“Maybe I can help you, Irene.”
I looked up from my salad.
“Roland Hill has expressed concern about my father. Maybe I could ask him about the meeting, ask if anything upset Andre.”
“I don’t know-”
“Why not? I’m staying in town a little longer than I had planned. I don’t want to leave Jerry here to cope with all of this alone. The next time I see Roland, I’ll ask.”
“Just ask him to return my phone calls.” I wasn’t too excited about the idea of getting a story second- or thirdhand. “Tell me what you’ve been doing for Barton Sawyer lately.”
The change of subject didn’t seem to bother her. In fact, she became quite animated. As she talked about her job, it was apparent that she respected her boss.
“He’s been so good to me,” she said. “Once I had my master’s, I was afraid I’d be pigeonholed, that he’d have me working on demographics forever. But he’s allowed me to branch out from there, to pursue my own goals.”
“Still, your background in statistics has been helpful to him, I’m sure,” I said.
“Of course, it’s very useful. And it will help me plan my own campaign. I guess I do owe that to Andre-I was never afraid of numbers.”
“So you aren’t completely without admiration for him?”
“‘Admiration’ might be a little too strong,” she admitted. “But I’m not ungrateful. Barton pointed a few things out to me. He said that Andre taught me to be thorough, not to be afraid to take on challenges, to follow through on what I started. He was right.”
“You turned out just fine, Andre or no Andre.”
“Jerry did, too.”
“I don’t know your brother very well. Is he still teaching at Las Piernas College?”
“Yes. I don’t know if he’s happy there or not.” She bit her lower lip. “Let’s quit talking about sociologists. Tell me about your husband. He’s a cop, right?”
“Yes, a homicide detective.”
“Homicide!” Her eyes widened. “How did you meet him?”
“Meet him? Hmm. We met a long time ago-remember when I moved to Bakersfield?”
“Of course. I was just a kid, and I thought I’d never see you again. You mean you’ve dated this guy for a dozen years and never told me about him?”
“No-we didn’t date then. But we met there, and became friends. I moved back here, and as it turned out, he moved here, too. There were a number of years in between the two moves, and all kinds of complications once we were both here. We finally got together last summer.”
“Last summer? And now you’re married? Las Piernas must have been a little more conducive to romance than Bakersfield.”
“It wasn’t that,” I said. “It was the timing as much as anything. Besides, I was a green reporter, he was a rookie cop, and even among the more experienced ranks, members of the two professions are discouraged from mixing socially-for good reasons.”
“I can see why. He might leak information to you, you might not be as critical of the police as you need to be.”
“Among other problems. But Frank’s worth the hassles I get at work, and so far, he seems to think I’m worth the ones he gets where he works.”
“Any chance of my meeting him before I go back to San Diego?”
“Sure. His schedule is pretty erratic, but we can try. Why don’t you come over for dinner on Monday? I’ll check with Frank and let you know if there are any problems.”
ICAME BACK TO MY DESK to find a voice-mail message waiting for me. Jerry Selman had returned my call.
“Hello, Irene,” the message said. “I’m glad you called. I’m here at the college now. I’ll be in my office until three.” He left his work number.
I started to dial the number, hung up, and walked over to the city desk to tell Lydia where I’d be.
“You mean you’ll be at Las Piernas College if you can find a parking space,” she said. “Want me to call ahead and try to get one for you?”
“No, thanks. Some of the members of the administration get a little antsy when they know the local press is around. I’d rather not have anyone announce my arrival.”
“OH,FORGIVE ME,” Jerry Selman said, finally stepping back to allow me to walk into his office. “I guess I wasn’t expecting you to go to so much trouble. The campus isn’t very accessible to the public, I’m afraid.”
Only a moat full of piranhas would make it less accessible, I thought, having hiked up a steep hill from a distant parking lot.
“I should have called,” I said, “but I was going to come up to the campus anyway, so I thought I might be able to catch you in your office.” As I said it, I told myself that wasn’t a lie. I didn’t have any appointments, but I did plan on trying to corner Booter Hodges after I saw Jerry.
“Let me take your coat,” he said. “Have a seat-the chair by the windows is the best of the three. And let me get you a cup of coffee. How do you drink it?”
“Just black is fine, thanks. Oh-this isn’t from-”
“The vending machines? Never.” His smile was contagious. “But you’ve just proven that you truly were a student on this campus. The coffee out of those machines is noxious.”
“We used to say that if you saw someone buying a cup of it, he just wanted something to pour on the cockroaches under the sandwich machines.”
He laughed and went down the hallway to another room and soon emerged with two cups of office-brewed coffee. He carefully set mine on a corner of his desk and seated himself, holding but not drinking from his own cup. This opening round of hospitality completed, he seemed at a loss, his expression solemn.
Serious, he was hardly less attractive than he was when he had smiled. Andre had been pleasant-looking but no knockout. Even as a younger man, Andre wouldn’t have received a second glance if you could have placed him next to his adult son. Jerry’s hair and eyes were dark brown, like his mother’s, but his other features were Andre’s-Andre’s, but somehow improved upon. Long fingers, thick eyelashes, a mouth a woman might want to coax into a smile or a kiss. It would be easy for this Selman male to surround himself with women. If he was half the manipulator his father was, he probably had a list of ex-lovers that would take longer to read off than roll call in a sultan’s seraglio.
“I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you and your husband,” he said in a broken voice, snapping me out of my sins-of-the-father attitude.
“It was truly nothing on my part,” I said. “You and my husband did all the work. Lisa tells me that your father is in stable condition?”
He nodded, setting his coffee down. “He’s still in intensive care. There’s talk of surgery. I don’t know. He doesn’t take care of himself. Out last night without his medication! With a heart condition! And I kept telling him that he can’t let things get to him. The past few days-I think it was all too much. Ben Watterson’s suicide, Allan’s resignation, problems here at the campus, that old photograph-he let himself get too worked up.”
“Photograph?”
He waved a hand in dismissal. “Someone sent a photograph of Dad and an old girlfriend to Dad’s house. Actually, it wasn’t a photograph, but a color photocopy of a photograph-as if to say ‘There are plenty more where this came from.’ Maureen saw it and was understandably upset. She asked him to explain it to her, and he lost his temper. You know how he can be.”
“Yes.”
He turned red. “Well, yes. So…he said some hurtful things to Maureen. They patched things up, but it was just one more episode of stress. I can’t help but think that whoever sent that photocopy to him had to know he had a
