The Admirer

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  “Where is Hornsby?” Helen asked.

  “We’ll deal with him tomorrow.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The next morning, Helen woke under a faded quilt. Embroidered plaques adorned the walls, promising that Jesus watched over this home. An ancient philodendron hung from a hook in the corner and looped around the walls. Slowly, she rose, donning a robe that someone had thrown over a chair.

  “There you are, Hon,” Margie said when Helen emerged. She introduced Helen to her husband, a portly man wearing a t–shirt advertising a Baptist summer camp. They both sat at the kitchen table.

  “How you doing, Kiddo?” he asked.

  Helen attempted a smile. “Better since you took me in.”

  Margie bustled about the kitchen, fetching Helen a cup of coffee and serving a box of donuts. Helen glanced at the stove clock. It was almost 11:00 a.m. They must have been waiting for her to wake up. Memories of the previous night flooded her mind, and she slumped in her chair.

  “You’ve had a night,” Margie said. “You’ll be all right now. Bruce here is a Marine. He won’t let anyone get to you.”

  “Semper fi,” Bruce said, giving the table a cheerful slap.

  “Plus,” Margie added. “This is the nosiest neighborhood in Berkshire County, and everyone knows it. No one with shady business would come around here.”

  Helen doubted that but said nothing. She accepted her coffee gratefully.

  “What’s more, those boys got it straightened out,” Bruce added. “Tyron and Darrell. When Margie first told me about them, I thought she was starting a daycare. They’re not bad fellows, though. They’re green, but they got integrity.”

  “They got it all sorted,” Margie said. “When you get dressed, I’ll give them a call, and they can fill you in on the details.”

  ****

  An hour later, Helen was dressed in a pair of Margie’s sweatpants and a t–shirt announcing in neon that she loved Cape Cod. Thompson sat in front of her, a glass of water clasped in his fingers.

  “After you came to the station last night, we went looking for Ricky Drummond. We found the Jeep at his house, although he was staying in the dorms. I looked up Hornsby’s report. Hornsby said he checked the vehicle, but I did a closer search. There were long hairs in the seats. They match Carrie’s description. We’ve sent them off to the lab. Plus, we found some partial prints that matched hers and a bag of knitting under one of the seats. Could be hers. Could be another girl’s. Here’s the thing…”

  Thompson took a deep breath. Bruce and Margie leaned up against the cupboard. They looked concerned, not curious. They had already heard the story.

  “I talked to Marshal Drummond again. This time, he wasn’t so sure about his son’s alibi. He said Ricky was home that night, but Mr. Drummond went to bed early. He assumed Ricky spent the night at home. However, Ricky could have gone out. Mr. Drummond’s bedroom is on the west side of the house, and Ricky had parked on the eastern edge of the drive. Mr. Drummond would not have heard the car if he was awake, and he said he slept soundly, except for an hour or so in the middle of the night.”

  Helen felt lightheaded.

  “Mr. Drummond said he never meant to lie. He just didn’t want to raise false suspicion. When we asked to search the Jeep, he said it’s been eating away at him.”

  Helen’s heart went out to Drummond. He was so proud of his son. She had seen the light come into his stony eyes when he talked about Ricky. My pride. My life.

  “Was it Ricky?”

  “It looks like it,” Thompson said. “At least it looks like Ricky had something to do with it. Maybe Carrie enlisted his help. We don’t know yet.”

  “What does Ricky say?” Helen asked.

  “He says he didn’t do it, but that’s what they all say. Hornsby thinks he did it. He’s finally come around. He knows he didn’t handle this very well, said his personal life got the better of him.”

  “They’re going to bring in some state troopers,” Bruce chimed in. “And the FBI.”

  “I’m not going to let this get swept under the rug,” Thompson said. “There’s no denying what’s happened, no smoothing things over.”

  Helen waited for a sense of relief to wash over her. She could go back to work, start the capital campaign and, over the course of the next year or two, watch the campus transformed as new money came in and the students forgot. She could go back to work. The thought gave her pause.

  “The dummy in my office… Do you think that was Ricky?”

  “It’s hard to say, ma’am. Ricky says he didn’t do it, but he says he didn’t kill Carrie Brown. He’s got a good alibi for the night your office was vandalized. He was bar-hopping in Great Barrington with three of his classmates and a girl from town. The bartenders confirmed they saw kids who fit their description, and he’s got a couple of Visa receipts.”

  “What about Adair Wilson?” This was the question that mattered. “Do you think she could have vandalized my office?”

  Thompson searched the floor. For a moment, Helen glimpsed the awkward, young man who had first accompanied Hornsby into her office.

  “Adair Wilson,” he said, as if to confirm he had heard properly.

  He liked Wilson. She heard it in the way he cleared his throat. Wilson was certainly not his love interest, nor even really his friend, but they were young professionals in a town ruled by old men and old money. Helen guessed he felt solidarity with Wilson. He probably did not know how much old money Wilson could leverage if she wanted to.

  “I’m not trying to frame her,” Helen said. “I don’t want it to be her, but she’s an employee of the college. I need to know if there’s any possibility that she was responsible.”

  “I don’t know,” Thompson said finally. “You say she’s the only one who knew about your sister’s death. She says she was home that night, but she lives alone. No one saw her enter her building. No one talked to her.”

  Helen felt her heart breaking. “I’ll need to call the board and have them put her on suspension.”

  ****

  “So that’s it,” Terri said. “Case closed?”

  “Of course,” Helen tried to give her voice the cheer it required. “The judge denied Ricky’s bail. Marshal told me he wouldn’t pay for it, even if he could. He’s the real victim, in some ways.”

  “Really?”

  Helen tucked the phone under her ear. With her free hand, she doodled a tree on the back of a manila folder and then looked up again. Outside, the quad wore the fall colors that made New England famous. A few boys tossed a rugby ball, occasionally tackling each other in drifts of browning leaves. She drew a noose hanging from a lower branch.

  “He is sixty–seven. His wife is dead. His son is in jail. At least I had a chance to start over.”

  “Are you?” Terri asked. “Are you starting over?”

  Helen had commissioned an artist to cast a bronze sculpture of Carrie Brown to place in the memorial garden, and she had recently connected with the widow of a wealthy alumni looking to put her husband’s name on a building. These were all signs of improvement, and she told Terri about them.

  “I don’t mean working. I know you’re turning that college around faster than anyone expected. I’ve read the buzz in the alumni quarterly. But are you making friends? Are you getting over this?”

  “Yes, Terri. I’ve been making friends.” She was thinking about dinners she’d recently shared with Drummond. They always met by chance. Their conversations were punctuated by silences, during which, Helen was sure, they both wrestled with their demons. Perhaps that was what she needed in a friend. It was certainly all she could handle.

  “What about that woman you liked?” Terri asked.

  After a two–week suspension, the faculty association had ruled there was not enough evidence to suspend Wilson. Helen had never confessed their sexual relationship, and now Wilson had good reason to keep quiet about it also. Without that connection, there was little to pin Wilson to the vandali
sm. After the hearing, Helen had avoided her assiduously, which angered Patrick. He said she owed Wilson a phone call, since Wilson called her office every day. For once, Helen had pulled rank and said no.

  “I looked her up online,” Terri added. “She’s gorgeous.”

  “It’s over,” Helen said. “It was a mistake.”

  “Too bad. You could do worse.”

  Helen felt like arguing, but it was almost noon, and she had chosen today. She had even put a fake meeting on her calendar so Patrick would not schedule her. She opened her desk drawer and touched the paper that lined the bottom. What Terri did not know, what no one knew, was that beneath that paper lay the prize Lebovetski had died for: a map of the Pittock Asylum circa 1887. It was not an original copy, but it would do.

  After the police crew had left Lebovetski’s office, she had slipped into Boston Hall. She had skipped the climate-controlled cases. If someone was willing to murder Lebovetski for what he had—and he knew they were after him—he would have sacrificed climate control for security.

  Standing in the chaos of books, papers, and blueprints, Helen had despaired of finding anything. How would she even recognize a treasure if she found it? Then she found the poem. It was penned in the spidery hand of an old man, but the lines were straight and the ink dark. He had pinned it on the only section of unobstructed wall.

  Lovely lady of the woods

  who fell as King George fell

  the light caught you like Icarus redeemed

  young lover, be beautiful but remember

  answers are beneath the ivy

  invisible like the dead.

  The mausoleum was a stone building on the edge of the asylum grounds, entirely covered in ivy. Helen’s hands trembled as she first cleared the foliage, waiting for the horror that lay within. Instead, it looked like a small post office for woodland fairies. In the far end, light from a window illuminated a space the size of a small conference room. The floor was covered with dry leaves and a dun colored bird rested on the window sill. The walls were lined with little plaques identifying the cremains. The inscriptions were innocuous: Mary Leonara Thompson. 1898—1934. Kind spirit, rest in peace. Ronald Beautress Gill. 1940—1975. Watched over by the angels. It smelled like damp springtime.

  There was no sign that anything had been disturbed for decades until Helen read the inscriptions more closely. Then, in the far corner near the floor, an inscription on a plaque caught her attention. The words shone as though freshly carved, and when she looked more closely, the plaque was a piece of tin foil pressed over the original iron. On it, were etched the words “Helen Ivers. Long live the king.”

  Trembling, she touched the plaque and then the box behind it. It was like a safety deposit box, long and low with a lid that lifted from the top. She withdrew it from its housing and placed it on the small altar beneath the window. The lid lifted with surprising ease. Helen held her breath, certain that if it contained bones or even the sinister dust of past history, she would scream. Inside was a blessedly familiar sight. Ziplock. The bag held several Xeroxed papers, folded up with a letter.

  “Helen,” Lebovetski had written, I am sorry I do not know anymore than this, and this is a poor copy. I only guess that this is what they are looking for. If you have found this, I presume I have joined the spirits in the ivy. Please tell my dear Adair to be happy. The spirits have been calling me for many years, I was just waiting to make my grand exit. Drop the curtains on me, my dear girls, and go and be happy for ‘no voices chanted choruses without ours, no woodlot bloomed in spring without song…’”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  She put the conversation with Terri out of her mind as Helen crossed the campus and hiked toward the asylum. Her mind raced. She felt beyond fear. She had lost Eliza. She had lost Adair. She would lose her job, she felt certain about that now. She might even lose her life. This was the end of everything, but before she went down, she would understand the asylum. It would yield its secrets. Ricky would yield up his secrets.

  She had just stopped at the edge of the asylum clearing, staring up at the barred windows and cracking bricks, when a voice startled her.

  “Over here.” Drummond stepped from behind one of the columns that adorned the front entry. His bearing was as elegantly upright as always. Today, his smile was warm and optimistic.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  For a second, Helen was speechless. “I…” she stuttered. “I was thinking about the renovation, a possible dormitory. I wanted to look around a bit, move forward, make this a site for future hopes, not past fear.” Years in administration had trained her to answer difficult questions quickly, and her voice sounded confident.

  “A grand idea,” Drummond said. His grief over Ricky, however deep, was expertly concealed.

  Helen thought how similar they were. “I’ve talked to some architects. They loaned me a map.” She touched the breast pocket that contained the Xeroxed sheets. “I was going to go in. Does that make me sound like a terrible freshman?”

  Drummond shook his head. “I’ve talked to the police about this. I know where it’s safe to go. Some parts of the asylum are falling apart, but the main wards are solid and safe. Let me go with you.”

  ****

  It was strange to see how beautiful the building was inside. The tile floor was cracked. The paint peeled on the walls. Nevertheless, the domed ceiling suggested the elegance of a bygone era. A chandelier still hung from an ornate fixture at the ceiling’s highest point. Two spiral staircases curled toward the second story.

  “The women were housed in the south wings.” Drummond pointed. “The men to the north. Families could visit here, at the center. Sometimes they even had balls and concerts. There is a theater downstairs. We should go look at it.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Helen said. “I wish…I wish there had been something like this for my sister.”

  “Modern institutions are so bleak. Maybe, just maybe, when people see what a beautiful dormitory this makes, they will remember that we used to provide this kind of accommodation for the mentally ill.” Drummond put his hand on her shoulder. “I know that is a pipedream, but let’s hold onto it. Come, let me show you around.”

  They bypassed the staircases and walked down the hallway. It was cold and dim. Most of the cell doors were open. Green light filtered through the ivy.

  “It must have been terrible to find your sister like that,” Drummond said, as though picking up the thread of a previous conversation. “How do you think she found the strength to do that? It is amazing what people can do when they’re not tied to reality.”

  Helen turned from the cell she was examining. “You knew?”

  “I’m sorry,” Drummond said. “You don’t want to talk about it. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” He held out his hand to Helen as she stepped over a pile of broken plaster.

  Helen was about to ask Drummond how he knew about Eliza’s death, when a sound at the end of the hallway stopped her. Footsteps pounded toward them. Someone was running. A second later, she recognized Wilson.

  “Adair!” Helen exclaimed.

  “Marshal, don’t move,” Wilson yelled, raising the Glock toward Drummond’s head.

  ****

  For one surreal moment, Helen remembered all the “Weapons on Campus” seminars she had mandated. There was always one well–meaning counselor in Birkenstocks who lamented that students turned to violence because they thought it made them powerful. “Real power,” the counselor would expound, “can only come from the within. Guns don’t change anything.”

  This gun changed everything. The air crackled around the weapon. The light from the windows disappeared into its black barrel, leaving the room darker. In the dim light, Wilson looked ten times more beautiful and infinitely more dangerous. She trained the gun on Drummond, her arms steady, her eyes as white as burning metal.

  “Get down on the mother fucking floor, Marshal!” Wilson’s voice was as deep as a man’s and full of
rage.

  Without thinking, Helen stepped between Drummond and Wilson. “Adair. No! What are you doing?”

  “Helen, step away. It’s him. It’s not Ricky. Marshal killed Carrie Brown, and he’s going to kill you.”

  Behind her, Helen heard the provost’s voice, calm and paternal. “Adair, I know this has been hard on you. I know you cared about Carrie, and that you want to do something, but you already have. You led us to Ricky. I was blind. We all were. Put down the gun.”

  “Listen to me, Helen.” Wilson’s eyes remained focused on Drummond, the gun trained on his head. “I talked to Sully and the men at the homeless camp. They’ve seen Drummond in the woods. They’re afraid of him. They call him the surgeon. And I asked Lebovetski’s students. I figured out what he had. It’s a map, Helen. It’s got to be. A map showing the underground passageways from the asylum to the warden’s house. The warden’s house that is now the Pittock House. Lebovetski had borrowed the map from the rare book room at the library. That’s what Marshal was looking for when he broke into Josa’s office and killed him.”

  Helen stared into the barrel of the gun. She did not need to see a bullet to know it was loaded. Helen turned toward Drummond. It was unthinkable. “Marshal?”

  “I’ve walked these woods a hundred times. Of course they’ve seen me,” Drummond said. “However, I did not kill two women and Professor Lebovetski.” He held out his open hands. “Nor do I know anything about a map. Adair, this is ridiculous.”

  Wilson continued as though Drummond had not spoken. “You know what else, Helen? The Pittock House belonged to the asylum warden. It was built with an underground corridor that led into the asylum. That way, the warden could travel quickly to and from his work in the winter when it was snowing. That’s how Marshal got into your house. That’s why he needed the oldest map.”