City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(81)

Three swallows later, she looked for a place to put the can down, spotted the agate coasters I keep on a side table. Sometimes people don’t bother and that’s part of the evaluation.

“So that’s my sordid past,” she said. “I cheated on Judy with Con and got pregnant—here’s something relevant. Con wanted me to terminate, I said no way. I may not go to Mass anymore but that much of a Catholic I am. Besides, I felt good about it. Having a baby. Philomena was totally wanted from day one. I had a feeling, this baby was going to be an important part of my life. And she is. Nothing else matters but her happiness, Doctor. Nothing.”

I said, “How did Con react to your refusal?”

She sighed. “I wish I could say he made a big deal about it but he didn’t, he just dropped it. As if it hadn’t been important in the first place. Which is his style. It carried over to the pregnancy. Minimizing. He wouldn’t participate in any prenatal program.”

“How did he relate to the baby?”

She smiled. “I guess I need to be honest. You seem like a guy who can figure out when someone’s not being honest. He was decent. Never changed a single diaper but he actually seemed to like her.”

“Seemed.”

“Okay, he liked her,” said Toni McManus. “Porer told me to make Con out as some kind of ogre but Porer’s an idiot and I’m not going to do that. Was Con ever a doting father? Not really. In his world, it’s all about him. But when he is with Philomena, they do have fun. He lets her do her own thing, never loses his patience. Not that she tries his patience. Or mine. She’s a very easy child, a darling, darling little sweetie, I’ve been blessed. All I want is for her to have stability, Dr. Delaware. Which Con cannot supply. He’s a gypsy, can’t hold a job, moves from campus to campus taking low-salary lectureships. Not because he’s stupid, quite the opposite. I’ve come to think he doesn’t want stability. So inevitably, he screws up.”

“On the job?”

Emphatic nod.

“How so?”

“Chronic absenteeism, not grading papers, lax about answering his email. Then, when he’s called on it, he pulls the I’m-above-all-that attitude. The crazy thing is, he’s a good teacher. Gets high ratings from students when he bothers to show up. The same goes for his writing. He won a dissertation award at Harvard, so he must know how to write. And like I said, he goes into his office but there’s no follow-through.”

“What does he write about?”

“He’s been talking about writing a book since we met. Some highfalutin thing on signs and symbols, his plan is to get Harvard or Oxford or whoever to publish it.”

Dismissive hand-wave. “Three-plus years we’ve been together and I still don’t understand what his thing is. Even with his teaching screwups, a book would help him professionally, right? That’s what professors do. Put out books no one reads but it gives them status.”

I said, “Con’s book has stalled.”

“That would assume he started it,” she said. “He goes into his office for hours at a time and comes out looking as if he’s accomplished something. When I ask him about it, he chuckles and shakes his head and ignores me. Like no way someone of your IQ could hope to understand.

She recrossed her legs, looked to the right, then down, finally at me. “Confession time, Doctor. A couple of times when he was at work, I went in there searching for some sign he’d written anything. Never found a trace, not on his computer, not on paper.”

She colored. “Now you know I snooped in his computer. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything incriminating that I could use now. Nothing at all, really. Not a single bookmark, just a few emails from his work that he hadn’t answered. Why he even has a computer, I don’t know.”

I said, “You see him as someone with a case of chronic inertia.”

She stared at me. “Well, yes. That’s a great way to put it. So you won’t hold it against me? The snooping? Because he gave me good reason. Leaving and being gone whenever he feels like it, walking out without explanation. And when I ask about it, he goes back to that obnoxious, know-it-all smile so of course, I lose it and say if you bring those fucking mugs out, I swear I’ll…this isn’t helping me, is it?”

I said, “You feel Con doesn’t care enough to engage.”

“Yes! Exactly! I mean, c’mon, people disagree, that’s life. Man up and engage, even if it means yelling back. Don’t just…be a…big blob of inertia.”

“You have your suspicions about his absences.”

“Of course I do,” she said. “He cheated on Judy with me so he probably cheated with Judy or someone else. So yeah, I do think he’s going out and meeting chicks. Can I prove it? No. And I’m not going to try to prove it even though Porer wants me to hire a private detective to dig up dirt. Because I know where that came from.”

She frowned.

I said, “Where?”

“Where else? My dad. He’s all about control, talks about money buying freedom, mobility, and control. I am not going to play that game, Dr. Delaware. It would hurt Philomena. Right?”

I said, “It is a good idea to concentrate on Philomena.”

“That’s what I’m really working at,” she said. “She’s everything to me and that’s the reason I want to take her back to Kentucky. Not to deprive Con, so Philly can live an amazing great life. I have no interest in keeping her from Con. But who knows where he’ll even be next year, given his work history? He claims he’s got another year on his contract with CSUN but there’s no tenure, so anything could happen. Eventually, he’ll be gypsying off to God knows where and then what? Philomena and I are expected to tag along? I want to settle her and give her stability and back home’s where that’s most likely to happen. It’s beautiful country, my folks own a gorgeous place with horses and farm animals and tons of space to explore and ride and just be a kid. Plus three guesthouses. We could have our privacy. Con could visit and have his privacy.”