No wonder there are no parables about my ancestors, the Unwittingly Horrible Samaritans.
Twelve
I was beyond tired. My marrow had dissolved. I wanted to be waited upon. Needed to be served. Yearned to be doted upon.
I wanted a mommy—a theoretical one, not my assigned one, because the latter would want answers, and currently, all her surprising largesse had done was raise more questions. I wanted a mommy who also knew massage.
I trudged toward the loft from the spot I’d finally found for my car—which, incidentally, was in as bad shape as I was, on its last legs, or bearings, but I couldn’t think about that issue now.
As I turned the key I heard the faint sounds of the TV, slightly surprising, but it meant C.K. was home, so I entered, playing for my audience for all it was worth, posture slumped, head bowed forward. The picture of somebody the world had mistreated. Somebody who needed all the TLC in the world.
“Hey, hon.” He waved casually from the sofa, his eyes never leaving the TV. Sprawled on a couch watching the tube in broad daylight—or at least narrow daylight, as night approached. All he lacked was the pink satin kimono, fluffy mules, and a box of bonbons.
I held the pity-me pose. He’d notice. My muscles spasmed. What was he doing staring at the tube like nobody I’d want to know?
He’s tired, my inner nice person suggested. I told her to shut up. I knew he was. He’d worked all night. But in that case he should be in bed, sleeping. And if he was too wired to sleep, which happened, he should be doing something kind. Whipping up dinner or—bare minimum—turning his head away from the TV and asking me how my day had been. Being civil. In fact, he shouldn’t even need to ask the question; one look at me should have summoned forth his emotional-paramedic techniques. Instantly. Had he given me one look.
I dropped the posturing—if a woman poses in the forest and nobody watches, is she still pitiable?—and dragged myself into the loft, just about commando-style, elbows propelling me across the loft floor. I might as well actually have done it for all the New Age–sensitive guyness my significant other demonstrated.
“Good flick,” he said out loud, presumably to himself. “I like it every time.” He noticed me staggering across the loft. “Come sit.” He patted the square inch of couch he wasn’t covering, ignoring the fumes coming out of my ears.
The cat, snuggled behind Mackenzie’s knees, looked up balefully. I’d become not only irrelevant but a potential intruder. I ignored both of them and walked behind the couch to check the table where we tossed mail. Not that I expected anything beyond bills and circulars, and not that I was wrong.
It was a fairly good position from which to wring the man’s neck. Which thought, of course, reminded me of Emily Fisher. How had somebody done that to her? From behind? From where?
Better to think about make-believe. I checked out the TV. North by Northwest. I guess I should have felt relieved he wasn’t hooked on a soap opera.
“Reminds me of my childhood,” he said. “’Cept, of course, they didn’t have so many movies on TV then. No videos. No VCR. We went to the theater to see them, or my mother did. She adores Cary Grant. Not even his death has weakened that love. The household gods, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Anything they were in, together or apart, she’d go see and see and see. Wanted her boys to be like him, her girls to be like the great Katharine. Had an arrangement with the local theater—they did revival movies every so often—that she could have any posters that survived the showing. I remember…”
My world was decomposing and he was nattering about his mother’s viewing habits?
“Look,” he said, “here it comes—the crop-duster scene.”
“Oh, of course!” I said. “It’s Cary!”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“Not him—you! Your mother loved Cary Grant, wanted her boys to be like him—so of course—C for Cary!”
“Wrong.”
I walked around the sofa and clicked off the set.
“Hey!” he said, sitting up. “Why’d you do that?” Macavity leaped to the floor, resettling in a hostile puff of dust-colored fur.
I folded my hands over my chest—primo teacher position. “Only way to get your attention, unless I get murdered.”
“Dear God,” he murmured.
That sort of male conciliatory behavior makes me crazier still. Conversing with the Lord about me, as if my behavior—or expected behavior—deserved divine sympathy.
“Look,” he said, “I’m real sorry, but I’ve had a long, long time of it. I have three cases driving me silly, and I’m too wired to fall asleep, so—what’s the harm in it? My favorite scene, too!”
“That’s everybody’s favorite scene. You’re supposed to be different. Special. I’d think you’d be creative. Original.” I had reached the refrigerator—the loft is spacious, but the living-dining-cooking area is all in one portion of it. “You’re becoming a household cliché. Ordinary.” I slammed the refrigerator door shut.
“Ordinary?” he echoed in a voice so low and soothing it alarmed me. That was the way you spoke to madmen. “Ordinary? Maybe I am, after all. But you surely are not, because ordinary would be now and then civil, compassionate, to her long-suffering man.”
I was sorry I’d already slammed the refrigerator door. Opening it again in order to repeat the action seemed silly. So instead I snapped, “There’s no dinner. I forgot to buy food and we’re out of anything coherent and I don’t care! I’m going to bed.”
“Hey,” he said mildly. “Whoa. What’s wrong? Have a bad day?”
“A bad day? Bad? What is the meaning of ‘bad’? How about a pukey day? A heinous day. A malevolent day. An atrocious day. A day that makes you not want to have any more days. A—”
He took a deep breath. “What happened?”
I struggled between the twin desires to keep sputtering and to move us on now that he was listening. To get sympathy at long last. This was my last port in the storm.
“First of all, I’m being fired.”
Mackenzie raised an eyebrow, tilted his head, and shrugged mildly. “This isn’t the first time.”
“It’s different now. Havermeyer told me as much. End of semester, end of me. And I’m not sure I care. I think maybe…maybe it’s time for a change.”
Of what, he should by all rights ask. Of scene? Of men? Or just of job?
Luckily, he didn’t, because I wasn’t sure about that, either.
“And they’re still threatening to sue me. For battery. All part of their conviction that I’m after him.”
Mackenzie looked oddly troubled by that—conflicted. Maybe even ready to react and say something, but I plowed on, not wanting to hear whatever it was. I didn’t need more of his mulish attitude about Adam. That wasn’t the issue at hand, and I didn’t need to justify my actions with the man I lived with, of all people.
“And then two of my tenth graders overheard something at a tennis club and now—not that they’re wrong, but they wrote an article for the paper about a major, major scandal at the school. A business selling substitute SAT exam takers, fake transcripts, fake letters of recommendation. They came to me because of the paper. It’s just going to cap it all for Havermeyer.”
“If you’re already fired, why worry?”
That was not the correct response. I had said I was definitely fired, but I didn’t 100 percent know that. And I didn’t want to be—if I left, I wanted it to be on my terms. I wanted to call the shots. Jill and Nancy’s discovery made the odds of that happening still worse. Mackenzie wasn’t getting it.
“And then,” I said, “I had to go back to the library. I left Lia’s book there yesterday. The one she’d annotated and underlined, and they couldn’t find it. Somebody must have taken it, and the kid’s going to be heartsick. Understandably. I already am.
“And then, when I left, Adam was outside the library, waiting for me. Is that list sufficient to qualify me as having had a bad day?”
“Adam Evans.”
I nodded. “He had somebody else’s book bag yesterday. Wanted to return it.” It was incredible how rational that made his actions sound, though they’d felt anything but.
“His book bag was next to the victim.”
I nodded. “The librarian told me. When I was back there today.” I finally sat down on a kitchen chair. “Mackenzie, you’re here, you’re chilling out—does that mean you have a suspect? An arrest?”
He sighed and looked at me as if he wished he were seeing something or somebody else. “We have a suspect, yes. But he’s not under arrest unless you detained him and brought him here with you. This is not a subtle case. Only difficulty is findin’ him.”
“Adam?” I wanted to disagree, to pull out facts that would refute that, but I couldn’t think of a single one.
“Where’d he go?”
“He ran off. He said he was okay, that his parents knew where he was. I have to assume he’s with a friend, although he’s an absolute loner at school. But I hate that he’s your only suspect.”
“Did he say he didn’t do it? He was up there, Mandy.”
I hadn’t asked outright. Hadn’t dared. “He said he found her. That she was dead. He may have overheard the actual killer. He heard a voice.”
“Schizophrenics—some of them—hear voices. What did his say?”
I whispered it. “‘Kill.’ Maybe ‘dead.’”
“That’s it?”
I nodded. “I think he heard himself. His own reaction to finding her on the floor.”
“Or to deciding to kill her,” Mackenzie said.
I hurried on to firmer ground. “I’ve found out a lot more about the dead woman. She’s on the outs with a homeless advocate who’s always there, and her sister, who was there, and her husband, who’s been known to be there, and—”
“I don’ get it,” he said, standing up. “I don’ get it at all. You’re so convinced the kid’s dangerous you practically accused him of murder before you knew that anybody was dead. Then—”
“I never! You’re saying I made things worse for him, aren’t you? Why? You’ve had the weirdest attitude all along whenever I even mentioned him. Why?”
His blue stare was enough to freeze-dry me. “We’ve been through this already,” he said, and with me instead of Cary Grant in front of him, he ran out of energy.
“No,” I insisted. “No, we haven’t. You kept saying I would make it worse, but you didn’t say why you were so sure.”
“The thing is, Adam is the clear number-one suspect. All logic points to him, and so does his scarf and the book bag, and the truth is, in his case, we may not require logic. Kids in his class said he was angry with Ms. Fisher. She hollered at him—”
“She didn’t shout.”
“Whatever—the kids called it hollerin’. That may be motive enough for him. An’ he was there. He had opportunity. And the scarf…”
“Method,” I mumbled.
He stretched, and I caught myself watching with admiration the shape of his torso against the blue shirt. Caught myself, and broke visual contact. This was no time for admiration.
“The thing also is, I’m sorry I doubted you early on. You were obviously right to be nervous about him, okay?”
“But—these other people. Her sister who owed money she couldn’t repay, and her husband who wanted her out of the picture so he could run for Congress, and this advocate for the homeless—”
“Why?” he asked. “Why them? Why suddenly now? You are completely emotional about this. Back off. It’s the only thing you can do. Just…plain…back off.”
“You’re like a posse, determined to get Adam when there’s no reason to—”
“I can’t talk to you anymore than I have about this case. You know that. I can only say—ask—beg you to stay clear of it. Leave that boy alone. Let things work out as they will. You aren’t helpin’ anybody, you’re just…” He sighed and half turned from me. “I wish, just now and then and again, maybe once a year, that you’d listen to me. Believe that in some instances, I have experience on my side.”
“About mental illness?”
“Maybe. People who kill aren’t the most stable portion of the population.”
“You don’t trust me at all, is what’s wrong. You act like maybe I’m an idiot—and as if I’m harming Adam, not trying to help him.” Why not blame my worst fear on the man in the blue shirt? It eased the guilt—the part about Adam. Later I’d worry about the guilt of dumping what wasn’t his on Mackenzie. “And you don’t take my situation seriously at all. I’m being fired. And sued. All hell is about to break out at school. You could show a little sympathy! You could care!”
“I do,” he said. “Maybe too much for anybody’s mental health. I’m real tired, is all. An’ I have to go back in too short a while. I’ll try a nap if it’s all the same to you.”
It’s nearly impossible to have a truly successful squabble in a loft without divider walls. There’s the bathroom and the bedroom and that’s it. I used to live in a tiny three-story warren of undersized rooms. It had its problems, but you could storm off and sulk without exposure to the elements. Here it was much more challenging.
He stopped halfway to the bedroom and paused, as if waiting for me to say something or waiting to hear himself say something, but we remained mute.
Only Macavity took a stand and made his preferences clear. He checked the scene and, after a discreet moment, sauntered off with Mackenzie.
I watched the male residents, human and feline, until they were behind the bedroom door, and thought only about how closed-minded Mackenzie had been. If that was the approach of the Philadelphia police department, Adam was as good as behind bars. And Mackenzie had as much as said that my ranting about the student was part and parcel of why he was so sure Adam was guilty.
Guess I could eliminate mediation, arbitration, and diplomacy from my list of possible future careers.
Thirteen
The weekend, at least the part of it during which Mackenzie and I cohabited, passed in a cordial chill. Something was out of kilter and we both knew it, but neither of us chose to look at it too closely or discuss it. We’d had another date with Andy and Juliana, but once again they canceled out. Apparently they were having problems. So were we, but theirs were faster arriving and out of the closet. We rented videos and sat in parallel silences, viewing them.
No mention of Emily Fisher or Adam Evans. But twice I answered the phone to hear labored, agitated breathing and “My scarf!” When I asked if it was Adam, when I said his name—softly, so that Mackenzie didn’t overhear—and told him to please let me help him, he clicked off.
For once, the arrival of Monday was welcome relief. Back to something, which was better than the growing nothingness at home in the loft.
I skimmed through the morning, trying so hard not to think about everything that felt truly important, trying not to look too closely, to notice the missing Adam, to spot his parents back at the school, trying not to say anything that might further inflame or upset, and most of all trying not to think about either my personal or professional life—that by noon, my jaw hurt from clenching my teeth. The weather was benign—a breeze, not a wind, sunshine and temperatures in the sixties—and the school felt anything but, so I decided to spend my lunch hour out-of-doors.
At the corner, I bought a soft pretzel with mustard, and breathed deeply for the first time that day before taking my first delicious bite. I considered my options. I could drop in on Sasha, as I hadn’t seen her in a while. She was participating in an experiment at a local research lab, more precisely, a “smell” center where busy scientists and their subjects devise better deodorants and room sprays.
Her malodorous phase should have ended by now, but until I was sure, I passed on an unannounced visit. The only sense I hadn’t been stifling all day was that of smell. No need to work on censoring that one, too, so instead of Sasha, I’d take care of The Birthday Gift.
Even if I was angry with Mackenzie, eve
n though I was so disappointed in the dull distancing that had come between us that I didn’t even try to look into the future, even if the entire idea of monogamy was losing its appeal, ignoring my partner’s birthday would be cruel and wrong and frighteningly final. I was still fixated on the idea of a lovely old history book.
I relaxed a little with a sense of direction, a project I could accomplish. Good going, I complimented myself. With renewed energy and sense of purpose, I turned toward Locust Street—and smashed into Terry Labordeaux. He stepped back, laughed, and straightened the bridge of his glasses.
“I’m sorry!” we said in unison.
“I was hoping to find you,” he said, “although not necessarily so…abruptly.”
My sense of purpose ebbed. He’d come to see me on my lunch hour. Nice? Yes. Nice.
“Because—” He was wearing a tan raincoat that of course looked slept in. He reached into his pocket and said, “Voilà!” And there was Lia’s Turn of the Screw.
I know it was just a trick of the sunshine through the nearly bare trees, but he was suddenly bathed in light spelling out H-E-R-O. “I cannot thank you enough,” I said. “In honesty, after it wasn’t there Friday, I never expected to see it again.”
He fell into step next to me. “I believe that persistence pays,” he said, putting all due spin and possible meanings onto his words. “And is rewarded with another opportunity to visit with you.”
I had the fleeting idea that perhaps the book had been in the lost and found all along, but he’d decided to make it a token in the courting ritual. Then I decided that was ridiculous, and I was reading too much into his polite gallantries.
“Besides,” he said, “I couldn’t rest until I found out what you told your student. The girl who annotated the book.”
Lia had, of course, asked about the book, and I’m ashamed to say I’d danced around the truth, although I didn’t precisely lie. I simply said, “Oh, no—it isn’t with me.” But did I have to tell this man about my weasel words? I glanced over at him, and my expression must have shown my confusion.
Adam and Evil (An Amanda Pepper Mystery) Page 14
