Smoke in Mirrors

  “How about the good cop, bad cop routine?” he suggested.

  “I don’t know. Neither of us are cops.” She wrinkled her nose. “Besides, everyone who watches television knows that trick. Hard to believe that sort of elementary psychological manipulation would work in real life.”

  “Are you telling me that you actually doubt the truth of what you see on television?”

  “Well—”

  “Besides, our goal isn’t to manipulate Julie Bromley with clever psychology.”

  “No?” She raised her brows. “What is our goal?”

  “To scare her into telling us the truth.”

  “Oh, right. Got it.”

  “I didn’t steal anything,” Julie shrieked. “I swear it. I just looked at some of your stuff, Miss Hutton, that’s all, honest.”

  Thomas winced and glanced uneasily at the wall that divided Julie’s apartment from the one next door. The off-campus building had been constructed as student housing and it was obvious that no one had worried much about sound insulation.

  Julie’s small studio apartment was crammed with the clutter of student life. There were several oversized cushions and a single chair. The bed was unmade. A half-full bag of potato chips was propped against the computer. Textbooks and a couple of notebooks were scattered across the desk. The closet door was open. Thomas could see several pairs of shoes and boots tumbled on the floor. A red leather jacket hung over the back of a chair.

  Julie had looked startled to find them in the hall outside her apartment, but she had allowed them inside without protest. She had been drinking a can of cola and had tentatively offered her visitors some. The idea of drinking pop at that hour of the morning sent a shudder through Thomas, but he had declined politely. Each to his or her own source of caffeine, he thought.

  Leonora had explained in a very firm voice that they needed to speak with her about an important matter. Julie had backed down in the face of an authoritative adult.

  Her initial nervousness had turned to outright alarm when Leonora had confronted her with the information that she had been seen sneaking out of the library office. Panic had set in immediately. After a weak stab at denial, she had plunged straight into mitigating circumstances.

  Leonora had been right. Julie wasn’t what anyone would call a hardened criminal.

  “I realize you didn’t take anything.” Leonora sat in the chair at the desk. “But I want to know why you searched my satchel. I’m sure you can understand my concern.”

  “I was just curious, that’s all,” Julie said sullenly.

  “About what?” Leonora asked.

  Julie twisted restlessly on her chair. “I dunno.”

  Thomas decided it was time for him to play his part. He had been standing silently at the window, letting Leonora handle the interrogation, waiting for his cue.

  He faced the girl. “What did you tell Alex Rhodes about the results of your search?”

  Julie froze, a terrified rabbit confronting a predator. Being the bad cop wasn’t as much fun as the television shows made it appear, Thomas thought. Especially when the victim was only nineteen years old.

  But her reaction told him that he had hit the nail on the head. He had to keep going forward or risk giving her time to recover and think up a story.

  “I saw you at Rhodes’s place yesterday afternoon,” he said. “That would have been after you went through Miss Hutton’s things. You were obviously reporting back to him.”

  “I didn’t . . . I didn’t—” Julie’s face crumpled. Tears slid down her cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Look,” Thomas said. “We don’t give a damn if you’re sleeping with him. Speaking as an official adult, I’ve got to tell you that I think it’s a mistake, but—”

  Julie clamped both hands into fists and shot to her feet. Her face flushed with outrage. “I’m not sleeping with Mr. Rhodes. Who told you I was? It’s a lie.”

  “Rhodes has a thing for attractive students. But that’s your problem, not ours.”

  “I am not sleeping with him, damn it,” Julie stormed. “He’s old. Why would I want to go to bed with a guy who’s almost forty? I love Travis. We’re going to get married as soon as we graduate.”

  “Sure,” Thomas said.

  It occurred to him that he was damn close to forty himself and getting older by the minute. He wondered if he looked old to Leonora.

  “It’s the truth!” Julie was shouting now.

  “That’s enough, Thomas.” Leonora rose from her chair, plucked some tissues from the box on the desk and crossed the small space to where Julie stood trembling. “I think Julie is telling us the truth.”

  She put the tissues in Julie’s hand and gently eased her back down into the cushion.

  “It is the truth,” Julie sobbed into the tissue. “I swear I’m not letting that old dude screw me. Jeez. I can’t even imagine getting into bed with someone his age. It’s disgusting.”

  “Take it easy,” Leonora said gently. “We know you’ve been to see Alex Rhodes and we know you searched my satchel. We think there’s a link between those two facts and we’re trying to figure out what it is, that’s all. We’re a little worried, you see.”

  “I’m not sleeping with Mr. Rhodes,” Julie mumbled dejectedly into the tissue. “I’m working for him.”

  Thomas stilled. Leonora must have sensed that he was about to pounce. She shook her head silently in warning. He hesitated and then reluctantly subsided.

  Annoyed at having his prey snatched out from under his paw, he turned back to the window.

  “It’s all right, Julie,” Leonora murmured behind him. “We understand. It was a job. That’s different.”

  Thomas kept quiet. He turned around again, in time to watch Leonora pat Julie in a comforting, almost maternal manner. Not just playing good cop, he realized. There was genuine empathy in her stance and the way she touched the younger woman.

  “We need the money,” Julie whispered in a broken voice.

  “You and Travis?” Leonora pressed.

  “Travis’s grades haven’t been so good lately. His dad’s threatening to cut off his tuition and expenses. Travis can’t make enough with his part-time job as a gardener to cover his rent and fees and stuff.”

  “So Rhodes offered you some extra cash for going through Miss Hutton’s things, is that it?” Thomas asked.

  His voice must have been a little rougher than he had intended. Julie flinched visibly. Leonora gave him another repressive glare.

  “He said he just wanted to know if Miss Hutton was a legitimate librarian.”

  “There’s such a thing as an illegitimate librarian?” Thomas asked.

  “He said he was concerned because at the last campus where he worked he remembered hearing about a phony librarian who used fake credentials to get into the rare book archives and steal some really valuable old books. He said the description fit Miss Hutton. But he told me that he didn’t want to get her in trouble unless she really was a phony.”

  “He sent you to get a look at my identification?” Leonora asked.

  Julie sniffed. “He just wanted to get your social security number or a credit card number so he could check it out on his computer to make sure you were who you said you were.”

  “Just doing his civic duty, is that it?” Thomas said.

  “I told you,” Julie muttered. “He didn’t want to get Miss Hutton in trouble unless she was a real phony.”

  “A real phony.” Leonora handed Julie a fresh tissue. “An interesting turn of phrase.”

  Thomas looked at Julie. “Did you give Miss Hutton’s social security number to Rhodes?”

  “No. I couldn’t find it.” Julie blew her nose into the new tissue.

  Thomas exhaled slowly. Maybe this wasn’t going to turn out so badly.

  “So I gave him her driver’s license number instead,” Julie concluded.

  “Shit,” Thomas said.

  Leonora frowned.

 
Julie jerked violently.

  “Anything else?” Thomas asked.

  Julie swallowed. “Well, I also found a couple of credit cards, so I gave him those numbers, too.”

  “Shit,” Thomas said again. “Little Miss Helpful.”

  “I thought I was helping Mr. Rhodes catch a book thief,” Julie added. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “Good to know that folks like you and Alex Rhodes are out there making the world safe for scholarly research.” Thomas leaned back against the edge of the window and folded his arms. “All right, Julie, pay attention. Here’s what you are going to do. You will not have any more contact with Rhodes. Is that clear?”

  Dismay widened her eyes. “But he still owes me another fifty bucks. He promised to give me two hundred altogether and I only got one hundred and fifty so far.”

  “The thing is, if you try to collect your money, some people might not understand that you were just holding down a part-time job. The cops, for instance, might get the wrong impression.”

  “Cops?” Julie looked horrified. “What wrong impression?”

  “They might be excused for thinking that you were aiding and abetting an identity thief.”

  “But I didn’t steal anything.”

  “Julie, you’re pushing the envelope with the naïve innocent act. Everyone knows that identity theft is big business and a serious crime. A social security number unlocks all the doors and, given a driver’s license and a credit card or two, it’s not that hard to get it.”

  “But I told you, Mr. Rhodes was just making sure that Miss Hutton was for real.”

  “Is that right?” Thomas asked. “And what makes you think that Alex Rhodes is for real?”

  Julie stared at him, obviously staggered by the implications of that question.

  “You mean that Mr. Rhodes is . . . you mean that he may be a criminal? But he’s like a doctor or a shrink or something.”

  Her voice had risen to such a shrill pitch Thomas was surprised that the window behind him did not shatter.

  “I don’t know yet who or what Alex Rhodes is,” he said. “But I think it’s safe to assume that any man who would hire a nineteen-year-old student to go through someone’s personal effects in search of identification data is probably not a very nice guy.”

  Julie started to weep again.

  Leonora touched her shoulder. “Calm down. Mr. Walker and I will handle this from here on in. But in the meantime, I think he’s right. It’s probably best if you don’t have any more contact with Alex Rhodes.”

  Julie looked up at her with wet, doleful eyes. “But what about my fifty dollars?”

  “I’ll tell you what.” Leonora reached down to unclasp her satchel. She took out her wallet. “I’ll give you the fifty dollars that Rhodes owes you.”

  “Uh, Leonora,” Thomas said.

  She paid no attention. Instead she opened the wallet, took out some cash and handed the bills to Julie.

  “Thanks.” Julie took the cash with alacrity, counted it swiftly and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans. “Don’t worry, I won’t go to see Mr. Rhodes again.”

  “We appreciate your assistance in this matter,” Leonora said.

  “Sure.” Julie hurried to open the door. “Well, I’d better get going. I’ve got a ten o’clock English Lit class.”

  Thomas followed Leonora to the door. “With any luck,” he said casually, “this will be the end of it for you.”

  Julie frowned. “What do you mean, with any luck?”

  “In the end, we might be forced to bring in the police.” He moved out into the hall and turned to smile at her. “You never can tell.”

  Julie threw him another traumatized look and shut the door.

  Leonora glared at him. “There was no need to add that last bit about the cops. She’d told us what we wanted to know.”

  “She conned you out of that money.”

  “Big deal. It was worth fifty bucks to find out that Alex Rhodes was doing research on me, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s beside the point. I didn’t like the way she did it. What I told her about the cops may be the truth,” he said. “The more we get into this thing, the more I think we will eventually have to take it to the authorities.”

  “Fine by me.” Leonora clutched her satchel in her left hand and fell into step beside him. “When?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t have enough yet. Ed Stovall has made it pretty clear he can’t justify reopening the investigation into Bethany’s death unless we bring him something solid in the way of evidence. Not after what he went through with Deke when Bethany died. He thinks my brother is a nutcase.”

  She searched his face. “You’re starting to believe that we may actually be investigating a couple of murders, aren’t you?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the nagging sensation that something big and nasty and endowed with a lot of teeth was bearing down on him.

  “I’m still not ready to buy into a murder conspiracy theory,” he said. “But I’ve got to admit that I’m coming to the conclusion that Rhodes is a serious problem.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I’m calling because a friend of mine needs some professional advice and Herb is the only advice columnist I know,” Leonora said on the other end of the line. “I’d go online and email him in care of ‘Ask Henrietta,’ but I know he’s busy and he might not notice my question right away.”

  “He’s swamped, all right.” Gloria settled into her armchair and propped her feet on the small hassock. She surveyed her ankles closely. By the time she had gotten home from the shopping expedition to the mall, they had been swollen. She knew from experience that if she kept them elevated for a while they would slim down. “Don’t tell Herb, but between you and me, ‘Ask Henrietta’ is the most popular column in the Gazette. More questions coming in every day. Herb’s talking about getting an assistant.”

  “I was afraid of that. This is sort of an emergency. I thought maybe you could go down the hall, get the answers we need and then call me back right away.”

  “We?” Gloria repeated cautiously.

  “I mean, the answers my friend needs,” Leonora amended quickly. “Here’s the deal. The guy lost his wife about a year ago. He hasn’t gotten involved with anyone else since her death. I think maybe the marriage had some problems and he’s got some unresolved issues. The point is, my friend wants to get his attention. Make him focus on her, if you see what I mean.”

  “I understand, dear.” Gloria cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear, picked up a pen and a pad of paper and started to make notes. “Does this man have children?”

  “No.”

  “Hobbies?”

  “Well, he’s really into computers.”

  “I see.” She wrote down nerd. “Anything else Herb should know about him?”

  “I can’t think of anything. Call me back as soon as you can after you talk to Herb, okay?”

  “All right, dear, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Oh, and, Gloria?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “While you’re asking Herb about my friend’s problem could you ask him one other quick little question?”

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “Ask him—” Leonora broke off and cleared her throat cautiously. “Ask him if he thinks there’s any possibility of a long-term, committed relationship between a divorced man who likes to work with his tools and who doesn’t plan to ever marry again and is afraid to have kids, and a . . . a woman who is from a somewhat different background.”

  “How different?”

  “Well, she’s more academically inclined, I guess you could say. And she does think she might like to get married. And have kids. Assuming the right man comes along.”

  Gloria was proud of herself. She didn’t miss a beat. “No problem, dear. I’ll get back to you as soon as I talk to Herb.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Everything else going all right up there???
?

  “Yes, I think we’re actually making some progress. Thomas is talking about taking the information we have to the cops. I have to say, it would be a great relief to turn everything over to the authorities.”

  Gloria frowned. “Does that mean you think Meredith and this other woman, Bethany Walker, really were murdered?”

  “I’m afraid it’s possible, yes. Drugs may be involved. We still don’t know exactly what’s going on here.”

  “Dear heaven.” She thought about that for a few seconds and then tightened her grip on the phone. “Leonora?”

  “Yes?”

  “Listen, dear, you’re not in any personal danger there in Wing Cove, are you?”

  “Good grief, no. Don’t worry about that, Grandma. I’m fine. Honest.”

  “You’re quite certain?”

  “Absolutely certain.”

  “Very well. I’ll go talk to Herb and then call you back.”

  “Thanks. Bye for now.”

  “Good-bye, dear.”

  Gloria ended the call and sat studying her notes for a long moment. A man who likes to work with tools . . . a woman who is from a somewhat different background . . .

  She tossed the notebook aside, grabbed the walker that stood next to the chair and hauled herself to her feet.

  She paused in the bathroom long enough to apply a coat of bright-red lipstick and then she headed toward the door of her apartment.

  To hell with her swollen ankles. She would worry about elevating them later.

  She made the trek to Herb’s apartment in excellent time. He opened the door in short order.

  “If you’re here to chew me out because my column is running too long, forget it,” he said. “Not my fault half the subscribers want advice from ‘Ask Henrietta.’ ”

  “I’m not here about the column, Herb, this is personal. I think Leonora is falling in love. We need help. Fast.”

  “Huh.” He stood back. “Come on in. I’ll see what I can do.”

  She maneuvered the walker into the apartment, turned around and sat down on the attached seat. “She called on the pretext of getting advice for a friend. But toward the end of the conversation she threw in the zinger about the man she’s interested in herself. At least, I think she’s talking about herself.”