pulled up to the table, but it didn’t stop Petra. “Or perhaps it wasn’t the job. Maybe it was something more personal.” She darted a glance over at Duncan, whose face was a study in nonchalance; maybe he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “How would you like it if someone went poking around in your personal life? Into your past? Or was it one of your reports that Julius was reviewing? He’d been wearing himself out, reading a stack of site reports three feet high; even though he was retired, people still valued his opinions. Maybe you were concerned that he’d have something to say about your work. It wouldn’t be the first time that Julius had something to say about work done by a Fielding.”
Garrison reviewing site reports? An alarm went off somewhere in memory, but I had to stick to the topic at hand. “You know I’m not doing this for the fun of it, Petra. I was shot at. I want to know why.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
I looked her straight in the eye. “I believe I could stand his scrutiny or anyone else’s, into my work or my past. If it was as important as I think this is.”
The same smile I saw on Thursday, when she was needling me about Duncan, was back. “But with all your hints, Dr. Fielding, you’re not just asking me whether I was still seeing Julius. You’re asking if I might know some reason that he might not have had an accident, as you’ve so eloquently put it?”
“Uh, yes.”
“You’re unbelievable. He took too much of his medicine. He’d been drinking. He was a selfish, stubborn idiot who went outside when he shouldn’t have, and he had an accident.” She swiped at the sudden tears that I was horrified to see running down her cheeks.
Petra had said before that Garrison had not been drinking. Was this denial or a slip-up on her part? “I’m sorry, it’s just that you had been speaking so angrily to him before the panel—”
“He was an easy man to get angry at! This isn’t your business, and if it is something the police should look into, then leave it to them.” She brushed at the last of the tears. “I might ask these same sorts of questions of you.”
“What do you mean?” I glanced around.
“Well, there was obviously no love lost between the two of you. Your paper was a marvel of unspoken antagonism paneled over with some factual, occasionally lauding, remarks.”
“Huh?”
“You seem to have had some problem with Garrison that you weren’t saying—”
“Well, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Once again, I was reduced to a petulant teenager’s response.
“I beg your pardon?” she said. “I know nothing of the sort.”
“Clearly that’s some of the reason that you’ve disliked me so much over the years.” I wished the words away as soon as I said them, cringing inside.
“You might find this hard to believe, but I haven’t given you a thought one way or the other. Why should I?”
“I don’t know. You were always so distant with me. Curt.”
She gave a short barking laugh. “We had nothing to talk about. How should I have been? No, never mind. I think this interview is long past over.” She turned to Duncan. “Dr. Thayer? Would you mind?”
He offered her his arm, and she left the room like a queen dismissing an impertinent commoner, which I guess was pretty close to the truth.
I sat back in my seat, free to consider what had triggered the mental alarms while Petra was chewing me out. Duncan. Laurel had said something about someone reviewing Duncan’s work; we had both assumed or guessed that it had been Kevin Leary, whose paper was on the amateur Josiah Miller and early research in New York in the session on farmsteads.
What if it hadn’t been Leary reviewing Duncan’s work? What if it had been Julius Garrison? What if Garrison had made the same connection between a supposedly recently discovered research report and Duncan’s dissertation work?
How far would Duncan go to cover up some professional misconduct? Was it possible that he had—
Laurel came in just then and immediately took Petra’s empty seat.
“How’s it going, Em? You look like you’re a million miles away.”
“Uh…I get the thousand-yard stare about this time every conference.” I shook myself; I had to think more about this before I got much older, but not in public and especially not in front of someone as perceptive as Laurel. I now had more