J. Jance - Improbable cause

She left me standing by the door while she went to the couch, got a tissue, and blew her nose. Then she picked up another box and carried it out to the porch.

“Did he know or not?” I asked.

She stopped and glared at me, the two angry spots I had seen before glowing bright crimson on her cheeks. “No, he didn’t know. And he didn’t have to know, either. I never would have told him if you hadn’t made me.“

“Where’s your husband now?”

“Back at the U. He was up all night, throwing my things into boxes. He told me to pack my stuff, take the car, and be out of here by the time he gets home tonight.” She started crying again. If it was a bid for sympathy, she was barking up the wrong tree.

“Do you know how we could find him?”

“Why the hell should I help you find him?” she demanded. “Oh, all right, the dean’s office of the Dental School has his schedule. Now get out of here and leave me alone.”

We got.

“That doesn’t look so good for your theory, does it,” Al observed once we were in the car.

“What do you mean?”

“If Rush was really the killer, wouldn’t he be the one running away instead of sending his little woman packing.”

Unfortunately, Big Al’s question made a whole lot of sense.

The car sweltered in the noonday heat, and our little standard-issue departmental Dodge was without air-conditioning of any but the open-window variety. We peeled out of our jackets for as long as we were in the car, but we put them on again once we reached the university. Naturally, the only parking space available near the Health Sciences Complex was nowhere near any shade. Par for the course.

A receptionist directed us to the Dental School Dean’s Office in D-Wing, and the dean’s office passed us along to the student paging office on the fourth floor of B-Wing. We felt like a couple of rats lost in a maze, but surprisingly, the student paging system worked and worked well. Within ten minutes, we met Tom Rush on the grass outside the main hospital lobby.

“I didn’t want to talk to you in there,” he said, motioning over his shoulder toward the building. His face was flushed. His hands shook.

“I didn’t do it,” he rushed on, without waiting for us to ask. “Debi told me you thought I killed him, but I didn’t, I swear to God. I might have if I’d known, but I didn’t have the foggiest idea, not until last night. Why’d you make her tell me?”

“So we wouldn’t have to,” I told him.

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and walked away from me. With his face averted, he spoke again. “At first I couldn’t believe she’d done it again. I mean, it was just like the other time. We’ve only been married a year and a half.”

“What do you mean ”the other time‘?“

“She did the same thing with the other dentist she worked for. I made her quit that job when I found out, and then she went to work for Nielsen. What does she see in those old farts?”

He moved farther away from us across the grass. I heard the other part of his question, the unspoken part. The part that said, “What’s the matter with me? Why aren’t I good enough?” I knew those questions only too well. I had asked the same ones over and over after Karen took off.

I felt sorry for Tom Rush. I noticed he hadn’t mentioned the money part, the raise Debi claimed to have gotten. I doubted she had lied to us about that. From their shabby apartment and threadbare clothes, I was sure it had taken every dime of that raise just to live and pay the bills. And I’m sure someone from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would have told me that this was a clear-cut case of sexual harassment and exploitation in the workplace. But still, I knew only too well what Tom was going through, and my heart went out to him.

Finally he got control of himself and came back to where Big Al and I were waiting.

“That’s why you threw her out, then?” I asked. “Because it had happened before?”

Rush nodded. “I told her then that if it ever happened again, that was it. I would’ve left last night myself, but it’s too close to the end of the term. I’ll be damned if I’m going to blow dental school at this stage!”

He paused and looked away while a look of utter desolation passed over his face. “I’ll probably take her back eventually,” he said. “I did it before. I came here to school today because I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve sat here the whole day, and I haven’t done a thing. It’s like my mind’s paralyzed or something.”

“I know this is tough,” I told him. “But we need to ask you some questions about Saturday.”

“You still think I did it?” Tom asked.

“Just answer the question,” Big Al put in. “Unless you’d rather have an attorney present when you do.”

“I was here,” Rush answered quickly.

“Where, in one of the labs?”

“Yes. The same one where they paged me just now.”

“Did anyone else see you?”

“Sure. There must have been five or six of us who were here all day.”

“Are any of the others up there now? Could we talk to them?”

“Do you have to?” Tom Rush’s pride was showing, but he didn’t have any choice.

“With them you have an alibi,” I said.

“Without them you’re up shit creek.”

Without another word, Tom Rush led us up to a small dental lab on the fourth floor of the building. There were probably ten people in the room altogether. We talked to all of them, one at a time. Six of them said they had been in the lab on Saturday, and all six confirmed that Tom Rush had been there with them. He had arrived before nine-thirty and hadn’t left until after four. Three of them, including the instructor, had eaten lunch with him in the cafeteria.

When we finished talking to them, it was about three o’clock. We walked back out and got in the car. It was an oven. The steering wheel was too hot to touch.

“What do you think?” I asked, as we rolled down the windows and tried to breathe.

“Sounded like gospel to me,” Al said. “Tom Rush isn’t our man, period. You don’t get that many people to lie off the tops of their heads and do that good a job of it.”

“That’s the way it sounded to me, too,” I said.

“So where the hell does that leave us?”

“In this particular game,” I told him, “I believe we’re back to square one.”

That night after work I finally got myself up to Bailey’s Foods on Queen Anne Hill to buy some groceries. I also made a foray across the street to the state liquor store to restock my depleted supply of MacNaughton’s. Bailey’s has installed one of those yuppie salad bars, so I treated myself to a huge taco salad-the kind my mother never used to make.

I went straight home and ate a medium-elegant dinner, served at my new glass-and-brass dining room table. I ate the salad from the chinette deli plate and drank my glass of chilled Vouvray from crystal stemware. It’s no surprise that after dinner I ended up falling asleep in my recliner. I spend more time there than I do in my bed.

I have no idea what time I fell asleep, but I know when I woke up-eleven. The phone on the table beside me was ringing its head off. I caught it just before the answering machine did.

“Hello,” I mumbled.

“So it is you,” a woman’s voice announced. I’m not sure how she recognized my voice from that one-word grunted greeting. I sure as hell didn’t know who she was, but I could hear the tiny telltale beeps that said she was calling from the security phone downstairs in the lobby.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Darlene,” she answered.

“Darlene who?” I couldn’t recall anyone by that name. “I think maybe you’ve got the wrong apartment,” I said.