Jeffry Lindsay - Dexter in the Dark

“Yeah,” she said. “But if there’s a Tammy enrolled in one of Halpern’s classes, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

I pulled the tattered remnants of my arm from her grip. “And if there isn’t?”

She just shook her head. “Come on,” she said.

But as I passed by the body once more, something clutched at the leg of my pants, and I looked down.

“Ahk,” Vince said to me. He cleared his throat. “Dexter,” he said, and I raised an eyebrow. He flushed and let go of my pants. “I have to talk to you,” he said.

“By all means,” I said. “Can it wait?”

He shook his head. “It’s pretty important,” he said.

“Well, all right then.” I took the three steps back to where he was still squatting beside the body. “What is it?”

He looked away, and as unlikely as it was that he would show real emotion, his face flushed even more. “I talked to Manny,” he said.

“Wonderful. And yet you still have all your limbs,” I said.

“He, ahm,” Vince said. “He wants to make a few changes. Ahm. In the menu. Your menu. For the wedding.”

“Aha,” I said, in spite of how corny it sounds to say “Aha” when you are standing beside a dead body. I just couldn’t help myself. “By any chance, are these expensive changes?”

Vince refused to look up at me. He nodded his head. “Yes,” he said. “He said he’s had an inspiration. Something really new and different.”

“I think that’s terrific,” I said, “but I don’t think I can afford inspiration. We’ll have to tell him no.”

Vince shook his head again. “You don’t understand. He only called because he likes you. He says the contract allows him to do whatever he wants.”

“And he wants to raise the price a wee bit?”

Vince was definitely blushing now. He mumbled a few syllables and tried to look away even further. “What?” I asked him. “What did you say?”

“About double,” he said, very quietly, but at least audible.

“Double,” I said.

“Yes.”

“That’s $500 a plate,” I said.

“I’m sure it will be very nice,” said bright-red Vince.

“For $500 a plate it had better be more than nice. It had better park the cars, mop the floor, and give all the guests a back rub.”

“This is cutting-edge stuff, Dexter. You’ll probably get your wedding in a magazine.”

“Yes, and it will probably be Bankruptcy Today . We have to talk to him, Vince.”

He shook his head and continued to look at the grass. “I can’t,” he said.

Humans are wonderful combinations of silly, ignorant, and dumb, aren’t they? Even the ones who are pretending most of the time, like Vince. Here he was, a fearless forensic tech, actually within inches of a gruesomely murdered body that had no more effect on him than a tree stump, and yet he was paralyzed with terror at the thought of facing a tiny man who sculpted chocolate for a living.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll talk to him myself.”

He looked up at me at last. “Be careful, Dexter,” he said.

ICAUGHT UP WITH DEBORAH AS SHE WAS TURNING HER CAR around, and happily, she paused long enough for me to climb in for a ride to the registrar’s office. She had nothing to say on the short drive over, and I was too preoccupied with my own problems to care.

A quick search of the records with my new friend at the registrar’s office turned up no Tammy in any of Halpern’s classes. But Deborah, who had been pacing back and forth while she waited, was ready for that. “Try last semester,” she said. I did; again nothing.

“All right,” she said with a frown. “Then try Wilkins’s classes.”

It was a lovely idea, and to prove it, I got an immediate hit: Ms. Connor was in Wilkins’s seminar on situational ethics.

“Right,” Deborah said. “Get her address.”

Tammy Connor lived in a residential hall that was only moments away, and Deborah wasted no time in getting us over there and parking illegally in front of it. She was out of the car and marching toward the front door before I could even get my door open, but I followed along as quickly as I could.

The room was on the third floor. Deborah chose to vault up the stairs two at a time rather than waste time pushing the button for an elevator, and since this left me with not enough breath to complain about it, I didn’t. I got there just in time to see the door to Tammy’s room swing open to reveal a stocky girl with dark hair and glasses. “Yes?” she said, frowning at Deborah.

Debs showed her badge and said, “Tammy Connor?”

The girl gasped and put a hand to her throat. “Oh, God, I knew it,” she said.

Deborah nodded. “Are you Tammy Connor, miss?”

“No. No, of course not,” the girl said. “Allison, her roommate.”

“Do you know where Tammy is, Allison?”

The girl inhaled her lower lip and chewed it while shaking her head vigorously. “No,” she said.

“How long has she been gone?” Deborah asked.

“Two days.”

“Two days?” Deborah said, raising her eyebrows. “Is that unusual?”

Allison looked like she was going to chew her lip off, but she kept gnawing on it, pausing only long enough to blurt out, “I’m not supposed to say anything.”

Deborah stared at her for a long moment before finally saying, “I think you’re going to have to say something, Allison. We think Tammy may be in a lot of trouble.”

That seemed to me a very understated way of saying that we thought she was dead, but I let it go by, since it was obviously having a profound effect on Allison.

“Oh,” she said, and started jiggling up and down. “Oh, oh, I just knew this would happen.”

“What is it that you think happened?” I asked her.

“They got caught,” she said. “I told her.”

“I’m sure you did,” I said. “So why not tell us, too?”

She hopped a little faster for a moment. “Oh,” she said again and then warbled, “she’s having an affair with a professor. Oh, God, she’ll kill me for this!”

Personally, I didn’t think Tammy would be killing anybody, but just to be sure I said, “Did Tammy wear any jewelry?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “Jewelry?” she said, as if the word was in some foreign language-Aramaic, perhaps.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said encouragingly. “Rings, bracelets-anything like that?”

“You mean like her platinum anklet?” Allison said, very obligingly, I thought.

“Yes, exactly like that,” I said. “Did it have any markings on it?”

“Uh-huh, her name,” she said. “Oh, God, she’ll be so pissed at me.”

“Do you know which professor she was having an affair with, Allison?” Deborah said.

Allison went back to shaking her head. “I really shouldn’t tell,” she said.

“Was it Professor Wilkins?” I said, and even though Deborah glared at me, Allison’s reaction was much more gratifying.

“Oh God,” she said. “I swear I never said.”

One call on the cell phone got us the address in Coconut Grove where Dr. Wilkins made his humble home. It was in a section called The Moorings, which meant that either my alma mater was paying professors a great deal more than they used to, or else Professor Wilkins had independent means. As we turned onto the street, the afternoon rain started, blowing across the road in slanted sheets, then slowing to a trickle, then picking up again.

We found the house easily. The number was on the yellow seven-foot wall that surrounded the house. A wrought-iron gate blocked off the driveway. Deborah pulled up in front and parked in the street, and we climbed out and looked through the gate. It was a rather modest home, no more than 4,000 square feet, and situated at least seventy-five yards from the water, so perhaps Wilkins wasn’t really all that wealthy.