Regrets Only

by Nancy Geary

  “This is it,” she said, pushing the door all the way open.

  Lucy stepped past. The small rectangular room had three windows all facing the back of the building. A bed with a mattress and a lumpy pillow, a walnut dresser, a desk, and a chair were the meager furnishings. A picture hook over the bureau showed where a mirror must have hung. The walls were bare. Propped in one corner were a broom and a dustpan.

  “She had all this great stuff—some cool paintings, tons of CDs and clothes. I’m surprised she made it out in a day.”

  The three of them stood quietly for a moment. Lucy walked to the middle window and looked out at the fire escape, an easy exit after curfew.

  “What time does the building get locked?”

  “Ten. Eleven on weekends.”

  “How often can someone leave campus?”

  “Juniors and seniors can leave after classes up to three weekends a semester. Most of us tend to stick around, though. It’s a hike unless you want to go into Baltimore, and that place gets old fast.”

  “You don’t happen to remember if Avery stayed at school last weekend, do you?”

  “Are you cops or something?” She wrinkled her nose as the thought dawned on her, and then giggled. “You don’t look like a cop, although I guess he kind of does.” She smiled at Jack. “Anyway, to answer your question, Avery went home.” She glanced at her watch. “I got to go. My English exam is in forty minutes and I still have thirty pages to read. Unless of course you know how The House of Mirth ends.” She smiled again, and flipped her ponytail as she turned to the door.

  While Jack searched the desk, Lucy opened the bureau drawers. Aside from a single Thorlo sock and a safety pin, they were empty. The closet was next. She reached for the knob and turned it, but the door was locked. Avery had left school. Why not leave everything open for the cleaning crew that would no doubt scour the dormitories over the summer break?

  “You haven’t got a pick set, have you?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

  Jack reached into his back pocket and produced a jackknife version.

  “The gadget guru,” Lucy remarked.

  Jack knelt before the lock, stared at the keyhole, and then selected the appropriate-size pick. She watched as he fiddled for a moment, applying pressure until the pins gave way. Then he pushed the door open. She gasped as she found herself staring at a makeshift shrine.

  Propped against the back wall in a thin frame was Foster’s self-portrait. The face was larger than she remembered and seemed to consume the space. Turned sideways, the sad, dark eyes cast a vacant stare. White pillar candles, each resting on a small glass dish, were arranged in a semicircle around a square card. In a familiar scroll was written:

  Your mother requests the pleasure of your company on Sunday, May 18th, at eleven o’clock at the Liberty Bell. Regrets only.

  The very same invitation Archer had received.

  Avery was supposed to meet her father on Saturday night and then her half-brother on Sunday. Neither family gathering had taken place. It made sense that she’d wanted to leave her mementos behind. Forgetting all that had happened would be hard enough without visible reminders.

  Jack removed a small camera from his pocket and photographed the scene. Then Lucy put the invitation, candles, and dishes in plastic bags, which Jack labeled. Their work was mechanical. Neither had anything to say.

  When they had finished their tasks, Jack’s voice broke the silence. “Let’s find Ms. Tyler. I want to hear about Avery’s regrets.”

  Sunlight streamed through the huge arched windows into the main reading room. At long rectangular tables sat anxious students, frantically cramming whatever details of Spanish, chemistry, American history, or British literature they could in the final preexam hours. As a whole, the girls looked tired and unkempt. Most wore baggy sweat pants and T-shirts, and several had taken off their shoes and tucked their bare feet beneath them. Although a prominent sign on the door instructed, FOOD AND BEVERAGES PROHIBITED, bags of trail mix, candy wrappers, cans of Diet Coke, and bottles of Gatorade cluttered the tabletops.

  Lucy had entered the library alone to attract less attention. She’d been given a minimal description—slightly plump, black hair, good skin—but the building was bigger than she’d expected and she knew Jack would be impatient. Stopping at the front desk, she inquired of the head librarian, who barely looked up in response. “She should be sitting by one of the two emergency exits.”

  As Lucy scanned the rows, she had an eerie feeling of déjà vu. How vividly she remembered her late nights and long high school days of caffeine-fueled studies. The only difference between her and these girls was that, when she’d been distracted at the library or had needed to exercise her stiffening neck muscles, she’d glanced out the window at the trucks on Washington Street or above to the water stains on the perforated library ceiling. No rolling green fields, ivy-covered buildings, or crystal chandeliers provided distractions.

  A girl matching the description sat at the far left table. Sure enough, red neon illuminated the exit sign just over her head. The librarian’s description had been exact. The school must be exceptional—or perhaps simply too small—if the faculty knew the idiosyncrasies of each student’s study habits. Then again, the parents no doubt paid heavily for just that kind of attention.

  Slouched over the table, Margot was reading a well-worn copy of Great Expectations with her nose just inches from the spine. An opened composition book revealed her notes and a collection of doodles in the margins.

  Lucy leaned over and quietly introduced herself.

  Margot started but didn’t rise from her seat. A look of sheer terror instantly covered her heart-shaped face.

  “My partner and I just need a few minutes of your time. It won’t take long. I promise,” Lucy said.

  Reluctantly, the girl dog-eared the page of her text and pushed back from the desk. She stood and tried to pull down her midriff shirt to meet the top of her blue jeans. When that failed, she grabbed the belt loops on either hip and attempted to hoist her pants up. Despite her efforts, the rolls of her milky white belly remained exposed. Without looking around, she followed Lucy back through the swinging doors of the reading room and into the entrance hallway.

  To Lucy’s surprise, Jack had come inside. He was stooped over a glass display case, examining the handwritten letters of a prominent abolitionist. Looking up as the swinging door opened, he approached them.

  “What have I done?” Margot asked. They were in an area that permitted speech at a normal volume, but she still kept her voice low.

  “You haven’t done anything. We just need to ask you a few questions about your former roommate.”

  “Avery?”

  Lucy nodded. “Have you spoken to her since she withdrew from school?”

  Margot shook her head.

  “Do you know why she left?”

  “No.”

  “We understand you had some problems in your friendship. Is that why she moved into a single?”

  Margot bit her lip and appeared to fight back tears. “I’m sure I was part of the problem.”

  “Why is that?” Lucy asked gently.

  “When we got here, we did everything together, really hit it off. But as the fall went along I gained some weight, and she was pretty critical of me. You know, the ‘freshman ten,’ although in my case it was more like twenty and I wasn’t a freshman.” She wiped her nose. “I’m not sure why Avery was so bothered by it. Maybe she thought I reflected badly on her. She said it showed a lack of control. But getting fat isn’t contagious.”

  “But you lived together throughout the fall and for the month of January.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Her parents requested her transfer after her brother’s suicide, but it didn’t happen until the beginning of February. There just weren’t any rooms available. I suspect her parents paid somebody to get the one she was in.”

  “How did she seem to you after her brother died?”

  “Avery
and her brother were superclose. He called her all the time. It used to get on my nerves, to be truly honest, because we’d be planning to do something, listen to music, go riding, and then he’d call and she’d be on for hours. He always seemed to be having a problem. I guess he had a lot of them or . . . or . . . anyway, his death was really tough for her.”

  “Did she tell you anything about it?”

  “Not really. But she did say he’d written her a letter kind of telling her why. By the time it arrived, she’d already heard from her dad.”

  “Did you see the letter?”

  “No. She never showed it to me. She just cried a lot.”

  For a moment Lucy wondered why it, too, hadn’t been included in the makeshift shrine Avery had constructed in her closet. Perhaps his parting words had been too important to leave behind. “Before her brother’s death, did Avery have any particular emotional problems that you noticed—moodiness or depression or anything like that?”

  Margot thought for a minute. “This is hard for me, you know, because Avery and I had been really good friends. So I kind of feel like I’m telling on her. I’m just not sure what she wouldn’t want repeated.”

  “This could be extremely important information. And Avery herself could be in a lot of trouble. You can either talk to us here, or we can go down to the local police station and you can talk to them.” Jack’s voice was matter-of-fact.

  Lucy could sense his impatience, but she feared that badgering Margot wouldn’t help the situation. “Avery moved out on you. What do you owe her?” She still remembered the slights she’d experienced from her peers and knew revenge could be a powerful motivator.

  Margot slouched slightly, jutted out her right hip, and twirled a lock of hair around one finger. “I guess you’re right. Besides, she was hardly Miss Nice Girl, if you know what I mean. Don’t get me wrong. She could turn on the charm when she felt like it. But when she got upset, she had a wicked temper. She could really fly off the handle.”

  “Can you give us an example?”

  “Well, one time she threw a book out the window—a closed window—broke the glass and everything, and there was another time that she smashed a mirror with her hairbrush. It was pretty scary to watch.”

  “Do you remember what prompted those incidents? Was it anything in particular?”

  “The thrown book had to do with a guy. It was just after Thanksgiving. She’d been late to meet him at a dance this school was hosting, but she’d been stuck on the telephone with Foster—he was her brother—and by the time she showed up at the gymnasium, the guy was slow-dancing with this other girl. I tried to tell her he wasn’t worth it. She just said, ‘What would you possibly know about guys?’” Margot hung her head. “I guess she was right about that.”

  Lucy resisted the urge to say something comforting or touch the poor girl’s chubby arm. Who could forget the pains of adolescence? “And the mirror incident?”

  “That was after her brother’s death. I don’t know the details, but I gather she and he had just learned over Christmas that they were adopted. I didn’t believe it. I mean, what sixteen-year-old just learns out of the blue that she’s been adopted? It didn’t make sense, especially because Avery was superclose to her parents. Her mom sent her packages and letters all the time. Her dad even took a Wednesday off to come watch a cross-country race. She was really lucky.”

  “But she broke a mirror?”

  “Oh yeah. I came back to the room and she was crying and kind of ranting about her mother abandoning her and how she should have had an abortion if she didn’t want her kids. I didn’t know what was going on. Avery was pacing back and forth in our room, which was a feat given all the stuff on the floor. Then suddenly she went over to the mirror and just stared at herself. Her eyes bulged and she leaned into the glass. Everything was quiet and then suddenly she screamed, ‘I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.’ She started bashing the mirror with her hairbrush. It shattered, and her hand was all bloody.” Margot stopped speaking. Her clear blue eyes met Lucy’s. She’d obviously been horrified at the time, a horror her recollection had brought back. “I wanted to take her to the infirmary, but she told me not to. Instead her mother showed up a couple of hours later. Mrs. Herbert bandaged her hand, cleaned the room, and even hung a new mirror—one that was a lot nicer than the one Avery had broken. When she was through, it was as if the whole thing hadn’t happened,” she added, as though the miraculous cleanup had been equally traumatic.

  “That must have been very difficult to witness,” Lucy said automatically. She needed to placate the girl but her own mind raced far from this Maryland campus as she remembered the conversation with Dr. Ladd following the autopsy. She’d offered a theory. Could there have been two? Dr. Ladd’s words echoed: “If there were two, I’d bet my pension they’re connected.” The damaged car, the baseball bat, the details of the murder scene were beginning to make sense. It hadn’t been an apocryphal amount of coincidence.

  But could only one have intended to kill? Maybe she’d been right after all.

  “Shortly after that, she got her own room,” Margot mumbled, but Jack and Lucy were already turning for the door.

  3:05 p.m.

  “Your killer’s definitely a woman.” Frank confirmed what Lucy already knew. “We’ve analyzed that hair sample—it’s a raccoon. There’s no recoverable DNA at the root, which is what we’d expect to find if the animal had scavenged in the car and the hair had fallen out. More importantly, the hair’s been dyed and at least the last time I checked, salons around here aren’t yet booking beasts. A fur coat or jacket—could even be something with raccoon trim.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The alcohol used on the steering wheel turns out to be cologne. The chemical composition matches something called Verbenas of Provence, made by a British company and sold at only a handful of places for around fifty dollars an ounce. Plus our killer wasted at least two hundred dollars of perfume wiping off fingerprints.”

  “Was that Jo Malone?”

  “I didn’t take you for the fancy-perfume type.”

  “I may surprise you.” Lucy reached into her knapsack and removed the plastic bags of evidence she’d collected from Avery’s closet at boarding school. She handed them to Frank.

  “What are these?” he asked.

  “I confiscated a shrine. Can you dust for prints?” She stood.

  Frank nodded. “Right away. Where are you two headed?”

  “Gladwyne,” Lucy responded. Then, turning to Jack, she added, “And I think we’d better hurry.”

  The Herberts’ maid looked terrified as she opened the door to Lucy, Jack, and the team of four police officers and technicians who had been dispatched to execute the search warrant on the Gladwyne property. “Missus no home,” she kept repeating even as Jack flashed the paperwork and walked past her.

  They gathered in the grand entrance, and Jack issued instructions. The navy blue Windbreakers scattered as Lucy stood beside the maid, waiting for the translator to arrive. The small woman was visibly shaken. “Esta bien,” Lucy said softly, struggling for an appropriate idiom from her high school Spanish.

  “No tiene remedio,” the woman responded in despair.

  Within moments Jack returned from the mudroom carrying a shopping bag marked GOODWILL. He reached in and pulled out a raccoon jacket. “I guess she didn’t want it to go to waste.” With that, he shoved the jacket into a clear plastic bag and marked it with an appropriate inventory control number.

  A Hispanic police officer who doubled as a translator had just arrived when Ben DeForest reappeared in the entrance. He’d been initially dispatched to search the barn and surrounding fields. Although he had a three-way radio, they’d heard nothing from him in the thirty minutes they’d been at the Gladwyne property. Now back inside the main house, he leaned forward with his hands resting on his thighs. “You’ve got to see this,” he said, his voice excited but slightly out of breath.

  Jack and Lucy left the
maid in the custody of the translator and followed quickly on Ben’s heels. They crossed the driveway and cut left behind the house across a fieldstone patio. The trimmed lawn ended abruptly at an open expanse of field.

  The large barn was constructed of painted pine. The door was open, and they stepped into a cavernous space with a hayloft above them and three stalls along the right side. Each had a brass nameplate secured to its hinged gate. An open black trunk against one wall revealed an array of tack, two well-worn rope halters, several snaffle bits, a pair of saddles, and myriad brushes. The smell of horses—hay, oats, and manure—permeated the air despite the fact that there were no longer animals in residence.

  “This way,” Ben said. He slid open the door to the stall marked JUMPSTART. “There.” He pointed to the ground where a pile of hay had been moved aside.

  Lucy took a step closer, leaned forward, and then dropped to her knees. There lay a baseball bat. The black script along one side read LOUISVILLE SLUGGER. The end flickered with spots of burgundy metallic paint.

  “We’ve taken prints. Good prints. I e-mailed the image to Frank back at the Roundhouse. And I probably don’t need to tell you we’ve got an exact match to Avery.”

  Back inside the Herberts’ home, Angelica, the maid, offered what little she could. She’d been given last Saturday night off. “Mrs. Herbert doesn’t do as much entertaining as she used to, and hardly ever goes out. I spent the night at my sister’s,” she said in Spanish. “I did notice the car had been moved in the morning, but when I realized Avery was here, I thought she’d gone to pick—” Her words fell off, but her mouth remained open and her eyes bulged in fear.

  Lucy turned around. Faith Herbert stood in the doorway to the kitchen. Avery was visible behind her. The girl was tall, thin, and more beautiful in person than she’d appeared in her photograph. “Would someone please tell me what is going on here?”

  “Your daughter is under arrest.” Reaching for the handcuffs in her pocket, Lucy moved past Faith and stood inches from Avery. Close-up, she thought she could see the mild flutter in Avery’s T-shirt as her heartbeat quickened. Reaching for the girl’s wrist, she felt Avery’s frigid flesh. The locking mechanism of the handcuffs seemed to echo as she secured them, and began to recite her rights. “Avery Herbert, you are under arrest for the murder of Morgan Reese.”