Come Unto These Yellow Sands (10 page)

That was both disconcerting and confusing, but even more confusing was Nerine Corelli going to the college with whatever her complaint was. She hadn’t seemed angry or suspicious during their brief meeting, so what had changed?

Becoming aware that Koltz was still waiting for a reply, Swift said stiffly, “If you feel it’s necessary to check up on me.”

“This isn’t personal, Professor Swift,” Koltz said quickly. “Faculty members hold a position of trust and must be above reproach. We all know you’ve had some issues in the past. Happily nothing that we’re aware of during your tenure at CBC, but I have to think of the college when someone—let alone the mayor—makes an accusation like this.”

“I wasn’t aware she was the mayor yet.”

Koltz’s cheeks went slightly pink. “Mrs. Corelli is the mother, er, stepmother of the missing student, that’s the real point.”

No, it wasn’t, but whatever the real point was, Swift couldn’t figure it out. He said tersely, “Be my guest. Call Max.”

Koltz’s eyes flickered at the deliberate reminder of Swift’s own political alliances. He said in his normal hearty way, “I have no doubt Chief Prescott will confirm everything you say, and we’ll be able to put this unpleasantness behind us.”

Swift took that as his cue to escape and rose.

He almost didn’t have the nerve to go back to his office knowing that Dottie would be waiting and watching, hoping for a sign that he’d been suspended or at the least suitably reprimanded.

Swift knew he wasn’t everyone’s cup of poison, but it did shake him to recognize he was actively disliked in certain quarters. He had always considered his presence a fairly insignificant blip on the CBC radar.

When he reached Chamberlain Hall, he quietly opened the side entrance and sneaked down the empty hall to his office. This was likely what Tad had done the afternoon he’d waited for Swift. Granted, Tad was a kid, and Swift was a grown man who probably ought to show a little more backbone.

To his relief no students waited for him. He let himself in his office, closed the door and locked it. He left the light off and sat down behind his desk, resting his face in his hands. For a few minutes his thoughts were a chaotic jumble of resentment, fear and bewilderment.

What if Max didn’t back him to Dr. Koltz? What if he gave Koltz the whole, unvarnished story? Swift’s stomach did a flop like a dying fish, and he reached for the phone on his desk. He realized the red message light was blinking.

He stared. More bad news? He wasn’t sure he could deal with it.

Instead he dialed Max’s cell. His heart pounded so hard with an irrational mix of nerves and worry it was almost hard to breathe. Maybe the years of drug abuse were about to catch up and he was going into cardiac arrest.

“Prescott,” Max answered abruptly. If he’d seen the number flash up, he didn’t sound particularly thrilled to hear from his former fuck buddy. Swift’s anxiety shot up another degree.

“Max…” The word cracked. Swift froze. He didn’t trust his voice. It was like having vertigo and being stuck on a ladder—unable to climb up and unable to crawl down.

“Still here,” Max said after an agonizing second or two.

Swift put his hand to his throat and squeezed, trying to control the threatened shake. “Did…Dr. Koltz…call?”

“That blubber-ass windbag,” Max said. “I just got off the phone with him.”

Koltz must have snatched the phone up the instant the door closed behind Swift.

Into Swift’s strangled silence, Max clipped out, “Don’t worry. I corroborated your story.”

Swift squeezed the muscles in his throat so hard it hurt. “Thanks.”

Max said dryly, “Don’t mention it. And I do mean that.” He disconnected.

Swift listened to the buzz of dial tone. It sounded…final. At last he replaced the handset, remembered the blinking light and pressed the button for voice mail.

“Swift, my dear,” Bernard’s slightly fuzzy voice greeted him.

Swift’s first thought was that somehow his involvement in the Corelli case had made its way into the national news, but Bernard’s next words cleared that up. “I wondered if you’d had time to think over what we discussed the other day.”

There was even a little pause as though Bernard was waiting for Swift’s response.

“The last thing anyone wants is to put undue pressure on you, but it’s been almost seven years, after all. Time, surely, to have come to terms with…everything.”

Another pause before Bernard’s voice returned with that confessional note.

“You must remember what Richard Rosen said?
The poem is the point at which our strength gave out.
It’s time to go back and
look
, my dear. You’re strong enough to face it now.”

Swift quietly pressed the receiver button.

Chapter Eight

You’ve arrived at the banks of the Yanayacu River to join a medical expedition in the Amazon jungle, but base camp is completely deserted. Your colleagues have been lured into the shadowy jungle by the eerie music of a mysterious flute. Now you are alone with only strange Incan hieroglyphics left in the sand to guide you.

If you choose to spend time translating the message in the sand, turn to page 36.

If you choose to follow the eerie music of the flute, turn to page 97.

Or, given your luck, maybe you better stay safely at base camp and hope the rescue team shows up before you starve to death or have to resort to eating palm grubs.

Swift stared down at his plate. Arugula salad with grilled mushrooms and goat cheese. It just as well might have been palm grubs, given his appetite.

The doorbell rang, startling him out of his dismal thoughts.

He shoved his chair back and went down the steps and across the long polished wood floor to answer the door. As he passed the angel in the alcove, his pulse picked up—he didn’t want to examine
why
too carefully.

Whoever he was expecting, it was not the plump but attractive middle-aged woman on his doorstep. She was quite short, with salt-and-pepper curls. She wore a leather jacket and jeans.

“Yes?” Swift waited to hear a sales pitch for a church he did not belong to and never would—belonging being a two-way street.

“Are you Professor Swift?”

The wise answer was probably
who wants to know?
Swift settled for a cautious nod.

“I’m Cora Corelli. Tad’s mom.”

“Oh?” Swift said still more cautiously. Given the unpredictable result of his chat with Nerine Corelli, he was on his guard.

“I wanted to thank you for what you did for my son.”

“I didn’t actually do anything. I’d have been glad to help, but—”

“Tad’s been framed,” Cora blurted.

Swift’s shoulders slumped. There wasn’t any getting around this. “Would you like to come in?” He already knew the answer.

Cora nodded and crossed the threshold. Inside the entrance hall, she gazed about at the long, open rooms, the martial angel guarding its alcove, the soaring ceiling, the paintings. Her stare traveled up the narrow staircase to the loft with the decorative iron railing and the winged bronze.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What kind of place is this?”

Was that rhetorical?

“I guess it suits you.” Cora’s dark eyes met his. “Is your mother still living, Professor Swift?”

“Yes.” Swift was still trying to decide if there was an insult in her comment about his living space. It was probably not a compliment.

“Are you close to her?”

“No.”

Understatement of the decade. Even before she had publicly blamed the worry and anguish over Swift for contributing to Norris’s failing health, Marion Gilbert Swift had washed her hands of her “terminally troubled” only child. Forget Dr. Spock. Marion had been into the Three Strikes school of parenting.

Not that Swift really blamed her. He’d have washed his hands of himself too—in fact, he’d tried pretty determinedly to do just that.

“That’s wrong,” Cora said. “A mother is a boy’s best friend.”

Swift just managed to keep from saying
I thought it was a dog
.

“My son is everything to me.”

“He’s lucky,” Swift said politely. Personally, he thought she sounded like a nut.
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
Surely she was something other than just Tad’s mom? Swift tried to picture her twenty years younger. She was so utterly different from Nerine Corelli. A couple of decades ago she’d probably been a cute armful, but temperamentally she’d have been much the same—in fact, she’d probably mellowed. People usually did.

“Someone is trying to frame my son.”

“So you said. Why do you think that?”

“It’s obvious.”

It wasn’t obvious to Swift. “You think your ex-husband was killed just to frame Tad?”

“No, no. Of course not.” Cora turned away, slowly walking the circumference of the main room, studying the paintings and objets d’art littering the shelves. “But whoever killed Mario deliberately tried to implicate Tad.”

“That seems unlikely,” Swift said, watching her examine a tall bronze finial that someone had sent him after
BS
had been published. It was supposed to be from the Chapelle Saint-Blaise-des-Simples in Milly-la-Forêt where Jean Cocteau was buried. People had done things like that, back in the day. Sent him gifts. Wrote him deeply personal letters about how his words touched their lives. “The most damaging piece of evidence was the fact that Tad ran, and how could anyone know he’d do that?”

“Whose side are you on?” Cora demanded, turning to him. Tears filled her eyes and brimmed over.

“I want to help Tad however I can,” Swift said honestly. “I just don’t follow how or why you think he was framed.”

“Because whoever killed Mario knew that Tad would be the first person the police suspected.”

Was that how it worked? Swift had a vague memory of Max once saying that the first person to look at in a homicide was the spouse. Or maybe ex-spouse? Were children equally suspect? What a voracious world it was.

“Let me tell you about Mario. The divorce was his idea. I didn’t want it. I’m a good Catholic. I don’t believe you end your marriage because you get tired of waking up next to the same person every morning for fifteen years.”

Swift opened his mouth, but Cora drove right past. “Nerine was a
hostess
in our
family
restaurant.”

“I didn’t realize.”

“That’s right. A hostess.” Never had a simple job description sounded so sleazy. “And not as young as she acts, either. But he decides he’s going to marry her. Okay. I can’t stop him. But then he decides that a boy needs to be with his father, and he insists that he’s going to have custody of Tad.”

“Wasn’t Tad old enough to have a say?”

“Yes. But Judge Vecchio was a golfing buddy of my husband. So was Dave Luthor, my lawyer. Mario knows—knew—everybody in this town. So
I
got cheated on, and
I
got partial custody.”

It sounded to Swift like she had cause for grievance. Of course there were two sides to every story.

“Do you have any idea of where Tad is?”

Cora shook her head. “I thought you might. I need to see him. He needs me now.”

Why did everyone think Swift knew where Tad was? And why the hell couldn’t Tad have confirmed everyone’s assumptions and just gone to Orson Island?

“I don’t know where he is.”

“I heard you do. Nerine says you do.”

So the first and second Mrs. Corelli were now on speaking terms? The divorce had clearly not been amicable. Nerine had seemed to concur on that point. But maybe time had healed some wounds. Or maybe Mario’s death made the old injuries irrelevant.

Swift replied, “I don’t know where Nerine got that. I went to see her in the hope that
she
knew where he was.”

“She wouldn’t know. Tad wouldn’t go to her for help. He’s
my
son.”

Here be dragons. “Right. Well, she seemed to agree with that. Do you have any idea of where Tad might go?”

Cora shook her head.

“Do you know where his girlfriend—?”

“Tad doesn’t have a girlfriend,” Cora interrupted.

“Oh.” Swift considered this, deemed it wise to let it ride. “What about friends? I know he used to hang with Hodge Williams and Denny Jensen.”

“Denny, yes. Hodge and Tad grew up together. But they don’t have so much in common anymore. Not after Tad quit the football team. Most boys think poetry is for pansies.” Meeting Swift’s eyes, she shrugged. “Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

“I know some people think that way,” Swift replied, because what purpose would be served by debating it with her? This was a woman who believed she was her son’s best friend. “Are they still close enough that Tad would go to Hodge or Denny for help?”

“I already asked Hodge. He said Tad went to you.”

Now
they were getting somewhere, because how could Hodge know that Tad had been to see Swift unless Tad had told him? It wasn’t something Max was likely to spread around.

“Mario wanted Tad in his life. What was Tad’s relationship like with his father?”

“Mario was not a good father.”

Swift’s father had been one of the best. Unfortunately he hadn’t realized it at the time. But maybe that was true of most kids. “Is that what Tad thought?”

“Of course that’s what Tad thought. It’s what everyone thought. Mario was never there when Tad needed him. Not there in body and not there in spirit. And when he got mad, watch out.” Cora wiped at the tears, smearing her mascara.

“He hit Tad?”

“Tad, me, anyone who pissed him off.”

“Did you ever file assault charges?”

“No!” Cora sounded like Swift had said something ridiculous. She looked at the black smudges on her fingers. “Can I use your little girl’s room? I need to freshen up.”

Swift raised an eyebrow, restrained himself, pointed. “It’s the white door around the pillar there.”

Cora thanked him and disappeared between the carved pillars.

Swift went into the kitchen and put the teakettle on. He felt certain he was going to need a quiet, calm cuppa once the ex-Mrs. Corelli departed.