New England White (24 page)

“Yes, sir,” said Bruce, now that the true subject of the meeting had been broached. The smoke from the illegal fireplace was making the shadowy room dimmer.

The secretary stated his needs. A review of Bruce’s progress. The details of his interviews. But Gina Joule had been Trevor Land’s goddaughter, and the cop in Bruce was not about to give up all the information he had collected.

“I’m still fairly early in my inquiry,” he said.

The secretary nodded, scarcely listening. Bruce could barely see him through the haze slowly filling the room.

“Thing is, this Zant has raised more than a few hackles. Not sure what the problem is, really, why everybody’s up in arms, but everybody is. Alums on the phone every day. Have two dead professors now, not one, so it’s hard times, Chief Vallely. Hard times for the school we love. All right, Gibbs was an accident. Zant was a robbery. Still, don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, sort of thing, do we, Chief? Men of the world and so forth. But a little early to man the lifeboats, Chief Vallely, don’t you think? Can’t let the school suffer, can we? All pull together, kind of thing. Truth. Leadership at the top is weak at the moment. Well, all right, not his fault. Business with his daughter and so forth, unfortunate, but one of those things. Professors up in arms over this or that. Not really the best moment to go to the president for decisions. Your chain of command runs through the vice-president, but she’ll just ask the president anyway. Doing the man a bit of a service, I should think, if we don’t bother him with these concerns. Better bring everything to me instead.” Bruce’s eyes were tearing from the smoke, but Trevor Land seemed to tolerate it just fine. “Needs must, Chief Vallely. Institution cannot be allowed to suffer. Try to keep a lower profile. No harassing the professors, they don’t like it and they complain. Students, same. This Knowland. Father’s been in to see me. Mustn’t antagonize the alums. Look into the Zant thing, yes, but without making noise. Have a lead for you,” he said, and paused to swirl his brandy.

“I’d be grateful,” said Bruce, swirling but not sipping his own snifter, for his late wife had made a teetotaler of him, and he was not about to go back on anything he had promised her. They were now at the real point of the meeting. Outside the long, high windows, a sinking sun spread shadows of unseen buildings across the snow-shrouded lawn.

“Yes. Well. Final point, Chief. Final point. Other reason alums are on my back. Not just the scandal, as it turns out. Some of them had business dealings with Zant. Research, consulting, I don’t know what all. Happy with his work, most of them, and so they should be. Brilliant man, all accounts. But a few of them, Chief Vallely, seem to think he took something that belongs to them.”

“Something like what?”

The secretary dropped his clever gaze to examine the brown liquid in his glass. “Wouldn’t know, really. Corporate secrets. Inside information. Formulas. Not one’s field, Chief. But, whatever he took, they’re rather desperate to have it back.”

“Can you tell me if the item was something physical—a notebook, say, or papers maybe—or the sort of thing a man might carry around in his head?”

“Wouldn’t know, really. Alums not terribly forthcoming, I fear. Want it both ways. Get the item back without saying what it is. Detective work. More up your alley than mine.”

“Perhaps if I could talk to these, ah, these alums—”

“Out of the question, Chief Vallely. Confidential sources, sort of thing. Trust me, because I’ve known ’em forever.”

Bruce effaced himself, easy enough in the cavernous office. “I see,” he murmured.

“If you find it for them, Chief, one rather thinks they’ll be grateful. Write your own ticket, sort of thing.” That lift of a finger, so like a Roman emperor. “Word of advice. Don’t ever cross the alums, Chief Vallely. Power corrupts, sort of thing. True as morning. Not bad people, really, the alums, but rather accustomed to getting their way.” The clever eyes sparkled with glee. “They do tend to get their backs up when they don’t get what they want.”

“I see,” said Bruce again, his own back rising in anger.

“Not the sort of people you’d want to cross, I think,” said the secretary, and poured a fresh tot of brandy. A small shake of that clever head, then the conspiratorial smile with which Trevor Land closed every meeting. “Alums,” he said, and drank.

(IV)

D
RIVING HOME
after the strange meeting, Bruce began to sense Kellen Zant’s grand design. Why would Zant steal something from a client? Something of value? Not for the money: according to Rick Chrebet, the economist had a couple of million comfortably banked when he was killed, and more in his pension plan. Yet he was an economist, and saw life in terms of transactions and efficiency. The only reason to take the risk of theft was to obtain something he could not buy with money. So the item was not for his own pleasure; he had taken it for its trade value, bartering it in exchange for something he could not buy with money.

Bruce had an idea what.

He wondered whether the secretary saw what he saw. Probably. Trevor Land played the egregious fool but was in fact one of the most devious men Bruce had ever known, and the director of campus safety doubted his own ability to outguess him. The little man had to have figured out what Zant was up to.

Trevor Land had doted on his goddaughter Gina. Everybody said so. If Zant’s work was intended to discover her killer, the secretary had every reason to keep Bruce on the trail.

Wherever it might lead.

CHAPTER 25

THE FLUTTERING

(I)

I
T WAS HEFTY
T
ONYA
M
ONTEZ
, chief Sister Lady of Harbor County, who provided the clue, and although in truth she had no earthly idea that she had done so, afterward, when reporters arrived to tote up the damage and decide whom to blame, she preened as though she bore the principal responsibility for the less scandalous of Julia’s subsequent decisions. And perhaps, in a sense, she did, for Kellen used to tease that gossip played important regulatory functions, less because of the information it contained than because of the information it omitted: people would avoid certain disapproved behaviors in order to avoid being gossiped about.

Not that Tonya was a gossip. Oh, no. Ladybugs buzzed high above such pursuits, and, to demonstrate their contempt for gossiping, often handed around, chuckling, the silly stories less disciplined members of the community were busily spreading. So when Tonya, on Tuesday, swung by the huge house at the crest of Hunter’s Meadow Road just after the dinner hour, gossip was the last thing on her mind. Naturally. Tonya lived a good eight or ten miles away, at the western edge of the county, far from the heart of whiteness, but made the trek anyway, as a faithful Sister Lady should, for the sole purpose of reviewing with Julia in person what had happened two weeks ago at the meeting to plan for their chapter’s presentation at the Grand Orange and White Cotillion up in Boston just after Christmas—certainly not to soak up the latest gossip about the crazy daughter to pass along through the Elm Harbor end of the Clan.

By the time Tonya rang the bell, and was surprised when the heavy front door was flung happily wide by little Flew, Julia was, as Granny Vee used to say, in no mood. Lemaster was supposed to have come home early to help her frame a rather nice piece of Afro-Cuban art she had picked up at a gallery in the city. Always dutiful, always game, her husband had reminded Julia of the broken antique picture frame she had bought at a small discount from Frank Carrington a few months ago, meaning to repair it later. It looked about the right size, said Lemaster: they would do the work together. Probably she should have suspected that he would send Flew in his place. Lemaster had been a workaholic at the White House and the federal courthouse and the law school; he had been a workaholic back when they were students at Kepler, determined, as he told her in the divinity school library one afternoon, to allow no book within his reach to go unread. Julia had found herself utterly enchanted by the absurdity of this conceit. That she knew the brilliant young lawyer who thought he had a vocation to the priesthood intended to enchant her did nothing to diminish the effectiveness of his strategy. No coincidence, probably, that they made love for the first time the same night: in the basement stacks of the Kepler Library, after closing, because that was where Lemaster was to be found, and, after the finding, one must make do.

“A couple of rich alums unexpectedly in town,” said Mr. Flew, apologetically, who spent more and more time at the house, even when his master was absent. Julia, grudgingly, was coming to accept him as a mysterious but established part of the family’s life. Now and then he would even stay over in the guest room, Lemaster insisting, after one late meeting or another, on not forcing the young man to make the drive back to his condo in town. Julia was far too well bred—or far too kindhearted—to object, and even was learning to put up with the fussy way he seemed unable to pass the Thermador range without grabbing the rag and the special polish and cleaning the black glass top until it sparkled. She could not quite work him out. He was a slender, towheaded sprite, with impressive degrees and work experience on four continents, considerably overqualified for the post he held, hoping, said Lemaster, to move on one day to run a small nonprofit, and content meanwhile to flit along in the great man’s shadow. But Julia was not content just now. With anything.

Indeed, until the doorbell sounded, Julia had spent most of their two hours in the makeshift workshop in an unused bay of the four-car garage complaining about Mary Mallard, who kept on calling, and busily informing little Flew of her intention—having no husband present to hear her tirade—to do something about her, fast.

“I’ll take care of it,” said the sprite, and, in her current emotional state, she imagined for a moment that he meant Mary, not the doorbell. Julia nodded, wiping sweat from her brow. The work was harder than expected, not least because the compound joints in the old, softening wood were separating and had to be repaired. Flew, fortunately, possessed a native cleverness with the proper functioning of objects, and caught on swiftly to the proper angle for inserting the hypodermic full of hide glue into the joints as Julia pressed the wood together. Then, while she continued holding the pieces in place, he applied the masking tape.

“Thank you,” said Julia.

Jeannie, who had been watching the project, and watching Jeremy Flew, on whom she now harbored a tiny crush that she imagined was her secret alone, hopped to her feet and said, with perfect mimicry of his rising dulcet tone, “I’ll take care of it.”

“Let Mr. Flew take care of it,” said her mother.

A moment later, Flew was back, informing Julia, as a good butler might, that “Ms. Montez” had arrived, and was waiting for Julia in the solarium.

“I’ll finish up here,” he said.

And Julia, by now utterly bewildered at what could be driving her husband to keep sending this stranger into their home, mopped her forehead with a cloth and decided to let him.

“Come with me, honey,” said Julia to her youngest.

Jeannie said, gazing at her hero: “I’ll finish up here.”

“You should go with your mother, Jeans,” said little Flew, and only then did her daughter hop down from her perch and scurry into the kitchen.

(II)

T
ONYA HAD BROUGHT
a bottle of wine, a nice Napa Valley Chardonnay, because wine was what Julia liked, and, besides, the word among the Sister Ladies was that Julia had lately grown morose, and Tonya hoped, if not to cheer her, at least to soften her up. So they sat in the living room and sipped the wine (fruity but a little too much oak, judged Julia, who had learned her oenology from Mona) while Tonya, a soft, spreading woman of generous curvature and a generous nature, chatted about every topic under the sun except the one she wanted to most. Jeannie had slipped away, probably to watch Mr. Flew. Tonya moved on to Ladybugs business, reminding Julia in her foxily officious tone that everybody was supposed to have attended the meeting at Alice Henner’s house
(and, oh, honey, the weight that girl can’t seem to get off since the second baby),
which was also the deadline for turning in the money for the tickets, members and guests only.

“I mean, you are going to the Cotillion, right?” Tonya’s bright doe eyes kept straying to the foyer, perhaps hoping that the unspoken topic would put in an appearance. But the unspoken topic was upstairs doing her homework, or instant-messaging Janine Goldsmith, now plain Smith, or perhaps was posting to her blog, Gainful Nonsenses, although it remained to be seen whether Vanessa would hold her readers once she left the world of real-life murder and returned to her usual dreary fare of medieval chants, the history of warfare, and the oppression of the adolescent. The anagram of the site’s name, which kept popping up if you navigated there, was
SINFUL SANE N.E. SONG—“N.E.
” for “New England.” Julia did not consider the title particularly clever, and Lemaster hated all blogs on principle, but Dr. Brady pronounced himself encouraged by his patient’s use of the word
sane.

Lemaster’s principle was that blogs had been invented since his youth.

“We’re going to the Cotillion, yes. We never miss it.” And this was true. The Orange and White was, for the Clan, the social event of the year, and, if no longer as important for the debutantes who “came out,” the ball still allowed the elite to remind one another, amid the clamor and waste of their secret segregated existence, that they were real, and made a difference. “But I told you I’d miss the meeting,” Julia went on. “Remember? We had dinner at the White House.”

Tonya covered her mouth. “Oh, honey, I couldn’t go telling the Sister Ladies that, could I?”

“It’s not a secret dinner, Tonya. The President and Lemaster go way back.”

The chief Sister Lady laid a soft, unwanted hand on Julia’s thigh. “Yeah, well, you don’t wanna go spreading that around either.”

“I don’t?”

“Our people don’t
like
the President, Julia.”

“Is that right?” said Julia. She had voted for the other guy, just as Tonya had, but Veazie women were not quite pushable-around. “I must have missed the directive from Blackness Central.”

Tonya, about to snap right back at her, noticed the smile twitching at the corners of the crooked mouth, and smiled back instead. “All right, I come on a little strong. But, honey, I do need to make sure you’re going to the Cotillion. That’s why I’m here. To make a personal plea. I mean, your family practically founded the thing.”

“What does that make me? An exhibit?”

“Come on, Julia. You’re the life of the party.”

A smokescreen, Julia reminded herself. On the other hand, most of the others probably had turned in their money on time, because the Cotillion was a matter of the utmost seriousness: almost as serious as the endless debates on whether to amend section (e)(3) of the bylaws to change
those
to
these,
or whether Bitsy Farnsworth wore the same dress to the formal reception on the second night of the regional conference in Syracuse last month as she wore two years ago, or—silly woman!—just a dress that looked the same.

“You don’t have to plead with me, Tonya. We’ll be there, I told you.”

Flew popped his fair head in. The framing was all done. Where would Julia like it hung? Yes, indeed, the library was an excellent choice. He knew just the perfect spot, right above the period Hepple-white: he could take down that unfortunate Escher print. Would she mind terribly if Jeannie helped? The child had such a splendid eye. Oh, and he had done some Brie and so forth for the two of them. By the way—turning to Tonya with a little bow—who was this delicious creature anyway? Why had they never met before tonight? They would be the best of friends, he said to the chief Sister Lady. He was certain of it.

“Who on earth was that?” said Tonya, flushing, when they were alone again.

“Jeremy. Mr. Flew. He works for Lemmie.” Rainbow Coalition had wandered in and sat on her haunches amid the tall plants beneath the bay windows, still as ceramic. Outside, the floodlights illuminated the lawn as it sloped toward the reservoir. Lights of distant houses glittered on the other side. “He’s a kind of…factotum, I guess. Most people just call him Flew.”

“But what’s he doing here? Didn’t you say Lemaster’s at the office?”

“Well, yes, but—anyway, Jeremy’s here.” Rumors. All she needed was more rumors.

“He’s a little strange, isn’t he?” Stuffing her mouth full of cheese and crackers all the same. “Tell you a funny story. I was over at Sandra Maxson’s house for a committee meeting the other day. Alice Henner mentions this lawyer, Tice I think his name was, dropped by her office, wanting to ask her all these questions about Kellen Zant, what he was working on. She threw him out, of course. She’d do it, too, with that temper. Then Patrice Pomeroy goes, ‘Really? Me, too.’ Bitsy Farnsworth, the same. Not that Bitsy has an office. All she does is sit around and spend her husband’s—”

“Are you telling me that Anthony Tice is talking to all the Sister Ladies?”

Tonya covered her round, teasing mouth with a soft brown hand. The nails glinted a quite remarkable shade of pink. “Oh, I wouldn’t know about all. Some.” Tonya was the principal of an elementary school and liked to be precise. “So, what are you telling me, honey? You know the guy?”

“We’ve met.”

“Sounds like it didn’t go well.”

“He asked me the same thing,” said Julia, hiding in the crowd.

“Well, I’m still waiting for my turn.” Another nibble, surprisingly dainty, on a cracker. “It’s not like you don’t have enough on your plate, Julia. It’s been rough. I know that. My kids envy Vanessa. They think her life’s a thrill a minute. They don’t have a clue. I know it’s hard. Everybody understands, honey, but people are starting to talk. They say, Julia thinks she’s better than everybody else, and that’s why she doesn’t come. Now, I know that’s not true, even if nobody else lives in a palace. Still, believe me, honey, if it was up to me, you could come and go as you please. But it’s not, is it? The bylaws do set a minimum annual attendance requirement. Half the meetings. That’s only six a year. You can do that. There’s people waiting in line to get in,” she lied. “I’m not criticizing, honey, but you could be suspended. The good news is, there’s a provision for waiver in the case of hardship, under 10 (b) (5), assuming we have the consent of a majority of the executive committee and then a majority of those present and voting at the next meeting of the whole following—”

Julia searched for a place to interrupt, for a Ladybug in full flutter is as inexorable as winter wind, and about as warm and fuzzy.

“Tonya, stop. Wait. Stop for a minute. You have to tell them. Tell everybody. Anthony Tice is trouble. They need to stay away from him.”

A wolfish grin, waiting for the inside information. “Why do you say that, honey?”

“Take my word for it.”

“You can give me a clue.”

“Please, Tonya. You’ll have to trust me. But nobody should say anything to him.” She hesitated over the next words. “Especially if he asks about me.”

“Is he gonna do that? Ask about you?” In her excitement, she hopped up from the sofa and, unbidden, sat down on the piano bench, fingering the keys, creating what Julia’s piano teacher used to call a broken chord. “You mean, like, about you and Kellen?”

“Please don’t do that,” said Julia, feeling foolish, and uppity.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t play with the piano.”