Slugfest

“No phone either,” I said.

“How do you know he had a phone?”

“Everyone has a phone,” Lucy said.

“He called me. But it was after he left his bag, so he must have had it with him. He had a few bags. Three, I think. Maybe this was the nonessential stuff.”

“No wonder he didn’t bother to come back for it,” Lucy said. “There’s nothing here that couldn’t be easily replaced if you were trying to get out of town in a hurry.”

“I think he left a little sooner than he planned,” I said. “But why all the fuss about a bag with extra clothing in it? Especially if you’re expecting a windfall and leaving the country? If it was that important to him, why didn’t Garland just come and find me on Wednesday morning after he sneaked in?”

It hit me and Stancik at the same time. Garland wasn’t looking for his bag—someone else was. Someone who knew it was missing and wanted to know what was in it. I’d never actually spoken to him on the phone—Babe did, and she wouldn’t have recognized his voice. And anyone could have left that note on the bulletin board. For all we knew it was Garland’s killer who’d been trying to reach me.

None of us had seen the bag since Wednesday, when I’d stashed it under the table. Nikki thought the grate might have been slightly out of place on Saturday morning after her husband had been there. “I assumed Russ moved it.”

“Friday was the morning you thought I had rearranged Primo’s sculptures, remember?” I said. “Maybe someone took the bag from under the table in my booth, searched it, and then dumped it in the sarcophagus.”

“But why?” Lucy said. “Why not just steal it?” It was an excellent point.

Labidou arrived, carrying a black plastic bag like dozens of others on the show floor. He also held a bunch of battered roses he’d picked up for free. When he saw something was up, he got into cop mode and pushed them on Lucy, who was too confused to respond but was used to men bringing her flowers, so she simply said, thanks, and tried to figure out if she knew him.

Stancik placed the waterlogged evidence in the plastic bag and handed it to Labidou. Still wearing the gloves, Stancik removed the grate. “We’ll return this after we’ve had a chance to examine it. I don’t expect we’ll learn much but we have to check it for prints. We also have someone collecting the garbage carts, but I don’t know that we’ll find anything useful after this sprinkler business.” As the two men left, I was still pondering Lucy’s question, Why not just steal it?

“Either they took what they wanted out of the bag,” I said, “or they wanted to make sure that something wasn’t in the bag. Something that might link them with Garland Bleimeister.”

“Then why not toss it back under the table?” Lucy said, absentmindedly whacking the roses against her hand.

Who knew? Fear? Fingerprints? Would there still be fingerprints on something if it had been floating in the water? The cops seemed to think it was possible, but would a criminal know that? Was it bad timing? If they’d been inspecting the bag on Nikki’s table, it might be easier to slip it in under the decorative grate if someone came by. If you were strong.

A handful of rose petals fell, and Lucy bent down to pick them up. Instead of trashing them she tossed them into the water in the sarcophagus. “Oh, sorry.”

“Go ahead,” Nikki said. “It looks good. Reminds me of a spa treatment I once had.” The two women floated the rest of the roses in the concrete tub.

In lieu of the sarcophagus Lucy bought a pinecone nightlight she reckoned would be easier to get into a fifth- floor walk-up. We still had time before the doors opened and I planned to give Lucy a quick tour and drive-by introductions to Connie, Lauryn, and Rolanda, but she dragged her feet.

“Okay, but let’s go this way,” she said. “We should probably stay away from the security guard at Hall E. I don’t think she likes me.” That was Rolanda’s post. It seemed they had already met.

Fifty-four

After the morning’s excitement the rest of the day was tame. Not many attendees remarked on the extra humidity, thinking, as Lucy had, that it had been ratcheted up for the tropical plants. And if there were booths and exhibits in some disarray, perhaps they were just closing up shop early. Those who did know about the morning’s disaster were impressed at how quickly people had bounced back, but for most attendees it was business as usual.

Four of the pieces I had lent to other exhibitors had sold, so Lucy and I would have that much less to pack and ship back to Springfield. I was surprised Hank hadn’t called, but he was reliable and I expected to hear from him before Monday afternoon when everything had to be removed to get ready for the next event.

Having lived with them for days, I had decided to purchase one of the sculptures myself. It probably meant I wouldn’t make any money for my efforts this weekend, but I was confident Primo would give me a discount. I’d grown fond of the piece, a four-foot oxidized metal sculpture Primo had called Spade and Archer. He had used fragments of a shovel and of a bow and arrow. Since my astrological sign was Sagittarius and I am a gardener and a mystery fan, it seemed to have my name on it as well as Sam’s and Miles’s. I remembered the dumplike backyard at Primo’s place and worried that I’d never find the piece again, so I opted to take that one with me in the Jeep when I left the city and not ship it with the others.

At 1 P.M. Jensen swung by with formal invitations to Mrs. Moffitt’s after-show party in Hunting Ridge. Connie Anzalone had mentioned it on Friday and I had been faintly jealous, but now David, Nikki, and I had been invited, too. David’s unpleasant neighbor with the unsold fountains quietly seethed. Lucy cleared her throat.

“Is it all right if I bring a friend?” I asked. “Maybe two?”

Jensen said yes, and as soon as he left, Lucy pulled me aside. “Speaking of friends? Sarah called just after you left. That professor you asked about? Quite a character. I told her we’d call back since I wasn’t sure what you wanted to know.”

Sarah Marshall picked up after five rings. According to her, the good professor had had an eye for the girl students. That may have been a contributing factor to his getting the boot, but the school blamed it on his unauthorized experiments on pest repellents. Something to do with toxins, Sarah wasn’t sure because the juicier part of the story involved an undergrad, and why stick to boring science when there were more salacious—and easier to remember—details?

“First they pulled the plug on his funding and then they canned him,” she said. “I asked about students who might have worked for him. I don’t think the school would keep records of his former interns,” she said, yawning. “There were lots of them. I’m not sure if I could even get access to them. Especially now. Reporters have been nosing around because of that aggie student who died in New York. Garland something. The prof’s name was Lincoln Wrentham.”

“How are you spelling that?” I asked.

“With a W. Can I go back to sleep now?”

We found a surprising amount of information online about Lincoln Wrentham. At least surprising to me, who prided myself on having the fewest links of most people I knew. Wrentham’s last known address was somewhere in New Jersey. No current employer found. No recent papers published. Divorced.

My cell phone rang. It was Sarah, slightly more awake than she’d been earlier. I could hear her drinking something that I took to be coffee.

“Listen, there’s something else. Wrentham’s daughter went to school here. Some free or discounted tuition thing. She was registered under another name, but when the revelations about her father came out, so did her real identity, and she left when he did. Just as well. It would have been awkward to have everyone know daddy was boffing her classmates.”

“You remember her name?”

“Sure. She was in my creative writing class. A-plus student. Emma Franklin.”

Fifty-five