I tried to keep the disgust out of my voice, but I may not have given it my personal best. “You have a beautiful wife, a lovely home, a respected position at the college and in the community. Federal judges drink martinis in your living room. Uniformed cooks crowd your kitchen. Students scribble down your opinions, and faculty members beg you for pennies to buy legal pads and paper clips. Why would you risk the culmination of a lifetime of hard work and ambition to have an affair with a student in a sleazy motel?”
“It’s difficult to explain,” he said, wiping his neck. “It was flattering, you see. I’ve never been attractive. Eleanor married me for my family connections and my potential for success; I married her for similar reasons. When I was in law school, I became obsessed by the handsome young studs with their wavy hair, smoldering eyes, some as bright and disciplined as I, others less so but destined to succeed in their future endeavors simply on the strength of their physical attributes. I retreated into academia, where I could wage war on an intellectual level, but even now, when I address a class or interview applicants, I find myself…“ He made a gesture with a taut white hand. “This is not the time to present the defendant’s closing statement, is it?”
“I’m not the one with a houseful of guests, but I’m willing to acknowledge these psychological ravages of your past and move right along. You and Jean met at the Hideaway Haven. Someone took a photograph of you in the midst of this indiscretion and has been blackmailing you since then. How am I doing?”
He gave me an odd look, no doubt impressed by my acuity and acumen. “To some extent, you are correct in your suppositions, Mrs. Malloy. Approximately three weeks ago, a distressing depiction of activities that need not be detailed was sent to me, accompanied by a peculiar construction-paper cutout and a handwritten request that I make a private endowment. I was able to do so without undue problems. A second followed, and a third only yesterday. It became clear that I am to be hounded in perpetuity by a member of Kappa Theta Eta with the alias Katie. I’ve begun to dream of strangling that cat, of burning down the house, of penning a suicide note and disappearing into the wilds of Canada.”
I remembered Officer Pipkin’s remark about cloistered nuns as I leaned back in the squeaky chair and crossed my arms. “But hasn’t it occurred to you to confess and accept whatever punishment is meted out by your wife and the administration? Blackmail is a particularly nasty crime. Are you willing to allow the perpetrator to continue on her merry way? Aren’t you committed to justice and all that stuff?”
“John!” Eleanor called sharply from the doorway. “Judge Frankley is still asking for you, and dinner is ready to be served. What can you and Claire be discussing that must be resolved while the quail toughen?”
“I’ll be there in a moment,” he called back, waited until she was gone, and then gave me the look of a harshly chastised puppy who’d savaged a slipper. “I must see to my guests. I made a mistake, and it seems I am to pay for it. There’s your justice, Mrs. Malloy.”
“But you do admit you searched the sorority house for the negatives of the photographs of you and Jean?” I demanded as he rose to his feet. “Did you search her purse, too?”
“After I ran her down in the alley?”
I stopped congratulating myself on the guile of my leading question. “Something like that,” I admitted with a shrug.
“Allow me to correct some of your hazy, unsubstantiated, and fallacious ideas. I did have an appointment with Jean Hall the night she was killed, and we met in the enclosed patio of a fraternity house that borders the alley. At that time, she acknowledged that she was the blackmailer and informed me that larger endowments would be required, although none so outrageous that I could not comply without arousing suspicion. Negatives were to serve as my receipts. She took one out of her purse and an exchange was made.”
“You’re positive she had her purse with her?”
“Do try to listen, Mrs. Malloy. She took the negative out of her purse and showed it to me. Less than a minute later she put an envelope full of twenty-dollar bills into her purse.”
I attempted to envision the scene, but what flashed across my mind was not this icy entrepreneur in the patio but the bloodied body in the alley. And something was missing. “Was she wearing her sorority pin?”
“I was not concerned with her accessories, but I seem to remember thinking how ostentatious it was. Please do not quote me on that. In any case, I left her sitting on a bench, licking her lips in a disturbingly contented fashion. I never saw her again.”
“You drove by the house later. I saw you from my bedroom window.”
“After I’d had time to consider the situation, I decided to suggest to Jean that we terminate our contractual relationship with a single payment in exchange for all the negatives. I went by the house to propose it, saw the police cars in the alley, and went home. Only when Eleanor returned did I learn what had happened.”
“But now someone else is blackmailing you,” I said encouragingly (if one can use the term in that context). “You were searching the third floor, presumably with no success. How did you get in?”
“Eleanor has a full set of keys, in case an emergency arises that requires the immediate presence of a plumber or an electrician. I borrowed them from her desk, and replaced them as soon as I was home.” He gave me a reproachful smile. “I’d intended to work my way from the top floor to the basement, but you had the pinched look of a police informant. I haven’t found sufficient nerve to go back and continue my search.”
“Jean’s room is on the ground floor.”
“I wasn’t aware of that, but she wasn’t the sort to put her damning evidence in her dresser drawer or leave it lying on her desk. She implied the negatives were hidden somewhere in the house. I am by nature a methodical man, Mrs. Malloy.”
“Who do you suspect has the photographs of you and Jean in the Hideaway Haven?”
“They’re not of Jean and me, Mrs. Malloy.” Dean Vanderson replaced his handkerchief in his back pocket and looked down at me as if I were a sluggish student. “Earlier in the week I wondered if you had them, but now I see that you don’t. I never said I’d had an affair with her. She merely arranged introductions to some of her nubile young friends who enjoyed the companionship of… shall we say, experienced older men.”
“She what?” I leaped to my feet so suddenly that I was in danger of an unscheduled swan dive. “She was pimping for you?”
“She merely arranged introductions,” he repeated patiently.
I battled to regain my balance in all senses of the phrase. “She arranged introductions to girls with whom you subsequently had sex? Her nubile young friends? At the Hideaway Haven with its porn movies and waterbeds? Why don’t you tell me your definition of a pimp, Dean Vanderson?”
My words had been spewing out rather raggedly, but he seemed to get the gist of them. “Jean was providing a service, and until I conceded to the first blackmail demand, I’d given her nothing but avuncular advice and a part-time job. Actually, Eleanor suggested that. As for the girls, I often insisted on showing my appreciation for their youthful enthusiasm and lack of inhibitions. One particular girl was so delightfully inexperienced and reticent in her attempts to be introduced into the sweet mysteries of love that I rewarded her most handsomely. I’m an educator and aware of the importance of positive reinforcement in learning situations.”
I clutched my hands behind my back to restrain myself. “Were all these girls Kappa Theta Etas?”
“They did not wear their sorority pins, Mrs. Malloy.” He brushed back the pale peach fuzz on his head and nodded at me. “I really must attend to my guests. I have met the conditions you stipulated, and I hope you intend to adhere to our arrangement.”