Dead Waters - Anton Strout [54]
“I have to ask,” I said. “Do you think the university is going to throw any kind of memorial service?”
“Doubtful,” Elyse said. “I don’t think a lot of the other professors really understood Redfield, you know?”
“How do you mean?”
She gave a dark smile. “He’s an acquired taste, now, isn’t he?” she said. “Not everyone got his fascination with his particular brand of cinema. Most people look down on the horror genre with elitist disdain. It doesn’t usually win awards; the Times won’t touch them with reviews. . . If you ask me, it’s snobbery in its basest form.”
The entire table nodded in agreement and took a few angry swigs of their drinks. I joined them, admiring their passion for the professor’s type of films and his enthusiasm for them. He had already won high regard in my mind due to the Inspectre’s memories of their long-past friendship, but to see these young people so jacked up about his field of study was doubly encouraging.
“Does anyone know how he died?” I asked, doing my best to seem like I had no idea about it.
The group fell silent, either looking down at their drinks in discomfort or looking to Elyse for an answer.
“I read somewhere he was found in his new apartment,” Elyse said. “I hadn’t even known he was moving.”
I leaned in, pressing the issue a bit. “But, like, was it natural causes?”
Elyse looked at me. Her face flashed with a moment of concern, and then she went back to her somber look. “Don’t know,” she said. “Don’t really care. I mean, the man’s dead. Dead’s dead, Simon.”
Although her face didn’t show it, Elyse sounded a little pissed off by the bluntness of her statement.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean anything by it . . .”
“What does that even mean?” George asked, speaking up from Darryl’s left. He sounded agitated, too. “Natural causes. . . as opposed to what? Unnatural causes. . . ?”
“Georgey,” Elyse said. “Shush. Freshman are better seen than heard. . . although with that punk blond hair of yours, maybe you shouldn’t be seen, either.”
“Hey!” George said, running his hands up into his wild tangle of bleached blond again. He looked genuinely hurt. “Watch it, chica . . .”
I needed to calm them and quick. “I just meant that I hadn’t heard what happened,” I said. “If he had died in his sleep or maybe it was a mugging gone wrong . . .”
Elyse threw back her glass and drained it before slamming it down on the table. “Wrap it up, boys,” she said.
“You’re leaving?” I asked. Elyse nodded. “But I just joined you . . .”
“We’d love to chat,” she said, short, “but unlike you, we’ve still got class stuff to attend to, Mr. Already Graduated.”
The rest of the group finished up their drinks, gathered up their things, and started sliding their way out of the booth one by one.
“Maybe we could get together and swap stories about the professor sometime,” I said.
Elyse gave me a smile, but her eyes were dead to me. “Thanks for the beer,” she said, “but something tells me you didn’t know the professor in quite the same way we did.”
Mike slid out of the booth next, his camera pointing at me still. “Say good-bye to the camera, Vanderous.”
I gave a wave before standing up myself and walking after Elyse, wanting to keep them here. “Wait,” I said, reaching for her.
Darryl’s hand came down on my shoulder, hard. He pulled me aside.
“I think my girl said all she’s going to be saying to you,” he said. “Maybe the beer’s making you a little braver than usual, but trust me when I say you don’t want to press your luck with her.”
“Right,” I said, not wanting to start anything in the middle of Eccentric Circles. I had the feeling it might go against the subtlety the Inspectre had asked me to go for.
“And I know you don’t want to press your luck with me,” Darryl added.
I stayed still, and after a moment, Darryl slapped me hard on the shoulder, and then turned with his computer bag over his shoulder and headed up to the front of the bar toward the doors. I waited until all of them were gone before I headed back across the bar toward the Inspectre, Aidan, and Connor.
Aidan grinned at me from where