Grave Surprise

Page 12

"Drop my arm and stand away from me," I said, and I said it sharply and loudly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the three (very young) staff members at the counter were buzzing around nervously, unsure of what to do. I was so glad when someone else stepped forward and clamped a hand on Dr. Nunley's shoulder.
"Let go of the lady," said the man who'd been in the class the day before. He had that stillness about him that says, "I know what I'm doing and no one messes with me."
"What?" Clyde Nunley was very confused by the interruption of his bullying session. His grip on me didn't loosen. I had a wild impulse to grab the arm of Mr. Student, so we'd all be standing there holding on to one another. We must look ridiculous.
"Dr. Nunley, let go of me or I'll break your fucking fingers," I said, and that worked like a charm. He looked startled, as if I'd finally become a real person to him. Mr. Student kept hold of the inebriated professor, and his mouth moved in a very small smile.
By that time, one of the staff members had hustled around the desk and was striding over to us, trying to hurry without looking like he was hurrying. It was the pleasant-faced man in his twenties who'd checked us in. "Problem, Ms. Connelly?"
"Don't say a word," hissed Dr. Nunley, as though that would be sure to shut me up. He must normally deal with the well-mannered children of the privileged.
"Yes, there is a problem," I said to the young man, and Clyde Nunley's face twisted with surprise. He just didn't think I'd complain about him; I don't know why. "This man grabbed me when I came into the lobby, and he won't leave me alone. If this gentleman hadn't helped me out, he might have hit me." Of course, I didn't know that, but Dr. Nunley had definitely been spoiling for a confrontation, and if he thought I was going to forget he'd called my brother a pimp, he had another thought coming.
"Do you know him, Ms. Connelly?"
"I don't know him," I said firmly. In an existential sense, this was the truth. Do any of us know each other, really? I was sure the staff would back me up with no qualms if they thought Dr. Nunley was a stranger off the street, out to harass me. The minute I said the words "Doctor" and "Bingham College" I'd lose some of my own stature as a wronged female.
My new assistant, Mr. Student, said, "In that case, mister, I think you should leave. And in view of the fact that you seem drunk, I'd call a cab if I were you."
The clerk made a courteous gesture toward the door, as if Dr. Nunley were an honored guest. "One of our bellmen will be happy to call a cab for you," the clerk said in a sunny voice. "Right this way."
And before Dr. Nunley could regroup, he was out onto the sidewalk and under the watchful eye of the two bellmen who stood there waiting for cars to pull up.
"Thanks," I said to Mr. Student. "I didn't get your name yesterday."
"Rick Goldman."
"Harper Connelly," I said, with a little nod. I shook his hand, though my own was not steady. "How did you come to be on the right spot at the right moment, Mr. Goldman?"
"Rick, please. 'Mr. Goldman' makes me feel even older than I am. Would you care to sit and talk for a minute?" There were two brocaded wing chairs at a comfortable angle and distance for conversation.
I hesitated, tempted. I wasn't as calm and steady as I was making out. In fact, I was still shaking. I'd been taken by surprise, and in a bad kind of way. "For a minute," I said carefully, and sank down as gracefully as I could manage. I didn't want Rick Goldman to know exactly how shaky I was.
He sat opposite me, his square dark face carefully blank. "I'm an alumnus of Bingham," he said.
That told me absolutely nothing. "So are lots of other people, but I don't see them here now," I said. "What's your point?"
"I was a cop on the Memphis force for years. Now I'm a private investigator."
"Okay." I wished he'd cut the circling around and arrive at the point.
"The board of trustees is pretty sharply divided right now," Rick Goldman said. Okay, I was getting bored. I raised my eyebrows and nodded encouragingly.
"There's a liberal majority and a conservative minority. That minority is very concerned with Bingham's public profile. When that conservative faction of the board found out what Clyde was doing in his class, they asked if I would oversee the visiting speakers."
"Keep your fingers on the pulse," I said.
He seemed quite serious. I had a feeling Rick Goldman was a serious kind of guy. "Clyde didn't suspect you?"
"I paid my money and signed up for the class," Rick Goldman said. "Nothing he could do about it."
"The older lady in the class, she a monitor, too?"
"Nah, she just likes to take anthropology classes."
I thought about this for a second. "So, you just happened to be standing in the lobby here this evening?"
"No, not exactly."
"Following Clyde, were you?"
"No. He's boring. You're a lot more interesting."
I wasn't exactly sure how the private detective meant that.
"So have you been following me and my brother?"
"No. But I have been waiting here for you. I wanted to ask you some questions, after watching you in action yesterday."
I owed him the Q&A, after his timely intervention in the Clyde Nunley incident. "I'll listen," I said, which was more than I usually did.
"How'd you do it?" He leaned forward, his eyes fixed on my face. If the circumstances had been different it might have been a flattering moment. But I was afraid I knew what he meant, and that wasn't flattering at all.
I looked back at him with the same intensity. "You know I couldn't have learned any of that ahead of time," I said. "You know that, right?"
"Were you in cahoots with Clyde? And now you've had a falling out?"
"No, Mr. Goldman. I'm not in cahoots with anyone. I don't think I've ever heard anyone even say that phrase out loud, by the way." I broke eye contact, sighed. "I'm the real thing. You may not want to believe it, but eventually you'll have to. Thanks again." I got up and walked very carefully over to the elevators. My leg was still not steady, and it would be too embarrassing if I fell down.
I punched the up button with a quick stab of my finger. The elevator obligingly opened, and I stepped in, punching our floor number with a quick sideways motion of my hand. I stood with my back to the door so I wouldn't have to see him again.
I was ashamed that I had needed help. If I were as tough as I wanted to be, I could have thrown Clyde Nunley to the floor and kicked him. But that might have been a slight overreaction. I found myself smiling at the back wall of the elevator. I guess I'm the kind of woman who smiles when she thinks about kicking a man when he's down; at least, that man.
I told myself to stiffen my spine. After all, I'd handled that okay. I hadn't screamed or cried or lost my dignity. I'm not a weak person, I told myself. I just get rattled sometimes. And then there was the physical stuff left over from the lightning strike. One of those symptoms struck now, a headache so vicious I had trouble fitting my plastic key into the slot and getting into my room.
I opened my medicine bag and took a handful of Advil, and then I yanked off my shoes. I knew from experience how comfortable the bed was, and I knew in ten minutes I would feel better. I promised myself that. Actually, it took more like twenty minutes before the pain subsided to a bearable level, and then I looked at the ceiling and thought about Dr. Nunley and his temper until I fell asleep.
Tolliver woke me up a couple of hours later. "Hey," he said gently. "How are you? They told me when I came in that you'd had a problem with a man in the lobby, and some knight in corduroy had shown up to rescue you."
"Yeah." It was taking me a minute to gather up my senses. Tolliver had turned on my bathroom light, and he was a silhouette sitting on the edge of my mattress. "Nunley was waiting for me, and he was all 'How did you do this, you imp of Satan?' and so on. Well, he didn't go into the evil stuff so much. He just thought I was dishonest. But he clearly thought I was a big fraud, and he was mad you'd called him, and he wasn't nice about it."
"Did he hurt you?"
"Nah, grabbed my arm, but that's all. You remember that older man in the class, the one we were wondering about? He was in the lobby, too, waiting for me to come back. He stopped Nunley, and the guy from the desk sent him on his way. Then he told me some interesting information. The only thing is, after that I got a hell of a headache, so I took some medicine and dropped."
"How's the leg?"
One problem often triggered another. We'd been to maybe ten doctors, and they all said that my problems were psychological--whether or not we told them about the body-finding thing. "The effects of a lightning strike are over when you leave the hospital afterward," one particularly pompous jackass had told me. "There are no well-documented long-term effects." Sadly, the problems I had with the medical community were common among lightning strike survivors. Very few doctors knew what to do with us. For some of us it was much harder--the ones who couldn't go back to work and were trying to get workmen's comp or disability payments, for example.
At least I didn't have tinnitus, which affected so many survivors, and at least I hadn't lost my sense of taste, another common problem.
"The leg's a little shaky," I admitted, feeling the muscle weakness as I tried to achieve a leg lift. Only the left leg rose. The right one just quivered with the effort. Tolliver began to massage it, as he often did on the bad days.
"So, tell me the interesting information about the man from the class."
"He's a private detective," I began, and Tolliver's hands stopped moving for second.
"Not good," he said. "At least, depending on his goal."
I tried to recall everything Rick Goldman had said to me, and Tolliver listened to it all with absolute attention.
"I don't think this really has anything to do with us," Tolliver said. "He may not believe you're a genuine talent, but since when did that matter? Lots of people don't. He just hasn't needed you yet. As far as the board of trustees, or whatever, you've already been paid a retainer by the college. It wasn't much, anyway. This was more for the good buzz than anything else."
"So you don't think Goldman can hurt us?"
"No. And why would he?"
"He didn't seem really angry or upset," I admitted. "But he might think we were defrauding the college."
"So, what's he gonna do about it? He's not the guy who writes the checks. We were hired to do something, we did it."
I felt a little better about Rick Goldman after that, and I decided not to think about Clyde Nunley any more, though I knew Tolliver had a slow burn going about the professor being rough with me. Maybe we wouldn't run into him again. To change the subject, I asked Tolliver how his Beale Street jaunt had gone.
While his long fingers worked on my leg muscles, he told me about Beale Street, and his conversation with a bartender about the famous people who'd come to the bar to hear the blues. I grew more relaxed by the moment, and I was laughing when there was a knock at the door. Tolliver looked at me, surprised, and I shrugged. I wasn't expecting anything or anyone.
A bellman was there, holding a vase of flowers. "These came for you, Ms. Connelly," he said.
Who doesn't like to get flowers? "Put them on the table, please," I said, and glanced at Tolliver to see if he had the tip. He fished out his wallet, gave me a nod, and handed the bellman some bills. The flowers were snapdragons, and I didn't think anyone had ever sent me snapdragons. Actually, I didn't think anyone had ever sent me flowers before, unless you counted a corsage or two when I was in high school. I said as much to Tolliver. He pulled the little envelope from the plastic prongs in the foliage and handed it to me, no expression on his face.
The card read, "You have given us peace," and it was signed "Joel and Diane Morgenstern."
"They're very pretty," I said. I touched one blossom lightly.
"Nice of Diane to think of them," Tolliver said.
"No, this was Joel's idea."
"Why do you say that?"
"He's the kind of man who thinks of flowers," I said positively. "And she's the kind of woman who doesn't."
Tolliver thought this was foolishness.
"Really, Tolliver, you've got to take my word on this," I said. "Joel is the kind of guy who thinks about women."
"I think about women. I think about them all the time."
"No, that's not what I mean." I tried to think of how to put it. "He doesn't just think about wanting to fuck women, when he looks at them. I'm not saying he's gay," I added hastily, since Tolliver was looking incredulous. "I'm saying that he thinks about what women like." That still wasn't quite it, but it was as close as I could come. "He likes to please women," I said, but that wasn't exactly right, either.
The phone rang and Tolliver picked it up. "Yes," he said. "Hello, Diane. Harper just got the flowers; she says she loves them. You really shouldn't have done it. Oh, he did? Well, thank him, then." Tolliver made a face at me, and I grinned. He listened for a few moments. "Tomorrow? Oh, no thanks, we'd feel like we were intruding..." Tolliver looked acutely uncomfortable. "That's too much trouble," he said next. His tone was carefully patient. He listened. "Then, all right," he said reluctantly. "We'll be there."