"I didn't know intellectuals did that," I said.
"Laugh? Oh, I think real intellectuals do. Remember, life is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think."
"Horace Walpole?" I said.
"Oh my," she said. "A learned detective. Did you enjoy Dean Fogarty?"
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a Deanship," I said.
She laughed again.
"Well, you are a delight. Yes, Dean Fogy, as we call him, has never taken himself lightly."
"Was it Horace Walpole?" I said.
"Oh hell, I don't know. I think it was. Certainly you're in the right century. How can I help you with Lisa?"
"Did she have a friend in your class named Tiffany?"
"Yes," Professor Leighton smiled. "Typhanie Hall. She spelled her first name T y-p-h-a-n-i-e. She wished to be an actress."
"Talk to me about Lisa, what was she like, who her friends were."
"Well, of course I am limited by the artificialities of the student-teacher relationship. Clearly she was a bright woman. Clearly she had damn good insights about human interaction-she may have had some psychotherapy. And clearly she was not very well educated. She was some sort of radio personality, so she'd learned how to speak smoothly and she was facile and charming and attractive, all of which might mislead one at first, but it became quickly apparent that she'd had little formal schooling."
Professor Leighton smiled at me.
"You would notice it promptly," she said.
"I did," I said.
"In some ways I would say she is the opposite of you. You speak like a hooligan, but you know a great deal."
"I am a hooligan," I said. "I read a lot."
"Apparently. Do you fear, ah, for lack of a better word, foul play? Or is she simply a wandering wife?"
"You knew she was married?"
"She wore a ring."
"But she kept, whatever the proper phrase is now, the name she had when she was single," I said.
"You can relax, Mister Spenser, I am not one of your bushy feminist theoreticians. I accept `maiden name' as a useful locution. In fact, I have always used my maiden name."
"You're married?"
"Thrice," she said with a smile. "None of them current. I guess I'm a bit rebellious myself."
"Good you used the maiden name then," I said. "Be a Chinese fire drill to keep changing it every time."
"Plan ahead," she said. "Is she in harm's way, or merely adventuring?"
"I don't know," I said. "A few days after she disappeared, her husband was shot."
"Did he survive?" Professor Leighton said.
"Yes."
"Is she a suspect?"
"I don't suspect her. But I'm not trying to catch the shooter. I'm looking for Lisa."
"Was it Luis?"
"Was who Luis?" I said. Cagey.
"Did she marry Luis Deleon?"
"No. She married a Boston cop named Frank Belson. Who's Luis Deleon?"
"He was a student of mine last year, in my evening seminar on Media and Identity. Lisa St. Claire was in that class as well. I believe they enrolled together. They were very friendly, intimately so."
"You know this?"
"I can't prove it. I know it."
"By observation?"
"By observation. They sat together, they giggled together like much younger people. They clung together in the hall during the break. They held hands. They whispered. I've been in love, or infatuated, or both many times. I know it when I see it."
"Tell me about Luis," I said. "Is he Hispanic?"
"Yes, from Proctor, and like many Hispanics in Proctor, I fear he is very poor. The college runs an outreach program for the disadvantaged, as they like to call them. It sets aside a certain number of scholarships for the community and Luis took advantage of one of them."
"How old?"
"Luis? A bit younger than Lisa, perhaps, say twenty-six, twenty-seven."
"Does he have an accent?"
"Not very much, enough to discern, but nothing to impede communication."
"What else?" I said.
"Luis, like Lisa, was very bright, but very uneducated. Most of what he knew that was germane to my classroom, he learned from television and movies. I am not entirely sure he knew where film ended and life began."
"`Germane to my classroom'?" I said. "Why the qualifier?"
"Because I have some sense that he knows many things about life in the Proctor barrio that I cannot even dream of."
"Is he in any of your classes this year?"
"No. I'm a visiting professor here so I can do some postdoctoral study at Brandeis. This is my one class of the semester."
"He still enrolled at the college?"
"I don't know. Dean Fogy can tell you. I don't believe he was entirely comfortable in an Anglo academic setting, even this one."
"He ever come around to see Lisa before class or after?"
"Not this year."
"Any observations you've made on Luis you'd like to share?"
"In some ways he was quite formidable. Very tall. Athletic looking."
"How tall?"
"Unusually tall. Taller by several inches than you. Though not perhaps as thick. How tall are you?"
"Six one."
She looked at me appraisingly for a moment.
"He was probably six feet four or five," she said. "Very intense, full of machismo. I know that is said of many Latin men, but Luis did tend to strut."
She leaned back a little and closed her big eyes behind her huge glasses and thought for a moment.
"And yet he was also very innocent," she said. "He believed in absolutes, in the kind of world you see in television movies. Good is always good. Bad is always bad. Nothing is very complicated, and what is once is forever. He imagined the kind of life that one would imagine if one grew up staring at television. No experience seemed to shake that imaginative conceit."
"You wouldn't know where he lives?"
"No, I'm sorry. I guess I'll have to refer you once again to dear Dean Fogy. The college must have an address."
"Anyone named Vaughn in Lisa's class?"
"Not that I recall."
"You know anyone named Vaughn?"
She smiled.
"There was a baseball player named Arky Vaughn," she said.
"Yes there was," I said. "Pirates and Dodgers. Probably not our man."
"Horace Walpole and Arky Vaughn," she said. "I am impressed."
I gave her my card.
"If there's anything else that you think of, no matter how inconsequential, please call me."
"I'll be pleased to," she said.
I started for the door and stopped and turned back. "I have met a number of professors," I said. "And none of them were notable for honesty, humor, lack of pretense, and ability to observe. What the hell are you doing here?"
She smiled at me for a moment and then said, "I came for the waters."
"There are no waters here," I said.
"I was misinformed," she said.
Chapter 10
The dean had given me Typhanie Hall's address, which was in Cambridge, and Luis Deleon's, which was, improbably, in Marblehead. Cambridge was closer, and I had a suspicion that Marblehead was going to be a waste of time, so here I was with an appointment to see Typhanie on a bright sunny morning. Crocuses were up, and the Harvard students were out in all their infinite variety. I waited in my car on Brattle Street while two Episcopalian women wearing big hats and Nike running shoes paused in the middle of the road to discuss human rights. I wanted to run them over. Cambridge was the jay-walking capital of the world, and I felt the only way to get control of the situation would be to kill a few. I was, however, wary of the Cambridge Police, so I blew my horn instead. The ladies looked up and glared at me. One, wearing purple stockings and sandals, gave me the finger.
I didn't like where the Lisa St. Claire thing was going, but I wasn't in charge of where it went. So when the ladies got out of the way, I parked near Longfellow Park under a sign that said Resident Parking Only, and found Typhanie Hall's address, down. a side street, near Mt. Auburn.
Typhanie had an apartment with a side entrance on the first floor of a large yellow Victorian house. When she let me in she was wearing aquamarine spandex tights and an oversized navy blue tee shirt. Her bright yellow hair was pulled back and held in place with one of those frilly elastic dinguses designed for the purpose. A long pony tail spilled down her back. She had on a lot of eye shadow, and her nails were long and brilliant red. Like, wow!