Tall Man Down - 24. Chapter 24

Pete and I got to bed early – not long after ten – partly because of our early start and partly because of school the next morning. But I’d been spoiled by the unhurried days and late nights of summer, and maybe I still couldn’t accept that I had to be back in a classroom, teaching.

Pete read for a while, and I held the Sunday crossword in front of me, probably adding another few words he’d missed. But I readily set the paper down when he asked if it was okay to turn off his light.

Lying, half-wrapped around him under the lightweight blanket, I wanted to sleep. But it didn’t seem possible. I tried to clear my mind, but finally, afraid of keeping Pete awake with my restlessness, I slipped out of bed.

I expected him to say something, because I really didn’t think he was asleep. But, apparently, he was.

Reaching in the closet for my robe, I absently took my jeans instead. I pulled them on, adding a shirt, then my socks and bucks – my old ones whose backs are so bashed I don’t need to open the laces. The leather heels of my usual off-work loafers would have made too much noise on our polished floors. Carefully, I made my way downstairs, to the room Pete and I use as our home studio.

I intended to do some design work – I’m always behind in my drafting. But, even at that still relatively early hour, I found myself lacking in dexterity and interest. Though one of the antique inking pens I’d recently found for my small collection was clogged, and for a while, I set to cleaning that. Finally, only half successful, I left the pen to soak overnight.

I picked up a play I’d be designing later that year but had as much trouble with it as with the crossword. I began sorting accumulations in my flat file, emptying drawers I’d been promising to clean for years. Partway through, I found some sketches of a friend I hadn’t seen since grad. school and started a letter. But there seemed so much I wanted to say, and so little that would interest her, that I soon gave up. I piled things back in my files and moved to the living room, checking for anything tolerable on TV. There was nothing, and the choice of that or a stashed recording was no choice. So I did what I usually did when frustrated – and I had to admit, that was my problem with getting to sleep, I went to the refrigerator and studied our leftovers. After making a thick sandwich, I slipped outside, onto the deck off the kitchen, to eat and look at the stars.

Between bites, I found the easy Big and Little Dippers, and maybe a half-dozen other constellations whose names I could never memorize. Finished eating, I went inside for a jacket and our book on astronomy. Then I simply took my jacket. To read, I’d need a flashlight, or at least my phone, and finding either might make too much noise. But I soon tired of what I could see through the trees from the back deck, and I walked to the front of our house, for that clearer view. Then I kept walking along our dark street, looking for other lights, wondering who else might be awake.

But we don’t live on a street meant for walking. The houses aren’t widely spaced, but there are no sidewalks, and while at any hour cars rarely pass, at night, they seem to come faster. And because of the winding road, cars seem to come out of nowhere, occasionally hitting a jogger, which makes everyone extra careful. So I only walked to the end of our street, to the crossroads where an overhead light made the night seem even stranger and lonelier.

I had to do something. I didn’t have my keys or my wallet, but I went home and pried my spare key from its hiding place, then quietly opened my driver’s door and pushed my car down our driveway the street, starting the engine there. I figured I’d drive, slowly and cautiously, to the edge of town, then walk, safely, on the sidewalks there.

But in the same way I’d mindlessly taken my jeans from our closet, I found myself driving into town, to the college, and to the theater. I parked and sat there listening to late-night sonatas, wondering how tired I needed to be to slip home.

No answer coming, I left my car, passed the pool entrance, and started across the inner quad – the U formed by Waldron Hall, the library, and the newer math/science building. The old, far smaller one – it looked like a two-story, Victorian mansion – practically matched Waldron Hall in age and now housed the music department. The business folks kept eyeing it – saying they’d pay out of donations to have it restored – and that would have been great. At the moment, their faculty was still crammed in part of Waldron Hall’s basement. In any case, this part of the campus was absolutely quiet, the dorms being across the street, well past the cafeteria.

On the street beyond campus was the bank Pete and I used, and if I’d had my wallet, I could have withdrawn what little cash we might have needed for the week – we mostly used our debit cards. So simply passing the ATM, I found myself wandering downtown.

The Post Office looked staid in all its WPA glory. The gazebo, built on the small common, sometimes looked uncomfortable, camped between the maples and a Civil War memorial. Just then, it looked romantic. At the brick town hall, I stared down the long green corridor to see if there was any sign of activity. The first floor used to be the police station, till the town actually recognized that it needed a newer facility than from mid-nineteenth century. They’d also built a new fire station. So figuring I’d walked enough, I headed back to my car, hoping I was tired enough to drive home.

Still, at the theater, I unexpectedly kept walking, past the small, once private houses that were now college offices and moving along the sidewalk across the street from the gym, until I’d reached the President’s House.

It was mainly as dark as the trees around it – only the dull light on the porch tried for security. I stood in the driveway, in the narrow break between the hedges, and stared through the shadows at the house.

There was barely a moon, which means there probably wouldn’t have been one the night Catlin died. The porch light had been on, Elise said, but she’d also mentioned what it now confirmed – that it wasn’t very bright. I hadn’t remembered to check that the night Don and I had talked with Ted.

From the sidewalk, I tried to picture Catlin and Elise, sitting on the steps, looking out past his Audi. I guessed they couldn’t see far but couldn’t confirm that unless I sat on the steps myself. So I went to do that. Of course, there was no car to block my view, but I still couldn’t see much through the opening between the hedges.

I tried to remember exactly where the car had been, and I thought to the left of the porch steps – to the left of someone sitting on the steps. On the day Catlin died, I could just see the side of his car past the ambulance, and there was a police car parked on either side of that. So when Elise Pelletiers had gotten up to leave and Catlin followed her, he would have been standing on the driver’s side, since the Audi was parked head in. Though even if he’d stayed on the porch steps, which she claimed he hadn’t, he couldn’t have readily seen her reach the street. What he might have seen was a fragment of her silhouette momentarily blocking a security light on the gym across the road before disappearing.

From where I sat, I couldn’t even seen the gym. I could mainly sense its dark bulk, which stretched forward to Waldron Hall and back to the track that enclosed a small practice field. The only part of the gym I could really see was the small, wall-mounted security light, head-high and beside a side door. I knew there were lights further up the three-story building, but they were blocked by the trees, and so were the old fashioned, comparatively short, iron lampposts, widely spaced along the non-campus side of the road.

Largely, I saw the kind of darkness even an expensive camera couldn’t record. It looked as romantic as the gazebo. All I lacked was mist. Not even a car drove by, and if one had, I would have barely seen the wash of its headlights on the asphalt, then its front sidelights, then its rear.

The street seemed particularly quiet, too. It was noisy when there was a crowd at the gym, and I’d been told by our neighbors behind the theater that they could hear our show music, especially when it was live. But it was too late for games or performances, and what had once been student housing on the third and fourth floors of Waldron Hall had been converted to faculty offices long before I was hired. After classes were over, this was a very isolated area, surprisingly for it being close to the busy end of town. No wonder any number of people had seen the President’s House as a private place to have sex.

I wondered for a moment if Catlin maybe had a visitor after Elise Pelletiers left – or even while she was there. I couldn’t see any advantage to Sandra stopping by, unless she absolutely needed to find Catlin with Elise. But that was no way to repair a marriage, which seemed Sandra’s aim. If other people had seen Catlin leave with Elise, probably Sandra knew of it or would know soon enough. But maybe that was part of what they were working on.

Ted could have stopped by to talk with his dad. It seemed they’d done a lot of communicating this summer. Or he could have stopped by with the girl he was seeing or the one he’d been seeing, thinking his dad would be home after the party. But Ted was in Amherst, a dozen miles away and being a freshman, he might not even have had his car. He could have thumbed from his dorm. Plenty of people, not all of them kids, did that, when they were tired of waiting for the bus. And he could have picked up his car to drive back.

Lisa also could have come by – but why? There was no indication she felt particularly close to her dad this summer. Though maybe part of the problem Sandra was having with her was Lisa’s siding with Catlin. And while she was closer physically – Northampton and Smith being only four miles away, and probably had an apartment and a car – it was still unlikely. If Catlin has just started sleeping around, and Sandra needed an ally, she’d probably call or text Ted.

Like Catlin’s immediate family, Abby Rodelle also knew he sometimes worked late. But she’d just seen him at the party and would see him first thing in the morning, so I couldn’t imagine what she’d need to say. Unless she was Sandra’s ally, sent to confront Catlin. But Elise said she’d left on her own, early and peaceably.

Maybe it was the ‘early’ that did it: she’d gone by the time Sandra – or Ted – or Abby – had arrived – before a possible fight. But how would a fight with a drunk and somewhat stoned man wind up with him in the tub. I couldn’t make that connection.

That still didn’t eliminate Catlin dying by accident, as Greg had described, while having sex with Elise in the slippery tub. And then her panicking and taking off, still wet from the shower. But she seemed too sensible for that. She just would have called the police, and Catlin – merely unconscious – might have been taken away in an ambulance.

But what if she had run and someone had seen her? What if the story she’d told Pete, Don, and me was simply a lie? Then why wouldn’t the e-mails and phone calls have asked where she was when Catlin died? I suppose there no point if their real intent was to knock Larry out as Dean. And Elise had easily admitted having sex with Catlin, despite his marriage. She didn’t seem embarrassed or afraid of losing her job. She’d just been honest.

I tried to leave them all out – Sandra, Lisa, Ted, Abby, Elise – as I’d separated Catlin’s death from all the nonsense e-mails, phone messages, school and union politics, and the joust between Greg and Larry. I doubted that Greg knew the detail that made Larry resign, but did even one other person on campus know of Larry’s private life? Did Catlin? I hadn’t, and I considered Larry a close friend.

But leaving out Catlin, his family, and the opportunistic political silliness sent Catlin’s death back to being an accident – unfortunate, but merely that. Maybe he’d intended to go home after Elise left. Maybe he’d purposely kept that short or even gotten high and drunk to distance himself from his activities. Maybe Sandra had been expecting him and had simply gone to bed. But once Catlin realized he couldn’t drive – or even walk – the short distance home, and maybe that he couldn’t even handle the steps to his President’s House bed, why wouldn’t he just sleep on the living room couch? Unless he was hoping a shower would clear his head.

I sat there thinking, “Accident. Accident. Accident,” and wondering why Don had ever thought otherwise. The guys from Boston were just going to embarrass him, and I hoped he’d be quiet when they showed up. Or else he could be back directing traffic. Owen wouldn’t like being embarrassed either.

I finally stood up on the porch steps, knowing I had just enough focus to get myself home. As I straightened and momentarily blocked and unblocked the faint porch light behind me, something glinted beside the rose bushes. The glass from the reception still lay in the flower bed, protected by thorns and out of my reach. It was another metaphor I didn’t need.