The Puzzled Heart (14 page)

Kate pondered this for a while. “What I don’t get,” she said finally, “is how you arrive at this idea of the culprit as friendless and frustrated professionally?”

“I told you: personal experience. Kate, throughout my old life, from the time my parents lost interest in me because they’d by then had the boy who really mattered, I was looking for a friend. I guess I was too earnest, or, what is probably nearer the truth, I had too funny an idea of friendship, probably modeled on stories of boys’ companionships and adventures, and not realistic about them either. I remember at camp asking a girl to be my friend, and she said, ‘We’re all friends.’ But we weren’t. I wanted a special friend. Then, when I got married young, I thought: well, my husband is my friend. I kidded myself about that for quite a while. But husbands aren’t friends; they’re husbands, however friendly and supportive. It took the women’s movement to make that clear, I guess. Meanwhile, I saw classmates from school and college who were getting somewhere, or I thought they were. I never seemed really to get time to paint. I tried studying art history, but even that didn’t seem to satisfy; I wasn’t really a scholar. If I hadn’t left the
marriage, and begun serious painting, and found Jane, and if I’d looked at you—successful, lots of friends and colleagues, with tenure, a good marriage, and, well, what looks like a pretty fulfilled life—I might be damn sore. You see what I mean?”

“More or less. You are, of course, wildly exaggerating the total satisfactions of my life. From time to time it seems quite purposeless to me, and full of petty professional squabbles, duties, and arbitrary decisions on the part of tyrannical administrators and pompous, aging, male professors.”

“Of course it does. I’m asking you to look at yourself from the outside. I’m not saying that’s how I see you; I’m saying how I might have seen you if things had been different with me.”

“And the next step? I have to look in my past for a professional failure without friends? You don’t ask much.”

“Kate. Try being the detective you’re always making yourself out to be. Obviously it’s someone connected with what’s happened, though I haven’t an idea how she or he is connected. Whether it’s someone behind the scenes or one of the players, I don’t know. What I’m suggesting, dear friend, is that you start from the beginning, get over the mental stagnation caused by Reed’s being kidnapped, and use your head. Is that clear enough? I could draw it for you, I suppose—well, a diagram anyway. How about a drink?”

“Lovely,” Kate said, obviously deep in thought.

When Leslie returned with the drinks, she offered a toast to Kate and the new solution.

“Wasn’t I a friend?” Kate asked. “We’ve known each other for, what, fifteen years? You never thought of me as a friend?”

“Oh, Kate. You came along after the friendlessness and the artistic frustration were, if not over, at least being defeated. Maybe meeting you even helped me. Did you ever think of that?”

“It can’t be fifteen years.”

“Now she’s quibbling about years. Fifteen, fourteen, what’s the difference? And the best part is when you’ve made one friend, you make more.”

Kate twirled the glass around in her hand. “Do you really think,” she asked, “that someone could go that far in trying to shame me?”

“Yes, I do. Not most people. If this whole mess hadn’t happened, I’d never have thought of it; it’s not the most likely thing in the world. But since it has happened, I’m just suggesting a possible explanation, at least as probable as the right wing or a demented professor whirling around on his or her own.”

“I’ll take it under serious consideration,” Kate said. “Here’s to professional jealousy as a solution.”

“Give it a try,” was all Leslie said, before they began to speak of other things.

Once home, Kate turned her mind to her past, trying to remember friendships from kindergarten on. It
was amazing and a little troubling to discover how many people she had forgotten. School, camp, summer communities, travels, college—the task was daunting. Even if she could recall someone in particular whom she had once befriended, who had slipped away and not been encountered for years—and she couldn’t—where would that get her? To trace every girlhood or student companion would be the job of months, perhaps years. Kate was not at all certain that Leslie was right in her surmise, but it certainly was worth thinking about. None of the other suppositions had yielded any helpful leads.

After a time she sought out Reed and told him Leslie’s interpretation of the plot. Rather to her surprise, and a bit to her disappointment, he did not dismiss it out of hand.

“I’ve been beginning to question our ideas myself,” he said. “The more I think about it, the less likely it seems to me that a professor would be involved, even some of the troglodyte types you’ve got in your department. Students, yes. This is exactly the kind of caper they could find themselves in. It resembles all the beastly games that fraternities seem to find so rewarding, in spirit if not in detail. The question is, as we have already seen, who got the students started, who arranged it all? Let’s say the boys, given the ideas about pictures of sexual activities, recruited the girls. Who suggested that scheme to the boys? It’s not that they couldn’t have thought of it; of course they could
have, but for some reason I’m fairly sure they didn’t. Why am I sure? Because it wasn’t me they were after; it was you. College boys might have dreamed up the scheme as a way to get back at some male they loathed, but the point of this scheme was to shame you. Ruining my life was a case of collateral damage whoever was behind this probably never even considered.”

“Fine,” Kate said. “I’m with you. But where are you? We seem better at eliminating people than at identifying the culprits.”

“If we assume it’s a woman, and if we accept Leslie’s explanation for her rage at you, then we might begin by assuming she’s more or less your age.”

“No kidding,” Kate said, with more emotion than tact.

Reed ignored this. “Let’s begin by limiting ourselves to women you met in school, college, or graduate school.”

“Lovely. It should take me merely a year to compile such a list, let alone learn anything about where the women are now.”

“Just list the ones you remember, the ones you had some sort of close contact with.”

“Maybe I’ll write the story of my life while I’m at it.”

“You’ll be right in style,” Reed said. “Memoirs are what everybody’s writing these days.”

Kate in her turn ignored this. “You do realize,” she said, “that we may never have met this woman—that
she may not have shown herself in the course of this investigation. That she could be not only firmly behind the scenes, but determined to stay there.”

“Quite possible,” Reed admitted. “But she had to be in touch with someone we did meet, someone who has shown herself or himself.”

“So we question all the girls, all the boys, all the people investigated by Harriet and Toni—Reed, we can’t start that all over again.”

“We can ask Toni and Harriet to start all over again. After all, that’s their profession, isn’t it? They’re certainly as eager to figure this out as we are.”

“True. I’ll get on to them then.” And she left Reed to his work.

The next day, therefore, she met with Toni and Harriet. She outlined Leslie’s idea, said that she and Reed had found it plausible, or at least as plausible as anything else that had been suggested, so what they had to discover was who had been the originator of the scheme. Everybody had to be questioned as to who had talked them into taking part, from the kid who ordered the car onward. Kate was prepared to pay for Toni and Harriet’s time for as long as it took.

“In short,” Toni said, “we start all over again from the beginning.”

“That’s about it. Except,” Kate pointed out, “I might at any moment get a clue, or become overpowered by
the right memory, or have a brainstorm. And I don’t intend to just sit by and cheer you two on. I think I’ll start by going to see Dorothy Hedge again.”

“Why do that?” Toni asked. “Do you think she might be the long-lost angry friend?”

“No, alas, I don’t,” Kate said. “But she is the sister of that goof who wrote the right-wing letter. Remember him? And besides, if you must know, I intend to tell her I’m coming, and ask her to borrow Banny from the woman who owns her. It can’t hurt to have a little visit with Banny, can it?”

“It’s not really advisable,” Harriet said. “Like dropping in to see a child you’ve given up for adoption. A clean break is best, don’t they think?”

“I’m not sure they do these days,” Kate said. “I think adoptive mothers often know the biological mother and keep in touch with her. Anyway, I’m not adopting Banny. I’m just dropping in for a visit.”

“Are you sure it’s fair to Banny?” Toni asked.

“No, I’m not sure. I just want to see her again. It will probably turn out that she doesn’t remember me at all, which will be crushing to me but not to her.”

“Don’t you think Reed or I should go with you?” Harriet said.

“Of course not. Reed may want to, in fact, but you two had better get going on the investigation. I’ve got classes and meetings all day tomorrow, but I think I can manage the next day. I’ll ask Reed, if that makes you feel any better.”

And having arranged certain financial details, and left a check to cover anticipated costs and payments, Kate left their office.

Ten

T
wo afternoons later Kate and Reed prepared to set out on their visit to Dorothy Hedge and Banny. Reed, like Harriet, had not altogether approved of the proposed visit to the puppy that was not theirs and which they ought, sensibly, to forget or to accept as an eccentric and unrecoverable event of the past. In the end, however, he had decided to accompany Kate—whether to provide her with emotional support at this canine crisis or to get another glimpse of Banny was not clear to Kate or to himself.

Kate had not again that day referred to Leslie’s theories about an old friend of Kate’s turned enemy, but she had worried Reed slightly by quoting Auden’s lines, “Each life an amateur sleuth / Asking
who
did it?
” Whenever Kate quoted Auden, Reed grew concerned.

They had called Dorothy Hedge the night before, and she had agreed to ask Marjorie about borrowing the dog. She too had issued a word of warning; indeed, she had tried to discourage the visit but had acquiesced upon their insisting that she at least leave the decision up to Marjorie. Late that night, Dorothy had called back saying that Banny and she were prepared to welcome them the next day.

Kate and Reed were almost out of the apartment when the telephone rang. After a moment’s hesitation, Kate ran back to answer it. Harriet’s voice was closer to frenzy than Kate had ever heard it.

“It’s Toni.” Harriet seemed almost to be gasping. “Someone tried to kill her.”

“Where are you?” Kate asked.

“At the hospital. I found her in the office, lying on the floor. I thought she was dead, except that she was still bleeding. Dead men don’t bleed—didn’t someone once say that? I don’t even know if it’s true.”

“Harriet,” Kate said. “Tell me exactly where you are. We’ll come.”

“Roosevelt Hospital; the emergency room. It’s—I think it’s on Ninth Avenue.”

“I know where it is. We’ll be there, Reed and I. It won’t be long.”

Kate hung up. “Someone tried to kill Toni. Harriet’s at the hospital. I said we would come.”

“Is she going to be all right?”

“Oh lord, I didn’t ask. Harriet said she was still bleeding when she found her. In their office.”

The hospital was not far away. A taxi delivered them to the emergency entrance with commendable, if dangerous speed; Reed had said something to the driver. Kate dashed from the taxi, leaving him to pay, which seemed to be only a matter of thrusting some bills at the driver. Just like the movies, Kate thought, wondering if she was losing her mind to think that at such a moment. They found Harriet hovering amid a crowd of waiting people.

“Thank God you’ve come. They’ve taken her off to test her brain. I called the police, and that may have got her faster attention here; maybe the ambulance came faster. I don’t know. Someone hit her all over the back of her head. She may die. The doctors weren’t all that hopeful.”