Dead Secret

Department.”

“I understand completely. It’s not an inconvenience for us.”

“I didn’t want to leave on bad terms.”

Throughout the conversation, Diane tried to gauge whether Annette Lymon was the type of person to knife someone. It struck her as odd that not once during the conversation did she mention Mike’s being in the hospital. Maybe she didn’t know, but the news was all over the museum.

It was a good place to end the conversation; there were suddenly several voices in the hallway, and it looked like they were about to have company.

“We almost had him the other day.”

Diane recognized the voice of Spence Mitchell, the herpetologist. He rounded the corner with Jonas Briggs, the archaeologist, and Sylvia Mercer, the zoologist, and came face-to-face with Diane. He stopped abruptly and smiled weakly, rubbing a nervous hand over his bald head. Diane knew he dreaded seeing her.

“I was just telling Dr. Mercer and Dr. Briggs that we almost had our snake.”

Against Diane’s better judgment, she had allowed the herpetologist to put in a live exhibit when the museum opened last year. Unfortunately, one of the live exhibits, a black snake, Elaphe obsoleta, had escaped and taken up residence in the museum walls and cabinets, showing himself at inopportune times.

“Almost?” said Diane.

He shrugged as if to say, Almost is as close as we’ve gotten so far.

“What I don’t understand,” said Diane, “is why he doesn’t go outside.”

“Well, uh, I’m not sure.” He smiled brightly. “But I’ll bet we don’t have any rodents in the museum.”

“Small compensation.” As Diane spoke to the herpetologist she noticed Dr. Sylvia Mercer eyeing Dr. Lymon, who had just grabbed a Coke from another machine and was now hurrying out of the lounge.

The herpetologist nodded at Diane and backed away toward the candy machine, followed by Jonas, who was laughing. Sylvia Mercer stopped in front of Diane.

“I need to speak with you. I should have sooner. Can we talk somewhere?”

Chapter 16

Diane led Sylvia Mercer to her osteology lab office. Sylvia flexed her hands, rubbed them together and sat down in the stuffed burgundy chair.

“I haven’t seen this office.” Her gaze traveled around the sparsely decorated room, finally resting on the watercolor of a gray wolf. “Canis lupes,” she said in almost a whisper, as if she were practicing her memory of taxonomy. “That’s a very nice watercolor.”

“Thank you,” said Diane. “It was painted by a friend.”

Sylvia was a zoologist from Bartram University and one of the part-time curators. She was a slender woman, athletic and energetic, though this evening all her energy seemed to be of the nervous kind. She was wearing her lab work clothes-jeans and a T-shirt-and had her midlength brown hair tied back in a ponytail. Since she’d helped Diane solve the murder of Frank’s friends by helping excavate and identify a mass grave of animal bones, she and Diane had become friends of sorts.

“You wanted to talk to me about something?” Diane said.

She hoped she hadn’t sounded curt, but she was tired and her damned cut was hurting again.

If Sylvia noticed her abruptness she didn’t let on. She seemed to be searching the room for something to talk about. There was nothing else for her eyes to rest on but the gray wolf, and Diane thought she was going to mention it again, perhaps tell her something about wolves in order to avoid whatever topic had brought her here. Instead, Sylvia finally brought her gaze back to Diane.

“I’m very ashamed of what I’m about to tell you.”

“Sylvia, you’ve never been shy or reticent. You’re acting like my herpetologist. Did you lose a snake?”

Sylvia smiled briefly, then reverted to a frown again. “I wish it were that simple. It’s something I should have come to you about when it happened.” She took a deep breath, as if about to dive into cold water. “One evening about a month ago I was out of microscope slides. I knew Mike always keeps plenty, so I walked up to the geology lab. I arrived there just in time to see Annette grab a handful of Mike’s most private parts.”

Diane arched an eyebrow.

“Poor guy, he was as stunned as I was,” said Sylvia. “Fortunately, they didn’t see me-or maybe it wasn’t fortunate. She would have stopped if she had known I was there. He tried backing away, but she apparently had a good hold on him through his Dockers and he was backed up against the cabinets. He, uh, asked her to let go, but. . ” Sylvia’s gaze darted around the room again. “This is just shit; I hate this.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Mike was quite restrained. He could have knocked her on her ass. Anyway, he asked her what the hell she was doing. She told him to not look so shocked, that this was the kind of thing guys dream about, and to come home with her and she would show him the best time he’d ever had.” Sylvia looked away for a moment and shook her head. “Mike told her he was seeing someone. She told him she didn’t want a relationship-these are her words- she just wanted a ‘good, hard fuck.’ That clearly was the last straw for Mike. He grabbed her wrist and jerked her hand away and told her that what she was doing wasn’t appropriate. Man, she got angry, I mean really angry. I couldn’t make out everything she said, but it sounded like she said he owed her.” Sylvia let out a deep breath. “I was appalled, but I didn’t report her, and I’m ashamed of that.”

Diane leaned forward with her elbows on her desk. “Why didn’t you?”

“She’s got tenure and is better connected than I am. Frankly, I was scared. I rationalized that Mike was a guy and it wasn’t a big deal for guys-and I felt sorry for her.”

That surprised Diane. “Sorry for her? Why?”

“Did you know her husband? Ransford Lymon, bigwig in chemistry?”

“I’ve never met him.”

“He ran off with his twenty-four-year-old graduate student about three months ago. Up until then, Annette thought he was a devoted husband. It turned out he’d been planning his escape for months. Got a position at a university in California, had everything in place before he left with his nymphet and their bank account. Annette was beside herself. She canceled her work with the oil company this summer. For a month she barely left her house. I’ve never heard of her doing anything like this business with Mike before, and believe me, Bartram is a hotbed of gossip. I think she just wanted to stop feeling old and used up, and there was Mike and that crooked, dimpled smile of his.”

Sylvia stopped talking a moment. Diane thought she was about to get up and leave, the way her hands were perched on the arms of the chair, but instead she slumped forward, looking defeated.

“I know this is hard,” said Diane.

“Hard and embarrassing.” She shook her head. “I had convinced myself that Annette just felt safe with Mike because she knew him so well, and that it was harmless. Then I heard she pulled his assistantship. God, the sleepless nights I had over that.”

“Why didn’t you come forward then?”

“Same reason. Annette is a member of the tenure approval committee for the university. I had the support of my department, but I needed hers.”

“And now?”

“And now I have my letter of tenure. It arrived today-and there’s Mike in the hospital. He’s had so much bad luck in the past few months-getting shot, stabbed, sexually harassed, losing his assistantship. And with all that, he is always cheerful. I’d made up my mind to come forward even if I didn’t get tenure. I’m so sorry I didn’t do it sooner.”

Diane was sorry too. But she didn’t say it. “I appreciate your telling me now.”

“Maybe something can be done about his assistantship. I know it’s already been awarded to someone else, but. .”

“I think things will work out.” Diane started to ask her if she thought that Annette Lymon could have stabbed them, but stopped. She’d put David on the task, and he had his own ways of investigating. Asking questions now