Chapter 22 The Young and the Small
The Young and the Small
Sunday had been a productive day in her garden.
She’d fertilized her perennials and let loose a container of ladybugs into the roses.
She’d planted six-packs of yellow daisies, red petunias and orange calendula around the garden for patches of spring color.
There’d been no sign of the cat, although another gopher had made its presence known in her garden.
She hoped the little hunter had found a new home and not become a meal for coyotes.
How precarious life was.
Now it’s Monday and she tells herself to stop looking for what wasn’t there and removes the saucer and blanket from the porch.
There is, again, a little pinch of loss when she sees that the small bowl of chicken chunks she put out appeared untouched (she told herself she didn’t want the cat yowling for food if he came back in the middle of the night but it was only half the truth).
It’s her own fault for giving the animal a name.
“Good luck out there, cat,” she says to the morning air, although there is no animal there to hear her goodwill message. She makes herself feel a little better by recalling the cost of cat food, which she’d happened to see at the market. Fancy Feast, indeed!
She heads off for work with her lunch but minus her thermos. She and the custodian-journalist have a coffee date.
Meeting, she amends.
She texted Joe Friday night, writing that she had some interesting news to share about her foray into Blackstone’s home territory, and he texted back immediately that he was on his way out of town but that he had news too.
He suggested they meet at the campus café at ten a.m. Monday for a debriefing.
She liked the term “debriefing.” It made her feel like a spy or someone in the diplomatic corps.
She arrives at the lab on time and is surprised when Calvin shows up thirty minutes later. He’s in his usual outfit of shorts and T-shirt. This one reads, Fall Out Boy.
What boy and what is he falling out of?
Calvin seems more subdued than normal. Perhaps he swallowed more Xanax than he should or had a run-in at the dog park. Or maybe it’s that he doesn’t know what to say to a woman who wears a bull’s-eye on her back, one he helped place.
Hippomane mancinella, Margaret thinks. The little apple of death. A tropical tree that bears fruit that resembles an apple but will blister your mouth and esophagus with only one bite. She will be as aware of Calvin as she would be of a toxic fruit.
At nine forty-three a.m., she tells Calvin she has an appointment and leaves him to his research (testing the stability of the stinging bush’s chief compound under certain conditions: frozen, refrigerated, in solution) and heads for the café.
Margaret’s plan—which she made right after receiving Joe’s text—is to order coffee and be seated by the time Joe arrives.
She does not enjoy wandering through a café peering around for someone she has no guarantee will actually be there.
She knows what that feels like after her first year of college when a classmate suggested they grab a coffee and talk about a math project with which she was having trouble (Margaret would have done anything to have a friend, even a needy one).
She waited in the cafeteria for more than an hour. The girl never showed up.
Margaret’s plan falls apart, however, as she approaches the café and sees that Joe is already at an outside table, two medium coffees in front of him.
He’s wearing a red T-shirt, faded jeans and leather sandals.
Sunlight makes the scar on his face seem less pronounced, but the T-shirt reveals that the burn marks also extend partway down his arm to just above his elbow.
“I thought it was too nice to sit inside,” he says, and slides a coffee in her direction. “I didn’t know what you wanted, so I got black. I can get cream and sugar from the coffee station if you want. There are syrups too. I always put some vanilla in mine.”
Margaret starts to tell him that she’s perfectly capable of walking over and preparing her own cup but swallows the words just in time. Isn’t this when you’re supposed to let someone perform a service for you?
“Perhaps a little cream,” she says.
The café coffee is stronger than she’s used to.
“Coming right up,” Joe says and returns with three small containers of half-and-half for her cup.
“How was your trip?” she asks.
“It was just what I needed.” He doesn’t offer where he’s been. Instead, he takes a long pull from his coffee. “Tell me what you found.”
Margaret tells him about the lien, the big home remodel and Amy Blackstone apparently sharing that her husband had a big invention in the works. She doesn’t mention the children she saw or that she’d introduced herself as Forsythia.
“Nice work,” Joe says and pulls several folded sheets of paper from his back pocket. “I did some digging too.”
As he’s smoothing out the papers on the table, two female students pass by, slowing to stare at Joe’s ruined face.
Joe looks up. “Cut myself shaving,” he says and the pair hurries away.
“That’s a quote from Jonah Hex, in case you were wondering how I could be so clever and handsome at the same time.”
He grins.
“Does Mr. Hex work at Roosevelt?”
“Oh, no, sorry. He’s a DC Comics character. A bounty hunter with a scarred face and a terrible personality but he lives by a code of honor to avenge the innocent.” He leans forward. “It kind of fits, doesn’t it? Especially the terrible personality part.”
“The grad students all call me Big Bird.”
Why did she tell him this?
“My favorite character on Sesame Street.”
Is he joking or does he really like the giant yellow bird?
“Anyway,” he says, “listen to this. Back in the day, Blackstone’s parents filed a lawsuit against Yale, alleging their son was wrongly expelled after being accused of spiking an ex-girlfriend’s soda with ipecac syrup, causing her to end up in the hospital with severe vomiting.
The parents claimed due-process violations and also the fact that there was no proof the vomiting wasn’t caused by some kind of virus.
The lawsuit was settled, Blackstone was returned to the campus and the suit was sealed. ”
“How did you find it?” Margaret asks.
Joe shrugs. “I have friends.”
He leans back in his chair. “I doubt it would be admissible in court, but it shows a pattern.”
The café door opens, releasing the sound of clanging silverware, the hiss of coffee machines, a burst of laughter.
Margaret studies him. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what? Having coffee? Well, I like the taste of it, for one thing.”
“No, helping me.”
“First, because it feels good to flex some old reporter muscles, and second, because I like the fact you say what you mean instead of dancing around things, and third, it’s exactly what Jonah Hex would do. He’d search for justice. Minus the tomahawk and rifle, of course.”
She has no idea about the tomahawk and rifle and why he would like her directness since most people don’t. Still, she asks him the favor she has been contemplating since yesterday.
He doesn’t hesitate. “Sure, I’ll help you get into your professor’s office again. Does six o’clock tonight work?”
Margaret tells him that’s just fine.
The fading light gives Dr. Deaver’s office a muted, church-like glow. Shriveled yellow leaves carpet the floor around the ficus. An indoor ficus can live for twenty years, but this one is dying an early and undeserved death. Just like Dr. Deaver had.
Margaret looks away only to have her eye catch the bloodstained rug. It’s been eleven days since she discovered Dr. Deaver’s body, but it feels like months. She fights the urge to get rag and soap and scrub the blemish out.
She goes to the windows and opens one slightly. Fresh air is what she needs. A hard northeast breeze has sprung up outside.
Dr. Deaver’s weekly planner and papers lie askew on the desk.
She straightens them and adjusts his Lionel Cohen Award photo to the spot where it usually sits, three inches from the right corner and facing toward the door.
She hangs Dr. Deaver’s fallen jacket on the coatrack and rolls his desk chair into place.
“So, what are you looking for exactly?” Joe interrupts. He’s standing in front of the closed office door and must wonder why she’s asked to be let in the room just to straighten up.
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
Margaret tells him about Dr. Deaver’s research journals and explains that while most scientists now keep electronic records of their thoughts and processes, Dr. Deaver had stuck to the old-fashioned way of writing out his notes, which he said had the feel of authenticity and also were almost impossible to alter because they were handwritten.
Each numbered page was also signed and dated, strong proof in case someone challenged a result or a researcher’s methods.
“Clever,” Joe says.
“What I’m looking for is where he recorded his discovery of the bush and its compound and also to see if there were any worries about our results or challenges from another scientist that might make him feel depressed.”
“Depressed?”
Margaret hadn’t meant to say that last part. For once, she wishes he was one of those people who paid no attention to her. Joe, however, waits patiently. Should she tell him about the atropine and the sign-out sheet?
She does.
“That’s heavy,” Joe says, which is exactly how the idea of Dr. Deaver dying by suicide sits on Margaret’s chest.
She leads him over to a metal filing cabinet and pulls open the middle drawer. Inside are a dozen brown 9⒈／⒋-by-11?-inch notebooks filed with their spines facing up. Each spine carries the dates the books cover.
She’s reaching for those books that mark the last three years of Dr. Deaver’s research when, suddenly, there is a rattle from the doorknob. She freezes. The knob twists back and forth. Someone is trying to get inside.
Joe hisses a curse. “Behind the couch,” he orders.
He moves quickly and almost without sound.
Margaret, however, is not as graceful or as athletic.
She drops to her knees and scuttles behind the sofa like a cockroach seeking shelter from a smacking broom.
She is hunched over, her feet tucked beneath her, wondering if any part of her is showing—how can you check when you’re curled up like a pill bug?
—when there is the sound of a key turning in a lock and the office door opens.
She and the custodian are almost nose to nose. He gives her a slight nod as if to say everything will be OK. But will it?
What if it’s the dean come to review some of Dr. Deaver’s papers?
If he spots her in a room that he strictly forbade her from entering, she will be fired for sure.
Or what if it’s Officer Bianchi finally arriving to do his job and he discovers that she’s tampered with evidence?
Why did she have to hang up the jacket and straighten the desk? Can you be arrested for that?
The door closes and someone moves across the room, then pauses.
Margaret’s heart clutches. Is some part of her showing?
She presses herself lower to the ground.
Would someone notice the jacket was moved from the floor and a breeze sifted through the window?
Did she leave the file drawer open? The questions are followed by an even more ominous thought.
She’d brought her cell phone to take photos of evidence as Joe had advised and now it lies in the pocket of her skirt. Unmuted.
If she were a cursing woman, she might do that now.
There aren’t a lot of people who phone Margaret.
Sometimes her cell won’t ring for a full week.
But what if a spammer suddenly calls to inform her that the IRS is after her and she needs to give them her bank account and Social Security numbers?
What if Calvin finally snaps at the sight and sound of all those yipping dogs and phones to say he needs a leave of absence?
(With pay, of course.) Could Keith decide this was the perfect time to dial her number and tell her more about her horselike face and demand an apology for hurting his feelings?
She presses her lips together as if she could quiet her phone simply by miming silence. Should she reach into her pocket and try to mute it?
A file drawer clunks shut. Papers rustle. A chair squeaks. Is someone sitting at Dr. Deaver’s desk?
She wonders if it could be the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. In mystery books, writers sometimes have their detective attend funerals and survey the crowd that gathers at crime scenes.
Joe catches her eye. He must be reading her mind because he gives a little shake of his head that either means “Don’t try to look” or “Why is the intruder taking so long and what is he or she doing?”
Finally, the pad of footsteps and the door opens and snaps shut.
Joe is up from behind the couch so quickly and quietly, it’s as if he levitated himself.
Margaret, however, uncurls with a groan. She is too old and too big to be doing all this crouching and hunching. Save that for the young and the small.
Joe puts out a hand and helps her to her feet.
“Did you see who it was?”
“No, but whoever they are, I don’t think they could have gone too far. I’m going to go after them. Grab the notebooks you want and meet me in the janitor’s closet.”
He’s out the door in a flash and Margaret limps over to the file cabinet, her knees complaining about how long she left them pressed against a hard floor.
She slides open the file cabinet drawer.
It takes her a few seconds to register what she sees.
Dr. Deaver’s most recent notebook is gone.