The Sugar House

by Laura Lippman

  Sarah Whittaker, seated in a black Boston rocker, still in her white, high-necked gown, could have been an illustration from some nineteenth-century children’s book. Except for the hair on her face, of course.

  “Where am I?” Tess asked her.

  “Persephone’s Place.”

  “Does it have another name?”

  “I call it hell on earth, but I’ve heard other people call it lots of things.”

  “The Wedding Cake, the Gingerbread House?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Sugar House?”

  Her features puckered. Hers was such a small face, so shrunken and gaunt, her expressions were tiny, too. “That’s a new one. But I like it. The Sugar House.”

  “Is it a school, as the woman told me, or a clinic?”

  “Both.” Sarah hugged herself, not as if she were cold, but as if she were enjoying a private joke at someone’s expense. “And you’ve got everyone discombobulated. You’ve disrupted the schedule. Breakfast is at eight on Sundays, but they can’t bring us out of our rooms until you’re gone. They could bring us trays, but that’s antithetical to the treatment. We have to learn to eat like normal people, which means letting other people watch. The compulsives, especially. We have two of those right now. Bulimia. How tacky. You’d never catch me sticking my finger down my throat.”

  “You’re anorexic.”

  The girl wasn’t impressed by Tess’s insight. “That’s easy enough to see, isn’t it?”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Three months.”

  “I’m looking for a girl who might have been here over a year ago. Has anyone been here that long?”

  “Doubtful. Three months is the average, in fact.” Sarah got out of the rocking chair and walked over to the window where she had been keeping vigil when Tess first saw her. “I’m considered quite pathological. Much worse than my cousin. She came home cured.” She permitted herself a tiny giggle. “Like bacon.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last summer.”

  Which could be right, if Jane Doe was here in the months just before she died. A long shot, but it was all she had, all she was going to get.

  “And your cousin’s name is—”

  “Devon, Devon Whittaker.”

  “Where’s your cousin now?”

  Before she could answer, the auburn-haired housemother yanked open the door.

  “This is not a public area, miss.” Her mechanical voice buzzed with anger. “I’m sorry, but you must not wander around the premises. It’s upsetting to our girls. Please come back downstairs until your friend arrives.”

  “Miss Hollinger—” Miss Hollinger. The name was for Tess’s benefit, and she dutifully filed it away. Sarah kept her face toward the window, but her voice was sweet and plaintive. “It’s almost Christmas. Do you think I’ll be allowed to go home? The family is going to Guadeloupe soon, as we do every year. All the cousins, I mean, even Devon. She made the honor roll at Penn, did I tell you that? Everyone’s so proud of her.”

  “Well, that depends on you, doesn’t it, Sarah? If you make the right choices, the kind of choices Devon made last year, you’ll have a lovely Christmas.”

  Sarah did not turn around, did not acknowledge in any way the help she had given Tess, just stood in her window, looking across the bay. The light shown through her white gown, and Tess could see the dark hair along her arms and back. Lanugo. Sister Anne and Bluebeard, all rolled into one. She hoped this frail child would make the right choices, the ones that would allow her to leave this place in a stronger, sturdier body.

  But she feared spring might never come for this particular Persephone.

  chapter 14

  ONLY WHITNEY PROFESSED TO BE SURPRISED WHEN Tess began developing the symptoms of a raging head cold within hours of her impromptu bay swim.

  “Getting your head wet in cold weather doesn’t cause colds,” Whitney proclaimed the next morning. Proclaimed, it should be noted, over the phone, intent on keeping herself at a safe distance from whatever germ Tess carried. “That’s the oldest of old wives’ tales.”

  “Yes, but a wet head, wet feet, and wet internal organs when the temperature is in the forties—don’t you think that could make one the teensiest bit ill?” Tess was irritated, and frustrated. How could her body let her down when she was so close to finding Jane Doe?

  “All in your head,” Whitney insisted.

  “Of course it’s in my head. It’s a head cold.”

  “Get lots of rest,” Whitney said, as if this were a revolutionary piece of advice. “And eat a lot. Feed a cold, starve a fever.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s the exact opposite.”

  “Okay, then do that.”

  As it happened, Tess did neither. She ate as she always ate—heartily, happily—while discovering that technology made it almost too easy to work from one’s sickbed. Crow, who was temping in Kitty’s store for the holiday rush, left her Monday morning with a mug of cocoa and her laptop. By 10:30 A.M., she had exhausted the garden-variety directories in trying to track down a current phone number for Devon Whittaker. She had several numbers for other Philadelphia Whittakers, but she was too stuffed up to bluff her way through phone calls to people who might or might not be relatives. They’d think they were getting obscene phone calls from Donald Duck.

  Tess then searched the online archives of the Philadelphia papers, looking for the name Whittaker. The surname was there, it was all over the place, in the benign, bland bits that made up the society pages, but she couldn’t find it attached to Devon. By lunchtime—a scorched but well-intentioned grilled cheese from Kitty—she conceded defeat and made a snuffly call for help to Dorie Starnes, one of the robber barons of the Information Highway. There was no freight that Dorie couldn’t highjack, but she charged dearly for her black-market goods, especially if speed was required.

  A restless Tess had progressed from bed to sofa when Dorie arrived the next day. Her cold was now mostly in her chest, leaving her with a wet, slushy cough and a wonderfully husky, Lauren Bacall voice.

  “I wish I could lie around on the sofa when I was sick,” Dorie said.

  “You can,” Tess rasped. “You’re the one who works for a corporation, the one with paid sick leave and medical. I’m self-employed, and pay for my own health insurance.”

  “I run my own business, too.”

  “From your office at the Beacon-Light.”

  Dorie shrugged. She reminded Tess of a robin, with her round, full torso and ruffled, cowlicky hair. “They get what they pay for.”

  Esskay wandered out of the bedroom and began circling excitedly at the sight of a guest. Dorie, who wasn’t much taller than she was wide, held her ground, putting out a tentative hand. “Nice doggie,” she said, fingers tapping the top of Esskay’s skull the way someone else might dribble a basketball. Luckily, Esskay wasn’t fussy about human contact, as long as she got some. She returned contentedly to bed. It had disrupted Esskay’s routine, having Tess at home during the day. When left alone in the apartment, Esskay was used to moving freely from bed to sofa and back again, and now here was Tess taking up her space, throwing little bits of tissue around.

  “Ready?” Dorie asked. Tess was one of the few customers that Dorie didn’t exact payment from before she spoke. Suspicious of computers, hostile toward paper, she worked from her own memory, which she claimed was impeccable. “Devon Whittaker is a student at Penn—”

  “I knew that. I told you that.”

  Dorie didn’t acknowledge Tess had spoken. “—but she lives off campus, in an apartment. She’s nineteen years old and her phone number is unlisted.”

  “But you got it.”

  “I couldn’t charge these prices if I didn’t.” She recited it, wincing slightly when Tess wrote it down.”

  Tess didn’t ask how Dorie had gotten the number. Don’t ask-don’t tell was the cornerstore of their working relationship. She suspected Dorie used the Beacon-Light’s commercial
side to run credit checks on people, which was definitely illegal. Besides, even if Dorie’s methods were within the law, Tess wasn’t sure she wanted to know all her secrets. She liked Dorie’s magic act aura.

  “Finding this girl was actually much simpler than most of the stuff you bring my way,” Dorie said. “But then, she’s only nineteen. It’s hard to leave too many electronic footprints at that age. How many addresses can you have?”

  Something in Dorie’s voice tripped Tess’s paranoia switch. “Have you ever run my vitals through your programs?”

  “You’re not much of a challenge. Baltimore is full of people who know your business, and how to find you.”

  “That’s not a no,” Tess pointed out.

  “It’s not a yes, either.”

  “What’s my middle name?”

  Dorie struggled for a moment, torn between her natural inclination toward secrecy and wanting to show off.

  “Esther,” she said. “But anyone could know that.”

  “Last address?”

  “One-oh-six West University Parkway.”

  “Weight on my driver’s license?”

  “A lie. A flat-out lie.”

  What could Tess say? It was.

  The next morning, her head clear, her voice still pleasingly husky, Tess took the train to Philadelphia. She had not called Devon Whittaker first. She almost never called first. No one wanted to hear a stranger’s voice on the phone. Strangers never brought you good news. And the phone was so easy to slam down, to avoid, to screen through an answering machine or Caller ID. Doors were bigger, harder to shut, and most had only a fisheye to give you a distorted view of the visitor on the other side. As long as Tess wasn’t holding a copy of The Watchtower, she was pretty sure she could gain entrance to anyone’s home.

  Crow dropped her off at Baltimore’s Penn Station, embracing her as if they were to be parted for weeks, or even months. He was romantic, in the best sense of the word, and she was beginning to accept that his love for her was not a passing phase.

  “Do good,” he told her. “Be safe.”

  “It’s just Philadelphia. You know what Philadelphia is? It’s Baltimore, only bigger.”

  “Call me as soon as you know if you found her. I feel as if I have a stake in this, too.” He kissed her again. They were drawing a small crowd.

  She suspected he was inspired, in part, by the old-fashioned train station. It was small, with only six gates. But the ceilings soared to wonderfully wasteful heights, and high-back wooden benches lined the walls. Tess much preferred it to Washington’s Union Station, which had been turned into a mall, with glossy restaurants and movie theaters. Here, it was possible to imagine Ingrid Bergman slithering by in a trenchcoat, spies exchanging briefcases, lovers meeting surreptitiously.

  The tiles on the tote board swirled and clacked, the “All aboard” sounded. Tess settled into a window seat on the east side of the train, because this provided the best views. She was the only person she knew who considered the trip scenic. But then, Tess had always been intrigued by the rear view of things, which she found truer, full of unexpected glimpses into people’s real lives. She was fascinated by what people did when they thought no one was watching. Not sex per se—she had no interest in spying on people in bed, unless someone was paying her to do it. Even then, she held her nose. No, she liked to watch people hanging laundry and scratching themselves, having desultory arguments with children and spouses. Everyone wore masks these days, and they seldom slipped. The extreme was the reality-based television shows, where people created meta versions of themselves by trying to act in a way they thought was natural.

  The train was already crossing the Susquehanna River. Wilmington and Philadelphia were only minutes beyond. Tess hunkered down with a map, trying to figure out if Devon’s apartment was near the train station, or if she would have to take a cab.

  She had a photo of her, from last year’s Penn freshman face book. Again, she hadn’t questioned Dorie’s methods, had just paid up. It wasn’t the best reproduction, a printout from a scanned photo. Devon Whittaker appeared pretty, in a dull, flat way, but also looked much older than the average college freshman.

  It was past eleven when Tess found Devon’s apartment building. She tried the buzzer in the foyer, but no one answered. She was in luck, there was an open square across the street, with a bench that afforded an unobstructed view of the building’s front door. It was cold for outdoor surveillance and she was downwind of a cheesesteak vendor, which made her ravenous. The long, gentle fall had lulled her into complacency; she hadn’t dressed warmly enough. She could get a cup of coffee, but that would present another problem common to surveillance: the bathroom issue. Tess was on mailing lists for catalogs offering all sorts of interesting solutions to this problem, but many of them were anatomically unsuitable for her. She subscribed to mind over matter. So far, it was working.

  Mind over matter was still working for her, barely, when Devon Whittaker walked right by her less than two hours later. She even stopped in front of Tess, inhaled the steam blowing from the cheesesteak cart, then made a face as if she found it noxious. Tess caught up with her just outside the door to her apartment house.

  “Devon Whittaker?” Nothing like a person’s name to get his or her attention.

  “Yes?” She responded as anyone would, with the usual mix of suspicion and puzzlement. Who would have your name except a process server or the Publishers Clearinghouse Prize Patrol? Her key was out, she was ready to slide past Tess and into the apartment.

  “I’m Tess Monaghan. I have a message for you from Sarah, your cousin.”

  This interested her even more than her own name. “Is she okay? Has anything happened to her?”

  “Could we talk inside? I’m chilled to the bone.”

  Devon fumbled with the door, which had a balky lock, and walked up one flight to an apartment overlooking the park where Tess had been keeping her vigil. It was not a typical college girl’s apartment, furnished with cast-offs and the landlord’s things. Nor was it a pampered darling’s lair. The living room was clean and simple, with the kind of basic IKEA pieces one expected from young newlyweds. A dining area had been set up at the far end, and the kitchen was just beyond, separated by a counter. There were three closed doors off the hallway.

  “Nice place,” Tess said. “Do you have a roommate?”

  “No—I mean, yes, I do live with someone. You said you had news of Sarah. Is she okay?”

  “As okay as anyone there, I guess. I don’t know what she looked like when she went in.”

  Devon had bypassed the living room and seated herself at the dining room table, as if she wanted something large and substantial between her and the world. “She was on the verge of going into a coma.”

  “I guess she’s better, then.”

  “What did she want to tell me?”

  “Actually—” how Tess hated that word, how she disliked the part of her job where she admitted to the half-truths already told, the deceptions and manipulations already employed. “She simply told me where to find you. I needed to talk to someone who was at Persephone’s a year ago, because there’s a possibility that a girl who’s now missing was there at the same time. Sarah told me you were there then.”

  “She’s missing, but you don’t know where she was to begin with?”

  “It’s complicated,” Tess said. She pulled the artist’s rendering of Jane Doe from her knapsack. Devon studied it intently, frowning.

  “This face is a little too round,” she said at last, “and her hair was much fuller, very thick and dark. But it could be Gwen Schiller.”

  Gwen Schiller. Tess tested the name, and it felt right. Gwen Schiller. She took the sketch back from Devon, looked at it. Gwen Schiller, Gwen Schiller, Gwen Schiller.

  “I suppose her father hired you?” Devon asked. “About time.”

  “No. Until you told me her name, I didn’t know who she was. Who’s her father?”

  “Dick Schiller, of co
urse.”

  Tess needed a second, maybe two. “Dick Schiller, the guy who invented the e-mail software that Microsoft bought out? He’s practically a billionaire.”

  “On paper,” Devon said, as if her family’s mere millions were in something else, like gold bullion. Or blue blood. “But if Dick Schiller didn’t hire you, who did?”

  Her killer’s sister. But it wasn’t time to say that, not just yet. “You and Gwen knew each other at Persephone’s Place?”

  “We overlapped there by several weeks last year, yes.” Devon had a natural wariness about her, she never seemed to relax.

  “Who left first?”

  “I did. I was discharged just before Labor Day, so I could start classes up here.”

  “When did Gwen”—the name was still a wonderful novelty in her mouth—“leave the clinic?”

  Unconsciously, Devon combed her blond hair toward her face, as if to cover it. She bore a superficial resemblance to Whitney, with her thin body and pale hair. But where everything about Whitney was sharp and bright, this girl seemed soft and dull.

  “They didn’t tell you?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me anything. I met Sarah…by accident.” True enough. “She sent me to you.”