Gail Bowen - Burying Ariel

“And she didn’t elaborate?”

“Not another word on that subject or any other. The plane landed; we shared a cab from the airport. I got dropped off first, and I haven’t seen her since. I’ve been uneasy enough about her state of mind to try her office and her house a half-dozen times. No luck.”

“I’m sure she’s fine, just out riding her bike somewhere,” I said, with what I hoped sounded like conviction. “I’ll call if I manage to connect with her.”

“I hope one of us finds her soon,” he said. “Because all the bike-riding in the world doesn’t offset the fact that that note was written by a deeply troubled woman.”

When I got back to the Political Science office, Rosalie was at her desk. She was wearing a white silk blouse, a single strand of pearls, and delicate pearl and diamond drop earrings. She looked lovely, and I told her so.

“One of the tips in my bridal book is that a bride should try out her jewellery for the wedding beforehand. It says a bride doesn’t want to be walking down the aisle when she discovers that she should have had her grandmother’s pearls restrung.”

“No,” I said, “I guess she doesn’t.”

Rosalie picked up the flatness in my voice. “Am I talking too much about my own life these days?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I love hearing the details. You know that. I’m just a little preoccupied. You haven’t seen Solange, have you?”

“She was waiting outside the office when I got to work this morning.”

“Is she around now?”

“No. She wanted some information, and when I gave it to her, she left.”

“What was the information?”

Rosalie fingered her grandmother’s pearls pensively. “You know that I try to keep my dealings with every faculty member confidential…”

“This is important,” I said quickly.

“I guess there’s no reason not to divulge this,” Rosalie said. “Solange wanted to know if we had a current phone number for Maryse Bergman.”

The name was familiar but I couldn’t make a connection. “Is she a student?” I asked.

“She was a student,” Rosalie said. “She was the one who accused Dr. Coyle of rape.”

“Right,” I said. “How soon we forget.”

“I’ll bet Dr. Coyle hasn’t forgotten,” Rosalie said tartly.

“I’m sure he hasn’t,” I said. “So, did you have a current number?”

“The last listing we had was in care of the Political Science department where Ms. Bergman went to do her M.A.”

“You mean some university actually accepted her into their graduate program? Kevin showed me her transcript when all his problems with her started. She barely made it through her undergraduate degree. Who took her?”

Rosalie named the university.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Their program is first-rate. They’ve rejected students of ours who had a lot more potential than Maryse Bergman.”

“Maybe she didn’t have that much potential after all.” Rosalie’s blackberry eyes sparkled with secret pleasure. “Solange wasn’t able to reach Ms. Bergman through the Political Science department there. She must have flunked out. Anyway, Solange came back and asked if we had anything more current.”

“And we don’t.”

“We don’t, but I knew Dr. Coyle would. He makes a point of keeping track of all the people involved in his defence. He calls them his ‘players.’ I guess he was able to give Solange what she needed because I haven’t seen either of them since. Funny. Dr. Coyle didn’t even drop by to tell me where he could be reached. That’s not like him at all.”

“Rosalie, do you have Tom Bradley’s number? He’s…”

“Head of the Political Science department that accepted Maryse Bergman?” she said. “Of course, I have it. He was one of Dr. Jesse’s closest friends.”

“I’d forgotten that, too,” I said.

“I haven’t forgotten anything about Dr. Jesse,” Rosalie said wistfully. “When he was head of this department, we had standards.” As if to stop herself from elaborating, she snapped her lips shut and reached for her Rolodex. The conversation was over. I walked to the filing cabinet, found Maryse Bergman’s file, and pulled it.

When Rosalie handed me the paper on which she’d written Tom’s number, I noticed her manicure. “I like that shade of nail polish,” I said. “What’s it called?”

“Bridal Pink,” she said, but for the first time an allusion to her wedding didn’t bring a blush and a smile.

I went back to my office and opened Maryse Bergman’s file. What I saw confirmed the need to call Tom Bradley. Not only were Maryse’s grades mediocre, the file was fat with letters of protest she had written about grades. Maryse had never been my student, but her litany of aggrieved entitlement was a familiar one. “I spent three weeks working on this paper and I know for a fact that X wrote hers the night before, and I don’t think it’s fair that she got a better grade…” I closed the file and picked up the phone.

I’d met Tom Bradley several times when Ben had been alive, and we had liked one another enough to keep up the acquaintance through e-mail. I was glad we were on good terms because the question I had to ask Tom was a humdinger.

His pleasure when he heard my voice filled me with guilt, but there was no turning back. “I need to ask you about Maryse Bergman,” I said.

When he spoke again, there was a distinct chill. “What about her?”

“Is she still in your M.A. program?”

“She didn’t last.”

“That can’t have been a surprise. I’ve just been looking at her file. What made you accept her?”

The silence between us grew painful.

“You did it as a favour to Ben, didn’t you?” I said.

“To Ben and to your department,” he said finally. “Joanne, you remember the atmosphere then. It was a war zone, and the press was panting over every lurid rumour. Finally, when it seemed as if the worst was over, Maryse Bergman came along with her charges against Kevin Coyle. They would have been proven false. I want you to know that. If there had been even the slightest chance that Maryse Bergman was telling the truth, Ben wouldn’t have called me.”

“And asked you to accept Maryse into your graduate program to get her out of the way,” I said.

“It was a decision I didn’t lose a moment’s sleep over,” Tom said. “By accepting an unqualified student who, logic suggested, wouldn’t make it through her first year of studies, I was able to spare an innocent man more public humiliation and give your department a chance to reflect and regroup. Most importantly, I was able to take some of the heat off Ben. He’d already had one heart attack. I could see the price he was paying for trying to be fair and decent to a small group of people who were neither. I didn’t want to lose him. As it turned out, we lost him anyway, but I take comfort in the fact that I did my best for him.”

“You should,” I said. “Ben Jesse was one of the finest men I’ve ever known. Unfortunately, that’s not a factor here. I still need to get in touch with Maryse Bergman. Do you have a number where she can be reached?”

“So Ben’s obituary is going to be rewritten after all,” Tom said coldly. “Like Neville Chamberlain, he’ll be remembered as a man with a fatal need to appease.”

“If I’m lucky, Ben’s name won’t even come up,” I said. “All I need to find out from Maryse Bergman is if she acted alone or if she had a little help from her friends.”

“Joanne, does all this have something to do with that instructor who was killed out there last week? There hasn’t been much about it in our media, but I assumed it was a case of random violence. It never occurred to me till this minute that there might be a link with that mess two years ago.”