“No,” I said. “It was Mike Peralta, the asshole. They’re often mistaken for one another.”
She looked at me wide-eyed, and then filled the room with laughter. A nice laugh.
“You haven’t changed a bit.” She shook her head fondly and sat in one of the straight-backed chairs. “You’re also just as tall, dark, and handsome as I remember.”
Pleasant-looking, you’d call her. In glasses, with tortoise-shell rims. Maybe around thirty-five, with strawberry-blond hair, parted on one side and falling to her shoulders. Dressed in a copper-colored sweater and navy skirt. The sweater made her pinkish skin seem more flushed. It was a pleasantly forgettable face. You’d have to spend a lot of time with that face to find it remarkable. I had no idea who she was.
“Miss…?”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She stood hastily and thrust her hand across the desk. I shook it. “There’s no reason you should know me. I was one of your students, Dana Underwood. I was Dana Watkins, then. At Miami. I guess I look different now.” She smiled. Smiling, it was a better face.
I smiled back and invited her to sit down. As an itinerant history professor I had taught at Miami University in Ohio, the University of Denver, and finally San Diego State. At Miami, I was not much older than my students and teaching the kind of survey courses where the class size is not as large as the crowd at a Suns game. I must have made quite an impression for her to look me up.
“This is a beautiful old building,” she said. “I didn’t even know Phoenix had any old buildings.”
I told her it was built in 1929.
“My gosh,” she said. “They didn’t even have electricity then, right?”
I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. You never knew these days. So I just smiled. If she had been one of my students, she hadn’t had much aptitude for history. In a moment, she started talking again.
“My husband was transferred out here with Motorola a few years ago. He was laid off, but that’s a different subject. Anyway, I started seeing your name in the papers, as the history expert who worked as a deputy. I always thought there’s no history here, it’s so new. But when I’d see your name, I’d say, ‘I was in that guy’s class.’”
“Thanks for remembering,” I said. I wasn’t a good listener just then. I was stuck back in Peralta World, thinking of what I should have said to him.
She said, “You were a wonderful teacher, Dr. Mapstone.”
“How about David.”
“David,” she said, and folded her hands neatly in her lap. Her eyes were watery, making her seem on the verge of tears even when she smiled. Her eyes made a track of my office. It was not much different from when it opened in 1929, with sumptuous dark wood paneling, deco light globes, and tall multi-paned windows with curved tops. I had scavenged the furniture from county storage, and added too many books.
“I can’t believe how much time has passed. I see you’re married now.” She pointed to my wedding band. “Do you have kids?” I said I didn’t. “I have two, can you believe it? Madison is seventeen and a senior, and Noah is a junior. They’re great kids. I never thought I’d be a soccer mom.”
“Good for you,” I said.
She cleared her throat, and started again. “I came here today because I need help.” I didn’t recognize her, but I recognized her voice. Even serious, it had a lilt, as if you could turn butterscotch into sound. Where did that voice fit in my past?
I thought about what Peralta had said. It wasn’t like I had time to be helping former students. But I said I’d do anything I could. David Mapstone, always happy to help the taxpayers of Maricopa County and avoid sitting down to write.
Dana Underwood pulled an envelope from her purse and set it carefully on my desk. It looked unremarkable, a white No. 10 envelope. I half wondered if she was here to contest an old grade with me.
“Now, David, it takes me awhile to get to the point. This drives my husband crazy, but it’s just the way I am.” Her hand brushed back her hair, tucked it behind a small pale ear. One reddish strand still fell against her glasses. “You see, my father died last year. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, but after he died it was up to me to go through his things. He was a pack rat, and mother was in no condition…this is all back in Rocky River. I can’t say I was close to my dad. I didn’t really know him. He was a self-made man. He’d started out working the ore boats out of Cleveland. And he saved enough to buy some old rental houses and fix them up. That’s how he got his start. He never even graduated from high school. But he did really well in real estate, which is how he could pay to send his children to places like Miami. He even bought land out here. It’s still in the family.”
I put a finger on the envelope. “Is this about your father?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I warned you. Yes. It’s a letter. To me. He wrote it, and left it in the drawer by his bed. As you can see, it says, ‘to be opened after my death.’ When I found it, I was a little afraid.” She paused and looked around the office again. “I mean, what was it going to say? You know, you get older and see something of life, and you realize that your parents…nobody’s parents are saints. So I let it sit for a few days. But then one day I read it.?
??
She reached for the envelope, lifted it toward her, then seemed to think better of it and set it back on the desk.
“David, I think he killed a man. I think, I fear, my father killed a man.”
“And you didn’t know about this?”