Murder Misread by P.M. Carlson Page B

beast of a man had raped and killed her. Suddenly
Anne’s eyes were brimming. She bumbled blindly into her bag,
looking for a tissue. Then one was pressed gently into her hand.
“Here,” murmured Maggie.
    “ You all right, Mrs.
Chandler?” asked Walensky uneasily from the front seat. A question
so silly it was unworthy of consideration. Anne blew her nose
noisily into the tissue while her mind splashed about searching for
something solid so she could haul herself out of the undignified
sea of tears.
    Maggie, more pragmatic
than the policeman, provided a second tissue and a lifeline. “You
know, it might help the police if you thought about some of the
things Tal was doing this week.”
    Walensky said, “Now, Miss
Ryan, this isn’t the time to trouble her with—”
    “ Oh, shut up, this is
exactly the time!” Anne barked at him. She blew her nose again.
“Only reason I’m coming along is to try to speed things up! Now, do
you have a notebook?”
    “ Uh… yes, ma’am.” Walensky
glanced hastily at young Pete. Probably wanted to be sure the
younger man understood that he was buttering up the university
community rather than capitulating to an old bitch. Well, Anne
didn’t care what Walensky thought of her, as long as he got the
information.
    “ All right. Tal’s
projects. Today is what, Thursday? Well, he was expecting to hear
back from a publisher sometime this week. They’d accepted his book
but it was conditional on some revisions. He’d sent them in a month
ago but hadn’t heard yet. He was also working on an article,
finishing the statistical analyses. He was thinking about a grant
proposal, but I don’t think he’d actually started work. Depressing
things, grant proposals. Like writing a book or monograph but it
doesn’t count as a publication. But as I say, he hadn’t really
started on that except to collect some reprints on the subject.”
Anne found a dry corner of her tissue and scrubbed the last
vestiges of those embarrassing tears from her eyes. “That’s all the
campus stuff I remember. Did you get it all, Captain?”
    “ Yes, ma’am. Though the
car doesn’t help my penmanship much.”
    “ Well, do your best,” Anne
said resignedly. C-student, no doubt, Wayne Walensky. Tal deserved
better. “Ask his colleagues about it too. Now, do you want me to
tell you about his home projects?”
    They were pulling into the
Van Brunt parking lot, but Walensky said, “Yes, please.”
    “ Okay. He had a doctor’s
appointment this morning, regular checkup. Doctor said he was
absolutely fine. And Tal was trying to get last year’s taxes
straightened out. We were in France for spring break and sent in an
application for late filing. But some half-wit at the IRS lost it,
so Tal was busy making copies of everything he’d sent just to prove
we were law-abiding citizens. Aside from all that, just the usual
stuff. Getting the car washed, clipping the hedge. What everybody
does.”
    “ Fine, Mrs. Chandler,”
said Walensky heartily. “Anything else?”
    “ Got nothing to add now.
I’ll tell you when I think of something. Now, you’ll give all that
to Sergeant Hines too, right?”
    “ Yes,” said Walensky
without enthusiasm. “We’ll cooperate, best we can. But be sure to
call on me if he gets obnoxious, all right? Both of
you.”
    “ All right.” Maggie opened
her door and hopped out onto the blacktop, unfolding her long
frame, stretching. Walensky shoved the notebook back into his
pocket and climbed out too. Anne allowed him to hurry around to
open the door for her. Men like Captain Walensky functioned best
when they were being protective, and she needed him at his
best.
    Inside the building, Cindy
looked up in surprise to see Walensky. When she heard the news, she
clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no,” she moaned. “Oh, no. Oh,
no.”
    Anne didn’t want to hear
Cindy. She stalked over to the window. Parking lot view. Here came
the second car, the one with Charlie and Bart and Nora.