Caught Dead in Philadelphia

by Gillian Roberts

  I read the note. Helga Putnam’s perfect penmanship requested my appearance as soon as school was over.

  * * *

  Sitting rigidly behind her desk, her nose glowing like a signal beam, she greeted me. “Him,” she said, tossing her tight curls to the right.

  “Afternoon,” he said. Under his corduroy jacket, Mackenzie wore a pale blue turtleneck, perfectly color coordinated with his eyes.

  Helga lowered her voice and hissed in my direction. “I’ve told him everything.”

  C.K. dredged himself out of the chair. “We’ll use Dr. H.’s office, okay, Helga?” he said.

  She winced at the irreverent use of her name and her master’s. I’d always thought of the two of them as Victor Frankenstein and Igor in drag. She rushed in before us and cleared the desk of his precious, jargon-laden papers, and then she left.

  I sat down in front of the polished desk. “I feel like a kid with a detention.”

  His eyes were exceedingly blue, even if he hadn’t been wearing that sweater. Blue enough to warrant some of his insufferable self-assurance.

  He walked over to the long, high window facing the park. When he spoke, his voice was melancholy. “Miss Pepper, we have a new problem.”

  “Then I’ll pass. The old one’s enough for me, thanks.”

  “I stand corrected. We have the same problem with a new and puzzling factor. I’d like to go over yesterday’s events one more tahm.”

  “Mackenzie, do you have a learning disability? Nothing’s changed, you know. Just check your notebook. If you’ve got problems with note-taking skills, I can help. I teach that. Otherwise, I’ll be going along. I have work to do.”

  “Miss Peppah, Miss Peppah.” He turned to face me, his long body silhouetted against the afternoon glare. “I do ’preciate your pedagogical responsibilities and rapier-lahk wit. However, I also have work to do. The big difference is that my work gets done first. Get it? So, go over it once again.”

  I controlled a real need to cry in frustration or punch him out and droned my way through the introduction. “…so I tried to call her, but nobody answered, so I went back to my class and—”

  “Stop right there.”

  “Don’t you want to know how I found the body? And how poor Mrs. Steinman took so long on her walker? You loved that part yesterday.”

  “Tastes change. It’s the phone call today.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Miss Helga says Liza was here with you yesterday.”

  I could feel that atavistic blush again. With Mackenzie around to put roses in my cheeks, I’d save a lot of cosmetics. “Oh, God.”

  “The Deity may understand you, Miss Peppah, but I most certainly do not.”

  “This is sort of embarrassing.” I had the distinct feeling I’d used that line with him before.

  “I trust I’m up to handlin’ it.”

  I looked away and did a fast mumble. “I lied yesterday. To Helga. Well, not really a lie. I let her think what she wanted to. I never said that Liza was in the building. I just said I’d give her a message when I saw her. Which, I swear, I really hoped would be any minute.”

  “Ah,” he said. He sucked in his bottom lip and ruminated. He seemed to think about as slowly as he spoke.

  “What you’d call a little white lie, is that it? Not a nasty, real lie, because you didn’t say the words.”

  He leaned over me. The scent of his after-shave stirred irrelevant emotions. “I hate games,” he said without expression. Then he moved away, sat down in Havermeyer’s chair, and put his feet up on the sacred desk. “Ah, you probably get that way bein’ around kids all day,” he said.

  “Wait a minute! The kids—the kids you’ve been talking to—didn’t they tell you Liza was absent?”

  “Sure did. Anyway, I knew it before I got here.”

  So much for self-control. Maybe Mackenzie drummed up business by driving people to violence. I exhaled, and my breath was steaming. “You say you hate games? Then what do you call what you just did?” I stood up. “Good day, Officer,” I said with all the outraged dignity I could muster.

  “Sit down,” he said, and I did. I even stayed quiet, which feat should have proved that I am not the kind to murder on impulse. “Liza couldn’t be here for class because she died between one and two yesterday afternoon. During your lunch hour or right when class started. But she might have come to school before her class. You might have met up with her in your room.”

  “But I said—”

  “You’ve said lots of things. And they’re confusin’. You’re a confusin’ person. And a person who lives a few minutes away by car. You could have gone home without her or with her, become angry, pushed her against that fireplace, panicked, and left again. I understan’ you usually spend that hour in the teachers’ lounge, but not yesterday.”

  “Because I stopped smoking, and I didn’t want to be around—”

  “You could go home and be back here in time for class.”

  “You make me sound like a professional assassin! Don’t you need a motive?” I began to doubt my own innocence. I must be guilty to be treated this way.

  He shrugged. “It’ll appear. Eventually.”

  “Listen, talk to Gus Winston. I had lunch with him. And then I saw him when I went down to the office. I’m sure he’ll remember.”

  “He has. So what? There were about forty minutes in between. Anyway, why’d you find it necessary to leave your class unattended and go to the office?”

  “To call Liza. To remind her where she should be. I was understandably furious. She’d done this before.”

  He pulled his feet off the desk and leaned toward me. “Let’s get this straight. You were angry with her, but at the same time you lied—white lie or what have you—to protect her?” He shook his head sadly. “Furthermore, it’s mah impression you called Fargo, North Dakota, not your home.”

  “Helga Putnam is so worried we’ll abuse the office—use up too many pencils or rubber bands or ditto masters, or make toll calls—that I said ‘Fargo’ just to hear her gasp. It was a joke.”

  “Or a sure-fahr way to make her remember where you were, then.”

  “Like an alibi?” I couldn’t believe this. “Do you really think I killed Liza Nichols?”

  He stood up to leave. He turned back to me when he reached the door, and he looked depressed. “I really think, Miss Peppah, that you ask too many questions and you don’t give nearly enough answers.”

  Five

  Mackenzie left me alone. Maybe he hoped I’d take a cyanide tablet and lighten his caseload.

  I listened to the end-of-day noises in the outer office. Someone ran the duplicating machine. Someone laughed and dropped a ring of jangling keys.

  I spent seven minutes feeling sorry for myself, wishing I could retroactively cancel my decision to stop smoking. If my habit had only persisted one day longer, if I had only inhaled one user-friendly cigarette in the teachers’ lounge on Monday, at alibi time, I wouldn’t be on my way to the gallows. I never realized that not smoking could kill you, too.

  But seven minutes of rewriting history is long enough. There were no more sociable noises coming from outside Havermeyer’s stuffy office. Just the occasional taps of Helga Putnam’s typewriter.

  Luckily, my eleventh-grade class had completed The Scarlet Letter a few weeks earlier, and Hester Prynne was fresh on my mind. If she could walk the streets wearing her scarlet A, then I could face Igor out there.

  Helga eyed me slyly, lowering one eyelid, pursing her lips with distaste for my dastardly deeds, but I held my head high and glided toward the telephone. How inspiring, how useful, the classics could be.

  I wasn’t going to wait in the suburbs while Mackenzie shuffled and bumbled around. He didn’t seem too swift, and even with great detectives, there were cases that dragged on forever. This was going to be one of them if Mackenzie kept focusing on me. Meanwhile, I was getting back to my normal life. I dialed Beth’s number.

  “I�
�m staying home tonight,” I told her. “I love you and appreciate all you want to do, but home’s much easier and more convenient.”

  Beth made major use of words like “dangerous” and “foolish.” But Beth had always considered anything urban to be blighted.

  “Beth, thank you. I know you care, but if nothing else, I have to feed Macavity.”

  Back in my deserted classroom, I gathered up a textbook and the pile of sympathy notes I’d take to Liza’s mother. I straightened the window shades, convincing myself I had not been the murderer’s target. My house was no more than an unfortunate setting. I was therefore in no danger.

  My room looked in order. I opened my pocketbook to get my car keys—one of my self-defense lessons was always to have keys ready before needed.

  And then I saw it.

  “Damn!” I’d forgotten the package, the bear, the five-hundred-dollar gift for “honey.” Mackenzie would be thrilled anew to find me withholding evidence.

  * * *

  Liza’s mother lived in an area that hadn’t yet been declared chic and resold at ten times its original price. The row homes, three white steps up from the sidewalk, were not ornamented with window boxes and shutters in authentic colonial hues, as were those on my street. Instead, turquoise-and-white aluminum awnings hung over front doors, and in a few instances, imitation stone facing was inexplicably plastered over the original brick.

  The street was crowded. In my neighborhood, people leave when they reproduce. Our tiny quarters are too small to house several affluent middle-class generations. But here, where the houses were no larger, no such philosophy reigned. I drove carefully, avoiding balls, skates, hockey pucks, and small bodies. I found a space near Mrs. Nichols’s house and rang her doorbell, a bouquet of early tulips and the packet of sympathy notes in my free hand.

  The woman who opened the door had an ample figure, but she looked deflated nonetheless.

  “Is Mrs. Nichols in? I’m Amanda Pepper and I—”

  “Come in, Amanda, come in. I’ve wanted so to meet you.” She made sociable gestures of welcome, leading me toward a long brocaded sofa that filled one wall of the small living room. “So pretty,” she said of the flowers. “Sit down, sit down. So nice to finally meet Liza’s best friend, and—” And then her voice liquefied and I could feel recent events flood back into her consciousness. She looked confused and fumbled for words, shook her head, and hurried into another room with the flowers.

  I looked down at my hands, embarrassed again by the “best friend” label.

  Mrs. Nichols returned, settling on a stiff, ornate chair next to the television console. The furniture looked plucked in toto from a late-night commercial. The matching brocaded sofa and chairs were draped with crocheted antimacassars, the marble-topped occasional tables, covered with photographs, ashtrays, “conversation pieces,” coasters, and lamp bases that were porcelain ladies-in-waiting from one of the Louis’s courts. Every busy inch was shining, immaculate, and loved.

  “I came to say how sorry I am. I brought notes from the class, her students. I wish I knew what else to say.”

  “Amanda,” Mrs. Nichols said forcefully, “I know. I understand. I—I feel sorry for you, too.” She sniffed and ran a puffy hand over her eyes. She was a small, plump woman, and hints of Liza’s beauty were still evident inside her puffed features. “I know you had nothing to do with it.” She shook her blue-gray hair. “I told them that.” She pulled a crumpled tissue out of her dress pocket. “I told them.”

  “Who?”

  “The police. Those detectives. A skinny black man and a big white one. They came last night, to—” her voice dwindled to a whisper—“to…tell me.” She closed her eyes, then blew her nose. “The white one came this morning again. To ask me…things…about…my baby!” She buried her head in her hands, the tissue pressed to her face.

  I went over and crouched by her side, holding her arm until the sobbing stopped. When she spoke again, her voice quavered. “It doesn’t make sense. Who would hurt my baby? Do you know? You were so close, the two of you.”

  I winced. “I don’t know, Mrs. Nichols. I don’t know.”

  “I was so happy when you two became friends, when she started staying with you. I always wanted the best for her. She stayed with good families, rich families, important people, when I worked for them. She lived in their houses, ate their food, wore the same clothing. You couldn’t tell her apart from their children. She belonged there. She always belonged there.”

  My legs were cramping, and I stood up. Mrs. Nichols grabbed my hand. “You understand?” she demanded. “You understand?”

  I nodded, although I didn’t understand at all.

  Her voice became dreamy. “I used to watch the children in the neighborhood, and I could tell, right from the beginning, that Liza didn’t belong here. She was different, special. When she got so wild in high school, it broke my heart. And then, the acting, and wanting to go to New York, and—” she brushed something imaginary away with her hand—“and then, look, it all started happening the right way. Like magic. Like I always dreamed. Engaged to Hayden Cole and…”

  Mrs. Nichols was deep, deep inside that old dream of hers. She smiled proudly, and I knew she had momentarily forgotten again. And then she looked around the crowded room as if something had leaped out of a corner, and her face collapsed. She stood up and leaned against the television console. Its top was covered with framed pictures of Liza. Some were ads cut from slick magazines. Some were fuzzy snapshots of a young Liza. Mrs. Nichols touched the silver frame of her daughter’s engagement portrait. “She was beautiful,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  She walked over to the sofa, near me. “The police, they asked if anything was bothering her. Why?”

  “I think it’s just something they ask in these situations.”

  “How could she be troubled? She was marrying Hayden Cole! She was going to be a senator’s wife, maybe something even more someday. She was going to live in a mansion. Is that something to bother a girl? Since the day she was born, since her father ran out on us, I’ve worked every day to get back her real place in life. I gave her speech lessons, dance lessons. I never let her feel she was a little girl whose daddy ran away with a cheap—who didn’t care if we had a cent or a way to live like decent people. It was all for her. For Liza.”

  I understood why Liza didn’t find it easy to talk to her mother. The woman had decided how the world worked a long time ago, and how to make it work for her, and she wouldn’t have been interested in any of her daughter’s opposing theories. She cataloged half a dozen more special lessons given her daughter. Modeling, singing, on and on. It reminded me of geisha training.

  “Of course, she was high-strung,” Mrs. Nichols said. “Especially lately. But all brides get cold feet. If she’d had any important worries, I would have known. We were very close. You must know that.”

  I had a sudden painful realization of how far apart we all stand from one another, how single-minded we all must be in what we want and what we choose to see.

  “Mrs. Nichols, you must be exhausted.” And if she wasn’t, I was. “You should be resting. I just wanted to express my sympathy. Is there anything I can do to help you through this?”

  “You aren’t leaving?” She looked terrified. “Let me fix you something. Coffee, tea, please?”

  So I followed her into the tiny kitchen that was really a side slice of the dining room. It was decorated with the same heavy hand as the living room. The toaster was covered by a gingham rooster with a skirt. The salt-and-pepper shakers were a ceramic angel and devil. Magnets shaped like bananas and pears held a calendar and notes to the refrigerator.

  Mrs. Nichols busied herself with the kettle. “It’s so awful. Things go on like normal, as if nothing had happened. The mail comes, a check for a job she did. A phone call. Her answering service. I don’t know what to do with it, I feel bad throwing it away, just like that….” She turned on the water tap and filled
the kettle.

  There was a small pile of mail on the table, all addressed to Liza, all opened. I had a good theory as to why Liza had her personal mail, or packages, sent to school, not home.

  The calendar on the refrigerator was a sad witness to change. The future was all arranged in its small white squares. Tonight, Tuesday, had a notation: Dinner—H—7:00 P.M. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all had “PPH”—Philadelphia Playhouse, I assumed, inked across the bottom of the squares. There were more notes and notices for Liza behind magnetic grapes and plums, chickens and cows: “Special rehearsal, Saturday A.M.,” a list, ripped from a magazine, of “good, moderately priced wines,” and, farthest from the calendar, a longer missive signed “Mom.”

  “Liza,” it said, “I’ll be back around 6. Ans. Serv. called—call agency, maybe job Wed.? Also Winnie—call back.”

  Winnie? As in a little gold bear? Somebody called Winnie, not “honey”?

  “I know I have to throw things away,” Mrs. Nichols said, “but I can’t. It feels too…”

  I put cups and placemats on the dining room table. “Mrs. Nichols, who is Winnie?”

  She shrugged and seated herself. “A friend. She had so many. I never met most of them. Models, teachers, the Coles’ friends. Why?” But she didn’t really require an answer.

  We sat in a tiny dining room heavy with furniture scaled for another setting. The whole house felt squeezed, condensed, as if Mrs. Nichols had stocked up for bigger, better days.

  Mrs. Nichols reminisced about the past, her face softening as she spoke about the young Liza.

  A clock in the living room went through an elaborate chiming tune, and Mrs. Nichols glanced at her watch. “Oh, my,” she said, “I didn’t realize how long I was talking. I’ll just tidy these,” she said, gathering up our cups. “Mr. Winston will be here soon.”

  “Gus?”

  Mrs. Nichols nodded.

  It was as natural for Gus to pay a condolence call as it was for me. More so. He had dated Liza, and he had worked and acted with her.

  Winnie? Nobody had ever called Gus Winston that in my hearing. But it would be like Liza to rename him on her own and think it was cute. Still. A five-hundred-dollar trinket? A love gift?