Chosen for Death (6 page)

Acton Academy was a staid old all-girls prep school with a dwindling enrollment. Our interviews with Acton alumnae, current students, prospective students, parents, and faculty showed that the school was perceived by applicants as old-fashioned and dull, although it actually provided an excellent education, especially in math and science, in an environment where girls felt it was safe to excel. Acton had asked us to advise them whether it would be necessary, or successful, to accept boys.

Our research had included focus groups with various sections of the school population, telephone surveys, hours of interviews, class visits, and a review of the promotional literature. It showed that including boys wasn't the solution. What the school needed to do was update their curriculum slightly, adding some "sexy" courses in areas like video production, photography, and computer science, and find ways to give a truer picture of their strengths and promote their overall strong academic program, especially the math and science curriculums.

Our clients had started out pessimistic, but the progress reports that we had given them had lifted their spirits dramatically. We expected the final report to sustain that optimism. Our telemarketing surveys with high school students who were potential candidates and their parents indicated that Acton could increase its enrollment by targeting anxious parents in medium-sized cities and large towns where an eroding tax base was beginning to affect the quality of the schools.

My job was to write all ofthis down, in a lucid and persuasive way, in a report of not less than fifty pages. Some of those pages I could fill with charts and graphs, some with recaps of answers from questionnaires, but it was always a challenge to make about fifteen pages of succinct prose become fifty pages of rhetoric. Our contract was to produce a fifty-page report, and fifty pages was what the client would get. Our clients, whether they acted on our recommendations or not, usually liked our reports.

Suzanne was aware of my deadline dilemma, and she had offered to do the final edit and check on Friday. I raced the clock all week, feeling like a soldier crawling through a minefield. Every time I sat down to concentrate on the report, my secretary, Sarah, interrupted me with a client who thought he had an emergency or a question that just couldn't wait. I finally, after a couple of almost-all-nighters, staggered into the office on Friday morning, tossed the revised draft and twelve new pages on Sarah's desk, and collapsed into my chair. "Make the changes, type those last few pages, and get it to Suzanne as soon as you can," I said.

"Of course, Thea." She handed me a pink memo slip. "Your mother wants you to call her before you leave."

Maybe it was a reprieve. I grabbed the phone eagerly and dialed her number. "Mom, it's Thea."

"Have you heard anything from the police about your sister's killer?" she asked, not wasting any breath on a greeting.

I felt a tingle of excitement. "No. Have they found him?" I hoped that they had. My attitude hadn't altered a bit since the funeral. I'd tried to avoid thinking about Carrie, but her face had come floating into my head nightly as I pored over the documents I was consolidating into my report. Her direct blue eyes seemed to be asking me why I wasn't doing something about her death. I suppose that was just me, feeling guilty. Even Carrie had always believed Thea could fix it.

"No. They haven't. A whole week and a half gone by, and nothing. No news." My mother sounded outraged. "Well, there was something, dear. A call from that policeman, asking more questions. I told him I didn't have any more time to waste talking to him, I had to get on with my life, but that you were coming up today. He's working at the Thomaston barracks and he wants you to stop in and see him on your way through. He said to ask for him at the desk."

How nice of her
, I thought,
to have my life all arranged
. "Be prepared for a rude awakening, dear," she went on. "He may have seemed nice the other day, but he isn't a nice man at all. The questions he's asking are quite terrible. I should refuse to answer them if I were you. About her sex life! Can you imagine? I don't know why he thinks I might know something like that." She sputtered on into silence and hung up, having dropped her latest bomb into my lap.

I sat staring at the phone, stunned into immobility. I was running on less than eight hours' sleep in the last two days. I had a four-hour drive ahead of me and now, before I even reached Mrs. Bolduc—and I needed all my energy to keep from harming her—I was supposed to have a chat with Detective Andre Lemieux about my dead sister's sex life. Wasn't life grand?

"Here. Drink this," Suzanne commanded, setting a large glass of bright pink liquid on the desk. She took the phone out of my hand and replaced the receiver.

"What's in it?" I asked suspiciously. Suzanne has been known to embrace some pretty weird diets.

"Strawberry instant breakfast. Protein powder. Wheat germ, fresh strawberries, milk, and an egg. I promise it won't hurt you. Drink it. You need the energy." Reluctantly I raised the glass to my lips and took a tentative sip. Not bad. And I hadn't done much eating lately. I'd been too busy. Suzanne beamed like a mother watching her child use a cup for the first time. "Have you looked at yourself in the mirror, Thea?"

I shook my head. I hadn't had time yet. I hadn't even combed my hair today. "Well, don't," she said. "You'll fall into terminal depression. Are you going to be able to drive to Maine without falling asleep?" She fumbled around in the gigantic leather bag she euphemistically calls a purse. Pony express riders used them to carry a whole town's mail. "Here," she said, fishing out a small brown prescription container, "you'd better take one of these." She opened it and shook out an orange pill shaped like a rounded triangle.

"What is that?"

"Dexedrine." She chuckled in disbelief. "I can't believe you've never tried it. I'd never get my work done without it." She ignored my skeptical look. "These are really mild. Take a half or a whole, whatever works for you, and you're energized for hours. They're great for killing your appetite, too, not that you, with the world's fastest metabolism, need to worry about that. If I ate like you do, I'd weigh two hundred pounds."

"Are these legal?" I asked. "I thought doctors weren't allowed to prescribe them anymore."

"They're for my narcolepsy," she said with a perfectly straight face.

"Right," I said, "and I'm the Queen of Sudbury. How do I know this won't make me crazy?"

"You don't," she said, "but chances are it won't. I've been using them for years, and I'm not crazy, am I?"

"I'm taking the fifth," I said.

She looked worried for a moment, but my smile reassured her. "Just take it with you, Thea, in case you need it. I don't want to lose my valuable partner in a car accident because she fell asleep." She dropped it into my hand as she passed, and sailed on out the door.

I put it in my jacket pocket, drank the rest of her concoction, and headed for the exit. As I passed Suzanne's office, her last remark finally hit home. She had said "partner." But I was just an employee. Highly paid and well regarded, but not owning a piece of the action. I stuck my head around her door. "Did you mean that?" I asked.

She grinned. "A bit slow on the uptake today, aren't you, Thea? Of course I meant it. It's about time, don't you think?" Yes, I did think it was time. I'd been psyching myself up to introduce the subject for some time, and I was about ready to do so. Now Suzanne had saved me the trouble, and paid me a major compliment. I felt a little less weary as I started my car and swung out onto the highway. The psychological lift, and maybe even Suzanne's weird concoction, made the drive seem easier.

I stopped at the mile 24 service area on the Maine turnpike and had a large coffee. I lingered in the rest room long enough to brush my hair and put on some lip gloss. That was enough prepping for my interview with Detective Lemieux. He'd better not take too long. I couldn't afford to be late with Mrs. Bolduc, or I'd find the door locked.

The drive was easy as far as Bath, where the four-lane road ran out. Good old Route 1 had been awful when I'd come up in the summer. It had taken me more than twenty minutes to cross the bridge. Today things were easier. There was one imbecile driver who pulled out in front of me at the last minute, making me jam on my brakes and say bad words, and who then proceeded to creep along at twenty-five. It took a while to get by him. And there was the weaving pickup truck with the occasional beer can flying out the windows, one of which bounced off my windshield. If I'd only brought my bazooka along I could have blown him off the face of the earth, but I'd forgotten to pack it. Otherwise, the traffic wasn't bad, which was a good thing, because despite the coffee I was running low on energy and my mind was on cruise control.

Coming down the big hill in Waldoboro, I was struck by the ugliness of the landscape below. In the valley between the hills were clustered masses of gas stations, car dealers, and other businesses. It looked as if a giant, playing with toy buildings, had set them carelessly on the hillsides and they had all rolled down. At the bottom of the hill, almost obscured by the ugliness, there was a pretty little river flowing through the valley.

Route 1 wound its way along toward the coast, past tree farms and animal farms, past gift shops lurking behind huge wooden lobsters and gift shops lurking behind Viking ships, a tribute perhaps to Leif Eriksson, that early explorer. Everyone who wasn't having a yard sale seemed to be selling wooden sheep with fleece, birchwood reindeer, or the silhouettes of bent-over ladies to decorate your yard, or pretty wooden butterflies to perch on the side of your house. My condo association would have a fit if I mounted a few of those butterflies on the front of the building and installed a few sheep in the yard.

I crossed the St. George River and headed uphill toward Thomaston, the "Town that Went to Sea." According to Lemieux, via my mother, the state police barracks was at the top of the hill. I pulled up in front of the building and got out. I wasn't dressed for an interview. My mother hadn't called me before I left home and reminded me to wear a dress. Instead, I was wearing an indigo T-backed tank top under a blue and white shirt, black cargo pants, and an indigo washed-silk bomber jacket. The kind of clothes I love, but not what my mom would consider suitable. And not what I would have chosen if I'd known I'd be doing this. It was a fine outfit to wear to a discussion of someone's sex life.

Lemieux was waiting for me. Today he had the height advantage, because I was wearing jogging shoes, not heels, but I was still better looking. Not everyone would think so. A lot of people probably found his clean-cut, paramilitary look and sturdy build attractive. And some misguided people think my hair is too wild and my mouth is too big. We shook hands and he asked me to follow him back to his office.

It wasn't much of an office. Utilitarian, crowded, and too small. There wasn't much around to give a clue about the occupant, either. No pictures on the wall, except a calendar, and that was from an insurance company. A man with a blank face and blank walls. Maybe he saved his passion for his work.

He noticed my scrutiny. "My office is in Augusta," he said. "I just borrowed this one." I sat down in the chair facing the desk. There was an ashtray between us, filled with little putty-colored balls of chewed gum. He pulled a file out of the drawer, flipped it open, and pulled out a yellow lined sheet.

"Mrs. Kozak, I'm afraid that the questions I'm going to ask you may be unpleasant. Murder is an unpleasant business." He had a deep, resonant voice, the kind that would be nice reading Dickens aloud. "I'd appreciate it if you would concentrate on answering my questions instead of getting upset about the fact that I'm asking them." Trying to be helpful, I guess, but he made me feel like a naughty child being lectured by a grown-up. "You're an intelligent, capable woman, and I'm sure you'll understand why I'm asking these questions when we're through. If you don't know the answer, just say so, and we'll move on. If you find you're getting upset—"

"You can skip the lecture," I said. "I'm in a hurry. Just get to the questions." I was being rude, but I didn't much care. I wasn't there for tea. He wasn't the soul of tact either, according to my mother.

"Certainly," he said. His eyes were amused, but his face stayed blank. I think he wanted to push me around a little, but his priority was asking questions, at least for now. "Were you and your sister close?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "Maybe not so close recently." The truth was that since David's death I'd been withdrawn, burying myself in work, and I hadn't always been there for Carrie. After nineteen years of being a second mom to her, I'd let us drift apart. Which was one reason I felt so guilty about her death.

"Was your sister promiscuous?" he asked.

He didn't beat around the bush, did he? "No," I said.

"Was she sexually active?"

"She was an attractive, red-blooded American girl," I said. "Free, white, and twenty-one. Of course she was sexually active." I'd better start exercising some serious self-control or I was going to get into a fight with this guy. His chairside manner left something to be desired.

He nodded. "Sexually active, but not promiscuous. Did she have steady boyfriends, or did she play the field?"

"Both. She dated several boys in high school, then settled down with one, Todd, although she and Todd had their ups and downs. During the downs she sometimes saw other guys." I didn't add that she sometimes slept with those other guys for the sole purpose of driving Todd crazy. Nor did I tell him that it had had the desired effect—Todd was driven crazy. Carrie had been pretty young then. Young and acting out.