She had finally stumped him. “New one on me,” he said.
Alone again, she tried to read admission folders from the early applicants, but could not get her mind off the conversation with Joe Poynting, and how it fit in with what Mary Mallard had told her. She could not believe she had quizzed poor Poynting about all this, just a few days after promising herself to stay clear of Kellen’s little mystery. But Kellen had always had that effect on her. No matter how often she swore off of him, she always stumbled back. Even after her marriage, Kellen would chase her down with his preternatural sense of when Lemaster was away, Kellen with his slow, sleepy, syrupy Southern voice that used to soften her and sweeten her, to melt every barrier she tried to erect, and it was sometimes only sheer luck that had kept her from stumbling back to him.
She checked her watch. Time for her meeting with the dean. Walking through the halls, she reflected that she knew at least a piece of it now. Not much, but some. Kellen was selling something. That was the big mystery. Either he had already sold it, or he was about to; but, whatever the sequence, he planned to hold back the best part for himself. The trouble was, he had wanted to spread the risk. He had wanted Julia to hold for him—whatever it was. He had told Mary that Julia would have it if anything happened to him. He was killed less than a week after asking her, and being turned down.
What she did not know was whether he had found somebody else to hold it before he was shot.
(II)
“SO HOW’S THE FAMILY?” said Claire Alvarez brightly. “So many children. That’s wonderful. Just wonderful. I envy you so.”
“Everyone’s fine,” said Julia.
“Does Vanessa know where she wants to go to school?”
“Ah, not yet.”
“Well, I know she’ll be a star wherever she goes. She’s amazing.” The dean of the divinity school nodded. She was a tall, ethereal woman who for the past fifteen years had taught Christian ethics to students who increasingly doubted that there were any. Her sweetness covered you like a blanket. Old Clay Maxwell, already on in years when he taught Julia over twenty years ago, liked to say that Claire could make you feel so warm and fuzzy that you slept through the part where she fired you.
“Thank you,” said Julia, although talk of Vanessa and college frightened her.
“Did she enjoy France? She was just in France, wasn’t she?”
“She loved it,” said Julia, omitting to mention that the trip had been a year ago, Vanessa’s sixteenth birthday present, a private visit to Granny Mo, before everything went bad.
“I just adore that girl,” Claire said, as if they were discussing a musician or a painter instead of a troubled teen. But Claire found few women she didn’t like. She was the nation’s leading expert—possibly the nation’s only expert—on the holiness theology of the great Methodist evangelist Phoebe Palmer, who, as far as Julia could tell from Claire’s frequent and enthusiastic lectures, had distinguished herself in the years leading up to the Civil War, when other Protestant clergy were arguing over the place of slavery in a nation that believed in Scripture, by first skipping the subject and then skipping town, preferring to spend the war years in England. “By the way, are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Trouble?” said Julia, very surprised. “I, ah, I hope not.”
“I’m sorry to sound so melodramatic,” said Claire, gentle face composed in the half-smile that was her only known expression. “I know we’re supposed to be talking about admission and financial aid, and we’ll get around to that. But I just had the strangest visit from a lawyer who’s also a major donor. It turned out, all he wanted to talk about was you. Odd, isn’t it?” Folding her hands alongside the polished silver humidor that was the improbable tradition of her office. “Tice is his name. Anthony Tice. He does those late-night television commercials.”
She stopped, apparently waiting for a confession.
“I’ve seen them,” said Julia cautiously, fingers wrapped tightly around the folder holding the presentation they were working up for the provost. “But I don’t know him.”
“You’re not worse off. He’s not a particularly pleasant man. Very smart, very good-looking, and knows it. He’s given us a hundred thousand dollars each of the past two years. I’m not sure why Mr. Tice thinks us worthy of his beneficence”—looking up at the portraits of past deans, as if the answer might be found there—“but the nation’s divinity schools are not exactly awash in money these days.”
“What did he ask about me, Claire?”
“Two things. Your relationship with poor Kellen Zant—”
“We didn’t have one,” Julia objected, too quickly.
“—and, second, what kind of person you are. Do you have integrity? Courage of your convictions? Are you willing to take risks for a great cause?” She rose to her feet, moving slowly around the long, shadowy office, rendered only moderately cheerier by the November sun. “It was as if he was preparing to make you a job offer of some kind. At least that’s what I thought at first.” The dean had reached the window. She fussed with her hair and watched the view, even if there was nothing to see but the drabness of Hudson Street in winter, and, from the short side of the room, the rich, ugly swankness of Hilliman Social Science Tower, looking condescendingly down on the superstitious rabble of Kepler: the one where truth was measurable but not eternal, the other where truth was eternal but not measurable. “I sang your praises, of course. I told him how proud the school has always been to count you among our graduates, and how delighted we were that you chose to come work with us three and a half years ago.”
“Thank you,” said Julia, who in fact had never completed her degree.
“And he asked how you were bearing up under the pressure. He meant finding Kellen’s earthly remains. I told him it must have been terrible, naturally, but you bear up fantastically well under pressure.” Turning back into the room, arms folded. “You do, you know. It’s one of your many marvelous qualities, Julia. Things don’t get to you. You take the same delight in God’s creation no matter what’s going on in your life.”
Julia dipped her head. This was pouring it on a little thick, even for Claire. The reckoning would surely follow. Nervous, she began nibbling on her lower lip, a habit of which Mona had tried, and failed, to break her by painting her lip with iodine.
“You’ve been here a little over three years. The students adore you. The faculty respects you. You seem to like everybody. I suspect you’d even get along with Mr. Tice, unpleasant though he can be. He wants to meet you, Julia.” Claire made it sound like a blind date. “Yes, the man’s self-centered and probably greedy, and he talks a mile a minute. But, Julia, if you can get along with Boris Gibbs, you can get along with anybody.”
“What does Tice want to talk about?”
“Kellen Zant, I think. He says the two of them knew each other. They worked on a project together. They didn’t have the chance to finish their research. I formed the impression that Mr. Tice might want to recruit you to take Kellen’s place.”
“Oh, Claire, no. No way.”
A kindly palm came up. “Far be it from me to force you, Julia. But think about it. Mr. Tice is a major benefactor of the school, after all, and you are…a dean. You might at least talk to him. Or don’t. It’s entirely up to you.” Meaning it wasn’t.
“I’ll think about it,” Julia promised. She owed Claire, and they both knew it, for the dean had searched her out in the miserable months after she lost her job in the public schools. To this day, Julia was not sure why, although Claire loved to give speeches trumpeting Kepler as a showcase of diversity.
“The only strange part came at the end of our conversation. He asked me if you were good at running your office. I naturally said you were wonderful. Well, you are. The neatest, most efficient office in the building, Julia. You know that. I told him, of course. And then he asked me if he could have a look at it. At your office. At that point I had to tell him that, as grateful as we are for his support, there are li
mits to—”
But Julia missed the rest, because she was pelting down the hall.
(III)
“ARE YOU SURE NOTHING’S MISSING?” said Lemaster, sizzling with fury.
“Nothing I could see.”
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe it.”
“I can hardly believe it myself.”
They were sitting in Lemaster’s study, a two-story affair separated from the main house by a breezeway. Except for a few family photos, and a flurry of south-facing windows, books covered every square inch of wall. Lemaster had told her back in their courting days that he wished he could live in a library. Now he nearly did.
“I know this Tice. Sat on a couple of bar committees with him. Half his clients are scum. Mafiosi, accused terrorists, ax murderers. Seriously. All right, they all deserve representation, but I get worried when one guy feels he has to represent all of them. Tricky Tony. That’s what they call him.” A heavy sigh. “Thing is, he isn’t a bad lawyer. He’s actually pretty good. But he has no sense of morals. None. And he doesn’t have an independent thought in his head. He wouldn’t cross the street without a client paying him for it. So, if he wanted to see the inside of your office, it was on behalf of a client.”
Julia sipped her wine. They were sharing a rather pretentious Napa Valley white. “What kind of client?”
“No idea. But, Jules, the nerve of this man. To come onto my campus, to try to get one of my deans to open my wife’s office to him!” On his feet now, striding around the room. “All right. All right. Believe it or not, he didn’t actually violate the canons of ethics, or the law, either. Lawyers have a lot of freedom to—never mind. He’s not going to get away with this.”
My campus, she registered. My deans. My wife.
“You just said he didn’t break the law and he didn’t break the canons of ethics.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?”
He shuddered to a halt. When Lemaster put on this act, stomping around, Julia had to hide a smile, because, being so short, he reminded her of a child throwing a tantrum. “The rules laid down are not necessarily the proper measure of right and wrong.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now, trust me.” In his run-along-now tone, when he wanted to get back to work. Often she felt like a supplicant in this palatial room. Often she was. “Wait. Jules, wait. One thing.”
“Hmmm?”
“Do you have any idea why this Tice wanted to see your office? What he was looking for?”
“No.”
“The Vanessa File?” He meant the collection of clippings and memos about their daughter’s troubles, which she kept at Kepler in the arbitrary belief that it was safer there than at home.
“I don’t know. I don’t think Claire is aware of its existence.”
“Maybe Tony is.” He stroked his graying goatee. “Well, all right. Never mind. I’m sorry you had to go through this, Jules. I’ll take care of it.”
Julia hesitated. Through two decades of marriage, Lemaster had always promised to take care of whatever problem might arise, and had generally kept his word. She wondered when she had crossed the line from reliance to dependence.
“Thanks, sweetie,” she said. Already back at his laptop, he only smiled.
Julia stepped across the breezeway into the house. Maybe Tice had indeed been after the Vanessa File. Perhaps he represented someone planning to sue them for some offense, yet unknown, that the teenager had committed. But Julia had another explanation, even if she was not prepared to share it with her husband.
Mary Mallard had assumed, erroneously, that Kellen had entrusted his surplus to Julia before he died. There was no reason in the world to suppose Mary was the only one who thought so.
CHAPTER 8
MAIN STREET
(I)
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, two days before Thanksgiving, Julia snuck out of Cookie’s like a thief, carrying candy for gifts to various friends and colleagues. Snuggling at the bottom of the bag was a diet-busting box of cappuccino truffles for herself. Standing in Vera’s shop, she often identified friends according to their tastes: Tonya Montez from Ladybugs was peanut brittle, Iris Feynman from across the hall at Kepler was vanilla fudge, and budget-conscious Boris Gibbs, who spent his own money on less expensive sweets from the CVS but would never turn down a freebie—Boris was smeary, messy chocolate-covered cherries.
Out on Main Street, the day was clear but glowering. Icicles garlanded stores and trees and parking meters. Julia recognized few passing faces, but she was not really looking. She was worrying. Jeannie walked contentedly beside her mother, features swallowed by the fur-lined hood of her pricey parka as, delicately, she popped Jelly Bellys into her mouth. Of course Jeannie was content. She was always content. Unlike her brothers, Jeannie seemed to view her older sister’s weaknesses as an opportunity to showcase her own strengths. The mantle of Clan princess, once draped around Julia’s shoulders—as, back in Harlem of the fifties, it had been draped around Mona’s—had started to slip from Vanessa’s even before the fire. Jeannie seemed to think the mantle her due.
In her dreariest moments, Julia gazed in wonder at her four children, and felt maternal failure staring back at her.
“Hurry up, honey.”
“Why?” Another Jelly Belly.
“Because it’s almost five.”
“So?”
“So, we have to go see Mr. Carrington before he closes.”
“Why?”
Classic Jeannie. In her leisurely way, she was never quite disobedient, but she always wanted reasons. Still, Julia was not about to explain to her youngest that Vera Brightwood, in the midst of one of her poisonous monologues, had let slip that she had seen Mommy’s ex-lover, three days before he died, going into Old Landing, the antiques shop across the street.
Or that he stayed for an hour.
(II)
FRANK CARRINGTON WAS, to Julia’s way of thinking, a typical Landinger: white and sturdy and in town forever. In his day he had been everything from deputy constable to school-bus driver to bartender, before discovering that he had an eye for antiques, or at least a talent for fleecing tourists, and opening Old Landing. The village was a good twelve miles from Elm Harbor. Thanks to the wisdom—or recalcitrance—of the zoning board, the Landing, unlike the other shore towns in the county, had yet to be fully colonized by professionals who commuted to the city. It was full of Frank Carringtons, who simmered with resentment toward the university folks who moved in and raised prices and elected Democrats to the town council, but, at the same time, craved the hard cash they dropped into the till.
“What about him?” said Frank, when Julia had stated her business.
“Was he here?”
“I’m a businessman,” the dealer explained, intonation Yankee-flat. He was winter pale and New England lanky, and wore his tawny hair in a younger man’s style. His shop was long and dark, crowded with antiques, half of them hidden in shadow. “I do business with anybody who walks through that door. Now, some of our merchants up here don’t like minorities. I’m not like that. You know I’m glad you folks are here.”
Yes, she knew, because he told her every time she came in to make some little purchase, or, now and then, some big one.
“We need more minorities,” he announced, in the same tone he might have used to suggest that Pleasant Road needed a stoplight. “All kinds,” he added piously.
Julia, examining a girandole, said nothing.
“How’s Pres?” Frank asked, still punching, because the Landing still marveled over her firstborn. Four years after Preston’s early graduation, the regional high school had not recovered from the discovery that its resident genius was black. Nor had Lemaster, the relationship between father and son forever spoiled, on both sides, by the discovery that the son was the smarter of the pair. “Still doing the Landing proud, I bet!” said Frank, smiling weakly.
&nbs
p; “Preston is fine.”
“Brightest black kid anybody around here ever saw,” he said, meaning it as a compliment. “Now, tell me about the rest of the family.”
Julia refused to be distracted.
“What did he want, Frank?” She glanced at Jeannie, who was standing in the front window, admiring the porcelain Christmas village. A sign warned visitors not to touch, but any minute now, her mother knew, Jeannie would pick up one of the pieces and, possibly, break it. “Kellen Zant. When he was in here. What did he want?”
“Same thing everybody wants. To buy something.”
“He bought something from you? Kellen?”
“Some reason he shouldn’t?”
“What did he buy?”
A moment’s hesitation, as if figuring out how much to charge for the information. Frank was tall but hunched, as if his height was greater than his ambition. His eyes kept straying over Julia’s shoulder, toward Jeannie, who was now kneeling. “Remember that nineteenth-century cheval mirror you looked at last month?”
“Of course.” She also remembered how Frank Carrington had wanted eighteen hundred dollars for it, which was daylight madness.
“He bought it.”
“Kellen bought the cheval? Why on earth would he buy the cheval? Kellen didn’t know squat about antiques.”
“Well, he bought this one.” Puffing up with pride. “Paid full price, too.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense. What would Kellen do with an antique mirror?”
Again Frank’s eyes cut toward Jeannie, who, true to form, had lifted the little train station from its base. She held it close to her face and peeked inside. Rules applied to those less perfect than she. “He said it was a gift.”
“A gift?” A moment’s unreasoning jealousy. “For whom?”
“For you.”
Julia glanced at her daughter, not wanting to be overheard. She actually put a hand on the older man’s arm, drawing him deeper into the gloomy shop. “That’s not funny,” she said.
“It’s not a joke, Julia. He asked me what you liked, and I told him.”
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