Adam and Evil (An Amanda Pepper Mystery)

by Gillian Roberts

  “You’re my friend, and I’d want to know if the situation were reversed. For all I know, it may be.” She laughed, rather nervously.

  “Rachel, this is obviously difficult for you to say, but please, please say it.”

  She nodded and sighed. “While I was talking to Havermeyer, he got a call, and from what he was saying, Mandy, I’m positive they’re advertising for an English teacher, who will also run the newspaper, starting in the autumn.”

  I nodded.

  “So unless they’re expanding the school, adding classes… Is anyone in your department planning to leave?”

  “Planning? No. Nobody plans. We’re English teachers. We know old sayings, collective wisdom such as ‘The best-laid plans…’”

  Fired.

  It had been a threat, something that I’d been sure I’d get out of—but now I was really and truly going to be history. This chapter of my life was over.

  And damn, but did I have to get news of it on a day when I’d actually gotten good compositions?

  Fourteen

  I drove home fighting vision blurred by frustration and fury. Havermeyer had implied he’d wait awhile. Despite my play for sympathy with Mackenzie, despite my insistence that I’d been fired, I’d been privately sure that with some salvage work I could keep my options open.

  Instead they were advertising for my replacement. How dare they!

  That was it, then. I’d never darken that door again. Never come back. Not even to collect my paltry possessions. Never. I’d show them. Show him.

  And then the biggest escape route I’d yet imagined came back into mental view. England. I’d go, too. I slammed my car door shut and locked up. England, I thought as I stomped toward my soon-to-be-abandoned home. London. Save money by rooming with Sasha and—

  Sasha! I checked the time, ran back to my car, and drove to Pine Street, where I wound up being too late to cruise for a spot. I was hostile paying the parking attendant, slapping bills onto his hand, as if it were his fault I’d screwed up.

  She was waiting. It’s hard to miss a six-foot-tall woman in high heels—or high buttoned boots, as the case actually was. Sasha never differentiates between street clothes and costumes, and that day she was done up in Edwardian duds, a long skirt, those boots, and a high, ruffled blouse. The only anachronism was the camera strapped around her neck. “For effect,” she said when I gestured at it. “I’m looking for props, aren’t I? I should look like a photographer.”

  “You are a photographer.”

  “I should look like a busy photographer. And what is it I should be hunting in there?”

  “Inspiration. Nothing specific, nothing she can say she doesn’t have.”

  “Who are you supposed to be?” Sasha asked.

  “Your friend. In fact, that’s the only solid job classification I’ve got left.” We were out on the sidewalk, hardly the best time or situation for major life revelations, but it was a nice day and I felt stretched as far as I could go. The pressures building inside me needed an escape valve, or the hope of one. “Sasha,” I said, “would you consider having a roommate in England?”

  “I don’t know. My style might make a Brit uncomfortable, and I’m leery of adjusting to anybody else’s, too, plus—”

  “I mean me.”

  Her eyebrows lifted, and she smiled. “Really? Incredible! That’d be great, that’d be—” Her eyebrows lowered. “I’m talking England,” she said softly. “The one across the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “I know. I’m talking grad school over there.”

  She narrowed her eyes, stared at me.

  “Then maybe we should both be talking Mackenzie.” They’d been at war, politely but adamantly, for a long time, but had struck a pact somewhere along the way, and now she was one of C.K.’s biggest fans. “You know, your love? Lover? Roommate? Possibly the last good man in town?”

  I shrugged.

  “You’d…leave him?”

  “Don’t think of it in those terms.” Leaving men, or being left, was Sasha’s specialty. Actually, it was a family trait and probably genetic. Generations of her family switched partners seasonally. There was no reason for her to stand on the sidewalk, gape-mouthed. “This isn’t about him. It’s my adventure…my finding something new.”

  “But you and—this really upsets me. What happened?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m just—I’m having an attack of feeling exactly the way you do. I need a change, I need to do something. I’m being fired, anyway, so I’m basically being forced to make a change. My mother thinks I should change, too. Grad school was her idea—well, mine, of course, originally, but now out of the blue she says she’ll pay my tuition. She says I shouldn’t rush into marriage. As if I were doing that.”

  “Your mother? Bea Pepper?”

  I nodded. “That mother.”

  “She said that?”

  “Did you answer my question about wanting a roommate?”

  “I never thought about…well, if you were actually there and…sure,” she said without enthusiasm. “But…you and Mackenzie…he’s special, Mandy. You’re out of your mind—unless there’s something.” She waited. “Somebody? As in else?” She waited again. For half a second the librarian with the gold-brown eyes occupied my mind, but—I shook my head. “Then something really bad. Something not negotiable.” When I still didn’t offer up a something or someone, she shook her head and continued. “Then you’re nuts. You were going to be the ones who made it, the exception to the rule. The reason hope can keep springing eternal. This is so—”

  “Let’s go in before she closes,” I said. “It’s odd that it’s open at all. Given that her sister was murdered, she might have closed out of respect.” I wondered when the funeral would be, whether the police still were holding the body and if so, how long they’d keep it. Mackenzie might have answered my questions, had I asked, had we attempted to stop snarling at each other.

  Sasha gave a histrionic sigh to make sure I knew she wasn’t finished with the subject. She even stamped one boot-shod foot. And then we entered the store, which was still devoid of customers. “Hope you don’t mind if I browse,” Sasha told the proprietor, who approached us with a smile tuned to precisely the right degree of intensity. Not desperately pleased to see us, simply glad enough. “I’m Sasha Berg, and I’m a photographer. I have an assignment that calls for me to create a certain ambience in the background. Can’t yet define it, but I know it would be period, though which, I’m not sure. Definitely amber light and all, you see it?”

  Helena Spurry, looking as chic and slicked back as when I’d last seen her, was again dressed monochromatically, this time in chocolate brown slacks and shirt. And again, she wore an oversized printed scarf—cream and caramel, this go-round—artfully draped over one shoulder. The black and gold necklace again wound around part of the scarf, and then hung below it. Obviously, her signature look—the look of a bored, Americanized matador. She harmonized perfectly with the soft yellow light and aging waxed woods that surrounded her. She ran her thumb and index finger down the chain, and I wondered whether a scarf wrapped around a chain could do its fatal damage without leaving ligature marks.

  The scarf and chain apparently served her as a talisman, something to clutch when life or Sasha’s remarks confounded her, as was apparently now the case. She had no idea what Sasha meant—how could she? Sasha herself didn’t. But Helena was ready to help make it happen. I suspected she was thrilled to have actual people walk through her door, and I wondered what she did all day while she waited for the likes of us. There were just so many times you could dust furniture before you wore off its finish.

  “This is my friend, Amanda,” Sasha said. “She’s helping me. She’s familiar with the client’s taste. She’s not a pro, but she has a good eye.”

  I took that as a compliment and tried to assume an air of good-eyehood, landing judgmental and stern-edged glances on Helena Spurry’s wares.

  “Are you looking for large or small pi
eces? We have table settings to armoires.” Helena gestured at the crackled, water-stained monster I’d noticed through the window.

  Sasha glanced my way. I frowned, confused, then realized I was supposed to be helping her make these momentous decisions. I shook my head. “Not the right feel,” I said. “Too intimidating. Besides, the water stain…” I shook my head sadly at its imperfection.

  “The Johnstown flood.” Helena fingered her chain. “This was in the home of the banker when the waters rushed in. I consider it a historical marker, surely not a mere stain.”

  “Interesting.” Hereafter I would think of all splits, tears, blemishes, and ravels that way. Nothing would ever wear out. It would instead become historically marked. A good philosophy for my impending impoverished life.

  Helena looked from one of us to the other. “May I ask what the product is?”

  “It’s actually…not so much a product shoot as a portrait,” Sasha said. “But the subject is rather an eccentric. Happily, she can afford to be however she pleases, although it makes certain things, like this portrait, more difficult than they need to be. She wants a definite feel to her setting, her style, more or less, while she doesn’t want any invasion of her privacy. We are shooting this in my studio because she does not want people—including me—trooping through her actual house. Her personal collection is quite distinctive, and much of it’s museum-quality, but she never opens her house for charity and is close to being a recluse. Doesn’t want anything she owns in photos, on record. Encourages thieves, I suppose. Odd, then, to want to do a portrait with props that simulate the look she loves, I know,” Sasha rambled as she held up a flowered china bowl. “But still and all, not as odd as some of my clients.”

  Helena had no choice but to laugh along with Sasha, to act as if her client list were also chockablock with peculiar people. Both women were lying. Sasha had no stable of clients and barely scraped by—in fact, I’d have to ask her how she planned to stay alive in London before I considered sharing her flat—and Helena seemed the only member of humankind sincerely interested in the contents of her store.

  I looked at the two financially struggling women and made another major occupational decision: nothing under the heading of self-employed. It might seem appealing to have no boss, no possible Havermeyer, but the downside was too frightening. With that thought, I felt as if I’d made great strides forward in one of the many upended segments of my life.

  “Are you planning to buy or rent these items?” Helena asked.

  “Buy them, of course,” Sasha said. “And then Man—my client will donate them to charity.”

  I was intrigued by this imaginary eccentric, although Helena’s business wasn’t going to improve via a figment. How did her shop stay afloat? This was the vocation of a woman who existed in a different place than Helena did. This was the comfortable retreat of a comfortable woman, but for Helena this was a fantasy, projecting an image of financial security. It had nothing to do with reality, with paying actual bills. This was indeed a catastrophe waiting to happen.

  Or what had precipitated a catastrophe in the library.

  “Have you—Traditions!—been here long?” Sasha asked, lifting a piece of red Bohemian cut glass. She passed it to me. I loved the way even the feeble sunbeam that made its way past the looming furniture and around the porcelain shepherds slid through the ruby glass. But as one or the other of us was going to have to buy whatever we decided would make a good prop for our imaginary friend, I twirled the glass, squinted at it, then regretfully put it down.

  “Six months,” Helena said.

  “Where was the store before then?” I asked.

  Helena looked taken aback and annoyed. “Traditions! was born six months ago.”

  When her sister had loaned her the bulk of her share of their mother’s inheritance. And almost immediately needed it back. Had anybody believed that this hobby shop would support anyone?

  I meanwhile stammered along, searching for the subtle way to ask, By the way, did you strangle your sister with your long scarf or necklace? “I’ve been thinking of opening my own place, being my own boss,” I said. “How do you do it? For example, have you always collected antiques?”

  “I’ve always enjoyed fine things, craftsmanship, beautiful objects, classic design. For myself and others, whom I help with their interior design. And I’ve collected through auctions and travel for years, so once I had the capital and a location, setting up was quick, but it isn’t easy turning your passion into a business, no matter what anybody tells you. Of course, a great deal depends on what your merchandise is. Bagels aren’t the same as heirlooms. What sort of store do you have in mind?”

  “Oh, I thought…” I hadn’t thought. I’d only spoken. I had nothing in my mind except a wish that, for once, I’d get things straight before I nattered on.

  “Tchotchkes,” Sasha said. “That’s a scientific term for this and that. She adores stuff nobody needs.”

  “Don’t make it sound tacky,” I said, instantly defensive about the merit of my nonexistent collection. “It’s…memorabilia. Letters, posters, the ephemera of popular culture.” I had it, and I was ready to roll now. “Old magazines, original movie posters—” I was getting into it, ready to phone up Mackenzie’s mother and ask if she’d like to sell her Hepburn-Grant posters. “And the prizes they used to give out, and—”

  “I see,” Helena said, underwhelmed.

  “Of course, you could have been open for years and I’m so oblivious.” Sasha to the rescue while I felt stung and sorry for myself—what was so bad about my things? “I’m not a collector myself,” Sasha said as her thousandth lie of the day. “I inherited my furniture.”

  A thousand and one lies. Although who’s to say that acquiring one’s furniture and wardrobe from secondhand shops isn’t “inheriting” it?

  “Mostly I work with art directors who choose everything, so I’m not really up to date with what’s around,” Sasha babbled on. “Mandy, this is quite nice, don’t you think?” She held up a gracefully shaped oil lamp.

  I nodded, then caught a glimpse of the price tag, which had way too many digits. I said in a stage whisper, “Do you think your client wants to be identified with oil?” I kept my eyebrows up a ridiculously long time, miming my keen desire for Sasha to “get it”—or pretend there was something to get. Would Helena buy the suggestion that Pew family members would find a gilt-and-crystal lamp too symbolic of the Sun Oil foundation of their fortune, and therefore bad?

  “You know what would be fabulous?” People into props and antiques, people with a good eye, used words like fabulous, I thought. “Something like that chain you’re wearing. Elegant, understated, but bold. I can just see—ah, the client in it, can’t you, Sasha? It isn’t old, is it? I mean, it’s a reproduction, isn’t it? We could probably get one for her—she’s not wearing her own jewels his time, is she?”

  “Doubt it,” Sasha said. “You know how she is.”

  Helena again touched the chain, as if to verify its reality. “This is old. Quite. A family heirloom. It was my mother’s and her mother’s before her. Made in Vienna, last century. What made you think it was a reproduction?”

  “I…” I couldn’t think of another way to the truth except by using the truth. “I saw one like it last week. Admired it, is why I remember so vividly. At the library. Logan Square? I mean, the detail work—those black stones, framed in gold, the way they’re set and all…”

  Sasha stared at me as if I were a foreign film without subtitles.

  “But I must be mistaken, if it’s one of a kind.” I shook my head, miming a slow mind piecing things out, I hoped. “Unless it was you! It must have been you. I’m afraid I was looking more at the necklace than at its owner.”

  Helena touched the chain and backed off a step. “I suppose there’s more than one, then,” she mumbled.

  “Thinking about that necklace makes me remember everything that happened that day. Awful. A woman was murdered.”

 
; Helena bowed her head slightly and straightened the scarf on her shoulder. I thought she might mention that the dead woman was her sister, but perhaps she was simply being professional in keeping her silence.

  “Was that you?” I asked. “In the library?”

  She looked peeved. “Possibly,” she said. “I have a…a friend there. It’s a pleasant walk, a bit of exercise, so I frequently join…the friend for lunch. Or I look at old books of photos, prints for ideas…”

  “This was Thursday morning.”

  She looked at me sharply. “Thursday?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She actually went in search of a date book and flipped pages. “No,” she said.

  “Sorry, then. It was somebody else.” I made my voice and body language as perky as I dared, tossing out I’m-no-threat vibes like fairy dust to blind her. “And probably a different necklace design altogether. It’s just that look, maybe. The big scarf and the chain, but my memory stinks. Anyway, I was in the Rare Book Department, not the print department or cafeteria, where you’d be.”

  Her pale skin blanched even more. I plodded on, doing a dumb-blonde routine even though my hair is a fairly intense red-brown. “I remember where I was because…because that’s where the woman…” My voice was down to a whisper. “Where…you know. Later in the day, where it happened,” I finished lamely. “Right outside it.”

  Helena tightened her lips and held them that way before she spoke. “A crazy person did it. They should lock them all up. They’re ruining the city. They ruin business—nobody wants to crawl over them to get into a store. And now they’re killing people.”

  “Horrible, isn’t it?” Sasha held a leather box with straps for closures, one of those things that never had a possible function but looked stunning.

  Sasha might keep having a good time with her imaginary assignment, but I’d reached a dead end. Helena had been at the library. She’d admit it, I bet, if asked again. I had nothing beyond a memory of her standing over that case—the visual equivalent of hearsay, so now what? I was desperate enough to try for the truth, or something akin to it. “My sister knew her. My sister was friends with the…victim.”