Till the End of Tom

by Gillian Roberts

  I’d stay two hours, I decided, then head home and mark those essays that, because of too much wine and talk with Sasha, had not gotten themselves read the night before. For about the millionth time, I wished math were my subject. I bet math teachers spent their evenings enjoying all the books English teachers, stuck marking papers, wish they had time to read.

  But, I promised myself, today I’d zip through them and then I’d move forward with the wedding things, I’d pick an invitation, decide what it should say—except, of course, for where the event would take place, and I’d thereby bring a little sunshine into the bridal bullies’ lives as well.

  Making plans and lists and schedules fills me with energy and optimism. Carrying out the plans, actually doing the work, and being disciplined exhausts me. No fun at all, in fact, but I try to ignore that part of the equation when I’m high on planning, as I was at that moment.

  I was nearly out the door when Liddy Moffat, carrying a mop and pail, shouted, “A minute of your time!” It was not a request but a demand. “What’s up?” I asked when she was near.

  I waited to see what precious item she’d extracted from the trash this time, to hear the lecture on wasting not and wanting not, but her hands remained on the empty bucket’s handle. “Somebody has to do something,” she said gravely.

  “That’s pretty much always true. Want to be more specific?”

  She cleared her throat. “Don’t you get angry or anything.”

  Liddy did not generally concern herself with our potential reactions to her dictates. This, then, was troublesome. “I promise I won’t get angry.” I wondered what cleanliness infraction was this enormous.

  “You think they’re poisoning the kids?”

  I did a classic double take, sure I’d misheard. “Who? What do you mean, poison?” I hoped against hope this was not more Tom Severin aftershock.

  “The cafeteria.” She put down the pail and folded her arms over her chest. “Have there been complaints about the food?”

  “There are always complaints. Why?”

  “Because maybe kids—my girls—are being poisoned, that’s why.”

  “Miz Moffat, I appreciate your concern, but I don’t understand it.”

  She drew herself up taller, holding the mop as if it were a ceremonial sword. “That’s what I thought. Just wanted to be sure. So Miz Pepper, we have ourselves a mess of trouble. It gets fixed, or I leave.”

  And with that, she seemed to have said her piece. I waited, then finally confessed that I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “The vomit,” she said, as if of course I’d understand, as if vomit had been on my mind nonstop all day long.

  I’d thought I knew my problems, but here, Liddy said, was another. One I really did not want on my list of concerns.

  “In particular,” Liddy said, “the ones who don’t bother to get it into the toilet. You know they could. If they’re not dying, or poisoned, then it’s a sign of no respect, is all. I can’t take it no more. There are other jobs. Next time, I’m working in a geriatric ward. Or a boys’ school. Boys don’t do things like that.”

  “Back up. What things? Who’s sick?”

  “Nobody’s sick. If you say no poison, and I believe you—I only thought of that because of that dead man here. I heard on the news last night—”

  “Yes. I understand.” I could not bear one more retelling of yesterday’s news.

  “So I didn’t really think it could be the food, but I didn’t want it to be this stuff, that they’re throwing up on purpose so they won’t get fat. To be honest, I dread the period after lunch. Also makes me want to shake them silly—there’s people starving in this world, and they’re stuffing themselves and tossing it back. Dis-gusting!”

  “Has this been going on for a long time?” I felt like those people at disaster scenes, the people interviewed on TV who say things like, “I knew this happened, but to other people, not to us.” Of course I knew about bulemia and anorexia, about how frighteningly common eating disorders were among teens, how desperately they wanted to look “right,” whatever that meant to them, to fit in. But everyone at school looked so healthy, so normal.

  I felt a shudder of things missed, dangers unsuspected.

  “It isn’t that I’m lazy, or that I don’t know sometimes in my profession, you gotta deal with unpleasantness. But when it comes to people being that inconsiderate, I have my limits.” She planted her sturdy body even more securely, one fist now on her hips, the other still holding the mop like a staff and banner.

  I nodded. “Of course. Well, I’ll see what . . .” What? This was definitely out of my league and in fact, was in a league I didn’t want to join.

  Having vented, Liddy’s instinctive kindness asserted itself. “I don’t want them thrown out or anything. I understand how much they want to stay thin. Well, no. I don’t understand it really, but I know that’s how it is with girls today. Where I grew up, just getting food on the table and not being hungry was the thing. But I’m trying to understand. I just won’t tolerate them missing the bowl, is all.”

  I looked at her, not sure whether to laugh or cry, and most definitely not sure of what to do about this situation. “May I ask why you came to me?”

  She shrugged. “You seem like you care about things. Not everybody does.”

  I was flattered, but even so, it wasn’t as if I could rationally expect help from the administration. I couldn’t even imagine myself going into Havermeyer’s inner sanctum and saying, “We need to talk about vomit.” Did an uglier word than that exist?

  This was emotional, psychological, not academic. That was the counselor’s province, although the divisions were ultimately meaningless. A girl binging and purging, thinking always about what she weighs and what she can or cannot eat and how she’ll get around the chemistry of hunger, can’t devote her attention to learning grammar. A depressed child doesn’t learn, a frightened child doesn’t learn. There is, for better or for worse, a mind-body connection.

  I hoped Rachel Leary, our counselor, would know what a school could and should do in this situation. She had three daughters now herself, and even though two were still in diapers, it was never too soon to think about the problem, because they might grow up to have teachers as oblivious as I’d been.

  Or so I was going to tell her. And then I was going to leave her with the problem, turn my back, and bolt out of her office and away from this entire topic.

  * * *

  Six

  * * *

  * * *

  YO, Plucky!” Ozzie Bright had clipped out a news story and he handed it to me within seconds of my entering the office. “For your scrapbook,” he said. I was touched. Ozzie was a man of a school so old he barely acknowledged that women had entered the workplace. In the several months I’d worked there—for Mackenzie, not Ozzie—he’d barely spoken to me, and then, only when I’d directly addressed him or asked a question. “Thanks,” I said, flattening out my voice, demonstrating that I was not a flighty female ready to burst into tears at this show of consideration. “Gotta get to work now.”

  I’d scored points with Ozzie for that exchange. I always did when I made myself sound like the world-weary, emotionally void private eye in a thirties mystery.

  “It’s a bitch you don’t get paid for the work,” he said. “Freelancing doesn’t mean free, you know.”

  I hadn’t thought of the cup-retrieval as freelancing.

  “But good you mentioned the agency,” he added.

  I hadn’t done that, either. My home phone gives the cell phone number in case of emergency and that, in turn, gives our names as part of the Investigative Office of Ozzie Bright. While Sasha was visiting, I had refused to answer the phone at all last night, couldn’t stand the idea of more wedding agitation, but I had apparently supplied my caller with enough information anyway.

  “Misspelled it though,” Ozzie said before closing the door of his cubicle.

  I looked at the news story. The reporte
r had written “Brite.” First Plucky, then Brite. Strike two.

  I hadn’t done anything here except talk to Mackenzie and run out of the place the day before, and I had stacks of boring but necessary filing on my desk—reports, expense vouchers, printouts—plus bills and statements to prepare. I put the news clipping in my desk drawer and got to work, pausing only to kiss and greet Mackenzie when he showed up. I liked the days when we were both in the same place at the same time, even if we inevitably wound up doing our separate tasks.

  I was preparing a bill for yet another hapless middle-aged man trying to find his first love when I heard the knock on the outer door of the office.

  This does not often happen. Things have changed since the days of noir when the dame with the gams slithered into the office and hired the shamus. Most people phone their orders in because most wants are simple: find the girl I loved in high school; find out if my husband-who-I-know-is-cheating-on-me really is; find my child who has run away; find out who’s stealing inventory or my daughter’s heart or state secrets; find out if this guy’s for real. Photos can be scanned and sent, documents faxed or attached, and much of our work is done without ever meeting the client.

  Visitors these days are mostly delivery boys bringing Ozzie his nightly pizza, but it was too early for that.

  Besides, the door wasn’t locked. I shrugged and went to open it.

  Instead of the acne-scarred pizza boy, I faced a tight-lipped woman in a leather blazer over a white shirt, tailored slacks, and chunky-heeled lizard shoes I immediately coveted. I gestured for her to enter, at which point I was able to see her handbag, which I also coveted. And while we were at it, I wouldn’t have minded the jacket, either. It looked so soft, it was just this side of melting off her.

  “I’m looking for”—she pulled a news clipping, that story again, out of her pocketbook and checked it—“Amanda Pepper.”

  I identified myself, and invited her to sit down. I decided, partly wishful thinking, that she wasn’t from a newspaper. Her wardrobe suggested she had more money than most journalists, and her behavior lacked their self-possessed pizzazz.

  She seated herself and found a paper-free corner of my desk, where she placed and smoothed the news story. “You found him,” she said.

  “If you mean Mr. Severin, yes. And you are?”

  “Penelope Koepple.” It was an awkward name, made more so by her speech, which had a discreetly European flavor, though I couldn’t tell which country had spiced it.

  “How can I help you?” I asked.

  She smoothed the article again, unbuttoned her blazer, and leaned forward. “I believe I have information that might be valuable concerning Mr. Severin’s murder.”

  Forget what I’d said—this was a thirties novel, after all. Unfortunately, I had no homburg and wasn’t fond of mean streets, so I had to behave as if it was actually the present. “If that’s so,” I said, “you need to tell the police.”

  Her expression was stern and direct. I was sure I was supposed to quiver and quake under that fierce stare. “That isn’t possible,” she said. Her features and hair looked die-cut, and everything about her from the head down to those lizard shoes and the accent and modulation in between made it clear she was privileged, educated, and used to fine things. She seemed astounded to find herself here, in a poorly decorated, poorly maintained office. I was pretty surprised to find her here myself.

  “May I get you a cup of coffee?” I asked politely. It didn’t seem proper to mention how awful the house java was.

  She shook her head. “Thank you, but no. If you have tea—perhaps with the smallest dash of cream?”

  I offered up apologies, and thought of how Ozzie would view such a request. She was lucky he was still behind his office door.

  I buzzed Mackenzie. “I’d like my partner to sit in,” I said. “We handle our cases together.” That wasn’t true, but whatever she had to say concerned a murder investigation and those waters were too deep for the likes of me.

  When C.K. appeared, I made the introductions, and he pulled up another chair. “Ms. Koepple was about to explain her problem,” I said.

  “It isn’t my problem,” she corrected me. “Except in that I’m the one who perceives it as a problem.”

  We must have both looked blank because she nodded, as if agreeing that she hadn’t communicated anything clearly. “I am Ingrid Severin’s social secretary,” she said. “For the past fifteen years I have kept her calendar, though these days, in truth, Mrs. Severin requires more in the way of a companion. I still answer her mail, decline invitations on her behalf, and so forth, but Mrs. Severin is in decline, so she spends most of her time in seclusion.”

  I had been wrong about the thirties noir business. We were much further back in history than that. I purposely avoided glancing at Mackenzie to see if he was as entranced and surprised by the arrival at our humble office of a woman out of Jane Austen.

  “I am here, therefore, of my own accord, but on behalf of Mrs. Severin, who doted on her son. However, if Mrs. Severin were to know of this mission of mine, I’m afraid I would be summarily dismissed. This is why I cannot involve the police. If they were to come question us, or in any way make it known that I’d gone to them, it would cost me my position.”

  Judging by her attire and accessories, her position was sufficiently lucrative. Things had improved for the help since Jane Austen’s time.

  “I believe you said you had information related to Tomas Severin’s death,” I prompted.

  She tilted her head. “You didn’t use the word ‘murder.’ Don’t you think he was murdered?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I didn’t know him, and we never had a chance to speak.”

  She held her head high and angled so that she was looking down the tidy slope of her nose at me. “He was drugged, was he not? That can’t have been an accident. Tomas Severin was not a man to risk humiliation with a pitiable street drug. Midday! In the city! Something so low in a man so dignified and respectable. No. Absolutely not. Somebody wanted to humiliate him, to remove his ability to think clearly, make wise decisions.” She shook her head. I coveted her haircut now, shaped so precisely that it swung, all strands synchronized, as she moved. “I believe that there was malicious mischief,” she said, “as I believe anyone would surmise. And further, I believe I know who is responsible.”

  Before I repeated the fact that she was obliged to take this information to the police, I couldn’t resist asking, “And that person is . . . ?”

  “Cornelius Westerly. Or so he calls himself. He’s the type to re-create himself at whim, and I’m sure his actual name is something rather less grand. Less traditional.” She sniffed, regally, and looked from Mackenzie to me.

  This had to be somebody’s idea of a practical joke. Instead of the tough PI talk, give the English teacher an escapee from Sense and Sensibility. Cornelius Westerly indeed!

  “And he is?” C.K. asked.

  “Ingrid Severin’s . . .” She paused and made sure she had our attention. “. . . betrothed. Her fiancé.” She paused for dramatic purposes. “It is worth noting that he is thirty-two years old.”

  My age, and a decade or two younger than Ingrid’s son.

  “Ingrid Severin is seventy-eight,” Penelope Koepple said crisply.

  I could barely squelch an immediate response, a question as to how wealthy—or not—Cornelius Weatherly was. I was sure Ms. Koepple would inform us in time.

  “Are we to take it that the age difference troubles you?” Mackenzie asked mildly.

  Penelope Koepple appeared to be a well-maintained fifty-something, though it was hard to tell, and now she raised her fifty-something well-plucked eyebrows and considered that sufficient reply to Mackenzie’s question.

  “Age disparity is not a crime,” he said in response. “And as they say, love makes for strange bedfellows.”

  She winced when he said “bed.” I was sure he’d chosen his words carefully especially since the saying referred to pol
itics, not lovers, and he knew that. I could feel his growing impatience, his eagerness to get back to actual paying work or to studying. In either case, to stop having his time wasted, and I had to salute his Southern politeness and savvy that hid his emotions from the prospective client.

  “You perhaps don’t comprehend the gravity of the situation,” Penelope Koepple said. “Ingrid Severin fades in and out of lucidity, and she is often rather muddled. Further, as you may know, she is in possession of significant assets, so whatever papers she signs, new wills she makes, deeds she transfers—especially when emotionally diverted, one can’t be certain she actually understands her actions.”

  Money. We were getting to the problem.

  “That includes understanding the nature of love,” Ms. Koepple continued. “The nature of the loved object. It is obvious to everyone except Ingrid that her young man is nothing more than a fortune hunter, but she apparently thinks she is half of the great love story of the century. She has said that it took nearly eighty years for her to find the right one. Although I never met Mr. Severin, senior—he died before I became his widow’s social secretary—he was not, apparently, the most attentive of husbands.”

  “And Cornelius?” Mackenzie murmured.

  “The most attentive of husbands-to-be. At least while he is embroiled in attending the financial aspects of the marriage.”

  “A prenup?”

  “And worse. An altered will, or plans for same. Mr. Severin was quite involved in attempting to prevent the process, and need I say there was strife aplenty? Although Tomas controlled and ran the business once he was of an age to do so, and until, of course, he sold it, Mrs. Severin inherited significant assets when she was widowed, among which are apartment buildings here in center city. I am sure I need not say that we are talking about real estate worth many multiples of millions. I speak on behalf of her legal heirs—Tomas and his children. I should make it clear that I have nothing at stake here. I am simply a concerned friend of the family. And with Tomas gone, the poor addled woman needs someone to speak for her.”