Ashley Bell (Ashley Bell #1)(114)
After calling Bibi a syphilitic little whore, Dr. St. Croix took such pleasure in the idea of her former student being in trouble with agencies dedicated to national security that the hardness went out of her face and the Sunday softness returned, though her smile was akin to a vindictive sneer and would have been regarded with disquiet had she been in a roomful of church folk.
“I knew that deceitful bitch would step into deep shit one day. I hope it’s deep enough for her to drown in it. She thinks she’s more cunning than she is, and she took me for a sap who could be easily intimidated. Imagine a seventeen-year-old neophyte daring to attempt to manipulate a woman as experienced and connected and respected as I am. The little fool.”
Paxton had a moment radically out of character for a Navy SEAL, a Bette Davis moment in which he wanted to throw his drink in the professor’s face and say something so cutting that she would need the rest of the year to rebuild her ego. But that was not an effective technique of interrogation. Loyal Pogo was not as good as he should have been at concealing his rage, and before the professor might glance at the kid and read his revulsion, Pax smiled at him and winked and raised his own glass as if in a toast, though by the gesture he meant to say that taking a drink would be better than throwing a punch.
“I will do anything I can,” St. Croix said, “anything, to help you convict Ms. Blair of whatever she’s done. I don’t need to know anything that’s classified about the case, if only I can hope that she’ll get something between life in prison and the death penalty.”
She favored Pax with a seductive smile, and he said, “You have every reason to hope, ma’am, but you understand that I can’t share even the smallest details of the pending indictment.”
The professor brightened further, spread her arms so that the sleeves of her colorful tunic flared like butterfly wings. “What a lovely word—indictment. That’s all I need to hear. I am in such a superlative mood, you cannot know, you cannot possibly know. I was about to start forming tarts when you rang the doorbell, so might I get on with that while you ask your questions, Chief Petty Officer?”
Pax could not quite compute the words forming tarts, but he said that, yes, of course she could continue with what she had been doing if it didn’t interfere with his inquiry.
As the professor went to one of the two Sub-Zero refrigerators, Pax tried the Scotch with half-and-half. He was surprised to find the whisky had not curdled the cream, but even more surprised that Dr. St. Croix hadn’t curdled it.
To medicate his outrage, Pogo had consumed most of his drink in one long swallow.
Barefoot and blithe, Solange St. Croix returned to the island with a bowl, over which was draped a dish towel. She whipped off the cloth to reveal a large ball of risen pastry dough. “I love to bake. I adore it.” From cabinets she retrieved a baking sheet and twelve white-ceramic tart cups, which she also brought to the island.
She refreshed her drink and offered to refresh theirs. When Pogo accepted a second round, St. Croix smiled at him the way a fox smiled at a tender rabbit. Bartending finished, the fastidious baker washed her hands at the sink. She moved always as though she assumed she was being watched with erotic interest.
When she returned to the island and began pressing buttery pastry dough into the tart cups, she twinkled her blue eyes at Pax and said, “Now, what is it you want to know about Ms. Bibi Blair? Were her parents drunk, doped up, or just tacky when they gave her such a frivolous name? Never mind. Sorry. You’re the one who needs to ask questions.”
Pax wondered at her quick and unqualified acceptance that they were something they had never claimed to be, that she deduced from a SEAL tattoo and little else that they had some law-enforcement role and an official mission. Perhaps the days were long gone when college professors built their courses with respect for logic and reason, and likewise conducted their lives with that same respect.
“Well,” Pax began, “as you might imagine, we’re most interested in why Ms. Blair was thrown out of the university writing program.”
Raising her eyebrows, St. Croix said, “Nowhere is it written that she was ejected for any reason. The story is that she resigned of her own volition, perhaps because she found the coursework too difficult or the atmosphere of academic excellence not to her taste. Who can know but her?”
Pax smiled, shook his head. “Give us some credit for exhaustive backgrounding, Doctor. We know from various sources that there must have been something more to it. And we suspect that whatever she did to get herself forced out, back then, is an example of the behavior that makes her of such great interest to us now.”
“Exactly,” Pogo said, apparently concerned that he might seem superfluous and therefore suspicious.
St. Croix’s attention was less on Pax and Pogo than on forming tarts. “I gave a writing assignment. The students were to choose someone they knew but whose residence they had never visited. The person could be another student, a university staff member, or one of their instructors. This was to be a test of their powers of observation and psychological insight, as well as their sense of characterization and their imagination. Each student was asked to create a richly detailed, vividly described, coherent, credible living environment for that person, whether it might be a dorm room or an apartment or a house. Ms. Blair chose me for her subject.”
“Were you bothered by that?”