by Dana Cameron
Today I notice in Nora a Vertue unlooked for…
The whole passage confused me; if she was so concerned about the Reverend’s death, then why the hidden text and the long description of her garden? And what was it that the heretofore sullen Nora had done to earn that grudging encomium? I made a note to try and locate some biographical data on Reverend Blanchard: Obviously her parsley tonic hadn’t had its hoped-for effect. And that remark about rumors savored of careful circumspection.
The hairs suddenly stood up on the back of my neck, as the feeling of being watched made me look up. I was surprised to see Harry Saunders standing over my carrel, looking at me sympathetically. There’d been no sound of his footfall on the carpeted floor.
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” Harry apologized. “I was trying to be discreet. So many chatty Cathies around here today—” he looked around disapprovingly at a little group who was buzzing off to one side, watching us. “Maybe I should have been a little more noisy.”
“It’s okay, I’m just a little preoccupied,” I said, sliding an acid-free bookmark into my place.
“And no wonder,” he said. “I was just going to offer you my office, if you like, just to have some quiet today.”
I knew that by “quiet” he meant privacy. “Thanks, Harry, I’ll be fine. Everyone’s being polite; they can’t help but be curious.”
“Of course, please, just let me know. Is there anything…?”
“Nope, I’m just working through the Chandler manuscript, right now, but I may want to have a look at the town histories for Stone Harbor. Something was definitely happening at the time Margaret Chandler was writing her diary. Have you read it?”
“No,” he said brusquely and turned away.
The blunt, almost curt negative startled me. “Are you okay, Harry?”
He turned back suddenly and blurted out, “If you want to talk about finding Faith, please don’t…keep it bottled up inside. I’m…I’m a good listener.” Harry needlessly adjusted the knot of his tie to cover his embarrassment.
At first, I was so angry, I could feel my stomach contract as if preparing to take a punch. I felt betrayed: It seemed that this was just a ploy for Harry to hear firsthand the morbid details of my discovery of Faith. But I saw something in his eyes that was beyond nosiness, something that looked a little more like grief endured. Faith had been here for several weeks before she died—what if Harry’d fallen for her? From a distance, Faith was an easy person to have a crush on, regal looks and brains too. Had I been wrong about him and Sasha?
“I’m sure it was very quick,” I said, shrugging. I didn’t know any such thing, but it couldn’t hurt, I reasoned. “I just hope the cops can tell us what happened soon.”
Harry said nothing, but nodded sadly and then withdrew without another word. I guess we all have our ways of coping.
A piercing wail unexpectedly tore through the room and I jumped up, not knowing what to expect. “Shit!”
“Fire alarm!” Sasha called calmly, as she locked the glass-fronted offices. “Everybody out through the front!”
I followed the small group out through the front doors and stood under one of the great pines in front of the building while Harry, Sasha, and a security guard went through their procedures, counting heads and double-checking that everyone was out. Everybody was huddling together without their coats: The weather had turned gray and raw since the almost-spring of yesterday. It suited the general mood of the place, or maybe just my own.
Sasha came over to where I was standing, freezing. “You really should have left that, you know,” she said sternly.
I looked down and realized I’d carried Madam Chandler’s diary out with me. “Sorry, I didn’t think.”
“It’s okay, next time, just leave the books inside.” Her remonstration delivered, Sasha smiled kindly. “Completely understandable reaction. I had to train myself out of it when I first arrived. It’s hard to leave these behind sometimes.”
We watched as the fire truck pulled up outside, and the marshal conferred with Harry. They both went back inside.
“Probably just the darned construction work again,” Sasha explained. “It’s been tripping the alarm lately, day and night, even when it’s disarmed. We just have to live with it until the repairs are done.”
She smiled bravely, but her voice began to quaver. “There’s just been too much going wrong here lately, and so sad too. Faith, Dr. Morgan—” She broke off and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and then blew her nose, finally, as if determined not to completely break down.
I patted her arm, feeling like a louse for not sharing her tears. “I know. It makes you feel vulnerable.”
An unmarked police car pulled up too, and a grim-looking Detective Sergeant Kobrinski got out. She looked around questioningly and then spoke with Mr. Constantino. On my way to the library that morning, I’d seen her and a couple of officers combing through the damp leaves along the bank of the stream. They had planted little colored flags that stood out in contrast to the dark earth exposed where the leaves had been raked away.
“She doesn’t have it easy either,” Sasha sniffed, watching the detective sergeant read something off a clipboard to an increasingly unhappy Constantino.
“No?”
“We both grew up in Monroe. Pam Kobrinski and I went to high school about the same time.” She shrugged. “It’s tough to be in charge where everyone’s watched you grow up the hard way.”
Before she could elaborate, we were interrupted when the woman herself approached. “Sasha, how’re you doin’?”
“Okay, Pam.” The librarian corrected herself awkwardly: “Detective Sergeant.”
Detective Kobrinski didn’t seem to notice Sasha’s hesitation. “Can I have a word, Ms. Fielding?”
She led me apart from the group. “I just thought I’d let you know, since you knew the deceased. Faith Morgan died by drowning.”
“Was it an accident?”
“We’re still looking into that,” Kobrinski answered briefly.
“Well, thanks for telling me,” I said. “Let me know, will you, if I can help you out in any way.”
Detective Kobrinski’s mouth twitched, and I was reminded of a fox’s nose and whiskers flicking, testing the wind. “Oh, don’t you worry about hearing from me.”
A general murmur rose from the small group of staff, and people began moving back into the library.
“Sasha says the alarm’s been going off a lot because of the construction,” I explained.
“That’s a damned waste.” She frowned. “I know, it’s the insurance companies, probably, or something, but other folks who really need the fire department won’t be able to get them.” The detective sergeant looked as though she’d just had an idea. “Have you—?” But just as quickly, she reconsidered whatever it was she was going to ask me and turned to leave. “Never mind. I’ll be in touch.”
I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon catching up on my departmental paperwork, composing e-mails to the colleagues and students covering my classes, and losing myself in that other world. When I got back to the house, I found I was the first one home from the fray, but I hadn’t even grabbed a soda when Jack stumbled in.
He didn’t bother to conceal the fact that he was loaded, and went directly to his cupboard, where he emptied the scant remainder of one bottle of scotch into his glass, drained off that inch, and then opened another bottle immediately. He was wearing his headphones, and I could hear another synthetic jazz tape playing, but slowly, the sound distorted by the failing batteries.
What am I doing here? I thought miserably as I watched him. These people are one nervous tic away from the loony bin. Not even the Funny Farm. Brian’s right, I need the real world, not more obscure factoids and isolation in the midst of these freaks.
Only after Jack had refilled his glass halfway to the top and added one lonely ice cube did he seem to slow down, noticing my presence there with him and pulling off the headphones. “Faith’
s death. One feels surrounded by malignancy. Terribly upsetting.”
“Yes it is,” I said.
“But of course, you were the one to find her,” he acknowledged. As if that fact were reason enough, he took another gulp. “Horrible.”
Despite his drinking, there was only just the hint of a slur on “course.”
Jack looked at me apprehensively, then breathed, “Do you think she was murdered?”
It took me a long time to say it. “Yes. I don’t know who or why, but she wasn’t out there by herself that night,” I said.
“That night, Wednesday night! But that’s the thing that confuses me,” he exclaimed, scrubbing the back of his neck as if that would clear his thoughts. “I could have sworn that I saw her yesterday morning!”
“What?” I almost dropped my soda.
“You see, I can’t be certain.” Jack looked anguished. “I just can’t be certain.”
“What time did you see her?” I asked. “Was it before breakfast?”
“Oh, not morning-morning,” he explained. “It was still dark out, about three-thirty, I think it was. I don’t sleep well, you see.”
I said nothing, thinking about the disruptive effects of alcohol on sleep.
“I’d been tossing and turning, and I thought a wee dram might ease things a bit, you see. Calm me. I happened to look out the window, and I could have sworn I saw her walking down the road, toward the gazebo. But I just don’t know.”
“Well, when you were down here in the kitchen, did you hear the door—?”
“Kitchen?” he asked, puzzled. The ice popped in his drink, reminding him it was time to take another large sip.
“Yes, yes, kitchen,” I said impatiently. “If you could see her, she must have just left—”
“Oh, no,” Jack said. “I wasn’t in the kitchen.”
“I thought you said you got a drink?”
“Well, I keep my small bottle of brandy in my desk, you see,” he admitted unwillingly. “You remember, from the other night? And like I said, I have trouble falling asleep sometimes.”
“I see.” I recalled the sickeningly sweet stuff he’d shared with me.
“I just happened to glance out the window, as I said, and I saw her heading down the road. I recognized her by her dress, you see.”
“Jack,” I asked softly. “Were you wearing your glasses?”
He looked uncomfortable, a thin glaze of perspiration creeping across his balding head. “No, of course not. I was just…getting my drink, you see. Didn’t need them. But I did remember that dress of hers, all…whatever you call it. Billowy, full.”
I thought about the narrow cut of Faith’s jumper, and I knew now for certain that Jack had seen no such thing. “Didn’t you think it was odd that she should be out so late, with no coat on?”
Jack was silent for a moment. “I remember thinking that she seemed to be in a hurry. I thought she was going to the library.”
“Jack! The library closes at five o’clock! What on earth would she be doing going there at that hour? Wait, are you sure it was really three-thirty? Did you read the clock wrong?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he said wretchedly. “I just don’t remember much, maybe I’ll remember better later, after the shock has worn off some. Perhaps another small sip—”
“Damn it, Jack! You don’t need another drink! You need to tell Detective Kobrinski all about this!”
“I will, I know I have to tell her,” he snapped, suddenly angry. He slammed down his glass. “Just as soon as I figure out what it was, I’ll tell her. I’m no shirker, I know what I have to do. So just leave me alone, Emma, leave me be!”
Under other circumstances his hopping about might have been funny, but now I was alarmed, convinced he was going to have a heart attack. Jack was nearly purple and sweating like a racehorse.
“Jack, I didn’t mean to—”
“You have no idea what it’s like,” he continued, unmindful of my interruption. “No idea at all, and you just start in on me, do this, do that!”
“I’m sorry, I just—”
“You don’t know anything,” he insisted angrily. “Just go away. Leave me alone! Why can’t you all just leave me alone!”
Jack stomped out of the kitchen, bringing his glass with him. Stunned by his outburst, I stared after him a minute before I started pulling out the ingredients for dinner and began cooking.
“Smells good,” someone whispered into my ear.
I jumped about six feet in the air. Michael had come into the kitchen without making a sound.
“Holy snappers! Michael, don’t do that!” I exclaimed when I came down out of orbit. “What is it with people around here, always sneaking around?” First Harry, now Michael.
“It’s a library, Emma,” Michael said, leaning against the doorway. He looked like he’d do it again the next minute, if he would get the same reaction from me: he was the very picture of a little boy teasing. “Skulking is the first thing everyone learns.”
I frowned at him and turned my attention back to my frying onions.
“I keep forgetting, people are a little edgy around here since yesterday.” He unbuttoned the omnipresent overcoat and then massaged his hand as if it were sore.
“You seem to exclude yourself from the rest of us, the way you say that.”
Michael shrugged and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, then, catching himself, swore quietly and put it back into his pocket.
“I didn’t really know Faith all that well.” He shrugged again, shook his dark hair out of his eyes. “She died. It happens.”
“You know, that sounds a little callous.” I cracked some eggs violently into the pan with the onions, then picked out the eggshell. I deliberately turned my back on Michael to stick some bread in the toaster but he didn’t say anything until I had turned around again. I noticed he was rubbing his wrist again.
“What’s wrong with your hand?”
“Nothing. Look, it’s a shame Faith’s dead. If she was murdered, then that should be looked into. But I’m not going to cry crocodile tears over it. What am I supposed to do?”
I sighed as I dumped my scrambled eggs onto a plate. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s other people you should be thinking about now, not how you felt—or did not feel—about Faith. The library is full of scared, shocked people who might not see it from your angle.” Some of the egg had stuck to one side of the pan, and I scraped at it irritably, got the toast, then took my plate into the dining room and began to eat.
Surprisingly, Michael followed me. He twitched aside one of the curtains to sit on the windowsill, despite the fact that there were five perfectly good chairs free at the table. “Do you always go around thinking about what other people think?”
I put down my fork and looked at him sarcastically. “Well, Michael, that’s sort of the definition of what anthropologists do.”
“But you’re an archaeologist.”
“Right. I generally think about what dead people thought.” Then I heard what I had just said and suddenly, I didn’t want to finish my dinner. The eggs sat on the plate looking cold and greasy.
“Sounds like a lot of work to me. And depressing too.”
“Then I guess that’s why you don’t bother,” I said shortly and then got up to throw away the remains of my dinner. I hadn’t even made it to the door when Michael stopped me.
“I don’t see you crying into your tea towel, Emma. Could it be that beneath that carefully groomed exterior, you’re just as ‘callous’ as I am?”
“Look, you,” I snapped. “My relationship with Faith was minimal and complicated and just plain weird right up to the minute we said good night. I’m still sorting things out for myself, so just cut me a little slack, okay?”
Michael nodded. “And yet, I wonder what you would have said if that’s what I’d told you.” He stood up, then without warning, brushed past me. “I need a cigarette. Don’t wait up worrying about the parlous state of my soul, Auntie.”
>
He left me stunned. As I washed my dishes slowly, I wondered: Just what had his relationship with Faith been?
Chapter 8
FROM THE SOUNDS I HEARD EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, as far as Jack was concerned, I wasn’t off the hook yet. My plan to sleep in late and avoid my cranky housemates wasn’t working. I heard Jack coughing and hawking his usual morning symphony on his way to the bathroom, and I noticed that he added a few extra slams and dropped items just for my benefit. He obviously remembered my inclination to sleep in and was making the most of the chance to act out. At one point I could have sworn he threw the bathroom scale out of spite, but I couldn’t be certain. A phone rang, and I buried my head under a pillow; everyone seemed to be conspiring against my getting a little extra sleep.
I finally decided that there was no point in trying to wait until we all cooled off, as no one was cooling, especially me. I felt crabby and decided that I hated everyone: The only thing keeping me in this nut bin was Margaret Chandler. Besides, I had an evil caffeine-deprivation headache that I could only wish on Republican politicians.
The news channel blared from the parlor and then went dead, followed by a slammed door as I descended the big staircase. Good, I thought, that was Jack. I watched the coffee drip with maddening slowness into the pot, and was glad that Jack had left the house: I wasn’t ready to be the peacemaker. We were all in this together, and you didn’t catch me pitching any tantrums.
Brian said that he’d show up for his visit around noon or one. That meant three hours until I had a little relief from the tumult here. I figured a trip down to the library would keep me from dwelling on the situation. Even if the stacks were officially closed on weekends, I could still get to my carrel to sort out my notes and look at the reference works that were available to us. Good: A plan and a monster mug of joe were positive steps toward staying sane.
