“That’s insane,” Gregor said. “How do they ever get anybody to work for them? Are you the only—what did you call it? Adjunct?”
“Better than three quarters of all the teachers at Mattatuck–Harvey are adjuncts,” the woman said. “And the percentage is higher at Pelham. And the reason why I do it is that it’s the only job I could get. I’ve got a doctorate. I’m almost sixty. Put the combination together and you’re not going to get hired full time at much of anything. All the people they’ve hired full time at Mattatuck–Harvey over the last ten years have been under forty.”
The woman held out the hand with the gun in it, then dropped that hand to her side. Gregor swore he could see her blush, even in the darkness. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve never had any cause to take it out before. And it’s a good coincidence you found me here, really, because I’ve been meaning to come and talk to you. My name is Penelope London. I was Chester Morton’s English teacher at the time he disappeared.”
Gregor thought about it. “London,” he said. “That name’s in my notes somewhere.”
“Oh, it should be,” Penny said. “When they actually bothered to start investigating Chester’s disappearance they did get around to me. Howard Androcoelho and Marianne Glew came and interviewed me for nearly an hour. And Marianne took notes. I knew both of them, though, before that, because they’d both been at Mattatuck–Harvey for a while. That’s what people do around here. If they go away to college, they don’t come back. If they’re going to stick around, they go to Mattatuck–Harvey.”
Gregor looked at the woman standing there, and then the car, and then back at the lights in the parking lot of the hotel. He’d come through all that tall grass, and as far as he knew, there were snakes in it.
“Come on,” he said. “You can give me a ride back to the hotel. Then we can go sit someplace and talk.”
3
It took less time than Gregor thought it would to talk her into it, just the assurance that there was an entirely separate room, with nobody in it for the night, and nobody likely ever to sleep in the second of the big queen-sized beds.
“It seems a shame that the man has to spend the entire night sitting up with a corpse,” Penny London said. “And what for? Because Howard Androcoelho can’t get his act together. Howard’s always a big fave with the Mattatuck–Harvey Taxpayers Association. They’re the ones who don’t want to pay for anything. They’re the reason the police radios don’t work for half the town.”
“Excuse me?” Gregor said.
“Oh, I’m not making that up,” Penny said. “Mattatuck’s a huge place, really, considering just land mass, and there are dead areas for the radios in at least half of it. So we had a referendum a few months ago, to vote on getting a new system put in and a new service provider, but it was going to cost five million dollars, and that was that. I suppose none of them live out in the middle of nowhere where the radios wouldn’t work if they were in trouble. I mean, for God’s sake. Really.”
Gregor let her go into Tony Bolero’s room to shower and change. He heard the shower go on immediately, and when he did he called down to the restaurant and ordered takeout. He ordered a lot of takeout. He had no idea what Penny London liked to eat. She could be a vegetarian. She was a middle-aged professional woman with a doctorate. She could even be a vegan. He ordered four entrees—everything from the vegetarian stir-fry to a pair of very thick steaks—and slipped out to pick them up. This kind of thing was easier to do in places that had real room service.
When he got back to the room with his bags of food, the room next door was quiet. Penny London had finished taking her shower. Gregor knocked on the connecting door.
“Are you all right for company? Come on in. I brought us some dinner.”
“Oh,” Penny London said, from behind the door. Then the door opened and she stuck her head into Gregor’s room. Her hair was wet and sleeked back. She was wearing a pair of loose cotton pants and a sweatshirt. “Oh,” she said again, looking at the food Gregor was spreading out on the table near the windows. “You know, I’m really not poor. I do eat.”
“You’re living in your car, and dinner is on me. Come on in and have something and tell me about Chester Morton in your English class.”
“Just a minute.” Penny London disappeared for a second. When she came back, she was holding a manila file folder. She left the connecting door open and came in to sit at the table in front of the food. “This is incredible,” she said. “Do you normally eat this much?”