The Ghosts of Lovely Women Read online

  “And couldn’t that be true?”

  “It could if she were visiting people. But this was after school. We were all gone.”

  Derek said, “Does she have a recognizable car?”

  I looked nervously at the door. My period two students were gathering in the hall and peering in; they seemed to think that Danny was in trouble. I waved at them to indicate that it was nothing, and they began to file into the room.

  Danny saw this. “Yeah, it’s recognizable. And you think about this: who was her hero around this place? Who came to every show and acted like Jessica could do no wrong? Our principal,” he said in a low voice. “Mr. Anthony Fairchild.”

  He left, with a dark look over his shoulder. “Danny—” I said, but he was gone. And what was I going to say? Don’t pursue this? Why shouldn’t he? Let him tell the police. If Anthony had to endure some temporary suspicion in order for Jessica’s murderer to be found, then that would be necessary. He had certainly allowed Josh to endure plenty of it before he was exonerated, in the aftermath of a girl’s vicious rumor.

  I sighed. Derek said, “I’ve got to get to class. We’ll talk later,” and was gone. I faced my own class and pasted on a bright smile. Could they see my inauthenticity? Could they sense what was simmering beneath my surface? Tension, growing inexplicably, and the gnawing feeling that Danny might somehow be on the right track.

  *

  By period three I was feeling drained. Between Derek’s visit and Danny’s information, I had expended a great deal of psychic energy. I decided to put some of Derek’s notes up on the board for the world lit class who would not hear his presentation. I opened my drawer to look for a piece of chalk that wasn’t already a hopeless nub, and saw a shadow in my doorway.

  I looked up to see Fred Bastian, all business with his clipboard and his brown suit. He consulted the clipboard for a moment. “Teddy,” he said. “How about that writing proposal?”

  I sat back in my seat, surprised. Fred never came to people’s classrooms — he always gave us those little notes, what Josh lovingly called the “Fred-Ex,” and he waited for us to come to him. Here he was in my kingdom, and I couldn’t even revel in the victory because I had so much on my mind. Out of nowhere a line from Crime and Punishment came to me. Porfiry, the brilliant detective, is amused when Raskolnikov comes to the police station. “Here you are,” he says. “In our territory.”

  “Oh, Fred — you’re going to hate me, but I didn’t do it yet.”

  “Ah. Well, the thing is I need to put this curriculum guide together, and I was hoping I could get it from you. Do you think you could type something up this period?”

  “Of course. Absolutely. In fact—” I jumped up and rushed to the bookcase by the door, where I’d left a notebook with some preliminary jottings. I retrieved it and turned swiftly; Fred turned, too, but not before I saw that his clipboard was entirely empty. I paused, my mouth open, and Fred smiled at me.

  “You’re normally so organized, Teddy. I’m surprised you don’t have this in triplicate by now.” He reached out and tapped my arm. Joking around. Something Josh would do, but never Fred. Never Fred. I stared at him for a moment, not laughing, and something twitched in his jaw.

  Your lip is trembling, as it always does. Porfiry Petrovich, confronting a murderer.

  I needed to get myself together. I wasn’t inside a book. This was life. This was Fred Bastian the boring, for goodness’ sake. But he was joking with me. He was in my room, where he had never come, not in eight years. He had pretended to read something on an empty clipboard. He had touched my arm. He had smiled at me — twice. Today and yesterday.

  “Teddy?”

  “Oh, sorry. I just had another idea — let me jot it down before I forget it.”

  “Maybe I could wait here while you get your thoughts together.”

  “Sure, sure.” I went to my desk and sat down, pretending to flip through the notebook. I was trying to arrange my thoughts, but not about the writing. When else had Fred been inauthentic? I remembered his hand trembling as he wrote down the information about Jessica’s death. Was that like him?

  And his expression, when he asked me to come into the office with Mr. and Mrs. Halliday — it had looked so miserable, so unlike Fred, who could normally handle any occasion with aplomb.

  And what about that day — the day I was in his office? I had left my purse on Fred’s desk. I had been distracted by the Hallidays; Mrs. Halliday had hugged me, talked to me. I was watching Jessica’s journal, because I wondered if they would recognize it. Fred could have taken my key, then used it to break into my apartment. But what would he have been looking for? What was he looking for now? Was it the missing page from Jessica’s printouts? Had he visited her website? Had Kathy asked him about that? She had visited him in his office the day she died.

  “So — uh— let’s see. Okay, let me just open the file I had started,” I said. My hands were trembling as I turned to the computer and opened a file I had labeled “Writing Proposal.” There were only a couple of sentences there so far.

  “Teddy? Are you upset about something?”

  I looked at him, and then found that I couldn’t look at him anymore. His eyes were searching mine, and not in a caring administrator sort of way. This was a man who was seeking information. I strove for any excuse. “Well, the fact is — I’ve been dating Derek Jonas. And I wanted to just confess it to you before you found out through the grapevine. I don’t know what the school policy is—”

  Fred laughed. It was horrible, wrong laughter that seemed to conceal a hidden dread. “We’ve had other faculty members who dated. Even married. Remember Tom Mitford and Ava Harkness?”

  “Oh — yes. They’re gone now. I thought maybe they had to leave.”

  “They got jobs in Alaska. A lifelong dream.” He didn’t sound happy for them.

  “Oh. How cool. Let’s see…” I couldn’t concentrate at all. Not at all. Fred was looming over me and I was thinking, Who would be here at school after everyone had left? Anthony Fairchild? Maybe. Fred Bastian? Definitely. Josh always joked that Fred probably had his dry-cleaning delivered here.

  “What do you have so far?” He was leaning closer, but not close enough for me to see the empty clipboard that he thought I hadn’t seen. His prop. Raskolnikov had used a prop, too, to gain entrance into the pawnbroker’s apartment. And then he had killed her with an axe.

  “Uh— you know what? The fact is I can’t concentrate at all while you’re standing over me, Fred!” I made myself laugh and poke him back, with one finger. His arm felt tense.

  “How about if I come back in about fifteen minutes?” he said.

  “Fifteen? How about thirty, and I’ll have it all done. All nice and wrapped with a bow,” I said, showing my teeth in an attempt at naturalness.

  “Teddy, you’re acting very strange today.” He hadn’t moved.

  I forced my eyes to meet his. “You know what? I don’t think I’ve gotten over Jessica Halliday’s death.”

  He didn’t wince, but his eyes did something — narrowed or twitched or flinched — in his otherwise paralyzed face. “It’s been difficult.”

  “Yes. For all of us. Especially you, I would think.”

  His brows rose, as though someone had pulled a string to make it happen. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Oh, just that you’re the one who had to hear the news first, and then tell everyone and process all the arrangements. Plus weren’t you two pretty close? I mean, all those extracurriculars and stuff. And there were all those photos at the wake — her posing with you and Anthony for all of her awards and events.”

  “We pose with many students.”

  “Yeah. But Jessica was special, wasn’t she?”

  Fred smiled and put a hand on my shoulder, heavily. “Yes. She was very special.” I felt his grip tightening, ever so slightly, when Rosa appeared in the doorway.

  “Fred. What are you doing up here? You have a phone call.”

  Fred
walked stiffly out of the room, not acknowledging either one of us.

  I started shaking. “Rosa.”

  “Yeah? What’s with the personal visit?”

  “Rosa, were you here late the day Jessica died?”

  “I don’t think so. I generally leave at four.”

  “Fred — did he ever get personal mail in his mailbox? Mail from parents, or students, or—”

  “Sure. He gets all kinds of stuff.”

  “From Jessica?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe from the Drama Club? When she went here she was always delivering stuff. Especially right before she graduated — it seemed like she was always at those mailboxes, dropping off, picking up.”

  “Rosa.”

  “Yeah?” She eyed me as if she feared for my sanity. I can’t imagine how I looked.

  “The mailboxes down there are numbered, right?”

  “Yeah. It starts with Anthony, who’s 100. Fred is 101. And Jessie’s Drama Club — I don’t know—114, maybe?”

  “Thanks,” I whispered. All this time we thought that Jessica had been leaving clues, but Jessica had never expected anyone to find them. She’d been insuring herself against harm, or so she thought. Her little notes and messages and cryptic comments. They were as effective as the restraining order that my brother despised so much.

  “Do you feel okay?” Rosa asked.

  “Getting the flu. I’ll be okay. I’m just going to run to the bathroom.” I watched her go to the door, but then a thought occurred to me — from nowhere. From the Underworld.

  I said, “Where is Rosalyn Baxter this period? Would you happen to know by any chance?”

  Rosa laughed. “I haven’t memorized all their schedules! But I do know where she is, lucky for you. I had to bring her a message last week. She’s in Chip Henders’ graphic design class.”

  “Thanks.”

  I waited until she left, her expression still dubious, and then I ran down the hall, all the way down to room 220. I knocked on Chip’s door and twenty students at computers turned curious faces to me. “Mr. Henders? May I borrow Rosalyn Baxter for one moment, please?”

  “Sure,” said Chip, although he didn’t look too thrilled about it.

  Rosalyn came out into the hall with a frightened expression. “Miss Thurber, what’s wrong? You look weird.”

  “Rosalyn, is anyone home at your house?”

  “My mom. Why?”

  “I want you to call her on your cell phone.”

  “Cell phones aren’t allowed during the school day,” she reminded me.

  “I want you to call her on your cell phone NOW. Ask her to find that book — the cookbook you and Jessica liked. Ask her to see if there’s anything inside. Okay?”

  “Okay. Sure. My phone’s in my locker.”

  I escorted her there. I had defined “surreal” for my class many times, but I’d never understood it the way I did now, as I walked next to Rosalyn like an executioner.

  “Ms. Thurber, you’re scaring me.”

  “I’m sorry. Listen, you make your call, and I’ll stand here so no one hassles you about using the phone.”

  Rosalyn nodded, then dialed her little pink phone. “It’s ringing,” she said. We waited. “Four rings and no one answered. I’m getting the machine.”

  She left a message for her mother, and I thanked her. “Okay. But now if she calls back, you’ll be in class.”

  “I’ll tell her to leave a message at the main office. With Mrs. Martinez.”

  “Good. Do that. But not with anyone but Mrs. Martinez, okay?”

  “Okay.” She called back and left another message. Her voice sounded curiously young and sweet as she talked to the tape that her mother would hear. I remembered how Jessica’s voice sounded on my answering machine. “Ms. Thurber, what’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you later. This might lead to nothing. But knowing Jessica, it might also lead to something, right?”

  “Yeah.” Rosalyn nodded her pretty head. “Yeah, I think it could. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to look in there.”

  “Go on back to class, before Mr. Henders gets really mad at me.”

  “Okay.” She went, but not without looking back at me with a worried frown.

  Then I went to Derek’s room. He saw me and was at the door instantly. “What’s wrong?”

  I drew him further into the hall. “It’s Fred,” I whispered.

  “What about him?”

  “It’s Fred. Fred did it. Fred killed Jessica.”

  He stared into my eyes. “How is that possible?”

  “Your lecture was still in my mind, and our book, and then he appeared, just acting so strangely. Like a page out of our novel. He was carrying a clipboard with nothing on it and staring into my eyes as though he was searching in there—”

  “He had access to your key.”

  “Yes. And Derek, his mailbox number — it’s 101. I think Jessica was giving him something, or getting something, via the mailboxes. I think she — or he — might have even communicated that way. Maybe that’s why the number was so important in her mind. She saw it almost every day. She connected it with Fred.”

  “That poem she wrote—”

  “It was labeled 101. And Kathy — she somehow knew the number of the customer, and how much money he’d given to Jessica. Maybe she thought it was blackmail, or maybe it was hush money. She thought I knew, too. Maybe she got that information about Jessica while she was in town. But the day I saw her she told Rosa that she’d be back. She asked about the mailboxes, and about who was with Fred in the office, and said, ‘I’ll be back.’ And that night she was dead.”

  “We need to call the police.”

  “Derek. He’s our boss. If we’re wrong — If I’m wrong, I mean — this would be beyond awkward, for all of us. I need to be sure. But I’m not facing him alone.”

  “Help me find a sub,” he said. “We’ll go down right now.”

  Maura Jamison, our head librarian, was the nicest person in the world. I found her ordering books online, drinking Diet Coke and swearing softly under her breath. Swearing was her secret pleasure, although not one of our students would have known it. “Hey, Teddy. Do you believe how expensive this reprint is? How the hell are we supposed to get these for the kids—”

  “Maura, I need a huge favor. Huge.”

  She looked up and saw me for the first time. “Oh, my God. What’s wrong? Did you have lunch? Honey, you’re going to faint.”

  “No, I’m not. Really. But I need you to sit in on Derek Jonas’ class for a few minutes. Maybe the rest of the period.”

  “Teddy?” Her voice lowered. “Is it a student? Has another student been hurt?”

  “No. No. Let me tell you later, okay?”

  She grabbed her purse and a copy of Remembrance of Things Past. Her bookmark was halfway through it. “I’ve got my Proust and my wallet. Let’s go.”

  Twenty-Seven

  “What do you mean — who is the murderer? …

  Why, you are the murderer, my dear fellow! You are the murderer.”

  —Porfiry Petrovich, Crime and Punishment

  It’s an odd thing to go into a familiar room and to see it entirely differently. There was Rosa, and there were the other office workers, and there were the mailboxes. Above Fred’s name was the number 101. This room was no longer about work.

  In Crime and Punishment, Porfiry suggested that to enter one’s room was to enter their mind, their territory. He mocked Raskolnikov, saying “The door of your room was wide open. I looked round, didn’t even tell your maid, and went away. You don’t even lock your door, do you?” He was accusing Raskolnikov of being transparent. Porfiry could SEE his guilt as plain as day.

  Derek stopped me before we went in. Rosa and the other women were looking at us. “Just go along with me in there, okay? Even if I say something weird,” he said.

  Rosa said, “Do you guys have an appointment?”

  “We need to see Fred, R
osa — right now.” I know my face must have looked ghastly.

  We walked into Fred’s office then, into the point of no return. Fred was on the phone, and he held up a pointer finger; he was pretending to be annoyed, but he had grown four shades paler. I didn’t even look at Derek. I knew he had seen it, too.

  Fred ended his call and swiveled his chair to face us. “Yes? I’m very busy.” He seemed to have forgotten all about the proposal he wanted from me.

  “I need to talk to you, Fred. It’s about Jessica.”

  “Ah. And Derek, what can I help you with? Shouldn’t you be in class?”

  “I’m staying, Fred.”

  “Teddy and I can sort this out, whatever it is. Please go to class.”

  “No.”

  They stared at each other, then Fred nodded. “What’s this about?”

  “Jessica — I recently found a poem she wrote. A poem she titled ‘101’,” I said, not sure how to begin.

  Fred looked ostentatiously at his watch; it was inappropriate to the situation. This fueled my resolve. I sat down in one of the chairs across from Fred, at his eye level. Derek sat in the other. “In the poem she suggests that she is going to confront a man. She says she wants this man to step down. And she indicates that it will be sort of a final confrontation. That if he doesn’t do what she asks, she will become angry.”

  Again I saw the tightening in Fred’s jaw. “Angry,” he said.

  “Rosa tells me that last year Jessica was always delivering and receiving mail. Your mailbox is number 101.”

  Fred looked at me blankly. Then, as though it were my gender that made me inscrutable, he turned to Derek. “Maybe you can clear this up for me, Jonas. I don’t know what Teddy’s talking about.”

  Derek nodded. “She can go off half-cocked sometimes, I admit.” I checked the anger that flowed instantly into me. Derek was trying to gain Fred’s trust. He was going to make it guys-against-girl.

  I turned on Derek. “No, I do not, Derek. I have a valid point and I would like it addressed.”

  Fred smiled at Derek, then looked at me. “My mailbox number. What does that have to do with anything?”