I lifted my chin and studied the side of Bart’s face, his botchy skin, the acne pockmarks. He seemed unwilling to look at me. Perhaps he was ashamed. What was the nature of his “friendship” with Moira? At the reception, Moira had told me that what Miss M had done to her family far outweighed what Halo had done to Miss M. So, what had she done?
As the questions whirled through my head, I knew that I needed answers. “I’m not hungry,” I said and stood.
Bart didn’t respond. Edith kept chopping.
During my mad dash to the roof to stop Halo, I’d wedged Charlene’s journal behind the bathtub before climbing out the window. It was time to read it.
* * *
PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 24, 1948
The past few days have floated by at a distance. Sophie’s funeral and her graveside service at Harper Cemetery were tasteful, a credit to Dad’s and Sarah Yolland’s quick planning, but they seemed to have little to do with Sophie. But no ceremony or speech or song would’ve been good enough. I am too shattered. When Quincy first told me that she had collapsed and tumbled down a flight of stairs, I flopped into his arms. It was a physical reaction—a sudden contortion of my internal organs, my breaking point.
I’ve regained my cool now. Well, mostly. The grief still comes in waves, but the thickest gloom has lifted. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and out-of-town family are congregating for a big meal. This evening, though, the house was quiet.
After an early dinner, I found Quincy building a fire in the living room. For a while, we sat on Sophie’s creaky antique sofa and watched the flames crackle as dusk fell. In the semidark of the room, Quincy’s face appeared dim and closed off in the firelight, but no less handsome. He held a tumbler, which every few minutes, he would agitate and drink.
“May I have some of that?” I said.
He looked at me incredulously and smiled. “Okay,” he said, “but it’s whiskey. You’re not going to like it.”
When I sipped it, I winced, but it was better than Judy’s nasty gin. It warmed my throat and chest and eased the tension in my neck.
“Did you know Mom wanted me to have children?” he said. “Lots of them. She wanted grandchildren to spoil.”
There was a heavy pause while I studied the shadows playing across my aunt’s antique bric-a-brac. I didn’t want to talk about her. I didn’t want to fall apart again.
“I’d like to be a father, you know,” he added. “I’m suited for it.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?” I said.
He smirked.
“Hmm,” I said. “I hope she’s a nice girl, someone I’ll get along with.” When I was little, I thought I’d be jealous of Quincy’s first serious sweetheart. Other than Dad, he’s the most important man in my life, and in every way, he’s the sort of man I should marry. But I have no desire to marry or have children or bake cakes or whatever wives and mothers are supposed to do. I want to be a teacher like Miss Martins, or maybe a writer like Ray Kane. And I don’t want to spend time with anyone other than Judy. Through this entire ordeal, she has fluttered in my periphery. I wonder what she’s doing. Is she thinking of me?
He raised his eyebrows. “Do I need your approval?”
“Of course!” I said and held my hand out for his whiskey. He gave it to me, and I took an aggressive swallow.
“Easy does it,” he said, laughing.
The burn hit my stomach and spread through me. I let it sink in, my eyes tearing. Then I asked, “Have you heard anything?” I relinquished the glass.
“You mean about Closs?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I have. Case closed. Well, nearly closed.”
“Really?”
“When they broke the news of his death to his wife, she fell apart, and when they told her they suspected him of the murders, she had quite a story to tell.”
I didn’t want to pressure him for the details, so I focused on the fire and watched the heat swell in the glowing logs and the smoke drift up the flue.
“Don’t you wanna know?” he said, giving me a sarcastic side-glance.
“You know I do.”
He studied me a moment. “Can I trust you not to blab this to Judy?”
“Yes,” I said, knowing it was a lie. “I promise.”
He smiled faintly and sipped his whiskey. “Okay. So, Closs’s wife tells Kipps that the mister was a maniac, that he’d force himself on her and other women all the time. She tells him that, when she finally confronted him about it, he attempted to poison her milk with an overdose of Veronal—her sleeping aid, if you remember. But that night, she broke her pattern; she had an upset stomach and didn’t drink her milk. But her son did—two glasses! Closs came home late and was surprised to find his wife still alive and his son dead. He threatened her and demanded that she help him wrap up the body and carry it to his car. She doesn’t know why Cleve was shirtless, or why Closs dumped him in the river, or why he had writing on him.”
“Wow,” I said. “But I thought Cleve drowned—and didn’t he have traces of Bon Ami in his lungs?”
“Yes, and yes. Kipps and Paulson aren’t sure what happened, but they think the Closses took him for dead when he was just unconscious—it’s happened before—and he drowned in the river after Closs dumped him.” I thought of Cleve sinking below the waves, eyes shooting open, gasping for air but only getting the Anacostia. “But it could’ve been that Closs needed to finish the deed and drowned him at home before dumping him. You didn’t hear either theory from me.”
“And the Bon Ami?”
He shrugged. “Police work is like drawing a constellation. You have a few guiding stars like you do clues, but you have to use your imagination to make Orion look like Orion or Ares like Ares.”
“What about Miss Martins?”
“They think he killed her to silence her. After all, based on what you witnessed, she was most likely his last ‘conquest.’ ”
“And Jackie Peabody?”
“They’re less sure about that, but the nature of the crime, that she was violated, points to him as a strong possibility. Also, as you know, all three crimes are linked by that word, whatever it means.”
I slumped back on the sofa, returning to my doubts about Halo, to the puzzled look on his face before Judy sent him four stories to his death. “Why would Halo scrawl AHKA over Miss Martins’s body? Why would he strangle her with his own tie, a tie he wasn’t even wearing, and leave it behind? He was undermining his scapegoat and implicating himself.”
“Maybe he was a lunatic and more committed to his MO than protecting his alibi. Psychotics often become more reckless as the victims stack up.”
“Why not kill Elaine, then?”
“That would’ve pointed all the suspicion right at him. He wasn’t that insane.”
“I guess.” Had I misread Halo’s expression before his plunge? Had I been so shocked by what he said that I’d convinced myself he wasn’t a villain?
A log shifted in the fireplace, followed by a burst of sparks. Quincy rose, picked up the iron tongs, adjusted the charred wood, and stoked the flames. When he finished, he returned to the sofa and said, “I’m glad you and Uncle Carl are here. I’m glad I don’t have to go through all this alone.”
“I miss her so much,” I said and scooted close to him, resting my head on his shoulder, feeling tears welling up. I needed his reassuring warmth. Unlike Judy, whose physical presence stirred me, he soothed me.
“That reminds me,” he said, reaching inside the pocket of his suit. “She told me to give these to you.” In his hand was Sophie’s worn deck of tarot cards. “She said you’ll need them.”
I took them gingerly, aware of their power, shuddering at the Devil card inside, the vampire, the depraved child. Once again, I remembered Sophie’s warning about Judy: “All around her, there’s a backdrop of shadows.”
* * *
PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 28,
1948
Quincy is staying in Harpers Ferry another week. He’s preparing the house to go on the market, which is breaking my heart all over again. It’s really the only place I’ve called home. I hope he’ll change his mind—or at least delay the process.
This afternoon we piled into the car and headed back to DC. Just outside the city, Dad caught my eyes in the rearview mirror and, in a tentative tone, said, “This has been an extraordinary week, Philippa, a when-it-rains-it-pours stretch. So, I hate to ask this of you now, but you need to end your friendship with Judy.”
Although I knew it was coming, it still felt as brutal as a backhanded slap.
Bonnie chimed in, her voice fluttery, “Mr. Peabody rang us before we left. They’re taking Judy on a whirlwind trip to the Caribbean for several weeks. Can you imagine? After Christmas, she’ll be going to boarding school at Agnes March.” As Bonnie droned on, I didn’t cry. I couldn’t feel anything but deep vibrating anger, as if my spine had been struck with a tuning fork. I glared at Dad in the rearview, and he patted Bonnie’s knee, his universal signal for “Thank you, dear, but that’s enough.” I hunkered down and pretended to sleep.
As soon as we arrived, I went to my room and flopped. After a few minutes, there was a knock at my door. Dad entered holding a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. He smiled, but I couldn’t bring myself to return the gesture. “This came for you.” I snatched the package from him and closed the door.
It had no return address. I tore at it and threw the paper aside. It was Love’s Last Move. So strange. Was it some sort of parting gift? I flipped it open. Inside the cover, written very neatly in Miss Martins’s delicate hand, was a note:
To Philippa, so that’ll you’ll remember me, as a friend, as a mentor, as a mother of sorts.
I wish I had said goodbye properly, but I wouldn’t have been able to find the words.
Promise me, you’ll always stay close to Judy.
Love, C
Then below it, a quotation:
From her own mouth no way of speaking’s found.
But all our wants by wit may be supply’d,
And art makes up, what fortune has deny’d.
—Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book VI
PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 29, 1948
I’ve kept my secret from Judy to protect her, but now, I might spill it. To be honest, it wasn’t just to spare her, although I’m sure that learning you dropped your father four stories won’t come as welcome news. No, I’ve clung to it to create a level playing field. I want to know why she draws me close one moment and pushes me away the next. I want to know who we are to one another. Friends? Or something more? I’ve been telling myself: If she shows me her heart, I’ll show her the truth. But now, we have more to worry about. Moira and our parents want to rip us apart, to destroy our friendship, our love for one another. I want to tell her my secret, so it will become our secret, and it will fortify us against them.
But I had trouble finding her. No one answered the Peabodys’ front door, and she wasn’t in school. It was too soon for Bart and Edith to have shipped her off. God, she’ll hate the beach with all its preening sunbathers, tacky palm trees, and the blistering sun! We’re alike that way. We see no romance in paradise; we like back alleys and blustery skies.
Mrs. Blandish didn’t even call her name in English. I overheard Ramona Carmichael whispering to Jake Wallace behind me: “I hear Judy Peapod is going to reform school. I can’t say I’m surprised. Good riddance, if you ask me.” I swung around to set her straight, but before I could, she winced, clearly frightened of me, which shocked me. I’m a bad girl now, it seems. I’ve come a long way since my San Fran days. Anyway, I glared at her, aware of my power, and aimed as much enmity toward her as I could muster. The MBBS queen blinked, and the blood drained from her face. It felt good.
I slipped Love’s Last Move out of my bag and covertly opened it on my lap. I scanned the Ovid quotation again. At first, I’d assumed it meant that Miss Martins struggled to find a way to say goodbye, that the words just wouldn’t come, that from her “mouth no way of speaking’s found,” but if that’s the case, then what did the last two lines mean: “But all our wants by wit may be supply’d, and art makes up, what fortune has deny’d”?
I closed it and gazed at the dramatic green lettering of the title and of Kane’s name, at the curl of smoke from the revolver’s muzzle, and at the scatter of rose petals evocative of spilled blood. I remembered Miss Martins saying, “Would you like to borrow it? It has a wonderful twist.”
And it struck me: Perhaps it’s all a clue—the book, the inscription, the quotation. She’s trying to tell me something without outright saying it. She was testing me. If I read the Ovid line with a different emphasis, it made more sense: “From her own mouth no way of speaking’s found.” If not her mouth, then perhaps another’s?
I needed to go to the library, and then I had to find Judy.
JUDY, NOVEMBER 29, 1948
I see the appeal of tarot readings, tea leaf divinations, and even astrology. They’re about reading an interpretation into a preexisting pattern, like a puzzle with more than one solution, but at least the clues are limited, manageable. So, what about my shitty life? It’s a scatter of infinite fragments, spread across my memory like too many tea leaves or the vast Milky Way. It’s evidence of something, sure, but what? What story does it tell?
Then, the day comes when you begin to see a pattern, even if it’s a few trembling stars that suggest a shape in the night sky, and you get so excited, so delirious, that you don’t stop to think that, instead of clarity, the future may hold only greater confusion. You don’t stop to consider that one open door might lead to an entire passageway of closed doors with big question marks scrawled across them. You have no idea how to feel, and how to place yourself in the world. In this new state, you don’t know what your next move will be. It might be something that terrifies you.
Today was that day for me.
PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 29, 1948
At the 14th Street crosswalk, a voice called out, “Philippa!” I whipped around. Judy was rushing toward me. She wore a bulky black coat and had a dark felt tam pulled down over her ears. “Jesus,” she said, her breath visible in the chilly air. “You walk fast!”
“I almost gave up on you,” I said. “I thought you’d left town.”
“In a week,” she said and groaned. “We’ll be making a complete tour of the Caribbean: Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico. I’m calling it the Sunburn Tour. I’m sure I’ll peel a layer of skin off before I get home.”
“Sounds like a blast,” I said flatly.
“It should be a goddamn nightmare. Fuck B and E.”
Her profanity was the first thing I’d heard in the past few days that made me feel normal again. The traffic had halted, so I started up East Capitol, our familiar route. “Were you following me from school?”
“B and E think I’m downtown at Woody’s buying bathing suits.”
“I can’t imagine you in a bathing suit.”
“Can’t you?” She smiled and wiggled her eyebrows, her way of saying: “You’ve imagined me in far less, haven’t you?”
Anger shot through me: Days before she was going to vanish from my life, she was teasing me! I drew back, afraid of being suckered in again. I was sick of her toying with my feelings. But as I was about to tell her to go to hell, fear rippled through her face—not fear of me but of something else. Losing me, maybe? It was a chink in her smooth armor, a brief glimpse of her soft underbelly. It disarmed me. So, instead of lashing out, I listed toward her as if she’d just given the invisible string wrapped around my heart a firm tug. I wanted to touch her, kiss her. Being separated seemed unimaginable, cataclysmic, like surgically severing conjoined twins. I thought about my secret, about how it could bind us to one another, keep us whole, but I didn’t know how to tell her.
She seemed to notice my whiplashing emotions and, in a defeated tone, said, “I don’t know what I’m saying.” She hung her he
ad. “I wish you could go with me. We could coat our bodies in zinc oxide, hide under big umbrellas, and read Lady Chatterley’s Lover to one another. That would be almost tolerable.” A smile crept onto her lips, and she poked me. “Well, if you practiced your reading voice first.”
I murmured, “We’d have an outrageous time,” and my heart seesawed again. I didn’t want to fantasize about being together. It was too impossible, too painful. I commanded myself to move forward, to stamp out any base urges and, especially, sentimental impulses. I couldn’t live that lifestyle anyway. Be what? A lesbian? Live like a bohemian? No, I needed to be realistic—a fortress of self-possession! Perhaps I even needed to be ruthless, the bad girl Ramona Carmichael thought I was. My secret could be a weapon. It has the potential to bring us together, but if I sharpened it, if I delivered it with contempt, if I drove home that Judy had mercilessly murdered her own father, it could sheer us apart, cleanly. I would be safe.
I breathed in, the cold air biting my lungs, and prepared to unleash what I knew. “Judy…” I said and stumbled, unsure how to make the sharp edge of it land right. She bumped my shoulder. I shivered, and she grabbed my hand. Her warm dark eyes took me in, dazzling me for a moment. “I’ll miss you,” she said. “I need you. You know, underneath it all, we’re the same person.”
My first impulse was to pull away. She seemed to sense it and leaned toward me. In my ear, softly, she said, “I—I love you. I do.”
I jerked away. What was she doing? Why say something like that? What does it even mean? I darted across East Capitol to Lincoln Park. She followed me, snagging my coat sleeve and forcing me to stop. I spun on the sidewalk and stepped back, wedging space between us. I wanted her to explain herself. When you say something like that, when you put that out there, you better know what it means. The consequences are too great. Judy never likes to pin things down, and this time was no different. She just looked at me, openly, unguarded, inviting me in but with no direction. I needed her to be demonstrative, to illustrate “I love you,” to paint a picture of what that meant for us. Jesus, did she even know? Did I? The sun caught her face, and her skin brightened from an olive hue to a gold luster. Her eyes gleamed. Then, shockingly, she smiled. It was like having your pet suddenly speak to you. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t look away. She was beaming her heart at me. It was a swirling vortex of hope, fear, anger, and pain, and I was mesmerized. I wanted to step toward her, to touch her, to kiss her, but something deep in me—that creeping doubt—was latched to my leg like a bear trap. Would she leave me like Miss Martins, Sophie, or even my mother? What horrors were in store for me by loving her?
The Savage Kind Page 30
