“And memorize my lawyer’s phone number,” Sly said, grinning, finally.
“Where is your phone?” I asked him, thinking about the hang-up call I’d had that afternoon.
He shrugged. “Probably in the gallery somewhere.”
I excused myself and called Lew, asked him if anyone had seen Sly’s phone. He was still on campus, waiting for word from Sly, so he said he’d go take a look around. Like a lot of kids his age, Sly had no land line, anywhere. Without his mobile phone there was no way to contact him, and with all that was going on in his life, that would be a problem. I told Lew where we were, and he said he’d call back if he found the phone.
Max pulled out the network contracts for me to sign before there was any food on the table to soil them. Then he called a courier service to come and pick them up.
We were still looking at menus when Roger walked in, looking for us. Without preliminaries, he pulled out the fourth chair at our table and sat down.
Roberta, the owner, brought him a menu. She asked, “Your usual wine, Roger?”
“Please. A bottle and three glasses.” He looked at Sly. “What are you drinking, kid?”
Once Roberta was on her way to fill the drinks order, I said, “So, Roger, why don’t you join us for dinner.”
“You really pissed off Thornbury,” he said, eyeing Max.
“He knows the drill,” Max said. “If he’s pissed off it’s just for show.”
“I’m not sure. He’s pretty frustrated,” Roger said. “To hear him tell it, he spun his wheels all weekend trying to contact people; no one seemed to be home. Or, home to him. He couldn’t even get hold of Hiram Chin until this morning. He thinks he’s being stonewalled.”
“Do you think he is?” I asked.
Roger held up his hands. “A campus can be like a big family. Tough for an outsider to get inside, if you know what I mean. Protective.”
“Not that the insiders don’t eat each alive from time to time,” I said.
“Like a family,” Roger said.
We ordered. Just as soup was being served, the courier arrived. Max gave him detailed delivery instructions and sent him away with the packet of contracts. While Max was busy, I caught Roger’s eye.
“That license plate number I gave you?”
“Where were you when you called?” he asked.
“Up north, in Gilstrap.”
He stole a quick glance at Max and said, “I’ll get back to you.”
“Maggie?”
I looked across the table at Sly. “Yes?”
“Did you go see her?”
“Eunice?” When he nodded, I said, “I did. First thing Saturday morning.”
“And?”
“Sly, honey, Eunice has been on drugs for so long her brain is fried. We didn’t have much of a conversation.”
“She say anything about my father?”
“No. But she did say she had other children. If that’s something you want to pursue…”
“Maybe.” He looked down into his soup. “Sometime.”
Lew came by to drop off Sly’s phone.
“You left it out in the courtyard,” Lew told him, referring to the small patio outside the student gallery. “I hit your number on my phone and followed the ringtone, and there it was, sitting on the edge of a planter.”
“Thanks, man.” Sly, seeming lost in thought, looked at the face of the phone for a moment before dropping it into his pocket. I knew that this young man who had never had much that he could call his own did not lose track of his possessions. Certainly never one as important to him as his telephone.
Sly gave Lew a quick summary of what had happened at the police station and reassured him that everything was all right. He also apologized for worrying him.
“Stay for dinner?” I asked him.
“Thanks, but I have stuff to do. Another time.”
“I should charge you rent for office space,” Roberta joked as she refilled wineglasses. “Who else you got coming by?”
“You just never know,” I said, chuckling. You just never do.
Chapter 15
Tuesday morning I was up and dressed before the sun, though we would never see much of it on that stormy day. Rain poured down my front windows in sheets; the deluge had begun. I had an early class to teach, a four-hour workshop from eight until noon. Because of the rain, I needed to leave home a full hour earlier than usual in case mud or rock slides sent me off on a long detour.
Before I left, I called Ida Green, the producer from the network news division who had been trying to reach me. My neighbor, Early, had come over the night before with a message from Ida. She wanted me, as an old friend, she said, to sit down for an interview with one of her people to talk about finding Holloway. In exchange, she’d let me promote my project.
Early told me that Ida would be in the studio by 4:00 A.M. to send a live feed from Burbank to the morning news broadcast in New York, so it wasn’t too early to call her. Talking about Holloway for public broadcast was not something I wanted to do, not yet, anyway. But as a courtesy, I told Ida that if she cleared it with Lana, I would. At some point, we might need to use Ida’s people or facilities, so it was best to start off as friends.
Ida told me she was taking a film crew to the college. They would be taping a statement from Hiram, and she wanted me to walk her news person through the crime scene and give an interview, on campus. I told her I would be available after 1:00, giving myself time to find lunch after class. She said she would call my mobile when they finished with Hiram and were ready for me.
“Don’t dress like a schoolmarm,” she said. “Wear some color.”
I was wearing jeans and a navy sweater over a light blue oxford cloth shirt. Schoolmarmish or not, I wasn’t going to change clothes.
My trip to campus was uneventful, leaving me with a full quiet hour and a half to myself before class started.
For the short films they were working on, my students had finished their shooting scripts and storyboards, edited a brief teaser for their pitch sessions, and were in the process of actually shooting their main footage. We were going to look at a few of the students’ rough cuts and critique what they had done so far. When they were able to articulate what worked and what did not work in other people’s projects, they would have better insight for critiquing their own. Or so I hoped.
I was in my little office off the studio classroom, poring over a day planner trying to figure out how I was going to juggle teaching, the network film project, and Mom’s needs for the next few months, when Kate walked in.
“I saw your car in the lot,” she said, handing me a cup of cafeteria coffee. “Have a minute?”
“Sure.”
I turned my chair around to face the chair she pulled up. She sat, stretched her legs out so that she could rest her feet on the arm of my chair, and took the lid off her own coffee.
“The memorial is tomorrow at noon,” she said. “The notice went out on campus email last night. Did you see it?”
I hadn’t checked my campus email the night before or that morning.
“Hiram wants to hold it on the quad in front of the Taj, but in this weather, that’s just dumb,” she said. She looked tired. “I’m negotiating with Coach to let us use the big gym. It’s basketball season and he’s worried about what all those wet people and chairs and high heels will do to his floor. Too bad for him because I can’t think of an alternative venue.”
She told me about some of the details of the service, for which she had no enthusiasm.
“In Park’s honor, tomorrow all classes will be cancelled and all offices will be closed so that everyone who wants to, or is afraid not to, will be able to attend the service.”
Curious, I asked, “Who would be afraid not to attend?”
“Sly, for one. Roger hopes you’ll be there to look after him. With all this talk on campus, Roger thinks Sly should show up wearing a brave face. If he doesn’t, talk could just get uglier.”