This wasn’t precisely the subject I’d introduced, but it was preferable to a discussion of my assailant. “Someone mentioned there’d been thefts in the dorms and Greek houses. I can understand how a kid leaves his door unlocked, thus inviting someone within the residence to sneak inside and grab whatever’s on the dresser. But how could someone steal a large, bulky computer from a busy office on the campus?”
“We’ve had reports on computers, VCRs, speakers that were screwed to the walls, overhead projectors, photocopy machines-you name it. The problem is apathy. Someone strolls into, say, the biology department, announces that Professor Smith said to take the computer to the laboratory on the third floor, and carries it out the door. Professor Smith thinks a colleague must have borrowed it, and merrily goes away on his sabbatical for three months. In the next building, someone says he’s from the repair service, flashes a form, and takes the photocopier Not one grad student or secretary bothers to demand credentials, and the polite student who holds the door for the thief is too worried about his thesis to look at anyone’s face. Office and classroom doors are left unlocked at night. The storage building for the landscaping crew is in a lonely corner of the campus.”
“How can you stop it?” I asked.
She parked in front of my duplex. “We can’t, and it costs the taxpayers a lot of money to replace all these electronic toys. While we’re on the topic, I saw a report that might interest you, Ms. Malloy. A clerk at a boutique at the mall recognized Debbie Anne Wray’s face on the news and called us. Several months ago Debbie Anne went into the store and requested a refund on an expensive wool jacket. Although she didn’t have a sales receipt, the tags were still on the coat and it hadn’t been worn. Because the store makes every effort to court business from the coeds, it has a liberal return policy. The clerk was counting out the money when the manager returned from lunch and noticed it was a brand not carried there. When he said as much, Debbie Anne burst into tears and ran out of the store, leaving the coat behind. It was so odd that he and the clerk remembered her face.”
‘Why would you think this would interest me, Officer Pipkin?”
“Just a hunch,” she said as she shifted gears. “I’d better get back for a meeting, Ms. Malloy. Please call me when you feel better.”
Debbie Anne’s peculiar behavior would have to wait. I sat down on the porch steps and made sure my key ring was not hidden somewhere in the murkiest corner of my purse. My purse had been in my presence since I’d left my duplex in the morning. When Katie bit me, I’d dropped it, but it hadn’t burst open. Therefore, I thought with a sigh worthy of my daughter at her pinnacle of martyrdom, the key ring must have fallen out of my purse when I was attacked by my man in the moon. Pippa had gathered up the contents and replaced them, but had overlooked the key ring under a leaf or in a clump of grass.
Well-organized people not only have spare keys, they also put tags on them and know exactly where they keep them. Others of us hazily recall the existence of spare keys, likely to be in a kitchen drawer crammed with junk… or m a little box along with foreign coins and insufficient postage stamps… or in a shoebox with expired coupons and postcards from unfamiliar people who’d wished we were there. I knew about well-organized people, having once been married to a man who sent in warranty cards, filed receipts, won arguments with the bank, and watched, in precise chronological order, every episode of Upstairs, Downstairs. He empathized with the latter group who made the household run smoothly and efficiently, while scorning those dithery sorts who were forever misplacing their parasols and white kid gloves.
I went across the street and trudged toward the library, promising to abandon my slothful ways if I found my keys. Classes seemed to be over for the day; only a few students were sitting on benches outside the library or waiting for the stoplight to change across from the student union. It was not a dark and stormy night, however, and I was more concerned about my keys than about potential muggers in the bushes.
They were nowhere in the grass around the tree. I searched methodically in a fifteen-foot radius, then leaned against the trunk and considered every action I’d taken since unlocking the front door of the Book Depot at nine o’clock. I had not removed my keys from my purse, and it had been in my possession-with the exception of the few minutes when it had been propelled out of my hands. Along with sweet dimples, indignant dimples, and enthusiastic dimples, it seemed possible that Pippa had among her repertoire a few larcenous ones. I glumly contemplated the ramifications of not having a car key, a house key, a bookstore key, or any of the other odd keys that I kept religiously, year after year, in ease I ever remembered what they fit.
Clearly, I needed to have a word with Pippa, and a round of fisticuffs if necessary. My reluctant relationship with the Kappa Theta Etas had caused nothing but a series of headaches, of both the literal and figurative variety. I’d been bitten twice, thrown in jail, hurled into a tree, and exposed to several bizarre subcultures that had thus far existed quite successfully without any intervention-or interest-on my part. My resolution to defend Debbie Anne to the bitter end was melting away like a scoop of ice cream.
I continued to allow it to melt for about three steps, faltered, and veered toward the sidewalk that went past the agri building. My assailant was not likely to be dallying behind the shrubs, but I hadn’t done noticeably well in predicting his behavior to date. I circled the building, staunchly ignored a pair of coeds who giggled at me, and headed in the direction he’d purportedly taken.
The journalism building appeared deserted, as did a squatty structure that I thought housed philosophy and other cerebral, and therefore non-marketable, majors. Secretaries were now leaving for the day, replaced by the custodial staff, a few humorless students, and a rare faculty member with a bulgy briefcase and the obligatory leather patches on his or her elbows.
It was approaching five o’clock, which meant Caron was likely to be working herself up to a fine figure of a snit. My meandering had deposited me at the door of Guzman Hall, home of the law school; unlike the other buildings, it was lighted, and students were visible inside a lounge and a library. I decided to hunt up a pay telephone to tell Caron that she could close the store-if she could find a key in the drawer below the cash register or in any of my desk drawers, or in the box of junk on the filing cabinet, or in a similar container in the cramped bathroom. If she had no luck on this jolly little treasure hunt, she’d have to call a locksmith and wait until he arrived. My head began to throb steadily as I imagined her response to the final option.
I entered the building with the due caution of a civilian entering a lion’s den. The students brushing past me appeared normal, even nondescript, but I was keenly aware of their chosen careers and kept my face averted as I prowled for a telephone. The main office, an adjoining room apparently used for moot trials, and the dean’s office beyond it were all dark. No one was home to offer aid at the legal clinic. I heard distant laughter from around the corner of the hallway, and surmised it came from the lounge I’d glimpsed through the window. Surely there was nothing in the corpus juris of the library worthy of a laugh, or even a tiny chuckle.
A lounge was the logical place for vending machines, uncomfortable furniture, merriment, and telephones. I turned-and gasped as I found myself once again confronting the eerie white face of the man in the moon. My eyes wide and my mouth flapping mutely, I recoiled into a water fountain before I realized it was only a portrait attached to the wall, the last in a string that decorated the hallway like pretentious ancestors.