The Kingdom of Dog (18 page)

 

When I got back to my office, I called Tony Rinaldi and got his voice mail. I left him a message. I was ready to head for home when a meeting request popped up on my computer for the first thing the next morning. The note that accompanied it listed an agenda: Babson would talk about a potential trip to the West Coast; Sally was to talk about recruiting, Sam about exhibition games with prominent colleges, and Mike about donors. I was supposed to talk about press opportunities.

Rochester was nosing around my knees, eager to get a move on. “Sorry, pup, can't leave quite yet. Our fearless leader needs some work done.”

He sighed deeply and settled next to my chair in a big golden heap. I scrambled to get ready, putting everything else aside, and by sixI had gotten a fix on the major media opportunities in San Francisco and Los Angeles. I wanted to drive up to the Tohickon Creek and see if I could find that Common Shooting Star—but it was already dark by the time Rochester and I left Fields Hall.

At home that night, after I had walked and fed Rochester, I was still restless. I prowled around the house looking for something to do to take my mind off thoughts of murder and dating—which both seemed about equally dangerous. There was a loose tread on the staircase, and the kitchen door needed new hinges. A big piece of molding had fallen off the front window and needed to be put back into place. There were a half-dozen other little things that needed to be done.

I found my father's old tool kit in the garage. Picking up a hammer I remembered him using, I thought of him. What would he have thought of how I'd ended up? He didn't like Mary, though he was always polite to her. He had been eager to have grandchildren, and for the first couple of years Mary and I were married he had asked me every time we spoke.

Then she had her first miscarriage, and he stopped asking. Occasionally he would talk about a friend and his grandkids, and I could hear a tone of wistfulness in his voice. Would a granddog have satisfied him? He had never been much for animals when I was a kid. Somehow I couldn't imagine him driving around with a bumper sticker that read “Ask me about my son's golden retriever.”

I fiddled around fixing things until I couldn't focus on the tools any more, then spent some time on the floor stroking Rochester's golden fur.

When I woke the next morning I thought about shooting up to Tohickon Creek on my way to work, but there was no time, by the time I walked Rochester, ate breakfast, showered and dressed. I made it up to campus just a couple of minutes before the meeting with Babson.

He was at his most imperial. He asked Sam to see if he could set up an exhibition game between our basketball team and a comparable team in California. “I'll look into it, President Babson,” Sam said.

“I asked you to be prepared for this meeting,” Babson said.

“I was at a game at Lehigh last night and didn't check my email until this morning,” he said. “I will get on it today, though.”

Babson demanded my media report next, and even though it was thrown together quickly he accepted it without much comment. He was more critical of Sally's report on high schools he should visit, though. “I wanted more than just a roster, I wanted an itinerary. How do I know which of these schools are close to each other or how many I can visit in a day?”

I had the feeling Sally was thinking on her feet. “I wanted to get some feedback from you, President Babson. How many schools do you think you could visit, if they were close together? Would you mind attending evening receptions? How much time will you have to spare from fund-raising events? If we had a fund-raiser and a candidate reception in the same hotel, could you go back and forth?” She asked half a dozen more questions and Babson backed down.

“Well, that'll take some time to work out. Let me think about it. Write me a memo.”

Last of all he came to Mike for a report on the possible major donors who should get a personal visit. It was obvious that Mike had a staff at his disposal who could pull together a request like Babson's on a moment's notice. Mike had printouts of alumni organized by zip code, by class year and by office location. “We've got significant clusters in San Francisco, downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, and Long Beach,” Mike said. “I recommend three cocktail receptions and individual solicitation of these twelve major donors. ” He had lists of whose employers matched employee gifts and records of past donations.

“This is the kind of research I like to see,” Babson said. “This is professional, quality work.”

“It's the only way we're going to make our total,” Mike said. “We've each got to work as hard as we can.”

I thought Mike was being pretty smarmy, but I held my tongue. I was sure he had more notice than the rest of us about the meeting, and I made a mental note to ask Dezhanne about it.

Luckily I ran into her on my way back to my office. “No, we just heard about the California thing late yesterday afternoon like you did,” she said. “He sent someone to my Spanish class when it ended to drag me over to work, and he ordered us all pizza and made us stay until like nine o'clock. Everybody was going crazy. You know how he gets—like every little thing can set him off. Total roid rage, if you ask me.”

“Roid rage?”

She lowered her voice. “I think he must be taking steroids. I mean, have you looked at his body?”

“Not my type,” I said dryly.

“He's not mine either, believe me. But he's got muscles on muscles. You don't bulk up that way naturally. Roid rage is one of the side effects of steroid use—that and limp dick syndrome.”

“Don't even go there,” I said. Then I remembered the prescription I'd seen on Mike's desk for Viagra. Those nasty side effects would explain his needing that drug.

Dezhanne juggled the folders she was carrying. “It would have been almost comical last night, if it hadn't been so scary. He was even making the Two J's work.”

“The two jays?”

“Juan and Jose. These two idiots from the football team who are like his personal mascots. They're always hanging around the office, joking around with him in that dumb jock kind of way. I'll bet they're on roids, too.”

I remembered Tony Rinaldi mentioning a problem with steroids on the campus. Could Dezhanne be right? Were Mike and his buddies involved in it somehow?

I found myself staring at Dezhanne's earlobes. In place of her standard disks, she wore these globes that looked like the Death Star from one of the
Star Wars
movies, with spikes sticking out all over. “Don't those hurt?” I asked.

“What?”

“Those things in your ears.”

“Honestly, I don't even notice them,” she said. “I've had these in for a couple of days. I've been so stressed out working for Mr. M.” She lowered her voice. “Last night, he even said that he was glad that someone had killed Mr. Dagorian. That Mr. D had been a thorn in his side, keeping him from doing everything he wanted, and now the old fart was out of the way.”

I raised my eyebrows at her.

“I swear, that's what he said. Sometimes the guy is just not for real. It was like, get out the whips and beat us until we produce. I don't know how much more I can take of it. Except that it's real good money.”

“I can't offer you much encouragement,” I said. “I have a feeling things are going to stay this bad until the campaign is over.”

“Well, at least by then I'll have graduated and I'll be out of this place. I will graduate some day, won't I?”

“I did.”

“Yeah, but you came back.” She waved and walked off.

I turned around and instead of going back to my own office I went to Sally's. “You have a minute?” I asked, standing in her office door.

“Sure, come on in. These applications will still be here.”

I closed the door behind me and sat down across from Sally. She looked tired, with dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore her customary Fair Isle sweater.

“I was just talking to the work study student I share with Mike, and something she said jumped out at me. ” I told her about Mike's problems with Joe.

“You don't think Mike could have killed Joe, do you?” she asked.

“The police always say they look for motive, opportunity, and means. Mike had the motive—Joe was always getting in his way, complaining about everything Mike tried to do. You must have seen that, too.”

She nodded. “I can't remember a meeting when Joe and Mike didn't argue. But would you kill someone over that?”

“I'm sure Mike is under a lot of pressure to perform,” I said. “You've seen the way Babson operates. Any of us could be fired if we don't provide the results he wants. That could really be stressing Mike out. ” I pointed at the piles of paperwork around her. “Look at you—you're working hard, and you're stressed. What if Mike just broke?”

“At the launch party,” she said. “He was under a huge amount of pressure that night.”

“And we've both seen him go off on people. Suppose he argued with Joe again, and he just lost control.”

“But what about the knife? Why would he be carrying the knife?”

“We know that Joe and Mike argued a couple of times that night. Suppose Mike just couldn't take it anymore, and decided it was time to end it with Joe once and for all. He picked up the knife and then stalked Joe until he was outside.”

“Have you told this to that police officer?”

“Rinaldi? No. It just came to me, based on what Dezhanne said. I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Well, I don't think you should say anything yet. You don't have any real evidence, after all. It's just a bunch of speculation and what if. And Mike's your boss. If he's innocent, and he finds out you talked to the police about him, you'll be fired so fast.”

“But what if he's not?”

“If he's not, the police will figure it out. They look for evidence and stuff. Things that really prove something.”

I sighed. “I guess you're right. ” Even as I said it, though, I was thinking about how I could get some of that evidence Rinaldi would need.

“Steve. Look at me.”

I looked at her. “If Mike killed Joe MacCormac, and you start nosing around, you're putting yourself in danger. You have to leave it up to the police.”

I stood up. “I hear you. Listen, I'll let you get back to work. I need to do some thinking.”

I walked slowly back to my office. As I passed Mike's, he saw me through the open door and motioned me in. “How's your research going?” he asked. “You find out anything yet?”

For a moment I was startled, and my pulse raced. Did he know I was talking about him? Then I remembered I was supposed to be working on alumni profiles for him. “I started,” I said. “But then Babson sent us all off on this California thing.”

“You have to learn how to work with him. He'll ask for something, then send you off in thirteen different directions, and then expect you to come up with that first thing he asked for. You need to narrow your focus.”

It was like everything he said had a dual meaning. Narrow my focus? To him as the murderer?

“I've seen that police guy in and out of your office a few times,” he said. “You've been spending a lot of time trying to solve Joe's murder, haven't you?”

“I've been trying to help out. You know it's not good PR for us to have an unsolved murder on our campus.”

“Or for fund-raising either. But I'm worried that you're drawing too much attention to them by pursuing this. If I were you, I'd let the police do the work. You know, it's dangerous to play around in something like murder.”

I couldn't figure out what Mike's game was, but I thought I'd play along. The adrenaline rushing through my veins made me bolder. “I know,” I said. “But the police think the killer might be Ike Arumba, from the Rising Sons. I just don't believe he did it. I can't sit by and let him take the rap if he's innocent. The sooner we can get this resolved, the sooner we can all move on. Eastern College will survive this—it's gone through worse.”

He stood up. He was bigger than I was, a couple of years younger and a lot stronger. I remembered that he had played football in college, and thought that was why those two football players, Juan and Jose, were always hanging around with him.

Or were they some kind of henchmen for him? Could they have helped him kill Joe? I backed toward the door of his office. It was lunchtime, and many people in the building had gone out. Was anyone close enough to hear me if I yelled for help?

“I'm the best fund-raiser this college has ever had. I could be at Harvard right now. And if I can carry off this capital campaign I will be. I'll be the best fund-raiser there is. I wouldn't let a two-bit admissions director stop me, or interfere with my plans. No one can tell me how to run my office. I know what I'm doing. I'm in control.”

I backed away a little more, very slowly. I remembered those angry emails he had sent to Joe, that Rinaldi had mentioned? Was there really a motive there?

I was thinking fast, but I was very aware of everything around me. I scanned the office for things to throw at Mike, to knock him down or stun him so he couldn't chase me as I ran down the hall toward the front door of Fields Hall.

“Joe thought he was so important,” Mike continued. “Just because he'd been at Eastern since Jesus wore short pants. He thought he could run this college. He took away my telethon volunteers to recruit high school students. He wanted to have me fired. Hah! Can you imagine that! Every time I made a suggestion, Joe criticized me. All he cared about was his obscure scholarship funds. For a Nebraska high school student who intends to major in English. For a child of Ukrainian immigrants who wishes to study United States history. You know the kind of silly, Mickey Mouse funds he liked to set up.”