Invasion of Privacy

stuffed animals. Then we drove south to the factory. And guess what you pass along the way?”
    “Bill Clinton’s hometown?”
    “No. Branson , Missouri , home to the performance theaters of country stars, has-been sixties’ singers, and you name it. Zillions of buses and RVs filled with retired people hitting the theaters and shops and restaurants. And let me tell you, they really pack those theaters.”
    “To see...?”
    “Bobby Vinton, Tony Orlando, Pat Boone—”
    “Stop, you’re making me giddy.”
    Officer Dave coughed a little louder, and Tasker paused again. Then, “Mr. Cuddy, Trish said over the radio you were a wiseass. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that first impressions were the most important?”
    “Sorry.”
    Tasker flicked her hands again. “The road south from Branson goes through mostly rural areas, with homemade signs advertising quilts and fenced-in yards full of cement lawn ornaments.”
    “Lawn ornaments?”
    “Miniature deer, full-sized swans, even a lawn pig, with colored rocks.”
    “Colored rocks too.”
    “Painted, to serve as border markers. And we saw, I forget exactly where, this sign for maintaining the highways. You know, volunteer your group to do roadside cleanup?”
    “We have those in New England too.”
    “Yeah, only down there, the sign said, ‘Adopt a Highway. This Mile Maintained by the Ku Klux Klan.’ ” Tasker shook her head. I checked my watch.
    She said, “You have an appointment somewhere?”
    “No. I was just wondering how long we were going to kick around the Wonders of the Ozarks before whoever it is you’re stalling for gets here.”
    A very slow nod. “I must be slipping.”
    “Not by much. I brought up the diploma, remember? All you did was build on it.”
    Another nod.
    I said, “You want to tell me why I’m being held at all?” The nodding stopped. “You don’t know.”
    Tasker hadn’t spoken it as a question. “No, I don’t.”
    “Somebody—I’m guessing you—forged a signature on a letter to fraudulently obtain a former student’s records, seemingly with his permission.”
    “How about if I promise not to do it again?”
    “You’ve probably violated a federal student privacy act.”
    “Can you give me chapter and verse?”
    Tasker said, “No.”
    “Then who are we waiting for, the FBI?”
    “No. Our locals.”
    I leaned forward in my chair slowly, so as not to excite Officer Dave. “Ms. Tasker, don’t you think this is a little excessive, given the circumstances?”
    “Maybe you don’t know all the circumstances.”
    “Like for instance?”
    Tasker tapped the folder in front of her. “This file belongs to Andrew Dees, class of 1973. Harriet’s been in the registrar’s forever and remembered his name. He was killed in a car accident two days after graduation. My first ‘for instance’ would be why you’re forging the signature of a boy dead twenty-odd years.”
    I sat back in my chair, thinking Gail Tasker had a pretty good question there.

    “Gail, what’s up?”
    We’d sat—Tasker and I, anyway, Officer Dave still standing behind me—silently for another ten minutes, her studying the file like she had a final exam coming up on it. Dave shifted position just enough to open the door when we heard a knock. The man entering the room was around fifty, with a beer belly over brown pants cinched with a cracked leather belt. His broad shoulders had outgrown the green sports jacket two sizes ago, and he was the first male I’d seen wearing a porkpie hat in probably a decade. What hair the hat didn’t hide had stayed black, and his walk was more a waddle as he took up space against the wall near Tasker’s diploma.
    She said, “This is John Cuddy. Cuddy, Pete Braverman.”
    “Detective Braverman?”
    The man smiled, cruel and somehow familiar. “Chief Braverman, if it matters to you.”
    I looked from one to the other. “Director of Campus Security, Chief of Police. All the big guns, rolled out just for me.”
    Braverman crossed his arms in front of his chest, seriously threatening the seams of the jacket. “And just what did you do, Mr. Cuddy?”
    “Maybe you’d best ask the director here.”
    Braverman kept his eyes in my direction long enough to let me know he didn’t like his questions answered that way, then glanced toward Tasker.
    She summed up what had happened so far.
    When Tasker got to the part about Andrew Dees being the student I was after, Braverman didn’t look at all happy. Then he