Power of Suggestion (7 page)

“Hello, girls! Larry Boyd here,” he greeted them, shooting them an electrifying smile. “Glad you could make it. You got lucky, I have an open half hour. You don't know how hard it is to grab a minute around here. So what can I do you for?”

Nancy shook Boyd's hand mutely, feeling overwhelmed by his verbal barrage. He looked like a man who never stopped smiling. As Boyd ushered her and Bess into his office, Nancy said, “We were very interested in Dr. Edberg's project. We thought we could do a story about subliminals for the school newspaper.”

“It's great stuff, let me tell you. This field has a big, bright future, and here at Positive Tapes we're right on the cutting edge. Have a seat.”

He gestured to a couch that faced his chrome
and glass desk. The stark white wall behind Boyd was covered with framed photographs of him posing with famous actors, politicians, and athletes.

When the girls were seated, Larry Boyd leaned over his desk and lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Did you know that most people use only one tenth of their brainpower? It's a fact! All that human potential waiting to be unlocked—and we have the key!”

Nancy exchanged a quick look with Bess. Was this guy for real?

Boyd grabbed a tape off his desk and held it up for them to see. The title on its label was, Be Smoke-Free in a Week!

He jumped back up to his feet. “Come with me!” he said, and strode out of the room without a backward glance.

Nancy shrugged at Bess, then the two girls hurried to follow him. “Hold my calls, Margie,” Boyd remarked as he zipped by the receptionist. He led the girls into a mirrored elevator off the lobby and pushed the button for the third floor. “That's where our recording studios are,” he explained.

They emerged on the third floor, and Larry Boyd led them down a gray-carpeted hallway. There were a dozen doors along the hallway, each one leading to a state-of-the-art recording studio. After directing the girls into an empty studio, Boyd sat at a console and popped the tape into a cassette deck.

“Just listen to this,” he said.

The studio had a spectacular speaker system, Nancy realized as sounds of the sea filled the room. She could just picture gentle breakers rolling up onto a sandy beach. There were the cries of sea gulls and then a beautiful, gentle melody played on a harp.

“It's beautiful,” Bess commented. “But how does it make people stop smoking?”

“Listen.” Boyd turned some dials, and the music faded away. The sound of a voice rose up, until they could hear it clearly. Nancy recognized Larry Boyd speaking softly and soothingly.

“I am a healthy, beautiful human being. My body is pure, clean. I have no desire to fill it with smoke. My need for cigarettes is falling, falling away. I feel a deep, inner peace.”

The voice went on, but Larry Boyd turned the dials again, and the voice faded until once again there was only the music and the sound of the sea.

“That works?” Bess asked, looking amazed.

“You bet it does!” Boyd asserted, smiling broadly.

“But you don't have any proof of that,” Nancy pointed out.

“Until now,” he corrected her. “Thanks to Aaron Edberg, we're on the verge of clinical proof. I've built a nice little business here. We have a thriving mail-order operation, and our tapes are in bookstores and music shops all over
the country. But now we're ready to take the next step—”

“Dr. Edberg said the government is interested in subliminal tapes,” Bess put in.

“That's right. But there's heavy pressure from the government to demonstrate that these things work.”

Nancy hesitated slightly before asking, “What if they
don't
work?”

Boyd frowned. “That, young lady, is the downside. There are government regulators who want to put controls on the claims we can make for our tapes and even on the types of tapes we can sell. That's a problem!” He sighed theatrically, then brightened. “But with the great results Aaron Edberg has been getting . . .”

Nancy didn't trust Larry Boyd, but she wasn't sure how he might have been involved in Wayne's murder. “Does Wayne Perkins's murder interfere with your plans at all?” she asked.

“What a terrible tragedy. Sure it does,” Boyd replied. “That boy was very important to Aaron. I don't know what effect his death will have on Aaron's research. Frankly, I'm a bit worried.”

“Did you know Wayne?” Bess asked.

Larry Boyd shook his head. “Afraid not. I never met him. I tried to keep a hands-off policy—didn't want to be accused of trying to influence the results of the study. It's a funny thing. I've lived in Emersonville all my life, but I've never been out to the college.”

Nancy looked over as the door to the studio
opened and Margie entered with a tray on which were a pot of tea, a sugar and creamer, and three cups. “I thought you might want a little something to warm you up,” she said.

Larry Boyd was certainly a charmer, Nancy thought as she and Bess gratefully accepted the hot tea from Margie. What she still didn't know was whether or not he had been involved in a murder.

After taking a sip of her tea, Nancy asked, “So you weren't anywhere near campus last night?”

“No, ma'am!” Boyd laughed. “Margie, hon, where was I last night?”

“Where you are every night, Dad. Right here,” she answered.

“That's right!” he said. “I get here at seven in the morning, stay till nine every night!”

Nancy and Bess asked some more questions while they finished their tea but didn't find out anything more specific about Professor Edberg's study or about how Larry Boyd might fit into Wayne's murder.

“Mr. Boyd, this has been fascinating, but we really shouldn't take up any more of your time,” Nancy finally said, getting to her feet.

“Yes. Thank you so much,” Bess added.

Larry Boyd and Margie accompanied them back to the lobby. As Nancy and Bess headed for the door, Boyd insisted that they take a copy of the Positive Tapes promotional brochure. On its cover was a glossy color photograph of Larry Boyd's smiling face.

“Mr. Enthusiasm,” Bess muttered when they were back in Nancy's car. “Do you think he's for real?”

Nancy shrugged. “I think he's a great salesman, but whether or not he believes his own hype is hard to say.”

“What were you getting at with those questions about Wayne?” Bess asked.

“I was just probing a little. I wanted to see if he had anything to gain from Wayne's death,” Nancy explained.

“And?”

“It sounded like just the opposite, as if Wayne's death could actually hurt his study. Still, I'd like to know more about Larry Boyd.”

“How do we do that?”

“He said he's lived here all his life,” Nancy said, starting the engine. “Somebody with that much personality is sure to get his name in the local paper now and then. Let's go take a look.”

• • •

The Emersonville public library had a complete set of the Emersonville
Gazette
on microfilm going back fifty years. Nancy and Bess took a tray of tapes covering the past twenty-five years and set themselves up in front of a pair of microfilm reading machines. They started with the annual indexes, searching for anything on Larry Boyd or Positive Tapes, Inc.

Recent issues of the paper were full of items about Boyd and his company. Positive Tapes was one of the town's leading employers, the girls
discovered, and Larry Boyd was one of Emersonville's biggest boosters. He was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Lions Club, the Rotary, and he was a town councilman. From all that the girls read, he was a pillar of the community.

But earlier editions of the paper told a different story about Mr. Boyd. There was the legal trouble fifteen years ago, when Boyd had run a practice as an unlicensed hypnotherapist. And a few years before that he had had his insurance license revoked when he forged a client's signature.

“Look at this,” Nancy said in a hushed tone as she fed yet another roll of microfilm into the machine. Bess squeezed in next to her to look at the screen.

The issue of the
Gazette
on the screen was from twenty years earlier. A front-page photograph showed a much-younger Larry Boyd being led from the courthouse by two officers. He wasn't smiling.

Bess gasped as she read the caption beneath the photo: “ ‘Lawrence Boyd Delbert sentenced to five years in the state penitentiary for manslaughter'!”

N
ANCY LET OUT
a low whistle. “I'll bet this isn't in Boyd's official biography,” she said.

Bess frowned at the photograph. “Do you think this means that Boyd killed Wayne Perkins? I mean, if he killed before, maybe he's capable of doing it again.”

“It's not that simple, Bess,” Nancy said. “This still doesn't prove a connection between him and Wayne's murder.” She bent closer to the screen. “Here, let's read the article. Larry Boyd was in his early twenties. It was a barroom brawl, the other guy pulled out a knife. Boyd struggled with him, and the other guy was the one who ended up stabbed. Boyd was sentenced to two years in prison. There's no indication that he ever committed a violent crime again.”

Nancy sighed and turned to Bess. “So we've learned that Larry Boyd is, or used to be, pretty sleazy. We've got to include him in our suspect list, despite his alibi. But until we find some hard, fast evidence linking him to Wayne's murder, we have only our suspicions.”

“So what's our next step?” Bess asked.

“We still need to interview Diana DeMarco,” Nancy said. “But first I'd like to learn more about Wayne Perkins. Maybe that way we can find a motive for someone besides Parker to want him dead.”

• • •

“I don't get it, Nan,” Bess said, an hour and a half later. “Why is it so hard to learn anything about Wayne?”

“I don't know,” Nancy confessed. The two girls were sitting on a bench outside the psychology building, watching a squirrel forage through the snow. Nancy hoped the cold air would help her to think more clearly.

After leaving the local library, she and Bess had gone first to the campus security office and then to Wayne Perkins's office. They hadn't found out much about him at either place. He had received his undergraduate degree from a university on the East Coast, graduating with honors. His application to Emerson specified that he was interested in working with Edberg. As for family, Wayne had none. Both parents were deceased, and he had no brothers or sisters. He'd apparently been on his own for years.

The two other graduate students who shared Wayne's office in the psychology building hadn't been able to add much to that. Wayne had kept to himself, didn't talk much about his work. They weren't aware of any enemies Wayne might have had.

“What about that girl the other graduate students mentioned?” Bess now asked. “They said they saw Wayne with her off campus a few times.”

Nancy nodded. “They said she was a brunette. It could be Diana DeMarco,” she said. “We really need to talk to her, but it's almost dinnertime. Right now I think we should head over to the fraternity house and see how the guys are doing.”

They arrived just in time for dinner. Four of the brothers were bustling around in the big community kitchen, cooking a huge batch of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. The boys readily made room for Nancy and Bess at the dining room table.

“Where's Parker?” Bess asked, looking around the table.

“He's upstairs, sleeping,” Ned explained. “He crashed after that run-in with Edberg.”

Dave Webb served himself some chicken, then passed the platter to Nancy. “I just hope he wakes up in time for our meeting tonight.”

“There's a meeting in the living room in an hour,” Ned explained to the girls. “It's about
tomorrow's party. I'm sure no one would object to you two sitting in.”

An hour later, dinner was finished and the kitchen squad was busy washing pots, pans, and dishes. Word of the meeting had spread among the fraternity brothers, and now they began to drift into the living room.

Before the meeting started, Nancy found Diana DeMarco's phone number in the student directory, but her call was answered by a machine. Nancy left a message for Diana to call her at Omega Chi, then joined the others in the common room.

Soon after she'd squeezed into a chair next to Ned, Parker came in. As the brothers murmured greetings and encouragement, Bess walked over and gave him a warm hug. They sat together on one of two old couches arranged around the big stone fireplace. At last nearly everyone involved in putting on the party was present, about ten brothers in all. Howie Little, who was fraternity president, called the meeting to order.

“I'm sure that by now you're all aware of Parker's legal difficulties,” he said to the group. This was greeted by several calls of “Hang in there, Parker,” and “We're with you, pal.”