Grey Expectations (25 page)

‘What?' Dulcie swung around to look at him. This wasn't about library usage. ‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘We think you do.' Harris was leaning forward. He was, she noticed with a sinking feeling, quite large. ‘And we think you should tell us.'

‘I told everything to Detective Rogovoy this morning.'

Harris turned to exchange a look with Read.

‘I assume you've spoken with him?' Dulcie asked cautiously.

‘Yeah, Rogovoy.' Read tossed the name out like a bone. ‘We talked with him, too.'

Something was wrong, terribly wrong. Too late, Dulcie remembered how Trista had been visited by two men who claimed to be police. Rollie, too. Somehow, she felt they had moved beyond merely trying to scare people. She braced herself against her desk.

‘I don't think I want to talk to you.' She stood and put her hand on the back of her chair. ‘It's all on file. I've got to go.'

Harris acted first, lurching out from behind Lloyd's desk. But Dulcie was ready for him. She shoved her own chair at him, rolling it hard into his belly, and then pushed at the books on her desk. They hit Read's feet, and he tipped over backward with a yelp. Harris roared and lunged for her, shoving the chair out of the way. But she'd bought herself a few seconds – and her size served her well. Grabbing her bag, Dulcie ducked under his outstretched arm and bolted down the hall. She'd left her office wide open, but she didn't care. Mr Grey had warned her, and she raced up the stairs, as fast as any small animal in fear for its life.

FORTY

T
he guard, of course, was absent from his post. Absent or  . . . No, Dulcie didn't want to think of what else could have happened to the jovial senior who usually sat behind the desk at the top of the stairs. He was half deaf and no taller than she was, and Dulcie had long suspected the job was something like tenure for the old man, providing a place for him to sit until retirement. He wouldn't have stood a chance against those two. The image of Professor Coffin as she'd last seen him – bloody and still – flashed through her mind again, causing her to pause for a moment. To grab at the wall. Better not to think of it. Of him. Better to just keep moving.

But where? As she pushed out the big door and found herself in the improbably sunny grounds by the Science Center, Dulcie paused again, breathing heavily from her panicked bolt, and looked around. Home was twenty minutes away. The university police, ten. A quick glance behind her showed nobody on the steps, nobody in pursuit, but Dulcie couldn't relax. Even if she had escaped, her safety was temporary. They thought she knew something. Besides, they had terrified two of her classmates – one of whom was missing.

Trista. So brash and sure of herself, her friend was not easily scared. Had they come back to question her again? Had she called their bluff about being cops? Dulcie didn't want to think about it. She did, however, pull out her phone as she set off again, breath ragged in her throat. She was heading into the Yard. There would be people there. Students packing up, parents. Alumni gathering. In the relative safety of the crowd, she could think for a minute. She could make a plan.

As her phone powered up, she saw that she had a message.

‘Dulcie, are you OK?' It was Chris. ‘Please call. I'm leaving my phone on.' She checked the time: he had called only a few minutes ago. Tutorials were supposed to be cellphone free, but she hit redial.

‘Dulcie!' He sounded overjoyed to hear her voice. ‘Hang on a minute, guys. I've got to take this call.'

He was still meeting with his students. Of course, he would be for another half hour. Dulcie tried to keep it short.

‘Hi, Chris. I'm OK. Really. But I think I need to tell the authorities. Those guys are dangerous. I mean, I think they might be involved with Coffin and they kept asking me what I knew and, well, it was just instinct, but—'

‘Wait! Dulcie? Who are you talking about? What guys? Are they with Galveston?'

She hadn't filled him in. ‘This is something different, Chris. Rollie – I mean, Galveston's scared, too. The same two guys came after him, I think. There were two guys, two men in suits. They called themselves Harris and Read, but if those are their real names, then I'm Mrs Malaprop. Anyway, they were in my office and I got away. I'm in the Yard now. I don't know whether to go to the police or the departmental offices. I mean, this is all tied up with the Dunster Codex somehow—'

‘Dulcie, Dulcie, please! Hang on.'

Dulcie paused; he was shouting.

‘Dulcie, please. Get somewhere safe – somewhere with people – and then call me back. Right away. Please.'

‘If you're sure it's OK  . . .'

‘Dulcie!' She agreed and hung up. Maybe it was hearing her boyfriend's voice, maybe it was being outside, surrounded by milling students and their families, but she felt a little more relaxed now. Less scared, but – as she thought about it – angrier. It was time to call a halt to this nonsense.

‘Detective Rogovoy, please.' Dulcie had started walking again, craning her head to see if anyone was following her. She wasn't going to be foolish about this. ‘Tell him Dulcie Schwartz is calling.'

While she waited, she kept walking, striding along the paths that criss-crossed the shaded Yard. Turning left on one, she realized, without much surprise, that she was heading toward Widener. Well, it was her safe place. And she didn't have to go in. She could wait with the guard. If the detective wanted her to, she could head up to the police headquarters from there. Maybe he'd want to send a car to pick her up. The important thing was that she stay in the open.

‘Ms Schwartz?' Whoever had answered the phone was back. ‘I'm afraid Detective Rogovoy isn't available right now.'

She stopped in her tracks. The detective wasn't available?

The voice was still talking: ‘—will speak with you.'

‘Excuse me?' She turned around again, hoping to catch sight of the burly detective on one of the paths.

‘I said that Detective Rogovoy left very specific instructions in case you called.' The speaker sounded young, and Dulcie wondered if the police department used work-study students. ‘He said if you had any questions or concerns, or thought you might have any new insights to share, he would like you to come in.' Or interns. He could be an intern. ‘He said to tell you that Detective Sanchez has been briefed on the case and, um, on your history, it says here. He said you should come in and talk to her.'

‘He did, did he?' It wasn't rational, she knew that, but she couldn't help the feeling that she was being pawned off on a junior staffer. ‘He told her my history?'

‘That's what it says.' The voice sounded sheepish now. ‘I'm just quoting.'

‘I bet.' Dulcie thought for a moment before replying. ‘Well, would you get a message to Detective Rogovoy, please? Would you tell him I
do
have new information, but I also have my own work to do. He can reach me at this number. When he's available.'

She snapped her phone shut with a satisfying click. So much for trusting in the police to be there for her. It didn't matter. Widener stood right in front of her. Her intellectual home, the library was the ultimate safe haven. She looked in through the glass doors at the uniformed guard, standing to attention. It wasn't the same man as the day before, she was happy to see. But she was reasonably sure that anyone posted here would be able-bodied. He certainly wouldn't be deaf.

She climbed the last few steps, batting away a twinge of guilt, as if it were an annoying fly. Before the day was over, she'd talk to Rogovoy. Probably when he got back from lunch. But everything had gotten so complicated, she didn't want to have to explain it all, especially not to some subordinate who wouldn't know all the players and probably had been deputized to keep her calm. Until the big detective could make time for her, she'd be safe in the library. Maybe she could even find out a little bit more of what was going on.

She was about to enter when another thought hit her. That girl – the one who looked like Trista – she worked in the Mildon. Dulcie could stop by and get her name, maybe her phone number. She had been hesitant to ask more about the girl before, back when she thought that she was still being framed for the Dunster Codex theft. Now, thanks to Rollie, she at least had a rough idea of what was going on. And the fact that Rollie had been spooked by the young blonde was added proof that the girl was somehow involved.

Rollie wasn't a bad sort, Dulcie thought. He'd surface again to clear her name. Wouldn't he?

Turning her back on the big glass doors, she scrolled down till she found ‘Roland Galveston' in her contacts. She felt for him, she really did. The financial pressure on students was intense. And if Rollie had already been outed as a fraud, he had nothing more to lose – well, not much more to lose. All he had to do was explain how he had been pressured to copy Dulcie's ID.

She hit ‘call'. Maybe she'd start by asking him about that letter he'd told her he'd helped restore. That was a friendlier note, and she'd never followed up on it. ‘Rollie?'

Three rising tones greeted her, followed by a message she knew too well. ‘The number you have reached is not in service  . . .'

Damn! She clicked off, trying not to panic. This didn't mean that her one-time colleague had gone to ground. Lucy had had her phone turned off many times, and Dulcie had just been thinking of the financial pressure on her colleague. He wouldn't have bolted, would he? Not when she needed him to clear her name by explaining how Professor Coffin—

Professor Coffin, who had just been murdered. Dulcie had felt instinctively that Rollie was incapable of such a crime. That didn't mean the cops would agree. And now that she had filled him in on the news – of the theft and the murder – Rollie had enough sense to see that he'd be the prime suspect. If, that is, he could be tracked.

Well – she turned back toward the library entrance – she would simply have to prove her innocence some other way. Finding that skinny little blonde would be a start. With a new determination, she pushed open the door and strode in.

FORTY-ONE

I
t was nothing, Dulcie told herself as the guard seemed to take an unusually long time to examine her ID. A new guard. Normal precautions. She'd already turned off her phone. There wouldn't be any kind of a watch list with her on it, would there?

Only once he waved her in did she realize she'd been holding her breath. Safely in the elevator, she took out her card to examine it. Photo, check. Name and student number  . . . For a moment, she was seized by a horrible thought. What if
this
were a fake? Maybe her real ID had been the one taken. She flicked the card back and forth under the elevator's fluorescents. The holographic ‘Veritas' seal reflected back and disappeared again. It looked real enough, but Dulcie made a note to talk to Thorpe anyway. She didn't know what would happen to the investigation now that Professor Coffin was dead. She did know she didn't want to be caught short.

The elevator stopped on the third lower level, and Dulcie had to stop herself from getting out. She'd pressed this button automatically, but she wasn't going to her carrel this afternoon. Even if she didn't have other matters more pressing, she didn't necessarily want to go back to work. Call it thesis fatigue, even brain freeze. Ever since reading that essay, Dulcie had simply lost all taste for
The Ravages of Umbria
.

The automatic doors slid closed to descend another floor, and Dulcie allowed herself a moment of reverie.
The Ravages
had been so much of her life. She'd lived through that book, found excitement first in the wild adventures of Hermetria as she battled to save her castle, her inheritance – and then her life. And as Dulcie had gotten more involved in the work, she had been caught up in the drama of its creation as well. The anonymous author, a woman of brains and spunk. Fearless, or so it had seemed, and willing to face down the authorities with her near-revolutionary fervor. No wonder she'd had to flee England. A country at war with Napoleon didn't want to consider social upheaval. The New World must have seemed so much more inviting, and with peace between her homeland and the new republic, travel was finally possible.

Except, well, would that have made her new home less welcoming? With the fledgling United States once more allied with England, would that have meant the conservative forces here would also be on the rise? Could she have been in danger here, as well?

A loud bark caused her to open her eyes. A stooped man, clad in tweed, was waiting. She was blocking the elevator door. ‘Sorry,' she apologized under her breath, and stepped out.

‘Women,' she clearly heard him mutter as he took her place and the doors closed. Maybe things had not changed all that much.

Knowing how her identity had been compromised, Dulcie approached the front desk of the Mildon with trepidation. Whatever she did, she wouldn't leave her bag there, but it was hard not knowing who had been in on the curator's plot. Of course, it might all be moot, she realized as she approached the white counter marking the entrance. Nobody seemed to be on duty at all, and she pressed the buzzer set there for the purpose, only to see the small mouse-like attendant emerge from behind a closed door. ‘Yes, yes, I'm coming.' He pushed his glasses up on his nose as he scurried forward and peered up at Dulcie. ‘Oh, it's you again.'

Dulcie blinked at the unexpected rudeness. ‘Yes, I'm back.' She paused, then let her curiosity get the better of her. ‘Are you surprised?'

‘Well, we'd heard there were some problems.' He waved one pale hand. ‘Never mind, never mind. Here to serve. How may I help you?'

He seemed earnest enough and certainly confident in his self-righteousness. Dulcie wondered briefly if he had been one of the people photocopying IDs – and, if so, if he had been told it was part of a legitimate security proceeding. That wasn't what she'd come to ask about, though.