chinese takeout containers strewn across the counter. At least they had had the good sense to bring dinner. Drinks were well under way, and I heard Fred’s booming voice bouncing around my small Cape Cod. Everyone fell silent when I walked in.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Crawford said quickly. “Everything’s fine. Trixie’s doing great.”

“Where is she?” I asked.

“She’s upstairs next to our bed.” He pointed toward the stairs. “Go see for yourself.”

I took my shoes off and held them in my hands as I went up the stairs. Trixie was in her favorite spot on the throw rug next to Crawford’s side of the bed, stretched out and sleeping peacefully. When she sensed my presence, her eyes flew open and she got up, lumbering over to me for some love. I got on the floor in my work clothes and kissed and hugged her, ruffling her ears. Her nose was wet and shiny, just as it should have been, and her eyes looked clear. I let out a sigh of relief, my breath still redolent from my lunch with Abe, the panini having been followed by an espresso chaser.

After she was satisfied that I had given her enough love, Trixie drifted off and went back to her spot next to the bed, where she fell heavily to the ground, her back legs tucked underneath her, her front paws under her chin. The dressing from her intravenous puncture was still wrapped around her leg, but she didn’t seem troubled by it, so I left it on. I pulled off my skirt and sweater and threw on a pair of baggy pajama pants and a St. Thomas T-shirt; Fred and Max weren’t what I would consider “company,” so I made the decision to go with comfort over style. After I washed up, I went downstairs to partake of the Chinese feast that awaited me.

Not being the types to stand on ceremony, they had eaten before I had gotten home. I resisted the urge to tweak Crawford about it, but when the guy needs to eat, the guy needs to eat, and the alternative was a testy and weak man who wasn’t a lot of fun to be around. I heaped a pile of lo mein and General Tso’s chicken onto my plate and put it into the microwave for thirty seconds, hoping that that would land me somewhere between lukewarm and nuclear, heatwise. Crawford had already made me a martini—three olives, a little dirty—which was waiting for me on a place mat on the kitchen table. I carried my plate over and sat down, digging into the lo mein first.

I didn’t wait until I had finished chewing my first bite before pointing my fork at Fred and saying, “If I find out who poisoned my dog, I will kill them.”

He put his hands up in surrender. “I believe you.”

Crawford pulled open the refrigerator and handed Fred a beer, grabbing one for himself as well. “I have to call the detective tomorrow, but nobody seems to be able to figure out how someone got in here.” He opened his beer and tossed the cap into the sink. “Including me.”

Fred gave him a hard stare. “You’re better than that.”

“Don’t think I don’t know that,” Crawford said. “It’s driving me crazy, but I can’t find where they got in.”

Fred downed his beer and banged the bottle onto the countertop, so hard that it was a miracle that it didn’t shatter. “Let’s look.”

“I’m telling you, Fred,” Crawford protested, “we were all over this place.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t all over this place, and that’s what you need.”

Max nodded vigorously. “That’s exactly what you need.”

“That and an alarm system,” Fred said before he started canvassing the downstairs. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you people.”

“You people?” I asked.

“Yeah, you people. Suburbanites. The kind that think nothing bad will ever happen to them.”

As he exited the kitchen, I called after him. “Hey! I once saw a body with no hands and feet! Check that!
Two
bodies with no hands and feet. Don’t lecture me on what we suburbanites think about safety.” Too bad he was gone. Although even if he had stuck around to hear my tirade, he wouldn’t have cared. That’s how Fred rolls.

Max looked at me. “Think they’ll find anything?”

I shrugged.

“It’ll make them feel better one way or the other,” she said.

I hadn’t really looked at her when I walked in, just having given her a cursory glance. “Are you wearing a Lambda Pi Eta sweatshirt?” LPH was the Department of Communications honor society at St. Thomas and elsewhere, and Max had been a member in good standing back when Bill Clinton was in his first term, before he’d even met Monica Lewinsky. That item of clothing was soon to have its twentieth birthday, but what was more amazing was that it was still in such good shape; certainly it had seen its fair share of barroom floors, Max having been a bit of klutz back in the day.

“Still fits,” she said proudly, puffing out her chest.

“Why wouldn’t it?” I asked. “You’ve been a hundred pounds since the day I met you.” I forked in another heap of lo mein. “And it’s an extra large.” I put my fork down. “What’s going on with you? Is it your birthday? The big four-oh?”

The sound she made was a cross between a Bronx cheer and something much more dismissive. “No,” she said, but it didn’t sound convincing.

“Then why are you dressing like a teenager again?” I asked. “I miss the Jimmy Choos and the Prada coats and the Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses. I miss you,” I said, pointing at her.

“I’m still here,” she said.

“Then why are you dressing like you did when we were in college? The Ramones T-shirt? The ripped leggings?”

“Hey,” she said, jumping off her perch on the counter. “Do I criticize you for dressing like Leave It to Beaver’s mother? Huh? Do I?”

“That would be June Cleaver,” I said.

“Right. Her.” She leaned in and picked a piece of chicken off my plate. “The pearls, the pumps, the sweater sets. Do I criticize you?”

“As a matter of fact, you do. All the time. Sometimes I feel really bad about myself because when I think I’m looking good, you dispel that notion with one word.”

She let out a little puff of air. “You make it sound like I’m not nice to you.”

“Sometimes, you’re not.”

“You don’t respect what I do,” she said.

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re always making fun of the shows on my channel,” she said.

“
Hooters: PIs
? Come on, Max. That’s funny,” I said. Why she couldn’t see that eluded me. We had had this discussion a hundred times; I would never not see the humor behind the show.

“I’ll have you know that that show is making people a ton of money.”

As if that were proof of its legitimacy. “It’s funny, Max. Women running around in tank tops and short shorts solving crimes?” I asked. She wasn’t having any of it.

She gave me a hard look. “Do you really want to do this?”

I was tired. My dog had been poisoned. My husband looked like he had shell shock. No, I did not want to do this.

“Stop making fun of what I do,” she said.

“Okay, and you just think about what you say to me. That’s all I ask.”

As she often does when confronted with the truth, Max changed the subject. “How’s Trixie?”

I decided to ride her wave of denial. “She’s fine.” I put my napkin on top of my lo mein and chicken. “I would tell you to go up and see her, but as we both know, she hates you.”

Max snorted. “Dog has no taste.” We heard Fred and Crawford banging around above us. She looked up at the kitchen ceiling. “God, I hope they find something. Fred will be in a funk for days if they can’t solve this locked room mystery.”

“Good point.” I stood and rinsed my dish off in the sink. “Speaking of your birthday, what are we doing?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I just want to forget that it’s happening. The party at my parents’ was enough for me.”

I knew it. She was having a major issue with turning forty. “But we need to celebrate together,” I said, not content with leaving well enough alone. Above me, I heard Fred grunt and then let out a triumphant cry. “I guess they found something.”

I hadn’t really focused on the fact that someone had broken in, concerned as I was about Trixie’s health first and foremost, but hearing the effort that they were putting into solving the mystery of how someone had gotten into our hermetically sealed house made me realize that I should be paying closer attention. I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up. “Success?”