Meadowlark (16 page)

I looked at the beam, impossibly high overhead, and tried to
imagine Hugo doing acrobatics.

"I can't cancel the workshop," Bianca said with real
desperation. "Don't you see? I have to salvage something."

Lost innocence, perhaps. I did see, unfortunately, and never
mind that Hugo had refused to attend the opening night celebrations.
Bianca was trying to save an ideal.

I sat down on the bale beside her. "Okay. It'll be a media
circus, though. What do you want me to do? Extra, I mean."

"Oh, God, just back me up."

"That I can do."

We drove down the rutted lane in a fair state of
understanding. When we reached the broccoli fields, she said she
was going to have to harvest the first crop while the workshop was
in session. Otherwise, it would start turning yellow. The Vietnamese
crew had agreed to come Monday.

The ice house was still officially off-limits behind a yellow
tape barrier, but we got out together and looked in the door. The ice
had melted from the bin. The place stank of mold and something less
tolerable, but it was empty. So were the two sheep sheds I had
watched Jason and Bill enter the day before I found Hugo.

Keith and Angie reported that they hadn't seen any sign of
Mary either. Angie was calmer. I suspected Bianca had done the
search to calm Angie down. Marianne fed us coffee and cookies in the
kitchen. She said Del and Mike had driven in to town. It was only
four-thirty, so I decided not to wait for Dale.

As I drove home I began to think about backup strategies, in
case the worst happened and Dale arrested Bianca as the
workshoppers arrived. But I didn't really believe Bianca had killed
Hugo. Her grief, however theatrical its outward signs, seemed
honest. Besides, I couldn't think of a motive. Hugo's death was a
disaster for her. So who had killed him? And how was Mary Sadat
tied to the killing?

If the Vietnamese crew were eliminated, the suspect list was
short. Dale had excluded transients for obvious reasons. Hiding the
bicycle and burying the body under a load of ice required knowledge
of the farm. That meant Hugo had been killed by one of the interns,
by Mike Wallace, or by one of the staff.

Del, Keith, and Bianca were my favorite candidates, but
Marianne had been there that Sunday, and she had demonstrated a
thorough knowledge of the farm. And there was Angie. Angie was
ambitious and opinionated. It was clear she coveted at least some of
Hugo's territory. And, if I had doubted her ability in a knock-down
drag-out fight, that afternoon had dispelled my illusions. She was
hot-tempered and lethally able, but would she harm Mary?

Del, Keith, Bianca, Angie, and, of the interns, Jason and Carol
Bascombe. Jason because Hugo might have threatened his academic
future, and Carol because she was the only one who had expressed
hostility to Hugo directly. The others were dark horses. I had no
clear picture of the Carlsens. Bill seemed too much the follower to
initiate action, but he might have collaborated with Jason. And Mary
was missing.

A log truck passed me going the other way. The Toyota
shuddered in its wake, and I gripped the wheel. A pair of killers. Bill
and Jason, Jason and Bill. The two had gone to Seaside. Had they
offered Hugo a ride home, and quarreled with him on the way back?
If so, how had the bicycle got to the farm?

And what of Mike Wallace? I didn't want to think negative
thoughts about Mike. He was not an intern, not part of the team, but
he was more disturbed by Mary's disappearance than casual
acquaintance warranted. I doubted that Mike would have
collaborated with Jason, but he might have abetted his father. Mike
seemed to take Del's opinions seriously. And Del was a dominant
baboon. He could have fought with Hugo, killed him, then gone to the
house and demanded his son's help.

I reached the turnoff for Shoalwater and drove through the
tiny town at a sedate twenty-five. What was true of Mike was even
more probable of Marianne. Del could have intimidated her into
helping him dispose of the body. I wound out of town on the beach
road, drew up at our garage, and set the brake. My head ached, and it
was my turn to cook dinner.

It was a comfort to discover that my marriage wasn't going
to rise or fall on my cookery. I fixed scrambled eggs and pancakes,
and Jay didn't seem to notice. He was preoccupied by a tall stack of
reports he had to mark by eight a.m. the next day.

When Jay first set up the program at Shoalwater C.C., he
startled his wannabe cops and the English Department by requiring
formal reports in all of the police science classes. They were
technical papers, for the most part, and not exercises in creative
imagination, but he demanded literacy, attribution, and organization.
A surprising number of the first year students changed their major to
P.E. and Recreation by the end of the second term. It was the end of
the second term.

Between papers Jay told me of Dale's efforts to find Mary.
Mary's two large brothers had showed up at the Dean's office. Jay
had rescued him, an experience Jay said made him nostalgic for his
old hostage negotiation days in Los Angeles.

Then Dale had called all the interns to Jay's office and grilled
them about Mary there. Nobody had a hard and fast alibi for the
period in which she had gone missing. It interested me that Carol
Bascombe had showed up on campus. She was supposed to be
suffering from the flu. Dale had also taken Jason and Bill through
their statements about Seaside. They stuck to their story. They had
not seen Hugo the day he was killed. Dale thought they were hiding
something but couldn't figure out what.

The interrogation and the Dean's hand-wringing had
occupied most of the afternoon, as predicted. Jay thought he'd put in
an all-nighter with the reports. I made him a large pot of herb tea
and went to bed.

The next day, which was Thursday, both press coverage of
Hugo's death and the search for Mary Sadat heated up. I noticed the
press first, because a reporter from the
Oregonian
was
camped outside the bookstore. Kayport is off the beaten track, and
the first police report of Hugo's murder--sans mutilation, a detail
Lisa Colman withheld--had been insufficiently sensational to attract
metropolitan coverage. Now Mary was missing, our grace period was
over. I wondered whether television crews had yet reached
Meadowlark Farm.

I gave the reporter a couple of platitudes and a lot of blank
incomprehension. He finally left. Since Bonnie had gone off with Tom
in search of a travel agent, I was alone. I hid in the back room and
played the telephone answering tape. The little red light was
blinking like a lizard in a sand storm.

The first three calls were from reporters, one of whom was
enrolled in the workshop. Her I called. She wanted to know whether
the workshop would go on as scheduled and, when I admitted it
would, asked about Hugo's death. I told her Bianca would make a
statement. The reporter didn't let it go at that, of course, but I
managed to disengage without outright rudeness.

Two customers had called to order books--Danielle Steele's
latest and a tome devoted to poultry-rearing. The second sounded
more interesting. I noted the phone numbers and the books' titles
and looked the poultry book up on my database. It was out of print. I
had Steele in stock. I called the customers.

The next-to-last message was a breathy female voice, rather
garbled. I had to play it twice. It was Carol Bascombe. She said she
had to talk to me and asked me to call her back as soon as I could. I
would have, but she forgot to leave her number.

I stared at the telephone in exasperation. I had not the
faintest idea why Carol was picking on me, but I knew I wouldn't be
able to concentrate on my inventory until I had at least tried to reach
her. Perhaps she had called back with the phone number.

I stabbed the play button and picked up a pen, but the last
message was from Bianca. She asked me to call her when it was
convenient. Her voice was in plaintive mode. It wasn't convenient, so
I didn't call her. Instead I called Jay, got the building secretary, and
explained about Carol. Nancy, bless her heart, said she'd try the
registrar's office.

I sat at the desk entering ISBN numbers into my inventory
program until the phone rang. Nancy with Carol's home number. I
thanked her and hung up. When I tried the number, though, I got
another answering machine. The message was brief and to the point,
but the male voice sounded familiar. I left a short, and possibly
short-tempered, message and hung up.

It's not uncommon for women living alone to ask a male
friend to tape the message for their answering machines. The sound
of a male voice eliminates some of the heavy breathers. As I turned
back to the monitor screen my mind made the connection.

The voice was Jason's. Interesting.

I sat in my padded office chair, staring at the monitor until
the screen-saver pattern came on. Jason and Carol. Mike thought
Carol was an airhead. Jason might be more susceptible. He probably
preferred airheads. Carol had disliked Hugo, Jason had had a grudge.
Had they conspired to kill Hugo? Had Carol called me to confess?
Why me?

I tried to reach her again and hung up when Jason's voice
came on the line. It was half-past eleven. Jay was still in class.
Disgusted and worried, I went out for a sandwich.

Between shelving books and fiddling with my inventory, I
kept trying to reach Carol all afternoon. At three I called Bianca and
got
her
answering machine. I was about to give up and leave
for the day--after all I was still on vacation--when the phone rang. It
was Jay. He said that the police had found Mary's car.

My stomach knotted. "Where?"

"Astoria. It was parked behind a dumpster in the Baylor
lot."

The Baylor was an historic hotel that was being renovated. I
swallowed. "Do they think--"

"They're sifting through the debris right now."

I thought of Mary, shy and pretty. I thought of Carol, too. "I
hate this."

"So does the Dean," Jay said.

The memorial service for Hugo was scheduled for Friday
evening. I woke on that thought after a restless sleep troubled by
nightmares.

Dale had come over after dinner Thursday night looking
exhausted. Mary's body was not in the dumpster, nor did the Astoria
police find other signs of her there, and there was no evidence of a
struggle in the car, which was locked. Dale had spent the day
interviewing her family, the interns, and the farm staff, without
result.

"They're lying!" he burst out when he finished his second
cup of coffee.

Jay yawned. He'd had only two hours of sleep the night
before, but he had finished marking the reports. "Of course they're
lying. Crime suspects always have irrelevant secrets to protect, and
that farm is bound to be full of secrets. It's an unnatural set-up."

"Unnatural!" I scowled at him.

Jay said patiently, "People who work together don't usually
have to live together, too. If I had to live in the same place as the
Dean I'd wind up strangling him."

I contemplated living in the same household as Bianca.

Dale sighed. "Somebody's guilty as sin."

Carol. I had not yet reached Carol. I opened my mouth to
mention her call then thought better of the idea. Carol had called me,
not Dale and not Jay. Maybe she wasn't going to confess to murder.
Maybe she just wanted to know whether I had the latest Danielle
Steele in stock.

Jay was rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I don't
like this business of Mary Sadat. She must have seen something." He
dropped his hands. "And probably not at the farm. She was supposed
to be in Kayport working at the restaurant when Groth was killed.
Did you verify that?"

Dale's mouth tightened. "I asked her folks. She waited
tables."

"What time does the place open?"

"It's popular for lunch as well as dinner. I assumed..." Dale
yanked out his notebook, reached for the phone, and dialed. A voice
responded, and he asked what the restaurant's Sunday hours were.
"Thanks." He hung up slowly. "It doesn't open until four-thirty on
Sundays."

Jay whistled.

"Yeah. Lots of time." Dale slammed his hands on the table.
The mugs jiggled. "She was lying to me. I just asked her parents if she
worked that Sunday, and they said yes, but I damned well did ask
Mary Sadat what time she went to work. She lied." He rose,
energized. "I'm off. Thanks for the coffee, Lark."

"Don't mention it."

Jay said, "Look at all the times, Dale. She wasn't necessarily
out with another student."

Dale nodded. "I'll look, but I want a crack at those interns
tomorrow. Did I tell you they were lying?" He left with a bang of the
back door.

I got up and gathered the mugs. "Maybe Mary lied to her
parents, too."

I caught Jay in mid-yawn. He blinked at me.

I was chasing a small idea. "Her brothers came to confront
the Dean?"

"Yes. Two of them."

"Sounds like a traditional family."

"So?"

"Women in traditional Middle Eastern families are
traditionally deceptive. They have to be if they want any kind of
independence. She was probably seeing somebody her parents
wouldn't approve of."

He got up, eyes on me. "That's a shrewd observation. I doubt
that they'd allow her to go out with a man at all. Her brothers kept
harping on her virtue. At the time, I thought the concern was
irrelevant, that they ought to be worrying about her life."

"Poor kid."

"Yeah. Hell, I can't think." He rubbed his eyes again. "I'm
beat, Lark. I'll talk to Dale tomorrow."

When he had gone up to bed, I picked up the telephone and
tried to reach Carol. My mind was on Mary, so I was startled when
Carol answered my ring.