Chapter Twenty-five
On the day of convocation, every building on campus sported banners bearing the school colors—purple and orange—and the school’s motto. Helen was glad the banners were in Latin. Given recent events, she would have liked to retire “I too have seen the angels and trembled” in favor of something more cheerful. Perhaps, something like Smith College’s “In virtue one gains knowledge” or Harvard’s simple “Veritas.”
If nothing else, Helen was glad to see workers installing the new sign for Meyerbridge Hall. The sun hitting the reflective metal letters was almost blinding. She smiled. The wheel of college donation turned. Buildings were bought. Names were expunged. New donors appeared. That, at least, was a constant.
Drummond stood on the top step of the newly–renamed hall, surveying the work. He waved when he saw Helen.
“It’s official,” he smiled. “Let me introduce you to Adrian.”
Looking at Adrian Meyerbridge, it was hard to see him as the same man in the portraits taken for Westin, Meyerbridge, and Gray Investments. He looked like a science fiction creature, seated in a heavy motorized wheelchair. His hands were splinted. A clear plastic tube attached to a plug in his throat. His head rested between two headrests, and he stared motionlessly at the screen attached to his wheelchair. Occasionally, his caretaker, a young man with an orthodox beard, would swab a bit of saliva from Meyerbridge’s lips.
“Hello” the computer screen spoke. Meyerbridge moved his eyes across the screen, blinking when he reached the key he wanted to activate. The computer spoke a prerecorded greeting.
“We are very glad you came,” Helen said. “Your words will be an inspiration to the students.”
“Ha.” Meyerbridge blinked the sound, and the computer spoke. He added, “They just want to get drunk.”
Helen suppressed a smile.
“Laugh,” Meyerbridge said. “I joke.”
Together Helen, Meyerbridge, and his caretaker went to the theater to make sure Meyerbridge would be able to move around the stage. There, Helen found Patrick, who had been missing from his usual post. He was lying on the ground, with his head and shoulders under a makeshift ramp. Helen knelt down and tapped his foot. Patrick maneuvered himself out from beneath the ramp. He had a cordless drill in one hand and his purple Bluetooth in one ear.
“What are you doing, Patrick?”
“You told me to make sure everything was ready for our guest of honor.”
Helen pointed at the pile of scrap wood by his side. “And that?”
Patrick shrugged. “The Ventmore isn’t accessible.”
“So you’re building a ramp.”
Patrick was a wonderful secretary.
“It’s not up to code, and this is not in my job description,” he said. “But I know what you’re thinking. I am the perfect secretary.”
Helen was just about to introduce Meyerbridge when a noise stopped her: footsteps descending the metal staircase at the back of the theater. She turned to see Wilson gliding down the steps.
Perhaps Wilson had dressed for the evening’s convocation. Or perhaps, Helen thought, there was no reason—besides broad–spectrum eccentricity—why, today, Wilson had traded her military garb for this outfit. Half punk rocker, half rising heiress. She wore flowing, black pants and a corset–like top, emblazoned with a red dragon. A slash of red lipstick cut her lips in half, and her hair was spiked. She had replaced the cubic zirconium studs with a cascade of crimson jewels that brushed her bare shoulders.
“Dr. Ivers,” Wilson called. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”
Helen stared, transfixed. Wilson looked like a high–fashion model, aggressively beautiful in an outfit no real woman would ever wear.
“How are you?”
The costume was ridiculous, but she could not look away.
“Dr. Ivers?”
Helen pinched the back of her hand.
Arriving at her side, Wilson added, quietly, “I’m sorry about the other day, at the well.” She looked down with an embarrassed shrug. “I was just so relieved that you were okay.”
Helen glanced at Patrick, who was punctuating his conversation with a buzz of the cordless drill. She opened her mouth to speak, but she had lost her train of thought.
“Dr. Ivers?” Wilson said again.
“You saved my life,” Helen said. “I’m just not supposed to…” She waved her hand vaguely in the air. There was nothing she could say out loud in the busy theater, and what would she say anyway? I’m not supposed to kiss the faculty? I didn’t want that? Her arms had tightened around Wilson’s back and she had held her as fiercely on land as when she had thought she was drowning.
“Can I talk to you?” Wilson asked. “About something totally different. Will you come up to my office?”
Don’t go. Even as her rational brain repeated the details of Drummond’s story, her body remembered Wilson holding her in the water. Her eyes traveled the length of Wilson’s neck. The back of her hand stung where her nails had pinched the skin. She saved my life.
****
Inside the office, Wilson had been grading papers. On one side of the desk, a few papers bore a profusion of comments. Helen could read “Good job” in large letters, and then a long note in slanting handwriting that ran all the way off the page. On a chair sat thirty or more papers, waiting for their notes, and a pair of reading glasses. It did not look like Wilson had made much progress. Helen was struck by an inexplicable tenderness, something about the glasses and the intractable stack of papers.
“How are you?” Wilson asked. “I was worried about you after your fall. I didn’t see you on campus.”
“I was busy,” Helen said.
“Of course. Thank you for the flowers. And I’m sorry about the trouble with the stage. I’ve been trying to get the college to address it for years.”
“I’ll ask Marshal to look into it.”
“Mr. Drummond is not a fan of the theater program, although this isn’t about the theater; this is about equal access and the law.”
I made some unpopular budget decisions that affected the theater. Helen searched Wilson’s face. She was serious, not vengeful. Then again, she’s an actor.
“The money is always there in the spring when they do the budget,” Wilson mused. “Then, in the fall, it’s gone. We can barely afford costumes.”
“I’ll have Patrick schedule a meeting with your department.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Wilson leaned forward. “That’s not what I want to talk about. I saw the news about the body. They think it’s solved. Done. Over.”
“Yes.”
“What do you think?” Wilson asked.
You should drop this, Helen. She heard Terri. Get on with your life.
“I think we should focus on our jobs and let the police do theirs.”
“Do you really trust Hornsby?”
“Of course,” Helen said. Her eyes met Wilson’s. She knew it was a lie.
****
That evening, Helen sat on the Ventmore stage waiting for the convocation ceremony to begin. The students filled the theater, whooping, as if they had no cares in the world. Behind Helen, the professors sat in their regalia, including Wilson in a voluminous black gown, adorned by burgundy chevrons. When it came time for Meyerbridge’s speech, his caretaker wheeled him to the front of the stage. The speech was prerecorded on his Tobii computer, so he simply sat in front of the microphone while the computer read his words.
When he finished, Helen stepped into the bright light, surveyed the crowd, and delivered her speech. With convocation over, Helen joined Drummond, Meyerbridge, and many of the faculty for Champaign and hors d’oeuvres in the faculty club. Wilson was not there. Helen stayed with Adrian until he had been introduced to Professor Lebovetski, who was happy to expound on the history of disability rights and the Pittock Asylum. Meyerbridge’s questions suggested he was genuinely interested, so Helen left the two together.
As the gathering thinned,
around 9:00 p.m., Helen returned to Meyerbridge’s side.
“This was a wonderful night,” he said.
Helen thought she could read wistfulness in the computer voice. She could tell he had prerecorded the next part because the computer spoke fluidly.
“Mr. Drummond may have told you I have been debating whether to give my estate gift to the ALS foundation or to Pittock. This night has been wonderful, but I have decided to give my gift to the ALS foundation. No one should have to give their convocation speech from a wheelchair or hear it from one. The students of Pittock deserve the world, and the world starts in the body. I want to speak with my own voice. I am so sorry.”
Tears ran down Meyerbridge’s motionless cheeks. Helen knelt down and put her hand over his. His hand was cool and unnaturally smooth.
“It’s okay,” Helen said.
From across the room, Drummond caught her gaze. It was a question. She shook her head. No. Adrian Meyerbridge would not be the financial deus ex machina that saved Pittock College.
Chapter Twenty-six
He looked down the hall that led to the faculty club ballroom. Near the entrance to the building Meyerbridge sat in a pool of light, waiting for his attendant, who had just stepped out the door.
It was so easy. It hardly even counted. He did not make Adrian Meyerbridge. He did not even kill him. He just reached behind Meyerbridge’s neck and unsnapped the collar that secured the breathing tube. Then he removed the tube from the plastic housing inserted in the tracheotomy. It made a moist pop as he pulled it out. A little sigh escaped the tracheotomy and then nothing. The ventilator kept breathing, but no oxygen reached Meyerbridge. His eyes rolled back and forth, growing wider and wider, until the pupils were like dimes. Nothing else moved.
He stayed close, kneeling beside Meyerbridge, one hand resting gently on the back of the wheelchair. A little fluid bubbled at the site of the tracheotomy, and he touched it, warm and moist. It was always fascinating to see the inside come out, even though there was no thrill in this killing. It was just a technicality. He needed plane tickets for Alisha and Robert Hornsby. He needed a few other things for Ivers. And Meyerbridge had so much money he was not using.
When Meyerbridge’s eyes stopped moving, he put two fingers to his throat. Nothing. He reattached the tracheotomy tube. Then he slipped into a side corridor. Just in time. The door to the hall opened, and Ivers walked in, wearing a silky, gray dress, her blood–red hair spilling over her shoulders. A vision. So pale. So beautiful. So breakable.
****
Helen looked up from Meyerbridge’s face. The hall was lit with smoky chandeliers, their dewdrops reflecting a scattering of light on the highly polished floor. She looked back at Meyerbridge. He was fine, she told herself.
“Mr. Meyerbridge?” she asked.
She noticed a trickle of saliva at the corner of his mouth. There was a box of tissues in the mesh bag on the back of his wheelchair. She took a tissue and touched the fluid. A noise startled her. She had not heard the ballroom doors open, but Drummond was striding down the hall.
“Adrian,” Drummond called out as he strode forward. “Adrian, it has been a pleasure having you with us.”
Helen looked down at Meyerbridge. His eyes were open. She thought he was reading his screen, preparing to deliver a message. She thought he was about to speak. Then she was very certain he was dead.
“Adrian!” She shook his shoulder. “Mr. Meyerbridge!”
She took his hand out of the splint and felt for a pulse. His hand felt warm. He had to be alive. She squeezed his wrist, as though squeezing it would bring him back. Nothing.
“Marshal, he’s dead.” She could hear the panic in her own voice. “Call the police.”
She stared down at Meyerbridge. A slight movement caught her eye. A trickle of pinkish blood oozed from beneath the ventilator tube and dripped down Meyerbridge’s neck. Suddenly, Helen was back in Eliza’s kitchen, on her knees, the smell of bleach burning her eyes. Scrubbing and scrubbing, but the blood would never come out.
Even after the biohazard team had cleaned, she had found blood in the seams of the linoleum floor. The supervisor had run a toothpick along the crack then dipped it in a vial of clear liquid to prove that the house had been thoroughly sterilized. But Helen saw it. She smelled it. Blood in the vent at the bottom of the refrigerator. Blood in the heating duct, just out of sight. Eliza!
She wasn’t sure if she’d spoken aloud. The hall came back into focus. She was aware of Drummond’s arms around her, her face pressed into his shoulder. She let herself sag against his chest.
“This isn’t a tragedy,” Drummond said quietly. He released Helen. “Adrian was dying. We gave him one last evening that mattered. You gave him a little bit of his life back.”
Drummond took the tissue from Helen’s hand and tucked it away. He drew his hand over Meyerbridge’s eyes, then pressed his lips to the man’s forehead. He remained in that posture for seconds, then rose.
“Goodbye, old friend.”
****
The busyness of death took the place of its emptiness. Young Officer Giles arrived with a notebook in hand. He looked embarrassed as he asked Drummond to recount the night’s events.
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s procedure,” he explained.
Drummond put a hand on his shoulder. “Of course, son, and we appreciate you doing your job. We just came out here, Helen and I, and found him.”
“I left him here while I brought the van around,” Meyerbridge’s assistant added. “I should have stayed with him.”
“He had ALS,” Drummond said, more to the assistant than to Giles. “He died because… people die.”
After Giles was finished, Meyerbridge’s assistant conferred with Drummond about a mortician. Thirty minutes later, an old man in a white lab coat arrived. He brought with him a quiet youth, whom he introduced as his grandson. The boy wheeled a gurney down the foyer, bent over as though already his grandfather’s age. The mortician stroked Meyerbridge’s hair with a large hand.
“A gentle death.” He spoke softly, as though he was concerned about waking Meyerbridge. “A quiet death is a gift, although I’m sure he has done his suffering on this earth.”
As though lifting a sleeping child, the mortician slipped his hands under Meyerbridge’s shoulders and knees and raised the corpse in his arms. The mortician laid Meyerbridge on the gurney, and was about to wrap a white sheet around him, when his grandson stopped him.
“What’s this?” The boy touched Meyerbridge’s neck with a gloved finger.
“A little blood,” the mortician said. “From the tracheotomy. Just a little blood at the very end.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
It was after midnight when Helen headed for home. As she approached the Pittock house, weary and uneasy, she stopped. A dark shape moved in the bushes near the front door.
Helen froze. Her heart raced. Her body told her to flee, but she’d be hard pressed to outrun an attacker in her slim dress and silver heels. And where would she go? There was a security phone mounted outside the alumni building and more of them back on campus. Even if she could evade whoever watched her, she’d have only a few seconds lead time. There’d be no time to call for help. She kicked off her shoes. Her breath sounded as loud as the ocean in her ears.
As she watched, the shape straightened, then separated from the bushes. It was not quite human. Like some mythic beast, it possessed a head and shoulders, but the legs blended into a hulking lump. It lurched along the path, coming closer to Helen.
The sound of squeaky wheels and the rattle of a shopping cart brought Helen back to her senses. Sully, the local fortuneteller, came into view beneath a street light. Helen picked up her shoes, gave the woman a quick nod and then started walking. A few seconds later their paths crossed and Helen heard the woman call out.
“I know you, Miss Twenty Dollar Bill. You don’t want to know your fortune, because you don’t believe. You just want to give me your big charity. Your big
twenty.”
Helen quickened her pace, nearing the Pittock House. Sully had left her shopping cart and was stumbling back toward her.
“No. I don’t believe,” Helen said.
“Are you the boss?” Sully asked. The whites of her eyes were yellow, and the finger she pointed at Helen was black with dirt. “Boss lady? But you don’t want to know, do you? You’re too scared to see the future.”
“Goodnight,” Helen said coolly.
“You need to see your future,” Sully said in a sing–song voice.
Helen turned, then Sully was at her side.
“Crystal Leigh Evans? Do you know what happened to Crystal Leigh Evans?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Helen walked faster. Sully followed.
“Crystal Leigh. The one they found in the train without any legs. Do you know what happened to her?”
Helen stopped. “Is this something from the news?”
“I don’t need any fancy newspaper–radio–TV–man to tell me the truth. I see it.” Sully made a circle with her fingers and pressed it to her forehead. “I have the third eye.”
Helen wanted to snap at her. If she really had a third eye, she did not have to ask these questions. Something stopped her.
“What about Crystal Leigh Evans?”
“They found her in a train.”
“Did you read that name in the paper?”
“That’s her name, but it’s not in any paper. She doesn’t even get a name. She don’t count. All of us, out at the camp, knew Crystal Leigh. They said it was a suicide. Said she was drunk. I believe it. She was always drunk. But she wasn’t on the tracks that night. No. I talked to her as clear as I’m talking to you. We was sitting around, and we was talking about those legs. I remember because Crystal broke a cigarette in half, and we said that was what a train did to a body. Snap you right in half like a butt. That’s when I saw her floating in the well.”
The Admirer Page 13
