Murder Misread Read Online Free PDF Page B

it firmly on the receiver, made herself
dial the well-known number.
    “ Can you hold a moment,
Mrs. Chandler?” asked the receptionist.
    And in a moment,
miraculously, John’s voice: “Dr. Lambert here.”
    “ John, it’s Anne Chandler.
I haven’t been able to catch Tal, and I wondered….” She trailed
off. What she wondered could not be put into ordinary
English.
    And didn’t have to be.
John exclaimed enthusiastically, “Looked great, Anne! Still
shrinking. He keeps on like this another six months and he’ll be
good as new.”
    “ You’re… sure?” she
faltered.
    “ The X-rays were as clear
as they could be. He’s winning, Anne!”
    “ John… thanks.” She hung
up, dazed. Braced to deflect the worst, she found that this good
news could not penetrate her defensive walls either. She was
adrift, unable to believe or disbelieve.
    And Tal? Maybe this was
why he hadn’t called, this inability to believe. Anne slung her bag
over her shoulder, locked her office, and hurried out into the June
sunshine.
    The air was pleasantly
tepid, scented with the first blooms on the rose plants around the
Modern Languages building. To hell with
you, roses, with your little pink smell. She pulled out her Gauloise and lit it defiantly, sucked the
delicious stinking smoke deep into her chest, then spewed it
contemptuously at the blossoms.
    To hell with you, too,
cancer.
     
    The Ed Psych office was
locked when Anne arrived, the halls nearly deserted in this
peculiar between-semesters slack. Les vacances , the French said:
vacation, vacancy. Tal’s office, as it turned out, was vacant too,
locked and dark. Puzzling over her next move, she wandered back
toward the door. Maybe she shouldn’t have canceled that meeting
about next year’s French film season. But she couldn’t face Ken and
his need for mothering today.
    At the door she met Cindy
Phelps approaching from the library walk. “Oh, Cindy! Just the
person I wanted to see!”
    “ Really?” Cindy’s light
blue eyes looked kindly at Anne from under shelves of enhanced
black lashes. She dragged her rose-colored cardigan from her
shoulders and tossed it over her forearm, then reached into her bag
for the office key. “What can I do for you?”
    “ I’m looking for my
wayward husband.”
    Cindy glanced over her
shoulder at the hall clock. “Twelve-thirty. He’ll still be at
lunch.”
    “ Yes. But do you know
where he is?” Anne followed Cindy into the departmental office.
Eric, the plastic brain model on the shelf, stared at them with
blank blue eyes.
    Cindy stowed her bag and
hung up her cardigan. “For once, yes. He said he’d be at Plato’s.
Invited me to come with him and celebrate.”
    “ Celebrate?” An avalanche
of hurt battered Anne’s heart, stirring buried memories of that
horrible long-ago winter when she’d discovered Tal’s affair with
that bosomy premed student.
    Cindy laughed, preening.
“Oh God, that sounded wrong! This wasn’t like a tryst or anything.
A bunch of people went. He asked Bernie too, but Bernie had to have
lunch with some computer people from Japan. I couldn’t go, so Tal
said he’d save me some champagne.” The hand patting her exuberant
hairdo into place slowed, and she frowned at Anne. “Are you okay? I
mean, he said you had an appointment. How come you’re
here?”
    “ Oh, it got canceled.”
Anne smiled at Cindy, the weight lightening. It was true—Tal had
known about her lunch with Ken. Still, why hadn’t he called? “So
he’s at Plato’s?”
    “ Right. Say, what’s he
celebrating? His birthday? Seventieth, right?”
    “ Right, you might say
that. Cindy, I tried to call him this morning but he didn’t
answer.”
    “ Well, he got in late.”
Cindy lifted the cover from her typewriter. “And he was running
around the halls, in and out of everyone else’s office. Busy busy.
So you didn’t have much of a chance of getting through.”
    “ Well,” decided Anne, “I’m
going over to Plato’s. If I happen