New England White (27 page)

“You walk your way, I’ll walk mine.”

“Maybe I should give you a ride.”

“You’re not everybody’s mommy, Julia.”

Regina shoved her away, but, as Julia the onetime science teacher could have told her, the reactive force shoved back. Regina tumbled onto the grass. Julia tried to help her up, but the younger woman snatched her hand away. “Don’t you have enough trouble with the daughter you already have?”

Stung, she soldiered on. “I’m worried about you, that’s all.”

“This is America, honey.” Eyes sizzling, Regina was on her feet: teetering, to be sure, but definitely on her feet. “You don’t tell me what to do. Play by your own rules, okay? And I’ll play by mine.”

Julia, stunned, did not snatch her friend’s keys as planned, and allowed Regina to slide into her Acura RL and streak off down the icy road. Julia stood there, watching her go. Regina’s last, furious objection had opened a new door.

“Oh, Kellen,” Julia said to the frosty air. “Oh, Kellen, you clever, clever bastard.”

Climbing into the Escalade, she remembered to say a quick prayer for Regina’s safety, just in case somebody was listening. But mostly she focused on her destination, and the bold absurdity of what she was about to undertake.

The rules, she told herself. It was time to make her own rules.

(III)

T
HE SLEET HAD TURNED
to plain snow. The night was moonless. Julia climbed from the Escalade in the brooding shadow of Hilliman Tower, where lights burned in a few offices, even at half past ten. Her key card admitted her to Kepler through the side door, and as she stepped inside she wondered whether Kellen might have been here so late that he needed digital permission to enter; and who gave it to him. You’re insane, she lectured herself, in Mona’s voice. Absolutely insane. Now we know where Vanessa gets it from. They’re going to lock you up.

In the dimly lighted hallway, her footsteps echoed like cell doors slamming. She could not remember the last time she had been inside the divinity school at this hour, and doubted that she had ever been here at this hour alone. In her office she watered the plants and fussed with her perfectly arranged desk and picked up a couple of memos she had to study for a meeting tomorrow with Iris Feynman, papers she had left intentionally to provide an excuse for her return, on the off chance that somebody noticed she was there, or perhaps checked the digital records.

Back out in the hall, she encountered a trio of exhausted students, arguing vaguely about Kierkegaard, as astonished as Julia herself by the nighttime presence of the dean of students. She offered a cheery good night and ostentatiously left the building. She put the memos in her car, glanced around, and then, giving herself no chance to think, padded off into the snow, not down the steps to the side entrance this time, but around the back, where plowed snow was still heaped beneath the windows of the deserted common room. She crouched against the aging brickwork, ignoring the chill on her legs, and found what she was looking for: the well leading to the basement windows.

The windows she had seen set high up in the wall as she sat in Rod Rutherford’s office.

From the archivist’s perspective, they were sealed and barred, but some of the students appointed the dean of students their confessor, and a couple of months ago a young woman had sat in Julia’s office and, after swearing her to secrecy, confessed to sneaking into the archives late one night to deface a portrait of a former professor accused of sexual harassment.

“How did you get in?” Julia had asked, marveling proudly at the young woman’s chutzpah.

And so the student had explained. She used to work in the archives to pay her tuition, and had noticed, while filing papers in Rod Rutherford’s office, that the screws on some of the bars were loose. After that, whenever she found herself alone, she would climb on a chair and spend a few minutes working on them. The stonework was a hundred years old, the bars probably half that, and they came loose with surprising ease. She left them hanging so that they would appear to be in place, then pried the cover off the latch so that it would not seal properly but the damage would be invisible from below.

“All this so you could draw a mustache on poor Professor Millikan?”

“It wasn’t a mustache.”

No wonder Roderick Rutherford had sent the portrait off for cleaning, without ever quite saying why.

Had the librarian noticed his intern’s secret entrance? Evidently not: when Julia leaned down into the window well and shoved, the glass swung open with a surprised pop. She hesitated and then, taking a last look around, lowered herself into the well. Snow caked around her stylish boots. Then, refusing to consider the consequences, Julia took a cue from Broadway, for Regina’s lament about following her own rules had reminded her of Elphaba, the anti-heroine of the musical
Wicked,
who sang about how she was through playing by the rules of someone else’s game, and how it was time to close her eyes and leap.

After so long and placid a marriage, it felt good to be taking risks again.

She closed her eyes and leaped…

(IV)

…AND CAME DOWN IN A HEAP
, her head missing a file cabinet by inches, and immediately she saw her error. She had not brought a flashlight. She also had not considered how she would get out again, and, looking up at the hanging window, wondered whether some special corner of Hell was reserved for the truly stupid. In the soft, snowy glow from the window, she found the switch and turned on the fluorescents, reasoning that nobody would be standing behind the div school peeking at the basement to see whether the lights were on; at least nobody who knew that the archives were locked and alarmed at five-thirty, six days a week, because Mr. Rutherford rested on the seventh.

She tried to figure out whether it was breaking and entering to sneak into the closed stacks of a building to which she had every right of access, twenty-four hours a day.

Never mind.

Close your eyes and leap.

The cabinets in Rod Rutherford’s office were all locked, but his files were not her objective. She stepped out into the workroom. The archives themselves were locked up for the evening too, but they were not her objective either. Not tonight. She crossed the pitted linoleum floor to Mrs. Bethe’s little hutch, where Mr. Rutherford’s assistant filed request forms in long gray boxes behind her desk. The boxes were neatly stacked but otherwise unsecured, and Julia paged swiftly through them.

No request form from Kellen on the last night of his life.

Frowning, she went back, page by page, the work not particularly difficult, because the divinity school archives, once Kepler’s glory, actually got little use.

Julia worked her way past November and into October.

She finally found a request with Kellen’s name on it from the middle of the month. She held it up, looked, then looked again, to make sure the name was Zant. Paging back, faster and faster, she found several more, almost all of them seeking documents from the same collection. Volume so-and-so, folio such-and-such, of the Merrill Barnes Joule papers.

The same collection Vanessa had used a year ago in writing her disastrous term paper.

Julia sat down hard on the desk, staring sightlessly across the low room, the roar of the air conditioners drowned by the roaring of blood in her head.

Now she knew for sure what all the fuss was about, what Astrid had wanted, and Cameron Knowland, and Tony Tice, and Mary Mallard. She knew what surplus Kellen had been trying to capture, and what inventory risk he had tried desperately to spread. What she had suspected was confirmed. At the time of his death, Kellen Zant had been investigating the death of Gina Joule.

And, no matter what Vanessa thought, Kellen had believed that his answer would blow the lid off the election.

CHAPTER 29

THE INVESTOR

(I)

L
EMASTER
C
ARLYLE WAS
the sort of man who collected acquaintances rather than friends, but Marlon Thackery, Sister Lady Regina’s husband, was as close to him as anybody in Harbor County. Marlon had been a successful money manager at a New York firm, and had been hired by Lemaster’s predecessor to run the university’s endowment. He was a tall man, taller than Bruce Vallely, but so thin you feared a harsh word would break him in two, and so hopelessly unassuming that if you passed him on campus, head down and shoulders hunched as he slouched about his business, you would take him for an African American of the working class, hurrying off to his job in a sub-basement somewhere, the sort of fellow who kept out of view. Even in his bright, modern office in a glass-walled tower downtown, with a splendid view of beach and ocean, he seemed an interloper, sitting behind the wrong desk, and Bruce kept waiting for the boss to come in and take his place.

Marlon said, eyes on the glass desktop, “Lemaster loves his wife. Why would you think he didn’t?” His voice was scarcely above a mutter, but he was by all accounts a financial genius. Golf trophies stood here and there on shelves, and photographs of his lovely wife and three angelic daughters at all ages filled the extra space, so he could not possibly spend all his time folded into himself like this. People said he was a fantastic father. “That’s a really weird thing to ask.”

“I didn’t say he didn’t love his wife. I asked about how he and his wife met.”

“Well, I think it’s a weird question.”

“It’s part of filling in Professor Zant’s background. That’s all. So, please, Mr. Thackery. Humor me.”

Still the money manager was unable to lift his eyes. They strayed to one of the several computer monitors in view, but Bruce was at a loss to guess what the charts and numbers meant. The door stood open, and every now and then minions came rushing in, dropping off vital memoranda. The semi-private firm that handled the university’s investment accounts ran to thirty-six employees on two floors, but seventeen billion dollars is a lot of money.

“Lemaster’s not an easy man,” Marlon Thackery finally said. “Julia’s Julia. She’s a sweetheart. Everybody knows that. Lemaster is focused. Controlled. Sticks to the matter at hand. He’s an immigrant,” he added, as if that explained everything. “He grew up with nothing, and now the world’s at his feet. Law. Politics. Both parties are after him to run for office. Senator. Governor. Do you know how many corporate head-hunters call every month? How many investment banks? He could have been chief executive officer of—Never mind. He holds all of this together by holding himself together, and he holds himself together because of the marriage. Julia might not always know she’s his rock, but she is. The marriage is everything to him, because without it he could do nothing.”

Bruce caught an undercurrent, then wondered if he had imagined it. “You said the marriage is everything. Not Julia. The marriage. Like it’s a symbol or something.”

“I meant Julia.”

No, you didn’t. “They met as students,” said Bruce.

“Divinity students. Right. Lemaster was an Assistant United States Attorney—that’s when we met—and then a Wall Street lawyer. He quit, traveled the world, spent a year in Africa, went home to Barbados, came back, did some volunteer work in Brooklyn, then decided he might want to be an Episcopal priest. He enrolled at Kepler, met Julia, dropped out, got married. He joined the law school faculty. The wandering stopped. He settled down. And, after that, you know, the judge-ship, the White House, everything else.”

That was it. Had to be. “When you say he settled down—”

“I mean his career. Hold on.” He tapped some keys, clicked his mouse. “Sorry. Have to jump in fast on those.”

“Just his career?”

“What else is there?”

“What about his personal life? There had to be women before Julia.”

“Obviously,” said Marlon, tight-lipped now, fully engaged, and Bruce knew he was near the heart of whatever was being defended.

“He met Julia when he was—what?—thirty? How long did you know him before that?”

“Probably five years. Six.”

“Did he have a lot of women?”

Back at the keyboard. No doubt currency was fluctuating somewhere. Marlon Thackery, eyes glued to the screen, spoke out of the side of his mouth. “That isn’t really your business.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to tell me?”

“Yes. It means I’m not going to tell you.”

Had the investigation been official, or Marlon Thackery less prominent, Bruce might have tried browbeating. But facts were facts. He glanced at the rolling water and selected a more delicate course. “You said Lemaster settled down after Julia. You said he used to wander—”

The chair swiveled back. “He doesn’t wander any more. He would never cheat on his wife. Not the Lemaster I know. Please don’t suggest such a thing. Frankly, such a statement is defamatory. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s actionable. You’re not official. You can’t use that defense.”

“I’m not making any such statement. What intrigues me is that you’re so quick to deny it. I ask you about how he met his wife, and you tell me he’s done with wandering. You tell me Julia is his rock.” Bruce turned to a fresh page of his notebook, but only for effect. “I think you’re suggesting that his social life before Julia was more…complex. Is that fair?”

A pause. “Complex. Yes.”

“For all those five or six years you knew him before they met?”

A longer pause. “I suppose.”

“Do you know who he dated in college?”

“Is this really related to what happened to Kellen Zant?” The sleepy eyes briefly flashed fire. “Or is this some private vendetta of yours?”

“Humor me,” said Bruce again, controlling himself with an effort, and Grace’s whispered encouragement. “I know it seems distant.”

“It’s not just distant, it’s in another galaxy.”

“What about in Washington? His year and a half at the White House?”

“What about it?”

“His family stayed here. Do you know why?”

“I imagine they didn’t want to disrupt the children’s education. What kind of a question is that? You have to be careful, Bruce. Very careful.” Something pinged, and he turned to the computer again. “You do realize I’m going to tell Lemaster about this conversation,” he said, out of the side of his mouth. “I just want that to be clear.”

“Of course,” said Bruce, who had expected nothing less. Probably he was trying to rile his president a bit, before their inevitable interview. But Thackery was right. He no longer had any official standing, and had to tread lightly. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything else.”

“Good. Because I wouldn’t.” Another longish wait, after which Marlon Thackery answered a different question. “I didn’t know him then, but I understand he was seeing a young woman from the Catholic university. This was long before Julia, of course.” The humorless eyes came back up. “This conversation is making me uneasy, Bruce. Why are you so interested in what Lemaster did in college? Or with whom? First Kellen Zant, now you.”

“Are you saying Professor Zant asked you about—”

“Listen to me, Bruce. We’ve talked about you, Lemaster and I. He’s not really sure what you’re up to. I’m not really sure what you’re up to. And I have a feeling you’re not really sure what you’re up to. But I’ll tell you one thing. Lemaster Carlyle is not a man to cross. And do you know what? Julia Carlyle is not a woman to cross. They protect each other, Bruce. Fiercely. They protect their family. Fiercely.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“I analyze numbers for a living and make predictions. So let’s take a look.” Hunching over the pristine desk. The computer bleeped, but he ignored it. “Lemaster’s cousin causes trouble, and she’s gone. Cameron Knowland causes trouble, and, just between you, me, and the wall, he’s in trouble with the White House and maybe even planning to step down as Senior Trustee. Anthony Tice causes trouble, and I understand the Bar is investigating his conduct in a couple of cases. I’m just warning you. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Bruce stood up. And Kellen Zant caused trouble, too, he shouted, but not quite aloud.

(II)

B
ACK AT HIS OFFICE
, Bruce watched the blowing snow and tried to get the numbers straight in his head. The hope that the name “Gina Joule” might have dropped from Marlon Thackery’s lips had been in any case something of a long shot. Yet the visit had not been wasted. The money manager had warned him that Lemaster might sue, and had hinted that he could lose his job. And Marlon was the second person, maybe the third, to warn him about what happened to people who crossed Lemaster Carlyle. Yet none of this suggested violence, just the ruthless use of connections, of influence, of whatever tools happened to be at hand. The line between getting the Bar Association to investigate a lawyer who would not stop harassing your wife and hiring a killer to take care of her ex-lover was as bright as a line could be. Nobody stepped over it by accident.

He put his notebook aside and delved into his messages. One of his officers had broken his wrist playing basketball, and looked to be unavailable for tomorrow night, when he always sent three to the campus rink for the hockey games. He would have to get somebody else. Crowd control was important inside the rink, and traffic control was important outside. On hockey nights, the city wisely banned parking all along Town Street, and—

Wait a minute.

He pulled the notebook back, paged to the front.

Nathaniel Knowland’s statement:
We were out on Town Street, I’d say, ah, eight-fifteen, eight-thirty, something like that. We were out on the street, trying to decide what to do next, and that was when we saw the car. The gold Audi, the one Zant got killed in, parked right on the street.

Not possible. The Audi could not have been parked on Town Street, not after the game started at seven-thirty. Not with an officer patrolling the street all night and a tow truck on five-minute call.

Nathaniel Knowland had lied through his teeth.

Wherever he had seen Kellen Zant—if indeed the young man had seen the professor at all—it was not out on Town Street climbing into the Audi.

Trevor Land, having been dressed down by Nate’s daddy, had warned Bruce to stay away from the witness henceforth, but Bruce had never taken terribly well to warnings. He reached for the phone, but Nate Knowland’s answering machine said that the spoiled little rich boy had already left for the holiday.