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“Yeah, but I might be offended by that because the color is all wrong for him and that dress got some wrinkles in it,” Lula said.
“Someone get a paddle and give that pledge a whack for having wrinkles in his dress,” Iggy said.
A guy peeled off the pack, and a moment later we heard whack!
“Ow!”
“He’s gonna have a welt,” Lula said. “He should have ironed his dress.”
I cut my eyes to her. “He would have been fine if you hadn’t said something.”
“Well, I just noticed, is all. You think I should tell him about lanolin?”
“No!”
Iggy stopped in front of a room and motioned us in. “Nobody home here,” Iggy said.
I methodically went through the room, looking in drawers, the closet, under the bed. Some of Globovic’s books and clothes were strewn about the room, but the toiletries had been removed from the bathroom. There wasn’t a smartphone lying out. No computer or tablet. It was clear Globovic wasn’t staying here, but I didn’t find a forwarding address.
“I don’t suppose anyone wants to tell me where I can find Globovic, or Gobbles, if that’s what you call him.”
No one came forward.
THREE
WE LEFT THE Zeta house and got back into the Firebird.
“That was a big waste of time,” Lula said. “And they were all fibbing about not knowing where Gobbles is hiding out. I figure he’s in the cellar.”
I had the same thought, but I didn’t want to go into the Zeta house cellar. I was afraid it would be a dungeon where they kept the cross-dressing pledges. Or even worse, it could be filled with spiders.
“There’s a story here,” I said to Lula. “This guy has no priors. He’s a good student. I didn’t see anything weird in his room. His fraternity brothers obviously like him, because they’re protecting him. His family hired a good lawyer for him, but he chose to disappear and not show up for court.”
“Yeah, but that’s typical of a amateur,” Lula said. “Everybody’s afraid to go to jail for the first time. Especially if they got freaked out over getting arrested and locked up overnight in one of them cells at the police station. And it’s not like he got friends and relatives already in jail waiting for him like most of the people in my neighborhood. In my neighborhood the only way you can afford to get dental work done is to get yourself sent to the workhouse for a couple months. So it’s not like it’s perceived as a bad thing, you see what I’m saying?”
I read through Globovic’s file again. His parents lived about an hour away in East Brunswick. I’d get to them eventually, but I wanted to run through the local connections first.
“Globovic was accused of attacking the dean of students,” I said to Lula, “so let’s talk to him next.”
After ten minutes of confused driving around the Kiltman campus, Lula managed to find the administration building.
“This school must have been built around cow paths,” Lula said, pulling into the lot and finding an empty space to park. “There’s no signs on any of the little roads, and GPS don’t know nothing.”
The campus was mostly composed of big blocky redbrick buildings. Two or three floors for all but the science building, which looked brand-new and was five stories. The administration building was fancied up by four columns marching across the front.
Martin Mintner, the dean of students, had an office on the second floor. A small waiting area in front of his office held four uncomfortable wooden chairs and a scarred wood coffee table with a couple dog-eared magazines on it.
“This must be where the bad kids get sent,” Lula said.
The door to the dean’s office was open, so I stuck my head in. “Knock, knock.”
The man behind the desk was slightly paunchy with dark hair cut short. Receding hairline. Gray beginning to show at the temples. I guessed he was in his early fifties. He was wearing a light blue buttoned-down shirt with a gray and red repp tie. He had a cast on his left forearm.
He looked up from his computer at me. “Yes?”
“Dean Mintner?”
“Can I help you?”
