The Lesson of Her Death

vinyl, squinting against the glare. People used to tell Sammie to fill up the window with plants (they died) or blinds (they cost too much). He’d say it’s an ugly room who gives a damn anyway. Which it was and nobody did so they all stopped complaining.
    Corde asked, “What are we doing here?”
    “Waiting for
her,”
Kresge said, and pointed to the woman in her late fifties, slender, short, with foamy gray hair. She was walking through the door on the arm of an older man, balding and also thin.
    “Hey, Wynton,” the woman called. “How’s Dark?”
    “Tina, Earl, come on over here for a second.”
    The couple walked over and Kresge said to Corde, “They eat here ’most every day. She and Darla’re bridge buddies.” Kresge introduced Corde to Earl and Tina Hess. Earl was a lanky retiree of about sixty. His protruding ears and hook nose were bright with a May sunburn.
    “What’s that uniform you got yourself, Wynton? The school got you all duded up?”
    “Got a new job.”
    “Doing what?”
    “I’m a deputy.”
    “No kidding,” Earl said. “Like Kojak.”
    “He’s still got himself some hair left,” Corde said. “But not a lot.”
    “We come for the tuna plates,” Tina said. “You want to eat with us?”
    Corde shook his head and turned the session over to Kresge, who said, “We’ve found ourselves a picture and we were thinking maybe you could tell us where it is, Tina.” He turned to Corde. “Tina worked for Allied Office Supplies.”
    “Sales Rep of the Year fifteen years running. My last year I lost to D. K. Potts but only because he got himself the Instant Copy Franchises up in Higgins which are owned by the Japanese and I won’t comment on that.”
    Kresge continued, “She’s traveled all over the state. Knows every city, bar none.”
    “Three years ago I put a hundred thirty-seven thousand miles on my Ford. You ever put that much mileage on a car before she rusted. I should bet not.”
    “No, ma’am,” Corde admitted.
    “She didn’t tell you about the transmissions,” Earl said earnestly.
    Kresge said, “We’ve got to find the building that’s in the picture.”
    “That’s a sort of tall order,” Tina said. “Do I have to testify or anything?”
    “No.”
    “I was hoping I would. You watch
Matlock?”
    “’Fraid I don’t,” Corde said. Kresge set the photograph on the table.
    “Why’s it wrapped up?” Earl asked, poking the plastic bag.
    “Evidence,” Kresge said.
    “Why’s it burned?”
    “Was in a fireplace,” Corde said. “You know where that is?”
    “Not much to go on.” Tina squinted and studied it. She held it toward her husband and he shrugged. Tina said, “No idea. Why you so interested?”
    “It’d help us in an investigation.”
    She handed it back. “Sorry.”
    Kresge, taking the failure personally, said, “It was a long shot.”
    Corde kept the disappointment off his face. “Thanks anyway.”
    “Were you part of that layoff at Auden?” Earl asked Kresge.
    “Layoff?”
    “They let near to three hundred people go. Professors and staff.”
    Kresge whistled. “Three hundred? No. I left before that happened.”
    “After that professor killed that girl,” Earl said, “a lot of people took their kids out. It was in the
Register
, didn’t you read it?”
    Tina said, “I wouldn’t send my kids to any school that hired professors like that. I can’t blame them.” The couple wandered off to a booth.
    As Kresge and Corde stood and dropped bills onto the bar Tina called from across the room, “Hey,Wynton, got an idea: Why don’t you ask somebody in the Fitzberg C of C where that is.”
    “Who?”
    “The Chamber of Commerce.”
    “That’s Fitzberg?” Corde asked, pointing at Kresge’s breast pocket where the burnt photo now resided.
    “Sure, didn’t you know?”
    Kresge laughed. “Well, no. You said you didn’t recognize it.”
    “I thought you meant did I know what
street
it was. Of course it’s Fitzberg. What do you think that building is in the background? Fireman’s Indemnity Plaza. Where else you think they have a building like that?”
    Earl said, “Fitzberg’s got a Marshall Field. Best store in the Midwest.”
    Dean Catherine Larraby walked in a slow circle around the perimeter of an oriental rug that had been acquired in 1887 by the then chancellor of the school, whose first visitor to tread upon the new carpet happened to be William Dean Howells. The august writer was lecturing at Auden on the