Final Exam (26 page)

“Hi, Shari, it’s Dr. Bergeron.”

She yawned. “Oh, hi, Dr. Bergeron.”

“I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Clearly, I had, but she was kind enough to pretend otherwise. “No, that’s okay,” she said.

“Is Amanda there?”

She yawned again. Got it. You were sleeping, I thought. “No, she’s out,” she said. “She’s sitting desk at Emanuelle tonight. One of the RAs needed coverage.”

So where was Costas? That didn’t make any sense. Shari yawned a third time, reminding me that I hadn’t responded. “Thanks, Shari. Go back to bed.”

Bart was long gone but I tried to call his room as well. There was no answer, leading me to believe that either Bart had immediately conked out upon arriving at his room or he had stopped somewhere along the way. I was too tired to try to find him. Instead, I went about locking up the building for the night. I looked into the TV room and saw that it was empty, despite the fact that the television was on. I wandered down the other end of the hall, away from my room, and checked the various rooms—the old dining room, another common room, and the room with an old piano in the corner—and saw that they were all empty.

I headed back to my room, and as I listened to my shoes make a clicking sound on the marble, I realized that Trixie wasn’t making a sound as she usually did when she heard me approaching. I put my hand on the knob, curious about the silence that greeted me. I had my keys in hand but it turned out I didn’t need them; the door was unlocked. I couldn’t remember if I had left it like that or not. When I opened the door to my room and entered, seeing Costas sitting in a chair in my parlor room, I only had one question.

“What did you do with my dog?”

When he didn’t respond, I repeated my question. “What did you do with my dog?”

Costas beckoned me to come into the parlor, but I stood in the doorway to the dorm, looking around to see if Trixie was anywhere in the suite. A quick look told me she wasn’t in the bathroom, and if she was in the parlor, she was drugged because there was no way she would have allowed Costas to come into the room without setting up a howl. A howl that even the comatose Bart Johannsen would have heard in the midst of his snore-filled slumber.

“I’m not coming in, and I’m not leaving until you tell me where the dog is,” I said, my panic increasing with the realization that she wasn’t in the room.

“The dog’s fine,” he said. “Come in. I want to have a little chat with you.” He remained in the chair. Had I had warmer feelings toward Costas, I would have warned him of the black mold that was probably eating away at the decades-old Styrofoam cushions inside the chintz upholstery.

“I can hear you just fine from here,” I said. “Talk.”

“There seems to have been some misunderstanding,” he said.

The strains of “Cracklin’ Rosie” filled my head and I attempted to stay with the conversation. After getting up as early as I had, and after what I had done all day, including the trip to Newark, I was exhausted.

When I didn’t answer, he continued. “You see, my daughter loves Brandon. She’s going to marry him in August, despite your attempts to break the two of them up.”

“She’s not sure if she loves him.” And I knew a thing or two about being married to a spouse who doesn’t love you. I was something of an authority on the subject.

“She does. She loves him very much. They’ve been together for four years and she’s going to be very happy. She’s going to have a very happy, very secure life,” he said. “Just like her mother.”

“She was in love with Wayne until recently. She’s a young girl and she’s very confused.” I leaned against the doorjamb. “Did you come all the way here to admonish me about listening to your daughter talk about love? Because that’s all that’s happened.”

He shook his head sadly. “If only that were the truth. You sent that woman to see us tonight. You want to know something. I’m just not sure what it is.”

“I want to know why you are forcing Amanda to marry Brandon. I want to know why two thugs from Newark, where your company is located, beat her up. I want to know why the bulk of your business comes from men going back and forth to Mexico and Latin America. And I want to know why,” I said, going out on a limb, “I found a brick of heroin in Wayne’s room when the strongest thing he’s ever had in his possession is pot.” I left out the fact that they were multiple bags of pot, but that didn’t seem to be a necessary detail. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Does that answer your question?”

“Those are just questions, not answers.” Costas leaned forward in the chair, his weight making it tip toward me slightly. I resisted the urge to tell him to be careful; if he fell flat on his face and busted his nose, it would give me a chance to hightail it out of the building and over to the security booth at the entrance to campus, not that the guys in there would be much help. Not when there were doughnuts to be consumed. Costas stood. “Let’s take a ride.”

I ran out into the hallway and headed to the side door. But Costas was faster than his stocky, Neil Diamond body would suggest and he was on me before I had a chance to get the door open, the old knob its usual cranky self, barely budging when I tried to turn it. He grabbed my shoulder and dragged me back into my suite, throwing me onto the bed and slamming the door behind us.

I sat up straight and watched him as he paced the room. “How did you get in here?” I asked, gesturing around the room.

He smiled. “Easy. After that kid at the desk fell asleep, I went into his knapsack and took the master keys.”

I would have to have a word with Bart when this was over. If I was still alive. “What do you want?”

“I want you to stop interfering in my family’s life.”

“That would have taken a phone call, Costas. This is a little extreme,” I said, chuckling, but not feeling amused. I moved to the edge of the bed so that if I had to, I would be able to get off the sagging mattress quickly. Sitting in the middle of the bed would keep me entombed on the depressed, springless mattress.

He pointed at my face. “You’re very nosy.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“And you’ve stuck your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

“Like where? Like where you had a young kid who needed money for school take drug dealers back and forth to the airport? Or how you had him act as an unwitting drug mule for you?” My voice was shaking, more from anger than fear. “Or like where you planted drugs in Wayne’s room to scare him off campus and away from your daughter? Is that where I’ve been sticking my nose?”

His face changed a few times, and it looked like he was deciding whether to go with indignant, denial, or straight to confession. But if he confessed, he was going to paint himself into a corner, because then he would have to make sure that I went away. Forever. I didn’t entertain that possibility as I pushed him on the details. “So, did you start with Wayne and then ask him for a recommendation for a patsy? Michael Columbo is a nice kid. You could have ruined his life.”

“Better his life ruined than my business go bankrupt,” he said, although that was no excuse for what he had done.

“You have Nicholas. You don’t need anything else,” I said, assuming that Nicholas had infused T&G with the cash it needed to stay afloat.

Costas did a double take. “Nicholas?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Nicholas?” he asked again, this time letting out a belly laugh. “Are you kidding me?” He leaned in close to me and I got a whiff of pungent aftershave. “Nicholas is so busy paying alimony and paying off Brandon’s college expenses that he doesn’t have a pot to piss in.”

“He didn’t give you any money toward the company?” It wasn’t the first time one of my theories was out of left field and proven wrong but I had been pretty dead certain that this one was right.

“At first, but that’s gone,” he said, leaning against my dresser and folding his arms across his chest. I took this as a sign that he was letting down his guard and peppered him with more questions.

“So you decided to start a ‘side business,’ ” I said, “to make a little extra cash? I bet that’s lucrative. That oughta keep you afloat for a while, huh?”

His guard wasn’t completely down; he didn’t answer the question.

“So, Wayne. You planted the drugs in his room. Why?”

He didn’t mind telling me the answer to that one. “I wanted him away from Amanda. And he was going to expose the whole plan.” He smiled at a recollection. “Moron was trying to blackmail me.”

So there it was. He did want Wayne away from Amanda, but more than that, he wanted Wayne to go away for good, not exposing the illegal doings at T&G.

“What was to stop Wayne from exposing you once the police picked him up? What made you so confident that he was going to run?”

He laughed. “Because I had a little dirt on him, too.”

Right, I thought. That made sense.

“And he’s a loser. I made a bet that he would try to disappear and I was right.” He laced his fingers together. “That’s why I stopped by. I wanted to make sure he was gone.”

He had tried to disappear all right. But the first rule of trying to disappear is to leave the premises completely. Going to the convent was a bad move all around.

“And if he stayed, and tried to implicate me, there was nothing that would reveal me. I’m a respected businessman in Newark. Nobody would have believed a cockamamie story coming from a two-bit pot dealer.” His smile got wider when he thought of his plan and how flawlessly it had been executed. The only snafu was when I moved in and starting nosing around.

I wanted to know something else. “Why are you so hell-bent on Amanda marrying Brandon?”

“He’s Greek, he’s smart, and I know his family. He loves my stepdaughter . . . no, he adores her. What could be better?” he asked. “I met my wife two times before I got married,” he said, putting up two fingers. “We were married twenty-five years before she died. She was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said, his eyes misty at the remembrance of the first Mrs. Grigoriadis. “With the exception of Victoria,” he said, quickly amending his original contention. “And, of course, my stepdaughter.” He straightened up suddenly. “Okay, trip down memory lane is over. Let’s go.”

“Let’s go?” I asked, a knot growing in my stomach. “Where?”

He looked at me sadly. “You don’t need to know that.”

I don’t know why I had thought this man—an obviously loving husband and father—would tell me all of this and then just leave. Of course he had planned on killing me all along. A tear ran down my face. “Just go and none of this will ever leave this room. I won’t tell a soul.”

“You already have,” he reminded me. “Don’t you have a boyfriend who’s a cop?”

I nodded. That revelation usually gets me in trouble in situations like this.

Costas continued with his train of thought. “He’ll figure it out. But if you’re gone, he’ll be focused on other things. This whole thing,” he said, throwing his arms wide, “will go away. The kid’s not going to say anything, right?”

I thought about Michael Columbo and his terrified face when we figured out exactly what he was doing to put himself through school, and I realized that he would be just as happy quitting his job and never speaking of his employment at T&G ever again. “They’ll know it’s you.”

Costas shook his head. “No. They won’t.” He reached into a small bag on my dresser—one that I hadn’t noticed previously—and pulled out a syringe filled with some kind of liquid.

I didn’t know what it could be, but I let my mind wander into some very depressing territory. “What’s that?” I asked.

He turned. “Heroin. Grade A stuff. You’ll have a nice trip and then”—he snapped his fingers—“nothing.”

All of a sudden, “Cracklin’ Rosie” sounded very sinister to me; I wouldn’t ever listen to it the same way again. “Hey,” I said, trying to throw him off while I concocted a way out of the situation, “has anyone ever told you that you look like Neil Diamond?”

Costas let a small smile play on his lips. “You’re a very strange woman.” He held the syringe up and tapped it with his finger.

“And do you know what a ‘store-bought woman’ is?” I asked, a sob escaping from my throat as he grabbed me and pulled me up. Outside my door, I heard the familiar sound of nails tapping on marble, and I managed to let out a scream before he lunged toward me and put a meaty hand over my mouth. Trixie set up a howl on the other side of the door and I heard Bart Johannsen’s voice.

“Professor Bergeron?” he called. “Are you okay?”

I looked at Costas, my eyes wide. His grip tightened. He looked from me to the door several times.

Bart began banging on the door. “Professor Bergeron?”

I started to squirm and thrash, succeeding in knocking the syringe from Costas’s hand, and giving him a big, hard kick in the shins. When his hand slipped a little I let out another garbled scream.

Bart stopped knocking and I prayed that he was smart enough to do what I thought he would do, rather than run for help. As I heard his body make contact with the old door for the first time, I said a silent prayer of thanks that good, old, lazy, sleeping Bart had a better head on his shoulders than I would have thought. I imagined his giant Scandinavian body—broad shoulders and tree-trunk legs—being hurled against the door and hoped that the door would cave in before Costas broke my neck or choked me to death.

Costas let me go and scrambled after the syringe. I jumped on his back and began to hit him around the head; he used the hand not holding the syringe to swat at me. He stood and shook me off, and I fell against the dresser, which hit me in the small of the back. I started for the door, but he blocked my path, knocking me sideways onto the bed. He stood and pulled his arm back, ready to stab me anywhere he could. On my back, I had one last chance, and I used it; I pulled my legs back and, with all my might, kicked him in the crown jewels.

Bart crashed through the door at exactly the same moment as Costas crumbled to the floor, grabbing his crotch and writhing in pain. Trixie was right behind him and she circled Costas, knowing instinctively that he wasn’t a nice man. She took a chunk out of his calf for good measure and the sound that Costas let out was something I hoped I would never hear again. Bart took in the scene and looked at me.