New England White (22 page)

“She could blame herself,” Julia pointed out, knowing from her husband’s posture that her time had expired. “Or she could blame the Senator.” Lemaster only shrugged. “It’s possible, Lemmie. That’s all I’m saying. What she did—tried to do—didn’t seem that serious. Not at the time. There has to be more to this than meets the eye.”

“I’m sure there is,” said Lemaster, his gaze straying to the report he had to read to prepare himself for the budget meeting.

At the door, allowing him his softly possessive kiss, Julia asked, “What about Cameron? Are you going to get him fired, too?”

“I didn’t get Astrid fired, Jules. I told you.” Paging through the document. “Anyway, Cameron’s a little big for me to take on.” He laughed. His wife did not.

“Lemmie?”

“Yes, Jules?”

No choice but straight at him. “The night he died, Kellen told somebody that he was on his way to Jamaica.”

“Maybe he was.”

“No plane ticket, no hotel reservation.”

“Well, then, it’s a matter for the police.”

“Not any more,” said Julia, for the investigation, as Chrebet had predicted, had reached its end.

“I suppose not.” Lemaster kissed her again, the report stuffed beneath his arm. A rising hum of conversation from beyond the stout oak door told Julia she had overstayed her welcome. His highly organized working day was running behind. “Why do you bring up this Jamaica business?”

“I was wondering if you had any idea—”

But his face told her he didn’t, even if he wished he did.

“Jules?”

Pausing, hand on the door. “Yes, Lemmie?”

Gaze down on the report again. “What do you think of Bruce Vallely?”

“Bruce? Why do you ask about Bruce?”

“I understand he’s exploring other options,” said Lemaster, not looking up. “I wondered whether we should try to persuade him to stay.”

Julia swallowed, shuffling her feet, feeling the way she did back in high school when a guidance counselor accused her of lying about the theft of her purse to get another girl in trouble. “Ah, well—that’s up to you, I guess.”

Brilliant smile. “Thank you, darling.”

(IV)

B
ACK AT
K
EPLER
Q
UAD
, Julia rushed through her work. She cautioned a student who was missing too many classes, and counseled a student whose boyfriend had stopped calling. She read files of applicants and did her best to keep track of her assistants. She tried several times to get in touch with Astrid, imagined her in her townhouse near Capitol Hill, stalking back and forth, smoking like a chimney, ignoring the constantly ringing phone.

Or maybe it was only Julia’s call Astrid was refusing to take.

What do you think of Bruce Vallely?

She picked up a pencil and spent a little time working anagrams with “Shari Larid,” the name Tony Tice had asked her about, because word games were what Kellen liked. Her results—
Hard liar is? Dial Harris? Rash rail id?
—were unsatisfying. Shari Larid had not turned up in any Internet search, but maybe Julia was spelling the name wrong.

Two-thirty: time to pack her bag for the day and beat the buses to Hunter’s Heights. About to leave her office, she had a thought. Bruce Vallely had found a copy of Vanessa’s term paper on Kellen’s computer. The term paper came in two varieties: the original she had turned in, for which Ms. Klein had delivered the dreadful grade, and a revised version, a working draft, featuring some of the additional research her daughter had done. If she knew which version Kellen had possessed, she might know more about his relationship with Vanessa—even though, sooner or later, despite Dr. Brady’s strictures on cross-examining his patient, she would have to ask directly, just as Rick Chrebet suggested.

In the bottom right-hand drawer of her desk, hidden among folders with various forms that students needed, Julia kept her Vanessa File—her collection of everything from clippings about the fire to the washed-out newspaper photograph of Gina that once adorned Vanessa’s dresser. The file also contained both versions of the term paper.

Except that it did not.

When she drew out the folder and opened it, only the newspaper cuttings about the fire remained. Everything else was missing.

She would have blamed Tricky Tony Tice, but the evidence was otherwise: all over the olive-drab folder, like blood smears after a murder, were fingerprints in mushy brown chocolate, left by the late Boris Gibbs as he rifled her desk.

CHAPTER 23

MIRROR, MIRROR

(I)

I
T DELIGHTED
V
ERA
B
RIGHTWOOD
no end that the sport utility vehicle that smashed poor Boris Gibbs to smithereens up in Norport was her very own, stolen two days before from her house on Pleasant Road. Down at Cookie’s, she told her regulars, and anybody else who wandered in, about the hours she had spent with the detectives, after nobody had cared when she first reported the car missing. About time they paid some attention to the crime wave in the village, she said. The number of assaults in the Landing had doubled over the past year, she announced, and for once had her statistics right, even though she omitted to mention that the doubling took the cases from two to four. But Vera was just about the only source of news in town, and, as Lemaster pointed out with a smile when Julia complained, failing to mention the details that made the numbers less impressive was a habit shared by pretty much all the media.

Julia spent a couple of afternoons on Main Street, roving from shop to shop, collecting stories, sifting rumors, seeking truth. Beth Stonington, the top Realtor in town, who had sold the Carlyles the land on which Hunter’s Heights was built, insisted that nobody could look at one of the town’s few remaining waterfront lots without her hearing about it. And, no, she said when Julia pressed, thinking Boris might have had the story wrong: Kellen Zant had not viewed any of the houses on the market. She would have heard.

Because he was black, Julia thought but did not say.

Carrie Bissette, evening manager at the CVS, had never met Kellen Zant, but had seen a great deal of Boris Gibbs. People said they used to have a thing. And, no, she assured Julia gravely, Boris had never asked her about Zant. Greta Hudak, who ran the tavern bearing her name, told Julia what she had told the police, that a tall black man who did not live in the Landing had been in once or twice for lunch but she could not pick out his photograph. Julia asked how she knew he didn’t live in town. She would have remembered, said Greta. Danny Weiss, who ran the struggling local bookstore, had sold Zant a volume on antiques a week or so before he died. Lurleen Maddox at Luma’s Gifts told her that Kellen Zant had indeed stopped in, the same day he purchased the book.

“Did he buy anything?”

“Just a little toy mirror,” she said, with sour disapproval of his parsimony.

(II)

A
ND SO IT WAS PLAIN
that Kellen was telling her something. He was buying mirrors, delivering mirrors, trying to give mirrors as gifts, even though he died before he could accomplish his plan. He had wanted her to follow his trail, like a night creature, leaving his spoor along his path through the Landing, signaling Julia in a way she was no doubt supposed to find both irresistible and irrefutable, and she marveled that she had heretofore been unaware of his presence in her town. It was as though the Main Street merchants conspired together to keep from her the simple truth of what Kellen had been up to.

But what was he up to?

Inventory risk. The dark matters.

Still Julia could not work out how Kellen thought he would blow the lid off the presidential campaign. The most plausible guess was that he had evidence that the President of the United States, while a junior at the college thirty years ago, had killed Gina Joule and hidden that truth all these years. In the panic of her confrontation with Bruce Vallely, she had actually credited this possibility. Now, in a calmer moment, she felt as if accusing the President, even in her mind, was to slip into someone else’s paranoia. Besides, there was no reason it had to be Scrunchy. After all, Lemaster had not been around Hilliman Suite to keep order: he had spent the spring semester of 1973 studying at Oxford. Any one of his roommates—Scrunchy or Mal or Jock Hilliman—could have done any sort of mischief without Big Brother, as they used to call him, finding out.

Vanessa, however, remained adamant in her insistence that DeShaun Moton was the killer. On Sunday, Julia took her daughter out to dinner at Greta’s and pumped her for more.

“I told you, Kellen and I never talked about it.”

“Never?”

“Well, he asked what I was working on. When I said it was Gina Joule, and that it was clear that DeShaun did it, he complimented me on being willing to take unpopular positions.” Her fork clattered, because her hand was trembling. “Creepy pervert.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Tell you what?”

“That you told him about Gina?”

Vanessa seemed unable to think of an answer to that one, or at least unable to articulate it, for she dipped her head and hid her face behind her braids. Her hand shook harder, and she put down the fork. Outside, the night was crisp and clear. Cars drifted through yesterday’s snow with majestic unconcern.

“Honey?”

“Yes, Moms?”

“Did you give Kellen a copy of your term paper?”

She smiled in reminiscence, like an old woman thinking back on her youth. “He promised to help me get it published. He was creepy. He just wanted—well, you know what he wanted.” She sliced a piece of salmon. “I e-mailed it to him.” Chewing. “But he never got back to me. I guess it wasn’t good enough.” Her face went into its fall. “You know, Moms, he could be pretty cruel. Your Kellen.”

“I know, honey.” Covering both her hands at once. “I know.”

Driving home, Vanessa squinting over calculus homework on her lap, Julia turned the sequence over in her mind. Maybe. Maybe not. Say Kellen is hanging around Kepler, hoping for a glimpse of Julia, meaning to cause trouble. He runs into Vanessa, and, pleasantly surprised, he teases her for a bit, probably as a way to tease Julia by remote control, possibly because Vanessa herself—well, anything was possible. He visits the div school another day, and there’s Vanessa again, working in the library on her research. Maybe he flirts with her. They talk. He learns about the paper. About Gina. Does he extrapolate? Do the calculations himself to discover that the white teenager died while Scrunchy and the others shared Hilliman Suite? Or did he know already, in which case Vanessa was simply a source of additional information? Either way, Kellen is intrigued and looks into the matter further, and discovers—what?—the President? Did he die because of who he decided was guilty? Did Boris die for the same reason?

Julia shivered, partly with worry, partly with relief: Vanessa had recently announced she was giving up on the paper.

“Honey?”

“Yes, Moms?” Writing furiously by the glow of the map light, equations sprawling over the page.

“You’re sure it was DeShaun? Absolutely sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No evidence of anybody else?”

“Nope.” Vanessa flipped to the back of her math book, checking her answers, and, frowning, began a massive erasure. She had missed a step. “I mean, somebody could fake some evidence or something,” she continued, starting the problem over. “You know. Try to frame somebody.” She smiled and nodded to herself. Now she had the equations right. “But I can’t see Kellen doing that.”

“Why not, honey?” said Julia, marveling at how Vanessa, as usual, stayed a step ahead.

“Because framing somebody would require…passion. Commitment. And you know what? You’d have to really hate your victim to take the chance.” Vanessa was in the next chapter, working a new problem. “I mean, who would Kellen hate that much?”

(III)

A
T HOME, LATER,
Julia bolted awake. Half past one. She had been dreaming, as she often did, of stumbling through snowy trees, pursued by some furious nightmare creature, snarling that she was not as nice as people thought. Up ahead was sanctuary, but the dream always ended before she found out if she reached it or not. What had tugged her to wakefulness this time was a high-pitched keening. The sound had stopped, so maybe it was part of the dream. Beside her, the president of the university snored on. Julia settled back down, then sat up again. No. No dream. There it was again, faint, but Julia’s hearing was, like her daughter’s, exceptional: they both played piano. She swung her feet into slippers, tugged on her favorite tattered robe. She tracked the sound to Vanessa’s room. She put her ear to the door. A kind of squealing hum, vaguely tuneful.

The sound stopped.

She was still deciding whether to knock when the door whisked open. Vanessa, in pajamas and bare feet, was already talking before Julia had a chance to ask.

“There’s this really cool Web site that I found that lets you download these funeral dirges from different cultures? You can’t do it with earphones. You need the speakers to get the feel.” Julia peered past her daughter. The room was a mess, clothes and papers and books mounded everywhere, but she could pick out, here and there, the remote Bose speakers scattered around. Eight, she vaguely recalled. “I turned it down low, and I’m sorry if it was too loud, but I’m kind of glad, too. We can listen together. You’ll
love
this.”

“Tomorrow’s a school day.”

“I’ll sleep in French class. Sit down.” Drawing her mother in, shutting the door. Julia moved a dog-eared book about the battle for Stalingrad and sank into a chair. When Vanessa bent over the desk, Julia identified the laptop, hidden behind a wall of Perrier bottles and glittering CD cases. A tune came on, mournful and sweet. Chanting. Vanessa began, slowly, to slide her bare feet from side to side. “They dance to these, Moms,” she explained, shrugging prettily, smiling. “That’s what I was up to when you knocked on the door. Nothing nefarious. This one is from the Ewe people of Ghana. They have this special dance for the death of an elder. I don’t know all the moves, so I made most of them up.” She closed her eyes and lifted her slim arms and began to shimmy. A moment later, Julia was on her feet, the two of them dancing together to the funereal moaning, dipping and swaying and twirling as they struggled to remember, and to forget. Vanessa clicked. Another came on, more up-tempo, no accompaniment, just a faster keening. Julia whirled and whirled, because movement was real and death was a fraud and if she could only whirl fast enough nobody would ever have to die. Vanessa, laughing, was explaining what culture the dirge was from, and how outside of the West most cultures danced at funerals, but her mother was lost in the music and the movement, hardly listening, whirling and whirling as she felt oddly joyful tears running down her honey-colored cheeks, because Kellen might be dead, Jay and Granny Vee might be dead, but she was alive, she was here dancing with her daughter, and they were going to make it right, they were going to start over, they were going to—

“And this one is my favorite,” said Vanessa.

Silence.

Julia stopped twirling. She waited. Nothing happened. Vanessa stood hunched over the desk, fingers poised and trembling on the mouse, but unable to click. She struggled and struggled, finally turning helpless eyes toward her mother.

Julia crossed the room, lifted her daughter’s hands, squeezed them between her own, and held Vanessa close until whatever had frozen her melted into sobs.

And she realized, as she thought of Vanessa’s tears, and the trauma Vincent Brady said she was repressing, that she no longer had any choice. She had to do exactly what Mary Mallard and Tony Tice wanted her to. She had to work quietly, but she had to work. She had to find out what Kellen was working on when he died—not for Kellen’s sake, but for Vanessa’s.

And perhaps, she realized, for her own.