They parted in the parking lot. The other car was gone, and Lucinda had not seen Thea on the way down. Did she go off with Jay somewhere?
Lucinda drove the eight miles back to the farm and headed for the barn to collect Catcher. She always brought him to live in the farmhouse after the first serious snow, trying to make him a house cat until at least late March. That usually failed, and he was back in the barn by late January.
She let herself into the dark, cold farmhouse and turned up the thermostat while Gabriel sniffed Catcher all over and complained about the imposition. After a dinner of things plucked randomly from the fridge, she went to her bedroom to read. She noticed it right away — the wall over the bed was empty.
First Kiss
“He’s maneuvering to get into your britches,” Lucinda said, unfastening the girth on the left side, then the right, and pulling off the saddle and saddle pad. Lady Grey was recovering well from being tied to a wall twenty-two hours a day listening for the race bells to ring, their piercing sound charging her up with no way of letting it off. Lucinda stroked her neck, pleased the mare accepted being groomed in the crossties now — she’d initially pulled back against the leads clipped to her halter, eye whites showing — and stood at ease in the aisle outside her stall.
Thea took the saddle and pad from Lucinda and laid it over the blanket rack outside the mare’s stall.
“You don’t have a clue about Jay. About us. You’re just — ” Thea said.
“Yes. Believe me. I do,” Lucinda said emphatically. So Thea hadn’t heard about her affair, Lucinda realized, or ignored the fact of it. “I’ve seen him in action.”
“He’s going to take me to the UK on spring break to groom for him. That’s all. Plus I get to tag along when he goes to the horse sales.”
“He’s been here day and night since Tori’s been in Florida. And pretty late too.”
Lucinda wiped the mare’s back with a towel. She’d developed a saddle-shaped sweat mark from working in the indoor despite the December weather. Not that her training session was taxing, but this whole world of under saddle work at the walk, trot, and halt made the mare anxious, like the other shoe would drop, the bell would ring, she’d have to run until it felt like her heart would burst. But after her first session with her new trainer, Holly Spear, Lucinda felt the mare beginning to relax a bit.
“He’s excited about Kildaire. He’s been showing me DVDs of his jumper shows,” Thea said.
“He goes for a good horse, I don’t doubt that. But he wouldn’t be hanging around day and night if Tori were here. When’s she due back?”
“Another week. After she cleaned up in her division they begged her to stay and do a series of clinics.” Thea gave the mare’s mane a quick pass with a brush.
“What about Caitlin?”
“She’s basically put Kildaire in Jay’s hands until the summer. She’s spending the winter on the show circuit in Florida with her other horses.”
“How convenient,” Lucinda said. “For him.”
Their eyes met over the mare’s back. Thea stood her ground, folding her arms over her polar fleece jacket. “He’s just very sweet. No harm in that.”
Lucinda finished wiping the mare’s back, then dried the wet spots behind her ears where the headstall of the bridle had lain.
“Thea, just be careful. I know it’s your life and you should pick your own… eh, friends. But don’t let him dazzle you, ok? He’s charming now, but he’ll turn selfish. Then nasty. You don’t believe me now, but I have to tell you anyway. Enough said.”
Lucinda reached for a hoof pick and a finishing brush from her grooming caddy.
“No, he won’t!” Thea replied, storming off to the tack room.
“No, he won’t,” Lucinda said softly to the mare. “Not if I can help it.”
* * * * *
Well, at least it was something to go on. A snippet Martin passed along to Tori that he’d been to a show of Bart’s at some gallery downtown where he’d actually been spotted at the opening. What was it? Rapid Fire? Shutter Bug? It was easy enough to search the Internet for it. Rapid Shutter popped up right away from a search under Bart Beck. And the show was still on.
Before Tori left for Florida she extracted a promise from Lucinda to visit Martin, who she felt was spending way too much time shut up alone with the eagle. Lucinda took the opportunity to pump him for more information on Bart.
“How was he?” Lucinda asked. How did he look?” She’d let herself into the Bentley mansion when the front door was left unanswered and found Martin on the sun porch.
“It was hard to tell. He’d been drinking and was being idolized by the crowd as if he were the new messiah of the camera. But he looked lost to me. Hey, ’course I’m one to talk. Spend all day keeping watch over a bird.”
As Tori suspected, Martin had camped out on that porch since she left. There was a balled up down sleeping bag on the couch. They looked right together, thought Lucinda — broken eagle, broken businessman. Soaking in the weak sun. Mending.
* * * * *
She drove south toward the city while the blurry sun struggled to free itself from the clouds like skeins of blue-gray wool piled on top of the treeline. She’d already booked a late lunch appointment at a bistro with an alumna donor, a friend of Bettina Collins, for an update on the arts program expansion. After that she’d hunt down that gallery and see what she could find out.
“It looks fabulous, Lucinda,” Della Barardi said after Lucinda showed her the layouts and their food orders were taken. “I’ve been waiting for Peabody to get serious about its studio art program. I didn’t think it would happen with this new guy. Wickes, is it? Seemed like one of those I-know-better-because-I’m-from-the-corporate-world guys.” She winked at Lucinda. “I don’t expect you to respond to that one, by the way. Come rushing to your boss’s defense like a loyal employee. How’s your father doing? I hear he went off to the wilds of New Hampshire.”
Lucinda smiled and sipped her lemon water. When Della talked, she always got a barrage of questions from which to choose.
“He’s having a great time now. He says wind speeds once reached more than 230 miles an hour at the meteorological station on Mt. Washington. Two-thirty-one to be exact. Highest recorded wind speed on Earth, he brags. The lichen he studies is a little ways down from the summit.”
“I’m surprised it hasn’t all blown off.” Della chuckled, 18k white gold chains glinting at her neck. “My son took classes from your father and enjoyed them immensely. Changed majors because of him.”
Before they parted, Della said, “I’m pledging another $250,000 for the renovations. You’ll see my check by the thirty-first.”
Normally that would have made Lucinda’s afternoon, especially coming out of the blue as it did, but Lucinda found herself focused more on Rapid Shutter as she almost ran to the gallery from the subway stop. When she paused on the sidewalk in front of the gull shot, people passed her in front and behind. Someone on her left said “Amazing, eh?”, but when she turned, there was no one there. She let herself into the gallery.
The photos were even better than the ones at the farmhouse. He’d been busy in the six months since he’d moved out. Or had he been working on these for years when he was doing his well-paying catalog gigs? Bart had dreamed of an exhibition like this for more than a decade.
“May I assist you?” a man inquired. He wore black rectangular eyeglass frames and a burgundy cashmere sweater.
“I’m actually looking for the photographer. Can you give me his address?”
The man sized her up. “He lives north of here.” He waved a hand like he was shooing away a fly. “Newcester or Plumcliff.”
“Does he have a more local address?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Family,” she said. She was sure “wife” would clam him up.
“We don’t give that information out,” he said. “If you want to leave something for him, I’ll be sure he gets it.”
“Let him know that Lucinda Beck was looking for him.”
“Sister?”
“No.”
Lucinda moved off to examine the photos more closely. In each one he’d found a way to blend sea and land, reflections of sky, water, clouds, or ice. Each one too had some surprising pop of color. Reflected in the gull’s eye in the marquee photo there was an upside down boat — bottom painted bright yellow — up on a dock. In another, a hubcap settled into the intertidal zone on the beach, its concave side filmed with ice off which glazed a hot pink ray of rising sun. In another, a child’s blue mitten was caught, as if in a washing machine, in the curling foam of a wave racing toward a jetty. Over the back of another gull, the bright magenta orb of a beach plum swelled. Momentarily, she forgot where she was.
She sat down on a bench under another large photograph. It was taken at the same spot at Granite Point beach where Jay first kissed her. The same cliff with those twin birch trees about to lose their foothold but never do, the rock-studded sand, and a bright green beer bottle corralled by floating seaweed. This one had a sold sticker on it. The price $3,000.
The bench paralleled the street, and for a while she watched the lower legs and shoes passing the gallery. Some stopped. A few people entered the gallery, breezed around, and left.
She remembered that first kiss. Jay’s tongue hot, sharp in her mouth. He was taller than her and narrower than Bart, and his hip bones jabbed her through her riding breeches. He smelled of musky cologne and the sweet waxy scent of a horse’s shampooed mane. She felt blood rushing and for a moment could not feel her feet touching the sand. After a length of time she couldn’t measure, he unfolded his arms from over her back, waist, and rear and bit her lip teasingly before releasing her.
This was her first memory of that kiss without the surge of pleasure and dislocation it usually unleashed. Now she remembered it as the time he first injected her with some venom that wouldn’t kill her but from which she would struggle to free herself. To regain herself.
She lowered her head between her knees and wretched. Nothing came out, but she alarmed the gallery tender, who came rushing over with a towel.
“Are you sick?” he asked.
“No, I just got a little dizzy. Really, I’m ok.”
“We’re closing soon,” he warned. It was quarter to five.
“Excuse me,” said a woman approaching the man. “I’d like to buy the mitten one.”
Lucinda studied the woman’s face for a few seconds. After the spare photographs, she struck Lucinda as full of color. Heat. In her early thirties, Lucinda guessed, then turned away quickly and watched the feet passing outside.
The gallery tender ushered the customer away to make the transaction. Lucinda’s eyes slid back up the wall to the beer bottle, watching it for some slight movement of the tide.
Orion
Aden placed a wooden bowl of tossed salad on the table next to the takeout pizza box. Should I offer wine? Or is that too familiar? Too coupley? He knew Lucinda liked good wine, as did he. But here in his apartment, with no one around to chaperone him but an egomaniac dachshund, he didn’t think it wise.
It was getting harder and harder to deny his feelings for Lucinda. Would he put his job on the line to bring Frank down if it didn’t also involve saving Lucinda’s job and reputation? Hiding behind Japanese screens for chrissake? He’d like to think ethics was at least half of it, but he wasn’t sure whether they actually could bring Frank down or whether it was the right thing to do. Bottom line was he just couldn’t stomach the thought of Lucinda getting crushed after all they’d been through in the last eight years and all she’d done for P-H.
But she kept suggesting they meet at places other than on campus. Was she perhaps open to considering… .no way, he thought. Even on the remote chance there was interest, neither of us would be able to do our jobs if that happened. And technically, she was still married.
Gretel sprang off her green tartan dog bed straight toward the door, barking with the ferocity necessary to repel a pack of timber wolves on the other side. Aden checked the mirror by the door before he opened it. He’d forgotten to change out of his work clothes, except for removing his tie and jacket. Just as well. He opened the door.
“What’s wrong?” he said, all thoughts of his own desires quelled in the face of Lucinda’s appearance. She slumped against the doorframe, favoring her right leg, then she limped in and lowered herself carefully into a chair at the dining room table.
“It’s nothing. Well, nothing really.” She settled her right foot on another chair. “I guess it’s sprained.” She touched her ankle and grimaced.
“What happened? And why do you have pine needles in your hair?” He stepped forward and plucked a few out. Watch it with touching her hair. Then he noticed the pine pitch above her ear.
“There was an icy patch on Babson Road. You know the place that curves into the woods? A car in the other lane hit the ice and just came sliding right at me. I jerked the car to the right and ended up half on the shoulder and half on an incline. When I crawled out the passenger side and stood up, I was kind of dazed and took a step back, twisting my ankle in a groundhog burrow, and then kinda fell into a tree.”
“Who was driving?” Warren, no doubt.
“That’s the kicker. The street light is out there and the car didn’t stop.”
“Why didn’t you call?
“My phone is out of juice. I thought I’d just come here anyway. I wanted food.” She looked up at him and smiled.
She’s so damn appealing. She’d changed from a work suit into black jeans, a charcoal grey sweater, and silver teardrop earrings. There was a smudge of dirt along her left jaw but her eyes dazzled violet, which he’d noticed they tended to do at night in lamplight. Gretel sniffed the black suede sneaker on her left foot by the table leg.
“She smells groundhog,” Lucinda said running her index finger in the crease of the dome of Gretel’s head.
“You need ice,” Aden said, heading for the freezer. He returned with an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel, handed it to her, and pulled up another chair.
The icing session complete, they ate their salad and pizza. Aden served seltzer water.
“Ok,” Aden said. “I ran a query on recent hundred-thousand-dollar donors, and Frank’s splitting this kind of gift between either general operating or business school and calling a thousand of it ‘endowment.’ Hah! The gifts are going in under Jennifer’s old log-in. She’s changed her log-in by the way. My guess is that he’s banking on us not paying attention to those details. But how is he going to make up the difference once he ‘reimburses’ Warren for his services?”
Aden handed her the query report showing the information he’d pulled on the donations.
“And why is he obsessed with his corporate buddies to the exclusion of the alumni and the foundations?” Lucinda asked.
Aden popped up from his chair at the table. “I almost forgot dessert!” He stepped into the kitchen, started his coffee maker, and returned with a checkerboard cake.
“Courtesy of Mrs. Whipple. Another advantage of living here.”
Lucinda was in the middle of her second bite of rich chocolate and vanilla cake when an idea bubbled up.
“How about this?” she said. “Frank gets one or more of his corporate buddies to make up the difference as part of a much bigger gift paid off in pledges, not all of which comes to the college to be recorded. Some of the money comes to him under the table, which he uses to pay off Warren, and the college never sees the full total donated.”
Aden squinted at her, with his fork raised, trying to poke a hole in her theory. “But what do the companies get in return for this?”
“That’s the next question.”
“I wonder what Margo’s role is? If anything. She and Frank sure are tight,” said Aden.
“She’s always been ambitious,” Lucinda said.
Aden smiled, wondering, as he glanced back in her direction, whether Lucinda, w
ho was admiring her slice of cake, realized the extent of her own ambition.
“This cake is tremendous,” she said. She met his gaze.
“Maybe Margo’s bucking for Vice President,” Aden said.
“Not another one after my job.”
“No, administration or operations, I’d guess.” He pushed his empty dessert plate away. “Maybe she just likes the attention after dealing with Ben, who never did like bombast. And now she gets all those cozy tête-à-têtes at the president’s mansion. And has the president’s attention. Maybe she’s after him.”
“Or the perks of having his ear. Or maybe there’s something funky going on with admissions.”
Aden considered. “You mean like that list I showed you before we went over to the Weld’s — how the art student applications were down? What is up with that? Maybe she’s… .” Aden paused and Lucinda jumped in.
“So Frank tells Margo to let in the kids, nephews, and nieces of corporate principals and buddies. Kids who probably wouldn’t be top-tier competitive.”
“I’d think they’d want more than that.”
“Well, buying your way in is a fairly big deal, but maybe you’re right. And Margo is definitely getting something.”
“Is it time to go to Honor with this?” Aden wondered.
“No. We’re still mostly in the land of speculation. Do you think Warren’s been paid yet?”
“No,” Aden said. Gretel watched the conversation from her bed, her ear cocked to the door. “That donor bash coming up next weekend at the mansion, perhaps we can do more poking around there. Get some drinks into people. Warren will be at his rehearsal dinner and — ”
“Yeah. And then next week I have to give Frank the update on those out-of-thin-air donations he wants me to hustle by Valentine’s Day.”
She paused and shifted her ankle in the chair, wincing. Aden jumped up to fetch a small throw from his couch. Wordlessly, he placed it under her ankle and she smiled at him.
“Thanks. Look, here’s what I figure,” Lucinda said. “If we go to Honor now, the whole thing is easily doctored and covered over and hushed. Frank won’t be accused of anything but using an unethical corporate-style reward structure to motivate his favorite fundraiser. Honor will slap him on the wrist, and he’ll continue trying to replace me and doing whatever other thing he’s really doing. We have to prove he’s diverting a significant amount of money and tie him to bigger, badder things.”
Halt at X: A North of Boston Novel Page 13
