Smoke in Mirrors Page 22

  He took a large bite out of the toast and swallowed a couple of pills with the glass of juice she gave him. He made a halfhearted attempt to think of something civil to say to Kyle. When nothing leaped to mind, he abandoned the effort in favor of another bite of toast.

  “Cassie called while you were in the shower,” Leonora said. “Margaret Lewis has agreed to see us this morning. Cassie and Deke said they’d pick us up around ten o’clock.”

  “Sounds good.” He glanced at his watch. It was seven-thirty. “That’ll give me plenty of time to go back to my place, check in with Wrench and change into some fresh clothes.”

  “What happened to you?” Kyle blurted, obviously unable to contain his curiosity for another second. “Run into a brick wall?”

  “Accident on the footbridge that runs across the cove.” Thomas polished off the last of the toast. “Dangerous places, footbridges.”

  Kyle looked dubious. “Looks like you were in a fight or something.”

  “Or something.” He swallowed some coffee. “Sorry to eat and run, but I’ve got things to do and places to go. Better be on my way. See you at ten, Leonora.”

  “Right.” She put her cup down.

  He went to where she stood at the counter and kissed her. A bit more forcefully than necessary.

  She didn’t resist, but when he raised his mouth from hers he could tell from the ironic gleam in her eyes that she knew damn well that it had been one of those dumb, staking-a-claim kisses men used to mark their women in front of other males.

  He felt very immature until he noticed that Kyle was openly gaping, clearly appalled. That made him feel a lot better. In an immature sort of way.

  “See you around,” he said to Kyle.

  Delling looked blank.

  Thomas walked out of the kitchen and got his jacket out of the closet.

  Leonora followed him to the front door. She did not speak until they were out on the porch.

  “That was not real subtle or romantic,” she said.

  “I like to think that our relationship has progressed beyond the superficial.”

  “Progressed my left toe. What was with the macho show-off bit back there in the kitchen?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Only an extremely immature person would engage in macho show-off behavior.” The cold air hit his raw face, stinging initially and then turning everything nicely numb. “What’s with the ex-fiancé in the kitchen bit, anyway? Is he here to try to patch things up?”

  “No. He’s after something much more important than the repair of an ephemeral and transitory personal relationship.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Tenure.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “I’ve hung with enough academics during the past year to know that tenure is some sort of Holy Grail for that crowd. What makes Delling think you can help him get it?”

  “One of my best friends is the chair of the department that is going to make the decision concerning whether or not Kyle gets moved onto the tenure track in the English department. She’s very loyal to me, and she took great offense on my behalf last year when word got around that Kyle had jumped into bed with Meredith.”

  Thomas grinned. It hurt but it was worth it. “Revenge is sweet, ain’t it?”

  “Only an extremely immature person would dabble in something so ignoble as revenge.”

  “Like I said. Sweet.” He nodded again, satisfied. “Good to know we both have a streak of immaturity. One more thing we have in common.”

  He went down the steps and headed for the footpath. He resisted a sudden, inexplicable urge to whistle. He was much too beat up and sore to whistle.

  He opened his own front door a short time later. Wrench was waiting in the hall, looking reproachful in the way only a dog could.

  “Okay, okay, you were right. I should have taken you with me last night.”

  They went through the routine greeting ritual, but Thomas got the impression that his dog was disappointed that Leonora had not come with him.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” Thomas promised.

  “What’s with the Incredible Hulk?” Kyle asked when she walked back into the kitchen. “Not exactly your type. Playing Lady Chatterley out here in the provinces?”

  “I’m going through an immature phase.”

  Kyle frowned. “Those bruises looked bad. Must have been a hell of a fall he took on that footbridge. Is he just clumsy or what?”

  Leonora poured herself another cup of tea. “Actually, Thomas got those bruises in a fight last night. Some kid high on drugs attacked him. The boy is in the hospital.”

  “Shit.” Kyle blinked a few times. “Is this a joke?”

  “I haven’t felt the inclination to share a joke with you since the day I found you in bed with Meredith.”

  Kyle’s jaw went rigid. “You’re still obsessed with that one insignificant incident, aren’t you? You’ve got to get past it, Leonora. For your own sake. It’s time to move on.”

  “But I have moved on, Kyle. I doubt if I could have appreciated a man like Thomas if I hadn’t gone through a relationship with you, first. I suppose I owe you for that.”

  “Sarcasm is not a constructive mode of communication.”

  She thought about it. “You know what? I wasn’t being sarcastic. What I just said was the pure, unadulterated truth.”

  The Wing Cove Retirement Community apartment complex was composed of three handsome redbrick buildings constructed in a three-story triangle.

  “You sure Wrench will be all right here in the car?” Leonora asked, turning around in the front seat.

  Thomas looked at Wrench, who was in the back of the SUV, his head hung over the rear seat where Deke and Cassie sat.

  “It was his choice to come,” he said.

  “He’ll be fine,” Deke assured her. “We’ll leave the window open.”

  “He won’t be out here alone for long.” Cassie unfastened her seat belt. “Margaret has an art class later this morning.”

  They entered the apartment community through a pleasantly furnished lobby. There was a large bouquet of fresh flowers on a round table. Thomas glanced at the list of the day’s activities on the chalk board: Aqua aerobics, current events lecture, art class, museum tour sign-up. A Cary Grant film was scheduled for the evening.

  A polite, polished receptionist verified that they were expected, and then gave them directions to Margaret Lewis’s residence.

  It wasn’t easy squeezing all four of them into her tiny, one-bedroom apartment. Everything, including Margaret, seemed to be in miniature. Thomas felt like a giant in the little mauve and leaf-green room.

  He lowered himself cautiously onto one of the dainty, undersized chairs, half afraid that it would shatter under his weight. Deke, he noticed, was just as careful. His brother was perched gingerly on the little sofa.

  There was a small writing desk in one corner. A laptop sat on it, the lid neatly closed. The walls of the doll-sized apartment were covered with framed photographs, many of them photos of Margaret Lewis posed with various academics. Probably the deans, department chairs and other notables who had been associated with the Eubanks College Department of Mathematics during the time Margaret had reigned as secretary, he decided.

  A large calendar hung on one wall. Thomas noticed that every square was filled in for the current month. He checked out a few of the entries. Bridge. Yoga. Bridge. Aqua Aerobics. Bridge. Current Affairs. Bridge. Dr. Appt. Bridge. Museum Tour. Bridge.

  Margaret Lewis was a cheerful, self-possessed woman with dark-brown skin and a crown of tight, silver curls. She used a cane and looked trim and fit in a mauve polyester pantsuit that matched her décor.

  Thomas glanced at a photo of a young black man standing on the steps of an imposing building. He was smiling at the camera.

  “My son,” Margaret said proudly. “He’s on the faculty at the University of Washington.”

  She lowered herself into a flower-print chair and nodded pleasantl
y at each of them as Cassie completed the introductions. When the formalities were concluded, she peered at Thomas with lively interest in her dark eyes.

  “What happened to you?” she asked. “Get into a fight?”

  “Accident on the footbridge,” he said. “Jogger ran me down.”

  She made a tut-tutting sound. “Never understood the craze for running and jogging. Absolute nonsense. Hard on the knees. Knees wear out, you know.”

  He nodded. “I’ve heard that.”

  “Arthritis sets in fast. Eighty percent of the people down there in the pool doing water aerobics this morning have artificial knees. Why do you think I’m using this cane? Just had my second knee replacement.”

  “I hear you,” Thomas said.

  She rewarded him with another smile. “So nice when a young man has the sense to take sound advice.”

  So nice to be called a young man, Thomas thought.

  Margaret Lewis switched her attention to Deke. “Oh, dear, are members of the faculty wearing beards at Eubanks these days?”

  Cassie hid a quick grin.

  Deke flushed a dull red. “I’m on sabbatical.”

  “I see. Well, take some advice from an old department secretary. If you want to get anywhere at Eubanks, you’d better shave off that beard. They’re a conservative lot there. At least they were in my day.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Deke muttered.

  “Doesn’t do anything for you, anyway,” Margaret said. “Makes you look years older than you are. Have some cookies.”

  Thomas needed no urging. Neither did Deke. They both reached for cookies. Margaret looked pleased.

  Cassie contented herself with coffee. So did Leonora but Thomas noticed that she took only a couple of polite sips from the delicate china cup that sat on the table in front of her chair.

  Cassie cleared her throat. “It was very kind of you to agree to talk to us about the Eubanks murder, Margaret. As I told you on the phone, we’re interested in it because two people we know who died recently seemed to have been interested in it.”

  “We’re starting to wonder if there’s a connection,” Leonora said. “We’ve read the old newspaper accounts but we can’t see anything obvious.”

  “The Eubanks murder.” Margaret snorted gently. “You certainly won’t find much in the papers. The Eubanks College trustees exert a great deal of influence in Wing Cove these days, but it’s nothing compared to the power they wielded thirty years ago. They literally ran the town at that time. They could get a police chief fired or force a mayor to resign. They wanted the murder of Sebastian Eubanks kept quiet and that’s exactly what happened.”

  “There must have been a lot of gossip at the time,” Deke offered tentatively.

  “Of course there was gossip.” Margaret wrinkled her nose. “The wildest rumors you ever heard circulated for weeks. The official verdict, however, was that Eubanks had surprised a burglar in the old mansion that night. That is the version of events the administration wished to have prevail. So, naturally, it prevailed.”

  “What can you tell us about Sebastian Eubanks and his death?” Leonora asked.

  “Well, now, where to begin?” Margaret hooked her cane over the edge of her chair and settled back against the flowered cushions. “Sebastian Eubanks was something of an eccentric, to say the least. And getting more so by the day. Took after his father, I’m afraid. He had become quite reclusive and odd at the end. Downright paranoid.”

  Thomas sat forward, resting his arms on his thighs. “Odd in what way?”

  “He had stopped seeing his friends. Never left the mansion. That sort of thing. Word was, he had become obsessed with his work. He really was a very brilliant man, you know. Quite probably a genius, in my opinion. But we’ll never know because he died before he could make any significant contributions to the field of mathematics.”

  “What were the wild rumors that circulated after his death?” Deke asked.

  “Well, now,” Margaret said very deliberately, “we were all warned by the dean himself that we must not breathe a word about the gossip. Bad for the college’s image and so forth. Eubanks was even more conservative all those years ago than it is now.”

  Thomas exchanged glances with Leonora, Deke and Cassie. He turned back to Margaret.

  “It’s been thirty years,” he said. “Can you tell us the gossip?”

  Margaret chuckled. “I’m retired, remember? I can do anything I please these days. Besides, the dean who issued the warning died ten years ago. I never did care much for him.”

  Cassie smiled. “Don’t keep us in suspense, Margaret.”

  “At the time,” Margaret said, lowering her voice to a confidential level, “several people in the department and in the administration were convinced that Sebastian Eubanks was murdered by his lover, not a burglar.”

  They all stared at her.

  “There was no mention of a lover in the newspaper accounts,” Deke said.

  “Probably because the lover was a man,” Margaret said. “A very charming, rather good-looking instructor named Andrew Grayson in the computer science department. Grayson was forced to resign, naturally. The administration applied a great deal of pressure. I have always suspected that the trustees took steps to make certain that he never got back on the tenure-track at any other college.”

  Leonora leaned forward and folded her arms on her knees. “Why did the administration work so hard to keep that theory quiet?”

  “The silly fools were terrified of a wealthy alumnus who was, at the time, a major donor. He was preparing to endow a chair in the political sciences department and build a new wing for the library. He was rabidly antigay.”

  “I get it,” Leonora said. “The administration was afraid that if this donor discovered that Sebastian Eubanks had been involved in an affair with another man, he would pull his funding and take it elsewhere.”

  “In a nutshell, yes.” Margaret hesitated. “I heard that the police chief did question Andrew. Supposedly he had an alibi for the time of the murder. But most of those in the know remained convinced that he had killed Eubanks in what amounted to a lovers’ quarrel.”

  “What happened to Andrew Grayson?” Deke asked.

  “I have no idea. He packed up and left very quietly and was never seen in Wing Cove again.” Margaret looked pensive. “I’ve thought about him from time to time over the years. He was so very smart. His departure was a great loss to the college.”

  “Do you believe that he murdered Eubanks?” Thomas asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Margaret replied. “I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now.”

  “Why not?” Cassie asked.

  “Because I knew for a fact that Andrew Grayson had ended his relationship with Eubanks almost a month before the murder. I also know that it was Andrew’s decision, and that he made it because Sebastian Eubanks’s behavior had grown so extremely bizarre.”

  Deke took out a pad of paper he had brought with him and started to make some notes.

  They left half an hour later. On her way to the door Leonora paused at the dainty little desk where the computer sat.

  “I see you’re online,” she said to Margaret.

  “Yes, indeed.” Margaret’s eyes brightened. “Can’t imagine life without my email account.”

  “Do you, by any chance, subscribe to Gloria’s Gazette?” Leonora asked.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. How did you know about the Gazette?”

  “My grandmother is the publisher and editor,” she said proudly.

  “You don’t say. Please tell her for me that I look forward to every edition. My favorite column is ‘Ask Henrietta.’ ”

  “I’ll tell her,” Leonora said.

  Thomas got behind the wheel. Leonora sat beside him. Deke and Cassie slid into the back. Wrench rested his head on the rear seat. All four doors closed. Belts were buckled.

  “Okay.” Thomas started the engine. “I admit it, I’m impressed. If all academ
ic department secretaries are like Margaret Lewis, they are a force to be reckoned with.”

  “Every college and university in the nation would fall apart without them,” Leonora said.

  “Now what?” Cassie asked.

  “That’s easy.” Thomas put the SUV in gear and drove out of the parking lot. “Now we see if we can track down Andrew Grayson.”

  “No problem.” Deke reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a wireless palm-sized computer. “If he’s alive, I’ll find him. Heck, I’ll find him even if he’s dead.”

  Thomas drove in silence. Thinking. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same thing.

  A few minutes later Deke looked up from the tiny screen. “Got him. Or at least a current address.”

  Leonora turned in the seat. “So fast?”

  Thomas glanced in the rearview mirror. “You’re sure it’s our Andrew Grayson?”

  “Age fits.” Deke worked on the computer for a few more minutes. “He’s retired now. Got his social security number from the college records. It all matches. Says right here that he was employed at Eubanks for two and a half years. Yep, he was there at the time Eubanks was murdered.”

  “He’s our guy.” Urgency moved through Thomas. “What’s he been doing for the past thirty years?”

  “Figuring out what Grayson has been up to for the past three decades will take some time,” Deke said. “But I can tell you one thing, he sure as hell isn’t trying to hide. And judging by the address I’ve got here I’d say that whatever happened to his academic career at the time of the murder, it didn’t ruin his life.”

  “Where’s he living?” Cassie asked.

  Deke looked down at his screen. “Mercer Island. It’s in the middle of Lake Washington, between Seattle and Bellevue.”

  “Expensive neighborhood,” Thomas said. “You’re right. He must have done okay for himself.”

  Leonora put one arm on the back of the seat. “I vote we talk to Andrew Grayson. As soon as possible. Probably better to do it in person. We can be in Seattle in less than two hours.”

  Thomas flicked a quick glance at his watch. “It’s a waste of time and energy to have all four of us move in lockstep like this. We need to get more efficient. I suggest that Leonora and I drive into the city to see Grayson. Deke, now that we’ve got some new leads, I think the best thing you can do is concentrate on digging up whatever else you can find online that concerns Grayson and Eubanks.”