“You’re not alone there.”

  “Come on, Nick, stop being so paranoid. Everybody hated Camille,” Stefan said when he was back in the kitchen.

  “But you’re the one who she threatened the most, at least, that’s how the campus police would see it. Valley’s predisposed to dislike the both of us, and you’ll make a great suspect, especially when you start setting off fireworks. Face it, you were the most important writer in EAR, but she came in like some cruise ship swamping a tugboat.”

  “Great image, babe.” Stefan turned to Sharon: “See why I’m the writer and he’s the bibliographer?” To both of us he argued, “Camille Cypriani’s got to have been the least popular person in EAR in years, and that’s saying a lot for a pretty hateful bunch of people.”

  “So why do you stay?” Sharon asked, and Stefan said he was living his dream. “I’ve been published, I’ve won prizes, I found a position as writer-in-residence. Sure, it’s not what I expected, but what is in life?”

  I stared at him, unable to believe his equanimity. This was the guy who a day ago could have been the main exhibit in a Misery Museum?

  “It’s not true that everyone hated Camille,” I felt obliged to point out. “Nina Bullerschmidt worshiped her.” I reminded them of what I’d seen at the reception, and Sharon, who herself had watched Nina and Camille at the so-called literary luncheon, suggested that there was something a little phony about Nina’s adulation.

  “Don’t you think it seemed too public, like she wanted to make sure everyone saw her?”

  “It’s just the groupie mentality,” Stefan demurred.

  “That’s the whole point, that it’s public, everyone watches you get some of that reflected glory.”

  And I added, “Look at all the Cypriani novels Nina had, right there in her home theater.”

  “Nina. Or the dean? What if the dean was the real fan, and Nina was somehow trying to undermine him, or Camille?

  Get to know her, get close to her, and then—” Sharon shrugged. “And then do her dirt, somehow.”

  “All About Eve,” Stefan said, and I smacked my hands together: “Yes! That’s what crossed my mind at the party.

  Nina seems sweet and shy and downtrodden, but what if she’s really a viper?”

  Sharon made hissing noises, and we spent a few delirious moments recalling our favorite lines from that movie.

  “Okay,” I said. “What if Nina killed Camille because she was jealous of her, jealous that Bullerschmidt was so taken by Camille? Those could be his books in their home theater, not hers. And she was strangled, right? Isn’t that the kind of thing a woman would be more likely to do than a man?”

  Sharon pointed out that strangling took a lot of strength.

  “Or surprise,” Stefan said, and I noted the strong color in his face, his clear voice and eyes, his posture. Stefan wasn’t just deeply contented, he was elated, overjoyed. Was Camille’s death what it took to make him feel better?

  Shuddering, I thought of Updike’s recent book where an elderly novelist took revenge on critics he hated by killing them.

  Sharon opined, “In marriages where one person is

  publicly brutal and nasty and the other seems so much nicer, it’s like the quieter one chose a mean spouse because he or she doesn’t have permission to act that way. So they get profound satisfaction out of seeing the other partner do it all.

  Nina could be just as awful as her husband underneath the pearls and the prissiness. Or worse.”

  The doorbell rang, and Stefan warily went out to see if it was a reporter, but returned with Didier, who was drunk and angry, though still sober enough to acknowledge Sharon with a wave. “Man, I was just watching some asshole senators on TV and they kill me! Not an honest one in the bunch. Those fucking comb-overs and toupees that look like nasty pancakes. Who the hell do they think they’re fooling? Am I supposed to take them seriously when they pretend to have hair? They’re lying to the public, and they think we’re stupid or blind or both.” Didier smacked his attractive bald head, eyed the champagne, and asked for a glass, which Sharon smilingly poured him.

  “Have you heard the news, Didier?” I asked. “No?

  Camille Cypriani was murdered in Parker Hall—well, she was found dead there.”

  Didier gaped at me. “Another body? Tabernouche! Can’t you people grow up over there? Go into therapy, for Christ’s sake!”

  “We didn’t do it,” I said, and tried changing the subject by asking how Lucille was liking it down at Duke, where she’d been guest-teaching.

  “Fine so far—nobody’s been murdered there.” Didier stalked off after downing his champagne with a cry of “God —you are all fucked.”

  13

  STEFAN said, “It’s too bad Lucille isn’t around to help calm Didier down.”

  “I miss her,” I said, thinking that I really owed her a call.

  “Well, at least Lucille’s not a suspect,” Sharon observed.

  “Right? Because coming up from—where?—North Carolina, now that would be a long trip for harassment and murder, don’t you think? Unless you were a real psycho and it didn’t matter, or you wanted frequent flyer mileage.”

  The doorbell rang again, and this time it was Polly Flockhart, who came bustling in behind Stefan, looking very distressed.

  “I heard the news about that Camille Cypriani endowed chair holder lady, and I left work early to see if you were all right. Do you need anything? Can I lend you some tapes I have on getting centered? Do you want a crystal for safety?

  I’ve got a good feng shui video that could help you create a more harmonious environment at home. Chimes? I have indoor and outdoor. Or I could let you take care of Maximilian for a day or two—that would give you a healing experience of unconditional love. Dogs can be so spiritual. No? You’re sure?”

  I did thank her, and accepted a hug before Stefan hustled her out. Sharon wryly asked who would be loving whom unconditionally—the dog or me and Stefan? “Is Polly for real?”

  “She thinks she is. But she may just be a character Stefan invented. It’s too soon to tell.”

  “I guess she means well.”

  Stefan grunted a soft “Hah.”

  I nodded. “Never say that; it’s a terrible put-down whether you mean it that way or not. Samuel Butler wrote in The Way of All Flesh, ‘If it were not such a terrible thing to say about a person, I should say that she meant well.’”

  Sharon said, “Ouch. Well, whatever, you can for sure rule out Polly. I mean, she couldn’t possibly have a reason to kill Camille.”

  “That’s sometimes the person who did it in a mystery.”

  “Forget books, this is reality,” Stefan snapped. “Can’t you remember that?”

  “Well, what’s reality ever done for me?”

  “But Didier,” Sharon went on gracefully. “He’s a grade-A USDA prime suspect. I mean, given Camille’s fame and what all happened with his book. But I have to tell you, if one more person rings your doorbell tonight, I’ll swear I’m in a Seinfeld rerun.”

  “How about some more pizza?” Stefan asked. We were tucking into second helpings when the doorbell rang, and we all started to laugh. Sharon almost dropped her pizza in her lap.

  This time I got the door. It was Juno, looking drop-dead gorgeous in tight black jeans and a velvet leopard-print top under a black leather jacket.

  “Have you figured out who killed Camille yet?”

  She strode commandingly ahead of me to the kitchen, surveying the room as if expecting to see charts and maps and crime scene photos.

  I protested, “It just happened.”

  Juno shrugged that off. “But you’re quite the sleuth, Nick—what’s taking so long?”

  Sharon laughed, invited Juno to dinner, and we opened another bottle of Chianti. Stefan raised his glass to make a toast, and I expected him to praise Camille’s killer, but he merely saluted the company, which at least seemed tasteful.

  Less couth was our discussion of what it would feel like to be strangled.

  Stefan got drunker and kept threatening to do the Hustle and the Bump to the disco music that was still playing, while Sharon complained that she wanted to play something different. I suppose she missed the momentary peace of Shabbat we had briefly found before all the commotion of visitors.

  Juno surveyed Stefan as he shook his broad shoulders and said, “Darling, I might join you if you get any looser.”

  I snuck out to the living room and, over Stefan’s groans when the music stopped, put on M People’s funky and romantic first album. When I returned to the raucous kitchen, Juno was wriggling her shoulders at the table to the beat of “One Night in Heaven,” looking very inviting to me, and somehow being in the same room with her and Stefan did not seem then like a conflict, but rather a gift or a synthesis or a reunion.

  I had to be smashed if it was making that much sense.

  And I avoided Sharon’s knowing glance.

  “I have a confession,” Juno announced. “It’s rather awful.”

  Well, that took the edge off for me, and we all sat up straighter.

  “I have a secret. I have a book on the best-seller lists under a pseudonym.”

  We all goggled at her and issued various surprised comments and general noise. Was Juno the real Mitch Albom?

  Drunk, wavering, defiant, pleased, giggly, Juno explained that she was “Victoria Vine,” the author of The Pharaoh’s Last Stand, an “Egyptian Western” in which the hero’s name was Wy-att Earpotep. I had not read this massive book, which must have been three inches across the spine, only reviews that eviscerated it as “too dumb to be camp.” The kindest had described it as equal parts High Noon and the cheesy 1950s The Land of the Pharaohs, with Jack Hawkins and Joan Collins.

  “You wrote that crap?” Stefan roared, astonished. “You did?”

  Juno nodded, delightedly bragging that none of her bad reviews affected sales in the slightest. “The book’s being translated all over the world, even into Bulgarian,” she laughed. “It’s what pays for my clothes, the perfumes, my Lexus, everything delicious in life I could never afford on a professor’s salary.”

  Stefan weaved over to where she stood leaning against a counter and crushed her in his arms. “Fucking A!” he yelled.

  “We have a winnah!” He picked her up and whirled her around, and I hoped he wasn’t planning to audition for the Cirque de Soleil. When he set her down, she looked surprisingly flustered as she rearranged her clothes and patted her hair, and she eyed him speculatively.

  Then she burst out, “I think my next venture should be a high-concept rewrite of Melville: what if Ahab was really a woman disguised as a man? I can call it Moby Pussy!”

  Sharon shook her head.

  I was amazed that Stefan enjoyed this revelation, that it didn’t send him into the valley of professional death again, lamenting his own bad luck. His responding so exuberantly to Juno’s success was a sign of how deeply relieved and released he felt because of Camille’s murder—as if she had quickly come to symbolize everything that blocked and frustrated him.

  Juno rattled on to Stefan about her trashy book, and I studied him, trying to figure out if his joy at Camille’s death was normal and healthy, or if there was something perverse about it. Sharon took my hand across the table, squeezed it.

  I remembered reading Virginia Woolf s diary entry about her rival Katherine Mansfield’s dying, and how it pleased her.

  But Woolf was reflective and even embarrassed by her pleasure in Mansfield’s death; she certainly didn’t party hearty.

  Last year when I discovered a body, I was anything but happy, and the vision still haunted me. Would Stefan escape that kind of lingering shock if he was so unperturbed now? All this was complicated by our dinner guest. Even though Juno stood right next to Stefan, her attractiveness wasn’t dulled in the least; if anything, it was heightened. I wanted both of them, and if before that had felt soothing in some way, now it was confusing again.

  The doorbell rang, and Sharon immediately started laughing so hard she almost slipped from her chair. “This is like a dorm!”

  Stefan and Sharon were too engrossed in book talk, so I headed for the door, but it was a disappointment to open it to Detective Valley, who quietly seemed to sniff the air between us as if he had a built-in Breathalyzer. I didn’t invite him in.

  “Is Juno Dromgoole here?”

  “Who wants to know?” Juno shouted from the kitchen.

  She surged down the hall and belligerently asked Valley what he wanted.

  “I’d like you to come to the Campus Police Building at SUM to answer some questions about Camille Cypriani’s death.”

  “Tonight? What for?”

  “She was strangled with a leopard-print scarf, like the ones you reportedly wear.”

  “Who the fuck’s been reporting that?” Valley pointedly regarded her top, and Juno rolled her eyes. “Okay, so I like leopard-print clothes. And?”

  Stefan and Sharon were now clustered behind her,

  Stefan mockingly humming Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars until Sharon kicked him to make him stop.

  Giving ground a little, Valley said, “Tomorrow morning at ten—or we’ll send someone for you.” He nodded goodnight to us, and I closed the door.

  Juno blew up. “How the hell did he know I was here? I didn’t leave a trail of bread crumbs. And I’m a Canadian citizen, he can’t arrest me.”

  Sharon slipped an arm around her. “Valley just wants you for questioning, not an arrest. Maybe Valley thinks you saw something or know something that can help with the investigation.”

  “Does he think I’m a moron? I’ve watched your Law & Order—helping with the investigation is just an excuse to trap you.”

  Sharon turned off the stereo and sat with the complaining Juno in the living room while back in the kitchen, the mood sober, Stefan and I cleared the table and made coffee. Under my breath I asked, “Did you notice the scarf Camille was strangled with?”

  “I wasn’t looking at it,” he whispered. “It was her face — But Juno did say she would strangle Camille if she were worth the effort,” Stefan recalled sotto voce as we loaded the dishwasher. “At Bullerschmidt’s reception, didn’t she? I’m sure someone else heard her. Hell, how could anyone not have heard her?”

  “Come on, that was just talk,” I reasoned. But even as I said it, I began to think that Juno might have dropped by that evening for some reason connected to the murder, something I couldn’t quite see. Maybe she did do it, and that question about whether we had figured out the murder wasn’t just a joke. She might have been worried.

  Unless she came by to see me.

  Over coffee, out in the living room, the subject of Sharon’s tumor came up.

  “Acoustic neuroma?” Juno whooped. “My sister had one of those removed, just last year. Darling, it’ll be worse than they tell you, much worse, but knowing that is going to be a godsend because you can’t be disappointed and upset that you’re not getting better fast enough. It will take ages to recover from the anesthesia alone. And never believe the doctors—it’s the nurses who will tell you the truth. My sister was in the hospital three more times.”

  “Leakage?” Sharon asked unhappily.

  “Yes. And you’ll have to have private nursing to

  supplement what the hospital provides—there’s simply no way they can give you the attention you’ll need, and you’ll need loads. But there’s one thing you mustn’t forget! They may be removing a tumor, but they’re not cutting out your sense of style. Getting the right hairdo afterward will be crucial, but since you were a model, I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  Juno regaled Sharon with horror stories of her sister’s surgery and hospital stay, but rather than tensing up more, Sharon seemed to relax about the whole situation, as did Stefan and I. Hearing Juno turn her sister’s ordeal into a story somehow reduced the terror.

  Juno gulped another cup of coffee before she left (“Marvelous”), and I nervously saw her to the door as if we’d had a date and I should be kissing her good-bye. Juno gave me a long full-body hug that left me shaken and stirred.

  Back in the living room, Stefan was saying that he actually had come to like Juno a bit. “She’s aggressive, but she’s entertaining, and she’s a straight shooter in EAR where they lie more than congressmen.”

  I found myself unnerved by this admission and avoided looking at Sharon. One thing I did not want was Stefan and Juno getting to be pals—that would be even more awkward.

  But later that night, Stefan and I had the wildest sex we’d had in weeks, and while Stefan slept, I contemplated the energy fueling it for each one of us: Stefan’s joy that Camille was dead, my continuing attraction to Juno. Very murky.

  In the morning, Stefan was up before me, and I found him in the kitchen with his arm around a weeping Sharon.

  “He canceled,” Stefan explained, as Sharon was unable to speak. “The surgeon at the Med School she was supposed to see for another consultation on Monday—he had to cancel her appointment.”

  “Shit. Fuck.”

  “Right. And she won’t be able to get in to see him until the end of next week.”

  Sharon pounded the table. “I felt like I had myself under control until today, but being rescheduled is too much to handle. Ever since I got my diagnosis, I’ve been feeling like I was plugged into a socket with too high a voltage, but I’ve been trying to stay calm. Now I just want to scream or break something, or—”

  “Or kill someone?” I asked.

  Sharon stared at me. “Yes!”

  “Let’s leave the paper outside,” I said. “We don’t need to see the headlines about Camille. Sharon, can I make you some French toast?”

  “Like your Mom’s?” she said hopefully.

  “Exactly like hers.”

  She nodded, and blew her nose into a fistful of tissues. “I already had cereal, though. I’m kind of full.”

  “I don’t care,” I said, bossing her around like Cher cooking that steak for Nicholas Cage in Moonstruck. “You need some French toast—‘for your blood’—and I need to make it.”

  She relented.

 

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