“Actually,” Carla said, “she’s pathetic. You know? I mean, me and Tracy working here is just, you know, a step along the way. Pay’s good, benefits are great. My husband’s a carpenter in town, on his own, no benefits. Tracy’s hub is working on a Ph.D. here. We got lives.”
“And she’s got?”
“The job,” Carla said. “Period. So she makes it into a damn religion. The department is perfect. The professors walk on freaking water.”
“And,” Tracy said, “if she weren’t ever-vigilant, it would all go to hell.”
“So what didn’t she tell me?” I said.
“Why do you think she didn’t tell you something?” Carla said.
“I’m a trained detective,” I said.
“Wowie,” Tracy said.
“So tell me about Ashton Prince,” I said. “The part that made you two sort of giggle at each other.”
“Ash liked the ladies,” Tracy said.
“Especially the young ones,” Carla said.
“How young?” I said.
“Mostly younger than us,” Carla said.
“Not to say he didn’t give us a chance,” Tracy said.
“Which you declined?” I said.
“I like my husband a lot better than I liked Ash Prince,” Tracy said.
“Absolutely,” Carla said.
“Students?” I said.
“You betcha,” Tracy said.
“Any one in particular?”
“Changed from semester to semester,” Tracy said.
“But he usually got them from his seminar,” Carla said.
“He gave a seminar every semester, ‘Low-Country Realists, ’ ” Tracy said.
“Which is where he trolled for them,” Carla said. “He’s something of a legend among the women students.”
“What happened to his seminar?” I said.
“Kids will all get the grade they had on the midterm for a final grade. Ash was a notoriously easy grader. Nobody’s complaining.”
“You don’t happen to know who his current favorite was,” I said.
“Don’t have a name. But there was a blonde girl, tall, very artsy-looking in a sort of fake way,” Tracy said. “You know. Long, smooth hair; high boots; too-long cashmere sweaters; pre-torn designer jeans. She spent a lot of time in his office.”
“When does the seminar meet?” I said.
“Tuesdays, two to five, in the Fine Arts building,” Carla said. “Room Two-fifty-six.”
“Right on the tip of your tongue,” I said.
“I spent most of a day trying to schedule a replacement for Ash when he got killed,” she said. “It’s burned into my brain.”
I gave each of them my business card.
“Hey,” Tracy said. “You’re not a cop.”
“Private,” I said. “You think of anything, you could call me.”
“A private eye?” Carla said. “You carry a gun?”
“I do,” I said.
“You ever shoot anybody?”
“Mostly I use it to get a date,” I said.
13
I went over to the campus police station and sat with the chief, a tall, pleasant-looking guy with short sandy hair and horn-rimmed glasses. His name was Crosby.
“Frank Belson said I should talk to you,” he said. “I started out in a cruiser with Frank back in the days when we were two to a car, working out of the old station house in Brighton.”
“Right across from Saint Elizabeth’s.”
“You got it,” Crosby said. “Met a lotta nurses from Saint Elizabeth’s in those days. Me and Frank both. We had
