this morning and will join him there. I guess it would be ungrateful of me to be disappointed that she has not come down merely to see me.
“But tell me how you are!” she exclaims. I am always a little suspicious when Irene starts exclaiming, because it is often a cover for something that is troubling her. But I know she isn’t ready to tell me, and there is too much to see and too much else to talk about.
We amble up the hill toward the Observatory, and I decide not to tell her of the fishy events of this morning. I am still too upset and confused to talk about it to an outsider, and to one who I know will tell me she told me so. I don’t need that. I show her round the Observatory, including—with bated breath—the fourth floor; and she does not comment on the fresh paint and the bouquet of solvent intermixed with Eau d’Herring. The garbage cart is gone, too, so there is nothing that needs to be explained away.
“What’s up there?” she asks, pointing at the stairs to the dome.
“The old observatory, but it’s not—actually, why not. It’s pretty cool. Come on.”
Making light of the fact that the key to the dome is kept in a box of tissues in front of it, I unlock the door for her. The dome is flooded with sunlight, beams of dust are dancing in the air, and the old glass panes distort the light so that the air itself seems to be whirling.
“Wow…” She turns on the spot, her head tilted back.
“I know. I wonder why the college hasn’t spruced it up, as a museum or something. These things—” I run my hand along one of the telescope stands “—must be a hundred years old, maybe more.”
“This is a place for secrets.”
“Well, Reenie, funny you should say that…”
Of course she relishes the story about Selena and her night-time lover.
“He’s bound to be an absolute assclown,” she says definitely. “And she’s writing her thesis about the devil? Bound to be the guy. Anyone devilish among your male grad students? Unless she’s making it with a professor, too.”
“Oh, come on. They can’t all be having affairs with professors! Anyway, Selena isn’t—”
I had been wandering aimlessly around the room, curious to see what it was too dark to see when I first came up here. There are two folded rugs on the old sofa; they look new and smell new, too. And on the little washbasin there is a small wash bag with a toothbrush sticking out of it. A bar of soap, and a disposable razor blade.
“Someone sleeps here?” Irene asks, looking over my shoulder.
“Possibly, although this doesn’t look like—eew!” I drop the razor into the washbasin.
“What?”
“This was not used to trim a beard,” I say through clenched teeth. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Blood?”
“Naaah…don’t ask.”
At the bottom of the stairs, as if to illustrate my story, Selena O’Neal is staring up at us, white as a sheet.
“Dr. Lieberman! I thought—”
“Hmm? You thought I was someone else?”
“I thought there was no key to the observatory!”
“Oh, but everyone knows where the key is kept!” I say airily. “Even I do! Sorry, Selena, could we just get past?”
The hallway is empty, except for Natalie Greco, a couple of girls I don’t know, and Mrs. O’Neal. They are viewing what is left of the evidence, and one of her friends sees me and whispers something to Natalie. She casts me a quick glance, undecided whether to address me or not.
Mrs. O’Neal has no such qualms.
“And what do you make of all this, Dr. Lieberman?” she demands of me.
“I’m sure my guess is worse than yours, Mrs. O’Neal,” I reply smoothly, glad that Irene has disappeared into the ladies’ room.
“Someone hates this poor girl! As if she hadn’t been through enough!” She bends down to me and lowers her voice. “Father’s dead, you know, he was much older than Natalie’s mother. She—the mother—has taken up with a new man. He’s a bank manager in Shaftsboro. Plenty of money, but—well, you can imagine.”
“Was her father a clergyman?” I ask on a hunch.
“Yes, why?” Lorna appears not to have been told about the quote from Leviticus on the wall. “Yes, he was a church minister, a highly respected man, and a very charismatic preacher. Lung cancer, bless him.”
Natalie has made up her mind to step in front of me. All these towering females, I’m getting tired of having to look up at