The Night Villa (6 page)

I send off the e-mail and then check my in-box, which turns out to be a mistake. I’ve got hundreds of messages—from students, colleagues, and administrators. I scroll through the lot of them, checking to see if any look urgent. I decide that none of them do. Perhaps my definition of urgent has changed since Dale Henry burst into the dean’s conference room and killed two of my colleagues. With a pang I notice that a number of the messages concern the memorial service for Odette, which I’ve missed, and a scholarship being started in her name. I check “keep as new” next to those and delete the rest.

I’m just signing off when an Instant Message box opens on the screen displaying an icon of Brad Pitt as Achilles next to a speech bubble that reads: Salve! from LatinLover66. It takes me a minute to remember that this is Agnes’s screen name. Before I can reply she adds another line: “Please say you’re coming to Italy!” and adds a smiley face emoticon. I can almost hear her breathless inflection.

I type a reply, telling her that I’m still making up my mind, but as usual I’m slow for the pace of instant messaging and before I can finish Agnes has added three more lines of persuasion. “I feel a little nervous being the only girl there,” she writes, and then adds, “Isn’t it cool the Villa della Notte turns out to be where Petronia Iusta lived!” and then, “Which reminds me, I still have those Phineas Aulus books you lent me. I can drop them off anytime…”

I look up on my shelf and realize she’s right. I’d lent her my three volumes of
Athenian Nights
two months ago when she started researching her project on mystery rites. I really ought to reread them before going to Italy…if I’m going.

I start a reply, but another line from Agnes pops up. “I mean, I’m really just hanging around until it’s time to go.”

Poor Agnes, I think, she sounds so forlorn. It must have been hard for her to come back to campus after the shooting. In fact, I’m surprised she’s done it at all. I would have thought she’d stay in Sweetwater until it was time to leave for Italy. I wonder if she came back to prove to herself she could.

Suddenly I feel like a coward, hiding in my house two miles away from campus while little Agnes Hancock from Sweetwater, who watched her ex-boyfriend shoot himself, braves the campus. I click on the reply box and write: “I was just going out for a walk. I’ll drop by to pick them up.” And then, before I can change my mind, I grab my keys and go.

I
know where Agnes lives because I’ve seen her get off the shuttle and walk up her front walk many times. It’s a large old yellow Victorian that, if the number of bicycles sprawled on the front lawn is any indication, houses about a dozen students. A young man with sun-streaked blond hair greets me at the door wearing skimpy cutoff shorts and no shirt. He eyes me warily when I ask for Agnes.

“Are you one of her professors?”

“Yes, I’m Dr. Chase.”

“Do you have ID?”

“Sam Tyler!” Agnes’s voice calls from upstairs. “Would you please lighten up on the security detail?” Agnes appears on the stairs wearing UT sweats and a voluminous sweatshirt that dwarf her tiny frame. UT’s burnt orange isn’t a flattering color for anyone, but Agnes could have pulled it off a month ago. Now it accentuates her pallor and the dark rings under her eyes. Her once glossy blond hair is done up in two lank braids, one of which she’s nervously snaking around her fingers.

“Yeah, well, I’ll be down here in the living room.” Sam squints at me as if memorizing my face for later identification in a lineup and then retreats to a large messy room just off the foyer and sprawls on a couch. Although he picks up a remote and turns on the TV, his eyes stay glued to us until we turn to head up the stairs.

Agnes rolls her eyes at me. “You’d better come up to my room,” she says. “Or the boys will be hovering all over us.”

As I follow her upstairs I see what she means. On each floor of the four-story house doors open and scruffy heads peer out, accompanied by blasting rock music and the smell of gym socks, stale beer, and corn chips.

“Are you the only girl in the house?” I ask when we reach the top floor and I’ve caught my breath from the steep climb.

“Yeah, I know it’s weird. I was in a sorority up until the beginning of this year, but then I kind of fell out with some of the girls…well, you know how girls can be…”

I nod even though Agnes can’t see me. I can well imagine that Agnes’s looks might have attracted enmity from her sorority sisters.

“It was too late to get housing in the dorms, so Sam said I should move in here. I’ve known him since high school and he’s always been like a big brother to me.” Agnes opens the door and waves me into a small room. Every inch of the walls is covered with photos of young people—in prom dresses and tuxes, or bathing suits and floppy hats under beach umbrellas, or huddled together in front of historic monuments. “The guys have all been really great,” Agnes says, sitting down on her bed, which is covered with a Little Mermaid quilt. “Especially Sam. When I moved in he had put up all these pictures.”

“It’s sweet,” I say, taking the desk chair. The only other chair in the room is a bean bag that looks as if it might swallow me whole. “You need friends in times like these.” I wince at the triteness of the sentiment, but Agnes is nodding eagerly as though I’ve said something terribly original. “It’s made the biggest difference. I don’t know if I could have come back otherwise. I was so afraid that everyone would blame me for what happened. My friends all warned me not to get involved with Dale from the beginning.”

When she talks about her friends, her eyes rove over the pictures on the walls and I find myself doing the same. I recognize Sam in a number of them—often with his arm around Agnes, the two of them mugging for the camera—but there’s not a single one with Dale Henry. Then I notice that Agnes’s hair is shorter in the pictures—chin-length in some, or just grazing her shoulders—and that she’s about fifteen pounds heavier. Not fat, certainly, but she has the plumpness of a freshman who’s indulged in a few too many late-night pizzas and starchy cafeteria fare. When I look closer I notice that a banner behind one of the huddled groups reads “Sophomore Spring Fling.” These pictures are all several years old. Like the Little Mermaid quilt, they seem like relics from a happier, more innocent past.

“When did you meet Dale?” I ask.

“At the beginning of this year,” she says. “At first it was really nice to meet someone outside my group, you know? By senior year it’s like you’ve met every boy on campus and he’s, like, already dated half your sorority sisters. Dale was older and he thought it was really cool that I’m a classics major. Most of my friends thought it was pretty lame when I declared…oh, no offense!”

“No offense taken. It’s not the most practical major. What are most of your friends majoring in?”

“Business, communications…Sam’s in poli sci. Dale was a philosophy major until he dropped out this spring. He seemed, well, I know this sounds so weird after what he did, but he seemed so sweet when I met him…just kind of lost…” Agnes takes a deep shuddery breath and flutters her fingers in front of her face. I pluck a box of Kleenex off the desk and sit down next to her on the bed. “I’m sorry,” she says after blowing her nose. “I bet you don’t want to hear that the man who shot you and killed poor Mrs. Renfrew and Professor Biddle seemed sweet.”

“I haven’t always been the best judge of people myself.” I look around the room again at all the young faces—all healthy and glowing with days spent in the sun. What possible preparation had Agnes Hancock from Sweetwater, Texas, had for assessing someone like Dale Henry? “You said he seemed lost?”

“Yeah. His father was in the military and so his family moved around a lot. He wasn’t used to having friends. At first he seemed to like that I did, but then he started finding fault with most of them. I mean, some of my friends might seem a little silly, especially the girls from my old sorority, and he thought all the business majors were too materialistic, which they kind of are…I mean, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, and since my father’s a minister I was taught to give to charity and to help people who are less fortunate. Most of my friends think I’m really old-fashioned, but Dale thought it was quite admirable. I think he liked that I had a religious background. At least at first.”

“Did something change?”

“Around Christmas he got kind of depressed. I invited him to come home with me, but he said he was afraid my parents wouldn’t approve of him, which, to tell you the truth, was probably right. But I should have made him come. When I got back something was different. Maybe it was being by himself during the break. He wasn’t sleeping much and he’d gone on this weird diet, all raw foods or something, and he’d gotten real skinny. He was staying up all night reading philosophy books, for the GREs I thought, but when I looked at the books I saw that something was wrong.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, my skin prickling.

“He should have been reading a wide range of materials, but he’d gotten stuck on the pre-Socratics. And half the books were some New Age stuff he’d picked up at Book People…like crystal healing and astral projection. He kept telling me that my
aura
was the wrong color and I had to stop eating meat. He thought he knew things about people because of what color their aura was—like Professor Lawrence only cared about worldly success and that Sam was really in love with me, which was just so silly because Sam’s been like my brother since we were kids.” Agnes laughs and for a second she looks like the girl in the pictures, but then a shadow falls over her. “We went away together spring break because I thought it would make things better, but it didn’t…”

She stops, her chin wobbling, and I guess that whatever happened during spring break is not something she wants to talk about. “And then you moved in here?” I prompt.

“Yes, but now I wonder if I had just tried harder to understand what Dale was going through…”

“Your friends were right, Agnes. Dale needed professional help.”

“I
did
talk him into seeing a counselor at the clinic, but now they’re saying that the pills they gave him just made him worse.”

“You couldn’t have known that.” I squeeze her hand and get up from the bed and go over to the bookshelf above her desk, scanning the titles.

“Gosh, I’m sorry, Professor Chase. Here I am going on about my problems while you came all this way for your books. Here they are—” She hands me the first two volumes of
Athenian Nights.
“Isn’t it just so exciting that Professor Lawrence has found a new book by Phineas Aulus!”

I smile, and am about to point out that Elgin didn’t exactly
find
the new book, but then, looking down at the books in my hand I notice something.

“Is something wrong?” Agnes asks.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I begin, but when she keeps staring at me I reply, “It’s just that I thought I gave you all three volumes.”

“Oh.” Agnes colors deeply, staring at the books in my hand as if she could turn them into three with the force of her mind. “Did you? Gosh, I don’t remember. These were the only ones here when I got back and I’m pretty sure I didn’t take any Latin books home with me.” She starts rooting through her shelves and I’m sorry I said anything. Poor Agnes, if she’s this guilty over a lost book, how’s she ever going to get over her ex-boyfriend killing two people?

“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s easily replaceable. I know where I can pick up a secondhand copy cheap.”

“Really?” Agnes asks, her face relaxing. “Are you sure? I feel just horrible. Please let me pay for it.”

“If you insist,” I say, already planning to halve the price for her. I put my arm around her shoulder, only meaning to give her a reassuring pat, but she surprises me by leaning in for a full hug, her arms wrapping around me so tightly that I’m afraid she’s going to pull loose my stitches. I squeeze back. I only wish I could replace everything we’ve lost so easily.

Agnes sees me down the stairs, walking so close to me that her shoulder brushes against mine. She’s found some comfort in my presence and would, I think, follow me out the front door and back to my house except that Sam is waiting in the foyer to take my place.

“Chamomile,” he says, handing her a steaming mug. I notice that another mug is sitting on the coffee table in the living room next to a stack of books. Sam’s obviously been camped out here, waiting for Agnes.

“That’s so sweet, Sam, thank you. Hey, do you know if anyone went in my room while I was away? There’s a book missing that Dr. Chase needs.”

“I made sure your door was locked at all times,” Sam says, giving me a suspicious look. “I did go in a few days ago to air it out, but I didn’t take any books.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Agnes says, turning to me. “I’m sorry, Dr. Chase, I can’t imagine what happened to it.”

Sam glares at me and I realize he’s angry that I’ve bothered Agnes about something as trivial as a lost book. He looks as if he might leap on me if I so much as say an unkind word to Agnes. “That’s really all right. As I told you, I won’t have any trouble replacing it.”

Agnes gives me a parting smile but Sam’s face is immobile. About halfway down the block, though, I hear the slap of bare feet on pavement and turn to find Sam jogging to catch up with me.

“I need to have a word with you,” he says, not in the least out of breath even though he must have sprinted to catch up with me.

“Sure, Sam, but please let me start by saying that I really didn’t come over to bother Agnes about that book—”

“It’s about the book,” Sam says. “I didn’t want to go over it in front of Agnes. You see, she was working in the living room the day before her interview, practicing her presentation in front of me and a couple of the guys, and when she went to the campus the next morning she left her books downstairs. Right after she left, Dale Henry came to the house. He stormed in, shouting for Agnes, and when he saw her stuff in the living room he started ransacking through it. Of course, I grabbed him and threw him out—”

“You
physically
ejected him from the house?”

Sam nods grimly. Most young men Sam’s age would be gloating, but Sam pales under his tan.

“You realize how lucky you are that he didn’t shoot you?”

“Yeah, that’s why I didn’t tell Agnes about it. I called her that morning to warn her that he came to the house, but I never told her that he forced his way in. Anyway, I remember he had a book in his hands when I threw him out. It fell to the ground when he stumbled on the front lawn and he scooped it up right away. I didn’t think anything of it at the time because he was always coming over with a book in his hands to show Agnes something very important, like a fucking Jehovah’s Witness or something. But now—”

“You think it might have been one of Agnes’s books. Do you remember what color it was?”

“It was red, just like all those Latin books Agnes has. Was that the book you were looking for?”

“It could have been,” I say, thinking that there are plenty of red books in the world. “But I can’t imagine what Dale Henry would have wanted with a Roman religion historian of the first century AD.”

Sam shakes his head, which makes his hair fall over his eyes. He pushes it away angrily. “I’ve stopped trying to figure out what that sick fuck wanted with anything. I mean, ‘That way madness lies,’ right?”

I nod, surprised that Sam has a Shakespeare quote ready at hand. “I understand. And if you brought it up in front of Agnes—”

“She’d start thinking about how easy it would have been for Dale Henry to blow the whole house away…”